Marring Of A Servant (part 4 of 4)

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.