Isaiah 52:13-53:12 • A Crushing Victory
Listen to the audio version of this message with the player below.
Sermon Notes
-
(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Let me ask that you would look in your Bibles at Isaiah chapter 53.
Isaiah chapter 53. Those who comment on the Bible say that this is the Mount Everest of Old Testament prophecy. Where the explanation of what will happen through the Messiah is so magnificent, you can hardly imagine that what was written was written 700 years before the birth of Christ. But it is not simply the Mount Everest in impact. It is so detailed that it is almost as though the prophet were sitting at the foot of the cross, writing down what is happening on Mount Calvary at the very time that he is looking into that future and our future as well. I'll ask that you stand as we consider God's Word. This prophecy is written originally for the temple that Solomon built. Do you remember?
But do you remember that in that building there was a poison pill, Solomon's own sin and ours.
And so this passage is written in the sequence of the sacrifices of the temple.
The worship of God, the confession of sin, the fellowship with repentant people that is renewed for life again, and the worship of God eternally.
We'll look at that in sequence. Let me ask that you just focus for the moment on the center of the poem.
Isaiah 53 and verse 6.
Where the prophet looking down the road 700 years says, "All we like sheep have gone astray.
We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." Let's pray together.
Only Father, we don't get to a sweeter or more specific gospel truth than this.
We have all gone astray, but the penalty of our sin was put on your Son.
May it not just be a truth from the past, but peace to our hearts. Renew us with the gospel even now, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Please be seated.
This prophetic poem in five stanzas of three verses each begins in chapter 52, and it's preparing us for the strange words that begin chapter 53. Who has believed our report as though something unbelievable has just happened.
We see it every now and then in modern life, and still it seems unbelievable.
Some of you are aware that Bill Buckner passed away this week. If you know the name, it's probably because of one incident, one time, 1986, sixth game of the World Series, the Mets and the Red Sox are playing.
The Red Sox are within one out of a key victory that will claim the World Series.
But there is a weak ground ball that is hit up the first base line toward Bill Buckner,
sports between his legs, and the winning run for the Mets scores from third base, and the Red Sox fans would never let Bill Buckner forget it. For the rest of his life, he was booed or jeered or received death threats. He said for the rest of his life as sports channels begin to multiply, he could not watch a sports channel without seeing the error replayed at least twice a month for the rest of his life.
It was so unfair, even the man who hit the ball, the Mets player Mookie Wilson actually said it was so unfair, one error should not define a man's life. There was so much that should compensate on the other side for the one error.
After all, he had hit 340 in the year that the Red Sox were in the World Series. It's been his bat that had carried them into the World Series. And it wasn't just one season, he had 2700 plus hits through a 22-year career. He was a repeat all-star. He had so much that he could claim as sparking the historic rise of the Red Sox, and yet the one error defined him.
And it wasn't just that moment that could be compensated for by his career. There was so much that should have compensated other people were to blame. At least you could have blamed other things. After all, the replay on the video showed that even if Buckner had fielded the ball, he was not apparent that the pitcher had got off the mound in time to receive the ball for the out at first base.
And that pitcher had just thrown the wild pitch that got the tying run to third base.
And the coaching decision that left that pitcher in after three consecutive hits and a wild pitch.
It was unfair, but nothing more unfair than the pain in which Buckner was playing being totally discounted.
He had a bum ankle and had sacrificially stayed in the game to keep his bat in the game despite excruciating pain in his ankle that no doubt was the cause of the error. All forgotten.
He did not make the play.
We might still have forgotten except for the prophecy.
Days before the World Series, Buckner was allowed an interview with the news media and a reporter asked him, "What are the pressures of playing in the World Series?" And before the World Series even began, Buckner said, "I will quote exactly, the nightmares are that you're going to let the winning run score on a ground ball between your legs.
Those things happen, you know.
Yes we know.
And could not forget."
