CrossWay Bible Church

CrossWay Bible Church 701 NW Woods Chapel Road, Blue Springs, MO 64015 Teaching Pastor Dr. Rodger Williams Sunday, November 17, 2013 The Servant Exalted — Isaiah 53:10-12 5th and final message in a series of expositional messages from Isaiah 53 entitled “Behold the Lamb”

INTRODUCTION In biblical salvation history there is a drum beating two great themes: The theme of God’s passion to promote His glory, and the theme of God’s profound love for sinners who have scorned that very glory. First, the theme of God’s passion to promote His glory—His name, and second, the theme of God’s profound love for sinners who have flaunted that very glory. Again and again all through the Bible you can hear the beat of these two great themes. Clearly God has a great passion to promote His glory. But the puzzling thing that emerges is that God has chosen to love sinners. He is honoring and blessing and exalting people who are sinners, yet the essence of sin is the belittling of God’s glory. Make no mistake, sin is diametrically opposed to the glory of God. Romans 3:23 says: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Something seems askew. God, who is infinitely committed to promote the worth of His name and the greatness of His glory, is engaging all His powers to bring the enemies of His name and glory into everlasting joy and honor! God’s righteousness and glory are impugned when He passes over sin and does not judge it, because sin is an attack on the worth of His glory. For centuries we don’t hear a resolution until Isaiah 53. This great chapter tells us how God upholds the worth of His glory and yet saves sinners. God would not sweep the sins of His people under the rug of the universe. If God was going to acquit the guilty—the Godbelittling sinner—by faith, then something terrible and awesome had to happen to vindicate His allegiance to His righteousness, to His justice—to the worth of His glory. Isaiah 53 is the confession of Israel looking back and telling us what God did. God put forth His Servant—His Son—as a propitiation, as a satisfaction, by His death on the cross. That cross death demonstrated His righteousness and His unswerving commitment to His glory, and also justified anyone who put their faith in Jesus (Romans 3:25-26). When Jesus approached the hour of His death, Jesus said: “Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. ‘Father glorify Your name.’” (John 12:27-28). He came and willingly paid the penalty of your sin and my sin, and to satisfy the wrath and justice of God against sin. That is how the worth of God’s glory is magnified in the death of Jesus. Now for our study of Isaiah 53 we come to the final stanza, the final of five stanzas in this Servant’s song, verses 10 through 12. And here we meet the Servant again, the one identified throughout this section of Isaiah as the Servant of Yahweh, the Servant of the Lord, none other than the Messiah—Yeshua. In

stanza number one, the Servant was appraised; in stanza number two, the Servant is rejected; in stanza number three, the Servant is our substitute; in stanza number four, the Servant is submissive. And now as we come into the final section—verses 10-12—we see Him as the exalted Servant. That is the theme: The Servant Exalted. Jesus is exalted because His suffering for us brought us salvation. Jesus had said previously: “Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles Himself shall be exalted” (Matthew 23:12). The apostle Paul writes how that applies to Jesus in Philippians 2:8-11 – Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. When we come to verse 10, we are reminded of the success of the Lord’s plan. The very first stanza announced that success and exaltation (52:13). We learned that He will be lifted up, exalted. Israel had that in their theology of the Messiah. He will startle many nations. He will literally shut the mouths of monarchs and rulers and kings, who will be stunned at the majesty and glory of His presence. They will see in Him things they had never seen and hear from Him things they have never heard. This all fits the Jewish messianic theology. He is exalted. He succeeds. He prospers. He conquers the world. He subdues the nations. He exercises His majesty and His rule. But there is an enigma in this opening declaration that comes from God and it is in verse 14. He is going to be astonishing for His glory, but He is also will be astonishing because His appearance was marred more than any man and His form more than the sons of men. Twice it identifies Him as a man. He is God in verse 13, and He is man in verse 14. As God, He is highly exalted, as God should be. And as man, He is disfigured and marred so severely that He didn’t even look human. It is puzzling. Well, the answer to the enigma of verses 13 to 15 is chapter 53. This explains both His suffering and its purpose, and His glory and its purpose. Isaiah 53 contains the most important truth ever given. The good news of salvation for sinners by the death of the Lord’s Servant—the only acceptable sacrifice to take away the sins of the world. God is speaking in the first stanza—verses 13 to 15 and the chapter ends with God speaking again, starting in the middle of verse 11 through verse 12. God introduces, and God sums up this great prophecy. God promises the plan in the first stanza (52:13-15), and He affirms its fulfillment in the last stanza (11-12). It is God who has planned both the exaltation and the humiliation of His Servant, the Messiah. What happened to Jesus Christ when He came was in the plan of God; it was the purpose of God.

