The Suffering Servant

April 4, 2021 Background Scripture: Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12; Luke 24:1 – 35 Lesson Passage: Isaiah 53:4 – 11a When the Ethiopian asked Philip, “Of whom does the prophet say this? Of himself or of someone else?”, it is easy to understand the confusion he was experiencing. The Ethiopian was reading a passage about a battered and beaten deliverer who appeared to be losing the fight for righteousness. We expect our deliverer to be strong and victorious. We look for saviors to come conquering and destroying. We don’t expect a savior to show up and become a victim. That is the paradox we encounter as God reveals Himself to us. It is also the way God tends to deal with us when we seek Him for help. When we ask God for strength, He often responds by causing us to experience weakness. Through our weakness, we learn to depend on God to be our strength. God does not make us independent of Him; that would not be good for us. Rather, God teaches us to rely on Him as a deliberate act of our will. We don’t depend on God as victims, instead we look to Him as His children. God sent mankind a Savior who came with all the frailties of humanity that we experience. Sin causes humanity to suffer. Our Savior had to experience the suffering of sin. The penalty that sin imposes on us is death. Our Savior did not take away the penalty of sin. He paid it. Mankind did not write the moral laws of the universe, but we must live under them. Because of the fallen state of this world, we are conceived in sin and formed in iniquity. We are birthed into this world under the penalty of sin. There is nothing humanly possible that we can do to change that. However, God can fix the problem. God promised the world a Savior to deliver us from eternal damnation. That Savior would become our hero. We have an idea of what a hero should be like. We expect a hero who wins all the time—not just most of the time. Unfortunately, the moral laws of the universe don’t change because we want things to work differently. The moral laws have not been repealed and neither have the penalties they impose on trespassers. Our deliverer cannot ignore that and effect a deliverance. Long before the Deliverer was sent, God provided a vivid description of Him by way of the prophet Isaiah. He was the suffering Servant of God. Through His living He would fulfill the righteous requirements of the Law. Through His death He would pay the penalty of the sins of the world. In victory He would be called the Lion of Judah, the conquering Savior of the world. He would be everything the Law required, and the world needed. All who look to Him for salvation will be saved from eternal damnation. He is the only way God has provided, or will provide, for humanity to be saved. Deliverance would not come through a physical battle but a spiritual war. In the spiritual war, our Deliverer would be offered up as a sacrificial Lamb for sin. His sinless life was an offering for the sins of the world. The moral laws of the universe were satisfied, and mankind was delivered through His selfless act of offering Himself. Physically, this was accomplished over two thousand years ago. Spiritually, this was accomplished from the foundation of the world. The Lion of Judah was a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Isaiah described Him for us before He came into the world. He was a Suffering Servant. Robert C. Hudson March 10, 2021