Easter 2025 - Isaiah 52.13-53.12

Happy Easter!

Some acts of rescue are so incredible that they leave you speechless.

We all remember Mamadou Gassama - the Malian spiderman - who scaled the facade of a building in 30 seconds to save a child clinging to the 4th floor balcony.

Everyone was just speechless, wondering how he did it.

Or, a few years earlier, the airline pilot who saved all his passengers when his plane's engines stopped over New York by landing on the Hudson River in the middle of New York.

Amazing. Mouths agape.

It's Easter. Easter isn't primarily about chocolate eggs, leg of lamb or flying bells (a tradition you'll have to explain to me).

It's a rescue and a rescuer that will leave the whole world speechless.

Let's go back a few verses before what has just been read - Isaiah 52:10

Easter is the moment when

"the Lord stretches out the arm of his holiness,

for all the nations to see,

And that even the ends of the earth shall see

the salvation of our God".

OK, tell us more. Well, verse 13

There will be a servant (a rescuer) who will succeed,

who will grow and gain in importance, who will be very highly placed.

Great! And verse 15 ...

Before him ... kings ... will shut their mouths,

Easter ... it's supposed to be the story of a rescue that leaves the whole world speechless.

Let's imagine it was up to you to write the rest of these verses.

What would you write?

What would God do that would leave the whole world speechless?

Maybe you'd like us to get up tomorrow, turn on the radio and learn that God has raised up a diplomat who has negotiated a peace agreement between the Ukrainians and the Russians, and another between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

"People would say, "That's the hand of God!”

Or a scientist who finally found a way to eliminate our carbon emissions.

"There's God at work!”

Or perhaps an economist who could convince Donald Trump to drop his tariffs.

"Hallelujah!”

If God were to stretch out his arm for all to see to save the world, what would you expect that to look like?

***

This morning, we are not going to meditate on one of the accounts written by the witnesses to the events of Easter, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, as Christians often do at this time of year.

Instead, we're going back 700 years before Jesus to find out how all this was anticipated by a prophet called Isaiah.

Isaiah lived through a period of political and military upheaval even worse than our own.

In its day, superpowers such as the Assyrian and Babylonian empires rose up and sought to dominate the world.

Against this backdrop of upheaval, Isaiah was commissioned by God to tell the people of Israel that they were going to be defeated by his superpowers and exiled far from home. Not because God couldn't protect them, but because they had turned away from God and this was their punishment.

But Isaiah was also responsible for announcing that this exile would not be the end.

God had a rescue plan for Israel and for all peoples.

He was going to intervene by sending his servant to carry out his plan.

Easter is the culmination of this plan.

Maybe you wouldn't call yourself a Christian this morning - welcome! You know that Easter has something to do with Jesus, his death, his resurrection, but you're wondering how these events, if they happened at all, help with anything. There are plenty of problems around us. A man who gets killed, then comes back, what's the difference?

Maybe you're a Christian, but if you're like me, you're sometimes tempted to think that the events of Easter are really what we needed most.

We have so many other problems that 2000 years later are still with us.

Where is the rescue plan that was supposed to leave us breathless?

Let's have a look together.

The first thing to notice is that this rescue plan revolves around a man, a servant, who will leave us speechless... in the face of his suffering.

Silent before his suffering (52.13-53.3)

Isaiah 53:1

53 *Who has believed our preaching?

To whom was the arm of the Lord revealed?

2 It grew before him like a young plant,

like a shoot emerging from dry ground.

He had no beauty or splendour to attract our attention,

and we weren't happy with the way it looked.

3 Despised and neglected by men,

a man of pain, accustomed to suffering,

he was like someone to whom you turn your head:

we despised him, we paid no attention to him.

Imagine if I told you I could show you a promotional video for a plan to save the world.

You'd probably look at me and say okaaay, what's he talking about?

Since you're being nice, you'll give me the benefit of the doubt.

You put on the video and you expect to see perhaps a scientific or medical discovery, or a brilliant political or economic project.

But after a few seconds you realise that it's not true.

These are images from death row.

We see a man walking, head bowed, escorted by prison guards towards his execution.

You tell me, but I think you've got the wrong video, this can't be it!

This is the reaction that Isaiah anticipates. Who believed our preaching?

He knows that his presentation of God's rescue plan will be almost impossible for many people to believe.

The exact opposite of what we would have proposed.

Saving the world should be a matter for great men and women who achieve great things.

If we had to choose one word to describe the man Isaiah presents to us, it would be 'loser'!