I.

THE LORD’S SUCCESSFUL PLAN

Verse 10 – But the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering.

Up to this point, the provisions and the benefits of the Servant’s death have been viewed from the perspective of the redeemed Israel looking back on the cross confessing that they missed Him in life and in His death. And that will be true all the way down to the midpoint of verse 11. The final lines from midpoint, verse 11 to 12, will shift to God‘s perspective. God affirms the truthfulness of their confession. The major point here in verse 10 is that the Lord’s death was no accident.

A.

The Lord’s death was no accident.

His death came as part of the deliberate plan of God (Psalm 22:15). It is true that the Jewish people and the Romans of Jesus’ day were guilty of a false arrest, an invalid trial, and a wrongful death, yet what happened was also a part of the plan of God (Acts 2:23; 4:28). When verse 10 says that the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief, it was not some type of sadistic pleasure in which the Father reveled by watching His Son die in agony. Rather, it was the prospect of fulfilling the great purpose of God. The phrase, the LORD was pleased, means it was the LORD’S will/plan. He does whatever He pleases (Psalm 115:3). The Lord was pleased to crush Him. Even though it says but—it could be translated yet. Even though, as verse 9 says—He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth—God crushed Him . In other words, in spite of His sinlessness, holiness and perfect righteousness, the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief. It’s a very powerful phrase—putting Him to grief—literally meaning an excruciating experience to completely debilitate His entire being. God not only crushes Him in the sense that it kills Him, but He makes it excruciatingly painful. And God is doing the crushing. In other words, the Lord is doing something to Him that is horrific. Men, of course, are unjustly crushing Him. Men are doing the worst that they can do with an unjust trial and the brutality and the abuse and the harassment and the punching and slapping and hitting with clubs and crowning with thorns and nailing Him to a cross. But God is pleased and God is delighted to crush Him. While men are doing the worst that they can do, at the very same time God is doing the best that He can do. Men are doing the worst that they can do to the sinless One, and God is doing the best that He can do for sinners. His Son’s death is God’s work. Jesus is God’s Lamb, chosen by God (Acts 2, Acts 4). It is God who laid on Him the iniquity of us all (6). It is God who crushes Him (5, 10). It is God who cuts Him off out of the land of the living (8). The God who finds no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18:23, 32), finds full pleasure in the death of the Righteous One. He calls Him that in verse 11: the Righteous One. Jesus died under divine wrath—no comfort, only divine fury. Jesus died tasting hell. “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Psalm 22:1; Matthew 27:46). No believer ever dies like that. And every unbeliever dies like that. Every believer dies tasting heaven. Every unbeliever dies tasting hell. Jesus died tasting hell. He died the death of an unbeliever with no comforts and no grace and no mercy. The Jews get it. They have a very rich understanding of the death of Messiah. But why was God pleased? What was it that pleased God? How could God be pleased with such agonies? How could it possibly be His will—His plan?

