Isaiah 53

I would like you to look with me please together at Isaiah chapter 52 and 53. Isaiah 52 and verse number 13 begins this section. Behold, my servant shall deal prudently.

He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. As many were astonished at thee, his visage was so marred, more than any man in his form, more than the sons of men. So shall he sprinkle many nations.

Kings shall shut their mouths at him. For that which they had not been told shall they consider, shall they see, and that which they had not heard shall they consider. Who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground.

He hath no form nor comeliness, and when we see him there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from him.

He was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.

The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he openeth not his mouth.

He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And they made his grave with the wicked, but he was with the rich in his death, because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him, he hath put him to grief. When thou shalt 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. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.

By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. Now I'd like to concentrate on this great servant song by first of all talking about the way the Lord has drawn our attention to it in two ways in Scripture.

One is by its frequent repetition in the New Testament, its frequent quotation, and second by its strategic position in the Old Testament. Let's begin first of all by just thinking in our minds some of the places where we find this great prophecy quoted in the New Testament. We can go for example to Matthew chapter 8, and there the Lord's healing ministry is discussed, and Matthew quotes from Isaiah chapter 53.

He says he himself bore our infirmities, and he took our sicknesses upon him. That's a paraphrase of the King James. So he's showing that in a sense this is an analogy that the Lord fulfilled the promises of Isaiah 53 even in the healing ministry that he had there with Peter's wife's mother and the others in that chapter.

We move on, we think of Luke chapter 22. This is the one place where the Lord Jesus himself assigned the prophecy to himself. This is right before Gethsemane, and the Lord Jesus says, as it is written about me, he was numbered with the transgressors, because the things that are written about me must have their fulfillment.

So we know the Lord Jesus himself identified himself as the servant in Isaiah 52-53. We now go on to John chapter 12, and there we are told about the fairly large defection of the people from him, and the fact that so few of them believed, that this was prophesied in the Old Testament. Lord, who had believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? Again in Romans chapter 10, when Paul is discussing the unbelief of the nation, he quotes who has believed our report.

In Romans chapter 15, Paul talks about the fact that he wanted to go to a place where the gospel had not been preached, so that he would not build on another man's foundation, and he quotes the last part of Isaiah chapter 53. We move on to Acts chapter 8, and there we have the Ethiopian eunuch, and he says, of whom does this man speak? Of himself or of some other man? And of course, that was a great invitation for Philip to preach the gospel from Isaiah 53, and you're well aware of that. First Peter chapter 2 would be another place we could turn to, right? In Isaiah 53, it says, although he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

In the Septuagint, or the Greek translation that Peter is quoting from, who did no sin, right? Neither was guile found in his mouth. And then Peter goes on to paraphrase other portions of this great Old Testament prophecy, who his own self bear our sin in his own body on the tree, that we being dead to sin should live unto righteousness. Then he says, by whose stripes you were healed.

So clearly, this section of the Old Testament is emphasized in the New Testament by its frequent quotation, and I haven't even talked about allusions. These are just direct quotations. Another way that the Spirit of God wants to draw our attention to this great prophecy is by its location.

And here we need to do a little bit of structural analysis of Isaiah. It turns out that our Bible has 66 books in it, 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament, and by both partly by design and partly by coincidence, the prophecy of Isaiah has 66 chapters. But the coincidence doesn't end there, because there are 39 and 27.

So that invites us to begin some comparisons. Now, I'm going to hasten to add that these are man-made divisions, in part, although the division of 1 through 39 versus 40 through 66 is divine. Okay, some of these partitions are definitely there in the prophecy itself.

In the first 39, we can write one word, judgment. Interestingly, there's a four chapter interlude there, 36 through 39, that really corresponds to 2 Kings 18 through 20. It's about Sennacherib and Hezekiah.

