“After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.” Isaiah 53:11
“He is risen. He is risen, indeed.”
If we were to take a poll in associating the phrase above with one thing, what would it be?
I have to wonder, would many of us be more quick with the answer of “Easter Sunday” than we would be “the resurrection of Jesus Christ”?
I know that many of us would follow in explaining that Easter Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, so in that way those responses are one in the same, but I want to challenge you, fellow Christian, to take a step back and evaluate your heart in this matter.
Due to a recent COVID outbreak on the ship, I spent this past weekend confined to an isolation cabin other than the one hour that we are able to spend outside each day to get some fresh air with our fellow COVID positive friends. Though for some, this may not have been an ideal way to spend the holiday weekend or any weekend for that matter, for me, it has been an absolute blessing and even more so throughout what would have been the Easter Sunday celebration.
During our fresh-air hour on Sunday, another crew member told me that this had been one of his favorite Easters because the distractions had been stripped away, from the music and food to friends and family, and he had been able to focus on the reason behind the celebration. Perhaps we should all be stripped of the distractions that surround this celebration so that we may more greatly focus on depth of the cross of Jesus Christ, the power of His resurrection, and the reason that it is something to be celebrated, not just once per calendar year, but throughout the moments of every single day.
I don’t know what your Sunday looked like, but I want to encourage you to take some time this week to sit down, to strip away the distractions, and to relish in the beauty of the cross of Christ, including His life, death, resurrection, and ascension.
As I have spent the past few days in isolation, I have delighted in getting to spend time with the Lord in simply being still with Him and in leaning into what He has to show me. My prayer in this time is that God would open my eyes, ears, and heart to everything that He would have me to absorb in this quiet, intimate, and intentional time, knowing that nothing is wasted and that God uses all things, including sickness and isolation, for good.
On Sunday morning I woke up with Psalm 23 on my heart and while flipping there in my Bible to start my quiet time, I was swiftly led to Psalm 22 instead.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Psalm 22:1
What a stark contrast from the “The Lord is my Shepherd, I lack nothing” (Psalm 23:1) that I had woken up with on my heart, but the Lord kept me there for a moment and then by way of study led me to Isaiah 53 where I spent the rest of my day.
At first I thought it was interesting that the Lord was keeping me in the old testament on this day when the Easter-celebrating world was focusing in on the traditional, well known new testament verses like Matthew 28:6, which says, “He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.”
But as I dove into the words before me, it began to make sense, just as it began to make sense that God took me from “The Lord is my Shepherd” to “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
You see, within Isaiah 53 lies the gospel on its own. A gospel written over seven centuries before the event of the cross actually took place. A gospel that walks through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. A gospel that walks the reader right up to the foot of the cross of Christ. In fact, as John MacArthur said in a sermon, if the new testament didn’t exist Isaiah 53 provides enough truth to present salvation to the lost and broken.
As God walked me through Isaiah 53 it was as though He was saying, “I need you to see the full story, before you can fully rejoice in the resurrection.” “I need you to grow in awareness of my suffering, before you can experience the depth of my joy.” “I need you to recognize the weight of your sins and iniquity, before you can appreciate the work of my Servant according to my atoning plan”… and I believe that He would ask the same to all of us.
Whether it be through the book of Isaiah, the new testament gospels, or elsewhere in scripture we, as Christians, need to see the fully story, to be aware of His suffering, and to understand that Christ didn’t suffer for Himself. Suffering wouldn’t have been necessary for Himself. It was all for us; it was all because of us.
As Isaiah 53:5 says, “But He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed” (NIV).
HE was pierced. HE was crushed. The punishment was on HIM. HIS wounds.
OUR transgressions. OUR iniquities. Brought US peace. WE are healed.
My hope is that the depth of this debt that we had before the life, death and resurrection of Christ will become real to you today; that it will become personal. The resurrection is not an unattached event of the past. It is so much more than that.
Isaiah 53 paints this image of a Servant who grew up like a tender shoot, like a root out of dry ground. A Servant who had no majesty or beauty, no physical attractiveness. A Man who was despised, rejected, afflicted, pierced, crushed, and oppressed. Yet while “we all, like sheep, have gone astray”, “the Lord has laid on Him (on Jesus) the iniquity of us all” (verse 6, NIV).
Why? Why would God place our iniquity on His Son? Why would Jesus willingly carry this weight? Why would he undergo rejection, affliction, pain, and oppression for us, without even “opening His mouth, He was like a lamb led to the slaughter” (verse 7).
“By oppression and judgement He was taken…” for us. For you and I, Jesus was taken. He was “cut off from the land of the living” (verse 8).
Jesus Christ, the Messiah died.
