Text: Isaiah 53:10-12
Date: October 24, 2021
Event: The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost, Year B
Isaiah 53:10-12 (EHV)
Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him
and allow him to suffer.
Because you made his life a guilt offering, he will see offspring.
He will prolong his days,
and the Lord’s gracious plan will succeed in his hand.
11After his soul experiences anguish, he will see the light of life.
He will provide satisfaction.
Through their knowledge of him, my just servant will justify the many,
for he himself carried their guilt.
12Therefore I will give him an allotment among the great,
and with the strong he will share plunder,
because he poured out his life to death,
and he let himself be counted with rebellious sinners.
He himself carried the sin of many,
and he intercedes for the rebels.
God’s Servant has Served You
Service is not often viewed as an American virtue. We are a society that praises innovators and those who opt to ruthlessly pursue their goals. To serve is often seen as making your lesser, not taking full advantage of everything you could do or be. Service is sometimes viewed as beneath someone with high aspirations. Likewise, someone who claims to “serve” may often be seeking their own self-interests, not the interests of others. Perhaps you’ve heard a politician talk about service here and then clearly serve their own desires rather than the people they are elected to serve over here.
We heard in our Gospel for this morning that this is not a uniquely American idea. Jesus’ disciples wrestled with this as the trekked along the dusty roads of Galilee and Judea. Ambition is not wrong, but it can cross a line where it becomes a distraction or it forces you to behave in a way that might be considered unbecoming of a Christian or that hinders your ability to let your light shine, to reflect the love of your Savior.
And it’s that love of our Savior that we want to do a deep-dive on this morning. Jesus ended his teaching moment with his disciples this way, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” And we can read those words and might even know those words by heart, but what is Jesus actually saying? What is the serving that God’s Servant does for us?
For our closer look at this service of the Son of Man we turn to the book of the prophet Isaiah. The end of Chapter 52 and all of Chapter 53 are probably some of the most famous words in that book if not the entire Bible. We read them in whole almost every Good Friday. Here we have a snippet of that latter chapter, but prior to our section, there are the famous and comforting words of prophecy and promise like, “It was because of our rebellion that he was pierced. He was crushed for the guilt our sins deserved. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).
In this chapter, God is speaking about the Messiah, his chosen Servant, whom he would send to accomplish his work. And what is that work of God? To make everything we had broken right again. When God created the universe, he did so primarily to have a relationship with mankind. Everything on the earth and even the universe was created in service of that. We see God making his presence known in the Garden of Eden, talking freely with Adam and Eve, all loving and being loved. It was idyllic. It was perfect.
Then, you know sin reared its ugly head. Adam and Eve went along with Satan’s ideas rather than abiding by God’s directions and caused infinite problems. Sin brought death and decay into God’s perfect world. Instead of a place of unending joy, the world became a place of suffering and misery. And, more to the point, instead of a perfect relationship with God, sin left us as hostile to God, his enemies and adversaries. And for God, this would not do.
Because God is just he could not simply look the other way or pretend that sin doesn’t matter. Because of that justice, God had to punish sin. It had to be dealt with, not ignored. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a), after all.
But then God’s plan takes a surprising turn. The triune God works together, and the Father turns to the Son to send him on a mission to redeem people from their sins. The Son would take the place of sinful mankind, suffer the punishment that all people deserved, and then his perfection would be credited to those same sinners. Our reading from Isaiah begins, “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him [that is, the Messiah] and allow him to suffer.” It wasn’t the Lord’s will because he hated his servant, his Son, his appointed Savior. It was the Lord’s will because he loved us.
So Jesus’ mission of redemption, his mission to buy us back from sin, death, and hell, was God’s will through and through. Jesus was not taken aback by what happened to him. He was not surprised when he suffers hell on the cross. He knew from the beginning what his mission was. He was to trade his perfect life for our sinful life. He was to die to save us. Or, to use Jesus’ own words again this morning, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
And there was no doubt about the outcome of this work either. It’s all here in the prophecy that God gave through Isaiah. Notice how there’s this back and forth, this ping-ponging of “because of this bad thing, this good thing results.” This suffering of God’s servant will not end in defeat, but eternal victory. The death on the cross doesn’t end there; it finds completion in the victorious resurrection leaving behind an empty tomb: Because you made his life a guilt offering, he will see offspring. He will prolong his days, and the Lord’s gracious plan will succeed in his hand. After his soul experiences anguish, he will see the light of life. He will provide satisfaction. Through their knowledge of him, my just servant will justify the many, for he himself carried their guilt. Therefore I will give him an allotment among the great, and with the strong he will share plunder, because he poured out his life to death, and he let himself be counted with rebellious sinners.
Pay attention to the verb tenses here. “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him… Because you made his life a guilt offering… because he poured out his life to death… He himself carried the sin of many.” Anything stand out to you about that? Isaiah is writing by God’s inspiration in the 700s BC, or roughly 700 years before Jesus was even born. And yet God speaks of these events in the past tense. Why? Because God had promised that they would happen. And because he promised that, they were as good as done. There was no question about whether or not God would want to or be able to follow through on what he promised. When God promised it, it was as good as done. And from God’s eternal perspective, his view of everything from outside of time, it was done and complete.
All of this was done and complete for the world, for the many. But this is also done and complete for you. You, personally, are loved by your God. You, personally, are the reason that God sent Jesus to give his life. God’s Servant served you, personally, by rescuing you from sin and all of its temporary and eternal ramifications. You are so loved by your God that he would suffer and die to rescue you. He would offer his life to give you eternal perfection with him.
And so it is. Your sins are gone. “He himself carried the sin of many, and he intercedes for the rebels.” You and me, rebels that we are, have been saved from ourselves. We are forgiven. We have been restored to the position of God’s dearly loved children because God’s Servant has served us. What a privilege that we dare not take for granted!
Knowing this, let’s not fall into the same trap that the disciples did. Let’s not fall into the same trap that you and I have fallen into in the past. We are not the most important person in our lives. We should be actively serving one another not looking for ways to exalt ourselves over others, because Jesus has served us. Actively take Jesus’ service into the week ahead. Where can you serve that you have served before? Where can you serve where you have not before? Where can your service point others to the Savior who has rescued them from sin and hell as well? How can you also be God’s servant as well, sacrificing to show others the ultimate sacrifice of our God’s ultimate Servant?
May God bless your service done in his name and to his glory! Amen.
