Isaiah 53

Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. 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.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living,stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.

Introduction

Last week we saw that Christ comes as the powerful Lion King crushing the enemies of God. It is jarring for our souls to see the king take off the royal robes and put on the servant’s towel as the crushing lion becomes the sacrificial lamb. We pause to let it sink in: the cross means Christ was crushed for your sin. The lion became the lamb. It certainly does not mean that Christ is a weak, meek, little lamb today. That is why the sermon closed last week by talking about the crushing wrath of the Lamb in Revelation 6! The Lamb has wrath. Jesus is a lion-like lamb and a lamb-like lion. It is not an either or.

This combination or intersection of excellencies was what we saw last week. Christ’s excellencies are not at odds, but sinlessly and seamlessly fit together. This week we see it supremely at the cross. I was crafting a way to say this and then I happed to read this week a paragraph in John Stott’s book The Cross of Christ, that said it better than the way I had crafted it. John Stott quotes Thomas Crawford as follows:

It is altogether an error … to suppose that God acts one time according to one of his attributes, and at another time according to another. He acts in conformity with all of them at all times. ... As for the divine justice and the divine mercy in particular, the end of his work was not to bring them into harmony, as if they had been at variance with one another, but jointly to manifest, and glorify them in the redemption of sinners. It is a case of combined action, and not of counteraction, on the part of these attributes, that is exhibited on the cross. (The Cross of Christ, pp. 134–135)

The key distinction there is the difference between combined action and counteraction. The cross is a combined action. Mercy and justice are combined actions that flow from a perfect being in whom there is no contradiction or lack of harmony. There is no Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde schizophrenia syndrome in God. There are no unstable pendulum swings of personality that come at us like mood swings between justice and mercy. Divine justice and divine mercy are not expressed in an attempt to try to correct an imbalance in God.

They are expressed to make visible the stunning harmony that already exists. We do not respond with a sigh of relief that an imbalance was momentarily rectified—we respond with a song of soaring praise for God’s unchanging perfections. Isn’t that why the wounds of Christ are eternally visible? Heaven does not try to hide them as something unseemly. The wounds do not lead to mass everlasting gloom, but to a massive symphony of everlasting praise. The cross is not a last ditch effort to restore rising imbalance within God; the cross is an expression of God’s everlasting perfection.

Kids, are you ready for another advent candle picture? Look at the burning candles. They give both light and heat. What is the light? The light represents the glory of Christ revealed in the law (candle 1), and the prophets (candle 2). The heat represents what we pray will happen in your hearts. Do remember what happened in the hearts of the disciples on the road to Emmaus: “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (Luke 24:32). Let’s pray that God would make it burn bright and hot in our hearts.

Looking at the Cross From Three Different Angles

I want to look at the cross from three angles this morning in Isaiah 53: (1) the wrong angle, (2) the right angle, and (3) the wide angle.

1. The Wrong Angle (Isaiah 53:1–3)

We begin by reading the text …

Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Some people in scholarship like to debate the identity of the sufferer in this text. Are the Gentiles looking at the suffering of Israel and having a hard time believing they are God’s servant? Or are the Jews looking at the suffering of the Messiah and having a hard time believing that he is really God’s Messiah?

I could go into the debate and try to show why I think the second reading is far and away the best one. But I have decided to read you the best commentary that I could find on this text from any book in my library.

In this book, there is a foreigner who is reading Isaiah 53. The foreigner asks the very question we are talking about. He says, “about whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” (Acts 8:34). Then the person with him “opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus” (Acts 8:35). The book is the book of Acts. It is the story in Acts chapter 8 about Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. The eunuch believed and became a Christian as a result of seeing Jesus in Isaiah 53. I have been praying that others here would do the same. God said that Isaiah 53 is about Jesus.

