Pastor's Power Points

April 9, 2006

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

“To see the lost, prodigal sons and daughters of God turning yearning eyes homewards, and saying ‘Abba, Father!’ must be satisfaction indeed to him who came that, in his sonship, he might honour the Father.”¹ Then I said Behold, I come; in the scroll of the Book it is written of me I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart (Ps. 40:7-8). The satisfaction experienced by the Servant included the fulfillment of this prophecy. He came to accomplish the will of the Father and that is exactly what He did. “The suffering of his Servant… was to be the beginning of the continued execution of the divine plan of salvation, carried out by him, the ever-living, ever-working one.”² So the purpose of God is accomplished. If one were to cut off the reading of Isaiah 53 at verse 9 it would sound like the prophecy of the suffering Servant ends in defeat – as if a good man dies in obscurity for a good cause, never to be seen again. Yet it pleased the Lord to crush Him, continues verse 10 – God’s purpose was in this tragedy. “The pleasure of the Lord had in view the accomplishment of the divine will,” confirms Young.³ Instead of the Servant’s suffering being a tragic miscarriage of justice, a part of the meaninglessness of this life, Oswalt explains,

What God wants to come out of the Servant’s suffering is of monumental proportions. He wants human beings to be able to offer this man up on the altar of their sins so that he can be “a full and sufficient sacrifice” (Book of Common Prayer, Ritual for Communion) for them, satisfying all the unpaid debts of their behavior, debts they could never hope to pay, but debts that if left unpaid would stand forever between them and a just God.⁴

God, in His sovereignty through the suffering of His righteous Servant, “made the sin of men subservient to His predetermined counsel.”⁵ The anguish and travail of His soul was what accomplished the purpose of the Father. He will see it and be satisfied. Martin concludes, “How many times in human history men have dared to accomplish stupendous feats all for nothing! Not so with the Lord Jesus. Here is the crown of His atonement – ‘satisfied.’”⁶ The Lord is well pleased for His righteousness’ sake (Is. 42:21a).
 

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¹The Pulpit Commentary, vol. 10 Isaiah, 313
²Delitzsch, 304
³Edward J. Young, The Book of Isaiah, III (Wm. B. Eerdman’s, 1972), 354
⁴Oswalt, 400
⁵Delitzsch, 304
⁶Martin, 141