“Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand” (Isa 53:10).
Crucifixion was the most painful and disgraceful method of capital punishment ever invented by man. It was the ultimate form of torture invented by the Persians and perfected by the Romans in the first century B.C. It was primarily reserved for the most vicious and the worst of criminals. The word “excruciating” was a new word created to describe the extreme pain of crucifixion because nothing in the language could describe the intense anguish inflicted on one crucified.
Before the crucifixion itself, the one to be crucified was stripped naked and flogged. Roman floggings were known to be very brutal. They usually consisted of thirty-nine lashes. They use a whip of braided leather thongs with sharp metals and bones woven into them. When the whip would strike the flesh, these would cause deep bruises or contusions which would break open with further blows. The back of the criminal would be so shredded that part of the spine would sometimes be exposed because of the deep cuts. Some of those put through this would even die from the beating before they would be crucified.
The physical suffering of our Lord Jesus began in the Garden of Gethsemane the evening before. While the disciples were sleeping, the Lord “being in agony prayed earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luk 22:44). Then Judas betrayed Him with a kiss.
He was arrested and paraded to the court of Caiaphas where some officers blindfolded Him, began to beat Him and spat on Him. In the hours following He received several additional beatings at the hand of the Roman soldiers. They led Him before Pontius Pilate. It was there He received the Roman scourging, flogged 39 times, after which they beat Him with their hands and with a reed, and pushed-in a “crown of thorns” onto His skull. By this time, His body had been battered, bruised, and totally disfigured beyond recognition.
“Just as there were many who were appalled at him — his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness” (Isaiah 52:14)
“He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. 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.
Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 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” (Isa 53:2-5).
Peter denied Him three times and ran away. All His disciples forsook Him. Only John and the three women had the audacity to stay around throughout. Justice was denied Him and He was condemned to die with the most wicked. Upon all the agony that He had endured from the previous night, the beating in Caiaphas court, the slappings and spittings, the beatings from the Roman soldiers, and the final scourging of 39 lashes, they made Him carry His own cross. And being too weak to carry it further, they compelled Simon, a Cyrenian to carry it after Him.
And when they got to the place called Calvary, the Roman soldiers stripped Him naked and placed Him on His back with His hands out and nailed to the cross. The nails, which were about 7-9inches long were placed in between the bones of the forearm and the small bones of the hands, and driven in and they drove in the ones for the feet also. And after they lifted the cross up and Him hanging there, they shared His clothes among them.
“And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots” (Matthew 27:35).
Where were His disciples? Where were all the followers? Where were all those who were healed and those thousands He fed? Where were those whose eyes He opened, whose limbs he restored? They all forsook Him. They “hid as it were their faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not”.
And because He was bearing our sins, God the Father turned His back on Him. It was in the midst of this horrific pain, in the face of this ultimate shame and indescribable loneliness that Jesus, in the agony of His soul, sang the twenty-second Psalm to God saying:
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?….……But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.
All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breasts. I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly, Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help (7-11).
Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death (12-15).
For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me (16-17).
They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture” (Psa 22: 18)
Many of us are familiar with some of the words of the Psalms He sang or chanted under torture on the cross. He was describing the scene both things happening physically around Him and in the spirit realm. Blessed be the Lord our Savior, for towards the end of the suffering of the cross, He made some categorical proclamations.
He declared that a “Generation” shall come, and a seed shall be brought forth. Before He said “It is finished” and gave up the ghost, He saw His Seed. Yes! He saw His seed and the joy reserved for Him. “And for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross and despised the shame” (Heb 12:2). There and then in the agony of His soul He prophesied saying: a “Seed shall serve Him” and it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. He also promised God the Father that He will declare His Name and sing His praise in the midst of the congregation of His brethren (who are His seed yet to be born). He proclaimed: “They shall come, and they shall declare God’s righteousness to the generation to come”.
The Lord through His sacrifice, the birth pains, brought forth the “seed” that would serve Him. He brought forth a people to be accounted to Him for His generation. Here therefore is the missing generation of the first Chapter of the book of Matthew. Here is His seed. Here’s His progeny. He prophesied it on the cross, and it has come to pass in the new creation.
“I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. For the kingdom is the Lord’s: and he is the governor among the nations (22,27,28).
“A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this” (Psa 22:30,31).
In the preceding chapters, we’ve been meditating on the generation of Jesus Christ the Messiah. We read the book of Isaiah, where the prophet was lamenting the fact that the Messiah’s life was cut off without leaving a seed to continue His family tree—or at least, that was the way it looked, when examined from the natural point of view. This would mean that the natural bloodline of Jesus was terminated at Calvary. It would mean He died without leaving an heir to continue His family genealogy. Since He’s the seed of Abraham, this would also implies that the seed of Abraham was terminated with His death and there would be no “son of David” to sit upon the everlasting throne promised by the Most High God.
But God, who cannot lie and who is the Almighty, said that the “seed of the woman” shall crush the head of the serpent. The devil understood what this meant. It meant that the Messiah would overwhelm the devil in combat, subdue him, and take over the dominion that he stole from Adam. That’s the meaning of “bruise the head” that God pronounced on the serpent. And the devil had been on the lookout since that pronouncement was made by God. He checked out every Hebrew child born to see if they could be the promised seed. And when he met Jesus of Nazareth, who overcame all tests and temptations, Satan knew this must be the One to come, and he worked extra hard to terminate the seed.
The devil identified Him correctly, but did not understand how Jesus was going to wrest the dominion from him and his forces of darkness. He therefore worked tooth and nail to destroy Him. He was successful (for so he thought) as he got the Jews to condemn Him to death by crucifixion.
It was there on the cross, in His final minutes before giving up the ghost, that Jesus the Lord gave us the answer to the question we’ve been pondering on. He said a “seed”, meaning a people, a race, an offspring, or a generation of people, shall serve Him, and that this seed will be reckoned to the Lord as a generation of His own. The seed will be reckoned to the Lord as His progeny, as His seed, and the continuation of His generation.
So we can now answer the question: Who shall declare His generation?
It’s the “seed” brought forth out of His death pains and raised up with Him in His resurrection, even the “seed” that shall serve Him, he, even he shall declare His generation. And “they shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born”. They are His “seed”, “His children”, of whom He said, “Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts, which dwelleth in mount Zion” (Isa 8:18). These ones form the corporate body that shall declare His generation and perpetuate His legacy on the earth. The universe has never seen anything like this before.