THE SUFFERING SERVANT OF GOD
Meditations in Isaiah 52:13 to Isaiah 53:12
THE SERVANT'S SUFFERING

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IN VERSE one we read of the essence of this prophecy concerning the servant. The prophecy now continues with an account of the details. In this verse we have described to us the suffering of the Servant. This was the awesome experience of the Servant, our Lord Jesus Christ.

This verse describes awful suffering and terrible disfigurement. Such is the suffering and disfigurement that there is an immediate revulsion at the sight of the Servant in his suffering. The verse is poignant in the portrayal of total rejection, and of being totally alone in this pain. The last sentence describes suffering that goes beyond anything any other person has ever undergone, and so as we seek to understand what we are told in this verse we have to look deeper than ordinary human suffering.

It is this suffering of the Servant that we are called upon to behold and consider. As we meditate we must involve all our faculties. We must understand, as far as this is possible, with our minds. We must also be touched and feel with our emotions. Also we must enter into the spiritual realm and seek to understand what this suffering was at this level too.

OUTWARD EVIDENCE

First we start at what is most easily seen, and that is the outward suffering of Jesus as we see it in his life on this earth.

His suffering commenced the moment he was born. This is something we do not naturally appreciate. A pale reflection of this suffering of Jesus caused by entering this world, can be seen in thinking of someone reared and nurtured in riches, love and goodness, suddenly, perhaps through loss of money, parents and relations, being thrust into the realm of poverty and vice. However this can't really describe what it meant for the holy one, the eternal Son of God, to come into this world, leaving all that glory and purity to dwell amongst sinners. Paul speaks of him emptying himself. Giving up all the experience and privileges of heaven and divinity.

The Servant’s suffering continued throughout his life. One can't read the narrative in the four Gospels and not appreciate the hate and rejection, the hardship, the being let down by his friends, and the awful burden and responsibility thrust upon him by the demands pressed upon him.

But the suffering culminated in his trial and death. The Servant was abused, vilified, falsely accused. He was scourged, mocked, and treated with contempt. He was nailed to the cross and made to hang there until he died in awful pain and agony.

Truly does Isaiah say he was disfigured and marred, and to look upon him is to be appalled.

LOOKING DEEPER

But this outward suffering is only a tithe of what the Saviour bore in love for us. If the outward suffering was all that there was, then it could not be said that he was disfigured beyond that of any man. Such is the cruelty in humanity, that human beings inflict on others awful and bestial cruelty, and although the physical suffering of Jesus was as bad as any other physical suffering known in the history of the world, yet it is doubtful as to whether we could say no other person suffered physically as he did. With Jesus it was made worse in the sense that there was nothing in him that deserved such suffering, and that the suffering was inflicted by creatures he had created and made, but the suffering in the physical realm was no different in depth to what many others have had inflicted upon them.

We must look deeper than just the physical suffering of Jesus, however important and awesome this was, for the prophecy declares that Jesus, the Servant, was disfigured beyond that of any man, and his form marred beyond human likeness.

Where then was this deeper suffering? Surely it was in the fact that Jesus was made sin for us who knew no sin. We are told in verse 6 of the next chapter that God laid on him the iniquity, the sin and evil, of us all. We are defiled with our own sin only. This is very bad and our sins our millions, but we committed them and our degradation is our own, inflicted on us by our own thought and action. Further we sinned because of the corruption of our nature so that we loved what we did. We would not have done it if there was not this desire to do it within. It was different with the Servant, our loving and gracious Saviour. The sin laid on him was not his own. He was and is the holy one with no experience of sin and with no desire or liking for sin.

It was not the sin of just one person that was laid on him. That would have been bad enough. Nor was it the sin of a few, or a selection of more worthy people. No! heaped on Jesus and laid to his account, were all the sins of the world from the first sin of Adam, to the last sin that will be committed before Christ stops all sinning on the day of judgement. The number of them is beyond computation. Sins small and great, shocking and less shocking, all were laid on the Servant. His holy person was degraded and defiled. It was besmirched and vilely dirtied. Every part of the soul and spirit of Jesus reacted in awful horror at this degradation. Jesus was made sin for us. He was imputed with our sin, so that he was made with our sin worse a billion times more than any other human being and infinitely more than this.

