Servant Songs: The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all - March 13, 2016

Weekly Messages - Prairie Presbyterian Church

The audio and the full text of the sermon are below. There are also questions for reflection at the bottom. Feel free to discuss on our sermon discussion group on Facebook.

This is part five in a five part series on The Servant Songs.

Isaiah 52:13-53:12 (NRSV)

13 See, my servant shall prosper;
he shall be exalted and lifted up,
and shall be very high.
14 Just as there were many who were astonished at him
—so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance,
and his form beyond that of mortals—
15 so he shall startle many nations;
kings shall shut their mouths because of him;
for that which had not been told them they shall see,
and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate.
53 Who has believed what we have heard?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
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,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.
4 Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
8 By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people.
9 They made his grave with the wicked
and his tomb with the rich,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain.
When you make his life an offering for sin,
he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days;
through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.
11 Out of his anguish he shall see light;
he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge.
The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong;
because he poured out himself to death,
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.

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Scholars have disagreed about the interpretation and application of the fourth servant song for as long as we have been reading it. This does not mean that we cannot understand what it says, but it does mean that we cannot claim to fully grasp everything that this servant song means.

As we’ve moved through the servants songs, we’ve concluded that they do, in fact, point to Jesus. This becomes even more pronounced in this fourth servant song. If it does point to Jesus, we shouldn’t be surprised that no matter what we say about this servant song, it will never be enough to describe the reality of God in Christ, nor will it ever be exact. Jesus is like that. Jesus is greater than any description we can apply to him. We will say one thing about him, make some conclusion about him, and we automatically leave something else out.

This is even more true when we confront the mystery of his suffering, death and resurrection and the mix of human and divine elements in it. Did he die at the hands of sinful human beings? Was he betrayed? Was he put on trial and did powerful people see to it that an angry mob was mobilized against him? Yes. But wasn’t it also God’s plan for Jesus to die? Yes. Did Jesus suffer in solidarity with all suffering ones, all victims? Yes. Did Jesus die to save us from sin? Yes. Was he an example to us in his willingness to go to the cross? Yes. Did he do what no one else could do on the cross? Yes. Did he die in our place taking the punishment for all sin upon himself, so that we would not need to bear the punishment for that sin? Yes. Did he die in order to defeat death by being raised on the third day? Yes. Are we supposed to die and rise with Christ? Die to an old life of sin and be raised to a new life of righteousness? Yes.

And we could go on.

Interpretive problems and problems of applying scripture never means we should avoid that scripture, or say it is too hard to understand and simply gloss over it. Nor should we simply decide for ourselves individually “what I think it means,” and ignore other possible interpretations. Instead, we need to lean in and learn from the multiplicity of meaning.

I feel like when we have a text, like we do here, that resists easy interpretation, we are in some ways closer to God—because God resists easy interpretation. Whenever we might think we’ve got God figured out, that is perhaps when we are in trouble. God is bigger than our understanding.

The word we search for as we look at a text like this is the word “awe”—or what would have in the King James Version be translated as “fear.” We may very well be afraid as we interpret and apply this text, because we may be off base—we may be wrong about it. But the greater fear may be that what we find in this text is true. That the servant suffered terribly and his suffering was simultaneously at least three things: 1) our fault—we are guilty. 2) to release us from our guilt. 3) God’s divine plan.

The interpretive problems are compounded by translation issues.

13 See, my servant shall prosper;
he shall be exalted and lifted up,
and shall be very high.

NIV (and most others) “my servant will act wisely”
New English Translation “my servant will succeed” and this sis perhaps closest to the intent of the Hebrew, which conveys that the servant will not fail in his mission.

Prospering is not about monetary wealth - it is about accomplishment, and here it is about accomplishment of the salvation mission.

“Exalted and lifted up” is a phrase that only appears 4 times in the Hebrew Bible—all in Isaiah. The other three times, it always refers to God. Here, it refers to the servant.
In John’s gospel, “lifted up” gets a double meaning. Jesus is lifted into the place of worship and praise and glory. But John’s gospel points to the cross itself as the place of Christ’s glorification. He is literally lifted up on the cross. What looks like shame and suffering to the world is actually the beginning of his exaltation, which will culminate in his resurrection.

