Continuing on, and interpreting
Isaiah according to the Christ-event, one finds that the shock of these kings
will come about because “they will witness something unannounced to them, and
they will understand something they had not heard about” (52:15d). How
will they witness something unannounced and understand something that they had
not heard? This will occur through the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus
(He is Lord of all). The shock will come when they hear that they are now
subservient to One that they had shamed and crucified. The fact of their
subjection to this King, Jesus (the one now understood as the marred and suffering
servant of Isaiah), was certainly not something that had been announced to them
beforehand. Indeed, a suffering messiah
was not even expected by His own people Nevertheless, the fact, at least
as interpreted by the followers of Jesus after His death and Resurrection, was
inescapable.
In addition to the
shock of the announcement about subservience to a crucified man, no one had
ever heard of one rising physically from the dead in the way that Jesus was
said to have risen from the dead. As a matter of fact, the very idea was
ludicrous. Men did not come back from
the dead---not in their physical bodies. Ghosts and spirits? Yes,
this was understood and even expected.
There was language for such things. A man coming back from the
grave and being exalted as the Lord of all people, nations, and things---who
would ever have spoken of such a thing? Little wonder then that the
earliest believers in Jesus looked at the words of Isaiah and envisioned him looking
forward (while also looking backwards and folding in Israel’s story and
purposes according to what he would have understood to be the purpose of the
Creator God for His world) and putting pen to paper for precisely this reason and
writing “Who would have believed what we just heard?” (53:1a)
In some sense, it is
reasonable to presume that Isaiah had an idea that what he was writing was
completely incredulous. How could this servant (Adam, humanity, Israel,
the messiah), disfigured so that he no longer looked like a man, and marred so
that he no longer looked human, startle nations, shock kings, and be lifted
high, elevated, and greatly exalted? This question could not only be
asked of the suffering servant of Isaiah, but of his God’s servant that was Israel,
and His first servant, that being man.
The answer would lie
in the Resurrection of the righteous dead and the restoration and recreation of
the world attendant to that as the Creator God would come to live with man
(heaven come to earth) and rule all things, which was long held as a hope of
Israel, and ultimately for those that would be witnesses of the resurrected One
and attempt to put it into words, its power that is mysteriously transmitted
and infused into this world through the preaching of the Gospel in both word
and deed. The servant would be resurrected. Israel would be
resurrected. Humanity would be resurrected. The previously marred
would be restored, according to the power and promise of the Creator God.
The Resurrection is
put forth as the answer to the question, but is that when this would
happen? Isaiah seems to ask the same question as he writes, “When was the
Lord’s power revealed through Him?” (53:1b) The answer has already been
heard, but it is returned to now, declaring again that the Creator God’s power
to do all that He planned to do, for and through His covenant people throughout
all of time, was made manifest when Jesus “was appointed the
Son-of-God-in-power according to the Holy Spirit by the Resurrection from the
dead,” which made Him “Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 1:4).
As the Lord Jesus is
elevated and lifted high through proclamation of His Lordship in word and in
deed, nations continue to be startled and kings are still driven to shock.
As the Gospel proclamation is live, the Lord’s power is continually revealed
through those that have cast their allegiance with Him, and the powerful and
faithful Creator God continues to re-shape, re-make, re-new, and re-store His
people and His world through them, reversing the marring of the fall of the
creatures that had been created as His image, and making them into those that
truly bear His image and reflect His glory into the world.
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