Pastor's Power Points

March 19, 2006

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

“The Servant’s satisfaction comes as a result of His suffering. So to better understand His satisfaction we must first understand the nature of His suffering.
The Righteous Servant was crushed (bruised) v.10, but with a purpose – “for our iniquities,” v.5. “He bore the sin of many,” v.12, and “the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all,” v.6. “Travail” or “anguish,” is often paired with ‘iniquity,” explains Oswalt, “showing that it has a negative coloration, suggesting something like ‘wretchedness.’”¹ This speaks to the nature of the travail since He is the Righteous Servant. As the sinless One He endured a judgment that was incomprehensible to the human mind. Ironside spells it out:

It was not His physical sufferings alone that made propitiation for sin, but what He endured in His inmost being when His holy, spotless soul became the great Sin Offering. In other words, it was not what man did to Him that made reconciliation for iniquity, but what He endured at the Hand of God, leading to Immanuel’s orphaned cry: “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?”²

Considering the attributes of God this is a travail that man could never comprehend. The triune Godhead is holy, infinite and eternal, yet there seems to have been an abandonment of the Son by the Father, which, in the time-space continuum may have seemed like a few hours but was an infinitely different duration for the Son of God who is not bound by space and time, who also had enjoyed eternal intimate fellowship with the Father. As Crabb illustrates, we can imagine the Father speaking to the Son: “I’ll break our connection and let you experience the death of separation from me that all sin deserves.”³ “In a way that we cannot comprehend, He took our place in bearing the righteous judgment of God against sin. That was the depth of the suffering of the Lord Jesus.”⁴ Delitzsch describes it as being “plunged into distress,” to “pour out to the last drop,” He “poured out His soul.”⁵ He will look upon His travail – incomprehensible to man – with delight and be abundantly satisfied. From His perspective the Servant is satisfied by the anguish – the unknown agonies – of His soul because of what He sees resulting from it. The result of His anguish may be endlessly defined, yet clearly from the context of this passage we can further understand the nature of His satisfaction.

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^{1John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40-66 (Eerdmans Publishing, 1998)
2H.A. Ironside, The Prophet Isaiah (Loizeaux Brothers, 1952)
3Larry Crabb, Connecting, (Word Publishing, 1997)
4Alfred Martin and John Martin, Isaiah, The Glory of the Messiah, (Moody Press, 1983)
5Franz Julius Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Isaiah, Vol. II, (Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1894).}