The Suffering Lamb

Isaiah 53: 1-12

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Exposition by Max A Forsythe

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Years ago, when I had a flock of real sheep, I came home from school and heard a lot of commotion in the barn. Just a day before I had weaned the wethers and separated them from the flock, so I expected a lot of frantic and frustrated noise from the flock. However, it was the barking of dogs that alerted me to a real problem. So I stepped inside the back door and retrieved my trusty weapon and ran to the barn. As soon as I rounded the corner of the barn I nailed the first dog within five yards. The second animal sprinted for safety and I emptied the magazine in his direction, hitting him at seventy yards on the fly. I least I think I hit him, because he rolled head over heels and limped sadly out of range before I could reload.

I herded the flock of ewes into the barn and patched up some wounds as best I could. For about a week, they were the friendliest flock of sheep I ever knew. They would hardly go out into the pasture without me or one of the boys around.

On another occasion I read a cartoon in a farm magazine. Again the wethers or market lambs had just been separated from the ewes. As two of them browsed at the water fountain with piles of hay and troughs of grain in the background, one of them said to the other: "You know, there is so much good food I almost forgot how lonely mother must be!" Back at the trough, the other wether asked, "Have you noticed that there is no one here over a year old?" Then, pensively he continued, "Should that be any concern of ours?" In the last panel, the first lamb answered back, "Naaaa - you can worry if you want, for me - its 'eat drink and be merry ... '"

The only thing left unsaid, but well implied, was the last phrase in that quotation: "for tomorrow we shall die"!

Real non-corporate farmers and shepherds have always taken good care of their livestock because that is the bread and butter, bacon and the whole reason of their vocational calling. Sure, long before the fur righteous and PETA, real caring people knew their flocks and herds by name and would make certain that their animals had the best pasture, grain and water. Only a certain "criminal" type would neglect their calling and embarrass the neighborhood. They usually didn't last long in the trade because they ran their assets down and had to find a different means of survival.

Now, you are probably wondering what the raising of young market lambs has to do with our theme today? Well, I'll tell you clearly and without wagging any more tales before you! Every literary image, symbol or conception has its limits. And in our text today, the theme for this Advent season breaks down precisely because of the prophetic vision outlined here.

In the whole Old Covenant economy, the sacrificial lamb s were the very best lambs of the annual crop and once selected they would not be allowed to loose too much weight or be injured because of the high calling to which they were to be subject. Thus, the image here of what must happen to the Lord's Anointed, the Messiah, the Lamb of God - is so out of character that I think I finally understand why the Jewish scholars missed the point of who Jesus was and exactly how and why He was whipped, tried and crucified.

The scene here in Isaiah is no way to treat an animal, or even an innocent human, let alone the real Son of God. Yet as we read through the long lamentation of what must happen to the Lord's Anointed, we must shiver at the "inhumanity" of it all. No civilized government does these things even to the worst of the criminal class in our day.

Every once in a while when we talk about appropriate punishment for crimes committed in school, I almost always have to bring up the constitutional amendment which prevents any cruel or unusual punishment. Our younger generation is not so civilized as the constitution and legal codes they know so little about! Were not the law so generous, real brutality could once again very easily become the practice of an unenlightened generation. So it is in this same context that the agrarian Jewish culture viewed the potential sacrifice of the real Lamb of God. Improbable, impossible - how could a righteous and holy God allow such a thing to happen to the Messiah of their dreams and expectations?

The lambs traditionally went dumb to their slaughter. They knew not the purpose for which they were bred, born and raised. By comparison, the Lord of all the earth, who put His glory by and deigned to enter the mortal body we know as Jesus - He knew far more what was coming to Him than any of the millions of lambs slaughtered to create His image and to symbolize His work here below. We do know that the night before He was crucified, Jesus stayed up all night praying about the morrow. He even sweat blood in anticipation of what must come to pass and the real hell that He would have to pass through on the way go glory.

