Isaiah Part4: The Suffering Servant and His Coming Glory

Isaiah  Part4: The Suffering Servant and His Coming Glory Passage: Isaiah 49-66 The book of Isaiah speaks long, frequently and repeatedly about the reasons for exile, judgment, and the coming deliverance. The final chapters talk about the great Hope of God that they can look forward to. Isaiah speaks triumphantly about God’s deliverance with words like “Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save." What does this mean? "The Arm of the Lord” is the image of the efficacious and powerful will of God. But His powerful "Arm" - His Messiah - will not be like any human deliverer we look to. Chapter 53 describes the Messiah in a different way: "He grew up before him like a render shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was rejected and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we were healed.” In the balance sheet of all the universe and before the throne of God’s justice, there was a mountain of sin piling up against humanity and someone had to pay in order that those who sinned and infected with this spiritual disease could be restored, made new, and have new life. Isaiah is talking about substitution and substitution is the key doctrine word for all of us to think and meditate on this week. Which is very timely as many of us observe the period of Lent, the 40 days of sacred meditation, prayer, fasting, worship leading up to the Saturday before Resurrection Sunday.