Suffering Servant Summary

[0:00] This lesson is our second lesson in Isaiah 53.

[0:18] That's the suffering servant passage.! Last week we talked about the main idea for the entire passage.! That is that Jesus Christ is presented as our suffering servant and the last verses of chapter 52 is divided into five stanzas of three verses each.

[0:45] So let's read the first stanza. That is Isaiah 52 verses 13 through 15. And in these verses God is speaking through Isaiah.

[0:56] Behold, my servant shall act wisely. He shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted. As many were astonished at you, his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance and his form beyond that of the children of mankind.

[1:11] 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.

[1:21] We mentioned the main idea for the entire study. Here's the main idea for just these three verses tonight. The main idea is that Isaiah 52 verses 13 through 15 summarize God's plan of salvation that is more fully developed in the remaining verses.

[1:42] So once again, the three verses that we will look at tonight summarize God's plan of salvation that is more fully developed in the remaining verses. These verses are actually a summary of what we'll see in the other 12 verses.

[1:56] And we'll see two things that will happen to Jesus as a suffering servant and one thing that his followers will experience as a result. So we'll cover tonight's passage in three sections of one verse each.

[2:10] And in the first section, we see the exaltation. So the exaltation is your first blank. Look again at verse 13.

[2:22] God said there, Behold, my servant shall act wisely. He shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted. That opening exclamation, behold, translates a common Hebrew word that's used more than a thousand times in the Old Testament.

[2:41] The word demands attention and could be translated as an outcry similar to look or a simple command such as observe this carefully. And although the word itself is common in the Old Testament, its usage here is rare.

[2:57] This is one of only five times that Behold is used in a messianic prophecy. Three of the other four times happen in Zechariah and the fourth comes earlier in Isaiah.

[3:08] Zechariah 3.8 also refers to Jesus as a servant of God. God said through Zechariah there, Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, you and your friends who sit before you, for they are men who are assigned.

[3:24] Behold, I will bring my servant the branch. Then Zechariah 6.12 has the next usage of the word behold in a messianic prophecy. In Zechariah 6.12 and 13, Jesus again is called the branch.

[3:40] And these verses explain why Jesus is called the branch. So look at Zechariah 6.12 and 13. Zechariah 9.9 has the name of the branch.

[3:58] Zechariah 9.9 has the next use of behold in a messianic prophecy.

[4:19] And Zechariah 9.9 is a verse that we'll hear referenced often leading up to Palm Sunday in a few weeks. Zechariah 9.9 says, Then the fourth time behold is used in a messianic prophecy is one of the other servant songs in Isaiah.

[4:54] Listen to Isaiah chapter 40 verse 9. It says there, Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news. Lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news.

[5:07] Lift it up, fear not. Say to the cities of Judah, Behold your God. So the five verses, including the first verse we'll study tonight, contain four different descriptions for the Messiah.

[5:23] Isaiah 52.13 and Zechariah 3.8 refer to the Messiah as a servant. Zechariah 6.12 calls the Messiah a man. Zechariah 9.9 calls him a king.

[5:36] And Isaiah chapter 40 verse 9 calls him God. Those four words paint a good Old Testament picture of the Messiah because he is servant, man, king, and God.

[5:49] When you think about servant, man, king, and God, they find a unique parallel in the four Gospels. Mark portrays Jesus as a servant.

[6:01] Luke stresses his humanity. Matthew presents Jesus as a king. And John emphasizes Jesus' deity. We'll focus on the servant aspect in our Isaiah 53 study.

[6:15] Remember that God is speaking in verse 15 when he says, Behold my servant. The word translated servant refers to one who did hard work in obedience to his master.

[6:28] A true servant didn't act independently to fulfill the desires of his own will. He only sought to please the person he served. The word describes someone who is duty bound to obey his master.

[6:40] And it's an exact parallel of the English word slave. A servant existed solely to do his master's will and bidding. So the Lord Jesus, the servant of whom Isaiah prophesied, likewise had no will of his own as such.

[6:55] His reason for coming into this world was to do his father's will. And his father's will was to accomplish the redemption of his people. And this servant mentality motivated and drove the Lord Jesus during his time on earth.

