You can find the audio file of the service at the bottom of the page.
This Sunday we will look at the fourth and last part of the complete picture of the Servant of God. With this I also want to present the theme of this preach: serving God in a perfect manner.
Read Phil 2:5-11 and Is 52:13 – 53:12.
The suffering servant in Isaiah
This section in the book Isaiah is one of the most famous parts in the Bible that gives a detailed description of the Servant of the Lord. While some have question marks about many other Bible verses concerning prophecies about the Lord Jesus almost everybody agrees that the prophesy in this part clearly and only points at Him without any doubt.
When reading these verses our thoughts already go to the suffering of our Lord during the moments before and on the cross on Golgotha. I don’t need to convince you this!
Let us first quickly review the verses that we read, while making some remarks.
Every time when I read these verses again I’m touched by the prophetical description of the suffering of my Saviour. There were the gospels present all the chronological events without much emotion before and during Golgotha, we see here that the Holy Spirit used Isaiah to list all the feelings, pains, tortures and miseries of the Lord Jesus when He was going to die for you and me. These severe sufferings were actually mine and I need to look at them time after time to get some small understanding about the value of the replacement work of Jesus Christ.
Chapter 52
Verse 13 starts with focusing on the end of the suffering of the Servant: finally after all His suffering and His work on the cross He will be rewarded and exalted. His reward is that He will return to His place next to the Father and the whole world will recognize Him and confess that He is Lord as we have been reading in Phil 2.
Verse 14 is then going back to His life on earth. It is pointing at that very moment on the cross. His body and face expressed all the physical and mental pain. I think Isaiah’s vocabulary was even insufficient when he saw prophetically the 3 hours of darkness when Jesus was abandoned by God. This pain cannot be described by any pen…
But not only during the tortures on the cross His countenance was disfigured, but already during His life, His ministry when He got in contact with sin and the result of sin: sickness. Offering forgiveness of sin and the related healing of sickness affected His state.
A practical example we find in Mk 5:25-34 where the woman who was suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years, tried to touch Jesus secretly in the crowd in order to receive healing. As soon as she succeeded to touch His cloth she indeed was healed of her affliction. But Jesus felt immediately that power had gone out of Him.
Verse 15: in His disfigured state the Servant will perform a priestly work of cleansing for not just Israel but many nations.
Do we remember the Old Testamentic cleansing ceremonies? Among other places we read in Lev 16:19 that Aaron the High Priest had to sprinkle the blood of the offered animals on the altar to consecrate it for the atonement of the Israelites. Like wise the Servant has been cleansing the conscience of many, Jews and Gentiles, from dead works to serve the living God as we read in Heb 9:13,14.
Chapter 53
Verse 1: who has really understood and believed the Servant when He was acting on earth? Despite many followers, how many people did not believe in Him and rejected Him? In the end of His life there was hardly anybody left and He was put on the cross by unanimous vote. I wonder so many times where I would have been during the trial of Jesus and during the hours on the cross. And what would have been my judgement over Him?
And as verse 2 says: would I have followed Him, Who was so unattractive? Would I have desired to be in His neighbourhood and to give-up all I had and follow this despised Man? We easily judge the disciples as simple and ignorant fisherman. But in this I really admire them. Still today this Jesus is despised and ridiculed by the world. How do I, as a today’s disciple, distinguish my self from the scorns and mockery of the people around me?
For verse 3 and 4 we unavoidably have to compare the fulfilment in Luk 23:35-37. As we concluded some Sunday’s ago: if He would have come-off from the cross then we would not be here in this building on Sunday morning. Then there would have been no hope for mankind for salvation. And still during the blasphemies of the people Jesus had pity on them and asked for forgiveness to the Father (Luk 23:34)!
Verse 5 is filled with the language of substitution. The Servant suffered not for own sins since He was sinless; but as the substitute for sinners. Our sins were put on Him while His peace, His righteousness was put on us! As 2 Cor 5:21 states: For He made Him Who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become righteousness of God in Him.
Verse 6 points out that all of us have sinned. As Rom 3 declares there is none righteous, no, not one! We even were enemies of God! But God considered us just as lost sheep needing salvation. How amazing is the love of God that He gave His own Son in exchange for this!
Do we know who in the New Testament was especially touched by verse 7,8? It was the Ethiopian eunuch in Act 8:26-40. These verses in Isaiah made a huge impression on the man and caused that he wanted to be baptized. He was one of the descendants in verse 53:8!
Verse 7 shows us the Servant as the perfect Lamb of God: this most innocent animal was killed without making any noise, without resisting, just willingly. We see this lamb already described in Ex 12: 3,6. The Servant fulfilled this figurative role literally and in heaven we will watch this Lamb as we read in Rev 5:6.
Verse 9 is another clearly fulfilled prophecy. Someone who died the death on the cross was considered among the lowest criminals and as cursed by God. Read Deut 21:22. A disgraceful death deserved a disgraceful burial along with the thieves. But instead the Servant was buried with “the rich” in a honourable burial through the donated tomb of rich Joseph of Arimathea. This was so to speak the first step in the exaltation of the Lord Jesus as a consequence of His righteousness and obedience.
Verse 10 contains a remarkable prophecy: after His sacrifice the Servant will see His seed! To see His seed the Servant must rise from death. The Servant did this and will reign forever.
Verse 11 states that the one sacrifice of the Servant will provide complete satisfaction in settling the sin issue. By this He declared many righteous before God. His deed was enough to save anybody who believes, to cover any sin that we committed and will commit, and to dethrone the power of sin and death. Therefore it is the main difference with the thousands of animals offered in the Old Testament: each animal could just cover one sin and time after time new animals were needed to be sacrificed.
