The Dark Side of the Good News - Isaiah 52 & 53

Isaiah is one of the favorite prophets of the writers of the New Testament.  He is quoted there many times, he is mentioned by name 14 times in the Gospels, and our text for today is alluded to and quoted several times.  I hope he has become one of your favorites as well.  Isaiah gives us an Old Covenant biography of Jesus.  His birth is spoken of, He is seen in a vision by Isaiah as the King of glory, Christ’s life is outlined, His crucifixion is described, His resurrection is clearly implied, and His future eternal kingdom is promised.  Isaiah may have known more and spoken more and revealed more about the Lord Jesus in detail than any of the other Old Testament prophets.

In Luke, chapter 4, when Jesus visits His hometown of Nazareth and speaks in the synagogue, He reads the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and concludes His reading by saying, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  (Luke 4:21b ESV)  Jesus Himself claimed to be the future Messiah of whom Isaiah spoke.

Turn with me to John chapter 12.  Here John presents Jesus as the person whom Isaiah spoke of and saw centuries earlier.  This will serve as a retroduction, a look back to Isaiah’s introduction of the Christ in Isaiah 52 & 53.  The 12th chapter of John comes immediately after the resurrection of Lazarus and the triumphal entry of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem before His death a week later.  He speaks to the crowd that has gathered in Jerusalem for the Passover in verse 27: 

[27] “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. [28] Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” [29] The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” [30] Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine. [31] Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. [32] And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” [33] He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die. [34] So the crowd answered him, “We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” [35] So Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. [36] While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” 

When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them. [37] Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, [38] so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: 

“Lord, who has believed what he heard from us,

and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”

 [39] Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, 

[40] “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart,

lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, 

and I would heal them.”

  [41] Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him [Jesus]. [42] Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; [43] for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.  (John 12:27-43 ESV) 

The more I learn from reading Isaiah, the easier it is to identify Jesus in the New Testament as the One of whom he spoke.  He is a perpetual revealer of Jesus.  And while we saw last week that the good news of the Gospel of Christ is infinitely good, we also see the infinite misery that had to come about in order for guilty sinners like us to receive that good news.  

Here in John 12, Jesus begins in verse 27 by saying His soul is troubled.  The reason His soul is troubled is because He’s read the prophet Isaiah.  He has read His own biography, He understands it perfectly, He knows His own future, and He understands all Scripture must be fulfilled, even Isaiah 52 and 53.  He says, And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’?  But for this purpose I have come to this hour.  Father, glorify your name.”

No wonder His soul was troubled.  He was well aware of the nature of His own death and referred to it as being “lifted up”.  Both He and the crowd around Him understood that to be a reference to crucifixion, and a reference to Isaiah.  Isaiah speaks of the Servant of the Lord being “high and lifted up” and “exalted”, but that exaltation will not happen until Jesus is high and lifted up and humiliated upon the cross.  This is why the heart of the Lord Jesus is heavy.  This is the dark side of the good news.  These are the depths to which the Messiah would have to descend in order that salvation might be preached to the nations.  This is the cost of forgiveness: the bludgeoning, barbaric, inhumane execution of the sinless Son of God, the good and faithful Slave of God the Father.

Then in verse 37 of John 12, we read these somber words:  Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him.  Therefore, the logical question would be (in my mind at least), “Why do the signs?”  What possible purpose could the working of signs, wonders, and miracles serve if not to lead people to faith in Christ?  Why else would He do them, especially if He knew before He ever worked a miracle, that many would not be persuaded of who He is?

The next verse answers the question: “So that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled.”  In other words, the unbelief of the people in spite of the miracles Jesus performed, like the miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead after he had been buried three days, was in order to validate the prophetic word spoken by Isaiah concerning Christ.  It just may be that God keeping His word is a higher priority than salvation.  Salvation is optional.  God being a liar is not.  Salvation may or may not be granted to a person according to the eternal purposes of God.  But it is absolutely impossible for God’s word spoken by His prophets to fail.

To be more specific, Isaiah 53:1 is the word that is being fulfilled by the unbelief of men in the face of miraculous wonders: 

“Lord, who has believed what he heard from us,

and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”

How does one believe in Christ?  Is it simply the result of the witnessing of a miracle?  Obviously not.  Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him.  Belief is not automatically produced when miracles happen.  An entire generation of Jews died in the wilderness, all of whom witnessed the most magnificent of miracles.  The Philistines saw the supernatural strength of Samson on numerous occasions.  He carried the gates of one of their cities 20 miles, but they never made the connection that the God of Israel was with Samson and was tro be feared!  Judas walked right behind Jesus everywhere He went for three years and remained a thief until the day he committed suicide.  The rulers of Israel saw the signs and wonders of Jesus and the apostles many times and they still insisted upon killing them all.

Saving faith is the result of the revelation of the truth of God to the heart and mind of an individual BY GOD: To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?  These things, often in spite of miracles, must be revealed.  And they can also be concealed.  John tells us more about Jesus and the miracles and the crowd that witnessed them, and the revelation of God to men:

[39] Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, 

[40] “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them.”