[7:10] Remember what Jesus told his disciples in John chapter 4 verse 34. Jesus said to them, My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.

[7:24] Jesus expanded on this point in John chapter 6 verses 38 through 40. Hear what Jesus said in John chapter 6 verses 38 through 40.

[7:35] For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me but raise it up on the last day.

[7:50] For this is the will of my father that everyone who looks on the son and believes in him should have eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day. When we think about a servant or a slave, we often get the picture of someone who is forced to do something against his father's will.

[8:10] Jesus' role as a slave was much different. Jesus eagerly did his father's will. In Mark 10 45, Jesus said, For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

[8:27] We have much more to study in Isaiah 52 13 and in all the verses of tonight's text, but pause for a few seconds and think about how Jesus, God himself, willingly became a servant to accomplish our salvation.

[8:44] We hear that so often that we easily can skip over what an amazing truth that is. And once again, Jesus, God himself, willingly became God the Father's servant so that he could accomplish our salvation.

[9:01] Think about how the world sees things. Greatness, according to the thinking of this world, involves getting others to serve you. The Christian faith, on the other hand, proclaims that God, the one to whom all service and worship rightly belongs, in Christ became a servant to accomplish our salvation.

[9:20] He became a servant with a specific task, namely to give his life as a ransom for many, and to pay the ransom price and set us free from the penalty and power of sin.

[9:32] In Isaiah 52 13, God leaves no doubt that his servant will succeed at his mission. The ESV says, Behold, my servant shall act wisely.

[9:44] For those of you with that translation, you will see a footnote that the shall act wisely also could be translated shall prosper. The Hebrew word there speaks of someone who performs a task with skill and expertise, and both translations are valid because the Hebrew word speaks of prudent action that gains prosperous results.

[10:07] Earlier we discussed how tonight's three verses summarize the entire chapter of Isaiah 53. The concept of the suffering servant prospering is more fully developed in Isaiah 53 verses 10 and 11.

[10:23] We're a few weeks away from getting to those verses, but just listen again to what they say. Here are Isaiah 53 10 and 11. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him.

[10:35] He has put him to grief. 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.

[10:46] 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.

[11:02] Listen to how Jeremiah more fully developed the concept of the servant acting wisely. These verses are Jeremiah chapter 23 verses 5 and 6.

[11:13] Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

[11:28] In his days, Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called. The Lord is our righteousness. Did you catch that deal wisely reference in Jeremiah 23 5?

[11:45] Jesus will be so successful that Jeremiah says in 23 6 that his name will be called the Lord is our righteousness. We know that Jesus' course of action will bring salvation to his people.

[12:00] In such promises, righteousness and salvation are virtually synonymous because to have God's righteousness is to have his salvation. The key point is that God's righteousness comes through us through his servant.

[12:15] God's servant is our righteousness, and that's the very heart of the gospel. Because of his successful ministry as the servant of the Lord, Jesus has become our righteousness, holiness, and redemption.

[12:27] The law holds out life to the obedient, but brings nothing to enable us to perfectly comply with its extensive demands. The gospel tells us in whom we may trust and brings God's life-changing power to us.

[12:42] Because we know that the suffering servant will accomplish God's will, that will cause the second part of Isaiah 52 13 to happen. God says of the servant, he shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted.

[12:59] Listen to what John MacArthur said about the end of verse 13. He said, those terms are escalating statements, going from high to higher to highest.

[13:10] The ascending degrees parallel Christ's resurrection, his ascension, and culminating in the highest possible honor, his coronation. No one else ever acted so wisely or as a result was so highly exalted.

[13:26] A New Testament parallel of the honor given to Christ is in Philippians chapter 2 verses 9 through 11. Listen to Philippians 2 verses 9 through 11.

[13:41] Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

[14:01] Isaiah starts his great prophecy then by leaving no doubt that the coming Messiah will be successful in his mission. That's important to know because the people of Judah never would have predicted how the Messiah would accomplish his mission.

[14:16] Isaiah will briefly tell us how the Messiah will accomplish his mission in the next verse and that brings us to the second section of the lesson and to Isaiah 52 14 and in Isaiah 52 14 Isaiah makes an abrupt switch.

[14:32] We go from the exaltation of the suffering servant to the humiliation of the suffering servant. So humiliation is the second point that we will look at tonight.