Verse 12 finally points at the reward of the Servant’s work: He will enjoy the spoils of the spiritual victories. With this it connects the first verse that we read (52:13) describing the final position of the Servant of the Lord. He will see the many descendants that His work produced.
Verse 12 repeats why He is rewarded like that: because He gave His life, was numbered with sinful human beings and intermediated between these beings and a holy God. It changed transgressors into holy saints who will be with Him as “spoil” into eternity.
The Servant of the Lord in the Gospel of Mark
In Isaiah 52:13-53:12 the Servant of the Lord is picturized as suffering Servant.
Suffering seems to be a property of the Servant! And later on we will see that suffering will also be our share when becoming believers!
As we did before we will link this particular part in Isaiah with one of the Gospels since the Gospels serve the same target as the several sections in Isaiah: describing the Lord Jesus from a particular point of view.
This time it is not so difficult: there is no other Gospel than the Gospel of Mark that so clearly projects Jesus Christ as the Servant of the Lord: in Mark we find Jesus acting as the perfect and obedient Servant of God.
Mark was not a direct disciple of the Lord Jesus when He was ministering. Only Matthew and John were witnesses of Jesus Christ during His ministry on earth. The other two evangelists Luke and Marc have heard about the life of the Lord Jesus via other people.
We see Mark later in the time of the apostle Paul: Paul mentioned him several times in his letters to the churches in Asia.
When Mark, guided by the Holy Spirit, started to write his gospel, his source of information was the apostle Peter. Of course Peter has been a direct disciple of Jesus, one of the 12, and has witnessed all the events with and deeds of Jesus Christ. Peter painted a picture to Mark about Jesus as the Servant of God. Therefore the Gospel of Mark is also called “The memoirs of Peter”.
Like Matthew described Jesus as the King, Luke Jesus as the Son of man and John Jesus as the Son of God, we see in Mark Jesus as The Servant. We notice in Mark Jesus as someone continuously in action. Contrary to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke there is in this case no genealogy; the Gospel starts with an introduction about John the Baptist, the one who prepared the way for the Servant. The Holy Spirit did not deem the genealogy of a servant important to be mentioned. Then comes the first action of Jesus: calling his followers. Within 20 verses of the first chapter He starts with teaching, driving out demons and healing the sick.
In chapter 10:45 we find the key verse of this Gospel: For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
We find two properties here of the Servant: serving and giving.
The word “serving” is the main verb in this Gospel. The focus of Jesus’ ministry in Mark is therefore more on service and sacrifice then on teaching and preaching. It is a Gospel of action with frequent recurring words like “immediately” and “then”.
“Giving” in its fullest extend means giving one’s own life. And this is exactly what the Servant of the Lord did. Giving His life was coupled with a lot of suffering and therefore we use the expression “Suffering Servant”. The Servant went that far that He gave His life to serve others. The anguish and afflictions, especially on the cross, did not come as a surprise for the Servant. Up to three times we read that Jesus is predicting that He was going to be handed over to the leaders of the people, to be rejected and finally to be killed (see Mk 8:31, 9:31, 10:33). During His ministry He continuously had this coming event in His mind.
Application on us: living sacrifices
To come back on Mark’s information source: it is remarkable that exactly Peter writes much about suffering! For him it is no question that suffering is part of our faith as he experienced himself daily. He states in 1 Pet 4:12 that suffering is not something strange.
If we read his first letter we see many verses handling this theme in application for us.
Peter has a practical approach towards this suffering and explains us why and how we have to deal with is.
Read 1 Pet 4:1-3.
Peter calls us to change our mindset. Instead of focusing on our will, which is guided by the flesh, we have to learn knowing how to please God by doing His will. In this we find a great example in the Servant of the Lord. I think when we read the passage in Isaiah it helps to move our focus on ourselves to Him Who we love so much. The mindset of the Servant was only filled with doing the will of God, so that He did not hesitate one moment to bear the greatest pains and afflictions. Realizing that He in this way finally gave His life for us stimulates us to change our life from serving ourselves to serving Him!
Like Peter said we need to develop the mindset that we would rather suffer in the flesh than choose to disobey God. In other words, there will be times when doing what is right will not feel good mentally, emotionally or physically. But doing the right thing, even though it may hurt, will result in avoiding the greater pain of disobedience down the road.
Read 1 Pet 5:10
When we suffer for the sake of obedience and serving God, we have the reward of knowing that we are pleasing God and that nothing is hindering our relationship with Him. This puts us in the position to experience His blessings in our lives.
Are we willing to follow the Servant’s example and be obedient even when it hurts? Will we choose to praise God even when we don’t feel like it?
We can cooperate with God to see where there are still area’s left in our lives that needs improvement. If we submit ourselves to Him, He will put His finger on these areas!
Remember that we started with reading Phil 2:5-11, where we saw the humiliation and the exaltation of our Lord Jesus, proving that God rewarded the Servants obedience. Let us now continue reading verses 12-13.
Thankfully walking in obedience and serving the Lord is not something we have to do in our own strength. God wants us to obey Him and work out our salvation, but it is a real comfort to know that He is the one who empowers us to do it!
We have to live with the understanding that God’s purposes realized in the future, require some pain in the present. The final result of our suffering is that we will be glorified by the Servant of the Lord, our Lord Jesus, Who has been suffering in the greatest extend for us!
I pray that this particular part in the book of Isaiah will help us to become better servants for our Lord.