No sooner than He finished His prayers, then Judas came and identified Him to the arresting patrol of guardsmen. A brief scuffle, a guardsman lost an ear and was lovingly healed. Jesus was taken to the Praetorium and turned over to the professional sadistic pagans of the Roman military, whose job it was to terrorize the population with punishments so cruel that no one would want to think twice about rebellion. Knowing not whom they had in their possession, they dressed Him as a king, then shamed Him, gave Him a blanket party and finally whipped the living daylights out of Him. Had He transpired in the process, there would have been no need of a trial.

Lesser men came not before the bar. Yet, what a Man among men He was. He took the worst that the Romans could give Him and remained standing. There is and always has been a subtle testimony in the New Covenant texts as to this phenomenon. And when He at long last passed away from a broken heart on the cross, it one of the Centurions who knew all to well what He had been through who testified, "Truly, this must be the Son of God!"

We have one more responsibility before us this morning, one more lesson to glean from this wonderful text. Why did the Lord of all the earth allow the Lamb of God to suffer such things, to die and go literally to Hades? You know, don't you? "By His stripes we are healed".

By every measure of the Jewish agricultural economy - there was no real purpose to punish, torment and cause excruciating death of a dumb animal! That, in less lawful societies could only be done to criminals. The Assyrians were especially good (or bad) at these practices. The Romans only less so. The justice of Rome, so fondly remembered in our classical fascination, was indeed brutal and when they dispensed justice - they did it with a vengeance. "By his stripes we are healed", Isaiah would tell us if we are willing to hear?

I have shared with you often enough that at age two I had my first spiritual experience in learning in a dark Sunday School class that "God is light." What I have not shared before is that by age five or six, I became aware of the fallen nature of the creative mind that the Lord gave to me. I will not say anymore than that, we all know that like Paul - there are thorns in the flesh and we must always struggle to maintain a form of godliness. Any one who claims differently does not understand the implications of the text before us!

Why did the Lord of all the universe cause the Lamb of God to suffer? "He was oppressed and He was afflicted", "it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief", "We esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted," "He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors."

All of this and more - you know why don't you? "Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows", He was wounded for our transgression, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed."

These are the themes I would lay before you, and to prove my point, let me detail the verses of this short chapter that what I call "The Gospel of Isaiah".

Isaiah began this chapter with questions: "Who has believed our report?" is the first. Certainly the first century Sanhedrin did not. Isaiah's Suffering Servant image was not popular and was certainly not imagined as likely. The Jews were expecting a royal, conquering Messiah. Their messianic focus was more in tune with Isaiah sixty-three. However, there in that chapter, Isaiah initially did not recognize the Lord's suffering servant whom he reveals in these passages. The early Christians better appreciated the prophets prediction of the long expected Jesus. Philip used Isaiah to show the Ethiopian the way, the truth and the life in Christ. The Ethiopian believed and was baptized into the Kingdom.

A second question is also in verse one: "To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" The reference here is to the spiritual power of God the Father. There are implications in the construction of these words that this power of God will one day be a particular person. And Isaiah here records a prophetic picture of just that person who will come in God's own time. This question of who this person will be is answered in verses two and three.

The old nursery tale of the ugly duckling is built around this theme as well. As we consider the implications of verse two, we do not have any accurate pictures of Jesus Christ, so we do not know for certain how Isaiah's prophecy should be applied. We do know that ideas of human beauty change over time and vary from place to place. In the middle ages, those of us who are today considered pleasantly plump would have been the ideal. And all those skinny people in the media would be frantically eating to put on a few pounds of beauty weight! But, in our century, everyone sweats and exercises to remake these human vessels into the slimmer mold of today's popular image. Human likes and dislikes are certain enough that Jesus at the least, could well have been that unfavorite but knowledgeable teacher who wore bow ties thirty years after they went out of style!

We do know that verse three is absolutely accurate in its description of Christ's rejection and his suffering. So we know that Isaiah's revelation was fulfilled: "he was despised, and rejected by men."

In verses four and five Isaiah prophecies what Jesus will accomplish. We know from the New Testament accounts that the earthly ministry of Jesus involved many healings and many sessions of counseling where the weights of physical and emotional defects were lifted miraculously by the mighty spiritual arm of the Lord. The crowds in Jerusalem greeted the miracle worker on Palm Sunday and sang of Him as their King. And yet within the week, the attitudes of the crowd changed dramatically. The same Christ was questioned, whipped and then raised up on a criminal's cross.

