Pastor Daniel Simmons preaches from Isaiah 52:13-53:7.
Christmas In Isaiah: Jesus Heals Our Suffering
Isaiah 52:13-53:7
Main Point of the Sermon: Jesus heals our suffering by suffering in our place.
Introduction
I love Christmas. I love the pizazz of the season. The music, the lights. People seem to get nicer, more generous. [Sing] “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” Right? But not for everyone. For many, Christmas is just a time that reminds them of a lost loved one, that their family is broken apart, that their bank accounts are still low or overdrawn, that their depression or physical pain still holds fast. It doesn’t go away because it’s Christmas.
Even if it’s not pain for you, it might be anxiety. The bills, the health issues, house issues, car issues, the stock market, your job… it doesn’t stop. The last couple weeks were some of the most challenging of the decade for me. I had a very painful injury and emergency surgery. Then My family got Covid. And I was dealing with anxiety from a number of things. It was rough. Yet, I’m here to tell you today, Christian, that you and I still have a real reason to rejoice this Christmas.
Today’s text, one of the most phenomenal prophecies in the Bible, shows us how Jesus came to heal all of that suffering through his own suffering.
Prayer: Let’s pray once more. Father, would you show us yet again the beauty, the glory of Jesus, who was lifted high on a cross of wood for us? Let your Spirit open our eyes to give us new revelation of your goodness and love, and would you cause it to produce in us an unshakable hope and an unexplainable peace in the midst of our pain today. In Jesus name, Amen.
We will begin in 52:13.
THE DIVINE MESSIAH WOULD SUFFER
[Slide] Behold, my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted.
“Behold” is another way to say LOOK! It draws attention to what’s following. Isaiah is about to lay out some shocking images.
The subject is “my servant.”
Who’s servant? God’s servant. Notice the first person possessive here. This is God talking through the prophet Isaiah about his servant.
And who is God’s servant? Anytime you come across a title, or really any confusing thing in the Bible, it’s always best to look at context. Scripture is the best interpreter of Scripture. Where else has Isaiah spoken of this servant? Where else do we see this language in the Bible?
Well, Isaiah actually has four prophecies which scholars call the servant songs, but I will show you just one, 42:1:
[Slide] “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.”
What we see here and in the other servant songs is that this “servant” is God’s specially chosen and Anointed One. He is the promised Messiah. The servant is the boy from chapter 7 and 9 who would grow up to reign on David’s throne forever.
Any Jew who knew the storyline of the Bible was longing for, looking for this Messiah. So, they would have been especially interested in texts that talked about him.
Isaiah says, “my servant shall act wisely.” Or as the footnote in your Bible may say, he will prosper. In other words, he will be a good and prosperous king. We are told that he will be “high and lifted up.” He will be “exalted”.
The general meaning of these phrases is that this king will stand far above the rest in the quality and length of his reign. This is very much in line with what we heard preached last week from Isaiah 9.
But there is something more to this phrase “high and lifted up” that is important to see before we move on. Isaiah uses it another place. Isaiah 6.
[Slide] 6 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.
Isaiah’s vision goes on to describe the heavenly creatures surrounding the throne who cry to another day and night saying: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”
What’s crazy is the connection that Isaiah draws from God on his throne “high and lifted up” to his servant “high and lifted up.”
This servant is not just some guy that God shows favor to. This servant is himself divine. The Apostle John doesn’t think this is a stretch either. He makes this explicit when he says of Jesus in [Slide] John 12:41 “Isaiah said these things because he saw [Jesus’s] glory and spoke of him.”
Wait! Though Jesus was born 700 years later, he was seeing HIM on the throne in his vision?! Yes!
This servant, which we now know to be Jesus Christ, is the divine king that Isaiah saw the angels worshipping. Church, Jesus is Yahweh, the second member of the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Transition: But what is so clear to us today was a mystery to Isaiah and his audience. If you were reading this for the first time, what would you expect to come after this description of his exaltation? Let’s look at verse 14:
[SLIDE] “As many were astonished at you—his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind—so shall he sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths because of him, for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard they understand.”
Our text today starts and finishes showing the Messiah’s glory. I think the reason is that Isaiah wants to set up the stark contrast next to the intense and unimaginable suffering of this individual.
From the image of a divine king, worshipped by the angels night and day, that Isaiah himself cannot even stand before because of his sinfulness, to the image of a man marred beyond recognition. He didn’t even look human. How can this be?