God’s delight and God’s pleasure in crushing His Son in this way was not in His pain, but in His purpose. It was not in His agony; it was in His accomplishment. It was not in His suffering; it was in His salvation-and that’s what it says. Why was the Lord pleased to crush Him, putting Him to that grief? Literally the Hebrew says: Because He would render Himself as a guilt offering—because He would give His life to save sinners. It was the outcome that pleased God, not the pain. But the pain and the agony were necessary. He had to die under the full, unmitigated, unrelieved, comfortless realities of divine law and wrath against sin. The Jews understand it. He was the guilt offering. Why would they say that? Why would the Holy Spirit put those words down for Isaiah to write—the guilt offering? There were five offerings the Jews gave, according to Leviticus, when they had their sacrificial system laid out by God. There was the burnt offering, the grain offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, and the guilt offering. The burnt offering, the sin offering and the guilt offering were animal sacrifices. The other two, grain and peace, were not. Those three animal sacrifices were pictures of the deadly results of sin—death. But also they were hopeful in that God would allow a substitute to die in the sinner’s place; they only pointed to the reality that there would be a substitute. But of those three offerings, the guilt offering adds a dimension that the others don’t have. It was the offering that added the dimension of restitution or satisfaction or propitiation, which come from a verb that means to be satisfied. In the guilt offering, the whole animal was put on the altar, and the animal had to be without blemish, perfect to picture complete satisfaction. The Jewish nation will see that: that the offering of Christ was the guilt offering. He provided full satisfaction, full restitution, and full propitiation. The satisfaction of God’s justice is demonstrated in the perfection of that sacrifice. The debt is fully paid by the Lamb without blemish and the sinner is freed. This is the gospel, that Christ is the complete satisfaction, the complete and perfect sacrifice to which nothing can be added. God is satisfied. That’s why God is pleased to crush Him; not because He delighted in the agony, but He delighted in the atonement. Jesus is exalted because His suffering for us brought us salvation.

B.

There are five divine results as evidence of the success of the Lord’s plan.

Wait a minute! He’s dead. What’s going on here? How could He see His offspring? Prolong His days? The good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand? God will see it and be satisfied? He would have to be alive. This is a confession of the resurrection. It’s just magnificent. “He will see His offspring.” Notice the switch to the future tense. The Jewish redeemed nation sees the results of what He has done.

a. He will see His offspring. He will see them all. All the ones He brings to glory He will see (Hebrews 2:10). He will raise them up on the last day (John 6:37-39). He lives to see His children. He will see His bride complete. He will see His flock gathered into glory. He will see His children and they will be with Him forever.

b. He will prolong His days. In Revelation 1:18 Jesus say, “I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore.” He will be alive for eternity. He is the eternal God. c. The good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand. Yes, He prospers. That’s what it said in verse 13 of chapter 52: My Servant will prosper. And here His prosperity is indicated in the final phrase of verse 10: The good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand. And what is the good pleasure of the Lord? That through crushing Him He saves the sinners who put their faith in Him. He will bring Israel back to their land; He will be a light to the nations; He will bring salvation to the ends of the earth. He will see it. Not only will He see it, He will do it. The good pleasure of the Lord will succeed in His hand. d. He will see the light of life and be satisfied. What will He see? He’ll see the plan to its completion. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see the good pleasure of the Lord succeed. He will see a world filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9; Habakkuk 2:14). He will see his spiritual offspring. He will see a glorious church without spot or wrinkle (Ephesians 5:27). He will see the redeemed gathered in the new heavens and new earth where righteousness dwells forevermore (Isaiah 65-66). God is satisfied by the atoning sacrifice of Christ, and Christ is equally satisfied by seeing all His children gathered around His throne forever; forever His bride, forever His sons and daughters; loving, worshiping, honoring, serving Him in His presence in the glories of eternal heaven. Starting in the middle of verse 11, God speaks. The pronouns all change. They go from being plural to singular. The verbs go from being past tense to future. It goes from the Jews as a nation looking back to the cross to God speaking, looking forward to the cross. This is the fifth result of the Lord’s successful plan. e. He will justify the many. This is God’s view. The pronouns, My and I; the verbs, future; God is personally speaking, predicting the very reality that the Jews will confess. He is predicting the death of the Righteous One. He is predicting that He will pour Himself out to death. He is predicting that He will be a sin-bearing Savior, that He will bear the sins of the many, and that by that He will justify the many. That is the doctrine of vicarious, substitutionary atonement—justification by imputation—the reckoning of God’s righteousness to sinful believers. That is the great doctrine that will be confessed by the future generation of Jews and by all of us who are believers, and God affirms it. He introduces His Servant again. “My Servant,” in verse 11; and that’s what He called Him when He introduced Him back in 52:13, “My Servant” –the Messianic title for Yeshua. But also notice the name: the Righteous One. There is only One—the only One in this world, the God-Man, God with us—who could bear that title, the Righteous One. It is a marvelous Old Testament designation of the Messiah that was familiar to the New Testament believers who knew the Old Testament. He’s the only Righteous One. So here is God speaking of His Son, His Servant, the Righteous One, and He says

