THE SEED
Andrew Martin
Isaiah 53: 10; Psalm 22: 30, 31; 69: 35, 36; 102: 23-28
It will be seen that what is in mind is the thought of the seed. We have in the first two scriptures read the thought of the seed as relating to the Lord Jesus, that is to say, His seed. The thought of a seed is the continuance of what was originally there. We get it early in Genesis in relation to the vegetable creation, the seed, “after their kind”, Gen. 1: 12. There is to be a continuance of what was seen once, that is the thought of the seed. It is affecting that, as applied to man, the first time the thought of the seed comes into the scriptures refers to the Lord Jesus Himself. At that time, the terrible moment in the history of mankind, when God came down and before Him were three wretched creatures, man, the woman and the serpent. You might say that all God’s thoughts had been put in jeopardy because the serpent had acted in opposition to God and the woman had been deceived by his craft and man had sinned. God says of the woman herself, the one who had listened to the serpent – “her seed”. He says, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed”, Gen 3: 15. He then says, “he shall crush thy head”, showing that God already had Christ before Him. The answer to man’s fall was Christ, the answer was in Christ to the one who rose up against God, “he shall crush thy head”. Think of what God had, His wonderful resources in Christ, but think of the greatness of the One who could do that, who from divine counsel was marked out as the One who would crush the head of the serpent. He was content to come into this scene as the seed of the woman. What grace! What lowliness we see in Jesus. He is referred to in many ways, “seed of Abraham”, “seed of David”, John 7: 42. Think of the grace of the One by whose very word everything came into existence, who came in and was content to take His place amongst the seed and be referred to in that way as the seed of the woman. It had to be so if He was to take up His glory as the Son of Man, it had to be seen that He must come that way, that He must come in, “come of woman, come under law, that he might redeem those under law”, Gal. 4: 4,5.
He came in in such humility and lowliness. What humility marked the Lord Jesus. We see Him in His humility here in Isaiah 53. If ever a chapter brought before us the lowliness and the humility of Jesus it must be this one. You see what men saw of Him, but first you see how God saw Him. He is presented in this chapter as God’s servant, that is the place He took. It is one of these chapters where He is referred to without a name. It says, “he shall grow up before him … he hath no form nor lordliness” (v 2), it is ‘he’ all the way. The antecedent at the end of the previous chapter is “Behold, my servant shall deal prudently” (52: 13). He is presented here as God’s servant, that is the theme of Isaiah in the latter chapters, He is God’s servant. Israel should have been God’s servant, Israel was taken up to be God’s servant, but it is fulfilled in Jesus. The servant is the one who fulfils the will of another. Who could carry out the will of God? The One who came in as His servant, He came in as His servant. Think of the greatness of that amazing stoop as Jesus came into manhood, and He came in in order to be the servant, to carry out the will of God.
I looked up the word before coming and according to the original the word ‘servant’ and the word ‘bondman’ are the same word, but the translator, according to the wisdom he was given has used the words in different contexts, and God reserves to Jesus as “my servant”. Jesus takes that place, the bondman has no will of His own at all, he relinquishes every right he has. Such is the grace of Jesus that He was prepared to come in as a bondman. Think of all that marked Him, see the spirit of the bondman. We read about it in Philippians 2, the character, spirit and mind of the bondman, the lowliness that marked the Lord Jesus, that as man, though as to His Person He is God, yet as Man He emptied Himself and then humbled Himself. Think of the spirit that was seen in the One who took the place of a bondman. If we see the spirit of the bondman in Philippians 2, we see the heart of the bondman in Exodus 21 where he says, “I will not go free” (v 5). Bondmanship according to man is inevitably against man’s will, but with Jesus it was not ever against His will, He says, “I will not go free”. What a bondman he was! God calls attention to Him, earlier in Isaiah. He says, “Behold, my servant”, just look at Him, is there anybody like Him. God says, He is unique, “Behold my servant whom I uphold … in whom my soul delighteth” (42.1). There is no one like Him and there never has been.