This is the fulfillment of Isaiah 6.  The Lord Jesus did not reveal Himself to those who did not believe.  Isaiah even says that He blinded them and hardened them so that they could not believe.  It could be that this blinding and hardening was a temporary condition so that the people would call for His crucifixion.  In 1 Corinthians 2, we see a very interesting statement by Paul which tells us more about this spiritual blindness and hardness of heart:

[6] Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. [7] But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. [8] None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.  (1 Corinthians 2:6-8 ESV)

Paul tells us that the crucifixion would not have taken place if the Jewish and Roman leaders had understood who Jesus was: the promised Messiah.  But because the Scriptures MUST be fulfilled since they are the very words and promises of God, the rulers of this age were kept from understanding and prevented from believing in Him so that Isaiah chapter 53 would indeed come to pass.

No one understood who He was.  Jesus was alone in the world.  As a child, He was not like the other kids.  As an adult, He was not like anyone else.  He was never even married to enjoy the companionship of a wife.  He was undesirable; an extreme minority of one.  One author says “the world would call Him an ‘unfortunate’.  They appraised what they saw and it added up to nothing.” 1  He was hated.  Shunned.  Unloved and unwanted.  Even His own people, the Jews, did not receive Him.  His earthly parents did not understand Him.  The religious leaders, the “holy” men of the day longed for His death.  

How does a man live in a world that universally despises Him?  How does one go on, day after day, year after year, with hardly a friend?  With no one who understands?  The only real comfort Jesus received as the perfect stranger in this life was when alien angels visited Him after His 40 days of fasting in the desert, and when angels again ministered to Him in the Garden of Gethsemane when He sweated blood over the trauma of anticipating the cross.  They were His messengers from home.

But He received His greatest consolation in fellowship with His Heavenly Father who loved Him.  No wonder He spent entire nights alone in prayer.  Only Jesus and the Godhead understood the purpose of His life, and what was taking place around Him.  Even the disciples who tried to love Him had a very weak grasp of who He really was prior to His resurrection.  He could not reveal who He was on a broad scale.  He had very few confidants with whom He could speak freely.  Had He done so, according to Paul, the rulers of this age would not have crucified Him.  And escaping the cross was not an option.  “Now my soul is troubled.“  What an understatement.

Turn with me to Isaiah 52:13.  (Read through 53:12).  Before we read this passage, I just want to read you a list of words and phrases taken from the 15 verses we’re about to read together.  List to these words: Marred, despised, rejected, sorrow, grief, despised, stricken, smitten, afflicted, chastised, stripes, oppressed, afflicted, slaughter, oppression, judgment, cut off, wicked, death, crushed, put to grief, anguish of soul, poured out His soul to death, bore the sin of many.

All these words apply to one Man, the Lord Jesus.  And in anticipation of all this He said, “Now My soul is troubled.”

V13 - Astonished - Stunned, dazed, appalled, at His appearance.  The ESV Study Bible says, “Jesus was beaten into a shockingly inhuman mass of wounded flesh.”  

V14 - Marred - Disfigured, distorted, twisted.  Unrecognizable as a human being, much less as an individual.

V2 - A young and tender plant from dry, dead ground; Unimpressive, plain, undesirable.

V3 - Unwanted, un-needed, Acquainted with grief - personally familiar with keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; sharp sorrow; painful regret.

V4 - Entirely misunderstood, sorrowful, grief-stricken, 

Vs 4-6 - The God-ordained scapegoat: The LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.  

[21] And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. [22] The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness.  (Leviticus 16:21-22 ESV)

Vs 7-9 - Persecuted, slaughtered like a lamb, cut off from His people, treated like a criminal, all without cause.

Vs 10-12 - But all of this was according to the purposes of God, “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23 ESV) so that sinners might be ransomed and forgiven.  

This is why God insists that men believe the Gospel message.  This is exactly why there are not many ways to God.  Not even two ways.  It is because of what the Father intentionally did to His Son for the sake of sinners that Jesus Christ is the only means of salvation.  Look at what hellishness the Lord Jesus willingly went through.  Look at the grief the Father was pleased bring upon Him for our sakes, so that we might not die in our sins and spend all eternity in hell.  The almost unimaginable pain and grief and anguish and sorrow of Christ was for us who believe in Him alone.  

It is His life and death and resurrection that makes Him the Cornerstone of the Church.  Everything in Christianity and in salvation itself is built upon the foundation of this work done upon the cross to satisfy the justice of God in punishing sin.  His carrying of our sin, God’s crushing of our sin in Him, His bearing of our sorrows and grief and pain and heartache, His substitutionary death and burial and resurrection are the cause of the good news of salvation.  This awful display of suffering is THE reason why there is good news to preach.  

It is because of all this that kings shall shut their mouths . . . ; for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard they understand.  (Isaiah 52:15 ESV).  What they did not know, they will eventually realize is true.  Those who despised Him will comprehend the great error of their ways.  They have hated the One who is exalted by God above all others, the King over all kings and the Lord over all lords.

To reject Christ is to reject the God who sent Him into the world for this specific purpose: To save sinners by means of His own bearing of their sin and guilt and punishment and death.  There is no other way to be saved.  There is no other name given among men whereby we must be saved.  

“He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.”  (Hebrews 9:26b ESV)

So when the angel comes to Joseph and says to him, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. [21] She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”  (Matthew 1:20b-21 ESV), Isaiah 53 tells us how He will do that.  The good news of a savior from sin is dependent upon the self-sacrifice of the Lord Jesus who gave Himself, who gave His entire life from birth until His devastating death in crucifixion, as a ransom for many.

This is the greatness and the glory of Jesus Christ.