Resurrection!

The fulfillment of Isaiah 53 by Jesus Christ is not mere coincidence but by divine providence. The Bible is a miracle! One of the facets that God’s Word miraculous is its prophetic utterances. Isaiah 53 contains many fulfillments to prophecy and New Testament writers often refer to this chapter. Let’s quickly run through where the New Testament quotes this chapter:
Is.53:1, :”Who hath believed our report?”: John 12:38, Romans 10:15
Isaiah 53:4: Matt. 8:17
Isaiah 53:5: 1 Peter 2:24
Isaiah 53:6: 1 Peter 2:25
Isaiah 53:7,8: Acts 8:32,33
Isaiah 53:9: 1 Peter 2:22
Isaiah 53:12: Mark 15:28; Luke 22:37
Ten different New Testament verses quote from Isaiah 53. Each Gospel writer quotes from Isaiah 53. The two most prominent apostles, Paul and Peter quote from Isaiah 53. All the writers quote from this chapter with one person in mind fulfilling the prophecies, Jesus the Messiah. All the writers quote this passage with complete confidence that Isaiah wrote the Word of God. This is conclusive evidence that this prophecy has its fulfillment in the RIGHTEOUS SERVANT, Jesus only. Jesus fulfills these prophecies not in some general way, but in a specific, detailed manner. The fulfillment of this prophecy could not have been mere coincidence, but by the arrangements of divine Providence.
There is only one way to make sense of the suffering Jesus endured in this world and that is to know that Jesus rose again from the dead. The suffering of Jesus requires His mighty resurrection; the resurrection of Jesus requires His substitutionary suffering. If Jesus remained dead, His suffering would make no sense. These verses predict the resurrection of Jesus Christ after His trouble filled suffering for the sins of the world. Each of these final three verses in Isaiah 53 refer to His suffering but the thought of the resurrection underlies His suffering. When you hear of the resurrection, what is your response? Do you mock? Do you delay? Or do you believe? Isaiah 53 gives us all a strong reason to believe in the resurrection because Isaiah predicts Jesus’ resurrection 700 years before He lived!
If you are not a believer in the death and resurrection of Christ, let me warn you. These things may sound like foolishness to you. Let me assure you, that they are not, for to us who believe, these things are the sweetest things in all the world. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God, (1 Cor. 1:18).
“He shall see His seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.”
“He shall see His seed.” “He shall see” speaks of HIS LIFE. You have to be alive to SEE. To see is the act of a living person. He shall see His seed shows that He will rise and live.
HIS SEED speaks of HIS life IN US. We are HIS SEED, His descendants by the regeneration of the Holy Spirit. (1 John 3:9)
His seed is US, the great company of those who will be redeemed by His blood. His seed are those who believe in Him and have been born again. A seed speaks of us having HIS LIFE in us.
“He shall prolong his days.” Though he would be pierced through with a mortal death wound, His days shall be prolonged and He shall live again! The One crushed shall see, and the one wounded will have days without end because He is the resurrection and the life!
Though he will be crushed and his lifeblood will be poured out, His days shall be prolonged and He will rise triumphantly from the dead.
“The pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.” These words throb with resurrection power, for Jesus in rising again will be eternally prosperous, sitting upon His throne in heaven.
The Resurrection shows that through the suffering of Jesus:
The FATHER is SATISFIED, v.10,11a
Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.
God was PLEASED to bruise Him… God was satisfied with His suffering. How satisfied was the Father with the suffering of His Son? So satisfied He raised Him from the dead!
The soul of Jesus’ suffering was the suffering of His soul.
How was God pleased with the suffering of Christ?
A. Christ’s suffering FORGIVES GUILTY sinners.
God was pleased to put His Son to grief in order to cleanse us of our guilt. God desires to forgive sinners. God took pleasure in the death of Christ because His Son was without sin and He would rise again. Now that His Son died for sin we can have absolute assurance that we can be forgiven. It pleased the Lord to bruise Him because SALVATION will arise from His SUFFERING.
How could this be? Can God take pleasure and delight in the death of His Son? Yes! Because God demands a penalty for sin which is death. Without the death of His Son, God would have to cast His entire creation into eternal hell! We have all incurred His condemnation and wrath, and only by the death of Christ can we be saved.
Did God Himself bruise His Son? No, wicked man crucified Jesus. Men inflicted the righteous Servant such crushing suffering and deep sorrow, but the supreme cause of all that happened was our Sovereign God. Even sinful men are subservient to His predetermined counsel.
Acts 4:27,28, For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.
Man in His anger cannot go beyond what God has ordained.
His soul an offering for sin! What sublime words we read. How can we get to the bottom of these concepts? The “nephesh,” or the living soul, the life of the perfect Servant was made a trespass offering, asham.
The phrase “offering for sin” is translated “trespass offering” thirty four times in the Scripture. There were five major types of offerings under the Law of Moses: the Burnt offering, the Meal, the Peace, the Sin, and the Trespass offerings. Jesus’ offering for our sin typifies all of these offerings! His sacrifice for sin is the fulfillment of all these Mosaic sacrifices and His one time sacrifice has done away with all of them, once and for all!
The trespass offering was offered by a guilty person. The unusual thing about this offering, found in Leviticus 5, is that the person may or may not even be aware of his sin. Sometimes we do not sin intentionally. We sin because we are sinners. Sometimes we commit a trespass ignorantly; we are unaware of our sin. Jesus is the perfect sacrifice, given to us by God, on our behalf to cleanse us from all of our sin. It has to do with a guilty person offering a sacrifice in order to receive atonement and forgiveness.
