Comfort and Joy III // The Suffering Servant

A message by Pastor Mark Jordan

Remember: Advent

  • Time of preparation like getting ready for an important guest
  • Focus on peace, hope, love and joy.

Love in the Bible

  • Philia: friendly love
  • Storge: family love
  • Eros: romantic love
  • Agape: unconditional love

Lighting the Wreath

  • John 3:16-17 (NIV) | For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Isaiah 53:1-12 (NIV)

The Origin

  • Vs.1-2: 1 Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
  • Jesus was born to fulfill the prophecy – a baby to be the tender shoot out of the spiritually dry state of Judaism at the time.
    • Matthew 1.21: The angel to Joseph, “you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

The Ordeal

  • Vs. 3-6 3 He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. 4 Surely, he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
  • Jesus took on the suffering for the sake of our sins; in other words, He took the punish so we wouldn’t have to.
    • 1 Peter 2.24: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”

The Obedience

  • Vs.7-9 7 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. 8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. 9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.
  • Jesus was obedient to death, even death on a cross
    • Philippians 2:8: [Jesus] humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!

The Outcome

  • Vs. 10-12: 10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. 11 After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
  • What looked like Christ’s defeat was God’s greatest victory, for Jesus and everyone who believes!
    • 2 Corinthians 5.21, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Jesus, The Offering

  • Matthew 20:28 (NIV) |…just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
  • Jesus’ sacrifice is for our salvation.
    • Romans 10.9: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Reflection Questions

  1. What are the different ways the Bible depicts love? What kind of love do you expect and/or share during these Advent and Christmas seasons?
  2. Pastor Mark broke down our over-arching passage from Isaiah 53 in four ways. What was the origin and how did it create the ordeal?
  3. What was the obedience that Isaiah pointed to that Jesus fulfilled?
  4. What was the outcome for Jesus, as well as you and me?
  5. How does Jesus offering His life inspire you to do the same?