So let’s ask a question. Why is it so hard to read about this suffering of Jesus the Messiah and believe that he is really the Messiah? Notice that the text calls for faith in what has been revealed. What has been revealed is called “the arm of the Lord.” Isaiah has spoken of God’s mighty arm being revealed. The last text in which it appears before this one says,

The LORD has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.—Isaiah 52:10 (cf. also Isaiah 40:10; 48:14; 51:5).

It is difficult to believe that the revelation of the powerful arm of the Lord would look so unimpressive. The text says that “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). Growing up I heard a few people say that Jesus was not a handsome man because they read this verse. It is not talking about good looks. It is talking about the unexpected nature of Jesus’ ministry. No one expected that Jesus would conquer their enemies this way. He could have come with crushing power, but he did not.

Jesus’ birth and death did not conform to anyone’s expectations. There is nothing impressive about a manger. Sure some think about how cute it is to sleep in the same room as baby animals, but do you know how a manger would smell? I grew up in a church in which you could tell which farmers came to church right after doing chores who did not have time to shower first. There is a smell.

There was also a smell at the cross. It did not smell like the smell of victory, but the stink of defeat. No one expected Jesus to be crushed by the power of Rome. Peter rebuked Jesus when he heard Jesus say that he was going to be murdered. It was a repulsive idea. Lamb’s are cute, but if you want something that is going to tear apart your enemies and you are expecting a lion, then a lamb seems like a cruel joke.

The two places in which Isaiah 53:1 is quoted in the NT both have this meaning of failing to believe in Jesus as the Messiah.

John 12:37–40 highlights this response of unbelief:

Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them.”

Romans 10:16–17 stresses unbelief that is overcome by the word of Christ and the coming of faith:

But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Maybe some of you today are listening to this sermon and you have the same view of Jesus. He was a good moral teacher, but then he got himself killed—maybe a good guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. Natural appearances are deceiving. We are too limited to get the right answer by trusting our senses. We need God’s revelation to interpret what we see. God’s interpretation is all that matters in the final analysis. What is God’s take on the matter? What is the right angle on the cross?

I wonder if you will pause with me to listen as God’s word gives us the right interpretation.

2. The Right Angle (Isaiah 53:4–9)

Yes, people are right to see that Jesus is suffering. But he is suffering as a substitute. The key word that is stressed is “our” and “us.”:

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. 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.

The logic of substitution has staggering implications. They looked at Jesus and what he “received” from God and they despised him for it. We despise or esteem according to what we think people deserve. Did you catch the stinger in the tail of verse 3 and verse 4?

He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief …. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

We despised him and rejected him as a man of sorrows, but he carried our sorrows. We reject him because he is acquainted with grief, but he bore our grief. We are the ones that deserve to be stricken, smitten, and afflicted. We deserve to be pierced and crushed, chastised and wounded. When people despise Jesus, they do not know that they are despising themselves. They despised what they saw only because they were too deceived to realize they were looking in the mirror.

The word substitution has already been a major theme and now we add two more words: sacrifice and submission. The next verses (vv.7–9) stress how lamb-like Jesus was, because the text uses the imagery of the sacrificial lamb. Notice how he begins and ends this stanza with a focus on Jesus’ mouth. The first stresses his submission (he did not open his mouth), the second stresses his innocence (no deceit).

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

He suffered not as an animal that is submissive by instinct, but as a rational person making a conscious choice to submit. He did it without violence or deceit. Pilate was amazed that Jesus did not speak (John 19:10). Peter stressed the same thing:

He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to the him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For your were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.—1 Peter 2:22–25

Verse 9 was also fulfilled in Jesus’ burial. Jesus is the only one that can fulfill the enigma of this text. How did a condemned criminal receive a rich man’s burial? A rich man, Joseph of Arimathea, took the body of Jesus and buried it in his own tomb (John 19:38).

3. The Wide Angle (Isaiah 53:10–12; Isaiah 52:13–15)

Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.—Isaiah 53:10–12

The last three verses highlight all that flows from the cross. “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him; he has put him to grief” (Isaiah 53:10; cf. Acts 4:28: “to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place”). Why? “When his soul makes an offering for guilt.” Now the question completely changes. If his soul was a sacrificial guilt offering as a lamb, then the question now becomes: what it an acceptable offering? Did God receive it?

