Man of Sorrows - The Oppressed Man
- Paul Downie
- 26 minutes ago
- 13 min read
Isaiah 53:7-9 NIVUK
[7] He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. [8] By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. [9] He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.
Three days before I began to write these lines, there was a disastrous press conference in the White House that many believed took us closer to World War 3.
American President Donald Trump and his Vice President JD Vance had an angry confrontation in front of the world’s press with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The source of this confrontation seemed to be that Trump and Vance wanted Zelenskyy to sign a peace deal that was demonstrably favourable to them, but less so to Ukraine, and without the security guarantees that Zelenskyy and his government needed.
The tensions became worse when Trump and Vance, and some members of the American press, showed a complete disregard for the fact that they were dealing with a battlefield president, ignored the complexities and sensitivities of his situation on the ground, and bulldozed ahead regardless to push for him to sign their deal.
It was an awful spectacle. As undiplomatic a situation as there has been in world politics.
When someone has suffered and their feelings are raw, among the worst words they can hear are simplistic platitudes that show no attempt to understand their situation, accompanied by the dismissive words ‘But why can’t you just...?’
The reality is that making no attempt to listen and understand the position of someone who is suffering and is in pain actually makes their suffering worse.
It can even push them over the edge.
Although these verses seem incredibly bleak, they contain within them a beautiful secret for all who carry the heavy burden of suffering:
Jesus knows. Jesus understands.
Here we see some beautiful truths about the God who did the hard yards to really understand what it means to be human, even dying in our place. Although it’s not an easy read, these words will help us to be strong and keep going in our situation, even when other people just don’t understand us.
The first of these tells us that when Jesus was suffering, He was The Silent Man.
The Silent Man
Isaiah 53:7 NIVUK
[7] He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
This really is quite something.
From my experience as a missionary, I’ve found that there are two categories of people in need:
Firstly, there are those who complain about it, and use it as leverage to try to get people to ‘help’ them.
Often, this is genuine – there is a real need.
However, we should not think for one second that the complaining will stop. The reality is that it is not just the help they are looking for, it is the attention. So once one need is identified and resolved, they will find another, and another, and another.
The Bible is straightforward about this:
Proverbs 30:15 NIVUK
[15] ‘The leech has two daughters. “Give! Give!” they cry.
This creates a very difficult situation for aid organisations. You know there is a need – you can see it and it is obvious. However, such people have no intention whatsoever of becoming strong and independent as they love the attention that being weak and dependent brings.
But there are others who have the same needs, feel the same pain, and do not complain because they accept it from God and seek Him to provide. They are embarrassed to receive help. They see it as almost being undignified. Their desire is to be independent and stand on their own two feet to help others.
They are in need, but are silent about it.
I knew such a family in Romania. They are now standing on their own two feet with children working overseas. They made it.
Because they brought their situation before God and He provided.
Jesus was in an awful situation. Sure to be condemned to death. Facing unimaginable torture. Falsely accused by those who were after His blood. And yet...
Matthew 27:12-14 NIVUK
[12] When he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he gave no answer. [13] Then Pilate asked him, ‘Don’t you hear the testimony they are bringing against you?’ [14] But Jesus made no reply, not even to a single charge – to the great amazement of the governor.
John 19:7-11 NIVUK
[7] The Jewish leaders insisted, ‘We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.’ [8] When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, [9] and he went back inside the palace. ‘Where do you come from?’ he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer. [10] ‘Do you refuse to speak to me?’ Pilate said. ‘Don’t you realise I have power either to free you or to crucify you?’ [11] Jesus answered, ‘You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.’
Jesus has every legal argument on His side. The false witnesses the Jewish leaders had amassed against Him couldn’t even get their story straight (Matthew 26:59-60; Mark 15:45-46), which, if you think about it, is quite incredible. A good lawyer would have been able to destroy their accusations in seconds.
Yet Jesus offered no argument. Not one.
Nowadays, Western culture is really big on human rights – my rights, even if they are wrong to you. Numerous rights that Jesus would have had if He’d been born nowadays were simply cast aside and trampled in the dust.
Yet He didn’t fight for them.
Why?
His silence was one of surrender. Look what He prayed at Gethsemane:
Luke 22:42 NIVUK
[42] ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.’
He was completely and utterly surrendered to His Father’s will, no matter the cost, and that was why He was silent.
It was also a silence of obedience.
