Isaiah 53:3: Jesus, the Man of Sorrows

INTRODUCTION

Some people seem to get through life without a care in the world.

They are blessed with a sunny disposition, everyone likes them, and fortune smiles on them.

But most of us have known plenty of difficulties and sorrows.

We have experienced disappointment, pain, loss, and trouble.

And we have learned more through our troubles than we ever did through our pleasures.

Another thing that sorrow does is connect us to the sorrows of other people.

We may have many friends who we can laugh with in the good times.

But few are the friends who will weep with us in our sorrow.

When we are in trouble, we seek out fellow-sufferers because we know they will understand.

Hundreds of years before God sent his Son into the world to become our Savior, a prophet wrote a description of one he called “the Servant of the Lord.”

We read this in the book of Isaiah:

The prophet wrote these words, the church since its beginning has applied to Jesus: “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3).

When God became man in Jesus Christ, he became a “Man of Sorrows.”

Our Jesus wasn’t one of those carefree folks who laugh and joke their way through life, who never seem to be deeply touched by anything.

Jesus knew what it was to experience pain. He felt the hurt of a broken heart.

The Bible never tells us that he laughed, although he must have. He surely did enjoy good times with is friends.

Jesus experienced deep and abiding joy. On the night before his death he told his disciples: “These things I have said to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).

But the witness of those who knew him testify that Jesus’s life was characterized more by seriousness and deep feeling than by merriment and lightheartedness.

The gospel writers give us clues so that we may understand that Jesus felt deeply the sorrows of people.

In Matthew 8 we read about a time when many people were brought to him for healing and he healed them. Matthew adds, “This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.”

In Mark 7:34 we read that when Jesus healed a deaf man, he looked up to heaven and sighed. Then he said, “Be opened.”

Evidently, Jesus’s healings cost him mental anguish.

Three times in the New Testament we read that Jesus wept.

I. The first time we read of Jesus weeping is the time when he stood by the tomb of his friend Lazarus.

A. Not long before his own death, Jesus received a message from his friends Martha and Mary concerning their brother Lazarus: “Lord, he whom you love is ill” (John 11:3).

Jesus came to Bethany where Mary and Martha lived, but by the time he arrived Lazarus had died and was buried.

We read, (John 11:32-36):

Then Mary, when she came where Jesus was and saw him, fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled; and he said, “Where have you laid him?”

They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”

Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

B. People have always wondered why Jesus wept when a few minutes he would call Lazarus from the tomb and Lazarus would be alive again.

I think I know.

Jesus was sensitive to the human sorrow.

Jesus knew the sting of death. Joseph, his earthly father, had died before this time.

People died young in those days. Jesus no doubt lost other loved ones and sorrowed with friends in their losses.

And he knew that in a few days, he himself would die—a terrifying death.

Jesus had evidently planned to give Lazarus back to his sisters, but when he saw his friends weeping at the grave of the one they loved, he was confronted with the sadness of death, the universal enemy of life.

Those thoughts made him deeply sorrowful, so sorrowful that he wept—even though in a few minutes Lazarus would be alive again and sorrow would be turned to joy.

II. The second time we read of Jesus weeping is in Luke 19, just after the triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

A. The crowds had been shouting and welcoming him as God’s Messiah.

Just after this we read, “And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. For the days shall some upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you and hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation” (Luke 19:41-44).

As Jesus looked down on Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, his mind went ahead to the time, less than 40 years distant, when the nation whose leaders had rejected him would bring the wrath of the Roman army down upon them and indescribable horror would take place.

The city and its Temple would be destroyed and its people killed or sold into slavery—all because they didn’t recognize Jesus as their Savior and rightful king when they had the chance.

B. This time, Jesus wept, not for himself but for the sorrow that would come upon so many because their leaders had rejected him. He calls his time with the nation of his people on earth “the time of their visitation.”

Here again, Jesus’s tears were tears of sympathy.

III. The third instance of Jesus weeping is noted in the book of Hebrews.

A. We read (Hebrews 5:7-9): “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard for his godly fear. Although he was a Son he learned obedience through what he suffered: and being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.”

The writer is recalling the time in the garden, just before Jesus was betrayed, arrested, condemned, and crucified.

It was a terrible time, so terrifying that Jesus cried out to God to be spared. We read that “he threw himself on the ground and prayed that if it were possible the hour might pass from him. And he said, ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will but what thou wilt.’”

B. Jesus was a sociable person, and he enjoyed the company of friends. But this was a time when Jesus knew the sorrow of incredible loneliness.

Jesus had gone to Jerusalem, knowing that he would die a terrible death there.

He could easily have escaped this fate. A few hours walk would have taken him out of danger.

But in obedience to the will of his Father, he went to his doom.

Earlier that same night, after he had had his last supper with his disciples and given them the bread and the cup—his body and blood, that was to be given for the sins of the world.

And just after that solemn occasion, what would happen but that his disciples would get into a dispute about which one would be the greatest in the coming kingdom! (Luke 22:24).

Then they went to the garden, where he told them to watch with him and pray, but they went to sleep as he agonized for hours in prayer.

Then one of his disciples betrayed him to his enemies, and another denied he ever knew him.

Forsaken by his best friends, he was hung on the cross, and mocked, and spit upon, and scorned by the people he loved and for whom he was giving his life.

And at the end felt rejected, not only by humans, but by the Father as well.

And he cried out, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?”

CONCLUSION

So what difference does it make to us that Jesus experienced such depths of sorrow?

It makes all the difference.

During the time I was in basic training at Camp Chaffee, Arkansas, a few days before we would be sent to Korea where there was a war going on, a young lieutenant conducted a class for us called “Combat Indoctrination.” It was supposed to prepare us for combat. The lieutenant made it very graphic. He talked about the fear.

He said that some men cursed while other men prayed. He didn’t think it mattered which—anything to release the tension. His lecture was graphic and emotional.

But something didn’t ring true, at least to one young black soldier in our company. When the lieutenant asked for questions, this young man stood, gave his rank and name (as required in speaking to an officer on such an occasion) and posed his question: “Sir, Private Stademeyer, Sir, have you ever been in combat?”

The lieutenant paused, then answered, “Well…I haven’t been myself…but I’ve got many friends who have.”

We didn’t dare laugh or even smile. I pitied the young officer who had been given this assignment for which he was so unsuited.

But his fine words were only so much air now, for he had tried to tell us about something that can only be known by experience.

When we come to our Jesus with our sorrows, we know that he understands.

If God, in Christ, had never experienced sorrow, how could we believe that he understands ours?

If Jesus had never experienced the seeming absence of God in his life, how could we suppose that he can understand our feelings of forsakenness.

There are kinds of suffering, of course, that Jesus never experienced—the unfaithfulness of a spouse, Alzheimer’s, mental illnesses. But he has suffered in other ways far more than we can imagine.

We could say that Jesus suffered in ways that correspond to all human suffering.

What a relief to know that Jesus knows our hearts and the griefs and fears that beset us.

He knows. He cares.

When we groan and cry out to God and say, “Why? Why? Why?” God understands. He makes allowances.

As you know by experience, being a Christian doesn’t make pain go away. Loving God doesn’t take away the disappointments in life.

Living our life for Jesus doesn’t take away all our fears—or all our tears.

But knowing God, and loving God, and living for God helps us to cling to the God who understands and forgives.

The suffering Savior is the one who can give us strength in the time of need.

That is why Paul wrote in one of his letters: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10).

God accepts not only our happy praises. He also hears and accepts our laments, our cries, our questions.

He hears, and he grieves with us. And when he says, “It will be all right”—it will be all right.