Isaiah 52:13-53:12
The Suffering Servant

I. The Servant is Revolting (52:13-15)
1. Look at Him. Fix your gaze at Him. It’s a command, an invitation and at first it seems appealing.
2. His appearance will be marred, inhuman, appalling. The horror of the crucifixion is described.
3. We have the Lord’s Supper to remember, to behold that bloody mess.
4. He’s a disfigured mauled sight, oozing out blood so that He can sprinkle, be an offering.
5. Our guilt needed to be taken away. The Servant sheds His blood to take away our guilt.
6. The Servant takes away the guilt of many nations. Jesus is the end of racism, of ethnocentrism.
7. He’s so astounding, both in His glory and in His agony, that kings are dumbstruck by Him.
II. The Servant is Rejected (53:1-3)
1. Who would believe that by acting wisely He is crucified, a bloody mess?
2. The Servant grew up like a tender shoot, vulnerable looking, like a sprout in a desert.
3. He didn’t appear particularly impressive. He didn’t have a majestic, royal, imperial bearing.
4. We’re the witnesses. We’re telling the message. We were, first, among His despisers.
5. He knew grief. He was familiar with betrayal, loss and loneliness. Too hideous to look at.
6. “We esteemed Him not.” Now, we are implicated in this. We didn’t account Him as much.
7. When He succeeded at achieving His goal, He was a grotesque pulp, we esteemed Him not.
III. The Servant is Our Replacement (53:4-6)
1. The Servant is our replacement, a man of sorrow and familiar with grief because He took ours.
2. He has borne our griefs. Yet, still, “we esteemed Him” — counted Him as stricken by God.
3. He was wounded for our sins; crushed; punished for our peace; by His stripes we’re healed.
4. We must have a replacement because all of us, “like sheep”, wandered astray.
IV. The Servant is Sinless and Suffers Silently (53:7-9)
1. Pontius Pilate had Him viciously scourged and announced, “Behold the man.”
2. Animals go to their slaughter unaware but He went to His death because of His submitted will.
3. He is “cut off from the land of the living.” He’s killed. He had done nothing wrong.
4. The disciples couldn’t grasp it even after they had been told. We so easily forget today.
V. The Servant Is a Guilt Offering (53:10-12)
1. He came to be a guilt offering, to serve by giving His life for many.
2. It had to be done because God is holy and will not just wink at sin, excuse them.
3. Talk about our transgressions, punishment, us being like sheep who stray is offensive.
4. The Lord crushed Him. The Servant is acquainted with grief because the Lord gave it to Him.
5. He crushed Him to be one final, true sacrifice for sin, a guilt offering.
6. He will see the fruit of His sacrifice, all the sons and daughters adopted from every nation.
7. The path through anguish, is the plan for the Servant to makes us to be accounted righteous.
8. He has poured out His soul to death. So, He was numbered with the transgressors.
9. We assume, hanging between two criminals, that He’s one too, getting what He deserves.
10. This was all written about Him. He fulfilled it so that He could bear the sin of many.