Isaiah 53:1-3 - Pastor David Deutsch

Good morning. Soli open your bibles to Isaiah, chapter 53. We are in the middle of our Linton Pascal series. In Isaiah, chapter 53, Pastor John looked at the last three verses of chapter 52, last Lord's day. And we will this morning take up the first three verses of Isaiah, chapter 53, and hear the word of God 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. 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. That's the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Our God in heaven, we come to you on this Lord's day, and we ask that you will show us the arm of the Lord, that you will give us eyes to see what those who are looking here cannot see.

The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The arm of the Lord and the suffering, humiliated servant. And I pray, as you open our eyes and as we behold the glory of the Lord and the suffering servant, that we would together be changed from one degree of glory to another, even as from the Lord the spirit, and that we would be willing to embrace the humiliation of the suffering servant and live lives unashamed of the scandal. In Jesus name we pray and amen. We want the arm of the Lord. We all want the strong arm of the Lord. And as we look back at the previous chapters before Isaiah 53, we see that we've been building towards the arm of the Lord. Our expectations are rising with respect to God showing his strong arm. Look at back at chapter 52 and verses nine and ten. Chapter 52, verse nine says, break forth 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 nations. And all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

We're on tiptoe for God to show his arm and to bring salvation, and that all the nations of the earth would look and would come to this salvation. If we back up to chapter 51 and look at verses nine through eleven. Awake. Awake. Put on strength, o arm of the Lord. Awake. As in the days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces and who pierced the dragon? Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made the depths of the sea away for the redeemed to pass over. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy upon their heads, they shall obtain gladness, and joy and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. The arm of the Lord is going to come, and it's going to deal with his enemies with his strength. And the ransomed of the Lord will flee into Zion, and sorrow will go, and joy will come. The arm of the Lord. Well, what might that arm look like if it was a man? Well, we get an idea of what we might think that arm would look like if it was a man.

In one Samuel, chapter 16, verse 18. Doesn't the first David look like the arm of the Lord? One Samuel 1618, one of the young men answered, behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence. And the Lord is with him. If David walked in a room, you'd all look more than once. You'd all look twice. He was a handsome man of good presence, and he commanded the moment around him. Is that what the arm of the Lord looks like? Is that what the arm of the Lord looks like? See, we want the arm of the Lord to look like David. We want the arm of the Lord to look like what we've seen in the previous chapters here. We want the arm of the Lord to look like our technology and our techniques and our image and our AI and our scientism and our wealth and our efficiency. This is our expectation. We want the exaltation. We want it immediate. We want the victory decisive, and we want it now. But the question is, do we actually have space for the arm of the Lord in the Lord's way?

Because the Lord's way is not our way. The Lord's way is not the way of the first David, that strapping man. The Lord's way is the way of humiliation. The Lord's way is the way of weakness. The Lord's way is a way that is almost indescribable. We ransack the language that God gives us to come up with words to describe the way that we judge and see the arm of the Lord according to our human standards and the depth of the humiliation that the arm of the Lord went into in order to take our humiliation upon himself. What do we actually get when we say that we want the arm of the Lord. Well, before God, it is one thing, verse two, for he grew up before him like a young plant. Before God, he is full of promise. Before God, he is full of the future. Because Jesus, the entire life of the suffering servant is circumscribed quorum dale before the face of God. He grows up before him in a certain way. Because God can see what the humiliation means, and he can see the strength and weakness, and he can see the pathway to exaltation goes through a certain valley in order to get there.

So God can see with his own eyes what human eyes and human judgment cannot see. He is growing up before him like a tender shoot. But when we look at it, when we look at the suffering servant, when we look at him, we do not see what God himself sees. We are looking at the outside like we always do. We are making judgments in the immediate, like we always do. We are assessing things according to our standards, human standards and human judgment, like we always do. And we do not see things the way the father does. We do not see, in the humiliation of the servant, the way to victory and success and exaltation and salvation. We think that the servant is humiliated because there's something wrong with him, you see, rather than seeing that he's entered into our situation as deep as anyone can in order to reverse it and redeem it from the inside out, what do we see? Well, we see not a good beginning. Like a root out of dry ground. As far as we're concerned, this root has no future. This root has no shot. What God sees as a tender plant, we see as parched soil.

We see a root that's not going to be able to ultimately bear fruit, a root that's not ultimately going to be able to be successful because the soil is dry, the ground is parched. It is without water. This one is not being groomed by royalty. This one comes in the unpromising, impressive beginning of a lowly condition. You see good for nothing. Nazareth, we hear unseen, ordinary, nomadic. The evaluation of the suffering servant in Matthew 13 is just this. Is this not the carpenter's son? What's so special about him? He comes not from the throne, not from the priesthood, not from the prophetic. He comes from Nazareth. His father is a carpenter. This is our judgment. His beginning is the anticipation of his end. You see, it's just dirt without water. That's all it is. Is this not the carpenter's son? Is this the arm of the Lord? Is this the arm of the Lord? Certainly not here. Well, not only does he not have a very good beginning. It doesn't really bode well for him as he grows up either. Verse two says he had no form or majesty, that we should look at him.