The answer is Yes. The doctrine of justification is found in this text. God accounts “many righteous” (v. 11). Who are these many? They are his offspring or children. The Lord will be satisfied. Verse 10 reverses the picture of death in verses 1–9. He went from being alone and rejected to seeing his offspring. Who are these offspring? As Motyer says, “we stray as sheep” (v. 6) and return as children in verse 10 (Motyer, p. 440). These are the same children mentioned in Isaiah 54:1 “‘Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married,’ says the Lord” (Isaiah 54:1).

“Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.” This is like Hebrews 12:2. He did this all for the joy that was set before him! He is satisfied by the result as he sees: one flock and one shepherd; one family together united by the cross. His Father’s name is vindicated in our salvation and his promises are confirmed.

Verse 12 at first glance reads in a confusing way. It reads as if he is ranked with the great and shares his spoils with the mighty. My favorite commentator on Isaiah (J. Alec Motyer) helped me a lot here. He along with several commentators have a better rendering of this verse as follows: “I will allocate to him the many, and the strong he will allocate as spoil.” In other words, the Servant received as his own all those whom he died to save. We go from being sheep to children.

This poem ends just like it began: with a note of vindication and exaltation. This might sound confusing if you only read 53:1. But the poem actually starts with 52:13. The servant shall “be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted” (Isaiah 52:13). The many that the Servant wins have already been defined as “many nations” (v. 15). These are the many Jesus spoke about in Mark 10:45—“even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.” Though people were astonished by how marred he was, he sprinkled many nations clean and shuts the mouths of the powerful like kings (Isaiah 52:14–15). The tailpiece of this poem is the response of Isaiah 54–55. The human response is to sing (Isaiah 54:1), come to the feast (Isaiah 55:1), and seek the Lord (Isaiah 55:6).

We should note that the doctrine of resurrection is at least implied in this text. Note that God restores the servant and vindicates him after death on the other side of the grave. We will focus on that point in even more detail next week from Psalm 16.

The Penal Substitutionary Atonement of Christ Defined

I want to take us deeper into the logic of penal substitutionary atonement. All three words are important. Penal means that Jesus’ death bore the penalty for sin. Substitutionary means that he did it as our substitute—he bore our penalty in our place. Atonement is the result of bearing this penalty as our substitute: we are reconciled to God—we have “at” “one” “ment.” That is what we have been talking about. It is not a story about a sympathetic sufferer. This is a story of someone who took on the wrath of God as our substitute sufferer. Lets go deeper together into the depths of grace found in Christ as our substitute.

The Penal Substitutionary Atonement of Christ Applied in Four Ways

1. The Cross Crushes Our Vertical Pride

The cross reveals what we deserve from God. The cross decimates our proud pretensions and our smug, self-righteous rationale for rightness with God. The cross crushes us because it convicts us of the true nature of sin. It testifies to the greatness of our evil. If we were a little wicked, then there could be a small sacrifice. The immensity of the sacrifice testifies to the immensity of our sin!

Ye who think of sin but lightly,
Nor suppose the evil great,
Here may view its nature rightly,
Here its guilt may estimate.
Mark the Sacrifice appointed!
See Who bears the awful load!
’Tis the Word, the Lord’s Anointed,
Son of Man, and Son of God.
(From "Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted," by Thomas Kelly)

It crushes our pride because we recognize the only way to receive grace flows from the dis-grace of Christ. To receive grace we must embrace the disgrace. To see Christ stricken, wounded and afflicted is the most terrible sight imaginable as the crushing weight of justice falls upon him.