this, “By His knowledge He will justify the many”— the many meaning those who believe; the many meaning the people of God; the many will be justified ; that is, He will provide Jesus’ righteousness for them. By His sacrifice, by taking on their sins, He will be able to grant them His righteousness. The phrase: By His knowledge, refers to what? Whose knowledge are we talking about here? If we take this in an objective sense, then by the knowledge of Him, many will be justified. The Hebrew would allow us to translate it this way, “By the knowledge of Him the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many.” In other words, justification will come to those who know Him. This interpretation is our knowledge of Him, of His person, of His work, of His provision—in His death and resurrection, the gospel. Here God validates the Great Commission. This is the view I take. If we take it in the subjective sense, then it is by His own knowledge that many are justified. The problem with that is that it wasn’t by the Servant’s knowledge that He justifies us; it was by His death. And then God says this. Knowing Him in a saving way, knowing Him in repentant faith will justify the many. How? How can knowing Him justify? Because He will bear their iniquities. The LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him (6). Jesus absorbed the wrath of God for our iniquities. God believes in the salvation by faith in the Savior, because He ordained it to be that way. Jesus is exalted because His suffering for us brought us salvation. Verse 12 concludes with the Lord’s seal of approval on the Servant.

II.

THE LORD’S SEAL OF APPROVAL A.

There are two divine gifts for the Servant. a. I will allot Him a portion with the great. The resurrection, of course, is implied because He’s now going to be rewarded. After the suffering, the satisfaction. After the sorrow, the salvation. After the death, the deliverance. After the gore, the glory. After the pain, the pleasure. After the thorns, the throne. After the cross, the crown. His first coming in humiliation; the Second Coming in exaltation. We would understand it if the Father said, “I’ll give Him everything.” And He will give Him everything. But that’s not the emphasis here. The emphasis here is about sharing. “I will allot Him a portion with the great, divide the spoil with the strong.” Who are the great and who are the strong? That’s us. How did we become great and strong when we are insignificant and weak and sinful? Actually the word for “great” is harabim, literally means the many—the many He justified. Look at the end of verse 12: He Himself bore the sin of the many.

Why does the translator take it from the many to great? Because, by that time we will have been made great. We will also be exalted. We’re going to become heirs of God (Romans 8:17) and joint-heirs with Christ. That means that everything He possesses, we will possess. It will be a magnificent gift out of His grace. We don’t sit in eternity impoverished, watching Christ enjoy all the rewards. Everything He possesses He shares with us. That is the extent of God’s massive and magnificent grace.

b. He will divide the booty with the strong. The exaltation culminates with triumph—with a victory parade—as the Lord God Himself sets His Servant on the throne and rewards Him with all the spoils of His conquering triumph. He is exalted; He is all-glorious; He is set on a throne. This is Revelation 11, when the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ. This is Revelation 19, when He comes on a white horse with all the saints to judge and make war against the ungodly, and then to establish His glorious Kingdom on earth for a thousand years, followed by the eternal new heavens and new earth in which He reigns and is forever exalted. This is powerful, royal imagery. This is the image of a conquering hero who returns with all the spoils of His triumph. Having overpowered all the hostile forces and embarrassed all the petty kings, He comes triumphant. He divides the spoils with the strong. We are the weak made strong. We are the triumphant ones. Jesus is exalted because His suffering for us brought us salvation.