Hebrews 10:7 NIVUK
[7] Then I said, “Here I am – it is written about me in the scroll – I have come to do your will, my God.” ’
Jesus obeyed the Father in allowing Himself to be crucified. He stuck to a plan that had been set in place since the creation of the world (Colossians 1:15-20).
This stands in complete contrast to the people of God on their way to the Promised Land.
Yes, their journey was long and arduous. Yes, they were suffering.
However, their reaction is held up as an example to us all, and not in a good way:
1 Corinthians 10:10-11 NIVUK
[10] And do not grumble, as some of them did – and were killed by the destroying angel. [11] These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come.
That is why Paul gave this command to the suffering church in Philippi:
Philippians 2:14-16 NIVUK
[14] Do everything without grumbling or arguing, [15] so that you may become blameless and pure, ‘children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.’ Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky [16] as you hold firmly to the word of life. And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labour in vain.
Now, I want you to understand me here. No-one can or should minimise your suffering. Life is hard. I have no doubt about that.
But how we approach our life, our attitude towards our circumstances, has a huge bearing on our ability to endure it.
I’ll give you a good illustration.
Years ago, I was in an office where everyone was facing redundancy and the loss of their career. Some denied the fact until it hit them, and it hit them hard. Others did their best to fight it, and lost. Others complained about it bitterly.
All of these people made their situation so much harder.
But although it was a very difficult situation to be in, what made it a little easier for some of us is that we prayerfully accepted it as the will of God and let Him lead us on to the next stage.
There us a time to resist and fight. But truly wise and discerning people know when it’s time to be silent, to bear through the suffering and to surrender to the will of God, even though it is difficult.
Lamentations 3:25-27 NIVUK
[25] The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; [26] it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. [27] It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.
When we can sit in our suffering and still say that God is good all the time, then we will have learned the value of the silence of surrender and obedience.
But Jesus wasn’t just the silent man, He was also The Oppressed Man.
The Oppressed Man
Isaiah 53:8 NIVUK
[8] By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished.
Jesus didn’t just suffer because of some ailment or mental anguish, He suffered because He was persecuted; He suffered because He was oppressed; He suffered because He was judged.
Or, in a sense, mis-judged.
You see, the Hebrew words translated as ‘oppression and judgement’ carry with them the sense that He was arrested and imprisoned.
Yet Jesus was innocent.
1 Peter 2:22 NIVUK
[22] ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’
Even when He was cross-examined by Pilate, this was Pilate’s conclusion:
Luke 23:4 NIVUK
[4] Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, ‘I find no basis for a charge against this man.’
So, as far as Roman law, which prevailed in Judea at the time, was concerned, Jesus was innocent. The only reason why He was handed over to be crucified was, humanly speaking, to satiate the blood lust of the Jewish leaders.
And that ought to be shocking to us.
This is, after all, the most severe sanction the Romans could utilise. An innocent man should not be anywhere near this.
And what’s more, the accusation here in Isaiah is that this humongous wrong took place, yet no-one in Jesus’ generation had spoken up to stop it.
We know that at least one of the Sanhedrin had not consented (Luke 23:50-51), but there is a world of difference between not voting for something and actively persuading your colleagues against it. The risk of the latter is way bigger than the risk of the former.
Jesus' persecution was unjust, but the fact that not one person spoke up or did anything to prevent it, even more so.
This is what prompted Peter to make the following serious accusation:
Acts 2:23 NIVUK
[23] This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.
And the Jewish leaders understood precisely what this meant:
Acts 5:28 NIVUK
[28] ‘We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,’ he said. ‘Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.’
But they were guilty. That was the point. They themselves had shouted to Pilate:
Matthew 27:25 NIVUK
[25] All the people answered, ‘His blood is on us and on our children!’
Those who had shouted that at Pilate were complicit and were guilty.
Those who had not were still complicit and guilty by their silence.
But here’s the thing. Here’s the amazing thing.
Jesus died for their sins too.
They were hate-filled and determined to take His life at all costs.
But Jesus died for them too. He bore their transgressions. He bore their sins.
Such is the grace of God.
The oppressed Man was oppressed so that His oppressors might go free.
Such is the grace of God.
And we ought to marvel at it. We really should.
Because the same grace saves us.
So we have seen the silent man and the oppressed man. We end by looking at The Dead Man.
The Dead Man
Isaiah 53:9 NIVUK
[9] He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.
What we see here is a remarkable prophecy.
On the surface, it seems almost impossible to fulfil.