Tell me, ye who hear Him groaning,
Was there ever grief like His?
Friends through fear His cause disowning,
Foes insulting his distress:
Many hands were raised to wound Him,
None would interpose to save;
But the deepest stroke that pierced Him
Was the stroke that Justice gave.
("Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted")

I have a friend who always remembers the holidays as a time when his wife was shot and killed. That by itself is crushing enough. But the worst part is that he shot her. There had been a string of burglaries in the area and he thought the person he shot was a robber. He went and saw that he had shot his wife.

It would be enough to crush us to see the perfect, sinless Son of God murdered—but the most crushing part is that we did it. He died as our substitute. It was our sin. His death is what we deserved.

But God designed salvation to deal the deepest possible blow to our pride. This is what Luther meant by a theology of the cross. We do not approach God on glory terms as if we rise up into his glorious company. We have fallen short of the glory of God. That path is closed. We cannot rise to God’s glory. The only way to get to God is by owning our sin, owning our disgrace as sinners, embracing the cross. It is suffering and then glory. We must embrace the cross if we are ever to think and feel rightly about God’s glory.

2. The Cross Crushes Our Horizontal Pride

We are also crushed corporately as a church. Christmas is the end of thinking we are better than anyone else. The cross is the end of arrogance. We are not better than anyone in this room or out of this room. Try this sometime. Attain something by hard work and then try not to notice people who have not attained it. Try to eat healthy for a week and then go get groceries and try not to notice the people with carts full of fatty, sugary food. Kids, have you noticed that it is much easier to tattle about what others do when they are naughty, then it is to admit what you did when you were naughty.

Christmas shows us that Jesus was born to bleed and as such it puts an end to our arrogant comparisons. We did not attain salvation by anything that we accomplished. Salvation is what God accomplished through Christ’s work on the cross.

3. The Cross Changes Our Thinking About Suffering

The cross is the ultimate ground of our hope that God can take things that look horrible and bring good out of them. It testifies at the start by reminding us when we go through suffering that the greatest question has already been answered—does God care? Yes! Look at the cross. It also testifies toward the future by saying, God can bring beautiful things out of pain and horror. It is not as if the cross did not hurt—it reminds us that we must allow God to interpret our suffering. He has. He is working all things together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28). The cross is exhibit A of God’s ability to bring good out of evil.

This means that your suffering and your shame need not define you. You don’t have to turn to food, or sex, or alcohol. You do not need to deal with the hurt you feel within by hurting yourself on the outside. Because people are hurting, they want to hurt themselves. How can wounds heal wounds? It happens at the cross. By his scourging we are healed. His wounds can heal our wounds so that we don’t have to hurt ourselves.

4. The Cross Means All of Our Boasting Is in the Cross

But as we stated in the introduction, divine mercy and justice are displayed so that we will glorify Jesus and boast in the cross. Look at the progression of grace.

Guilty Sinners (we should be crushed) > Perfect King (Christ should crush us) > Christ is Crushed (crushed by us and for us) > We are Crushed (we are broken at the cross) > and Created Again (boast only in the cross)
                                       
The end result is that we are sweetly broken so that we boast in the cross. A hard-hearted sinner cannot receive Christ being crushed for them without first being crushed by it.

The end result is that you can’t really sing the Christmas carols rightly without being crushed. You start singing them not because they are sentimental, but because they are about the Savior born and crushed for your salvation. Christmas cheer will only be chipper, not rich, deep, sweet, and awestruck.

Our giving will be the wrong kind of giving without the cross. Jesus received gifts from the wise men, but some have commercialized Christmas into the gifts that we get. Real giving can only flow from seeing God as the truly outrageous giver of grace this Christmas.

Conclusion and Charge

We must be broken by the cross before we can ever boast in the cross. The cross replaces all self-righteous boasts with the sweetly broken boast of the cross. We are broken with awe, broken with wonder. We must become poor in spirit—which does not mean that we are pretty poor—though we can scrape by. It means we are spiritual beggars. We deserve nothing and with open hands turned toward God we receive more than we could ever expect: the cross, Christ crucified. We boast in our King. Look at what my King did for me!

Concluding Song: “Sweetly Broken”