The Gospel According to Isaiah, Part 5, Stricken, Smitten, Afflicted, Pierced, and Crushed

The Gospel According to Isaiah

Part 5: Stricken, Smitten, Afflicted, Pierced, and Crushed

Isaiah 53:4-5

Luke 7:11-15

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Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Music: Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing by Robert Robinson and John Wyeth (Public Domain.) Arranged and performed by Ginger Manning. Recorded and mastered by Gordon Manning. 

Transcript

The Gospel According to Isaiah

Part 5: Stricken, Smitten, Afflicted, Pierced, and Crushed

Hello everyone and welcome back.

As always, I invite you to get your Bible and a notebook if you so desire; we will be back in Isaiah chapter fifty-three.

If you have been following along in our last few episodes, then you know that we have been looking at one of the Suffering Servant passages in the book of Isaiah; specifically, we have been looking at the passage that begins with the last few verses of chapter fifty-two and goes through the end of chapter fifty-three.

We have identified the Suffering Servant as Jesus of Nazareth and discovered that He will return to Earth to establish His kingdom.

We learned, also, that He is high, lifted up, and exalted by God the Father.

Then we started getting into His first earthly coming.

We saw how He was received the first time He came to His people, a discovery we will continue today as we look even deeper into the punishment that Jesus took in His body.

Some people may ask, “What more can be done to Him? Hasn’t He suffered enough punishment?”

Remember that He has already been beaten, mocked, put on trial, mocked some more, beaten some more, then taken to the Roman authorities to have more of the same done to Him.

By the time the general public sees Jesus again, He is beaten so badly that He was unrecognizable as a human being.

And now He is going to endure even more?

How can that be?

As we will see, some of this punishment does not come at the hands of men.

In fact, the worst punishment that Jesus takes on is carried out by Someone the people standing nearby do not even see. 

That is what we are going to look at today.

Let us read today’s verses.

Isaiah chapter fifty-three verses four and five.

Isaiah 53:4  Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 

Isaiah 53:5  But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

Let us pray.

Father God, we thank You for Your love and for Your Word. We thank You for all that has been done for us through Your Son. Open our hearts to receive Your Word and our minds to understand what You are saying through Your Spirit. We ask these things in the Name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

I want you to remember, from our last study together, that what we are looking at right now is the nation of Israel looking at what Jesus did when He was here on earth the first time. 

They are remembering how they treated Him, how they rejected Him, and now His work that was carried out through all of that rejection, beating, and the crucifixion.

As a people they are seeing, for the first time, that Jesus came to show them the way back to God the Father without the need for the Levitical priesthood, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, or any of the works that they had grown accustomed to performing.

They are looking backward in time, we can see that from the use of past tense verbs, and they are seeing, with humility and shame, how badly they rejected their Messiah.

In our verses today, we are going to discover that they see so much more than their own rejection of Him, but also the One who was ultimately responsible for Jesus’ death.

Let us begin to unravel our verses together, bit by bit, and see what the people of Israel finally come to realize about Jesus and why it is so important for us as well.

“Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrow.”

Our first phrase gives us some insight into what the people of Israel are finally starting to see about Jesus.

They understand that He was a man just as they are so He can relate to them on every level. 

If you look at the ministry of Jesus in the Gospel accounts, then you will see a man who deeply loved the people He was around. 

Not only did He celebrate with them in their happiness, such as at the wedding feast in Cana, but He also grieved with them in their moments of despair.

We need only look at the story of the widow whose son was dead to see the grief that moved Him to compassion for the woman.

Turn to Luke chapter seven for a moment and let us see Jesus in this way.

Luke 7:11 – 15  Soon afterward he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. 

Jesus was moved with compassion for this mother.

If you think for one moment that Jesus did not also feel some grief and sorrow for her, then you should seriously reconsider what kind of Person Jesus is. 

Not only is He fully God but He is fully human, also, which means that He is able to feel the full spectrum of human emotions.

He not only is capable of feeling every human emotion, but He is capable of succumbing to every human desire caused by those emotions.

That is why the writer of the book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is able to “sympathize with our weaknesses,” that in every way He was “tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

Jesus, because of His humanity, feels the same emotions we do, He feels joy, delight, happiness, sadness, grief, and sorrow. 

When the people of Israel look back on Jesus and they see what He has done for them, they say, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,” not only because of what He did that day on that cross, but because He was fully man, and He felt the emotions they felt every single day.

He still feels those emotions because He did not lay down His humanity when He ascended into heaven.

He was risen from the grave as a man, fully God and fully man the same as He lived. 

He now sits at the right hand of the Father in the same way, fully God and fully man.

He still has the same emotional capacities that He had when He walked the earth over two thousand years ago. 

He still understands our griefs and sorrows; He also understands our joys and our triumphs.

There is a reason He endured the torment of that day, the death of the cross, and the burial in that tomb.

There is a reason He rose from that tomb after three days and three nights. 

He did it so that we might be saved and become His joint heirs in His Father’s kingdom.

When we consider what happened that day, and when the people of Israel look back on that day, they see that it was not just the Roman soldiers or the Jewish leaders who inflicted their wrath upon Jesus.