Isaiah sums up this man's life in a few words.

He grew like a young plant,

like a shoot emerging from dry ground.

There are a few potted plants in my house that we don't water any more because we don't notice them, and we don't notice them because we don't water them. There's just some dry soil and a little shoot that doesn't look like much.

This is the servant and saviour sent by God.

To many, he looks like ... a loser. You hardly notice him.

We're 1,000 km from the Hollywood hero with the well-sculpted muscles and the perfect smile.

"He had no beauty or splendour to attract our attention".

You see people panhandling in Paris metro stations. How tempting it is to simply look away. We prefer to ignore them.

Isaiah says that this is the servant of God.

"like a man whose head is turned away".

It will be rejected.

What's more, this rejection led to his death.

Let's go back a few verses.

Isaiah 52 verse 14 ... which says that :

14 Many were horrified when they saw it,

his face was so disfigured,

so different was his appearance from that of humans,

I don't know if any of you have seen Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ, released some twenty years ago now.

It's a film that highlights the bloody side of Jesus' death.

It's striking to see that the Gospels, the eyewitness accounts we have of Jesus' death, are very sober about the bloody side.

They assume that we know that a crucifixion is horrible.

Isaiah gives us a clue as to how horrible it is.

Those who see this servant suffering will ask themselves: is this a human being we have before us? Is it possible for a man to undergo so many torments?

The Roman politician, Cicero, said that the mere word "cross" should be "removed not only from the body of the Roman citizen but even from his thoughts, eyes and ears."

It was so degrading.

Before the suffering of God's servant, Isaiah announces that we will be speechless.

***

We're supposed to ask ourselves: how can this be the world's rescue plan?

Indeed, Isaiah, who will believe your preaching?

It's absurd! It's grotesque!

How can this be saving the world?

***

Notice that we are not at the beginning of the book of Isaiah. There have already been 52 chapters.

These 52 chapters tell the story of the failure of strong men and conventional rescue plans.

They tell the story of the failure of ideas we would have invented ourselves.

It talks about powerful kings delivering Israel ... but only for a while.

There are plans for alliances with neighbouring countries to resist the invaders, which are collapsing.

God knows that strong men and human plans, however ingenious, offer no permanent security.

So when God sends us a weak and suffering man, it's because he knows it's the only solution. He is not naive. He alone sees reality perfectly.

***

But how does his suffering help us? That's the question.

This is the second point.

Mute in the face of her suffering ...

Silent before his sacrifice (53.4-9)

The servant suffers so terribly to undergo the punishment that our faults deserve.

As we prepared for Easter this week, I asked my daughters: can you think of anyone who was at the bottom, who suffered, before being at the top?

One of them replied: Aladdin!

Aladdin begins in the street and ends in the palace.

There is something in the parallel with Jesus, but in Aladdin, his suffering accomplishes nothing except to underline his elevation.

According to Isaiah, these excruciating sufferings of the servant accomplish something.

He highlights three points.

First the servant suffers ... in ...

Our place

Isaiah 53 verse 4

4 Yet "it was our sufferings that he bore,

it is our pain that he has taken upon himself.

It's the school holidays, but normally we meet up with our children when they leave school at 4.15pm, and an exchange takes place. We give them their snack, and they give us their schoolbag to carry, their sports bag, and sometimes their friends give us their schoolbag and their sports bag to carry too, and then they run ahead and we try to keep up by carrying all this load for them.

When God's servant suffers, it's because he too is carrying a burden for us, not just a few school bags, but our sufferings.

His pain on the cross was not his. It was ours.

To see Jesus overwhelmed by weakness is to see him overwhelmed by our weaknesses.

To see it bleed is to see it bleed ... in our place.

There's a logic of substitution, like when a player comes onto the pitch to sweat it out and give his all in place of another.

Jesus suffered in our place.

Isaiah explains why. It's because he doesn't just take our place. He takes ...

Our punishment

Verse 5

5 But he was wounded because of our transgressions,

broken because of our faults:

the punishment that gives us peace has fallen on him,

and *we are healed by his wounds.

6 We were all like sheep going astray:

everyone went their own way,

and the Lord has laid on him the iniquities of us all."

The Israelites had a ritual that they performed every year.

One day a year, a day called the great day of atonement, the high priest would take a goat, lay his hands on it and confess over it all the sins of the Israelites, as if he were transferring those sins from the Israelites to the goat. Then the goat was driven into the desert to die.