How can someone be assigned a grave with the wicked (i.e. a pauper’s grave, as it would be entirely unjust for a wicked man to be buried with the full privileges of the rich), yet also be buried with the rich? It seems almost contradictory.
Yet that is what happened.
A condemned prisoner like Jesus, particularly one who had died such a gruesome death as if He was barely human, would absolutely not receive a rich person’s burial, even if He had been innocent.
Yet all four Gospels agree that Jesus’ earthly body was buried by a rich man, Joseph of Arimathea, who was also a member of the Sanhedrin (Matthew 27:57-61; Mark 15:42-47; Luke 23:50-54; John 19:38-42).
And so, at the saddest time of the disciples’ lives, when they were absolutely at their lowest ebb, prophecy was still being fulfilled.
This teaches us a very important aspect of this darkest of periods:
It was planned.
God was still in control.
It might have been horrific. The disciples might have been confused. They might have felt like they had nowhere to turn. Their head might have been spinning.
But all that mattered for nothing, because God still had a plan, and that plan was still being worked out, even through the pain.
In 2000, while I was still a missionary, the team I was working with was asked to do a children’s program in a Roma (gypsy) neighbourhood. We had a guide with us who took us to the small church where we would do the program. He warned us not to leave the building or even enter the neighbourhood without him. He could not guarantee our safety if we did.
I had never been there before, so I was inclined to listen to him. I was wary. I was wary the whole time that the team was doing that children’s programme. However, we were not at risk because our guide had been there before and knew what to do.
Jesus died. That seems like something we should be sad about – and that is correct.
But there is also good reason to feel reassured by it. Death is the greatest risk any of us will ever face, and the last risk too. It can be terrifying, let’s be honest.
However, every Christian heading towards death does so in the footsteps of their Lord who has been there before, knows the way through it and will lead us to Heaven:
Psalms 23:4 NIVUK
[4] Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
So yes, it is sad that Jesus died. It’s even worse when you realise that our sins made it necessary for Him to die.
But at the same time, there is comfort there, because He will lead us to life everlasting.
Conclusion
1 Corinthians 15:3-5 NIVUK
[3] For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, [4] that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, [5] and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.
Death is rarely, if ever, good news – unless you are some form of psychopath with no sense of compassion. In death there is loss. There is pain. There is hurt.
There may be relief that someone’s suffering is over. However anyone who claims that death is easy either has no idea of the value of a life (or their own life) and is living in a nihilistic nightmare, or is so disengaged from reality in their own narcissistic bubble that they don’t have a clue of the real world.
Death is always rough. It is without a doubt the single hardest aspect of living in a fallen universe.
It’s therefore something of a relief that we only have to face it once (Hebrews 9:27-28).
But we are reminded often that at the heart of Christianity is a violent, unfair, unjust death.
Christianity is the only belief system in the world that centralises the assassination of its leader.
And that ought to upset us. It ought to cause us pain. It should not be an easy thing.
Why?
Because Jesus died for our sins (Romans 5:8; 1 Corinthians 15:3; 1 Peter 3:18). Although that sacrifice brought us salvation, we have to realise that it was necessary because we needed to be saved. If we had not sinned, there would have been no need for the sacrifice and Jesus would not have needed to die at all, let alone violently. His death is a stark reminder of the nature of our sin, the nature of our selves and the high price of our salvation.
We ought never, ever to forget that.
But there is another side to this, as we have seen. The fact that Jesus was the silent man in the face of incredible suffering teaches us how we too should be prepared to suffer and surrender to God’s will, without complaining or arguing, even if it’s tough.
The fact of His being the oppressed man, who was wrongfully arrested and tried, despite having committed no sin, teaches us that life is not always easy.
The fact that Jesus was the dead man teaches us that God has a plan, even in the very darkest times of our lives, and that Jesus has a very intimate experience of all that it takes to be human.
These verses might seem bleak and difficult on the surface, with everything seemingly headed towards a negative end, but they are not at all.
Why?
Because Jesus walked this road. Because we will one day walk it too.
And the fact that He has walked it means that we can trust in Him and not be afraid.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, it’s been difficult to read of Your suffering, and much worse when I consider that my sin was part of what caused it. I confess that sin now and ask You to forgive me. I will follow You, even if I am persecuted, because if I am, then I know You have been there and will guide me through it. Amen.
Questions
What can Jesus’ silence teach us about how to deal with persecution?
Why did Jesus surrender to wrongful arrest and trial?
What was the real cause of Jesus’ death? How should this change the way we live?
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