THE BEAT e133 Celebrate the Lamb of God (a serious and sovereign suffering for my soul)

This is Faith to Witness 99, motivating us to hear God and share the Shepherd.  

Season 2 Episode 133 

THE BEAT | Celebrate the Lamb of God (a serious and sovereign suffering for my soul)

Quick Take 

Hey human, in this episode we hear the words of Isaiah, about a common man, a suffering servant who took the brow of humanity on his shoulders, furrowed in sin. Rejoice in Isaiah’s witness, how he takes ownership of our need for contrition. Let’s prepare to celebrate the Lamb. He is resurrected. Join us in e133. And share it with someone who needs Jesus.

How are you suffering for the name of Jesus today?

I’m Kathryn Bise, your host. So glad you are here.

For those of you who come straight from e132, our last episode, Isaiah is top of mind. The book of Isaiah is the most quoted Old Testament book by Jesus and the apostles who wrote the New Testament. In the 8th century BCE (Before Common Era) God gave this man, his prophet, the words to prophecy about what scholars have named the “suffering servant” more than 700 years before Jesus walked on the earth. While Philippians chapter 2 captures the humility of Christ in descending to earth, and ascending to God’s right hand—scripture I return to almost daily—Isaiah chapter 53 gives us the power of a foreshadowing light on what his suffering was. And that God would give his son “a portion of the great” for the sacrificial life he lived on earth.

Isaiah 53:7

“And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”

This is the verse, verse 7 in Isaiah 53, this is when my soul crumbled in humility for what he did. Tears of gratitude. He suffered in silence. He took it on. So it is in this spirit I embrace Holy Week.

Picture Isaiah, a man who is well into his ministry of 87 years, three-quarters of the way to his own martyr’s death.  Drawn deeper and deeper into the power of God’s voice, and his Will for his people. That there will be a deliverer. Through the power of suffering.

He prophecies about that deliverer. Long before God gave his only begotten Son so that whosoever…

Let’s hear God’s word through Isaiah.

Isaiah 53: 1-3

53 Who has believed our message

    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

2 He grew up before him like a tender 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.

3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,

    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.

Like one from whom people hide their faces

    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

4 Surely he took up our pain

    and bore our suffering,

yet we considered him punished by God,

    stricken by him, and afflicted.

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,

    he was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was on him,

    and by his wounds we are healed.

6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

    each of us has turned to our own way;

and the Lord has laid on him

    the iniquity of us all.

Jesus walked this earth as a common man, a common face with a divine countenance. But the people did not see divinity.

In a beautiful article titled Isaiah and the Suffering Servant King, (May 31, 2017) by Dr. Tim Mackie, of The Bible Project, Dr. Mackie notes that Jesus’ death was the ultimate sacrificial guilt offering. This offering was introduced to the Jewish nation in Leviticus 5:14-6:7 if you would like to read it today. The guilt offering described was to provide atonement for their evil. But the priests provided the atonement. Now, we have the “high priest” to make the final atonement for all sin.

On Behalf of a People

Let’s continue with Verses 7-12.

Isaiah 53: 7-12

7 He was oppressed and afflicted,

    yet he did not open his mouth;

he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,

    and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,

    so he did not open his mouth.

8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.

    Yet who of his generation protested?

For he was cut off from the land of the living;

    for the transgression of my people he was punished.

9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,

    and with the rich in his death,

though he had done no violence,

    nor was any deceit in his mouth.

10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,

    and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,

he will see his offspring and prolong his days,

    and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.

11 After he has suffered,

    he will see the light of life and be satisfied;

by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,

    and he will bear their iniquities.

12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,

    and he will divide the spoils with the strong,

because he poured out his life unto death,

    and was numbered with the transgressors.

For he bore the sin of many,

    and made intercession for the transgressors.

Isaiah is so divinely rich. He takes ownership for his people. Dr. Mackie puts it beautifully: “the servant was suffering and dying on behalf of Israel’s sin and unfaithfulness. It was Israel who rejected God’s servant, and they led him to his death and killed him.”

Jesus Died at the Hand of the Guilty

Dr. Mackie also notes this key insight: “It was actually God’s mysterious purpose that the servant would die at the hands of Israel, because of their sin and on behalf of their sin.” He is saying that Jesus died at the hand of the guilty.

God’s Will is a mystery to the human mind. The whole spiritual transformation of my destiny is through God’s Son.

The suffering servant’s story ends so well. Because it is God’s Will that his people come to him. And to do that they must be pronounced righteous. The first forty chapters of Isaiah’s prophecy, which I imagine runs parallel to his life, so to speak, are about the nation’s evil ways, God’s judgment on what is righteous and what is not, and so their separation from God.

A Serious and Sovereign Suffering for My Soul

Yet, what we celebrate needs no belaboring of our own intellectual ways. To somehow meet a higher mark of understanding. The celebration is to accept his sacrifice and meditate on the divine suffering.

Jesus did not mistake my soul for sinful. It is sinful. Jesus did not despair that he suffered alone. He bore the burden. It was his alone to do. He is sovereign in his divine and redeeming humility.

His is a serious and sovereign suffering for my soul.

What we celebrate during this Holy Week is the silence of the Lamb of God.

What we take with us, what gives us courage, hope, and the steadfastness to love each other, human, is sharing in our deliverer’s suffering. To be silent, to utter not a word, and bear what comes to us in earthly life for “our portion” of living with God for eternity. Like Jesus, through Jesus, we “will see the light of life and be satisfied;”

And the joy of being like our brother in Christ, Isaiah, by telling others about the man who was fully human and fully divine, the man who remained silent so we could profess his name.

2,725 years later.