Reading: Isa. 52:13-15;
53:1-12.
"Behold, my
servant..." (Isa. 52:13).
"Behold, the Lamb of God" (John 1:29).
"Behold, the man!" (John 19:5).
"Behold, your King!" (John 19:14).
We are going to be
quite brief and simple in what we say in the fourfold
connection of service represented here - so very full and
altogether defeating every attempt at bringing out its
depth, its wonder, its glory; but our hope is that,
altogether apart from what is said, we shall be touched
in our hearts by the spirit of service breathed by these
four designations.
The
Servant
"Behold, my
servant." It does not need a great deal of insight
to see that those four designations correspond to what is
in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah's prophecies. (In
passing, it is much to be regretted that what has been
called the fifty-third chapter should begin at the
question, "Who hath believed our message?" In
the original text the new section begins at verse 13 of
what is Chapter 52 - "Behold, my servant" - and
should run right on as we read it; and then all that
follows is the servant seen from different standpoints,
and those different standpoints are the four which we
have mentioned - "My servant," "the Lamb
of God," "the Man," "your
King.")
Matthew, when he quotes
Isa. 42:1 - "Behold, my servant" - uses the
Greek word for bond-slave - "Behold, my
bond-servant" or "bond-slave" (Matt.
12:18) - which at once gives a different complexion to
the whole matter of the servant and His service; for when
it comes to the bond-slave - the indentured, branded
bond-slave - you know that all personal rights and
liberties have been abandoned. For such, there are no
personal rights and no personal liberties, they have been
surrendered. The idea, therefore, of the servant of the
Lord as represented by the Lord Jesus is that of a
bond-slave, and this implies utter self-emptying. (And
can it be otherwise with any other servant of the Lord?
Surely it is impossible for us to assume any higher
position in our service to the Lord than He took.) So
Paul, when he says "taking the form of a
bondservant" links with it - he "emptied
himself" (Phil. 2:7).
You see, He was
reversing the whole course of evil. The Cross - which is
but the point at which this self-emptying reaches its
fulness and finality of expression and demonstration - is
the culmination of an undoing and an emptying of
something which had no right. By letting go His rights,
He undid false rights. The whole course of evil, of sin,
began with Satan and is written in the history of man,
who, at the instigation of Satan, sought to have personal
fulness of rights and liberties, taking it out of the
hands of God and having it in his own hands. Satan began
it, even in the very height of his glory, and it was a
tremendous thing that he lost. We will not go back in
detail to those descriptions of him in person, position
and office before his fall - the covering cherub
occupying the position which those custodians of the very
mercy-seat within the tabernacle later occupied,
"the anointed cherub that covereth: ...thou hast
walked up and down in the midst of the stones of
fire" (Eze. 28:14), and so on. And he sought more
than that. What more was there to have but the very
throne of God, equality with God, and in that false
ambition and aspiration to have the very place of God
within himself, to be the central object of worship?
Satan brought into man's nature all that which we know
exists within ourselves of desire to have things our way,
to be regarded as something: or, to put it the other way,
all that hatred for being nothing and being emptied. You
know what human nature is now. All this that we in our
lifetime have seen and known in world affairs is simply
the outworking of that original evil - to have within
your own power the dominion, the godship, the worship. To
undo it all, the Lord Jesus emptied Himself - and that is
service; to undo that. It is not only the bringing of God
into His place, but also the bringing back to God of
everything that has been taken from Him. That is the
spirit of service.
It works out this way -
that, in order to get everything for God, we have no
ground of our own to stand on. If God is going to be all
in all, as He ultimately is going to be, it will be by
this way of the Cross; firstly, by the Son's emptying of
Himself; and then by our being emptied. Our emptying is
not in the same realm as His, for we have not His rights
and His glories and His fulness, but still it is an
emptying, and God only knows what that means in its full
measure. We know a little of the way of the Cross in our
own lives, finding ourselves all the time being emptied
and poured out, every bit of ground of selfhood taken
away to give God His full place. "Behold, my
servant," "my bond-slave." That means
utter self-emptying.
The
Lamb
"Behold, the Lamb
of God" - and that only carries what we have said to
its final step. If the very essence of servant-hood is
obedience unto another, the repudiation of all one's own
rights, then the Lamb says that that obedience is unto
death. "...taking the form of a bondservant...
becoming obedient even unto death" (Phil. 2:7-8).
You pass at once from the slave to the Lamb, the Lamb
obedient unto death. "As a lamb that is led to the
slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is
dumb, so he opened not his mouth" (Isa. 53:7) in
complaint, in revolt, in objection, in retaliation, in
resistance, in excuse, in self-pity. No! "...becoming
obedient even unto death, yea, death of the cross."
"Behold, the Lamb
of God, that taketh away the sin of the world!" The
sin - not the sins - of the world; the whole world's sin.
What is the whole world's sin? It is Adam's sin; it is
disobedience through unbelief. That is the world's sin.
Paul argues that out in his letter to the Romans - the
unbelief, the disobedience, from the very beginning. He,
the Lamb, takes away the sin of the world, the whole
world's disobedience, in His obedience. He compasses all
disobedience in His one act of obedience by which He
sanctifies them that believe once for all. He takes away
the sin.
If you want that
illustrated, you have the simplest and most familiar of
illustrations. "Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh
away the sin of the world!" Where did that Lamb
first come into view, in type, in figure? In Egypt, on
the Passover night. "The Lord spake unto Moses...
They shall take to them every man a lamb, according to
their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household" (Ex.