Judging by human standards, the way that we judge things by the outside, Jesus does not catch our attention. The servant has nothing compelling about him. There's no halo about his head, some glory raining off his face, that if you went by, you would have went woo. I felt a little divine for a moment. No, he has no form, no majesty that we would look at him. Nothing attractive, nothing wooing, nothing special, nothing to admire, nothing to imitate. As a matter of fact, you wouldn't even look at him. You certainly wouldn't give him a second look. But he's kind of like you don't even give him a first look. Because as you judge according to the outside, as you judge according to human standards, what you see is simply unimpressive. It's not even worthy of looking at, let alone twice, right? Sometimes you look at something, you go, whoa. But not here. Not according to the way we judge things. The arm of the Lord here, well, he has no man. There's nothing majestic about him. There's no form that we should look at him. I guess if we're looking for the arm of the Lord, it is not here.

The end of verse two. Not only does he have nothing by which we would look at him according to our earthly standards, but just to make sure that we don't mistake it. He has no beauty that we should desire him, no special appearance that we should want to follow him. Nothing irresistible about him, nothing to attract us or awakening in us a longing or to satisfy a longing. He makes no impression. He's undesired. There's nothing that would draw us to him. There's no beauty that we should desire him. The arm of the Lord. Here in this one, we must be missing something. But then the humiliation begins to spiral. It doesn't turn a corner. It actually intensifies. Because our human judgment of him moves us to our human actions towards him. Because of these things, we treat him a certain way. Because we look at him a certain way, we treat him a certain way, right? That's what happens all the time in the world, right? You use human, faulty, sinful, fleshy standards of judgment in the world, and what happens? You judge the outside, and then you act accordingly. Then you move towards that person and treat that person accordingly, okay?

That's why you can do nothing in our culture except take pictures of yourself and be a millionaire. Why? Because we value the outside more than anything else at all, that's what sells, that's what matters in our culture, right? We choose the form, the majesty, the beauty, that's what we do. And our entire world of social media and media and all that comes to us by way of our stories and our films and everything is about prompting up and lifting up only one thing, and that is the beautiful. That's it, the beautiful on the outside. But now we intensify, now we have to move, we have to deal directly with him and look at what verse three says. So here's the intensification of our human judgment upon this particular suffering servant. Verse three. Because of our human judgment, this is how we treat him. He was despised. Just so that we know this, the right Isaiah, who loves to double and triple things in his writings. We remember that from Isaiah six, holy, holy, holy, right. The Hebrew emphasis on doubling things in this verse. Isaiah wants us to know that that coming suffering servant, the humiliated one, is despised.

And he's not just despised, he's double despised. Look at the verse. He was despised and rejected by men. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief as one from whom men hid their faces. He was despised. Just in case you don't get it. We despise him. We despise this suffering servant. We despise this humiliated faux arm of the Lord. We will not have him as our king. We have no place for him. We despise everything about him. We scorn him, we mocked him. Mock him. We have contempt for him. We shame him, we shun him, we dismiss him. We despise this man. And if you don't think we do, just listen to these words. What is your judgment? They answered, he deserves death. Then they spit in his face and they struck him and some slapped him. You need more. Then the soldiers of the governor took jesus into the governor's headquarters and they gathered the whole battalion before him and they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, hail, king of the Jews.

Then they spit on him. And then they took a reed and they struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of his robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him. We despise this man. We will not have this man. He was despised. And verse three says, and rejected by men. A man of sorrows. Now you have to get this because Isaiah does something here in the Hebrew that the English doesn't bring out. Isaiah is trying to connect the word men and man together. Okay. He does this because he wants us to see the raw, rejected humanity of what it is that Jesus is undergoing here that he has here. But more than that, the way this works out in the Hebrews. I want you to hear this. It should be translated. He was despised and alone among men, man of sorrows. Alone among men. Man of sorrows, you say? But didn't he have followers for a while? Didn't he have friends up to a point? These are the words of the aloneness and the isolation of this humiliated man. And Jesus could not entrust himself to men.