[14:45] Look at verse 14 again. God speaking through Isaiah says, as many were astonished at you, his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance and his form beyond that of the children of mankind.

[15:01] The verse about suffering is in the past tense. Even though Isaiah wrote this before the suffering happened, we need to remember that Isaiah is looking backward from a prophetic viewpoint near the end of world history.

[15:15] So Isaiah was seeing Christ's future suffering as a past event with his exaltation and glory still awaiting in the future. Before we dig into verse 14, let's think about the context when Jesus was on earth.

[15:32] God's chosen people were under the authority of a foreign pagan power. They thought that the Messiah would put matters right and that was why they viewed the Messiah predominantly in political rather than spiritual terms.

[15:47] The Messiah, according to their thinking, would be a military and political leader strong enough to overthrow the Romans and restore the land back to those whom God had promised it.

[15:58] A suffering Messiah, therefore, especially one who suffered under the hands of the Romans, was something that made little sense to them. Because of that, we can cut the Jews of Jesus' day some slack.

[16:12] However, we should avoid letting them off the hook too easily. As we dig into Isaiah 52-14, we will see that from this verse alone, the Jews had enough information to anticipate what would happen to Jesus.

[16:27] Isaiah 52-14 also was far from the only place where Jesus' humiliation was predicted. Verse 14 starts in an interesting way in the ESV.

[16:39] It says, As many were astonished at you. Some people think the switch to a second person pronoun may be a copyist error there. Several translations render the phrase as something similar to, Many were astonished at him.

[16:56] Others, though, think that God paused in the prophecy for a moment to address Jesus directly. So as he was saying this, it's as if God turned to Jesus and said, Many were astonished at you.

[17:08] And that's what the ESV and the King James do when they render this verse. The New King James also does something similar there. And if any of you have the King James, you see another difference in the translation.

[17:23] The King James uses the word astonied rather than astonished. And astonied or astonied is a better translation, but few people, including me, before this lesson could tell you what it meant.

[17:36] We know what astonishment means, and our word astonishment can be either positive or negative based upon the context. Astonied, though, carries with it the idea of someone being so dismayed that the person can do nothing.

[17:53] Here's the dictionary definition of astonied. It says it's archaic, deprived briefly of the power to act or to be dazed or filled with consternation or dismay.

[18:06] The meaning of the original Hebrew word is even stronger. The Hebrew term translated here is never used to describe a positive reaction. It's closer to the English word appalled, and some of your translations may say appalled rather than astonished there.

[18:24] But it's even stronger than that. It speaks of being totally devastated. It's a term that can describe the total defeat of an army or the utter desolation of a vast region that has fallen into ruins.

[18:36] Earlier in Isaiah, Isaiah used this word in 49.19 to describe the land of Judah after the Chaldean armies had demolished almost every trace of human habitation.

[18:49] He spoke of your desolate places and your devastated land. When that word is used in a context such as Isaiah 52.14, the word has the connotation of horror.

[19:02] It speaks of a shock so staggering that somebody loses control of all his rational faculties. So it could be translated numbed, petrified, or even paralyzed there.

[19:14] And the remainder of verse 14 explains why Isaiah and the Holy Spirit chose to use that word. Speaking of the Messiah, the remainder of verse 14 says, His appearance was so marred beyond human semblance and his form beyond that of the children of mankind.

[19:34] So what Isaiah is saying there is that Christ's appearance would be so disfigured that onlookers would wonder if he was even human. This refers to the repulsive effects of scourging and crucifixion on the human body.

[19:49] It also shows how Jesus' bones would be out of joint and how his body would be covered with blood. So much show that he wasn't even recognizable as a person virtually.

[20:01] The Old Testament tells us more about the effects that Jesus' torture and crucifixion had on him than the New Testament does. The New Testament actually gives somewhat of a toned-down version of the horror that Jesus suffered.

[20:16] Isaiah 52-14 and Psalm 22 tell us more about the effects that the torture and crucifixion would have on Jesus' body. We know from the Gospel accounts that Jesus was struck on the head, spat upon, mocked, and flogged.