This was unfathomable to the Jews. Still to this day! This is what Jews stumble over, even what Muslims stumble over, that the glorious Messiah could suffer in this kind of way. He was supposed to be the one putting an end to suffering, not the one who suffers.
But by his suffering, he would sprinkle the nations. What does the sprinkling of many nations refer to? It refers to the shedding of his blood. This suffering servant would be wounded and shed his blood not just for Israel, but for many nations. In other words, the thing that the Kings of the whole earth would see and understand about God that they had never heard or known before was that his exaltation was coming through his suffering.
In these few verses we see laid out for us a summary of the history of our Lord Jesus, which Isaiah 53 will unfold in greater detail, that
1) many would be astonished, confounded, even offended by him
2) but by his death many would be healed by him
These two realities provide a structure for our remaining verses in chapter 53.
MANY WERE ASTONISHED
53 Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
Verse 1 points out the reality that this message would not be easily received. That’s because it’s a scandalous message that we so often take for granted! One commentator I read says that Isaiah sounds like someone present during Jesus’s ministry who is shocked at how few believe in him. Throughout Jesus’s ministry in the Gospels we see very few putting faith in Jesus. In fact Acts 1:15 says there were only 120 present in the upper room after Jesus raised from the dead and ascended into heaven!
It’s not because God didn’t show his power. This phrase “the arm of the LORD” is referring to the powerful working of God. This mystery was the work of God that should have been believed on by everyone because of all of the miracles performed by Jesus, even his resurrection! But still, few believed.
Why? Look at verse 2.
2 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.
What this is saying is that Jesus was not an impressive and powerful person! He was an average Joe. He grew up like any child would grow up.
Out of “dry ground” gives an image of a plant that sort of struggles. He didn’t grow up in a royal palace or with wealth, but in poverty to a blue-collar dad and a teenage mom.
Further, verse 3 says:
3 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.
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth,” they said. People in that day in age were obsessed by power and prestige just like we are today. But he wasn’t the Harvard grad, best-selling author, good-looking and charismatic guy that we so often pawn over. He was more like the guys you see working on the side of the road in small town Minnesota.
“A man of sorrows”. What a title for a king! Grief was like a faithful friend to him. Jesus probably lost his dad when he was young and spent much of his teenage years and twenties helping support his family.
Isaiah takes it so far as to say that he would be like one whom men hide their faces from.
Isaiah can’t stress it enough, the servant would not be named amongst the rich, powerful, and famous, but among the despised, shamed, rejected.
MANY WERE HEALED
But there was purpose to all this.
Look at verse 4. Though many were astonished to the point of rejecting Jesu, many would be healed. [SLIDE]
4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
The text takes a surprising turn. Isaiah makes sure you hear him loud and clear when he says “surely.”
Though the world judged Jesus and believed that he was being punished by God, his suffering was for a very different reason.
What does verse 4 say? Say the first line with me. HE HAS BORNE OUR GRIEFS.
Wait. He was suffering because he was carrying our suffering?! Yes. It was actually “our griefs” that he bore, “our sorrows” that he carried, not his own. It was not because of his own sin or fault that he was called a man of sorrows, but because he came to take others’ pain, diseases, and sorrow upon himself!
Verse 9 makes this point explicit. [SLIDE] “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.
This was a faultless man, the only faultless man, yet he suffered like he was a sinner, he died like he was among the wicked.
Why? Verse 5 and following shows us why. [SLIDE]
THE SUBSTITUTIONARY LAMB
5 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.
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;
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.
Praise the Lord for his great mercy! These words contain the best news in the world for suffering sinners.
Isaiah moves from more general suffering and sorrow to specific suffering. He speaks of the servant being “pierced”, “crushed”, and having “wounds”.
What other event in the history of Jesus’s ministry can capture this kind of suffering than the cross on which our Savior died?
How do we know this is talking about the cross. This is how the Apostles interpreted it! Look with me at 1 Peter 2:24 [SLIDE]:
“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree [that is the cross], that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”
Do you see that? Peter is basically summing up these verses in Isaiah. He helps us be sure we are moving in the right direction. The sufferings of the Servant laid out in Isaiah was a prediction of the sufferings of Jesus on the cross some 700 years later!
And why? Why would God come in the form of man to go to a cross?
Isaiah says He was pierced “for our transgressions”.
He was crushed “for our iniquities.”
Isn’t this exactly what Peter says? “He bore our sins.”
Church, our God took on himself intense suffering, even death, not because he had done something wrong, but because YOU AND ME HAD.
PAUSE
You and me had done something wrong. Since the time of the first man and woman, we all had.
