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For centuries, the Christian Church has regarded this fourth Servant Song in Second Isaiah as a prophecy that foretells the life, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Certainly the New Testament uses portions of it in connection with our Lord (cf. John 12:38; Acts 8:32-33; 1 Peter 2:24-25, et al.). And yet a great air of mystery surrounds this passage. Who finally is the servant? Why has he been the object of shame and suffering all of his life? Why was he judged and killed? How did others come to recognize that he was serving God's merciful purposes? How was he exalted over death? The poem itself does not spell out the detailed answers to all of those questions. Indeed, there are even lines in the poem that defy certain translation, as scholars have long recognized. And certainly the prophet whom we call Second Isaiah had no knowledge of the incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus of Nazareth.

Rather, the prophet simply faithfully proclaimed the words that God gave him, writing them down in the sixth century B.C. for the Israelite exiles in Babylonia. And then the poem's final interpretation waited for centuries, hidden in the secret heart of God, until it was the will of God to shine the dazzling light of revelation upon it and to embody it in the person of Jesus Christ. Ever since our Lord walked this earth, this passage has helped us understand Jesus Christ, and he in turn has helped us understand this passage. So if we want to know our Lord and the meaning of his history, then this Suffering Servant Song can help us to attain that knowledge.

The text begins with God speaking in verses 13-15 of chapter 52. God announces that his servant, who was so disfigured by suffering that persons could not bear to look at him, and who was cut off from normal human acceptance and community (v. 14), will become one honored and exalted and given all good things (v. 13). And that is totally unexpected. When we see someone horribly suffering in pain or disfigured, we turn away from them and do not expect them to be changed. That is unknown in our world. But the servant's lot will gloriously be transformed, and as a result, far distant places (nations) and important persons (kings) will hear of it and be totally astonished (v. 15).

In a sense, those three opening verses summarize most of the poem's thought, for in 53:1, the unknown speakers in far-off nations and exalted circles take up the speech. "Who would have believed such a transformation?" they ask (53:1). From his birth on, the servant's whole life was marred by suffering. He was weak and parched, like a plant growing up out of dry ground. He had no beauty about him, because beauty signifies blessing from God, and the servant did not seem to be blessed. No one regarded him as important (v. 2). He was a man subjected to blows and scorned, humiliated and isolated and sorrowing (v. 3).

As a result, the unknown speakers continue, we all thought he was rejected also by God. Yet, now we realize that the servant suffered because he was bearing our sins and that God was subjecting him to the punishment that should have been ours (vv. 4-6). "All we like sheep have gone astray," and the servant was atoning for our unfaithfulness to our Lord.

What causes this realization and repentance on the part of those for whom the servant suffers? Our text does not say. It simply goes on to describe the suffering that the servant undergoes for our sake. Hauled into court, the servant makes no defense of himself (v. 7). Instead he is condemned to death, and a shameful death at that. He is buried along with all the other criminals and forgotten as of no importance, even though he actually was innocent of our transgressions with which he was charged (vv. 7-9).

But all of that was God's will! God used the servant's death as the expiation for our own sin (v. 10). The innocent servant's death atoned for what all of us have done wrong! And as a result, all of us are now counted righteous in the eyes of our God (v. 11).

The servant's burial is not the end of the story, however, for God once more takes up the speech in verse 11. On the other side of the grave, beyond the finality of death, God proclaims that his servant will be restored and exalted to a good and happy life (v. 11). Is that a foretelling of the resurrection of Christ? The text does not say; it gives no further details. But it is clear that the servant's humiliating death will not hold him forever, and that he will live fully as the reward for his faithful and atoning sacrifice of his life (vv. 10-12).

So it is that those events in the life of the servant, who seemed of no consequence, have all been planned and wrought by God, and that behind the suffering, the scorn, the isolation and death of the servant, there has been the unseen hand of the Lord God, working out his purpose of forgiving us all and of restoring us, despite our sin, to righteousness once again in his eyes.

It is not a fanciful story, good Christians, for there are many in our world and in fact in this congregation who regard God's servant, Jesus Christ, as really of very little consequence for their daily lives. He was a man, they think, who got in trouble with the Roman and Jewish authorities of his time, and who therefore ended up dying a criminal's death on a Roman torture instrument called a cross. "So what?" is the attitude of our age. What does that have to do with me?

But somewhere along the line in our daily round perhaps God will penetrate our careless hearts and minds with the startling knowledge that Jesus Christ "was wounded for our transgressions" and "bruised for our iniquities" and "with his stripes we are healed" -- healed in the eyes of our God, you see, counted righteous once more in God's sight, despite all of the sins and terribly human mistakes and weaknesses to which we all fall prey. We are forgiven, Christians, our sins atoned for by the death of our Lord. And that means that we do not have to suffer the wages of sin which is always death, and that we do not need to think that we are loosed and cut off from the hand of our God. No. Instead, through faith in the work of Jesus Christ, we can be restored to the household of our Father and know once more his loving and sustaining presence. And that is life, friends, abundant life, and joy, and eternity with our God!