Like a Lamb to the Slaughter

These verses are known as the fourth servant song. Up to these verses Isaiah has been doing a “demolition” job on the whole world, and then getting us ready for the solution. He introduces us to this figure… the righteous servant. The servant stands in massive contrast to the rest of us when it comes to doing the will of God. He endures the punishment due to the people. He is not being punished for his own guilt or sin. We are willfully resistant of God; where we are willful the servant is willing. The lamb is symbolic of the sacrifice because of the sacrificial lamb whose blood spread of the doorposts of God’s used to signal the passover of the last plague in Egypt. Jesus is the lamb of God. It was John the Baptist who said “behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. His sacrifice was effectual because the servant was righteous. He was a willing sacrifice and the only sacrifice that could atone for our willingness to sin. Our Jesus about whom Isaiah is writing 700 years before he came, is giving a description of the fact that he will be rejected by his people, he would be despised, he will go to the cross and carry our grief and sorrows, he would by unjustly treated and he would do all this voluntarily. The righteous suffered for the unrighteous that he might bring us to God.