We have Him here in this beautiful chapter growing up here before God as a tender sapling drawing nothing from His surroundings. Men saw Him in a different way, God saw Him as the tender sapling, saw Him there as the One who was the plant of God’s right hand:
As a tender sucker rising,
From the dry and stony land,
Object of man’s proud despising,
Grows the Plant of God’s right hand.
The One there who was come to do God’s will, growing up before Him as a tender sapling, but when men looked upon Him they said, “he hath no form nor lordliness, and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him” (v 2). Have we all seen the beauty in Jesus. Is there anyone here who has not seen the beauty in Jesus? Is there anybody here who in the last two days has heard the Lord Jesus spoken about, heard about His humiliation, heard about the way He has gone, and not been stirred in your heart? Is there anyone here who has not felt a movement in your heart as you have heard about the lowliness of Jesus, the things we were speaking about yesterday? I would urge you, if you did not feel a stirring, get to Him, do not leave it, you have not a moment to lose, make sure you develop a link with that blessed One, a living link with the Lord Jesus. Where we have read it speaks of, “his soul an offering for sin”. Dear young brother or sister, if you have never come to it that you need One to take up the question of your sins, make sure you settle that tonight because the One who came in to take up everything for God was necessarily made an offering for sin. Think of Him there, “When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin”. He had to take up the whole question of sin in order that God should be glorified and that man should be secured. That includes you and me. Make sure that you have got to God as to sin because if you have not you are in grave danger, it is not a thing that can be put off. You cannot guarantee how long you can put that off, you cannot put it off for a moment. The One whom we are speaking about was made an offering for sin. Think of the great work which He undertook upon the cross, the One who took up everything for God’s glory to accomplish His will, He was made an offering for sin.
God made Him an offering for sin according to this; elsewhere He offered Himself, but here God made Him an offering for sin, God looked upon Him and there was no one else that would do, He made Him an offering for sin. How He stands out in all His distinctiveness and uniqueness and glory. But, as having accomplished that great work, that work of redemption, He sees that there is something else that comes into view. The perfection of the Lord Jesus is so great and God’s heart is so full of Jesus, so full of His Son and the glories which belong to Him that He would not have Him alone. He would have the features of that blessed One reproduced in many. “When thou shall make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see a seed”. In other words there is going to be a continuation of that line, there are going to be others brought in to continue what was set on and seen in Jesus so perfectly that, “he shall see a seed”. Have you seen the seed? The Lord Jesus has seen it, He sees it in all its perfection, He sees the perfection of His own work. He sees it universally. I suppose for many of us here it has been a long time since we have seen so many beloved brethren together in one place and it does your heart good to see them, but what a tiny fraction of the seed which He has seen. John saw great numbers in the Revelation: at one point he saw a great company that no man could number, he saw the seed; it is what has come out of the death of Christ, the work having been done. “He shall” see a seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand”. What more capable hands could the pleasure of Jehovah be in? How could He find His pleasure in any other hands? Any other hands would be unable to provide the pleasure of Jehovah, but, “the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand”. “He shall prolong his days”. The days of Jesus were cut short upon the earth, they are continued now in heaven, that life continues there before God in all its perfection and beauty and vitality. That life continues as the object of God’s heart, but here upon the earth there is a seed, “he shall see a seed”, and it is Himself all over again. That is the work of God in His people, that is what He sees, that is what He takes account of. How often we take account of anything other than the work of God in one another and in ourselves, but what He sees is perfect because it is Himself again, it is the seed. It is the seed of God’s servant, that One, that character of Person, that character of Man who came here to undertake the will of God; it is formed in divine workmanship in the hearts of His own. How is it formed? Who can tell? How did it grow? Who can tell? Some of us were speaking earlier of the other figure of the seed, of the man who cast the seed upon the ground, and He says it grows, he know not how. It is the sovereign divine work of the Holy Spirit of God that causes that seed to grow, but it grows and it develops and it expresses the feature of the blessed One of whom we read in Isaiah 53.