It kind of corresponds, doesn't it, to the 400 silent years between the Old Testament and the New Testament, an historical interlude. Then we have 27 chapters in the New Testament portion, can I call it that, of Isaiah 9, 9 and 9, three 9s. Now, if we're going to write one word over this, it's not going to be judgment, it's going to be salvation.

And here we find out that the person who is identified as the servant, and this becomes progressively clearer as we move through this part of Isaiah, is none other than the Messiah who has been prophesied throughout the whole book of Isaiah. Certainly not the first time we've met the Lord Jesus in Isaiah. We think of him as the sovereign in chapter 6, high and lifted up, his train filled the temple.

And we find the unfallen creation is affected by it. The seraphim cover their face and cover their feet and with the other wings they fly and they cry, holy, holy, holy. We find the inanimate creation is also affected.

The pillars shook and the house was filled with smoke. And we find that the fallen creation is affected. Isaiah says, woe is me for I am undone.

So we see the sovereign. If we move on to chapter 9, we see the Son, for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. And we understand this is the Lord Jesus as well.

We move on to chapter 32, a king shall reign in righteousness. And we understand that the Lord Jesus is identified as the coming king for his people. I suppose we could call him the sovereign there as well.

I'm not a big alliteration guy, so I'm working on this one, trying to make them all S's, all right? Then we move on to the shepherd, right? Isaiah chapter 40. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd. He shall gather the lambs in his arms and gently lead those who are with young.

And so what a great prophecy that is of the shepherd character of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Isaiah 42, behold my servant whom I uphold, mine elect, and whom my soul delighteth. So we understand that he's the servant.

And then we get to Isaiah chapter 53. Again, behold my servant shall deal prudently or shall prosper. Now in these last 27 chapters, we're going to make three divisions, 9, 9, and 9. The first chapters, the first 9, that is chapters 40 through 48, are going to anticipate the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We are going to see the forces of Babylon representing something larger, the forces of the devil himself against God and his kingdom. And we're going to receive prophecies of the coming one who will be the deliverer. Sometimes we are understanding that this prophet, that this servant may actually be someone like Cyrus, who is going to deliver his people from Babylonian captivity.

But we see beyond Cyrus to someone who will do it in a more full and complete way, there will indeed be a second exodus and Christ will be the leader of his people out of captivity and into millennial blessing. If we look beyond our central section to the final nine chapters, we understand that this is a promise of a coming kingdom. And we see, as we were told yesterday, that the millennium is described in 65 and 66.

And some people who are particularly perceptive may see beyond the millennium, other people don't. But we'll leave that right now because we want to come back to the central section. Now if the central section is chapters 49 through 58, the central chapter in that section is 53.

In fact, we could divide those nine, that central nine, into three threes, three, three, and three, and then go into the central section and we would have 53. And then we understand that chapter 53, if we include the tail end of 52, it is also 12 verses and we can hone further into the 15 verses. Excuse me, we go into the very center of that and we now have identified the apical verse of the Old Testament.

You say, what do you mean apical? The apex of the Old Testament. So look with me. Has the Spirit of God put this, not only by quotation, but by location in a very, very special place.

Could it be that the whole focal point of our Old Testament prophetic scriptures is coming down on one verse in Isaiah chapter 53, so that if people wanted to know what is the most prominent position to be occupied by a verse in the Old Testament, where does the Spirit of God want to particularly focus our minds? It would be the central verse of the central three, of the central 15, of the central nine, of the New Testament portion of the greatest prophet, the greatest writing prophet of the Old Testament. Shall I repeat that? The central verse of the central three, of the central nine, of the 27 chapters of the New Testament portion, the salvation portion of the greatest writing prophet. You say you shouldn't rank prophets as one greater than the other.

Well, he's certainly greater, and not in length. Jeremiah is longer, but we'll just accept me saying that for the moment and we'll move on, okay? It's the most prominent. It's the place where salvation is best explained.

Now you say, that's interesting. What is that verse? What is that central verse? I ask that too, because I've got to find it again. And I have a reason for going over that interesting material.

