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Good Friday A, April 7, 2023

The passage before us comprises the fourth Servant Song in Isaiah.  Christians have long considered these songs to anticipate Jesus Christ as the servant whom the Lord claims as his own.  This song addresses the exiled Jews taken into Babylon after Babylon’s army had waged a successful siege of Jerusalem.  The Babylonians served as an instrument of God’s wrath against an idolatrous people.  This cycle of sin-judgment-grace repeatedly characterized God’s relationship with his people.  The Book of Judges alone presents over a dozen repetitions of it.  Later in the people’s history, the kingdom of Israel is taken by the Assyrians as punishment for its apostasy.  Now the kingdom of Judah was being carried into exile for its idolatrous behavior.  The people and their prophets, including Isaiah here, wondered if anything would ever interrupt the people’s persistence in sin and the consequences of the Lord’s wrath against it.

The solution as prophesied here breaks the pattern and brings about an entirely new situation.  The solution does not entertain the betterment of the people—that is, the people do not sin less or become less inclined toward idolatry.  Established here is the Lord’s answer to the people’s unfaithfulness… to the people’s sin… to the people’s idolatry.  The Lord provides a servant unrecognizable, unattractive, and disrespected among men (vs. 3) yet exalted by God.  This servant bears the iniquity of the people (vs. 6).  This servant bears the sin of the many (vs. 12).  This servant is crushed because the Lord wills it (vs. 10).  The solution… this breaking of the sin-judgment-grace cycle… is so new, so unexpected, that it defies history.  Kings had not been told, nor had they heard of such a thing, but nonetheless, they will both see and understand (vs. 52:15).  The Lord himself breaks the cycle, breaking it in an unanticipated and unexpected way.  This is the new thing the Lord is doing (Is. 43:19).  In Jesus Christ, the Lord has done his new thing to you.

Table Talk:  Discuss the truth of, and perpetuation of, the cycle:  sin-judgment-grace.
Pray:  Heavenly Father, grant that Jesus Christ become your instrument breaking my cycle of sin-judgment-grace.  Amen

Isaiah 52:13-53:12 English Standard Version

Behold, my servant shall act wisely;
he shall be high and lifted up,
and shall be exalted.
¹⁴ As many were astonished at you—
his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,
and his form beyond that of the children of mankind—
¹⁵ so shall he sprinkle many nations.
Kings shall shut their mouths because of him,
for that which has not been told them they see,
and that which they have not heard they understand.
53 Who has believed what he has heard from us
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
² 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.
³ He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows^[e] and acquainted with grief,
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

⁴ Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
⁶ All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

⁷ He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
⁸ By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
⁹ And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.

¹⁰ Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
¹¹ Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
    and he shall bear their iniquities.
¹² Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out his soul to death
    and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
    and makes intercession for the transgressors.