Carey's Bible Study Notes
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the suffering servant
life of christ: isaiah 53.1-12
the suffering servant
introduction
So much of what we have studied in the past few weeks has focused on God's promise to David that his dynasty would be eternal. Whereas the passages in Kings and Chronicles to some degree give us some inclination that the future King is going to be glorious, Isaiah takes this concept up to the highest level by declaring that He will be none other than Mighty God. It is only logical that this King would be Mighty God since His reign is to be eternal-something which God alone could accomplish.
With Isaiah 40 we come to a new beginning in Israel's history. As we studied Isaiah 7-11, we saw that the tiny nation of Judah with its Davidic dynasty was facing its greatest threat. Isaiah 40-66 deals with a period of time which occurs around 200 years after the incidents in Isaiah 7-11. Whereas the first 39 chapters in Isaiah deal with the period of 750-700 BC, the last 27 chapters deal with the period immediately following the exile of the Jews into Babylon. In 605 and 597 the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and started deporting her citizens to Babylon and outlying areas surrounding Babylon. Finally, in 586 BC the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar come in and completely destroy Jerusalem along with the Temple built by Solomon. Jeremiah prophesied that for a period of 70 years, the Jews would be forced to live in exile because of her idolatrous practices.
With Isaiah 40, we see the long period of exile coming to an end. The prophet announces that God has prepared a superhighway in the wilderness so that His people could return home. What greets the pilgrims is a new paradise. Isaiah describes it in terms of a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Jerusalem is going to be rebuilt in such a manner that her new glory will surpass her former glory. What will bring all this to pass? Will the Davidic king return to restore Israel to her former glory? Will He crush the Persians who now rule over Judah and Jerusalem? Contrary to what we thought would have happened, a conquering military hero does not emerge to bring this to pass. Rather, God brings all this to pass through the work of His Servant who suffers for His people.
Normally, whenever we look at the OT books, we see an historical event which serves as the background for the passage. We then see that the passage is ultimately fulfilled in the person and work of Christ. Although many have attempted to identify the historical event which serves as the background for Is. 53, no compelling conclusion has been presented by any scholar. What we have is a passage that seems unattached to any historical event before the time of Christ. It appears that nearly of all the OT passages which relate to Christ, this one alone seems to apply only to Him. He is not only its ultimate fulfillment; He is its only fulfillment.
ASTONISHMENT AT THE REACTION TO THE MESSAGE (53.1)
In introducing this passage about the Suffering Servant, Isaiah expresses astonishment at the reaction his message about the Servant receives. His 2 questions imply a negative response? "Who has believed our report?" Hardly anybody! "Who has seen the Lord's power at work in the Servant and believed this power came from God?" Few if any. These questions and their responses basically predict the kind of reception Jesus the Suffering Servant would receive from His people the Jews.
Why did Jesus as the Suffering Servant receive this reception from the Jews? Because He was not the kind of Messiah (deliverer) they wanted Him to be. As long as Jesus miraculously gave them bread to eat in the wilderness, the people accepted Him. In fact, they wanted to make Him king after this incident (John 6:1-15); however, once He said that He was going to bring about their deliverance through their belief in Him as the Suffering Servant, they rejected Him (John 6:66). Conquering hero, any day; Suffering Servant, never. Why? Because they knew that who He was determined who He wanted them to be. If He reigned in arrogance, then they would be able to share in that arrogant reign; however, if He suffered, they knew they would have to suffer too.
Many Christians reject Christ in their daily lives for the same reason the Jews rejected Him-He just doesn't operate the way they want Him to operate. They have a financial problem and expect Him to swoop in and clear up the mess they got themselves into. Others have spouses who just don't measure up to the godly standards "God" has for them. Others just can't get the control over other people they feel that is rightfully theirs. A lingering and even sometimes fatal illness just won't go away. Somebody told me that there was no way that God was going to let a certain thing happen because of all the grief they had gone through. Well, the truth is that sometimes God does let us go through more grief than we can possibly handle for His own reasons. One of the reasons we feel this way is that we know God has promised to get us to POINT B. In our own logic, the only way to get to Point B is by going through Point A. Well, God can get to Point B in a number of ways and not just by going through Point A. What we have to do is trust Him that He will get us to Point B the best way by responding positively to the things He is doing in our lives. God had promised to deliver His people Israel; He just wasn't going to do it their way.
israel's evaluation of the suffering servant (53.2-3)
In Israel's eyes, Jesus in no way could be the promised Messiah. Instead of coming in pomp and splendor, decked out in the finest garments, charging in on a white stallion, Jesus resembled a tender shoot growing out of the stump of a tree or a root which had surfaced to the ground because of the parched conditions of the landscape. How could Jesus be God's man when He was born illegitimately (the Jews knew this-John 8:41-"we as opposed to You were not born of fornication"), raised in Nazareth which was a town so obscure that the Jewish historian Josephus does not even mention it, educated in a local synagogue and not in the fine rabbinical schools, and ultimately suffered the death of a criminal? Jesus simply did not meet the qualifications to be God's Man.
