For Easter Sunday it is fitting to come to the final stanza of this servant song:
Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
Isaiah 53:10-12
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.
Here we see the success of the servant’s mission – and more than that, the servant will see the success of his mission and be satisfied. He will know that his mission is accomplished. He will see life, and he will put many right with God, because he bore their sins.
It would be a mistake here to read “many” but not “all” in a kind of pedantic counting game. “Many” here is “many” rather than “few”. The number saved by the servant will be vast. The only limits are in the hearts of those who refuse to allow their sin to be carried – those who refuse to allow the servant to serve them.
For the servant will see the light of life. Death is not the end. Easter Sunday is that most wonderful of days when we remember that Jesus tasting death is so we don’t have to. Easter Sunday morning gives us a foretaste of the day to come when Jesus will return and gather all his children home.
Easter Sunday is victory day. The day we know death is defeated and Jesus is victorious. As we read on to Isaiah we come to the passage that was read this morning at Easter Sunday communion services in Anglican churches up and down the country – Isaiah 65:17-25. This is Isaiah’s vision of a new heavens and a new earth – and this is the vision that the servant’s mission brings about. Read this:
17 “See, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
and its people a joy.
19 I will rejoice over Jerusalem
and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
will be heard in it no more.20 “Never again will there be in it
Isaiah 65:17-25
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not live out his years;
the one who dies at a hundred
will be thought a mere child;
the one who fails to reach a hundred
will be considered accursed.
21 They will build houses and dwell in them;
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 No longer will they build houses and others live in them,
or plant and others eat.
For as the days of a tree,
so will be the days of my people;
my chosen ones will long enjoy
the work of their hands.
23 They will not labor in vain,
nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune;
for they will be a people blessed by the Lord,
they and their descendants with them.
24 Before they call I will answer;
while they are still speaking I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
and dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,”
says the Lord.
There will be no more weeping or crying. People will enjoy the houses they build – rather than building and working only for others to enjoy the fruit of their labour. Work will no longer be empty or in vain. Children will no longer be doomed to misfortune. Think of that in our world where our luxury goods come from the misfortune and poverty of others.
Then there will be no more predators, no one who harms or destroys. The serpent who tempted Adam and Eve to eat the fruit, the punishment for which was returning to dust will himself eat dust. Old enemies will be reconciled. The world will be put right.
And all this comes from the work of the servant who suffers as our substitute. The gospel is good news, not simply for me alone, but for the whole world. For all of us, a place in a new world where all sin and sickness and sorrow is gone is offered. And as those who live looking forward to that world we are to live now as signs and heralds of what that world will look like.
There is a day coming when all who have trusted in the work of the servant will see the servant’s satisfaction. We will see creation itself made new. On that day our faith will be made sight. On that day we will see our world as it was meant to be, and we will step onto that world with transformed bodies and we will see the Servant who is the King, the Lion who is the Lamb, the Man who is God. We will see his face, and the face of the Father, the face of the one who Moses could not see. As Isaac Watts put it:
There we shall see his face,
Isaac Watts
And never, never sin,
And from the rivers of his grace
Drink endless pleasures in.
And so this Easter, come back to the empty tomb. Listen to the joyful tidings “He is not here, he is risen.” And know that this resurrection makes utterly certain the final resurrection when we will be raised with him – and we will know that our labour in the Lord was not in vain.
Joshua's Tree Rooted 