Good Friday
Isa
52:13-53:12
4/7/23
San Diego Chargers fans could not wait
for quarterback Ryan Leaf to show up for the 1998 season. Leaf stood 6’5.” He had a cannon for an arm
and had just thrown for nearly 4,000 yards during his junior year in
college. He was a Heisman finalist and
had led his team to their first Rose Bowl in more than sixty years. He was
brimming with the cocky confidence of a winner.
Leaf was considered to be a “can’t
miss” franchise quarterback. The only
real question was whether Leaf or another quarterback available in the draft –
a quarterback named Payton Manning – was better. The experts were divided, and
many believed Leaf was the better
choice. He had a stronger arm and was
more mobile that Payton Manning.
The Indianapolis Colts had the first
pick and chose Payton Manning. The Chargers had the second pick and chose Ryan
Leaf. The team and its fans expected greatness, but when Leaf actually showed
up what they saw was very different.
Leaf’s record as a starter was only four and fourteen. He threw thirteen
touchdowns and thirty three interceptions. His cocky confidence turned out to be
arrogance that turned off fellow players.
After only three seasons, the Chargers cut Leaf.
In our Old Testament lesson for
tonight we hear about a similar contrast as the prophet Isaiah describes the
Servant of the Lord. He is expected to
be God’s holy arm bringing salvation. But when he shows up, he looks very
different. He looks like the opposite of
success and victory. On this Good
Friday, we reflect upon how the prophet’s words speak about Jesus Christ.
The prophet Isaiah wrote in the eighth
century B.C. as he dealt with events of his time. Yet his prophecy also looks down the road to
what awaits the nation – God’s punishment of exile because of her
unfaithfulness. The Babylonians would
conquer the southern kingdom of Judah in the sixth century B.C. and take them
into exile. Yet through Isaiah, God
spoke a word of comfort and hope. God
would bring them back from exile. And he
would do even more than this – he would act to give forgiveness for sin.
Just before
our text Isaiah has said, “Break forth together
into singing, you waste places of Jerusalem, for the LORD has
comforted his people; he has redeemed Jerusalem. The LORD has bared his holy
arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth
shall see the salvation of our God.”
Yahweh was going to bare his holy arm.
He was going to reveal his salvation, and surely this would be an
amazing sight.
In
our text, we learn that the Servant of the Lord is the One through whom God is
going to act. But immediately, it
becomes apparent that appearances do not match expectations. We hear, “As many were astonished at you-- his
appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of
the children of mankind.”
And things just get worse.
Isaiah adds, “Who has believed what he
has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
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.” We
learn that there is nothing about the appearance of the Servant that would even
make us want him.
The
holy arm of the Lord bared before the nations?
Surely, this cannot be the case. Instead, the Servant is an utterly
pathetic figure. He is man of sorrows
and grief – someone that others reject with good reason. Isaiah could hardly describe a less
attractive figure than when he says, “He was despised and
rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted
with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was
despised, and we esteemed him not.”
In words
that the prophet himself could not fully understand, Isaiah describes Jesus
Christ on Good Friday. He hangs, most
likely naked, on a cross. He bleeds
after having been whipped and beaten. He
wears a crown of thorns and is mocked by the inscription above him, “The King
of the Jews.” Nailed to a cross, the
suffering of his death has been put on display for all to see. He has become one more dying billboard for
the Romans in the provinces by which they warn: Don’t mess with us.
We too would
want to avert our eyes and ignore him. However, before we do, we must ponder
the fact that Jesus had said it would be this way. He did this several times. In fact, just before entering Jerusalem he
had said, “See, we are going up to
Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and
scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to
the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be
raised on the third day.”
Jesus
said he would be here. The One who
had worked miracles like stilling a storm on the Sea of Galilee and raising a
widow’s son from the dead had said it would be this way. He knew that it was coming. He had come to suffer and die in this
way.
And as we look at Jesus through Isaiah’s
words, something begins to dawn on us.
Those are not his grief and sorrows. They are ours. The prophet writes, “Surely
he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him
stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.”
It seemed that God was striking Jesus in judgment. He was.
But he wasn’t receiving this for himself. He was receiving it for us.
Jesus had
begun this path when he was baptized in the Jordan. He, the sinless One,
submitted himself to a baptism of repentance. At his baptism God said, “This is
my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
He spoke words of Isaiah chapter 42 that identified Jesus as the Servant
of the Lord. Jesus was the Servant of
the Lord, and on the cross he was carrying out the work of the Servant.
That work
was one of forgiveness for sin. It was forgiveness
earned by the One who suffered and died in our place. Isaiah tells us, “But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed
for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us
peace, and with his stripes we are healed.
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.”
Our
transgressions. Our iniquities. That is
why Jesus hung on the cross. The prophet
is right. We are all like sheep who have gone astray. We do not walk in the way of the Lord.
Instead, we make up our own way. We
ignore God and do what we want to do. We
harm our neighbor because we prefer to look out for ourselves. There is no shortage of transgressions and
iniquities in thought, in word, and in deed.
God
is the holy God. He justly judges and
punishes sinners who sin. There can be
no other outcome. And so we were by
nature and by action on a course that circled down into damnation. We were destined for hell.
We
were. And that is why God acted in the Servant of the Lord, Jesus Christ. Jesus
announced, that “the Son of Man came not be served but to serve, and to gives
his life as a ransom for many.” He came
to die in our place. As Isaiah says, “the
LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Those sorrows and griefs turned out to be ours – what we deserved. Jesus Christ received God’s judgment and
punishment against our sin. In this way
he saved us. As Isaiah says he was wounded
for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. By his suffering and death he has brought us
peace and healing.
Jesus
was offered as the sacrifice that gives us forgiveness. In our text, Isaiah describes the Servant as
a guilt offering. Jesus suffered and
died for us. But this was the means by
which God gave us a righteous standing before him. Our text says, “by his knowledge
shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted
righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.”
Jesus’ death
on the cross is the reason that you are justified. He the righteous One bore your sins – he was
crushed for your iniquities. God
punished our sin in Christ, so that now God can justly count you as
righteous. You have this by faith -
faith in in the saving death of Jesus.
St Paul tells us, “for all have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
and are justified by his grace as
a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put
forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”
We
have faith in Jesus Christ. Yet this faith is not grounded only in the events
of today. As important as today is, if
there was only today – Good Friday – we would have no assurance of
forgiveness. We would have no guarantee
of justification. The final wages of sin
is death, and without the defeat of death, sin’s power would not be overcome.
In
our text we learn about how the appearance of the Servant was appalling. Yet
before this, the very first words of our text say, “Behold, my
servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be
exalted.” It ends by saying, “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.”
Our text
tells us that the Servant suffers as he bears our sins. Yet it speaks about this because the Servant has
been exalted. Suffering and
humiliation were not the end. It was not
the end of Jesus Christ because as he declared about himself: “and he will be raised on the third day.”
That
is the focus for another day – for the third day. Tonight we listen to the prophet Isaiah’s
words about the Servant. He is not what
we expect as God’s holy arm brings salvation.
He is weak and helpless – a man of griefs and sorrows. But as we see Jesus Christ upon the cross
tonight in our Gospel reading we understand the crucifixion of Jesus in a new
light. We recognize that he looks that
way because of us. We understand that God acted through him to give us
forgiveness. As Isaiah says, “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.”
No comments:
Post a Comment