I. The travail of His soul. This seems to be a short expression to indicate the whole of Christ's humiliation, more especially in its inner and more spiritual aspect. We may take note of some of the ingredients that entered into the cup, although we cannot measure the degree of their bitterness: (1) He who was from all eternity the beloved of His Father put His glory off and put on our nature. (2) He severed Himself from the company of the holy, who loved and worshipped Him, for the company of the unholy, who in feeble friendship vexed, or in open enmity crucified Him. (3) "He who knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." (4) He met personally with the person of the wicked one in our quarrel. (5) His heart was often sore vexed by ignorance, selfishness, unfaithfulness, even of His own selected disciples. (6) The people for whose sake He came into the world the Israel among whom He was born and bred would none of Him. (7) The office of the priesthood, which He loved and honoured as God's institute to hold up the promise of redemption, was by those who held it prostituted to reject the counsel of God. (8) But alone, and above all, incomprehensible to us, yet awful, both for the part that we know and the part that we know not, is the desertion by the Father and the final descent of wrath, due to sin, on the Redeemer's soul.
II. The fruit that results from the travail of His soul. It is not to the sufferings in themselves that the Redeemer looks. Herein appears the greatness of His love. He looks over and past the travail of His soul, and fixes His regards on the results that it secures. The fruit is that twofold gain which was celebrated in the angels' song at the birth of Christ, "Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to the children of men." It is not merely the deliverance of a lost world from the doom that it deserved, it is the honour given to God by that deliverance. The means and end are linked together as the stalk and the grain in the cornfield; by the redemption of sinners God is glorified; and this double blessing is the fruit springing out of His soul's travail to which the risen Redeemer looks back yet with joy.
III. The satisfaction which the Saviour experiences in the results of the travail of His soul. He does not pass by, when His saving effort has been put forth, as if that were all; He lingers on the spot, and looks and longs to see men actually saved through His suffering for sin. "His delights were with the sons of men" from the past eternity, in anticipation of His saving work; and now that the work is completed, He is not content that His suffering should be fruitless. More than weary benighted watchers wait for the dawning of the day; the Lord who suffered for us longs and looks for the multitudes coming to Himself for life, as the fruits of His dying.
W. Arnot, The Anchor of the Soul,p. 52.
I. Mark the singularity and greatness which these words would seem to teach us to attach to Christ. "He shall see of the travail of His soul." These words imply a distinction between Christ and the Church, a distinction between Him and all the saved from among men. He, looking upon men, shall see the travail of His soul; they, looking to Him, shall behold the Source of their spiritual existence.
II. The passage indicates Christ's peculiar work, and attaches pre-eminent importance to that. The expression, "the travail of His soul," implies that all the glory of the Church, all in the salvation of sinners, the perfection of the faithful, whatever, in the consequences of His undertaking connected either with God or man, can be regarded as a source of satisfaction to Messiah all is to be attributed to the fact that "His soul was made an offering for sin."
III. The next idea which the text warrants is the greatness of the results which are to flow from the Redeemer's sufferings. "He shall be satisfied."
IV. Consider the grounds of the Saviour's satisfaction, the results of His work to the world and man: (1) in the inconceivable number of the saved; (2) in the inconceivable perfection of their character.
T. Binney, Sermons in King's Weighhouse Chapel,2nd series, p. 1.
References: Isaiah 53:11. Pulpit Analyst,vol. ii., p. 512; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. x., p. 146. Isaiah 53:12. J. Keble, Sermons for Holy Week,p. 153; C. Clemance, To the Light Through the Cross,pp. 134, 149; T. Monod, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xv., p. 327; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. viii., No. 458, vol. xxiii., No. 1385; Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 90. Isaiah 54:1. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xi., No. 649; Ibid., Evening by Evening,p. 243; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. x., p. 18. Isaiah 54:1-7. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 531.