The reason that we have a prophecy of 700 years previous saying what Christ would do, why do we have it? So that we will not forget. When we can't forget our errors of what we have done or has been done to us, that we will remember there is a God who when we can't let go of it, when other people can't let go of it, we have a God who won't let go of us.
He has provided a way for our errors to be forgiven. And in this amazing prophecy he is making it plain in ways that are surprising, even objectionable to ancient Israel and sometimes to us as well. The prophecy begins where we expect. Isaiah chapter 52 verse 13 is where this poem actually begins of the five stanzas of the prophecy. And in verse 13 of Isaiah 52 it says, "Behold my servant shall act wisely. He shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted." And that's what Israel was expecting. That after all the failures of the previous deliverers of humanity and Israel that there would now come one who is high and lifted up. Someone truly exalted high and lifted up. That's Isaiah's language from chapter 6 where he is describing the Lord himself. Do you remember Isaiah goes into the temple and it says, "Though the seedling opens up and he sees the Lord seated on his throne, high and lifted up and the seraphim sing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty." And now Isaiah says the Messiah is coming and he is exalted. He is high and lifted up. And Israel must think, "Hooray! Finally!" Because we know what happened to all the previous human deliverers. There was that Adam, the first man, and the first sinner.
And then there was Noah, the second start, and the even greater sinner.
Then there was Abraham, the man who is supposed to start the nation who is not even faithful to his own wife.
He raises conniving children whose deception gets a whole nation into slavery in Egypt. And then comes Moses to deliver and he gives the message of the law that even he will not follow.
The judges come just doing what is right in their own eyes.
So planting them are the kings of Israel. David, the one to whom the line of the Messiah is promised. And he shows such promise himself as he defeats a gigantic monster before becoming a monster himself, murdering and committing adultery and raising children who are a horror to himself and to his nation.
And Solomon, finally one who is wise, who builds the temple of God before he builds temples to other gods for the wives that he wants to have.
We need a second Adam, a nobler Noah, a faithful Abraham. We need a dependable Moses. We need a just judge.
We need a better David. We need a wiser Solomon. And finally we are told he will come high and lifted up. He is exalted above all others. We have waited so long we need him. How they must have rejoiced to hear the prophecy except for the problems within it.
After all, if you look at how verse 13 of chapter 52 begins, "Behold my servant shall act wisely." Wait, he's high and lifted up. He's exalted. He's divine.
How can he be a servant? We want a king. We want a better king if he's off the line of David.
And he is not just a servant. But verse 14 of chapter 52, "As many were astonished at you, his appearance was so
marred." Beyond human semblance and his form, beyond that of the children of mankind, the wording of marred is the wording of an animal in anguish at the time of sacrifice. Here this prophecy is being read in the temple where people well know what it means for a sheep, a lamb, an oxen to be sacrificed. What the pain of that is, and we are being told that the one who is high and exalted will have an appearance like an animal in agony.
And that's not the worst of it. Verse 15, "So shall he sprinkle many nations."
It's the priestly language that when the sacrifices were made in the temple, the priests' remembrance would sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant to atone for the sins of the people. And now we are being told that whoever this Messiah is who comes, he will be high and exalted but in agony like an animal being sacrificed and his blood will be sprinkled upon the nations.
Wait, we've waited for him, we've suffered for him, Israel, what do you mean for the nations? Not only is our exalted one going to suffer, apparently he's going to provide for people other than us? How is that right? How is that fair? We who've been in slavery, we who are the children of God. God is saying no, the blessing will be far beyond your imagining. Do you remember in Acts chapter 8 in the New Testament after the resurrection of Jesus, Philip is going down the road toward the Dead Sea and he comes across the Ethiopian eunuch, a man not of Israel, a man not of physical background to be part of the blessed people.
And that man who is reading this very passage that says the Messiah will come who will sprinkle the nations says to Philip, "What keeps me from being baptized?"
And Philip says not a thing and the blessing intended for the nations spreads.