52:14-53:3

This opening section sets up the reaction to the suffering servant. People are astonished by him. What are the astonished by?

“So marred was his appearance” - this is difficult to interpret accurately. Is this really saying that he is so disfigured in his suffering that he was unrecognizable? Probably not. What is more likely, is that this means that he undergoes full suffering—bodily, mentally, and spiritually, and to see that is truly terrible. What he went through is inhuman, or sub-human.

He shall startle many nations and kings will shut their mouths (or be speechless), because who has ever heard of a messiah who suffers? Who would ever believe that this is the way the arm of the Lord (the means of salvation) would be revealed?

53:2 talks about him being a young plant or root growing up out of dry ground. This is like saying he came out of nowhere. He wasn’t like a solid oak tree whose growth and roots are obvious, nor had he been cultivated by the establishment to be the leader. He just sprang up from a totally unexpected place. His earthly origins are Nazareth in backwater Galilee, even though his true origin is a heavenly one.

There was also nothing external about him that would draw anyone in. He was the opposite of what great people are supposed to be like.

John Oswalt puts it like this:
“A baby born in the back-stable of a village in. This would shake the Roman Empire? A man quietly coming to the great preacher of the day and asking to be baptized. This is the advent of the man who would be heralded as the Savior of the world? No, this is not what we think the arm of the Lord should look like. We were expecting a costumed drum major to lead our triumphal parade. Our eyes are caught and satisfied by superficial spledor. This man, says Isaiah, will have none of that. As a result, our eyes flicker across him in a crowd and we do not even see him. His splendor is not on the surface, and those who have no inclination to look beyond the surface will never even see him, much less pay him any attention.”

53:4 shifts.
We’ve already seen that the servant suffers and we’ve known that this suffering is somehow connected to our salvation. We’ve acknowledged that this is unexpected. Normally a saviour, a messiah, would lead from a place of power. This is a suffering servant messiah —three words that shouldn’t really go together.

Beginning at 53:4, we learn that he does not simply suffering alongside us, but his suffering is both because of us and for us.

“He has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases;”

If we knew nothing else about the rest of the servant song or about Jesus, this could easily mean that he has suffered in the same way we have - same sicknesses. But as we read on, we find that it is far more than that.

Verse 4 actually displays the conventional wisdom of the time. When someone suffered, the ancients believed it was because of something that they had done. They believed that if you were sick, then it was because of some sin in your past, or maybe in your parents’ past.

We see this spelled out quite clearly in the book of Job. We find it as well when a blind man received his sight from Jesus in the gospel of John and the question asked with reference to his blindness is “who sinned that he was born blind? Is it him or his parents?”
This way of thinking seems abhorrent to us today, but it explains a casual reading of Isaiah

53:4 - “we accounted him struck down by God, and afflicted.” We can still have this attitude today. If you know nothing about someone who is given the death sentence, it is natural to think—they must have done something terrible. Jesus was given the death sentence. He must therefore be God-forsaken. If you know nothing else about him except that he was crucified, your assumption would be that he was tortured and executed for his sins.

But, verse five says “But he was wounded for OUR transgressions, crushed for our iniquities;”

He did not suffer for anything he had done. He suffered for our sins. He died for what we had done. He died in our place, instead of us.

We might ask all kinds of questions about this. Why does anyone have to suffer or die for anyone’s sin? The answer is justice, or simply, what is right.

What should we do with a person who takes someone’s life? What would be right? What would be fair? What should we do with someone like Hitler? What would be the right thing? What should we do with someone who preys upon children? What would be just?
Should there be some kind of punishment? What about repeat offenders who never learn their lesson? How many chances should we give? What would be fair?

Then, what do we do with smaller things? Something like theft, for instance?
Now, what should we do with something like covetousness? And what about that commandment about honouring our parents? Are people doing that perfectly? And what should we do with the first commandment asking us to love the Lord God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength? Each time we don’t do that, each time we ignore God, each time we put Him on the back burner - what do we do with that situation?

What do we do with any sin? What would be right? What would be just?

Then we have question about what do we in fact deserve? We might want to say, I’m a good person - I deserve a good life, with good things. Is that really true? What’s your measurement for that?