12:1,3). Now, there was no virtue in the actual animal or
its blood. The blood of lambs, rams, bulls, goats, had no
virtue; but the virtue was typically in their obedience
which was so utter as to be unto death. The deep doctrine
here is that life springs out of death. The death of the
Lord Jesus as the Lamb meant the life of the believer
through faith. While death swept through the land, life
was theirs through faith. "Behold, the Lamb of God,
that taketh away the sin" - the unbelief and the
disobedience.
You know that is
pressed all the way through with Israel. In the brazen
serpent - "if a serpent had bitten any man, when he
looked unto the serpent of brass, he lived" (Num.
21:9). It was the obedience, it was the faith, that was
virtuous - not the serpent. The faith of the Son of God
led Him to death in His Cross - faith in God Who raiseth
the dead. He looked through the Cross and was obedient
unto death, believing in the God of resurrection. So,
life through His faith. The Apostle says, "That life
which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith
which is in the Son of God" (Gal. 2:20); the virtue
of His faith over against the world's unbelief; the
virtue of His obedience over against the disobedience of
the whole world. The Lamb of God bore away the sin of the
world.
The
Man
"Behold, the
man!" I expect there was a sneer on Pilate's face
when he said that. Jesus came out wearing the crown of
thorns and a purple garment. It was all done in mockery
and for ignominy, and as He came out these words in Isa.
52:14 were literally fulfilled - "Like as many were
astonished at thee (his visage was so marred more than
any man, and his form more than the sons of men)."
Pilate doubtless waved his hand in the direction of Jesus
and said, derisively, "Behold, the man!" You
see the Cross bringing His manhood down to shame and
degradation. They despised Him; His visage was marred
more than any man; there is no man in the whole race who
is such an object of contempt as He; "more than any
man... more than the sons of men." This very word
reminds us of a title which He chose for Himself and
loved to use of Himself - "the Son of man." Why
did He use it? Because it related Him to the race, it
brought Him into kinship with man. And here in the Cross,
as man in this deplorable, ignominious state, He shows
what man is like in the sight of God, what the race has
come to. That men could bring Him to this shows what men
are like. Here He is on the one hand representing the
deplorable spiritual state to which sin has brought man,
and He has entered into that in a kinship with all men -
"Him who knew no sin he made sin on our behalf"
(2 Cor. 5:21). He has entered into our deepest
degradation, in order to be the redeeming kinsman. It is
a wonderful change of scene from this man Whose visage is
marred more than any man, to the Man in the glory or on
the Mount of Transfiguration. All that shame and
despicableness was necessary in order that He might bring
us to this other; it was needful to bring the
representative man to that dishonour in order that we
might be changed into the likeness of His glorious
manhood. "Behold, the man!" What do you look
at? It is a sorry and terrible picture of a man that is
here. Was there ever service like that - to God, and to
the race?
"Behold, the
man!" - a man despised, rejected. But the prophet
carries it further. "We did esteem him stricken,
smitten of God, and afflicted." That was the
attitude of Job's friends. 'God has done this! This is
what you deserve at the hands of God!' That was how man
viewed it. A little later the prophet says, "It
pleased the Lord to bruise him; he (the Lord) hath put
him to grief: ...thou (the Lord) shalt make his soul an
offering for sin." The Lord brought Him down there
in order to exalt us. He, as in His own manhood, touched
the very depths of sin's outworking.
"The Lord hath
laid on him the iniquity of us all." That word
'iniquity' carries within its meaning an alliance with
Satan. The iniquity of Israel was that they went into
alliance with false gods and the gods of the heathen,
which are demons. That is the great iniquity of Israel.
"He hath laid on him the iniquity." See what
Satan would do with the Son of God, how he would degrade
Him! That is the work of the devil, and men have done it
at his instigation; but, in the risen, ascended,
glorified Christ, the deepest, direst work of Satan is
destroyed by the Cross. That is service to God.
The
King
"Behold, your
King!" Again, Pilate, of course, was mocking; as far
as a man in his predicament could, he was making a joke
of it. "Behold, your King! ...Shall I crucify your
King?" It is remarkable how the sovereignty of God
is active, even behind a man's joke. There was far more
truth in this than Pilate ever intended. "Your
King!" Of course, with the Jews, Messiah and 'king'
were synonymous terms. Their Messiah was to be king, and
their king was to be Messiah. They were refusing Him as
their Messiah, and therefore as their king. But note how
Divine sovereignty transformed the Cross from what men
intended it to be - the gibbet of a rejected Messiah -
into the throne of a triumphant Christ. He does reign
from His Cross, as you and I know. It is by the Cross
that He has triumphed. It is by the Cross that He has
gained His great ascendancy in our hearts and drawn from
the nations through many generations men to worship Him
as King. Pilate said, "Behold, your King!" and
the Jews replied 'Crucify him! He is no king of ours!'
But God saw to it that in that very hour He ascended a
spiritual and moral throne which has shaken this universe
to its utmost bounds. Through the door which was opened
then and there we are able to look in the book of the
Revelation, and we see in chapter 1 the Man; and then we
see the Servant, the Lamb; then we see the King.
"King of kings, and Lord of lords," yet the
Lamb in the midst of the throne. The government, the
throne, the kingship are held together from Calvary
onward.
Well, that is
servanthood, and service, so far as the Lord Jesus is
concerned. I am not suggesting that we can serve in the
same fulness and in the same way. We cannot serve
atoningly, but we can serve in the same spirit; and
service to God does involve the same principles - utter
self-emptying, having nothing of our own, obedience even
unto death, allowing ourselves to be marred and broken
and humbled and despised; but, blessed be God, "if
we suffer, we shall also reign with him" (2 Tim.
2:12). The Throne stands at the end of the way of the
Cross.