Isaiah 53:4, 5 Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.… In these words, which remain ever fresh and sacred, though they are so familiar to our hearts, we have - I. A SAD AND STRIKING PICTURE. It is the picture of the Servant of the Lord, wounded, bruised, chastened, stricken. We cannot fail to see in it the sufferings of the holy Saviour. We see him: 1. Wounded in body; not only a-hungered and athirst, not only weary with long-continued labours and without the promise of the soft pillow. of rest when the day was done, but suffering, beyond this, the laying on him the hard, rough hand of a brutal soldiery, the cruel smiting and scourging, the piercing of hand and foot with the remorseless nail, the pains and pangs of crucifixion. But beyond this, immeasurably more serious and more severe than this, we see him: 2. Wounded in spirit; bruised in soul by the shortcoming, the inconstancy, even the treachery of his own friends, by the superficiality and frailty of the outer band of his disciples, by the intense and inappeasable malignity of his enemies, by the sight of sickness and sorrow, by the pressure and burden of human sin; all this weight of evil crushing his holy and tender spirit. II. A NATURAL BUT A FALSE CONCLUSION. "We did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted," i.e. on account of his own sins. It was natural that men should think thus; there are facts which go to support though they do not justify it. 1. It is true that sin and suffering are very closely and causally connected. All sinners are, as such, sufferers. 2. It is true that, as a rule, great sinners are great sufferers. It was not accidental that Antiochus Epiphanes, Herod the Great, Philip II. of Spain, and other men, who, like them, committed enormities of wrong-doing, endured terrible pains of body and fearful remorse of spirit. But it does not follow that a very great sufferer is a very great sinner. For it is also true (1) that some of the purest and saintliest of mankind have been visited with severest bodily pains, or have passed through most trying troubles, or been called to endure heaviest afflictions. (2) And that the great Teacher warned us against pushing this doctrine to a perversion of the truth (Luke 13:3). (3) And we know that it was wholly inapplicable to the Lord himself. He who suffered mere than any other of the children of men was that one Son of man who "did no sin, and in whose mouth no guile was found;" he was the innocent, the pure, the just, the righteous One. III. THE DIVINE ACCOUNT OF IT. "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows... he was wounded for our transgressions," etc. But is it credible or is it even possible that the innocent One would or could suffer for us the guilty ones? Why not? Being such a One as he is - the pitiful, compassionate, magnanimous One, it is exactly what we might expect he would do. 1. Involuntarily, we are continually bearing one another's griefs. One sins and another suffers, beneath every sky and from generation to generation. 2. Voluntarily we suffer in one another's stead. The father willingly suffers and strives that his son may not endure all the threatened consequences of his guilty folly; the mother eagerly endures greatest privations that her daughter may be spared the dishonour which is her due; the friend gladly shares, halves the trouble, the anxiety, the loss, into which his old companion has fallen. Just as men are magnanimous and noble-minded, so do they carry the sorrows of their fellows, so are they willingly wounded and bruised for the transgressions of their kindred and their friends. And if we, being evil, will do this, how much more our Father who is in heaven! if we, whose thoughts and ways are so comparatively low, how much more he whose thoughts and whose ways are as much higher than ours as the heavens are higher than the earth! It is just the very thing we should look for from the heavenly Father. IV. THE PRACTICAL CONCLUSION. That we should, by a living faith in the Divine Redeemer, avail ourselves of the work he wrought when he suffered for us. Otherwise we shall not know the peace and rest of heart which he came to secure us. - C. Parallel Verses KJV: Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. |
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