Symbolically, this animal underwent the punishment that the Israelites had to undergo in order to be forgiven.

This is where we get the expression "scapegoat" - someone who is condemned in the place of another.

What happens symbolically with the goat happens literally with Jesus. Some people have already seen me use this illustration. Imagine that my right hand is me.

And this book lists all my faults. Every impure thought, every hurtful word, every selfish act. Every single thing.

Spot - the burning fire of God's holiness and righteous anger at the evil I have done.

Now imagine that my left hand represents Jesus, innocent and perfect.

At the cross, God does this ...

My faults become Jesus' faults ... my punishment becomes Jesus' punishment, and the Father pours out his wrath for all the evil I have done ... on him.

He is wounded because of our transgressions,

broken because of our faults

the punishment that gives us peace has fallen on him,

If you're like me, you may be aware of things in your past or present life that you're ashamed to talk about.

If we have believed in Jesus, our guilt has been fully transferred to Jesus. I'm not talking about our feelings of guilt. Our real, objective guilt. He took it.

Our place, our punishment ...

And all this is ...

His choice

Verse 7

He was mistreated, he humiliated himself

and didn't open his mouth.

*Like a lamb being led to the slaughter,

to a sheep mute before those who shear it,

he didn't open his mouth.

The comparison with the lamb and the sheep does not mean that Jesus was unaware of what was happening to him.

It's the other way round.

In other words, he couldn't resist.

He did not protest. When accused, he did not defend himself.

Suffering this way is her choice

He moves towards death fully aware of what is happening to him ... without flinching.

The word that comes to mind to describe his attitude is heroic.

We all remember Arnaud Beltrame, the gendarme who chose to take the place of a hostage during a terrorist attack in the south of France.

Fully aware of what's at stake.

God's servant voluntarily chooses to sacrifice himself by suffering in our place for our sins.

It's heroic.

This sacrifice is breathtaking.

***

Let's take a step back.

How is it that of all the problems God could have targeted, he chose this one?

He is God. He could have sent his servant to solve any problem on the planet.

We may have some very specific ideas about who we think should be given priority.

He decided to send him to die for our sins. But why?

The Bible says that all other problems have their origin, more or less directly, in sin - rebellion against God.

If you're suffering and you tell yourself that it's not normal, then it is not normal.

Suffering exists because our world is at odds with its creator.

Adam and Eve in the garden, and everyone with them, said to God 'we don't want you', and God says 'ok' ... but know that it will mean you live in a broken world.

Sin is the root of everything.

You only have to read the news for two minutes to see the hold that sin has on our world. We can't get rid of it.

No matter how sophisticated or cultured a person or society is, you can't get rid of it.

History shows that we are incapable of doing this.

By targeting sin, God targets the source of all other problems.

It attacks the root.

He puts an end to the rupture that separates us from him and his goodness.

What should really leave us dumbfounded is that it doesn't solve this problem ... 'remotely'.

It's not as if he presses a button from the sky and the problem is solved.

He comes himself, the holy God, he who is offended by sin, in the person of the servant, to suffer for our sin, to carry out his plan of salvation.

It's a gesture of love that defies comprehension.

I know that there are people in this room who are suffering.

God has not stood idly by in the face of our suffering.

He is not insensitive to our suffering.

This servant, ignored, rejected and killed, is God himself, who took the form of a servant.

He experienced loneliness, shame and pain in his own flesh and soul. He did not sit idly by.

But it's not just that God sympathises with our suffering, because he has experienced our suffering.

No. He proposes a plan to resolve our suffering.

Since he solved the problem of sin, we know that one day all the other problems - misfortune, sickness, death - will also be solved.

Which brings us to the last point...

Mute in front of his sacrifice ...

Stunned by his Victory (53.10-12)

Isaiah 53:10

The Lord wanted to break him through suffering.

If you make his life a sacrifice of guilt,

he will have descendants and live a long life,

and the will of the Lord will be done through him.

11 After so much trouble, he will see the light and be content.

By his knowledge, my righteous servant will bring justice to many;

he will bear their faults.

What does a successful rescue plan for the world look like?

How do you know if the plan has worked?

I don't know if any of you are familiar with the business jargon of 'KPIs'.

Key performance indicators.

These are the signs we look for to know whether a project is achieving its objectives or not.

What are the KPIs of God's plan? How do you know if it has worked?

So far in this message we've been talking mainly about Good Friday, the day of Jesus' crucifixion, as Isaiah had anticipated it 700 years earlier.