I think it's interesting anyway. It's Isaiah 53 and 5. I suggest this verse occupies the most critical place in the entire Old Testament, at least of the prophets. What does it say? He was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him. With his stripes we are healed.

What do we understand the Spirit of God saying to us by putting this in such a precise and pivotal location in the Old Testament? That this is the promise that the Old Testament contains. Of not only a coming substitute, I gave my word away, not only of a coming Savior, but of one who would be a substitute. And not merely one who empathized with people's sicknesses and infirmities, but someone who bore their sins.

So let's look at the structure then of Isaiah 52 through the end of 53. This is one proof that these chapter divisions are not inspired because whoever came up with this division made a blunder. This is the fourth servant song.

It begins at 52 and verse 13 and carries on to the end of 53. There are four servant songs, by the way, in this section, and I'll mention them just briefly. We already talked about the first one, 42.

Behold my servant whom I uphold, mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth. I have put my Spirit upon him. We have the Trinity, God the Father speaking, the Spirit of God placed upon him, and the servant himself identified as the Son of God.

That's the suitability of the servant. If we look on to chapter 49, we have the second servant song, and that song is about his coming salvation, which will encompass not only the Jewish people, but all the nations and the islands. All the Gentile nations will be gathered in because of this great servant.

This will be his work, his service. Then in chapter 50, we understand something about the suffering of the servant. Again, I'm working with us this year, but there's more than the suffering.

The Lord God hath opened mine ear, right? He awakens me morning by morning to hear is the learned. But then it does talk about his sufferings. I gave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair.

I hid not my face from shame and spitting. So we understand the suffering of this servant, but our chapter here is going to talk about the supremacy of the servant. Now, there are five sections.

Section 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. But we're not going to call them that. We're going to call them 1, 2, 3. Now, we're going to use letters. We're going to go A, B, C, B prime, and A prime.

You say, why would you do something like that? Because we're looking at a chiastic structure. Again, the Spirit of God is bringing our attention to the central, I called it an apical, verse. If you prefer, instead of using an X structure, we could use a mountain.

We could ascend from the first elevation to a higher, and then to the highest, the summit, and then come back down the other side, and then finally arrive at our original elevation, all right? So the first and the fifth sections correspond to each other. The second and the fourth correspond to each other, and the fifth is Calvary. The first and last sections have some things in common.

They tell about the Lord Jesus as the one who is glorified, but glorified through a path of humiliation, right? Isn't that the end of Isaiah 53, and it's also, 52 rather, and it's also the final verses of 53. The second section and the fourth section, they correspond with each other as well. The second section says he's despised and rejected of men.

The fourth section says he's oppressed and afflicted, yet he opens not his mouth. So we see the sufferings of Christ before Calvary. First of all, in his early life and through his silent years and into his early ministry.

And then in the fourth section, we see him before in the hands of men, oppressed, afflicted, unjustly tried. They made his grave with the wicked. We understand that this is the work of man against him toward the end of his ministry and into the last days of his life before his resurrection.

But the middle section is Calvary. Now I want to talk about a couple of things in each section, and I suppose I could easily split this time with someone else. We'll see how it goes.

13 through 15. The glorification of the Lord Jesus through humiliation. This is your Philippians 2 of your Old Testament.

Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation. Right? He emptied himself. He made himself of no reputation, as the King James Version says, and he was found in fashion as a man.

He was made in the likeness of men, rather, and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of cross death, all the way to the death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore, God hath highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name. And you know the rest of it.

You can quote it yourself. Now let's look at this section and see that it's precisely the same. Exalted, extolled, very high.

Exalted literally means raised up. I suggest maybe we're looking at three stages of the exaltation of Christ here. He is exalted, that is raised up.

He is extolled, that is made high, and again the third expression is also made high in our English, but I think what we might be seeing here is his resurrection and his ascension and his session sitting at the right hand of God. So he is where he was before, but what happened in the valley in between? Many were astonished at you, or at thee, if you will. His visage was marred more than any man.