“For the transgression of my people he was punished” (verse 8).
Again, my brothers and sisters, the resurrection is not an unattached event of the past. It is so much more than that.
I want to invite you to dwell with the realness of this and then to spend some time with the last few verses of Isaiah 53.
"Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand. After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." Isaiah 53:10-12 (NIV)
In the last few verse of Isaiah 52, we are told, “See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.” In the same way that we can see the promise of the victory of our Lord in these words, we begin to see it here in Isaiah 53. The death of Christ wasn’t empty; it wasn’t wasted.
Other versions of Isaiah 53:10 say, “It pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief” (NKJV). Oh how hard this is for us to understand. How could God the Father be pleased in laying the weight of our iniquity upon the shoulders of His Son? How could He be pleased in watching His Son suffer to the point of death on a cross?
John MacArthur said, “God the Father was not pleased in the agony of atonement, but in the accomplishment of atonement.” Scripture itself tells us, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 NIV). God the Father was pleased because the atoning price had been paid for the world that He so loves.
In the same way that God the Father is pleased by the work of His Son on the cross, Jesus will look back on His work and His suffering and “be satisfied” (verse 11). Jesus can look back on all the rejection, affliction, pain, and oppression today with satisfaction.
Why? Because by the knowledge of Jesus as Lord, the righteous Servant of God the Father, many “will be justified and He will bear their iniquities.” It is only through faith in Christ’s work on the cross that we may now stand before God the Father and be declared as righteous, just as told in Romans 5:1-2. “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand” (NIV).
Jesus “poured His life unto death” and resultantly “made intercession for the transgressors.”
Not only does Jesus look back with satisfaction for the sake of our justification alone, but for the totality of the intercession that has come by way of the cross. Because of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection we read, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9-10, NIV) and in addition to that God the Father has, “set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come” (2 Corinthians 1:22, NIV).
Jesus looks back today with satisfaction because it is by way of His work on the cross that you and I can walk into a relationship with God the Father and through Him that we can root our hope in eternity.
Just as His suffering was not for Himself, His satisfaction is not for Himself either, it is for us. It is for you and I, for all of our brothers and sisters in Christ, and for those who have yet come to know Him as their Lord and Savior.
We are so undeserving, yet have remained the motive of Christ, even in His darkest hours – how much more should He remain the motive of our every day?
Brother in Christ. Sister in Christ. This is our our reason to rejoice alongside our Lord and Savior, this is our reason to rejoice in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and this is our reason to rejoice before the Lord our God. This is our reason to rejoice in the cross and to celebrate together. This is our reason, not to celebrate once per year, but to delight daily in the opportunity to take up our cross and to walk forward as a child of God.
It is not until we step back and see the root of our problem that we can appreciate the suffering of the Servant. And it is not until we recognize the suffering of the Servant as the Remedy for our iniquities that we can fully rejoice in the power of the resurrection.
With this in mind, are we not to live with the cross as our focus every single day? Should we not be reminded of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus daily? Should this not be the motive behind our every breathing moment and the foundation on which we stand? Is this not a reason to rejoice right now?
“He is risen. He is risen, indeed.”
Dear brother or sister in Christ, can I challenge you today to rejoice in this daily. Why restrict this phrase to one day of our calendar year when it is the purpose behind our every day here on earth?
With every new day, we get to wake up and walk in the righteousness of our God because He is risen; He is risen indeed. Let us do so and do so with great joy.
Lastly, I want to challenge you in knowing that there is work to be done. Isaiah 53 is not only a prophecy of the cross of Jesus Christ, but it is also a prophecy of a group of people looking back on the cross of Christ. It is a group of people who are looking back on the greatest demonstration of God’s love for the world, as they are gaining awareness of their iniquity and their need for a personal Savior. Their eyes are being opened to the atoning work of Jesus on the cross.
Friends, we are living in the gap and there are generations passing us by in this time in between. Jesus Christ has come, died, and resurrected and there will be a day when He will come again and every eye will be opened to His atoning work on the cross, but that day has not yet come.
I want to remind you today that we have been adopted into sonship and have become ambassadors for our Lord Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:5, 2 Corinthians 5:20). We have been entrusted with this precious message of reconciliation and we have been asked to go forth and make disciples (2 Corinthians 5:21, Matthew 28:19).
Yes, we can rejoice in the work of the cross today, but let us also be burdened for the things of God. Let us not just watch this generation pass us by without encountering the cross of Christ. The time is now; today is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2). Let us be bold in sharing the good news as led by the Holy Spirit. Let us be a city on a hill; a light unto the world (Matthew 5:14-16). Let us “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:5).
With so much love,
Your sister in Christ
