“1 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 men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten 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 upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
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 her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. 8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken. 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 a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. 11 After the suffering of his soul, 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.”
How heavy is the gift? Growing up, I asked myself that question regularly at Christmas—how heavy is the gift? If a gift is heavy in the right places, there is a higher probability that it was amazing. Handkerchiefs are light. Six packs of socks are light. Board games are heavy. Electronics are heavy in all the right places.
One Christmas morning, I found myself opening a light gift. When you are hoping for a Bruce Springsteen box set, a light gift is rather disappointing. It wound up being a pair of driving gloves. I don’t think I put those gloves on for at least a week. I played my board game. I listened to music on my new headphones. I didn’t think about those gloves at all. Once I tried those driving gloves on for size, though, I never wanted to take them off. If you saw a young man without driving gloves on at any point that winter, that young man was not me. Those gloves became my favorite gift. Forget music, books, electronics—I’ve got gloves. Decades later, I still have those gloves and right now I can only find one of them and it is driving me nuts as we speak.
Now that gift was light. It didn’t seem all that impressive. Christ would have seemed like a light gift at Christmas. Most people would have ranked him at between two pairs of socks and three. They would have opened the gift of Christ with disappointment, smiled to be polite, and turned their attention elsewhere. For those who try him on though, like those driving gloves he becomes their favorite gift of all. Christ doesn’t seem like much of a Christmas gift, but it turns out he’s the best. That’s what we will see from Isaiah and that’s the claim of this sermon: Christ doesn’t seem like much of a Christmas gift, but it turns out he’s the best.
We will study this in four points. First: an undesirable. Second: a substitute. Third: the death of the servant. Fourth: the resurrection of the servant. We see that the servant is undesirable in verses 1-3. We see that he is a substitute in verses 4-6. We see the servant’s death in verses 7-9 and his resurrection in verses 10-12.
First: an undesirable. This is our final look at Isaiah’s servant songs. This song starts with a description of the servant as a kid; you see it in verse 2, “He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.” If you saw Jesus as a kid, he would have seemed like a tiny maple tree growing up through a crack in the sidewalk to you. You know that it isn’t going to make it. Someone is going to pluck it up before it grows. That’s a description for us of little Jesus. If you were a betting man, you wouldn’t bet on Jesus. You wouldn’t bet on him doing anything he was tasked with doing. We know the story too well to see it clearly.
Jesus certainly wouldn’t have seemed desirable; verse 2, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” These same words for “beauty” and “appearance” were used about Rachel—Jacob’s second wife. She was undeniably desirable. Jesus was undeniably undesirable. He was much more like Jacob’s first wife, Leah. Leah was despised and rejected by Jacob, a woman of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces she was despised, and her husband esteemed her not. Leah’s life was a sad story. If you watched Jesus, you would have thought his life was a sad story; “we esteemed him not,” was the popular opinion about Jesus.
Even those who later came to put their faith in Jesus at first thought very little of him. That’s who Isaiah is speaking for here. He is speaking for those who came to believe in Jesus; as verse 1 puts it, “Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Isaiah is speaking for people like Jesus’ brother James who saw nothing special about his big brother. James mocked Jesus’ teaching and thought he was an embarrassment to the family.
Now, I don’t know why I assume that if I lived in the first century I would do any better than James at recognizing that there was something special about Jesus. I would hate to see an assessment of how I treat the people whom everyone else avoids; “He was despised and rejected by men.” If I don’t embrace the people society rejects, I need to ask myself why I think I would embrace Jesus. That’s why Jesus connects himself with the hungry, the poor, the naked, and the imprisoned saying, “whatever you’ve done to the least of these my brothers, you’ve done to me,” because if I’m uneasy about embracing these people I would have been uneasy about embracing him.
Christmas is a picture of that. There’s nothing easy about being born to a woman who is engaged to a man who isn’t your father. There is nothing enviable about being in a half-barn/half-cave that smelled like dung.
That’s Jesus’ life. That’s the life God chose when He became one of us. “Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” Now, you and I wouldn’t choose that, would we? My guess is no one’s goal for 2022 is to become despised and rejected by Inwood. Why would anyone choose that? The answer is found in our second point: a substitute.