But if you recognize how unlikely, unexpected was that revelation of the Messiah who would suffer, be sacrificed and sprinkle the nation, you are then prepared for the response of chapter 53 and verse 1 as the poem continues into its next stanza, not about exaltation, but with rejection.
Verse 1 of chapter 53, "Who has believed what he's heard from us and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he that is this coming Messiah grew up before the Lord like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look on him and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by man, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief as one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised and we esteemed him not." It's the message of total rejection. Here comes the Messiah, but he does not meet our expectations. He doesn't do what we want him to do. He doesn't rule like we expected. We wanted Babe Ruth. You're sending Pee Wee Herman.
We want the lion. You send the lamb. We want the king. You send a servant.
That is not the message that we want.
Verse 2, "For he grew up before him the Lord like a young plant, like a root out of dry ground." He's got bad roots.
This one who comes. Now you and I can say, no, we know this Jesus. He's of the root of Jesse, the lineage of David. Isn't that wonderful? But what would it mean to be in the line of David? That means he's in the line of Judah and Boaz and David. And if you look at the mothers of those men's children, the first was a prostitute in an incestuous relationship with Judah.
The second, a foreign enemy of Israel who married Boaz.
And the final, Bathsheba, an adulteress who slept with David. That's the line.
That's the root. This is dry ground.
And it's not just history in the background. It's the present background that any who would read this prophecy into the future would know about this Jesus. Born in a stable.
His mother pregnant before she's married.
Son of a blue collar worker in an out of the way town called Nazareth. Does anything good come out of Nazareth, the Jews would say. And that's his background, our Messiah, our conquering King. These are roots in truly dry ground. And it gets even worse. He has a bad reputation as well as bad roots. Verse three, he was despised and rejected by men. Yes, the Romans looked at him and said, "Rabbel, rousing, rabbi."
Just despised him, but rejected by whom?
By his own people. In Nazareth, one day he goes to the synagogue and he reads from the scroll of Isaiah this very book and then sits down and says, "Today is this prophecy fulfilled in your hearing and his own hometown, this little village of Nazareth where everybody knows your name and everybody knows your roots and everybody knows your business."
How can this Jesus, the son of a carpenter, claim that this prophecy is fulfilled in our hearing? And far from respecting him, they rejected him and took him to the brow of a cliff to throw him off and kill. These are not strangers. This is his hometown. These are his neighbors. These are his relatives. These are his Sunday school teachers who are taking him to a cliff to throw him off.
He is rejected, we understand. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Yes, he knows the sorrows. He doesn't even have a house. Foxes have holes, birds their nests, but the son of man, Jesus said, has no place to lay his head.
The hometown has rejected him and it will not be the final rejection for at the moment of his greatest affliction, when you had wished that friends and disciples would be loyal and gather around you. And the very one closest to him sees his Lord ready to be crucified and says, "I never knew the man."
And curses in the name of God who that man is.
He was despised and rejected. He was acquainted with grief as one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised and we esteemed him not. He hangs on a cross. He is in agony, able barely to draw a breath and people hide their faces. They can't even look at the one that is supposedly king of the Jews.
And we, the people of God, the prophet writes, esteemed him not.
It will get worse. We esteemed him stricken of God.
If he's struggling, if he's suffering, if hard things are happening, he must have messed up.
God doesn't do bad things to good people. So if he's experiencing awful things, it must be him to blame before God. And so the rejection now moves to an even more complete understanding of the suffering that he will go through.
