"He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not." (v 3).

This is the most bitter prophecy of the Old Testament. From the very beginning, when amid the loveliness of Eden the first guilty pair stood and heard the sad tones of God passing sentence, there had always been the promise of a coming Redeemer. It is fairly evident from Eve's words at the birth of Seth that when Cain was born she had seen in that event the beginning of fulfilment of the Divine promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. That early hope was dashed when Cain became a murderer and was banished from the company of men; but with the coming of Seth the hope revived, and from that time onwards the world was never without those who looked for the Deliverer. The ancient mythologies of Babylon, reaching back to the shadowy times before Abraham, pagan though they were, show unmistakable traces of the belief, persisting even though men's ideas of God had become woefully distorted. When Abraham made his venture of faith and left his country for the land of promise, it was because he believed in the Coming One, and so to him came the promise that from his own descendants would deliverance come. Throughout Israel's history the expectation never died down; always were they a people chosen by the Lord to hail and receive the Deliverer when He should appear, and under His leadership become a light to the nations, to declare His salvation to the ends of the earth. That was the hope that kept them separate from the nations around them, that held them, despite their many shortcomings and failures. They were a people for a purpose, fashioned and developed by virtue of many and varied national experiences for the part they would be called upon to play when Messiah should appear.

And to Isaiah fell the bitterness of proclaiming in advance that it was all to be of no avail, that when the supreme moment of Israel's existence had arrived, they would turn away from the Deliverer and fail at the moment of achievement. He would be despised and rejected of men, and all the glorious things associated with His Advent vanish away like the morning mists. They would fail to recognise the time of their visitation, and the magnificent opportunity, pass them by for ever ‑ for even then the Divine sentence was in process of formulation "The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof".

The fulfilment of the prophecy is too well known to need detailed exposition. Jesus was despised and rejected of men, and had the fate of the Kingdom of God rested with the ecclesiastical leaders and the political rulers and the bulk of the ordinary people of the First Advent, then that Kingdom indeed was doomed. But in His infinite wisdom God has entrusted the destinies of His outworking Plan, not to the great and the wise and those chosen by popular acclaim, but to an inconspicuous and uninfluential minority who at certain times in earth's history have been called "the Remnant". A remnant they have truly been, on more than one occasion when the earth has been all but in darkness and it has seemed as though the Plan of God was sinking into irretrievable ruin; but always there has been new life springing out from that remnant, a revival of God's work in the midst of the years, an upsurge of spiritual vitality that has carried the Plan of God into another phase and another dispensation. So it was when Jesus was despised and rejected by the many; there were a few who did accept Him and did realise that His coming meant salvation for the world, in due time. And from the hearts' loyalty and lives' devotion of those few is born all that we possess or know of Christian faith and hope today.

The story is not ended. It is still possible to despise and reject Him. Even to-day the worldly wise and great and influential, the leaders and the controllers of this world, like their prototypes of two thousand years ago, do not understand and have no use for the teachings of the Man of Nazareth. The popular voice is no more disposed to consider His claims than it was then. If we would be of those whom God will use to carry the interests of His Kingdom into the next Dispensation, we must reconcile ourselves to being of the "Remnant". But even so we may yet fail to retain the coveted honour.

Those who rejected Jesus at the First Advent, and were in consequence themselves rejected, were not so judged because of lack of knowledge, or unsoundness of theological outlook. On matters of the Law, and of doctrine, and of righteousness before God, the scribes and Pharisees had much in common with Jesus. He certainly condemned them for their narrowness and rigidity in the interpretation of the Mosaic Law but He did not dispute the soundness of the theological ground upon which they stood. It was not their orthodoxy or their beliefs which cost them the Kingdom; it was their failure to appreciate and manifest and practice the mind of God ‑ which in our day we would call the spirit of Christ ‑ that led to their rejection and thrusting out from the Kingdom. "Go ye, and learn what that means, `I will have mercy, and not sacrifice'." That was the stumbling-stone. They despised and rejected Jesus because He manifested a spirit of love and tolerance and mercy, and with all their doctrinal orthodoxy they could find no room for those virtues. So they rejected Him, arrogantly, scornfully, and at the end, maliciously; so He in turn rejected them, sadly, regretfully, but firmly.

So it will be with us. Like Paul the most intellectually minded of all the apostles, we may understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, but without love it profits us nothing. If we refuse to have our lives guided by love, tolerance, and mercy, and insist instead upon the empty shibboleths of intellectual understanding and a mechanical memorising of Scriptural doctrines, we shall end up where the Pharisees did ‑ outside the Kingdom. Our Lord will be just as sad and regretful as He was in the case of the Pharisees, but He will be just as firm. The Millennial work of the future needs qualifications of a nature that cannot be learned out of a book. Unless we have well learned, and practised in our own lives, that spirit which pervaded the life of Christ we shall not be fitted for the Church's future work, and it will become true of us as it was of them "the Kingdom of God is taken from you". We shall have become of those who "despised and rejected" Him.

"Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted." (v 4). This is the first of three verses each of which affirm most definitely the substitutionary character of our Lord's sufferings. It was not just that. He endured similar sufferings to those of mankind. It was that He did in truth take upon Himself the sufferings that men ought to have endured. This is not a popular doctrine nowadays. Men prefer to think of Jesus ‑ if they think of Him at all ‑ as an example, a mentor, a leader who shows the way, One of whom they can speak admiringly or respectfully as pre-eminent, but they do not like to acknowledge that He endured sufferings that are rightfully theirs, that they are under that kind of obligation to Him. Men do not care to admit that they are sinners, and especially do they object to admitting that they are helpless sinners, and that only Christ can lift them out of that hopeless state.

One might very properly ask at this point in what way was it that Jesus bore our griefs and carried our sorrows? Men in all ages have had plenty of their own which they have had perforce to bear and it is self-evident that Jesus did not carry the griefs and sorrows of mankind to the extent that they had none themselves to endure. The cynic might well suggest that if Jesus had never lived the net difference to any man in this respect would not have been noticeable. The truth of the matter is that all grief and sorrow arises from the presence of sin, and it was a man who sinned and men who continue to sin. Hence that which Jesus undeniably did bear was rightfully the responsibility of men, for Jesus Himself knew no sin. As one translator puts it "It was our griefs he bore, it was our sorrows he carried". That reflection leads us to the realisation of another fact, that the sin of man has consequences that cannot be confined to the one who sins. The fathers eat sour grapes, but they are the children's teeth that are set on edge. It is when men comprehend that fundamental truth that they will understand why God has decreed righteousness the law of His creation and has outlawed sin. It is then that they will understand why Jesus bore their griefs and carried their sorrows. He, the sinless One, living in a sinful world, willingly sharing in all its life and all its affairs, could do nothing else but take upon himself that share of the world's distress. It is when men realise that, they will come with breaking hearts to acknowledge their own unworthiness and to render their allegiance to Him. "In all things" says the writer to the Hebrews "it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest. . . in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted." "We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin."

And He still bears our griefs, still carries our sorrows! Does anybody imagine that because He has now been exalted "higher than all heavens", resplendent in the glory of His spiritual nature that He no longer feels the woes of men here on earth in the flesh? The parable of the lost sheep should quickly refute any such reasoning. If there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repents, as Jesus declared, then surely there must be abiding sorrow over the sinners who have not yet repented. It is true, of course, that Jesus no longer bears the sin of man in a sacrificial sense, for all that was finished at the Cross, but it must be true that He still takes upon himself the burden of our griefs and sorrows and gives us instead, if we will, that strength and consolation that can come only from Him. That was His mission from the start and remains His ministry, to bind-up the broken-hearted, to comfort all that mourn, to pour in the oil of joy in exchange for mourning, to give the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. We ought to bear in mind that in taking upon Himself the burden of the world's distress our Lord did not assume it merely for the short space of three and a half years whilst He walked as a Man upon earth. He took it for all the time that had and has yet to elapse before sin and the results of sin are forever banished from the earth. Throughout all this present Gospel Age He has carried the griefs and sorrows of all His disciples and been to them a Shepherd and an Elder Brother, guiding and guarding them in times of difficulty and danger, consoling and cheering them in times of distress and tragedy. In the next Age, the Millennial Age, there will be griefs and sorrows also, as men and women find for themselves that the consequences of their past lives of sin weigh them down like the heavy burden carried by the hero of "Pilgrim's Progress", until, like Christian in that immortal allegory, they cast it down at the foot of the Cross where Jesus stands waiting to bear it on their behalf. How could He be a merciful and sympathetic High Priest in that glorious Age if He did not remove the burden from humanity's shoulders and assume it Himself, if He is not affected by the effects of sin in the lives of those to whom He has become a Mediator? It is they whom He is leading up the Highway of Holiness to full reconciliation with God. Surely this fourth verse of Isaiah's fifty-third chapter must be in process of fulfilment through all the long centuries, all the time that any of those for whom Christ died are still weighed down with the grief and sorrow that comes because of sin.