[20:33] He was beaten and abused by the chief priest, the temple guard, and the Romans. Added to that was the terrible scourging that he received on Pilate's orders. Listen to how Psalm 22 describes the effects of this treatment on Jesus' body.

[20:50] These verses are Psalm 22, verses 14 through 18. It says, I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint.

[21:01] My heart is like wax. It is melted within my breast. My strength is dried up like a potsherd and my tongue sticks to my jaws. You lay me in the dust of death.

[21:13] For dogs encompass me. A company of evildoers encircles me. They have pierced my hands and feet. I can count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me.

[21:25] They divide my garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots. We've already talked about how the Isaiah passage was written seven centuries before the events happened.

[21:39] Psalm 22 was written even earlier than that. Scholars estimate that Psalm 22 was written approximately 1,000 years before the crucifixion. Both Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 were written by people who had no idea what crucifixion was, yet they described it in detail.

[22:01] The New Testament had less need to describe the crucifixion in minute detail. Its original readers were very familiar with the devastating effects that crucifixion had on the victim.

[22:12] The original readers of the New Testament had witnessed crucifixions with their own eyes. They wouldn't need a lot of explanation about what that meant. Even though Psalm 22 and Isaiah both prophesied the crucifixion long before it happened, Jesus seems to be the only person actually expecting it to happen.

[22:33] Jesus himself on several occasions told what would happen to him. And let's look at a few of those predictions. In Matthew 12, 40, Jesus said, For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

[22:54] Jesus' later statements were more direct. Here's what Matthew wrote in Matthew 16, 21. Matthew 16, 21 says, From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.

[23:18] Listen now to Matthew 17, verses 22 and 23. Matthew 17, 22 and 23 say, As they were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them, The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day.

[23:41] And then the verse closes with, And they were greatly distressed. Mark 9, verses 9 and 10 have another prediction coupled with an explanation showing that the disciples failed to grasp what Jesus was trying to tell them.

[23:58] Here are Mark 9, verses 9 and 10. Those verses say, And as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

[24:12] So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead might mean. Then looking at Mark 10, verses 32-34, we see the most detailed statement that Jesus made about what would happen.

[24:29] At least it's the most detailed that's recorded in the Bible. Listen to Mark 10, verses 32-34. And they were on the road going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them.

[24:45] And they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priest and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles.

[25:06] And they will mock him and spit on him and flog him and kill him. and after three days he will rise. You would think that Jesus' comments there would be hard to miss.

[25:21] He told the disciples exactly what would happen. Yet the next four verses show that the disciples failed again to comprehend what Jesus told them. Listen to Mark chapter 10, verses 35-38.

[25:34] Mark 10, 35-38 say, And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came up to him and said to him, Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.

[25:48] And he said to them, What do you want me to do for you? And they said to him, Grant us to sit one at your right hand and one at your left in your glory. Jesus said to them, You do not know what you are asking.

[26:03] Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized? So picture the scene here. Jesus had just told them that he was about to be tortured and killed and that failed to register.

[26:20] Instead, they're arguing about who will get the top places in his kingdom. Even with Isaiah, Psalm 22, and the cross-references that we just read, and others too that we could have looked at tonight, no nobody other than Jesus himself expected the Messiah to be humiliated.

[26:39] But of course, he was. Other parts of Isaiah 53 clearly state the reason why. Listen to Isaiah 53, verses 4-6.

[26:51] Isaiah 53, 4-6 say, Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.

[27:02] 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.

[27:15] All we like sheep have gone astray, and we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

[27:25] We can marvel at the disciples' inability to grasp what would happen to Jesus, even though he so plainly told them what would happen.

[27:36] But before we're too hard on them, consider this. Do we fully grasp that Jesus suffered what he suffered for our sins? Do we fully grasp that Jesus suffered what he suffered because of our sins?

[27:51] When the disciples failed to grasp what Jesus was telling them, the crucifixion still was in the future. We're on the other side of both the crucifixion and the resurrection, but it often is hard, at least it is for me, to grasp that Jesus went through so much suffering because of our sins and because of my sins.

[28:13] Also keep this fact in mind. The physical suffering that Jesus went through pales in comparison to the spiritual suffering that Jesus endured. For the only time in all of eternity, the perfect sinless son of God, God himself, was separated from God the Father when Jesus on the cross bore the penalty for your sins and mine.