There at the end of the Passover holiday a common soldier pierced his rib cage with the point of a spear to make certain he was dead. The reason for all of this is carefully revealed to Isaiah. He was pierced, he was crushed, so that we hearing this report today might know peace and that we might be healed. But what if we don't think we need to be healed and what if we enjoy the fast life of constant turmoil where there never is any personal peace? If that is where you are at today, the next verse, verse six may very well be offensive to you today. Listen carefully, like a good dentist, I will make it as painless as possible! "All we, like sheep, have gone astray, we have turned, every one, to his own way;"

Years ago, the boys decided to finish a roll of film with pictures of our first spring lamb of the season, he turned out to be camera shy and when the flash went off he bolted for a forty-five minute romp. The electric fence was broken in two places as the panicked lamb bleated for a return to his mother and warm stall. The boys finally tackled him and carried him back to his pen. Later that same week, we turned the rest of the sheep out into the spring pasture. Several new sheep had a hard time learning about electric fence. They wanted to go in directions that were not in their best interest. One old ewe stomped her foot and kept trying to break out in the wrong places. It took a week to train her to follow the path through the gate! It always amazes me how very much like these ornery sheep we all are!

The last phrase of this verse tells us what happens to the Good Shepherd. "and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." In another spring season when the frosty ground was breaking up into muddy mush, I was outside fixing the sheep broken fence. I stepped over a fence line that I thought was off. This shepherd received a jolt that was meant for the sheep! I jumped eight feet and landed in the softest puddle of muck you can think of! Theologically, imagine the shepherd receiving the sum total of all the jolts ever experienced by my whole flock of sheep! I don't think I would even consider keeping sheep! Would you? But this is the iniquity laid upon our Christ. He received the punishment for the sum total of the sins of God's people. This was the incredible weight born by the Lamb of God upon that Passover cross two thousand years ago.

In verses seven through nine we see the types of personal anguish to be experienced by the suffering servant of Isaiah's vision. Jesus, who never committed sin in his whole thirty-three years on earth, bore the punishments due to others with no complaint whatsoever. He was held accountable not for any sins of His own, but for the sins of us all!

The last three verses of this chapter show us that these events concerning the Messiah would all be within the divine plan of God the Father Almighty. Verse ten shows us that even though Jesus was to be sacrificed for our sins, He will see the results of His sufferings and knowingly use the power of God to accomplish God's will. There in verse eleven we who know of the resurrection may understand the satisfaction of Christ our heavenly King who knows the final result of the suffering of his soul. That result is our coming to be justified in the sight of God because of His death and resurrection. In Verse twelve we may understand in light of our knowledge of His ascension into heaven where he reigns with His Father. There the Glory of the Son is celebrated because of what Isaiah foretold five and a half centuries before: "he poured out his soul unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors. And he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." That he does even today. He intercedes with the Father for you and for me. Who can believe such an incredible tale?

And yet, that is exactly what we as a Christian Church ask people to believe every single week. Will you believe it today? Jesus Christ came in the fullness of time, He lived a sinless life among us, evil men took hold of Him, nailed Him to a cross, killed Him, buried Him and thoroughly despised Him. All of this His Father in heaven has known from eternity. These facts that the Church has born witness too for almost two thousand years have remained fairly consistent in translation and in doctrine from one language to over three hundred. We invite all who are being called into Christ's Kingdom to believe the good news that the Lord's Anointed has come and fulfilled every plan of His Father. The Lamb of God suffered and died for you! May God's Holy Spirit enable anyone within our hearing to come to that understanding. Amen.

Amen.

 

Resources Used:
     MacLaren, A.              Exposition of Holy Scripture.
                               The New Geneva Study Bible (NKJV)
                              "Bringing the Light of the Reformation to Scripture"
                               (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995)

Places Preached:
     Christ Covenant REFORMED  (Presbyterian Church in America)
                               Box PO Box 13926 -- Columbus, OH  43213
                                            02 December 2000
                               tlg03