These things must be true of the Church also. Those who are the Master's disciples now, consecrated to His service, trusting in His promise that if faithful they will one day share with Him in His glory and be manifested with Him to raise fallen mankind up to the glorious liberty of the children of God; what of these? They also will bear the griefs and sorrows of mankind in that day. They also will be merciful and sympathetic priests, able to help and guide the willing of earth's unfortunates, able because they themselves have passed this way before. It is a solemn thought, that we cannot be of use to our Lord in that future unless we have in this life been made perfect through suffering as He was. That does not necessarily mean a life of physical suffering, nor yet of mental suffering, although something of both does usually enter into the experience of each disciple. It does mean suffering in the sense that we have shared in the griefs and sorrows of this sin-sick world, that in our own small way we have followed in the footsteps of our Saviour and been as He was in the world. We too must enter into the world's distress and feel deeply for all men in their sorrows if we are to be of the character needed in that day. Do our hearts ache for the injustice and oppression that comes before our notice every day? Do our minds cry out in protest at some flagrant example of misery or cruelty inflicted perhaps by heartless men or soulless institutions and governments? Do we long for the wisdom and the power to go out into the world bringing happiness and health where now there is sorrow and sickness? These are the things that must possess our inward being like a burning fire if we will be of those who in the next Age will come forth armed with all wisdom and power to do these very things. To-day they are considered by men as signs of weakness, for love and mercy and well doing are despised and the contrary attributes of selfishness and callousness exalted as desirable standards by which to live. So it is that in this day, as in that of Isaiah, the one who carries the burden of others is despised as one to whom even God is indifferent. Men in Jesus' day could not understand how such an One could enjoy the favour of God whilst bereft of all outward indication of Divine favour. They looked upon His life, spent chiefly among the outcasts and the poor, the uninfluential in earth's affairs, and His death, that of a common criminal, without any kind of spectacular deliverance such as the past heroes of their own history, Daniel, Job, Joseph, had experienced, and they could only esteem him stricken and smitten, deserted by God. They were quite incapable of comprehending how God could possibly be interested in such an one. God was, to them, a militant, war loving God, indulgent to His own people and a relentless foe to His enemies, justifying His worshippers on the basis of correctly performed ritual and sacrifice and condemning all others on account of failure to observe the Law. Temporal welfare and the favour of God went hand in hand, and the manifest disfavour of God could only mean that there was wickedness in the object of disfavour. Small wonder that, looking on the Man of Sorrows and seeing nothing of the spiritual glory, they esteemed him "stricken and afflicted of God".

"But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." (v.5).

This is the second verse affirming the substitionary character of our Lord's sufferings. He suffered these things by the hand of man and he endured them on behalf of man. Zechariah, more than two centuries later, must have remembered this passage when he cried "They shall look upon the one whom they pierced and shall mourn for him". The word here rendered "wounded" means "pierced" and has the significance of being thrust through with a weapon in a manner that inevitably causes death. Psa.22.16 uses the same word when in that noble lament that has so often been taken as prophetic of Jesus' sufferings, the Psalmist sings "the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me; they pierced my hands and feet". It certainly does at least refer to the sufferings of Israel as a nation. That prophecy was of course fulfilled literally in the case of Jesus on the Cross, as were so many of the other prophetic declarations of the 22nd Psalm. It is by no means unreasonable therefore to conclude that Isaiah, inspired as he was by the Holy Spirit of God, did have that Psalm in his mind as he uttered, and perhaps wrote, the splendid words of his 53rd chapter. The Lord's servant of Isa. 53, despised and rejected, is the same as the one who cries his solemn lament in Psa. 22. Just as in Psa. 22 the lament changes at the end into a joyful expression of faith in the eventual outcome, a confidence that at the end God will deliver and vindicate his loyal one, so in Isa, 53 the well-nigh hopeless strain turns at the end into a song of praise to God who has set the insignia of royalty upon the despised and rejected one, and vindicated and exalted him at last in the sight of. all people. There is correspondence between Psa. 22 and Isa. 53 that is well worth studying.

When Zechariah spoke of the great mourning that is to sweep regathered Israel in the last days (Zech. 12) consequent upon their looking upon the One Whom they had pierced, it is this final vindication which he sees. Isaiah and the writer of Psalm 22 saw this final glorious outcome from the standpoint of God in heaven. The faithful servant who had endured unto death, innocently, willingly taking the place of the sons of men who themse1ves had merited this judgment, exalted at last to the right hand of the majesty on high, as the writer to the Hebrews puts it. Zechariah, on the other hand, is standing on the earth at the Last Day. He sees the regathered and resurrected Israelites of all nations gathered around their King, the once rejected and crucified Saviour, and now they are weeping tears of contrition and repentance. Through that mourning will come cleansing, and ultimately reconciliation with God and a lifting of the burden of all their transgressions and all their sins. It is in that sense that He was pierced for their transgressions and for those of the whole world.

"Bruised for our iniquities". The Hebrew is far more forceful. "He was crushed." ! It is the strongest word the Hebrew language has to denote severity of suffering unto death. Isaiah uses the word elsewhere. In 3.15 he says "What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces... saith the Lord." That was a question addressed directly to those who were oppressing the people of the Lord and destroying them by their rapacity. Again, in describing the coming doom of the Egyptians, he says in 19.10 "they shall be broken in the purposes thereof". Pierced to death for our transgressions; crushed into lifelessness for our iniquities; that was the destiny to which His great love for the world of men which God had made led Him, that He might eventually save that world. To say that He died for our sins is a simple truth but a tremendous understatement of the facts. It was in conditions of well-nigh inconceivable suffering that our Lord gave his life in our behalf. He did not merely die for us; He also suffered for us.

(To be continued)

TH