03/28/2024 – Christ, the Suffering Servant
Isaiah 53: 10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. 11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities
People expected much of the Messiah. But the one element they did not expect…what puzzled even those who loved Him was His suffering. They could not understand why Jesus had to suffer in such a horrible way. It seemed punishment fit for those who are forsaken by God. In the book of Isaiah our Lord is described as the suffering servant. We are told that He was “despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”. From His birth our Lord knew rejection. Being rich beyond measure, He made Himself poor. He told those who wanted to follow Him that the foxes have at least a hole in the ground and the birds a nest…but the Son of Man did not have a place to lay His head.
The most amazing revelation in this chapter is that the suffering of Christ is ultimately attributed to God the Father. Yes, Christ suffered because of our sin. The devil had much to do with it, as did the religious leaders and the Romans. But above all that was the sovereign will of God. It pleased the Lord to bruise Him. The original word in Hebrew is the verb that can also be translated as “to crush”. It was the will of God so that sin would be defeated… so that you could be saved! There is a measure of suffering that we must also endure for the salvation of others.
What redeems this suffering and sanctifies this suffering is that it is the will of God. That makes all the difference.