In Psalm 22 we read of Him again, again a setting of His sufferings. Psalm 22 stands out distinctively amongst the Psalms, the setting being the sufferings of Jesus. It opens with words wrung from the heart of David. I have often wondered, but we do not know, what experience David went through to give utterance to those words, “why hast thou forsaken me?” (v 1), but what we do know was that the Holy Spirit gave him to record those words; and when the Lord Jesus was upon the cross there were no better words that could be used to give utterance to His feelings as to the forsaking of God, that He should be forsaken of God. He could use no better words than the words that David utters at the beginning of this Psalm. This is a Psalm in which His sufferings are distinctly brought out, there are sufferings brought out in this Psalm which no other could enter into. There are sufferings which others can enter into and feel, and they come into the Psalm too, but there are sufferings brought out which none other could ever enter into as He Himself was forsaken of God. When He was made an offering for sin, He was forsaken of God. Think of all the sufferings of the Holy One who there took our place upon the cross. Think of what He endured, the suffering was that He was forsaken of God. There was that from men which comes in as well, and there was that which offended Him, His sensibilities. The sensitive perfection in the Manhood of Jesus felt these things, felt the crudeness and the callousness of man, felt them deeply in His spirit. What a perfect One He is! But at the end he says, “A seed shall serve him”.
We have to be careful with the scriptures – we are applying them; literally they refer to Israel here and the Psalms tend to relate to Israel particularly in a day to come. We know that Israel had rejected the Lord Jesus, they had cast Him out and they would not have Him, and they have been scattered and the worst troubles are yet to come. The day of Jacob’s trouble is yet to be seen upon the earth; that day will come and there will be no suffering like it; Israel will go through suffering they have never endured before. You might wonder at that knowing what that nation has already gone through, but they will go through suffering that has never been seen before. Yet at the end of that there will be a few who will be looking for the One whom they first rejected, their hearts will turn to the Lord. We speak of those as the remnant, the few that there will be. Their hearts will turn to the Lord and they will be looking for Him, for the time of their redemption. This Psalm speaks about it too, “the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and revere him, all ye the seed of Israel”, the speaker looks on to the time and it says here, “A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation”. What a generation that will be when He comes to take up His rights among His earthly people. Does He have to wait for a seed that will serve Him? Does He not have something today, those who are secured, the result of His own work, the result of His death, those whom He saw, the seed that He saw as having been made an offering? He has it today. This Psalm speaks about His feelings as He comes out of death. As soon as He comes out of death He says, “I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee” (v 22). That is taken up in the assembly, the seed that serve Him, they shall be accounted to Him for a generation. Today that seed is to be found in the assembly and it is a seed that serves. You see the character of the One whose seed it is, they are serving Him in response to His God and Father, “in the midst of the assembly will I sing thy praises”. Think of the Lord Jesus having secured His own, having a vessel for Himself in which He can secure the Father’s praise and those who are the same character of Himself, “his seed”, secure the praise in the assembly.
In the other Psalms I think we get the thought more of continuance, because we have the “the seed of his servants”. Psalm 69 speaks of His sufferings from the hands of man, speaking of all that man did, and we can see the spirit that marked the Lord Jesus, “They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head; they that would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty” (v 4). What opposition was against Him and then He adds, “then I restored that which I took not away” – what a spirit was seen in Jesus:
Midst man’s unfathomed ill (Hymn 190)
Who could plumb the depths of man’s wickedness? And yet He says, “then I restored that which I took not away”. How great was that restoration, restoring that which He took not away. I think for the fulness of it we look to Revelation 21 and 22. You see there all that God had lost from the fall of man all restored in Jesus, the paradise of God fully restored. You see it all restored by that blessed One who came as God’s servant to take up His rights and to fulfil His will, “then I restored that which I took not away”. Beloved, how much is that spirit marking me? We might sometimes feel that it is sufficient not to answer back, but the Lord goes further; think of Him in the garden when one smote the bondman of the high priest, not only did He stop it but He brought in healing. What grace we see in Jesus, what perfection of manhood. Then we have “the seed of his servants”, we have His thoughts in relation to His people, “God will save Zion, and will build the cities of Judah; and they shall dwell there, and possess it”. Think of God coming in in that way, saving