Surely he was disfigured more than any man, and his form beyond human likeness. The burden of sin that Jesus bore could be the likeness of all the planets and solar systems in all the galaxies of the universe being laid upon him and crushing him to dust. Yet he was not crushed. He bore courageously all the sin of the world, bearing the sin and enduring the shame. There was not the least of the vileness of any sin laid upon him which Jesus did not feel, experience and bear. There was no least of any sin that Jesus did not take full responsibility for even though he was sinless, and the sins he bore were the sins of others, who were unworthy and worthless.

We behold in just a very small way this bearing of our sin when we read the narrative of the trial and passion of Jesus. Being brought before the chief priests, and then before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, Jesus was accused of many serious sins. None of these had he committed even in the smallest degree. Pilate’s wife gave testimony to this fact saying to her husband that he was an innocent man. Pilate also declared that he found no fault in him. Yet whenever Jesus was accused of these sins he remained silent. He could not say that he committed them, but he accepted them and their guilt, and took responsibility for them, because his Father had laid them on him. When asked other questions at his trial he answered without hesitation, but when accused of sin he remained silent. He bore our sin in his body.

This is the awful disfigurement of the Servant. But this is not all.

DIVINE DISFIGUREMENT

Here we are treading on holy ground, and our minds and imaginations can not possibly conceive or understand this disfigurement of the Servant, Jesus our Lord, and what it meant for the holy one to bear away our sin. I believe we are not meant to look on this horror of degradation too closely. The unutterable shame our Saviour bore and suffered for us, and the awesome loss and pain he suffered for us, is hidden from us on the cross by the three hours of supernatural darkness which enveloped Calvary at the height of the atonement for our sins. For our sins to be fully atoned for, and satisfaction made, so that we would be totally free from the stain and penalty of sin, meant that the Saviour had to suffer this awful degradation. We bow in worship of love and gratitude, but we are not meant to behold that degradation that saved us. But some small understanding of it is given so we may appreciate the love of God and the love of Jesus that was poured out for us on the cross.

What was this ghastly penalty Jesus bore for us? God made him sin for us. God imputed to him all our filth and vileness and then judged that sin. He visited on Jesus all the punishment that that evil deserved. It was in what this meant that the degradation is but dimly seen by us. God considered Jesus as vile - his own beloved eternal Son. God cast him out of his presence, turned his back on him and rejected him. Jesus was put out of the heavenly glory and cast into the darkness of hell. The Servant was considered as vile by the heavenly court and unfit to enter there. The ineffable union between the Father and Son was severed at that terrible time when God laid the sin of the world on the Saviour. The punishment for sin must be death. This death was not a cessation of conscious feeling, but to be cast out from all life and purity and love and goodness, to be severed from the Father, and to know the outer darkness.

This hell for us would be terrible, but for the Servant, the Father's well-beloved Son, infinitely worse. We cannot possible conceive the bond of union and love that is in the Godhead, but this sweet and wonderful union was severed and God turned his back on his Son and said I never knew you, depart from me. So the cry was torn from the heart of the Saviour at the worse moment of that disfigurement. He had been silent up to this moment and suffered without any real revelation of the terrible suffering he bore, but now, out of the heart of the Saviour comes the expression of his pain - My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.

How this could have been I know not. Nor do I understand it sufficiently to speak of it. No doubt I have described this degradation unadvisedly, and not been accurate as the subject requires, but what I have not been guilty of is to overstate the scale of the suffering and degradation. No one, not I or any other person, could ever encompass the whole understanding and description of that suffering which atoned for our sin.

CONCLUSION

Behold the Servant. Rightly be appalled at what you see. Do not shirk the view of the Saviour suffering for you. It was not his sin he was being degraded for but ours. It was not his pain he was suffering but our deserving. The hell he underwent was not his but our eternal damnation. He trod the winepress of God's wrath alone - for you - for me. Oh! wondrous, infinite, inexpressible love. What depth of mercy do we see here in the sufferings servant.

Can we have any doubt that Jesus loves us. Can we have any doubt that we are saved and that Jesus has won for us eternal life, completely and forever. Here in beholding the suffering of Jesus do we have the answer to all the devil's lies which would rob us of our refuge in wounds of Jesus. Behold the suffering Servant and worship. Stand in awe of this tremendous and great doing of Jesus for us. Here is the subject of praise and adoration, not only for now but for eternity.

Behold the Servant degraded for you so that deep love for him may be kindled in your heart. Here is where victory over sin, and faithful service, is born and sustained. How can we sin against such love? How can we sin when it caused the Saviour such pain? How can we not give our lives to him when he has poured out his life for us.

Jesus, I adore you! Jesus, I love you! Jesus, my Lord and my God, I worship you!