THE SUFFERING SERVANT OF GOD
Meditations in Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12
THE DARKNESS IN THE WORLD

"Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed."
Isaiah 53:1

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THE PROPHET opens his grief to us in this verse. He has been given this wonderful and amazing revelation concerning the Servant of the Lord, the Messiah of Israel. He is deeply moved by it, and he is filled with the wonder of the meaning of the revelation as God unfolds it to him, though he realises that he only sees the meaning imperfectly as yet. Then he thinks of the ones to whom God has sent him as a prophet and he realises that they will not understand or believe or receive this good news from God. He has spoken God's messages so often, and known practically total disregard of them by the people. He grieves because he feels and is afraid that this same disregard will be shown to this message concerning the suffering Servant, with all the loss to Israel that this would mean. Far more it grieved him that God should suffer in this way in His Servant, yet the people he is suffering for in love are totally disregarding his love and mercy.

I have been feeling this tragedy in our world much more lately. Just looking at the country of England in which I live and which I love, it grieves me that we are all so busy and so preoccupied, and people don't realise the darkness surrounding them. People are hungry for love and fulfilment. They are longing for happiness. To hide the emptiness of life they are filling their days up with more and more activity, and seeking more worldly wealth and comfort. God's love surrounds me through the blessing and salvation the suffering of the Servant of God has won for all who believe. I feel the emptiness of the world in the light of that love, and in the hopelessness in the world I rest with peace and hope in the sureness of the heavenly life to come which Jesus has purchased for me. In Christ there is real joy. He is my friend and the lover of my soul. As a weaned child I rest in his love and care (Psalm 131), and when I look into his face and come into his presence, his peace fills my heart and I am not afraid.

I look out at the world around me and I grieve. Such love as God offers us is disregarded and not known. There seems no way to reach through this carelessness. The churches seem to be just scratching the surface, and few of them seem to dwell on the love of God seen in Jesus, the Suffering Servant, or speak very much of the greatness and meaning of that suffering. But what grieves me more is that I know from 37 years in the ministry that, like Isaiah one can preach ones heart out, and with passion and feeling speak of the wonder of God's love shown in the suffering of Jesus, and what there is for us if we believe, and in the end we cry 'Who has believed our report and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed'. So few want to hear. The grief is for the loss of humanity in this unbelief and rejecting. It is the loss of life and love and blessing. Far more is the grief that such love from God should be despised and rejected and thrown back in the face of God.

As we wrestle with this problem let us consider the truth and meaning in this complaint of the prophet.

THE ARM OF THE LORD

The Bible uses expressions that may seem odd to us in the way we think in our generation. In the western world we tend to think abstractly. The Bible speaks mostly in concrete images as we have here. We would perhaps speak of the strength or the power of the Lord, or his work or action in the world. The Bible creates a picture in our mind of strength and action by bringing to our mind an arm. Our arm is the member of our body which is a tool of great versatility and strength. We do a multiplicity of work and tasks every day by the strength of an arm.

The arm of the Lord speaks of God working and acting in power. The working an acting in this case is something very special. It is the working and acting of God in the redemption of the world through the giving of His only begotten Son. It is this sending of the Suffering Servant, and commanding him to surrender himself up by taking responsibility for all the evil and sin in the world and suffering and dying as a consequence of that sin.

The arm of the Lord is an expression of the great plan of God to save us from the consequence of our wrong doing and falling short of his glory. This is no simple matter of making a decision to cancel a debt like cancelling the third world debt and writing off the money owed. Sin can't be dealt with in this way. It is a terrible defilement. It is offence against God's holiness and justice. It cannot be forgotten. It must be atoned for. The penalty must be exacted. Sin must be purged by death. There is no other way. Yet there is no way that we the perpetrators of the evil can make atonement. The debt is beyond our ability and even our will. God's love can't leave us to die. What can God do. He sees the only way. He must pay the price of sin himself. He must suffer death. His just wrath must fall on a human being, so God became incarnate to take the place of humanity and suffer, Oh so greatly, that we might be saved.

This is the arm of the Lord. What royal sacrifice and what glorious strength poured out in love. How can any one be indifferent to it. Yet the prophet complains "Who has believed our report".

TRAGEDY HIGHLIGHTED

"Who has believed our report" expresses the prophet's grief. It also expresses the great tragedy of humanity. The prophet expresses in this cry the attitude of humanity to the work of God to deliver and save them. Although God has done so great a thing for us, and though it was done at infinite cost, and though great love was the motive in God for working salvation, yet humanity is indifferent and will not listen. The prophets experience was not confined to his day, or to preaching to the Jews as opposed to the Gentiles. This attitude to God's salvation for us has always been the case. Here is the terrible sick condition of human beings. We are desperately sick but we don't know it, nor do we want to be healed.