Zion, building the cities of Judah, all that God had in His sovereign purpose, all that He had in His heart where He was going to dwell. He says, “This is my rest for ever; here will I dwell, for I have desired it”, Ps. 132: 14. That is Zion, God’s sovereign thoughts in relation to His dwelling and entered into by sovereign mercy, God will come in in that way and will build the cities of Judah, “and they shall dwell there, and possess it: and the seed of His servants shall inherit it, and they that love his name shall dwell therein”. It is available for them to come in to, available for us to come in to. I suppose we can take that ground, the seed of his servants. What have we received? What have we inherited? What inheritance have we? Our inheritance is part with Christ in the assembly, is that not glorious? A wonderful blessed inheritance and you might say there can be nothing greater than that. But what have you in the way of understanding of it? What do you know as to that inheritance? How much have you entered into it? How much could you say about it from having had some impression gained in the presence of the Lord, gained there upon your knees as in communion with Him as to the greatness of that inheritance? There is much that we have inherited in the way of the unfolding of the truth and we cherish it; the fact that we are justified by faith, that is an inheritance that we have received and we value it. The fact that there is a Man in heaven and He has a body on earth, that is an inheritance that we value too. You can go on and on, the fact that we have sonship, light as to the Holy Spirit, light as to the assembly, these are all part of the inheritance that we can cherish. But the real appreciation of it is by experience and it says, “the seed of his servants shall inherit it”. The challenge I would find in that is what is my legacy? What am I leaving to others? What will others receive? Supposing the present period were to remain a little longer and I should be gone, what will I have left to others, what will they say? Will they have received something, will they have received an example of one who was here formed according to the seed of the great servant of God, the One who did not do His own will but came to fulfil the will of another, who lived in the realm of His inheritance? Will they see something like that, or will it be simply what we are naturally, the things that we love to remember about one another? Will it be that that is left behind, or will it be an impression of Christ? It has to be an impression of Christ if the Lord’s testimony is to continue. What goes on is the work of God and the expression of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself that is what has to go on.
In Psalm 102 we have the children of His servants again and here they abide. What a thing that is! The setting of this Psalm is the Lord Jesus in weakness, not here suffering from the hand of God, or exactly in the same way as in Psalm 69, but it is in a scene of weakness. God made Him weak, it says, “He weakened my strength in the way, he shortened my days”. The Lord Jesus had to be weakened by God. Weakness is a thing that generally we do not understand unless we have experienced it. We may see it, and we may get some apprehension, but it is a thing that we do not understand unless we have experienced it. Generally it is brought about by deterioration through illness or neglect, weakness comes in. You can see that it could never apply to Jesus, God had to weaken Him. He was perfect in His humanity, He had to be weakened by God in order that He should go through that experience along with suffering humanity, “He weakened my strength in the way, he shortened my days. I said, My God, take me not away in the midst of my days!”. Think of that cry in Gethsemane, “if it be possible let this cup pass from me” Matt. 26: 39. Then the word comes in as to the greatness of that One who said, think of the Lord Jesus there in weakness, He had fallen upon His face to the earth, He is the One of whom it could be said, “Thy years are from generation to generation”. It speaks of the heaven and the earth, “They shall perish, but thou continuest; and all of them shall grow old as a garment: as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed. But thou art the Same, and thy years shall have no end”. Think of the greatness of that blessed One. Feed your souls upon the greatness of Jesus though found in weakness and lowliness here upon the earth, think of Him falling upon His face to the earth. I remember a brother speaking affectingly of the Lord Jesus falling upon the earth that He had created, He fell upon His face to the earth, there is weakness, the One whose years have no end. Here we have “The children of thy servants shall abide”, none shall pluck them out of His hand, none can pluck out of the hand of His Father, they shall abide. What a comfort that is, what an encouragement that there is divine protection to see us through whatever the trials may be. Grace is available, power in the Holy Spirit is available, divine protection is available, no shortage of these things, but all from God, they are there to be drawn on in view of the testimony of our Lord continuing.
That was my simple thought here we have that blessed One our Lord Jesus Himself. We have the perfection of manhood seen in Him but He shall see a seed. That kind of man is to be continued until He comes and then it will be continued in God’s presence eternally.
May the Lord bless the word.
Sunbury
April 2003