Externally, his visage was marred beyond human likeness. This verse is not saying that he was more physically mutilated than any human being has ever been. That's obviously not true.

What it's saying was that he was marred externally beyond human likeness. And there may be more. I wonder if it goes beyond that to the fact that there was a marring of the Son of God at Calvary.

Not only the hands of men, but the hands of God as he laid upon him the iniquity of us all. What will be the result of this when people see it? Many will socially sprinkle or startle many nations. Now here we come up with an interpretive difficulty, but we might as well look at it and try to extract some truth from both sides of the fence.

The Hebrew verb here means to cause to leap, or to cause to jump, and it can be used of sprinkling. But this construction is not exactly the same as the sprinkling, say, of the Levitical offerings. It could also mean to startle, and that's why you see these two variations in the translations of this verse.

And then the question rises, well, the people who are either being sprinkled or startled, who are they? Well, many kings, it says, shall shut their mouths at him. So it seems to be the rulers, perhaps, of Gentile peoples. And again, you have two options.

There are people clearly who are going to be astonished and amazed at him. It could be the saving vision which delivers them that amazes them, or it could be that vision of the Son of Man coming in power to judge them that amazes and startles them. I think both will be true.

But it will be astonishing to see the one who went so low made so high. And the one who, those of us who accept him, should never cease to be astonished at his condescension, his grace, and the fact that he went to cross death for us. Those who refuse him, sadly, as we've been reminded in our Bible studies, will be astonished at well in the judgment when they see the one who was the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, oppressed and afflicted, now holding universal sway and sitting on a great white throne.

Who has believed our report, 53 says, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? The Lord Jesus is the arm of the Lord. He is the one who accomplishes God's will, and he grows up before him as a tender plant, a root out of dry ground. This is sort of like an orchid in Wisconsin, maybe even like a blade of green grass in Wisconsin at the moment.

Something out of place, right? Something astonishing. Now, it's a plant that grows and prospers, tender, young, out of a condition that seems to be completely unsupportive, barren, dry. It's the same concept of the branch, which doesn't mean a dead branch, it means a new shoot.

A shoot, for example, out of the stump of Jesse, which we're reminded of in this book. New life and new growth that is not dependent on humans and on the world, but rather receives its sustenance from God. And he has no form or comeliness, and when we shall see him, there is no beauty.

Some people have suggested that maybe the Lord Jesus wasn't that physically attractive, but they're missing the point. Remember, he was the ideal man, untainted by sin. I think he was very handsome.

That's my personal view. But if you don't agree with me, you can't support your position from this verse. This is not talking about his external appearance.

It's talking about the fact that he had no trappings of majesty. He did not come as a royal figure, even though he was one. He did not appear to be a prince, although he was, but rather he was a humble Galilean.

And when you saw him coming down from Galilee, he would be dressed in the garb of a Galilean peasant with a few converted fishermen and one tax collector with him and a number of women, and they would be going along the side of the road and would be quite unremarkable. Nothing about him that would attract the flesh, nothing about him that would make people want to exalt him as some sort of political hero, but one who was a humble man, despised and rejected. That's what we learn next.

These are strong words in Hebrew, nibzeh, despised, absolutely belittled, thought nothing of, and scorned. We're amazed again at the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor.

His poor isn't just pecuniary or monetary poverty, it's poorness at so many levels, including the poorness of being despised and rejected by men. As we say, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid as it were our faces from him.

People did not want to look at him. They did not want to acknowledge him. They did not want to respect him.

He was despised and we esteemed him not. Now we come to our apex. The next three verses are pivotal, especially the central one.

Isaiah 53, 4, 5, and 6 enjoy the most privileged position of all Old Testament scriptures by the structure of the book of Isaiah and of the Old Testament. And the focus comes down on verse 50, verse 5. But let's talk about 4 for a minute. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

Now these words are actually typically used of physical illness. And in fact, Matthew borrows this expression in chapter 8 to describe physical illness. Because the Lord Jesus did bear the sufferings that sin has brought about, including sickness and disease.

