Isaiah told us about the Suffering Servant. He was talking about the Christ Child, Who was our Suffering Savior. This daily devotional looks at how instead of believing in the Suffering Savior, we despise and reject Him.
Nuggets
- We know how much trouble the Israelites had in believing.
- It looked like God’s promise had withered and died, but the stump got an offshoot.
- It was obvious that God was with Jesus because He suffered.
- The whole purpose was to reestablish the relationship between God and man.
Devotions in the Suffering Savior series
When Isaiah 53 came up for my Sunday Morning Bible Study group, I couldn’t look at it here. It would have been a one-and-off deal, and I thought I would need more time to really dig into it.
It is prophecy of the Christ Child. But it is more associated with Easter prophecy than Christmas prophecy.
So, I decided to wait until after Christmas and before we start the new topic for next year. Here we go!
Let's Put It into Context
We’ve talked a couple of times lately that Jesus did not fulfill the Jews expectations of the Messiah. They were looking for a king.
Aiken explained why that was. He wrote, “The usual Old Testament idea of Christ is that of the head of a kingdom or dynasty.”
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Ooo, baby. Isaiah 53 doesn’t mesh with that picture!
Well, the Messiah was to be for all times.
- “Bethlehem Ephrathah, you are small among the clans of Judah; one will come from you to be ruler over Israel for me. His origin is from antiquity, from ancient times” (Mic. 5: 2 CSB)
- “He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end” (Lk. 1: 33 CSB)
To them, that didn’t signal Suffering Savior.
But remember what we said in The Christ Child Is Born? that Kingsley wrote, “the Christ Child was also human — meaning there were issues with which to deal. Kingsley also wrote, “A God in need! a God weak! a God fed by mortal woman! a God wrapt in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger!”
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Isaiah gave us a snapshot of Jesus’ humanity. True, it is argued there are more than one interpretation of these verses, but we are going with these talk about Jesus.
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Let’s dig in.
Who Believed the Suffering Savior?
“Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” (Isa. 53: 1 ESV)
Scriptures have a way of asking rhetorical questions. It is almost a don’t-you-know-this attitude.
However, we know how much trouble the Israelites had in believing. How many prophets were killed because of their messages? They also had trouble following through with that on which they believed.
It almost comes down to the question of are we going to believe our own people? Aren’t we that way? There are times we believe a stranger over what one of our friends or family tell us. The Israelites didn’t believe their own prophets.
Well, Davidson contended that some in Israel had begun believing in the Servant. However, Manton reminded us that no one recognized Him when He came.
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Manton also said that the Jews, while having a wrong impression of the Messiah, held Moses in high esteem. “We know God spoke to Moses, but we don’t even know where this man comes from” (Jn. 9: 29 NLT).
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It is easy to continue to reject Jesus. Who says He lived thousands of years ago? Those fishermen aren’t people we would normally consider to be credible reporters.
The thing is, the Messiah was disguised here. No one expected a Servant. They expected a King.
No one expected a Savior who would save them from their sins. They expected Someone to save them from the Romans.
That is, in part, to what “… the arm of the Lord …” (Isa. 53: 1 ESV) is referring. Meyer wrote that the arm of the Lord “… signifies the active, saving energy of the Most High.”
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Clemance felt that the Messiah was disguised because “… he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isa. 53: 1-2 ESV). We just talked about the Christ Child not standing out because of His appearance.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
Why Was the Savior Likened to a Young Plant?
“For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isa. 53: 2 ESV)
Let’s backtrack a little bit. In The Prophecy of Christ the King Foretold, we talked about the Christ Child being a descendant of Jesse’s. “Then a shoot will grow from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit” (Isa. 11: 1 CSB).
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
The focus was on Jesse instead of David because the focus is on God, not the Christ Child. Manton wrote, “God cometh in for the deliverance of His people in times of greatest despair and unlikelihood. For when the branches of Jesse were dried up, and had no verdure, even then sprung up the greatest ornament of that stock, although a root out of a dry ground.”
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Jesse’s line had dried up. Oh, yes. Descendants were still being born — case in point, Mary and Joseph. They were no longer royalty, however.
It looked like God’s promise had withered and died.
But here came a sprig. The stump got an offshoot.
The promise roared back to life. Well, sorta.
The Christ Child had to grow into being the Suffering Savior.
Let’s look at it this way. The Jews were in a drought. There had been no prophets — no word from God — for 400 years.
Then, out of this quiet, springs the Young Plant. He takes root in the rocky soil (Mt. 13: 4, 19). There is sin all around — yet He takes root.
Spurgeon made a really great observation. We think of plants taking nutrients out of the soil. Jesus, instead, puts things into the soil.
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Why Was the Christ Child Despised and Rejected?
“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isa. 53: 3 ESV)
Sherlock brought up a good point. He said that it was obvious that God was with Jesus because He suffered.