Jesus became like us—a baby who certainly wet those swaddling cloths—to stand with us in our shame and sorrow. He chose to have a pitiable life out of pity for us; that’s verse 4, “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows.” There is nothing about God that would anyone to reject Him. You have never rejected perfection. The perfect God became rejectable because he became like us. We are rejectable. We’ve got reasons for shame.
Jesus became like humanity to help humanity. Humanity responded by thinking he was a loser; as verse 4 puts it, “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.” Humanity responded to God becoming rejectable by rejecting him. People responded to Jesus becoming like them in their pain by heaping more pain on him. That’s the story of the gospels. Jesus becomes like humanity. Humanity responds by killing him. God becomes weak like us; we make fun of him for being weak and then we kill him.
Imagine a single mother of two working two jobs to make ends meet. She loves her kids, but she’s so tired and weary. She falls asleep as she reads them bedtimes stories. When costumes are needed for the school play, she stays up late to work on them. Her kids find her asleep at the table in the morning next to sewing machine. They respond by complaining that their costumes aren’t done. When she drops the finished costumes off at school, they respond by critiquing her color choices. Those two kids regularly tell their mother all the ways in which she’s let them down. Now, if you met those kids, you would want to talk some sense into them, right? You would say, “you kids think your mom is a failure but she only seems that way to you because she’s been dying to herself to give you life.”
That’s Jesus. Humanity considered Jesus a failure. You wouldn’t want his life, right? That’s a natural judgment call for those who are excommunicated by the religious leaders. That’s a natural conclusion for those who are executed as a criminal. “I never have any trouble with the Romans. I just do what they tell me and there’s no trouble. That’s just part of being a law-abiding citizen.” Good people don’t wind up where Jesus of Nazareth wound up. Plenty of respectable people thought Jesus must have got what was coming to him. I don’t know if I would have been any different. Those kids considered their mom a failure, but the reality was that she was dying to herself so those ungrateful kids could have a better life. Humanity thought Jesus was a failure but the reality was that “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 are healed.”
Everything you find unattractive about Jesus’ life—everything that he endured that you fear—shame, rejection, unspeakable pain—he lived that way so that you wouldn’t have to. He was rejected so that you would be accepted. He lived in shame so that you could live under the smile of God. You will never find a friend like this. He loves you to death. He loves you to his death. That’s our third point: the death of the servant.
The Bible regularly likens us to sheep. It’s not a flattering comparison but it’s an apt one. Sheep are headstrong and simultaneously have no idea what’s best for themselves. That’s a pitiable combination and all too often that’s us. The clip you are about to see is a spiritual assessment of us sheep. Please play the clip.
Now I imagine that we would all say that, that foolish sheep chose to go his own way and it was a very idiotic way; well, look verse 6, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way. That’s us.
Now look at the rest of verse 6, “; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” We are the ones who act like sheep—headstrong, stubbornly jumping back into the ditches in life that lead to death—and Jesus suffers what we deserve. That’s why this sheep language continues in verse 7 describing Jesus saying, “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 her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”
You and I are as senseless as sheep, but Jesus is the one who was slaughtered. This language of him being silent before his shearers is seen in his trial before Pilate. Anyone watching Jesus on trial before Pilate—a lawyer, a school acquaintance, or even his own mother—would shake their heads and say, “that Jesus just isn’t good at life.” Even Pilate got fed up with Jesus’ unwillingness to defend himself and said, “why don’t you talk to me. Don’t you realize I have the power to release you or crucify you?”
Jesus’ bizarre ineffectiveness at defending himself led to what we see in verse 8, “By oppression and judgment he was taken away.” That’s injustice. Putting an innocent man to death is a special kind of injustice.