But let me make a point. Although the Lord Jesus bore our sicknesses sympathetically, his own body was impervious to disease. Just as when he bore our sins sacrificially, his holy soul was impervious to sin.

You can bear in the sense of empathy. You can bear in the sense of being punished without being sullied by what you are handling. And so the Lord Jesus, we see his sympathy here.

We understand that these griefs and sorrows maybe go beyond the external to something more. And if we're not exactly sure about that, the next verse will make it crystal clear. Because the next verse says this.

He was wounded. I'm going to change these words slightly to translation I prefer. He was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him. And with his stroke, singular, we are healed.

Now let's talk about this. This is the central verse of the Old Testament. What is it teaching? First of all, it is teaching that Messiah will come to deal with sin and that that is his central focus in his first coming.

Every other blessing, every other plan that's laid out in God's plan must first begin with the sacrifice for sin. Second, it's teaching us that the Savior would not be only a Savior, as great as a Savior may be, but he will be a substitute. There's a difference between being a Savior and a substitute.

All substitutes are saviors, I suppose, but not all saviors are substitutes, all right? So let's think about this. Let's say I was drowning and you came with your canoe or your life ring and threw it to me and you saved me. You would be my Savior, but you would not be my substitute.

If you drowned in my place, then you would be my substitute. There is teaching that this verse will refute, that we need to refute as well. The idea of Christus victor, or the idea that Christ was a great deliverer, but not a victim.

That he was a Savior, yes, but not a substitute. No, the central verse of the Old Testament teaches clearly, four times over, that he was a substitute for us. This verse also tells us that his substitutionary sacrifice would be complete and that it would handle sin in all of its aspects.

Sins, acts, and sin, the root. What are these four words for sin? What do they tell us about sin? Number one, transgressions. That's the most superficial level.

This is where God has laid down a statute and we have disobeyed it. God has made a line, we have stepped over the line. We have been disobedient.

That's a serious thing. Why are we disobedient? Because we're iniquitous. As C.S. Lewis would say, we're bent.

There's something wrong with us on the inside, that's why we behave like we do on the outside. And what more can we say about iniquity? What's the character of it? It's hostility and hatred. The punishment that brought peace.

There was no peace before and it was not because God was angry at us, it was because we were hostile and had enmity in our hearts toward him. We hate God. The hatred in our hearts toward God, that would have to be dealt with by the substitute.

And finally, the last expression, by whose stripes we are healed or by his stroke we are healed, tells us that sin is rottenness, it is illness, it is disease, it is leprosy. So this substitute who will come to save us must deal with sin at all these levels. He must deal with transgression and iniquity.

He must deal with hostility and he must deal with rottenness or we'll call it disease. So he was pierced for our transgressions. There are three places in the Old Testament that prophesy that the Lord Jesus would die a death of piercing.

Interestingly, all different Hebrew words but bringing us to the same truth. One is Psalm 22, they pierced my hands and my feet. Another would be Zechariah 13, where we are told they will look upon him whom they have pierced.

This is the third place. He was pierced for our transgressions. The next verb means to crush.

It is a word often used for dust, which is produced by the crushing of rock into smithereens. I'm going to use a different word, pulverized. It's a very accurate translation because pulver in Latin refers to dust or small particles.

Pulverized. Strong word. But these are strong words.

For our iniquity. The punishment. Now we get to another controversy.

There are some people who would deny the substitutionary death of Christ and say he saved us in some way but not by being our sin-bearing substitute. There are others who want to shy away from the word, the P word. What's the P word? Punishment.

They say God would never punish Christ. Stephen Chalk, an apostate teacher from England, said that's divine child abuse. God would never punish his son.

That's heretical and it's obviously completely refuted by our verse. The punishment. The punishment that I deserved and you deserved that brought us peace was laid upon him.