Jesus could not entrust himself to men. You will all fall away because of me tonight. You will all fall away because of me tonight. Could you not stay awake? You just read it. Could you not stay awake with me for just an hour? Could you not? And Mark 14 says, and they all fled. They all fled. A man alone. Psalm 88 is the darkest psalm in all of the Bible. And psalm 88 is a messianic psalm. It's a psalm about the coming Jesus. It's about the experience of Jesus. What the psalmist experiences in himself is proleptic of what Jesus is going to experience. It's an advance on what Jesus, the suffering servant, is going to experience. If you turn with me to psalm 88 for just a moment, the last verse of psalm 88 corroborates Isaiah's alone man. Psalm 88 and verse 18. You have caused my beloved and my friend. Friends, don't do this. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me. My companions have become darkness. Final word. A man alone. But he's not just alone. He does have some companions, and they're called sorrows. He's a man alone, but he's a man of sorrow.

So the companions that he has with him are sorrows. Psalm 53 says, he was despised and a man alone. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, knowing grief. This is a man who has entered into and taken upon himself the sorrows of the conditions around him. This is a man who has entered into and taken on the griefs and the pain of those around him. He stepped into a story that would require his humiliation. He would have no internal reason for sorrow in himself. He would have no internal reason for grief in himself. But what he would do is he would not put the sorrows and the pains and the griefs of those he came into the story. For at a distance he would take them and absorb them in himself. And because he's absorbing in himself not the sorrow of just what's in front of him. But the sorrows of his people. Sorrow upon sorrow. Grief upon grief. Pain upon pain. We could simply call him. There's the man of sorrows. That's what he is. The man of sorrows and human judgment. Looks at that. And sees this man of sorrows. And sees this man acquainted with grief.

And the way that our human judgment looks at it from the outside is in verse four. Look at the end of verse four. This is what the problem is. The problem is, not only do we loathe this servant. Not only do we despise this servant. God doesn't like him either. He's forsaken of God. That's why he's this way. Look at the end of verse four. We esteemed him stricken. Smitten by God and afflicted. The reason why he's carrying these sorrows. The reason why he's carrying this grief. The reason why he's carrying this trouble. Is because God is judging him like we're judging him together. The divine and the human are conspiring together. To say that this man is in the humiliation that he's in. Because he deserves it from God. And nothing could be further from the truth. He's taking yours. He's taking mine. And rather than keeping our junk, our mess, at an arm's length distance. He's becoming our sorrow and our pain and our grief. And now we won't even look at him anymore. Now comes the humiliation of the cross. Now we're done. If he's forsaken by God as well as us.

If we're done with him and God's done with him, then just crucify him. Just finish him. Put him up on that tree and let's be done with him. Let him die. Like a thousand other brigands have died in Rome. Like a thousand other of the margins have died in Rome. Just put them up there and leave them there for shame and mockery. And the grotesqueness of a naked body hanging to be shamed on the tree that is the cross. The grotesqueness such. In such a way that we will not even look. He is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. As one from whom men hid their faces. Not only is he not worthy of a look. Not only is he not worthy of a look. He's not even worthy of a look. We look away. We hide our faces from him. Can this be the arm of the Lord? Can this be the arm of the Lord, this disfigured man hanging on a roman cross. Let's add it all up. Let's do the math. Anybody who knows me knows me as a genius at math. Let's add it all up. Right, let's tally it up.

Let's take all of our human judgment, all of our human standards, looking at this man from the outside, seeing his humiliation, seeing the mockery, seeing the forsakenness, seeing that the political powers are against him, the religious powers are against him, our hearts are against him. Everything is conspiring. Let's add it all up. And what do we get? The end of verse three. And we esteemed him not. What's the worth of this man, this servant. What's the value of this man and the servant? Zero. Simply nothing. He is not worth the esteem. And that's what you get if you view this man. And that's what you get if you view this servant according to human judgment, according to our standards of assessing things. But what. But what if you were given new eyes? What if you were given new eyes? What would you see here if you were given new eyes? You see, Paul talks about this in two Corinthians chapter five. Turn there with me for a moment. Two Corinthians chapter five. Paul talks about this. He lays it out for us. Two Corinthians chapter five, verses 16 and 17. Look at what Paul says in two Corinthians 516.

Because this new creation has come. From now on, Paul says, verse 16, from now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh, even though we want. Listen to this. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we did. What was a time when we all looked at Christ and we assessed him in the same way that the eyes of unbelief have assessed him. As we've seen in Isaiah three, according to human standards, there was a time in which we regarded Christ according to the flesh. We regard him thus no longer. We do not see him the way we saw him. We do not see him the way that we saw him. Because, you see, something has happened inside of us. God has done something. And I want you to turn back to two Corinthians chapter four. I want you to see what God has done. So now we not only look and look again, and look again. We not only do not turn our eyes from him, we actually turn our eyes to him. And we don't look once. We look from now on, and we never leave the vision, you see, because the light has gone on, and we see through the standards.