There is an historical anecdote which illustrates this tragedy. I recall it from memory, so I may not have got all the detail accurately, though the substance is. Wilberforce, the great Christian reformer who worked for the abolition of the slave trade, took a friend in the government, the younger Pitt, to hear Whitfield, the greatest preacher of the evangelical revival over 200 years ago. After the sermon Wilberforce felt that Whitfield had been at his best, and that God was evidently present in the discourse. Wilberforce had revelled in the glory of the Gospel being proclaimed. While walking home Wilberforce asked his friend what he thought of the preaching and received from Pitt a polite but indifferent reply. The great politician had neither heard not felt anything out of the ordinary, and the whole sermon had been found to be for him of little interest. This illustrates the tragedy expressed by Paul in Ephesians 2:1 - We are dead in trespasses and sins.

This statement expresses the condition of humanity as we are born naturally in this world. We are dead spiritually. Sin has brought this sentence of death. Though being alive in body and mind, we are born dead spiritually. This death is seen in this blindness and indifference towards God. It is seen in the bias there is in all of us towards selfishness and sin, so that we do wrong naturally, but have to work hard to be good. It is seen in the fact that we have no appreciation of spiritual things.

This is not to be terribly bad as the world understands badness. There can be high moral achievement. Nor does it mean that there is no sense of the spiritual. A person may have a fine sense of religious things and spiritual feeling. What it means is that as far as God is concerned we are dead to him and have lost the divine life which God originally created in Adam.

The Bible describes our condition in terms of blindness, and to be devoid of light and walking in darkness. Paul speaks of the world in its wisdom not knowing God. Then again Paul speaks of humanity as being without God. There are many gods known to humanity, but these are idols.

GOD'S ACTION

The prophet speaks of God revealing his action in salvation. Isaiah says "to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed".

Without the special revelation of God, which the prophet speaks of here, we could know nothing savingly of God and his love. There is a general revelation of God in creation and in the world, but this tells us nothing of how we can know God and be reconciled to him. We can deduce from the world around us the fact of a supreme designer and an awesome power. We can deduce something of his love in that the world provides for us so much that is beautiful and lovely and that gives us pleasure. But we have nothing in creation that tells us how we can be the friends of God and be loved by him. Indeed even this revelation is denied these days as so many of the learned postulate the world formed by chance and natural selection, and then refuse to face the question as to how all this chance began. This is another example of the degree of darkness and deadness there is in the soul of humanity.

We must have a special revelation from God, and this he has graciously given us. God spoke through Isaiah here and through the other prophets and apostles. From this speaking God has revealed himself in love, grace and mercy. He has shown us the wonder of the sacrifice he has made that we may be redeemed from the sentence of death upon us, and resurrected to life and born again. God gave a further wonderful and amazing revelation. The letter to the Hebrews speaks of it. We read in the first chapter of this letter that in these last days God has spoken by his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. This revelation is written down for us in the Bible and is there for us all to believe.

God has further extended this revelation through his church where the church has been given the commission to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. Where the church is alive the preaching and teaching is an exposition and explaining of the revelation, and the making of this plain and the making of this Gospel relevant to the minds and hearts of people. But here again there is evidence of the sinful corruption of the human heart in that so much preaching is corrupted by human wisdom and the truth watered down or changed.

All this the Prophet knew in some measure, though not in such an extensive and full way as we know it since New Testament times. Though the prophet knew this revelation he still says "Who has believed our report" and says "to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed". The prophet opens up our need of a further and more powerful revelation where God applies his truth to the human heart so that it is believed, received and obeyed. Without this revelation there is no life. God comes with divine power and raises us from the dead, the spiritual deadness that afflicts us and is the sentence against sin upon us. There must be an action of the Holy Spirit so the preaching is powerfully applied to the human heart and mind. This is what was seen on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2.

We read in Acts chapter 2 after Peter had finished his sermon that the people were cut to the heart, and said what must we do. Something had happened to them which gave them a perception concerning their lives, attitudes and action, which was not there before. It was a heightening of their conscience by some new thing. This new thing made the difference between those who were convicted and those who remained unmoved. The new thing can only have been the giving of new life in the soul which caused these people, and all to whom this blessing is given, to see their lives as God sees it, and to see the vileness and be appalled at it. It also gave a perception of God and of Jesus which perceived their God and how much they had sinned against him, and the dreadfulness of the death of the Son of God which the sin of the world and their sin had made necessary.

This is the revelation that in the last analysis must be given, and can be given only by God. It is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. When we have been given this new birth, made possible only by the atonement of Jesus, we can only thank God for his sovereign grace and love. It is an act of gratuitous love, where God claims us as his own to be loved and cherished forever.

CONCLUSION

Oh! how we need to weep and grieve over the darkness and deadness in the world and in the heart of fallen humanity. How we should cherish the cross of Jesus and wonder at the gracious love of God who has redeemed us in Christ and then revealed this redemption through new life to us, even though there was no obligation in God to look with love and pity on us.

But also should we not grieve with the Prophet at the rejection of, and the blindness to, the message of love in the Gospel. What does it mean? It means that millions are in darkness and everlasting death, and they do not realise it. They do not even know they are not believing. How privileged we are that God has reached down by his Spirit to save us. Should we not, in the light of this, never cease to plead before God, in the name and merits of Jesus that light and life might be given to all these in darkness. Should we not with such praying also pray that God may make us his lights in the darkness of the world, and make this our chief desire and purpose in life.