And now we understand that it's not the strokes of men on his back whipping him nor is it anything that man could do to his body but it is the divine stroke. The final verb. By his, or the final noun, by his stroke we are healed.

Our healing is complete. Externally the roots, sorry, the fruit of our iniquitous natures has been dealt with. Our iniquity itself, the hostility, the alienation, the illness, everything that sin robbed God of, everything that it did to us and made us was removed by a substitute.

I think this is kind of an important verse. It's the most important verse in this section and again not to rank verses one over the other but let me do it for the sake of my outline. This is the fulcrum of the Old Testament.

Then we have the John 3 16 of the Old Testament for our third central verse in this section and that's Isaiah 53 and 6. It begins, as every gospel preacher will tell us rightly, with the word all and ends with all. We all are sinners and provision has been made for us all. So all we like sheep have gone astray.

That's sort of our natures. I guess if we're sheep we're going to do that. Yes, but each of us individually, by choice, by conscious decision has turned to his own way.

So now we have my culpability added to it. But the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. Now there are two pictures here.

First of all, I want you to think of the scapegoat. I think that's an obvious allusion here because on the Day of Atonement the transgressions, iniquities, and sins of the people of Israel were placed upon the head of the goat. Normally speaking, a person who offered an animal would put his hand on the animal to identify himself with the animal.

But the procedure was different in Leviticus 16. It wasn't one hand, it was two. And it wasn't just placement, it was leaning and pushing.

So pressing down on the head, the high priest would confess all of the sins of the people, all their iniquities and their transgressions, and he would place them on the head of that goat. And so Isaiah 53 and 6 is telling us that God has put upon him the iniquity of us all, and he, like the scapegoat, would go into a desolate land of oblivion and be lost to sight. And with him, all of our sins would be forever lost and forgotten as well.

But there's another cliche. I use the word cliche. It's a turn of expression in the Old Testament.

It's to fall upon. Very often we read expressions like the soldiers would fall upon someone and they would die. To fall upon in the Old Testament means to attack and to kill.

They fell upon. You're with me, right? You've heard that expression. You're used to that.

In the King James Version, it's accurately translated. That's the same verb here, hyphgeia. So it's not that Christ had, after he was positioned on the cross, our sins gently placed upon him.

But the sins themselves are seen to fall upon him, to assault him, to attack him, and to seek his death. It's very graphic that the Lord has caused to fall upon him the iniquity of us all. How thankful we can be this morning that we have a substitute, that we have a sacrifice, that we have one who was willing to do this for us.

Well, now we go come down the mountain up on the other side and we're going to start to scale back down and we come to the fourth section which corresponds to the third, the second, excuse me. Math is hard without a chart up here. And now we find out that there was oppression and affliction and he opened not his mouth.

The silence of the Lord Jesus, a lamb to the slaughter, a sheep before its shears is dumb. Now I can attest to the truth of this verse, being an amateur part-time hobby shepherd, okay? Sheep make a lot of noise, but when you throw them, and those of you who know what throwing a sheep is will appreciate this, you don't literally throw them through the air. That means to put them on their backs.

When you're ready to shear them, they're completely silent, absolutely passive. They just sit there and take it. Very apt description of the Lord Jesus.

Now you say, I thought he did say a few things. I thought only Herod received no answer from him. Herod had had his chance and the Lord opened not his mouth at all with Herod.

But what this is talking about is he never opened his mouth in personal defense. He never opened his mouth in complaint. He never opened his mouth to seek sympathy from others.

He did open his mouth to affirm the truth. He did open his mouth to bless others and to call for their salvation, but he never complained, even though he had gone through all that we've discussed. It says here in verse number eight, he was taken from prison and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation for he was cut off out of the land of the living.

Remember for Jewish people to be cut off out of the land of the living was the ultimate curse. In the Old Testament, they weren't so much looking for heaven as we think of it, but for a kingdom where they could be blessed agriculturally. They could sit under their own vine and fig tree and enjoy the blessings of the land and see their children and their grandchildren.

