When Jesus was found guilty before the council, it showed the cruelty of the Jews toward Him. However, when Isaiah describes further the sufferings that He bore on our behalf, it shows the great love God has for sinners. As the Scriptures describe the details of His sufferings, one should ponder in his heart that Christ died for him. Though Christ was God, He was submissive to the commandments of the Lord: what He had required of Him must be done justly and perfectly.
When making a careful study on the life of Jesus in the gospel, one is compelled to conclude that Christ had faced much suffering. The climax of His sufferings stretched from His arrest to the time He was nailed on the cross. It was during this time that all the prophecies about the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ given in the Old Testament were fulfilled for the glory of God.
The prophet Isaiah gave the prophecy of Jews despising and rejecting the Messiah. Isaiah 50:6 says, “I gave my back to the smitters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid no my face from shame and spitting.” This is to say that when the Messiah comes in His first coming, despite His position as a Prophet, Priest and King, He will be despised by His own people. He will be spat upon and smitten. What sorrow Jesus experienced when He received these insults from those whom He loved. Jesus had done nothing wrong to the Jews and yet He was rejected in this manner.
Matthew wrote further about this incident that happened to Jesus in His first coming in Matthew 26:67 “Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others smote him with the palms of their hands.” All these must be borne by Jesus Christ in order to fulfill the Scriptures. As Lockyer rightly said, "The prophets were inspired by the Holy Spirit to testify beforehand minute details of the indignities the coming One was to endure. How else can we explain the most accurate descriptions of the humiliation of Christ, who did not appear until some 700 years after these were prophesied? Note how prediction and performance exactly agree. ‘Jesus was smitten with a rod upon His cheek.’"
During the suffering of Jesus Christ, despite all the trials that He had to face, He was obedient even unto death (Phil. 2:8). Though He was spat upon and smitten by His enemies, He was submissive to what His Father required of Him. What a sad commentary written by Matthew of how the religious leaders of the nation of Israel stooped to such disgraceful acts as spitting at the Messiah’s face, “buffeting Him, and slapping Him.” Nevertheless, despite all these things, the Lord Jesus Christ endured to the end in order to be faithful to His Father’s commandments.
Old Testament books such as the book of Isaiah provide the most wonderful stories of the suffering of the Messiah. Isaiah saw and understood the sorrow and sufferings that would happen to the Holy Prophet of God. Through his prophetic vision, Isaiah “saw God’s suffering Servant battered and bleeding, with a holy face covered with man’s spittle.” He was afflicted, suffered, abused because of the sins of this world. Thus with true faith in the Old Testament one could see from the story of the life of Jesus Christ what the Messiah would have to do to save sinners and fulfill what had been written in the Scriptures.
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