The Life Giving Servant
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I want to open by thanking Mililani Baptist for the opportunity to speak tonight. Good Friday is a time when we really focus on Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf. There is a focus on the suffering and pain on the cross and often the darkness of the hour. We hear sermons that remind us in the darkness that it may be “Friday, but Sunday is coming” pointing to the hope of the resurrection we will celebrate on Sunday. But tonight, I want to take a slightly different look at the suffering of Christ. Don’t worry, we will still see the hope that Easter brings but from the perspective of biblical history.
Prayer
I read a book recently who described the Bible as a snowball. The themes of the Bible start in the first 3 chapters of Genesis and then “rolls down hill” through the rest of the Bible picking up more and more “snow” until by the end it is a huge “snowball.” I think this is true, and one of the best ways of looking at this snowball is by looking at the different layers and how the connect to the other layers. The snowball is huge by the time we get to the cross, but how did we get there? When I as asked to preach I was told to keep it under 4 hours, so we don’t have time to go through all of it, but I want to take a look at one passage in Isaiah that will point us to Christ at the cross and see that Christ is the promised redemption completed. You see, it was only 4 days earlier that the people recognized him as the king! Now he is dying a gruesome death, beaten, mocked, and crucified. Would you believe that all of this was foretold? Turn with me in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 52:13-53:12.
13 Behold, My Servant shall deal prudently; He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high.
14 Just as many were astonished at you, So His visage was marred more than any man, And His form more than the sons of men;
15 So shall He sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths at Him; For what had not been told them they shall see, And what they had not heard they shall consider.
1 Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
4 Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth.
8 He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.
9 And they made His grave with the wicked— But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, And He shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors.
We don’t have time to look at great detail at each verse, but I think it is important for us to pull out a few key items from this prophecy to understand what was happening at the cross.
13 Behold, My Servant shall deal prudently; He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high.
two points here. first, the servant, who is Christ, will deal prudently, or wisely. He will do what the Lord asks of him in order to provide the needed sacrifice for the payment for our sins.
the second point. He will be highly exalted. Just like the author of the book of Hebrews points out
2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
This exaltation to the right hand of God as our high priest is the second idea here. Because Christ acted wisely and obeyed even to the cross, now he is exalted at the right hand of God where he serves as our priest.
14 Just as many were astonished at you, So His visage was marred more than any man, And His form more than the sons of men;
After having been beaten, given a crown of thrones, and crucified Christ was indeed marred and those who saw him were astonished.
15 So shall He sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths at Him; For what had not been told them they shall see, And what they had not heard they shall consider.
but being a marred spectacle that people were astonished by was the sacrifice that made him the Priest on High. The idea of sprinkling comes from the idea of cleansing. The priests would sprinkle blood or water in different ceremonies to cleanse things, here Christ is sprinkling the nations to cleanse them of their sin!
The second half is pointing out that this salvation will go out to the other nations who had not heard or considered the one true God, but now they will be cleansed by him.
1 Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
This is a statement from the believing Isreal after the servant when it is clear that most missed his importance. They are lamenting that so few believed their report. The Apostle John sums up the fulfillment of this passage saying:
11 He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.
What was the report? The whole point of the book of John is to announce his report. He wants us to believe the report. His report is summed up as:
14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
15 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
The Son spoken of in John 3 is the same servant from Isaiah. If we believe in him for eternal life he will give it to us, yet as Isaiah suggest there is lament that so many still do not believe. If you are here tonight and have never believed in Christ to give you eternal life, I would encourage you tonight to do so. Believe the report of the life that Isaiah foretold and Jesus fulfilled.
2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
This is a continuation of the lament. The Servant, Jesus, did not have a spectacular background. He grew up before God and man. He was perfect, but as we see in verse 3. . .
3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Here he starts giving detail of Christ’s sacrifice. He was rejected and people hid form him.
4 Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted.
He carried our sorrows, yet he was not recognized.
5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.
I want to really highlight this verse. This is the whole message of the Bible that arrives as the snowball at the Cross. Look at the words used here “wounded” and “bruised.” God’s first promise of a savior to Adam and Eve was that one would come who would crush the head of the serpent, but that the serpent would bruise his heal. Christ was wounded, bruised (your Bible may say crushed, same word) even though he did nothing wrong. It was for our iniquity, not his! But by his stripes we are healed! This healing is better than just not being sick, we are healed from the eternal consequence of our sin. Our relationship with God can be restored.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
Here is what we needed his healing from. We have all gone astray. We have all sinned. Paul puts it this way
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
we have, but the Lord has laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all. Remember John 3:16? The payment was for the whole world, every one of us! No matter how bad you think you are, your sin was laid on Christ and paid for! All you have to do to be healed and have eternal life is to believe in Him for eternal life.
7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth.
Christ as he was beaten and questioned did not answer. he was silent. As a lamb, Jesus is called the “Lamb of God” and he was silent in his defence before the high priest and before Pilot and Harod.
8 He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.
he was cut off for the transgressions of the people. not for his own.
9 And they made His grave with the wicked— But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth.
Grave with the wicked, what shouted wicked more than crucifixion in Jesus’ day? But because he was righteous and had no violence, Joseph of Aramethia, a rich man lent him his tome
10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
The Servant, Jesus, his life couldn’t satisfy God’s justice, but he had to die as an offering for sin. That is why it please the Lord to bruise him. But just like the sermon that says “It’s Friday, but Sunday is coming!” we can see that the servant’s story doesn’t end in his death.
11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities.
he shall justify many, who are the many? Those who believe their report!
12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, And He shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors.
His portion with the great is King of Kings, but he is also, as the end of verse points out, our High Priest. He is in heaven now making intercession for us. His sacrifice is complete and his gift of life is available to all who believe in him.
Closing
Tonight I want to you see two things. The first is the proof of Christ. Isaiah wrote this over 700 years before Christ came and died, yet his description was spot on. This can only prove that Christ is the completion of the promise that we see in scripture of one who will crush sin and death. Jesus understood that his death was the fulfillment of this, and many other, prophecies. That is why he said “it is finished” just before he died on the cross.
Second, after seeing that I want us to take a moment to meditate on what Christ did for us. If you haven’t believed before, my prayer is that this passage foretelling of Christ on the Cross will cause you to be convinced. For those who have believed, think about the meaning of this. Christ knew before he came that he would go through this suffering, yet he did it anyway so that we could be healed of our sin and have eternal life. That is the overwhelming depth of Christ’s love for us.