[28:36] If we get that, and when we get that, the realization should make us marvel at our Savior even more. That is why becoming a Christian is more than just asking Jesus into your heart.

[28:49] becoming a Christian involves realizing that we deserve the penalty that Christ suffers. It involves repenting from our sins because we realize that we are deserving of death, but Christ willingly died in our place instead.

[29:05] Becoming a Christian involves realizing that God accepted Christ's sacrifice for our sins because Jesus rose from the dead, just as Isaiah and Jesus said he would. And we know that, of course, because the resurrection happened.

[29:21] And that brings us to the third section of the lesson. So far we've seen the suffering servant's exaltation and humiliation. In verse 15 we see the salvation.

[29:35] So the salvation is what is in verse 15. This salvation is not something that happens to the suffering servant. This salvation is provided to us through the humiliation and exaltation of Jesus.

[29:50] Here is Isaiah 52, 15 again. Speaking about Jesus still, the verse says, So he shall sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths because of him.

[30:03] For that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard, they understand. So we've done some switchbacks here.

[30:14] And the way Isaiah 52, verses 13 through 15 shifts from scene to scene would make it difficult to follow for readers who know nothing about Christ. In 52, 13, the servant of the Lord is high and lifted up, exalted.

[30:31] Then verse 14 gives us that shocking past tense view of the suffering Savior who was so marred even beyond human semblance. Then in verse 15, the scene shifts again and the verb tense changes abruptly again as well.

[30:46] We're looking ahead to the present and also to Christ's glorious triumphant return. As Psalm 72, 11 puts it, May all kings fall down before him.

[30:58] All nations serve him. And the key to understanding Isaiah 52, 15 is understanding what is meant by Jesus sprinkling many nations.

[31:11] Leviticus uses this same verb to speak of the application of atoning blood to cleanse sinners from their impurity. This technical term predicts the blood atonement of Jesus Christ for the elect from every nation.

[31:26] Listen to Leviticus chapter 16, verses 15 and 16. Leviticus 16, 15 and 16 describe part of what Aaron, the high priest, was required to do on the day of atonement.

[31:41] Leviticus 16, 15 and 16 say, Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people, and bring its blood inside the veil, and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkling it over the mercy seat, and in front of the mercy seat.

[31:59] Thus he shall make atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleannesses of the people of Israel, and because of their transgressions, all their sins.

[32:10] And so shall he do for the ten of meeting, which dwells with them in the midst of their uncleannesses. Moving ahead to the New Testament, the New Testament confirms what we already know.

[32:24] Jesus is the permanent sacrifice that was typified by the passage in Leviticus and others in the Old Testament. Romans 5, 9 is part of the song sung to Jesus by the 24 elders.

[32:38] And here is Revelation 5, 9. It says, And they sang a new song, saying, Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals.

[32:49] For you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. This sprinkling of nations occurs by the verbal proclamation of the gospel all over the earth.

[33:06] And this proclamation goes to kings who are amazed and speechless at the message about Christ, and it goes to other people as well. Envoys to Christ will travel over the surface of the globe and tell all nations a saving message that those nations have never heard before, and those nations will see it by faith and understand it.

[33:27] And when they do, they are sprinkled and forgiven. Isaiah foresees kings shutting their mouths because of what is revealed to them. In their silence, they're given grace to understand the significance of what the servant has accomplished.

[33:44] They are among those whose spiritual perception has been radically altered as they've been confronted with the foolishness and weakness of God. We are again given cause to reflect upon the wonder of God's grace, which enlightens all classes of people, from kings to common people alike.

[34:03] John Calvin said, Though Jesus had risen from the dead, all would have thought that he was still a dead man if the glory of his resurrection had not been proclaimed. By the preaching of the gospel, therefore, were revealed those things which formerly had neither been seen nor heard.

[34:21] For this doctrine was conveyed to kings and nations that were very far off and even to the very ends of the earth. We know, of course, that believers in many nations have indeed been saved by the blood of Christ's sacrifice.

[34:37] So the prophecy in verse 15 has been fulfilled already to that extent. That fulfillment was evident even in New Testament times. Listen to 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 1 and 2.