And now it's Easter Sunday !😊

Because the first KPI is ... resurrection.

After his death, the servant ... will have descendants and will live a long life.

Isaiah announces Jesus' resurrection 7 centuries in advance.

He will come out of the tomb to confirm that everything we have just said about the meaning of his death ... was not just hot air.

We could ask ourselves this question. Other people were crucified on the same day as Jesus. How do we know that Jesus' death was not just another death?

How do we know that this story of sins borne for us on the cross is not just a fantasy?

Thanks to his resurrection.

Jesus will leave the tomb, look at what he has accomplished and Isaiah says he will be "satisfied" with his work.

That's it! Mission accomplished! The plan worked!

It is as if Isaiah were saying that the servant will come out of the tomb, look around and be filled with satisfaction when he sees every person saved.

'Look, there's them over there, they were a thousand light years away from God before, but now they're part of our family'.

Then you here, you were so far away, so desperate, but now you are brothers, sisters. How happy I am!'

Ah, but there's him there too. Who would have thought, but he's there too! What a joy!

Mission accomplished.

Let's get rid of the idea that Jesus saves reluctantly. OK, I'll save him ... but not ... very much. Her ... I'm still very hesitant.'

No, when Jesus comes out of the tomb, he sees ... descendants ... he looks at us as family ... and he's satisfied!

Resurrection.

There is another related KPI.

Justification

Verse 11

"my righteous servant will bring justice to many".

How do we know that despite Jesus' death for our sins, God isn't going to get a bit fed up with us and our nonsense and push us away again?

How do we know that when the time comes for us to leave this earth, we won't be turned away at the entrance to his kingdom?

It's because he gave us ... his own righteousness.

We can approach the gates of heaven with as much confidence as Jesus does.

God sees us ... as perfect.

Finally, the third KPI. The third sign that the plan has worked.

Glorification

Verse 12 - last quote.

Therefore I will give him his portion in the midst of many

and he will share the spoils with the powerful:

because he stripped himself to death

and that he *was counted among the criminals,

because he bore the sin of many men

and that he intervened on behalf of the guilty.

I don't know if there are any Paris Saint Germain supporters here.

If... they manage to win the Champions League this year (I say if - I know they look promising), you can just imagine the scenes when they return to Paris! The victory procession. The players on the bus, cheered on by the crowd, all happy to share the glory of having won the trophy.

Like after the football World Cup in 2018 ... or the rugby World Cup in ... not the rugby World Cup.

This is the image that Isaiah leaves us with.

The victorious servant of God is exalted, acclaimed, recognised as the greatest, recognised in fact as God, and he will share with his people the joy and glory of his triumph.

Not just a temporary triumph ... until next season.

But an eternal triumph ... in his kingdom.

A kingdom in which all the other problems we would like God to put an end to will no longer exist.

It will be the world as it should be. Glory forever. And we will have access to it ... but only through the death of the servant.

I wonder if you're sure you'll be taking part.

All you have to do is trust the servant. Trust Jesus and then stand in awe of his success.

This is what we celebrate at Easter.

Mission accomplished for God's rescue plan.

It may not be the rescue plan we thought it was.

But it was the rescue plan we needed.

It's so easy in this world to sink into pessimism or cynicism.

It's best not to get your hopes up. You're bound to be disappointed in the end. That kind of attitude.

Let's content ourselves with cultivating our own garden, like Candide.

If God hadn't sent his servant, I could sympathise with that attitude.

I read the headlines and ... I don't feel like reading the headlines any more.

Too depressing.

But the fact is that God came into this world to suffer himself, in the person of the servant, to solve our most fundamental problem - sin - and to give us the certainty of endless glory.

That's the answer to pessimism! Good Friday. Easter Sunday.

Finally, I recently read the testimony of a certain Gilles who understood these things for the first time.

A friend explained to him the meaning of the cross and the love of Jesus, and invited him to pray with him for the first time.

Gilles remained silent, not knowing what to say, then after a long moment he simply said: "God, hats off. Hats off...hats off. God, really, hats off. Hats off, God"

Speechless before Jesus and his cross.

If we understand these things, can I suggest an activity?

It's not difficult.

We can try it out this afternoon or tomorrow - it's a bank holiday.

Just to remain silent ... to marvel ... at the cross .

Just keep your mouth closed in front of it.

Then, when we're ready, open our mouths again and tell someone about it.

Why not do it now? A few moments of silence. Then I'll lead us in prayer.