Messianic Prophecy CA314 LESSON 18 of 24 Louis Goldberg, ThD Experience: Professor of Theology and Jewish Studies, Moody Bible Institute We began in our last lesson what I feel to be the very heart of messianic prophecy, dealing with the coming of the Messiah, a description of His ministry, and dealing with the very heart of His ministry. We were looking at Isaiah 52:13, and we continue: he shall be exalted, that is, lifted up, he shall be high to the infinite. The exaltation of the servant is presented by means of three words or verbs which seem to have a continuous, ever-increasing function. They describe a beginning, continuation, and then the climax is reached. The first verb is that he will rise. The second is a reflexive idea and can be translated he will raise himself. The last verb expresses a condition where he will be high, showing the final point of exaltation. The Midrash on the verse states that he shall be higher than Abraham, more exalted than Moses, and loftier than the ministering angels. This is a true description of the servant of the Lord fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah. And I think that the writer to the Hebrews captures it in the first verses as he describes Jesus as the Messiah, rising to the heights to take His seat at the right hand of the majesty on high. The climax of this exaltation in the verse is expressed by the word for very much. So this introduces us to what follows. We shall then see the labor the servant will perform from which he is lifted up as very high. In verse 14 we see a contrast. Isaiah is characterized by this kind of style: from the high state of exaltation we are plunged into a low estate. We have a glimpse of the valley through which the servant of the Lord had to go. Note that verses 13 and 14 are linked by the word because and in verses 14 and 15 linked there by the word like or as or just as, so verses 14 and 15 serve as a balance, a sort of a thesis and an antithesis, some kind of a demonstration of a Hebrew parallelism. In verse 14 there is the verb astonished, and also it means to be laid waste, to be thrown into a desolate or bereaved condition according to Gesenius. This is the extent that many will be astonished at the servant of the Lord because of the greatness of His sufferings. His countenance and form shall be so marred. He shall be so disfigured that He shall hardly look like a 1 of 7
man. The intensity of the sufferings of the servant is portrayed in His face and in His form. It should really make our hearts bow low in shame because it is our sin that was the cause of the suffering. Look, for example, at Psalm 22:14 15 and 17 so as to have further light on this suffering. It is no wonder then that those who behold Him regard Him as suffering divine discipline. But just as his humiliation was great, so shall the fruits and the consequences be great also. In the fifteenth verse you have the antithesis of the fourteenth verse, and here we have set forth the consequences of the suffering of the servant. Men humbled the servant by putting Him to death, but God has exalted Him. Because of the exaltation men must respect the will of God. Already we are seeing some kind of recognition and obedience. Before the crucified one some kings have arisen from their thrones and other leaders have humbled themselves. People may say that such obedience can only be just mockery and that the worship is only in honoring with the lips, but it is still a testimony to the exaltation of Christ. However, we are looking forward to the day, the second phase of the kingdom, when the servant will be acknowledged as king over the whole earth. It is then that the leaders will hold their peace and they shall consider Him with honor. Let s note the word translated he shall sprinkle. There is a possibility according to Gesenius where a verb... translated he shall sprinkle can be likened to nazah, regarded as to exalt with joy. It s an additional rendering to what has been indicated to exalt with joy. So we are suggesting that this rendering in the text can be translated he shall startle many nations, rather than he shall sprinkle many nations. Some have said that this fits in best with the context. It is because of their being startled that kings shut their mouths and consider the servant anew. At any rate there are the two possibilities: he shall sprinkle or he shall startle. Let s go on to Isaiah 53:1 3. We have a description of the beginning of the servant s ministry. The tenses of the verbs in the verses are what we call a Hebrew prophetic perfect; that is, the future is regarded as prophetically already passed. So when we begin to say who has believed our report or that which we hear about the servant of the Lord, who has believed concerning the work of the servant of the Lord, who through a vicarious atonement has accomplished a great salvation for us and is now exalted to a height of glory and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed, there is a sense here that it is already accomplished, and the Hebrew prophetic perfect brings this out. The arm of the Lord is the emblem of divine power, and from the context of this passage we see that it is the viewing of the power of God in and 2 of 7