The Bible could not be more clear about this. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way;
We are the guilty and he was the innocent.
If you were to go out and talk to anyone on the street today you will find that most people shake their fists at God for their suffering in some way because they believe that they are fundamentally good people who deserve a good, happy, and long life. So when people suffer they rarely acknowledge the reality of their sin, but quickly blame God for dealing them a bad hand.
Maybe you feel that way today.
But it’s just the opposite. We dealt ourselves the bad hand! I’m certainly not implying that all suffering you experience is your fault, but what I am saying is that humanity has strayed like sheep running after our own path, our own control, our own gods, and the Bible says that is precisely why we lack peace and are dying in our sin.
But he came to take all of that pain according to the great love of God for humanity.
Look at verse 7 with me. [SLIDE]
7 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.
Our God, the uncreated One, took on flesh and identified with straying sheep. Jesus is compared to a lamb, even as we are compared to sheep.
But this lamb, not like us who justify ourselves so quickly before God and man, was silent knowing his innocence, as he stood before his judges and was taken to his death. Why was he silent?
Because he was fulfilling God’s plan of redemption, standing in our place as a substitution for our sin.
There aren’t many better places in the Bible to point to substitutionary atonement. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace…the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Jesus suffered what you and I deserve a million times over so that we could have the life he deserved. He was stripped of peace so that we could have peace. He was wounded with nails in his hands and feet, and a spear in his side, and a crown of thorns on his head, and with lashes all over his body, so that we could be healed of our pain, our diseases. He was crushed under the weight of the cross and the wrath of God so that you and I could be sprinkled clean with his blood and enjoy the presence of God again.
Like the lamb that was slaughtered at Passover, or on the day of atonement and sprinkled on the altar and on the people, our Jesus was slaughtered by God for our sake so that we might be saved!
Hallelujah! What a Savior! PAUSE
As I was suffering this week in some of the most intense pain of my life, the Lord showed up in a tangible way and started talking to me about his sufferings.
I was reminded in those moments that sorrow, pain, and loss are normal for the human experience. Peace is not. Painlessness is not. When we feel peace and go without hearing about some horrible loss or tragedy for an extended period of time, we are living in an unusual moment.
I was reminded further that so many people right now, inside and outside the church are suffering in really intense ways, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, some without any real idea of when the pain will let up.
And I was reminded that all of this sorrow we face is the grim result of our separation from God. It is deserved suffering. It is deserved sorrow.
But then the Lord reminded me of this incredible truth. Jesus came to buy peace for us. He came so we don’t have to hurt anymore. He came so we don’t have to worry any more, or feel loss anymore. And that should cause us to lift him up with our worship. That’s what Christmas is about.
Some of you have suffered greatly in this life and are still suffering. And if you are a Christian, I have a simple message of hope for you today. Hold fast to Jesus because he entered your grief and sorrow on the cross and will soon bring healing for good. The suffering is just a little longer and then it will be done forever.
Maybe you feel alone and misunderstood in your suffering. Know that you are not alone. Jesus has carried your griefs and sorrows. All of it!
I need you to know that our God is not a God who hangs out in lofty places with the rich and powerful feasting with holiday cheer pretending that everything is ok. No. He is God who took the title “Man of Sorrows”. He identifies with you in your poverty and brokenness
Why? So that all that’s wrong in the world could be made right. All will be made new.
Even Isaiah’s prophecy doesn’t end in death and sorrow as we know Jesus’s death didn’t end there either.
Look at verse 10-11 [SLIDE], which we didn’t read today:
“…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.”
Not only was the death of Christ prophesied 700 years before it happened, so was his resurrection!
We’re told that he would live to “see his Offspring” and “prolong his days”.
Who are his Offspring? Jesus never had physical children. Rather, it is all who put their faith in him.
If you are here today and you need to get right with God, it is as simple as believing on Jesus and all that he has accomplished for you. You can stop trying to prove your goodness and let God make you righteous through his Son Jesus. And if you come to him you can be sure to be healed both now and ultimately in eternity.
One final word for us this Christmas. Let’s be like Jesus this holiday season. Don’t be afraid to enter the suffering of others. We don’t need to pretend like everything is ok. Jesus showed us that success in life is not about escaping suffering or avoiding others suffering. Rather, his glory and exaltation came through his suffering, especially his suffering for others. If that’s true, you can know that as you enter into other people's pain you’ll find more of Jesus.
Now we're going to worship our risen king, Jesus, who healed our suffering by suffering in our place.
Let’s pray.