Jesus our trespass offering bore all of our guilt for sin! God was pleased to allow His Son to be bruised because:
B. Christ’s Suffering GLORIFIES our HOLY God: It pleased the Lord to allow His Son to endure such suffering at the hands of the Jews and Gentiles. Why? Because Jesus handled all these sufferings in a way that brought great glory to God (Read John 12:23 and John 17:1). No where is God more glorified than in the suffering of Jesus upon the cross! Jesus shows forth the attributes of God’s character by His death upon the cross. Two attributes of God that the sufferings of Christ magnify are His holiness and His love.
Christ’s sufferings demonstrate the absolute HOLINESS of God. Holiness is God’s chief attribute.
Christ’s sufferings demonstrate the unconditional LOVE of God. God loved us so much that He gave His only begotten Son to pay for all our sin.
God was satisfied by the suffering of Jesus Christ! Christ’s death satisfied the divine justice of God. Christ did not die to only SAVE Man, He died to SATISFY God’s divine justice. God is holy and just. God cannot have fellowship with sin. His absolutely holy nature causes Him to separate from sin and punish sin. God is angry at sin and Jesus Christ bore the entire weight of God’s wrath when He died upon the cross.
Travail means the wearisome labor that leads to exhaustion and pain. Travail is trouble. Travail is labor with pain. Does this not perfectly describe the crucifixion? God saw the trouble that the sins of the world brought to His Son and God was SATISFIED. Divine justice was propitiated. “God be merciful to me a sinner!” Propitiation means the punishment due to sin was released.
Believers are JUSTIFIED, v.11b
“By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.”
Why? Because Jesus is the perfectly righteous One who was raised bodily from the grave and lives forever. God took upon Himself the form of a servant so that He could suffer and die!
Why did Jesus die? To satisfy God’s holy justice and to save sinners by grace!
Romans 4:24, 25, But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.
Yes, He was raised again for our justification.
The righteousness of Christ is imputed on the basis of faith, Romans 4:3,5,6,11.
1 Cor. 15:17, And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.
Without the resurrection of Jesus Christ no one can have forgiveness of sins through Him.
Oh, so many have been saved by His grace. We would want more to be saved, for it seems that so many do not believe, but we must commit that to our Sovereign God. Not all are saved. The theory of a universal salvation is not found in the Bible. This much we do know: whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved. Because He rose again, He lives, and He can save all who call upon Him. If we confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in our heart that God hath raised him from the dead, we shall be saved.
Because Jesus bore all our iniquities. Like a heavy burden, Jesus carried our iniquities away!
Christ is VICTORIOUS, v.12
This One who is despised and rejected of men, acquainted with grief, who has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, who was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, who was oppressed and afflicted and treated with violent injustice, could He have died for nothing? Did He die in vain? No, may it never be, for He will conquer every foe! This verse teaches that Christ is victorious. Verse twelve would be impossible without resurrection.
Isaiah tells us the great results of Christ’s suffering. The idea of this verse is that the Savior will conquer like a mighty warrior over all of his foes. In His victory He will gain many prizes, and He will distribute the spoils of victory after a battle.
“He shall divide the spoil with the strong.”
What are the spoils of Jesus’ work? What land did Jesus conquer when He died upon the cross? Like a battle commander, He went to war, not in a physical war against an invading army, but in a spiritual battle against all the forces of evil and hell. His battle was against the Devil and all of His demons. It was a spiritual battle of epic proportion, a battle which we can never fully imagine or grasp. Jesus won the battle. He conquered every foe. Do you see the victory is His? Now He has the spoils of His victory to distribute.
What are the prizes of victory Jesus has to distribute to His people? Eternal life. Eternal joy, peace, power and His presence. We reign in life by Him and we conquer death by Him. Romans 8 gives to us the spoils of our victory:
We conquer in all of these things: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Yes, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
What else? Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
2001 was a year of suffering in our city and nation that we have never seen before. How can we be victorious in the midst of such loss of life? One of the spoils of victory that He gives to the strong is victory in the face of tribulation, distress, peril or sword. We conquer over everything life sends our way because Jesus conquered the grave.
If Jesus remained dead, our suffering in this world would make no sense. His resurrection gives us the hope of resurrection.
Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we can be assured that God does not deal with us for the sake of time, but the sake of eternity.
If Jesus conquered all of the mighty forces of wickedness on the cross, then surely He can conquer your strong stubbornness or your unbelief. Surely He can overcome your strong self will or your strong despair
Here are some other spoils that Jesus gives to the strong who trust in Him: FAITH in His deity. The resurrection of Jesus Christ PROVES His deity, Romans 1:4 says that Jesus was declared to be the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead.
ASSURANCE of Salvation. The resurrection of Jesus Christ grants to us SALVATION, Romans 4:25, Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.
INTERCESSION for our sins. The resurrection of Jesus Christ shows that He is our Great High Priest, Seeing then that we have a great high pries, Jesus the Son of God who ever liveth to make intercession for them.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ promises to us the POWER of the Holy Spirit.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is proof that there will be a judgement of the godly and ungodly. He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.
Jesus conquers all the power of Satan and all the power of sin. The victory of Jesus Christ over the cross would extend far. His salvation will extend to the great man and the small man; the strong man and the weak man. Jesus Christ as the King of all kings will save other kings of the earth. Jesus Christ as the Strongest strong one will save the strong men of the earth.
Sometimes it seems that so few are saved.
How did He earn this victory? Because he was numbered with the transgressors, he bare the sins of many, and he made intercession for the transgressors. Jesus died with sinful men and when he died upon the cross he interceded for those sinners. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do! Oh, what grace our Lord Jesus Christ shows! What can we say of this closing passage but that Jesus is the Friend of sinners. He was numbered with sinners at the time of his birth when He was put on the census taken by Caesar Augustus. He was numbered with sinners at his death, with sinners on each side of our Lord.