through the Messiah. We may truly ask the question even today, who believes this report, then our cause to face the very ministry of the Messiah. From verse 2 on, we have a little biography of the servant of the Lord. The servant did not burst upon the world in some display of power. Rather he followed God s silent law of growth. He came into this world as a babe and grew as any other human being. The word translated tender plant is a participle, to suck, so that you see this tender plant is a suckling or a tender shoot from a tree. This would give us a correct picture of what happened to the line of David from whom the Messiah was to come. By the time we come to the first century the line of David was hardly recognizable. The people were very humble. The stump of Jesse had almost withered away, but there comes then a shoot out of the stump, as it were, like a shoot out of a dry ground. This is a graphic picture of the early years of Jesus as well as He grew up in obscurity amid lowly surroundings. Is it any wonder that the natural man would want to turn away from what seems to be such unpromising circumstances? Many did so when people of Jesus day learned that He was from Nazareth. There was always the idea of, can anything good come out of Nazareth and the idea of a prophet arising out of Nazareth just seemed impossible. Men did not see any beauty in this servant, and so they did not desire Him. He was not the dashing warrior Israel wanted so as to be able to fight their oppressors. The mission of the servant was unwanted. Men would have nothing to do with God s [plan]. He came to bear away their sins. The great majority, while they may have gone through the ritual of confessing their sins, yet somehow the idea of a Messiah who would die for sins could not be accepted. In fact, this isn t what they were looking for in a Messiah. So, when we come to verse 3, Isaiah describes the servant as despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. All through the centuries no name has provoked such abhorrence among so many as the name of Jesus, and we have to recognize that it wasn t the dashing world conqueror that people could admire. However, we must indicate that if there is ever going to be a messianic kingdom, the sin question had to be settled; a heart condition of men had to be changed. There was no such thing as moving into a messianic kingdom where everybody would know the Lord yet not have the heart changed. We see then that men of high degree reject the claims of Jesus. He was a man of sorrows, pain, sorrow of heart in all of its forms. His entire life is distinct because of His steadfast endurance of pain and grief. He was acquainted with grief and sicknesses. This does not mean that He was subject to one illness after another. 3 of 7
Edward J. Young says that the word sickness is but a metaphor to describe sin. It needs to be emphasized that the deliverance, which the servant worked out, has to do with the fount from where sicknesses came, that is, sin. It is from sin and not sicknesses that a deliverance is effected. Men hide their faces from Him. All this shame and sorrow are summed up in the word despised. The depth of the contempt is expressed when the phrase is added that we esteemed Him not, or better still, as Luther puts it, we estimated Him at nothing. What a picture of the servant of the Lord, and many today, however, continue to despise Him and reckon Him as nothing and as of no value. In verses 4 through 6 we come to the very heart of the matter. This is a reference to the suffering of the servant giving the reason and the explanation. Some say the suffering was a result of the wrath of God, and this is true in a measure. But the servant suffered that these who saw with spiritual perception, that they might be delivered. It was a vicarious suffering, or what we have already indicated in a previous lesson, the exchange of life aspect whereas the Messiah takes our sins and, then therefore, He suffers and dies. In return, however, He gives us new life. But He suffered that men might be delivered from the penalties of their sins. David Baron shows that the verb to bear is continuously used in Leviticus of the expiation affected by the appointed sacrifices. This comes from The Servant of the Lord [The Servant of Jehovah, 1922; reprint ed., Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2001]. So then the servant who bore our griefs and carried our sorrows is understood in the sense of a suffering of substitution. He did not merely enter into the fellowship of our sufferings, but He took upon Himself the sufferings we had to bear. He did it in such a way that He might deliver us from them. The teaching of substitution again is brought out here. The question then might be asked as to how or in what sense did the servant bear our infirmities and sicknesses where we have already seen that griefs and sorrows means also sicknesses. Jesus of Nazareth commenced His ministry when He cured bodily diseases, for these sicknesses were the consequences of sin. Ultimately the results of the servant s redeeming work will not only bring us pardon and regeneration but also redemption of body in the resurrection. There are some believers who would read from this passage the characteristic teaching of healing in the atonement. Now it is true from Matthew 8:16 17 and 1 Peter 2:24 that Jesus came in fulfillment of what was said in Isaiah 53: that He would take upon Himself our sicknesses and that with His stripes we shall be healed. We must add, however, that this is a future aspect of the healing. We must indicate that healing, total healing that is 4 of 7