Rather it was the working of God the Father that day that made it possible for us to be saved.

Look at the rest of verse four, “yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.”

This is the part of the cross that makes people angry.

This is the part of the cross that makes people confused.

This is the part of the cross that makes people turn away, especially if they do not understand what is happening.

When Jesus was on that cross, He was taking on the sin of every person who would ever believe.

He was becoming the sin sacrifice for all time for every believer throughout all eternity.

That once-for-all sin sacrifice could only appease the wrath of God because it was offered by the Son of God. 

Contrary to popular belief, God the Father did not abandon the Son on the cross; He did not turn His back on the Son and forsake Him.

Instead, what happened was much worse by comparison.

God the Father unleashed His full wrath and justice against the sin of all believers on His Son that day.

That is why the people of Israel, when they look back on this event, they see that Jesus was “stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.”

The next verse tells us more of what happened during that time on the cross and what Jesus endured so that we might be saved. 

I want you all to understand that this next verse, in context, is dealing with salvation and nothing else.

This next verse has nothing to do with our physical healing and everything to do with our spiritual healing when we come to salvation.

Isaiah 53:5  But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

Unfortunately, certain groups of people who do not believe in taking a verse in context have taken this one verse and made it all about physical healing, stating that because of what Jesus endured we are promised physical healing.

If you remember the chief rule of Bible interpretation, “Always look at the context of a verse before you try to interpret the verse,” then you will know why this kind of interpretation is flat-out wrong.

Everything up to this point has been about our salvation and redemption.

It would be a huge jump in literary motif, textual analysis, and classical interpretation to say that verse five is about anything other than the same things: salvation and redemption.

After all, the words used in verse five are referring to sinful actions.

Let us take a closer look at them; we have the words transgressions, iniquities, and chastisement.

Transgression is defined as: an act that goes against a law, rule, or code of conduct; an offense.

Synonyms for transgression include the following: crime, offense, sin, wrong, wrongdoing, disobedience, trespass, infringement, etc. 

If Jesus was pierced for our transgressions, then an action (piercing, either with the nails in His hands and feet, or the crown of thorns on His head) was taken against Him because we have committed sin.

Iniquity is defined as: gross injustice or wickedness.

Synonyms for iniquity include the following: wickedness, immorality, evil, vice, villainy, criminality, etc. 

Next, we see that Jesus was crushed for our iniquities. 

What we have to remember is that some of this is being done to Him physically and some of this is being done to Him spiritually. 

The piercing was done physically but He was never physically crushed.

However, I do not think it would be too much of a stretch to say that the Father crushed our iniquities as Jesus took them on Himself. 

Chastisement is defined as: correction; punishment; pain or suffering inflicted for punishment and correction.

Jesus took on Himself the pain or suffering that was inflicted for punishment and correction, so that we might have peace.

What kind of peace can be gained by this sort of punishment?

Peace with God.

I believe this chastisement was both physical and spiritual as Jesus took pain and suffering from the cross and from the Father so that we might have peace with God.

Then we come to the end of the verse, the part that many people misinterpret because they miss the context of the verse.

“With his wounds we are healed.”

What wounds are we talking about here?

Again, we have to remember the context of the Scripture.

All the wounds that we have discussed today are at play here.

The emotional wounds from bearing our griefs and carrying our sorrows.

The spiritual wounds from being stricken, smitten, and afflicted by the Father.

The physical wounds from the Jews and Romans, from the beatings and from the cross.

All of these wounds together bring forth our spiritual healing. 

All of these wounds together make it possible for us to come to the Father.

All of these wounds together make it possible for us to become sons and daughters of the Living God.

To me, that is more amazing than a physical healing; that is the most amazing miracle ever brought forth.

That I, a sinner from before I was born, conceived in sin, could become a son of God because of what Jesus endured that day is beyond the comprehension of the human mind.

In fact, Paul even tells us that it is foolishness to those who are not being saved.

But for those of us who are being saved this is the greatest miracle imaginable.

I have some physical issues that I would love to not have to deal with, but I would never trade my salvation for a physical healing.

I will deal with having pain and know that I am on my way to see my Lord.

This is why I will fight against the health and wealth teachings of the prosperity gospel for as long as I live. 

I have seen its destructive force and what happens when verses are taken out of context.

Interpret Scripture correctly, in context with other verses, and people will not be led astray.

I want to urge you all to do this one thing.

Remember what Jesus has done for you.

Then as you remember what Jesus has done for you, go out and tell other people about who He is and what He can do for them.

Remember that sharing the gospel is not the same as sharing your testimony.

Your testimony is a good starting point because it lets people know where you are coming from, but it is not the gospel.

Always remember the gospel.

Let us pray.

Father God, as we come before You once again, we are reminded of just how wonderful You are. We are reminded that you sent Your Son for a specific purpose and that purpose has been fulfilled. We thank You for Your love. We thank You for Your Word. Please continue to lead each of us by Your Holy Spirit. We ask these things in the Name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.

Before you go, I wanted to remind you to check the show notes for important links concerning ways to support the ministry as well as ways to help us reach out to others. If this podcast is a blessing to you, please share it with others on whatever podcasting app you use.

Thank you and may God bless you.