How about we choose just the fourth of the ten commandments as our measure of how well we’re doing. “Remember the Sabbath and Keep it Holy.”
The thing is, we have a measure, and we fall hopelessly short of it. You can say the measure is the law, but you can also say that the measure is righteousness. None of us are righteous. Are we really going to talk about what we deserve for the kind of lives we live? If we go down that road we need to ask the very scary question of whether we are living the life that God has envisioned for us? It is the amazing grace of God that he doesn’t give us what would actually be fair.

And the reason he doesn’t is because he loves us. God deals in grace, but he also deals in absolutely perfect righteousness, perfect fairness, perfect justice.

In the servant God’s perfect justice and perfect grace are satisfied. It is by his perfect grace that the servant stands in our place to receive the full consequences of our sin.

“Upon him was the punishment that made us whole and by his bruises we are healed.”
Jesus suffered and died in our place and in doing so he set us right with God. The punishment that should have rested on us, instead went to him, which means that we start over with God. We are seen to be righteous because of this exchange, even though we are not.

Verse 6 summarizes this by saying that we are just like sheep. We easily go astray, distracted so easily by the next patch of yummy grass. We’ve gone off on our own, paying no heed to the shepherd. This is offensive to God. This is the fundamental root of sin. We’ve turned away from God, gone astray, gone our own way and not God’s way. This is the heart of the matter - this is our iniquity. But the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Verse 7 says that the servant was like a sheep too, but not in the wandering off sense. He was like a lamb to be sacrificed, and he didn’t say a word to stop it. He let himself be killed for us.

Verse 8 says that he was taken away by a perversion of justice. But didn’t I just say it was to satisfy God’s justice? This is the amazing way God works. Jesus’ trial, suffering and death was a terrible thing. As we read the story in Holy Week coming up, we hear a very human story - a story that is full of human sin. Of the failure of religion and politics. A story of a human justice system being twisted because people were afraid. What is amazing about how God works is that while the human side of the equation was full of sin, evil and injustice, this was the very way that God’s justice was done.

This is what is amazing about this servant song. Everything is so unexpected. Jesus is the only one to have ever lived completely without sin, yet he was sentenced to death. It was a perversion of human justice. Yet it was also God’s gracious plan to satisfy divine justice.
Because this is the story, we get these lines “who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living…”

“It was a perversion of justice” yet, in verse 10 “it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain.”

This sounds terrible. It is what some biblical scholars have called divine child abuse.
But what those scholars miss is that, while Jesus is the servant, and Jesus is the messiah, and Jesus is the son, Jesus is, in the end, God himself. God’s purposes are accomplished by God putting himself in the place of suffering and death for our sakes. His grace is on display because in this self-offering, we see how profound our sin is and how much God loves us anyway.

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For Reflection

1) How do you respond to the following statement? Is it encouraging, overwhelming, challenging ?
Interpretive problems and problems of applying scripture never means we should avoid that scripture, or say it is too hard to understand and simply gloss over it. Nor should we simply decide for ourselves individually “what I think it means,” and ignore other possible interpretations. Instead, we need to lean in and learn from the multiplicity of meaning.
I feel like when we have a text, like we do here, that resists easy interpretation, we are in some ways closer to God—because God resists easy interpretation. Whenever we might think we’ve got God figured out, that is perhaps when we are in trouble. God is bigger than our understanding.

2) What is “sin” according to the Bible? Do you agree that we all fall short and that no one is righteous?

3) How would you describe the consequences of sin in human terms (between people only)? How about in divine terms (between God and people)? What happens as a result of sin?

4) We are like sheep that have gone astray—we turn away from God. Why is this offensive to God? Why is all sin offensive to God?

5) When we have been wronged, typical human behaviour is to demand justice. When we are the offender, how strong is the desire/need for forgiveness? Are these demands/desires different from person to person? Why might this be the case? How does Jesus's death and resurrection "satisfy" both of these needs?

6) Here is are three definitions for the word “atonement” (dictionary.com)
a. satisfaction or reparation for a wrong or injury; amends.
b. In theology. the doctrine concerning the reconciliation of God and humankind, especially as accomplished through the life, suffering, and death of Christ.
c. reconciliation; agreement.
This servant song deals with the doctrine (or understanding) of atonement. In what ways is this doctrine portrayed in the servant song? How else might this doctrine be understood?