referred to by the prophet, can only have a full meaning in the days of the second phase of the kingdom. This is an aspect now of the material and the physical. There is to be a complete healing in the future during a kingdom that will include the totality of material and physical blessings, and this would also mean that bodies will not be subject to disease. But as to a present aspect, there is no healing as such in the atonement. In this first phase of the kingdom we are involved in the totality of spiritual blessings. For one thing, if such were the case and all diseases were eliminated now, death also should be postponed, but this has not been seen. Furthermore, we must understand in a passage like Matthew 8:16 17, this is not the case. Jesus of Nazareth took away diseases from the people to Himself, not in the sense that He became sick for the people He healed, but in the sense that there was the power to enter into the suffering experiences of the people and so effect the healing ministry. Dr. [Alva J.] McClain once aptly put it that the death of the Messiah was not pathological. He died in our stead for sin, but He did not have smallpox in our stead. We ll talk about this a little bit later on, but we must insist though that He did feel our infirmities. In the face of vicarious suffering, verse 4 goes on to declare that we completely misunderstood the reason for the servant s suffering. We esteemed or mistakenly thought the reason for the servant s suffering was because the sicknesses were His own. Isaiah goes on to describe a threefold description of the Messiah s bearing our sicknesses. He is stricken or afflicted with a hateful, shocking disease used to describe the plague of leprosy. He is smitten of God, one smitten, that is, God-smitten. He is also afflicted, that is, as if one bowed down by suffering. We see then the servant suffering terrible punishment for sin. The true case of the state is set forth that the servant carried sicknesses which were not His but ours. Since He is without sin, His suffering was beyond description as He entered into our experience. In verse 5 we see that it was He, the suffering servant, who was wounded for our transgressions. The word to wound comes from the verb to perforate or to pierce through, again, from Gesenius. This is a wound unto death. This mortal wounding was for our transgressions. Here again we see the vicarious suffering mentioned as being bruised or literally crushed because of our iniquities. It was not the servant s sin which crushed Him but ours. Because of the vicarious suffering and atoning death of the servant, we can have peace and healing. Because of what the servant bore and did for us, we can have peace with God, and we can be at peace when we know that our sin is taken from us. 5 of 7
In verse 6 we see the moral necessity of the servant s suffering. The verse opens with the phrase all we, indicating that everyone has gone astray. Sheep without a shepherd are a pitiful lot. They become lost. But while the sinful separation is universal, the paths taken by different individuals are as numerous as there are individuals. We have turned each single man to his own way. Man s way is contrary to the way of God; therefore, there is not only sin in the mass but the individual stands under guilt too. Because of this the Lord caused to fall upon the suffering servant the iniquity of us all. The word iniquity, as indicated in the last of the verse, is used not only of the transgression itself but also the guilt and the punishment. And so the verse closes with the phrase of us all. It s the same word with which the verse began, all we, so for repeated emphasis we note the indication that the sins of us all and all we as well as the guilt and the punishment is made to fall upon us. There is a meeting place in the suffering servant when we appropriate what He has done for us. So then again we see the idea of the exchange of life principle: He takes all of our sin, our iniquity, the guilt, the punishment; in return He gives us His life. We ought to recognize that here is one man, Isaiah, who saw beyond the sacrifices of the day. People offered the sin offerings, people brought their atonement offerings, on the great Day of Atonement the high priest offered sacrifices first for himself and then for the whole nation. Nevertheless, many of them didn t see beyond the actual offerings that they were bringing; but here is one man who saw beyond, that instead of an animal now, Isaiah is saying prophetically, the Lord has laid upon Him, that is, the Messiah, the iniquity of us all. The fourth section in verses 7 through 9 says something about the meekness and the submissiveness of the suffering servant to the will of God. The suffering servant is presented as a priest suffering on behalf of the sins of others. The suffering servant is a voluntary sufferer. This passage emphasizes that the servant bowed Himself under the heavy burden of sin to pay a great moral debt that reflects of action of the verb under consideration shows that it was He, Himself, who submitted Himself. Furthermore, it was a voluntary endurance for under a simile of a sheep led to the slaughter and as a sheep is dumb before its shearers, so the suffering servant opened not His mouth but bore all this patiently. There was a meek and quiet subjection of our Redeemer. 6 of 7
[Franz] Delitzsch says that all the references in the New Testament to the voluntary patient sufferings to the Lamb of God spring from this passage in the book of Isaiah. Delitzsch translates the first part of verse 8 as He was taken away from prison and from judgment. It was out of the midst of suffering that the servant was carried off. This is the principal emphasis of this sentence. The idea of prominent in the word taken away is snatched away, snatched away out of violent restraint, and as for the generation, this signifies an age or men living in a particular age. The other word, called or rendered as declare, can also mean to complain or lament. Combining these ideas then we have as for His generation, who pours out a complaint. Let s continue here next time to note fully and completely the ministry of the servant. Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 7 of 7