The third stanza begins at verse 4, "Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." It's the language of "wait upon another." And for those of us who live this side of the cross, the image that should come to our brains as of the Lord who has had his back flayed with a Roman whip, now with loss of blood, forced to carry his own cross to the hill of crucifixion, and he bears the cross, a load so great he cannot himself bear it all the way. And we are to learn he's bearing our griefs. The weight that is on him is ours, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted, for he was pierced for our transgressions. We get it. That wounding was the piercing of thorns in his brow, nails in his hands and feet, and a spear thrust through his side. Why was all of that? If it wasn't because of God, what was the reason? If it wasn't just he failed God in some way, we are told he was pierced for our transgressions,
not for his, for our transgressions. Verse 5, "He was crushed for our iniquities. On him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed." What would it mean if you truly believed that he was crushed for our iniquities? I hope you recognize the language. For it is from the very opening pages of Scripture. As Adam sinned, and after that sin, God himself spoke to the tempter and said, "I'm going to put a war on now between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. What's going to happen? You're going to strike his heel. You're going to wound him, but he is going to crush your head, Satan." And now we are told it is this Messiah who will be crushed, as though the great victory of crushing the head of Satan occurs by crushing the body of God's son. Nobody expected that. Who can believe that? That the great victory over the serpent, the great crushing of Satan is going to happen as the weight of sin crushes God's own son.
How does sin crush you?
Couldn't help but think of it this past week. I was ministering to Korean American pastors in New York City, and it's a time of crisis for the Korean church, not just in America, but in Korea as well. Here is the reason, even though Christianity has had a time of great flourishing in Korea since the Korean War, now those churches that grew to the tens, even hundreds of thousands are in huge crisis because as the patriarchal leader of those huge churches now are dying, almost immediately the church shrinks in size. People leave in numbers. And here's the reason, because what held them was expectation and shame in a shame-based culture.
And it wasn't just something happening in Korea, it was happening here as well. And now as an older generation is wanting to pass a church to a younger generation, there is a younger generation under Western influence, both here and in Korea, who is saying we will not be bullied by the Bible anymore.
So they are leaving, huge numbers.
And what Korean leaders are doing and Korean here are saying, we have to rediscover the gospel. We have to teach a gospel that's not just performance, not just expectation, not just motivating people by shame, we have to have a different gospel.
And I listen to an extraordinarily brave Korean pastor stand up in New York City this week and say what that would mean. He just confessed his sin and his own need of grace to a room full of Korean pastors. Here's what he said, "When I came to the United States, started a family.
I raised my daughter with tenderness and affection. She was my princess, but my son.
I knew that as the son of a former immigrant, he would have to be twice as good as his peers and twice as strong.
So I pushed him with discipline and expectation and shame.
So that when my church was having its 20th anniversary celebration of my ministry, my son, now an adult, flew across the country, came to our church for the celebration, met with me in my house at my kitchen table the night before the celebration, and he said to me, my son said to me, you are hard-hearted and a cruel parent and you have no right to be a pastor.
My son said that to me. I argued with him. We fought and I left the house. I went and lay down in a field and looked up at the stars and wept because I knew that what my son was saying was true.
And I felt as though the sky and the stars had fallen down on me and they were crushing me because of my sin.
And it was just one man's sin.
What if it were the sin of the whole world that had fallen on you?
Then it would truly have crushed you. And you begin to understand some measure of what verses five is saying right there in the middle. He was crushed for our iniquities.
Verse five says, "Upon him was the chastisement." As though it's weighing on him, this chastisement, this guilt, this penalty for our sins and with his wounds we are healed. Can you believe this? This weight that each of us, if we think back to the realities of our lives, the errors that we have made for a moment or for our children's entire childhood or what we have done in a moment of weakness or what we have done in a moment of rage and we cannot forget it, it weighs upon it, it crushes us. What if you truly believe that that weight could be put on another?
That God had crushed another with that very weight. What would it mean to you? It would mean peace.
It's not my weight anymore. It's put on another.
It would mean healing by his stripes, the chastisement, the feeling of him.
We are made whole again. We are healed by believing truly that that weight is on another. But what does that process involve?
Verse six that I read at the beginning is explaining it. It involves, first of all, believing that the weight is truly on you, that you're not blame shifting, you're not minimizing, that you actually believe there is a weight. All we like sheep. Do you recognize the prophet is including himself in that statement?
All we like sheep have gone astray. We every one of us has turned to his own way. There is none righteous, no not one.
That there is this weight that we are not denying but at the same time we cannot get out from under.
But it's not just believing the weight is real.
