Suffering Servant

Rev. Charles G. Dennison
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Seventeen sermons by Rev. Charles G. Dennison, former pastor of Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Sewickley, PA, tracing Isaiah's servant songs from chapter 6 through Isaiah 53 and beyond, culminating in Christ as the suffering servant whose humiliation and glory are never separated. Preached September 1986 - April 1987 and drawn from the Dennison Sermon Library archive.

  1. 04/19/1987

    The Spirit's Threefold Work

    The Reformed doctrine of the Holy Spirit stands against readings that reduce the Spirit to feeling or experience. Across the servant songs the Spirit works in three ways at once, as the servant's endowment, his mission, and the accomplishment of that mission. The Spirit's work saturates Isaiah 40-66 as fully as the servant's does.

  2. 04/12/1987

    From Suffering to Glory

    The five servant songs, reviewed together here, show a real progression: as the servant's suffering grows more explicit, so does his glory, the two never separated. Christ's own reading of this text in Luke 4 announces that progression as already fulfilled in himself. Our union is with the suffering servant in that glory, not merely in his suffering alone.

  3. 04/05/1987

    The Lion Who Is a Lamb

    Christ appears in Revelation 5 as both lion and lamb, an image that makes sense only after Isaiah has introduced his lamb. The lamb offends us more than we admit, because it shows weakness where we expect strength. The servant of 53:7-12 is that same silent lamb, and he dies so that God may exalt his own lambs.

  4. 03/08/1987

    Hopelessness and Hope

    The servant's humiliation, described in 52:14-15's disfigured appearance, points directly at our own hopelessness apart from him. God's means of saving the servant, and saving us through him, look impossible by any ordinary measure. Isaiah 11's picture of the root from Jesse growing out of a stump makes the same point in miniature.

  5. 02/22/1987

    Amazement at the Gospel

    Real amazement runs through Scripture's great turning points, Isaac's near-sacrifice, Lazarus's tomb, Paul's own conversion, and it belongs here too. Isaiah's own amazement at Israel's blindness sets the emotional register for the whole passage. The servant's aloneness and rejection is the necessary road from death to life, not an unfortunate detour around it.

  6. 02/08/1987

    The Plural 'Our' of Isaiah 53

    The plural 'our' running through 53:1-6 matters more than it first appears, Isaiah counting himself among the very people needing the servant's suffering. That servantlike humility mirrors the servant's own. Matthew 20:28's summary of the gospel, that Christ came to give his life a ransom for many, is simply this passage restated.

  7. 02/01/1987

    Comfort After Failure

    Hezekiah's failure in chapter 39 is exactly what paves the way for the comfort that opens chapter 40, judgment making room for grace rather than closing it off. Israel's own failure runs the same course. The servant goes to real lengths for Israel's good, the same strength described in 40:28-31 for those who wait on the Lord.

  8. 01/18/1987

    Behold, the Arm of the Lord

    'Behold' recurs across Isaiah at key turning points, in 52:13 as much as 41:27-42:1, always signaling something worth real attention. Israel's own deliverance follows the same pattern God uses to deliver the servant himself. The cross is already present in 52:14-15's disfigurement, prefiguring baptism, and in 53:1's question about who has believed the report of the Lord's arm.

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Seventeen sermons by Rev. Charles G. Dennison, former pastor of Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Sewickley, PA, tracing Isaiah's servant songs from chapter 6 through Isaiah 53 and beyond, culminating in Christ as the suffering servant whose humiliation and glory are never separated. Preached September 1986 - April 1987 and drawn from the Dennison Sermon Library archive.

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  • Creator
    Rev. Charles G. Dennison
  • Episodes
    17
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church
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    Suffering Servant