Not only were His external circumstances against Him, His demeanor proved He was not God's man. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Several times in the Gospels, Jesus is depicted as being so saddened at the spiritual condition of Israel that they say His bowels were moved with compassion; that is, He physically hurt for the people because of their spiritual condition. The last week of His life on earth saw Him weeping over Jerusalem because of the fate which awaited her. The second beatitude claims that those who mourn are blessed because they shall receive God's comfort. If Jesus is truly the most blessed of all, then He mourned the most over His people. His grief and mourning climaxed with His great sorrow on the cross. Now can you imagine the world's great men, such as Napoleon, Hitler, or Patton, mourning over their situations? Never. They would have considered such an action as a sign of weakness. The Jews believed that His grief and weakness proved He was neither a great man nor God's man. [We see that Paul encountered the same kind of response from the Corinthians that Jesus received from the Jews. Because Paul did not have an triumphant air about him, the Corinthians refused to believe that He was God's man (2 Corinthians).]
true evaluation of the suffering servant (53.4-6)
Although verses 2-3 described people's reactions to Jesus in His weakness, verses 4-6 show us the true nature and cause of His sorrow and grief. We claimed that Jesus must be One smitten by God, rejected by God. The truth is that He was carrying our griefs and our sorrows. He was crushed for our iniquities and pierced because of our transgressions. The grief and sorrow He experienced was not due to some flaw in His character but to flaws and rebellion in our character. Instead of these elements belittling Him, they show us the depth of our sin, rebellion and transgressions. Whereas we think our sins are so slight, the truth is that these have caused great grief to the One who has come to deliver us.
How does He deliver us? By God placing our iniquities upon the Suffering Servant. The image is that of the sacrificial lamb used at the Feast of the Passover. God required the death of each person because of the sins they had committed against Him. In order to make sure that people could live though and yet that a death pay for the sins of the people, God allows the people to substitute the death of a lamb for their own selves. By placing their hands upon the head of the lamb before it is sacrificed, the people are identifying themselves with the lamb. His death stands for nothing less than their own death. This passage teaches that the Suffering Servant is the Passover lamb whose death acts as a substitute for our own death.
Note the different ways that God describes our sins in this passage. He uses 3 different words for sin and also a specific image to describe our relationship with Him. First, the word "sin" literally means "we miss the mark." We're trying to hit the bulls eye; however, our arrow is a little warped, so that as hard as we try, we still miss the bulls eye. "Transgression" points to willful rebellion against God. God has set certain moral boundaries for our conduct, and yet we willingly cross those boundaries. "Iniquity" points to the unclean nature of our acts. The image of the sheep means that we are constantly straying and going our own way. All of these types of sin require the death of the Suffering Servant so that we can be rightly related to God.
description of his execution (53.7-9)
Isaiah next describes the execution the Suffering Servant was going to experience in order to deliver God's people. Although He was oppressed and afflicted, He did not retaliate but rather responded the way a helpless lamb responds whenever it is being led away to the slaughter. The image does not mean that Jesus did not speak at all when He was being judged. The truth is that Jesus did actually speak when under interrogation; however, whenever Jesus responded, He did not respond in order to defend Himself but to show them what they were actually doing-committing judicial murder. He spoke to them in order to try to wake them up as to what they were actually doing. All He tried to do in His trials was to show them that they were in denial and needed to repent. When it came for His own personal well-being, He remained silent because He knew His sufferings were for the salvation of millions.
Two results of this treatment were (1) He produced no posterity to insure that His name survived and (2) He was assigned a grave with the wicked. One thing that each man desires is the survival of his name. Each of us men wants a son to make sure that he carries on the family name, so that the man can live on through his sons. To die without sons is hard for any man to take; however, that is exactly what happened to Jesus. His untimely death meant that He died childless. Second, He was going to suffer more shame because the Jewish religious leaders were intent on making sure that they heaped insult upon insult on Him to insure that everybody was convinced He was not God's man. Well, God thwarted that plan because Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea blessed Jesus with a burial fit for a king.
victorious triumph of the suffering servant (53.10-12)
Although the previous nine verses have alluded to this, this passage makes abundantly clear that the treatment Jesus received came from none other than God Himself. The Jewish leaders never had the upper hand in their relationship with Jesus. God was controlling the situation all along. As a result, because Jesus responded properly to all that God had assigned for Him to suffer, God now was going to exalt Him.
This exaltation first took the form of Jesus seeing His offspring. Jesus did not die "childless"; rather, millions profess Him as their Lord and Savior as a result of His sufferings.
Second, this exaltation resulted in His having His days prolonged. Jesus did not remain in the grave but within 3 days rose from the dead to a new existence which defies death.
Third, He experiences God's good pleasure as a result of what He suffered ultimately for God. God not only raised Him from the dead but seated Him at the greatest place of honor in all heaven and earth-at His right hand.
Fourth, He shall experience extreme satisfaction as a result of this exaltation. He shall feel like the sufferings He experienced were well worth being exalted to the Father's right hand. "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that is to be revealed to us" (Rom. 8:18). To a large degree, this satisfaction comes from the fact that He knows His sufferings accomplished what He wanted them to accomplish-the justification of millions. When He sees you and me living in a right relationship with God, He believes His sufferings were worth it.
Fifth, Jesus would now receive a portion with the great. Paul writes that Jesus has received a name (reputation) above every name, whether in heaven or on the earth or under the earth. All the GW Bushes, Al Gores, Bill Clintons, etc. of this world think that they are so high and mighty. With the exception of a few presidents, not many of us can remember the names, much less, the deeds of most of the presidents of this nation. We stress out over the present presidential situation; yet when it is all said and done, neither one will amount to much. Who can tell me what heroic deeds Henry V performed for England? Who cares? Yet if Christ delays for another 2000 years in coming back to earth, millions will still confess Him as Savior and Lord.
Finally, He will divide the spoils. The image is that of a great victory. I love the stories of Henry V's great victory at Agincourt, of Patton's rush to win the Battle of the Bulge, etc.; however, those victories either have been forgotten or will soon be forgotten by most people. Yet the victory at Calvary still results in Jesus' people receiving the spoils of war. We still reap the benefits of Christ's victory as we experience the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives on a daily basis, as we look forward with hope to the glorious future Christ has won for us, as we right now get to experience some wonderful relationships with other Christians who have benefited from Christ's victory.