That was the earthly blessing for a Hebrew person, and therefore to be cut off out of the land of the living was the ultimate curse. And here we have a man, a substitute, a servant who goes to death and appears his progeny will be zero, that there will be no one coming from him, no progeny, no generation, a sad story, a heroic story maybe, someone who's done a wonderful thing for others and yet himself has been snuffed out. We know that's not the end, but that's what people thought.

In fact, they were still working on his humiliation because they made his grave with the wicked. Again, thinking in Hebrew language and Hebrew culture and worldview, a person's burial was in a sense the level of respect they had at the time of death and was an affirmation of their worth in their life. You know the Pharaohs took this to a huge extreme down there in Egypt, but even among the Jewish people, an elaborate burial was what a person of great worth and standing would normally enjoy.

That's not what they were giving the Lord Jesus. They would throw him into the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom, likely. This is where many crucified victims were thrown, and he would be scavenged, his bones would be exposed, and he would disintegrate without a burial at all.

That's what they wanted, but God had other plans. God drew a line. He said, thus far and no farther, here shall thy wicked works be stayed.

You did this to my son, you'll do nothing else. God at that time came down, and the Lord Jesus, his humiliation was over. Nevermore shall God... I could start quoting the hymn, but I won't for time's sake.

You're with me on this, right? God said at that point, he has paid the ultimate price, his work is finished, his humiliation is done. From this point, it will be nothing but exaltation. And that began with how he was treated by the rich man, prophesied here Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus with him, as they took the body of the Lord Jesus.

Pilate said, go, hud, take the corpse. That's a different word, potoma, but it says Nicodemus then took the soma, the precious body of the Lord Jesus Christ. They would know no corruption, and he put it into a clean and honorable tomb.

And this was the, ironically, the first step of exaltation. His burial was with the rich in his death. And that anticipates the final section, and that's verses 10 through 12.

Again, it's a summary, just as Isaiah 52, 13 through 15 was a summary, so here is another summary. We're getting a review of what we've learned already in this chapter. It pleased the Lord to crush him, to bruise him.

He has put him to grief. His soul was an offering for sin. And yet, again, this is exaltation through humiliation, so we have the fact that there will be progeny.

Listen to this. He shall see his seed. He shall prolong his day.

So that really wasn't the end of him. Resurrection. He shall prolong, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

He's got a great future. So he's got offspring. And you and I are those offspring.

Behold, I am the children whom God has given me, right? Everyone who is saved by the power of his sacrificial death is, in a real sense, one of his offspring. So he has an innumerable progeny. And it says in verse 9, he shall see of the labor of his soul and shall be satisfied.

And then we have, by his knowledge, my righteous servant shall justify many. Some people change that translation slightly because it is ambiguous to, by knowledge of him, many shall be justified. Well, we'll accept both.

It's very true. He will justify many by knowledge. At the same time, those who come to know him by faith will receive perfect justification.

Remember those transgressions, iniquities, the hostility, and the illness that were true of us? They're gone. And that's why we, as his children, are justified. God has taken care of that.

Therefore, the end of the chapter, I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoiled with the strong. And then we have four great summary statements. He poured out his soul unto death.

He was numbered with the transgressors. He bore the sin of many. And he made intercession for the transgressors.

The last one is quite interesting because it is not seen as a completed act, but as something ongoing. The verb tense, as we say, the verb aspect changes. He makes intercession for the transgressors.

And when does he do that, and where does he do that? At the right hand of God. His work on the cross is done, but his work as our sympathizing high priest and as our advocate is not done. He sympathizes with us as he attempts, not attempts, as he powerfully does work our deliverance through this life and into the life to come.

So what's the next word? Isaiah 54.1. Sing! That's pretty fitting. After all that's been done in this last and culminating servant song, how could we do anything but sing? What a Savior. May the Lord bless his word.