Pastor's Power Points

March 12, 2006

Divine Satisfaction
As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied…
Isa. 53:11a

As we are ushered into the Holy of Holies of Old Testament prophecy it is as if we are at the vantage point of John and Mary as they stood at the foot of the cross where Jesus was nailed. Add to that perspective the insights of Divine inspiration regarding His suffering, His travail, the anguish of His soul by the will of the Father – and we have revealed to us the Gospel. It is good news that the Servant suffered. It is good news that He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. It is good news that the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. It is good news that the righteous Servant shall justify many and make intercession for transgressors. But the climax of the good news rests in the word satisfied! He shall see the travail of His soul and be satisfied.

At first glance this is an odd statement. Truly it is unnatural, for what man would be satisfied with deep anguish of the soul? What is the nature of this satisfaction? Did the distress of His soul accomplish something? The answers to these questions form the good news of the Gospel. The Gospel is centered and focused on a Person. So of primary importance to significance is the understanding of who this Person is.

Can suffering and Messiah describe the same person? From Jewish history Demarest points out:

Judaism anticipated a powerful, triumphant monarch who would vanquish its foes by sheer force. Isaiah’s prophecy of a humiliated and suffering Servant was so foreign to their vision of the Messiah, that Jews came to view the Servant as the Jewish people as a whole. Judaism stumbled over a Messiah who in lowliness of mind came to suffer and to serve.¹

James Smart posits:

The possibility still remains that this individual figure represents an imaginative concentration of centuries of the Servants experience into a single portrait so that Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah… and all the faithful of the ages, past, present, and future are embodied in this one figure. (Italics mine).²

The preceding interpretations of the suffering Servant seem to be established on the notion that there exists a distinction between the Old Testament portrait of the Servant and the New Testament reality of the suffering Servant. This approach assumes that the meaning of the book of Isaiah for today is different than the meaning for its original readers. But we know for certain how the early Christian community interpreted the suffering Servant. Citing Philip teaching the Ethiopian in Acts 8, Elmer Leslie points out that the early church’s understanding of this passage was centered on Jesus Christ. The redemptive work of Christ is not the same as the redemptive mission of Israel. “[Isa. 53:4-6] gives us one of the profoundest concepts in the Old Testament, vicarious suffering – one who does not deserve it suffering on behalf of another”³

---

^{1 Bruce A. Demarest, Jesus Christ: the God-Man, (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1978), 85
2 James D. Smart, History and Theology on Second Isaiah, (Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1965), 191
3 Elmer A. Leslie, Isaiah, (New York, Abingdon Press, 1963)}