Look at what Paul says. Two Corinthians four, verse three. And if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. There are some who are going to continue to always see Jesus the way we heard this morning. In this case, in their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers. They cannot see him because they're blind. To keep them from seeing the light of the gospel, of the glory of Christ. Who is the image of God you see with the right eyes? We see in this suffering servant the glory of God on display. Our salvation is what he's in the business of doing in this humiliation and suffering. Verse five. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. Now watch this for God, who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And so now we look with new eyes, with divinely enlightened eyes, and we look into the face of Jesus. And it is not grotesque, and it is not mocked, and it is not scorned, and it is not despised.

It is the very glory of God that we see. And we cannot take our eyes off of it. We cannot look away from it, you see, because why? Well, look at back to chapter 53. This is what we know. Verse four. He was. Surely he has borne our griefs. That's what he's doing. That's what he's doing. New eyes see the change. It's our griefs carried our sorrows. You see, he has entered into this story to reveal the glory of God through his own humiliation, because he has come to draw near to us and save us from the things that we cannot save ourselves from. And when we take a look, we are riveted for life. Because the glory of God is in the face of this suffering servant. Amen. Aren't you glad the light is on? Aren't you glad that God turned the grotesqueness of his son to glory? For you, it is all of grace, none of ourselves. And this morning, God will take through the sacrament of the table as he does every week. And he will put the emblems of his humiliation in your hands. And you want to know what you will find there?

Life. You will find life. And you want to know where he's rescribed his image so that you can see it this morning is on the faces of those whom you will come to the table with and who you pass the peace with where do we find the arm of the Lord? It is in the humiliation of the suffering servant. Amen. Our God in heaven, fill our souls with Jesus, we pray. Let us look to him and everything in light of him. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

I have probably been complaining for a long time about not having a pulpit, knowing me, and said, if you could have the pulpit of your dreams, meaning mobile pulpit, not one built into a cathedral, what would it look like? Well, if you know me, I'm no artist, but I gave him an idea of what it would look like, and I just thought that was it. And then I showed up one Sunday, and this was there. I preached over 750 sermons from behind this pulpit for a very long time, for over 15 years, a lot of spit on this pulpit.

And then the Lord saw fit to.

Have that church servant's purpose and brought to a close, and this pulpit was returned to the man that had made it and has been in his garage ever since, his name being John Erickson. And this past week, John Erickson went home to be with the Lord. He had suffered from Parkinson's for a very long time, his family showing faithfulness to him in the days of his Parkinson's. The way that John showed faithfulness as a servant in the church. And I had the privilege to spend some time with them this week in John's waning days. And on Wednesday night, John would die. On Friday night, 24 hours later, on Wednesday night, when I was walking to the door, Diane, John's wife, who was also my secretary back then, that church, into the Lord's supper. This is a family that did everything. They were the consummate deacon and deaconesses that you've ever met in your life. And Chris, John's son, also faithful, served in the church for many years. His wife Hillary, and the daughter Lisa, followed me to the door before I left and said to me, we would like you to have your pulpit back after all these years.

And of course I wept, never thinking that I would not never see this thing again, let alone preach by. So yesterday, Michael saw was gracious enough to pick this up and return it here. And this would be the first sermon that I have preached in this pulpit since Father's day of 2013, and it means the world to me. Ericsson. The Ericsson are with us this morning. If you'll just raise your hands real quick. Raise your hands. Come on, everybody. All right, please greet them. This is a dear family to my family and love them greatly, and they are just a wonderful family in every way. And I also want you guys to know that the Soli de emporia that's on the front of this has always been on the front of it was not put on for us. But I think God had a plan. God had a rye. Prophets we didn't understand, we didn't see. So maybe if you felt a little bit more for me today in the pulpit, I know what this. You have to understand what this moment meant to me, what it meant to me, more than I'll ever be able to put in the words, to be able to preach behind this box again.

John also made this that's been at Soli from the beginning. John was. He sold insurance by day, he was not Batman by night, but he was a carpenter by night. And everywhere I look around my house, there's still something that John Erickson built, still something that's there, whether it be the island in my kitchen, the spinner, bookshelf in my study, everywhere I turn in my house, there's little things and big things that John may see. Because John was like his savior. He used his hands to craft things. And now those hands are at rest for a season until the resurrection.

The resurrection.

God's going to give John back those hands that put this together, they made these other things and let John loose on a creation, a new creation, a new heaven, and new earth, in which everything is going to be cooperating. So I just wanted to share that with you. The origin of this pulpit and why this is here this morning and how much it means to me and the Ericsson's, how much you mean to me and how much John meant to me. Thank you for allowing this moment to come back into my life, and thank you for allowing to come into Soli's life as well. Because if I'm anything at all to this group of people here, it's because I learned it with you guys together in the church. We had to get the reporter, and I'm humbled, and I'm grateful in every way. So I wanted to share that with you all this morning and do it without blubbering my way completely through it all. So with that, let's stand and let's receive gratitude.