Jesus did not preach prosperity. In fact, He taught the opposite. “I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world” (Jn. 16: 33 CSB). Sherlock wrote, “What ends could He have to serve by His doctrine, who met with nothing but misery and affliction, as the reward of His labour?”
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How and why was/is the Suffering Servant despised and rejected?
- People do not believe He is our Savior.
- We do not live following God’s laws and commandments, so we do not imitate Him.
- We keep Him out of our hearts.
- We consider Him an charlatan.
- We focus more on this world instead of the world He is describing.
- We don’t look past the physical to see the spiritual.
- He was despised by those who knew Him because they could not get past that He was more than they knew.
- He was rejected by the religious types because He did not preach what they did.
- He wasn’t who they thought He would be.
- He was despised because He came as a Baby, having to grow up to have the chance of being what they wanted.
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The Suffering Savior was described by Isaiah as a Man of sorrows. What is meant there is that He suffered greatly — He was “… acquainted with grief …” (Isa. 53: 3 ESV).
I think our definition of acquainted with is not what Isaiah was getting at. Jesus didn’t just know grief’s face so He could wave as He passed by. He was on a first-name basis. He knew everything there was to know about it.
But just think about how foreign this world would have been to Jesus. There is no sin in Heaven. No greed, no jealousy, no backbiting, no envy. Tempers don’t flare.
Jesus would have known what it was supposed to be like here on earth. He got to experience firsthand how we mucked it up.
The mission Jesus was sent on was to make it so we can have our sins forgiven. But He mainly got rejection. It the people didn’t reject Him, they just wanted Him to feed them.
So, Jesus had this difficult journey to make to a painful ending to make things better for people who didn’t want Him.
Ooo, baby. That would be a big reason for sorrow.
Jesus knew grief. It is believed that Joseph died before He started His ministry. So, some time between the ages of 12 and 30, Jesus became the Man of the family.
Do you think that is why Jesus wept when Lazarus died (Jn. 11: 35)? He knew how close Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were. He knew the grief they were feeling.
Does that mean we are supposed to go around as a sourpuss all our lives? No. God provides joy.
There was only one sermon addressing the “… as one from whom men hide their faces …” (Isa. 53: 3 ESV) part. Spurgeon wrote the bulk of it.
But I don’t know. He didn’t clean matters up for me like he usually does.
Spurgeon thought that it could mean that Jesus was comparable to a leper because of His humbling Himself. I don’t think so.
Lepers were shunned. People couldn’t go near them.
How was Jesus going to teach them if He couldn’t go near them.
I get there is a big difference between God and man. I agree Jesus came down in the world when He became Man.
But the whole purpose was to reestablish the relationship between God and man. How do you do that if You have to hide from Your audience?
I don’t buy that Jesus had such a sad face on all of the time, people couldn’t look at Him. Same reasoning — how do you build relationships?
The rest of the sermon goes on about how mankind hides from the Suffering Savior. Oh, yeah. We do hide, but that is basically a recap of why we reject Him.
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Making the Connections
Manton said that we can’t believe in Jesus until we believe what is said of Him. Only once we get an idea of Who He is can we recognize the experiences that give evidence that belief is true.
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Jesus is who we were supposed to be. Ford put it this way: “The prophet saw that He would be a Sinless Sufferer; what it had been intended that the nation should be, that the Suffering Servant would be. The voice of God, which set forth the ideal by the lips of prophets, now speaks through our own highest desires.”
The Gospel is just a report on Who God is, what He has done, Who Jesus is, what He has done, and what They will do in the future.
But we can’t just give it a quick read. We have to actually hear what it is saying. We have to take it into our hearts and have it make an impact on our lives.
How Do We Apply This?
It all comes down to faith. Durham wrote, “Look to all the promises, whether of pardon of sin, peace with God, joy in the Holy Ghost, holiness and conformity to God — there is no access to these, or to any of them, but by faith.”
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We need faith because it is in our job description that we are to preach the Gospel. We must tell others of the Suffering Savior so that He can be their Savior, too.
But we also have to continue hear it. God is going to keep revealing Himself to us as we navigate the Sanctification Road.
God doesn’t just flip a switch and fill us with all we need to know about Him. He reveals Himself to us as we work out our salvation.
The Disciple’s Job Description
Complete Job Description
Individual Description
Job Duty #4
Proclaim the Gospel (Mark 16: 15)
Job Duty #2
Work Out Our Salvation (Philippians 2: 12)
Whatever we face on the Sanctification Road, Jesus is right there with us. Since He was a Man of sorrows, we know that He can empathize with us no matter what trial we are facing. He knows what we are feeling.
That means we can go ahead and cry when we need to cry. We can feel the anger as long as we do not let it consume us. We can cry when loved ones leave us.
We have to be willing to suffer. We have to be willing to do whatever God calls us to do.
Gracious Heavenly Father. Lord, You sent Your Son to earth to die for us. He paid the penalty for our sins — the penalty we could never pay. You also sent Him to be an example for us. Help us to imitate Him in all that we do. Amen.
What do you think?
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