In high school Algebra 2, I sat by a kid named Mitch. I’ve never seen someone so brazen at cheating. He would just lean his whole desk over during tests and ask people, “what did you get for number three.” Mr. Fliestra seemed utterly oblivious to it. Now, let’s imagine that Mr. Flietstra actually caught Mitch cheating. He calls him put to his desk and tells Mitch he failed. He calls Mitch’s parents to explain. Mitch’s parents would have been fine with that. They would have been fine with a detention or two, but I can promise you that Mitch’s parents would not have been fine with Mr. Fliestra deciding to execute Mitch. Now Jesus who didn’t even cheat on a math test was executed. That’s the injustice that Isaiah’s talking about, and again Jesus chose it. You can think of Christmas as day one of Jesus’ living out his choice to live in this cesspool of a fallen world so that we can leave it.
Jesus suffered it for us. Think about it in terms of cold and flu season right now. There’s pneumonia floating around too. We’ve had everything short of the bubonic plague sweep through our house lately. Now I want all the children of this church to be healthy, but I love my own kids in a particular way. When my kids are sick, I wish I were sick instead of them. I don’t expect you to feel that way about my kids. Jesus feels that way about my kids. He feels it even deeper than I do. He truly is willing to suffer hell for my kids. He is willing for the same reason that I am—not because of anything in those kids but because simply because they are mine. That’s why he was willing to be afflicted, convicted, depicted as a reprobate and a criminal, and lifted high on an instrument of torture and execution. Only eyes of faith see that as love. Everyone else sees that as a waste of life. That’s our final point: the servant’s resurrection.
This last section is all about resurrection; that’s verse 11, “After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied.” That’s verse 10, after being cut off from his loved ones, “he will see his offspring and prolong his days.” This servant we’ve been studying for five weeks now would come back to life.
The resurrection is God’s A+ on Jesus’ life. God was well aware that humanity thought very little of Jesus. He knew that they considered him and his life to be pitiable. The resurrection is God’s public statement of how much he thought of Jesus and his life—A+, 10 out of 10.
Think of it this way—imagine that it’s the winter Olympics and you’re watching ice skating. A skater finishes her routine and is awaiting her scores. Out of ten possible points, the first judge gives her a 1.0. The second gives her a .5. The third one gives her a 0.0. The rest of the judges are equally dismissive. This is shaping up to be the singular worst performance in Olympic history and then the final judge gives her a 10.0. This final judge then turns on her microphone and demands that the other scores be thrown out. She proves beyond any doubt that the routine we just saw was the greatest performance of that has ever taken place on ice. Now it’s hard to argue with this final judge because she’s Michelle Kwan, the most decorated ice skater of all time, and it turns out that the other judges were just spectators who snuck into the judges’ booth.
That’s what’s going on with the resurrection. Throughout his life, people were giving Jesus’ performance scores of 0.5 and 1.0 and 0.0. Those scores came from the spectators who snuck into the judge’s booth—the Pharisees, Herod, Peter telling Jesus that he was a fool to think he was going to be handed over to die, James for thinking that Jesus was insane and trying to get him to come back home. We’ve all got our thoughts on Jesus, and they all fall woefully short. My best thoughts about Jesus don’t do him justice.
The resurrection of Jesus is God’s very kind way of kicking all humanity out of the judge’s booth and saying, “none of you know near as much about life as you think you do. That life was a 10.0. Did you see how Jesus pulled off that perfect trust in the midst of panic? Did you notice how he continued to turn toward people rather than away from them as their rejection ripped him apart inside? Check out my servant.”
That’s what all these servant songs have been about—“check out my servant.” It’s God’s way of telling me, “get over yourself, Adam, and look at the sort of person I admire. Look at the sort of life which I value so highly that even if it ended, I would resurrect it to keep it going. That’s the sort of life I’m offering you. I want to turn your life, which so often looks like that sheep jumping back into the ditch yet again, into the sort of life that deserves an eternal encore.” That’s what God is doing in the people who check out His servant.
That’s what God is looking for today. God is looking for people who come to see Jesus the way He sees Jesus. The whole Christian faith can be summarized as learning to see Jesus the way the Father sees Jesus. If you do that, you will no longer reject people whom you wouldn’t have given a second look at before. If you do that, you will want to live his way rather living like that sheep jumping back into the same ditch yet again. It all falls into place if only we check out God’s servant, and that’s what Christmas is all about—checking out Jesus. He might seem like a light gift, but he’s the best of all. Amen.