[34:51] Again, these verses are 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood, may grace and peace be multiplied to you.

[35:21] So you heard the reference to being sprinkled with Christ's blood again there. The apostle Paul summarized Isaiah 52, 15 and applied it to the conversion of the Gentiles by Paul's ministry.

[35:36] Listen to what Paul wrote in Romans chapter 15, verses 20 and 21. Here are Romans 15, 20 and 21. Paul said, And thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation.

[35:57] But as it is written, those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand. That obviously is a paraphrase of Isaiah 52, 15.

[36:12] John Brown, the theologian, wrote, The Gentiles were to have the mystery which had been kept secret from former ages and generations made known to them. Christ the Messiah was to be among them the hope of glory.

[36:26] The gospel was to be preached and believed, and the result was to be, the Savior was to be, admired and obeyed. The prediction has been accomplished, is being accomplished, and yet shall yet more be illustriously accomplished.

[36:44] The prediction will be fully accomplished when Christ returns again. The ultimate and final fulfillment of Isaiah 52, 15 will occur when Jesus comes on the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him.

[37:04] And that, of course, comes from Revelation 1, verse 7. Tonight's verses jumped around a lot, but they do go together. Here's the connection.

[37:16] John MacArthur wrote, The servant of the Lord is one astonishing person. His innate wisdom and splendor are wonders to behold. That one so glorious could be subjected to such gross humiliation and disfigurement is utterly preposterous and staggering.

[37:34] But the greatest wonder of all will occur at his glorious and victorious return, when every mouth will be stopped and the whole world will stand guilty before God. So here's what we need to see from this passage.

[37:50] Christ's sufferings were planned, purposeful, and successful. His death and all its horror and anguish were prophesied centuries earlier in Isaiah 53.

[38:03] Jesus knew exactly how his life would end, down to the minutest detail, and he had known it since before the foundation of the world, when the plan of salvation was formed.

[38:15] Only those enlightened by the Holy Spirit will ever see this. The testimony of the Bible is that Christ came to be a spiritual Savior, as opposed to a political, military, or social one.

[38:28] He came to redeem us from sin. At the very dawn of history, God promised one who would come and undo the ravages and consequences of Satan and sin.

[38:39] All the way back in Genesis chapter 3, verse 15, we see the first gospel promise. And that promise was of one who would come and crush Satan's head while being bruised himself in the process.

[38:54] In Christ, this promise was most wonderfully fulfilled. As 1 Timothy 1.15 puts it, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. To save those sinners, though, he had to pay the wages of human sin, which is death.

[39:09] At Calvary, Christ died for our sins. His spiritual sufferings dwarfed even the physical sufferings we talked about tonight. He suffered so that we could be saved.

[39:22] He was bruised so that we could be blessed. And he died so that we could live. We'll see more of each of these things as we get further into Isaiah 53.

[39:34] Tonight's three verses were just the summary of what we'll see in the remaining 12 verses. Let's end tonight by pondering what our response should be to the truths we've studied. Earlier, I read a quote from John Brown.

[39:48] After that quote, Brown went on to say that we should comply with the command from God that started tonight's passage. That command is, behold my servant.

[39:59] Then Brown explained why we should obey that command. And here's what he said. He said, behold my servant, suffering and reigning. Assuredly, he is well worth contemplating.

[40:13] Turn away your minds then from every other object. Look to Jesus. Behold him. Behold him. And in him, behold God reconciling the world to himself and blessing men with all heavenly and spiritual blessings.

[40:29] Look at him as the lamb on the altar, giving himself for you to bring you to God, bearing and bearing away the sins of the world. Look at him as the lamb in the midst of the throne, unsealing the book of the father's counsels, having all power in heaven and in earth, able to save you to the uttermost, coming to God by him.

[40:54] Behold him with firm faith, devout reverence, adoring amazement, entire dependence, ardent love, lively gratitude, and humble, cheerful submission.

[41:06] And thus, looking to him, gird yourselves for the high and holy work to which you have devoted yourselves, and in which you are workers together with Christ.

[41:18] As we contemplate that, let's rejoice in this one-sentence summary from the Apostle Paul. And that one-sentence summary is Romans 5.8. Let's pray.