It is believing that the weight has been put on him. The second half of verse six. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Here was the weight. Here it comes. It's so heavy. I cannot bear, I cannot breathe under facing the reality of who I am, what I've done, the difficulties, the lack of my own expectation of meeting my own desires.
It crushes me.
But it was put on him.
And when I believe that, what I'm believing is there is a substitution for my guilt in the person of the Son of God.
It is that message that begins the stanza with verse seven. It's the substitution stanza. He was oppressed. He was afflicted. Yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that has led to the slaughter, like a sheep that before its hearers is silent. So he opened not his mouth. It is this willing sacrifice.
This is Jesus. This is the creator of the universe. This is the one who by his word brought light into being, who created the stars and the sun and our world. Just with a word, he could have called 12 legions of angels to take him from the cross and to defeat his enemies. But he was silent.
He did nothing. He willingly became the substitute for our sin, taking the suffering that we would deserve. And you recognize the reason is verse eight, by oppression and by judgment he was taken away. He's oppressed.
He's being in the garden.
And the Roman troops come to take him away from his own prayers. And judgment is against him. As the Jewish leaders themselves want him to be judged, they turn him over to Pilate and he opened not his mouth. Do you remember at one point Pilate actually says to him, "You're not going to talk to me?
Do you realize I have the power to crucify you or to set you free?"
And Jesus then talks, "You would have no power whatsoever if it were not given to you from above."
This was God's plan.
This is Jesus willing sacrifice for a purposed death.
He was cut off out of the land of the living, verse eight, stricken for the transgression of my people.
There is the message. He is stricken at God's own plan and purpose. We can hardly take in the beginning of verse ten.
He was the will of the Lord to crush him.
We could get it if it was the will of the enemy only.
We'd get that. Or if another philosophic approach, it was just blind fate. He got in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But this truth, it was the will of the Father. He was the Lamb slain from the creation of the world. He was the one that was the purposed intention of God to wound and then to slay and then to require his death.
Because ultimately what was going to happen so that the guilt of our sin could be satisfied is he would pay the full price with the ultimate cost.
His own life, his provision of his life in our place, it had to be him. It couldn't be somebody else. If the crushing weight of our sin is on us, we can't take it off somebody else.
If the debt of our sin has to be paid for God, and we already owe $100,000 to that bank,
we can't pay for somebody else's debt.
It could be somebody who had no debt, who had no wrong, and we are told it was that one who had the riches of the righteousness of heaven itself, perfect and holy as God himself that he paid the price, standing in our stead to do it. Verse 8, right at the end, he was cut off from the land of the living.
Verse 9, they made his grave with the wicked.
He was buried in the tomb of a rich man. Just think about that.
He's hanging on a cross between thieves and then is buried in a grave he cannot afford.
What humiliation?
It's not just the humiliation of his roots.
It's not just the humiliation of his life experience. It's humiliation even in death, even in the grave. There is nothing to commit and it was the will of God as the Father put the worst upon him. Verse 10, it was the Lord's will to crush him. Why? Can you believe this? Because if the crushing would be on him, the crushing of the whole world, my iniquities, my sins, my failures, your sins, your iniquities, those are the hidden things, your failures, all put on him, then we could have peace.
Peace with God, peace even with ourselves.
And that's why it was the Father's will to perform the Father's work.
Halfway through verse 10, the last stanza, "He shall see his offspring. He shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand." It's strange wording. We've already been told he's cut off from the land of the living. He's made his grave with the wicked and yet he shall see his offspring.
He shall prolong his days.
The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand as though he's alive, as though the grave could not hold him, as though the death was not the victor, as though the price was fully paid. And now that death has been satisfied, that ultimate price, you recognize that death itself is conquered. And we are told that the same one who has experienced the death for us is alive again. And with that new life, his life for many. Verse 11, "Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.
By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant," says God, "make Mandy to be accounted righteous and he shall bear their iniquities." I just read the Bible language and I think, what does it mean to my own soul?