B.

There are four divine reasons for the Lord’s seal of approval put on His Servant. a. He poured out Himself to death. Literally it means He handed His soul over to death. So God is echoing the confession that we’ve read from redeemed Israel. Yes, He poured out Himself to death. He voluntarily laid down His life—no one took it from Him (John 10:17-18). b. He was numbered among the transgressors. This is a wonderful statement: And was numbered with the transgressors. Literally in the Hebrew it means He let Himself be included among transgressors. In fact, Jesus quotes this in Luke 22:37 before He got to the cross. He quotes these very words. It is a reference to His incarnation—that He was literally dwelt among transgressors. He lived among transgressors because they needed what only He could offer. He didn’t look any different than anybody else. There was no halo. He didn’t move two feet off the ground. He had no stately form or majesty. He looked like every other man. He walked like every other man. He spoke in a voice like every other man’s voice. He did what men do. Here God affirms the incarnation—God became flesh and dwelt among us. c. He bore the sin of many.

This brings to mind the image of Azazel, the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement. The second goat depicts how all the sins of Israel, were placed on it before it was led away into the wilderness never to return. It was called “the goat of removal”—picturing the removing of people’s sins, which is what Yeshua—Jesus –accomplished through His death on the cross. Finally, the fourth reason for God’s seal of approval on the Messiah is that… d. He interceded for the transgressors. The word means mediated. It means to mediate, to go between, to stand between. And this is the statement that Christ is the One who is between God and man (1Timothy 2:5). He is the One who pleads our case before the throne of His Father on behalf of all those who transgressed against Him. This is an imperfect verb meaning this is an ongoing ministry—He continues to make intercession—He continues to plead our case. What a wonderful Servant of the LORD! His mediation began for us really in the New Testament, in John 17, before He got to the cross, when He prayed that High Priestly prayer the night He was betrayed. He began to pray for us. He began to pray that God would bring us all to heaven. He prayed that all that belong to Him throughout all of human history would be gathered together, and that they would all be brought to glory where they could see Him in His glory and see the glory of the Father. And the Father always answers the prayer of His Son. The big picture of Isaiah 53 is the confession the Jewish nation will one day make—that Jesus Christ is the Messiah—the only Savior; that His death is a substitutionary sacrifice made for sinners; that He died as God’s chosen Lamb to take away the sin of the world; that there is no salvation in any other name than the name of Jesus Christ. Prayerfully, this is a confession you and I have already made. And this is a confession that God Himself affirms.

LIFE APPLICATION Jesus is exalted because His suffering for us brought us salvation. There was never any doubt as to the success that this Servant would enjoy. From the moment it was announced in 52:13, that is what He continues to enjoy to this very day on until He returns triumphantly to rule and to reign forever. 1. Christ Jesus (Yeshua) – Believe in Him with all that you are! People reject Jesus because they have failed to properly assess His value. 2. Christ Jesus (Yeshua) – Worship Him with all that you are! Our worship becomes more meaningful as we understand His immeasurable value. No need of gimmicks or formulas, just adoration and praise.

3. Christ Jesus (Yeshua) – Follow Him with all that you are! Emily Post was asked how one should properly respond to an invitation to dine with the President of the United States. She answered, “A White House invitation is a direct command—drop everything.” The King of kings and the Lord of lords invites us to follow Him. Drop everything!