That he who was totally pure took the weight of my sin. And now if I could just think of downloading it, if I could believe this is real, that it comes off of me and onto him, that I am accounted righteous, that the purpose of his death was to take that which was in my account and put it on his account. But the sin having been taken off of me, now his righteousness becomes mine. It's the two halves of the gospel, not just that my sin is relieved, but that his righteousness, God's love for him, God's recounting and respect for him, that becomes mine. Behold what manner of love the Lord has lavished upon us that we should be called the children of God. And that is what you are by this fantastic, amazing work of God that he is doing in our behalf so that we understand the great blessings of verse 12. "Therefore," says the Lord, "I will divide him a portion with the many and he shall divide the spore that is the victory of his death with the strong because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors." This one who had ultimate strength, power and righteousness allows himself to be poured out unto death for the sake of transgressors, us.
In the consequence, he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors. Think of that. It's not just a past act. It's not just a prophecy. It's the reality of what is happening at this very moment. That this same Jesus who no longer is constrained to the dead is at the right hand of God making intercession for you and me. Jesus is praying for you.
Jesus is praying for you.
Knowing sin, knowing weakness, knowing failed expectation, knowing the past you hardly even can think about without feeling it crushed you to believe not only has he taken that weight off of you, he's praying for you right now. I know that there's a certain beauty in recognizing a prophecy that in so much detail was written seven hundred years before the birth and the life and the death and the resurrection and the ascension of Christ, all of those details spread out before us 700 years before Christ was even born.
But do you not see that 2700 years before you were even born?
The prophet is saying right now Jesus is interceding for you, for you. This very moment the Son of God is at the right hand of the King of Glory saying your name and praying for you. Do you believe this?
It was the prophets question from the very beginning. Can you believe this?
It's not just the prophecy, it's the wonder of the gospel of grace that is ours to claim every day for our past, for our present, and for our future to believe that he gave himself for us. What would it mean if you really believed it? It would mean peace.
When Bill Buckner died, the diagnosis, Lewy body dementia.
And those commentators sometimes say, well, maybe a sad irony in that the one whose error people could not forget, could not in his last years remember their criticisms.
He could not remember their cruelty. He could not process it anymore. And there was a strange peace in that.
But it is not the real peace of Bill Buckner. Not for his past and not for his future. The real peace?
His wife Jodi spoke when she announced to the media of the world her husband's passing. She said to all who would listen, "Our hearts are broken, but we are at peace knowing he is in the arms of his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." It was his knowing that regardless of what the world would say, regardless of the media, regardless of the newsreels playing endlessly over again, he was at peace with his Savior. And it's what allowed him even in life to forgive those who would keep jeering and critiquing him to live at peace with God and man, knowing the weight was off of him. He'd been set free. He was right with his God. And he knew it was not just something past. It was something for all eternity. It's what I ask you to believe. It is this wonderful message that the weight that would crush us, deserved or undeserved, has been taken for those who believe that Jesus took the load, paid the price. He has made us right with our God. And so we are at peace. What must you believe? But that all we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have each, every one of us, turned to his own way. But what? The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Praise God for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Amen. Heavenly Father, so teach us the gospel again. We know the crush of the opposite, of making our own way, of trying to rid ourselves of our own shame, of remembering the things that we cannot forget. Teach us the gospel of the God who says, "You must, you can believe this."
Jesus took the load.
He was crushed for our iniquities.
Father, teach us that now. I pray, I pray for every heart here, even right now, those who are being crushed by the weight of what they remember, even as I say these words, that you would give them full assurance that Christ is praying for them before the throne of grace right now. And that when they believe that though they have gone astray, that Jesus took the weight of our guilt on the cross and it has been removed.
We pray, Father, that this gospel would touch hearts and free them and heal them and put them at peace.
I believe I'm such a sheep that has gone astray.
I believe that Jesus took the load for me.
That is our prayer. It is our hope. It is our glory.
And so we pray in the name of the sacrifice sheep, our Lord Jesus.
Amen.