Isaiah

1 Peter 1:1-13, Isaiah 52:13-53:12

December 21, 1997

by Dave Wilkinson

Predictions can make great reading - especially bad predictions. I guess that part of being human is feeling delight at bad predictions made by "experts."

When I was in high school chemistry, I was introduced to a man named Lord Kelvin -- mostly through a temperature scale I never have understood. And it kind if tickles me to know that Lord Kelvin around the turn of the century declared that "Radio has no future." "X-rays are a hoax." and that heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."

In 1943 Tom Watson, Chairman of I.B.M. declared: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Ersamus Wilson, a professor at Oxford University visited the Paris Exhibition in 1878 and said: "With regard to the electric light, much has been said for and against it, but I think I may say without fear of contradiction that when the Paris exhibition closes, the electric light will close with it, and no more will be heard of it."

It is even more interesting to see the fate of many modern less scientific predictions -- like the one’s in the supermarket tabloids at the checkout counter. Have you caught what’s ahead for 1998? All I’m going to say at this point is "soy bean futures." You heard it here first.

However, there are other kinds of prophesy. These are the prophecies we find in God's word. They are different because they invariably come true. They come true because they are the Word of God, and God shapes the future. He makes "all things happen according to the purpose of his will."

God gives us prophecies for three reasons -- to explain the meaning of an event that will happen, to show us that He is not caught by surprise by history, and to give us hope during a time of waiting.

During these Sundays before Christmas, we have looked at just a few of the many, many Old Testament prophesies of the coming of Jesus Christ. We looked at Eve who received the first promise. We looked at Job who declared in the midst of his suffering, "I know that my redeemer lives and at the last he will take His stand upon the earth. We even looked at Balaam, the strange seer of Mesopotamia, who had the vision of the star that would arise out of Jacob and the Scepter out of Judah. Some later professional descendants of this Balaam were the Magi or Wise Men who followed the star to the infant Jesus.

I’ve saved the best for the last. This Christmas Sunday morning we are looking at a part of Isaiah’s prophecy that written about six hundred years before the birth of Jesus. Isaiah gives us the clearest and most detailed prophecy of Jesus Christ in the entire Old Testament.

The keystone is Isaiah 53. No other passage from the Old Testament was as important to the early church as Isaiah 53. I encourage to keep open to the passage as I preach through the text.

The New Testament writers quote eight specific verses out of the twelve as having been fulfilled in Jesus. Verse 1, "Who has believed our message?" is applied to Jesus by John. Matthew sees the statement of verse 4, "He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases" as fulfilled in Jesus’ healing ministry. "All we like sheep have gone astray," "By his wounds we have been healed, " "Nor was any deceit in his mouth" and "He will bear their iniquities are all echoed by Peter. Verses 7 and 8, about Jesus being led like a sheep to the slaughter and being deprived of justice and of life" are the exact verses the Ethiopian Eunuch was reading in

his chariot, which prompted Philip to share with him "the good news about Jesus."

The prophecy is amazingly detailed. It includes Jesus’ whipping before the crucifixion, His piercing on the cross, His burial in the grave of the rich man Joseph of Aramathea, and His resurrection.

The prophecy actually beings in chapter 52, verse 13. There we are introduced to the servant of God and a strange conflict that exists throughout this powerful prophetic passage. We read first that God's servant will prosper, that He will be high and lifted up, that He will be greatly exalted. We also see that few people who just saw Jesus walk by would have seen that as likely.

It is interesting that the church before the time of the Emperor Constantine pictured the Lord as He walked on earth as ordinary in appearance; whereas the church after Constantine pictured Him has having quite and ideal beauty. Yet in Isaiah 53:3 we read the truth -- that "he had no stately form or majesty that we should look upon him or appearance that we should be attracted to Him. In chapter 52, verse 14 we read: "His appearance was marred more than any man." The image is of such tremendous suffering that the servant's bodily appearance hardly seemed human.

This prophecy found fulfillment on the cross. But Jesus’ suffering has dramatic impact. Verse 52:15 says that through his suffering, Jesus will "sprinkle many nations." Through His cross Jesus will act as the high priest of the world like the Old Testament priest did for Israel -- sprinkling the people with the blood of the atoning sacrifice and making clean what has been defiled.

This is the great and central truth of this great prophecy. This is the ultimate goal of the incarnation -- the birth of Jesus that we celebrate this season. I know I haven’t said one word this morning about angel choruses, shepherds, or mangers. But we cannot separate Christmas and the cross. Jesus said, "I came to give my life as a ransom for many." Jesus is God's sacrifice for Israel and for us. In the sacrifice, a perfect victim; without offence on its own account, takes the place of the guilty. The offender's sin is transferred to the victim. And the death of the blameless victim brings forgiveness for the sin.

So we read in verses 4-6 "Surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the guilt of us all to fall on Him."

The Bible says that sin is like gravity. It pulls us down. The destructiveness of sin is in its very nature. It separates us from God.

God is holy. And for God to be content with what is not holy -- in the universe or in us -- would be for God to cease to be God. God has absolutely declared his displeasure against sin. A just and Holy God has decreed that sin should be cut out of His creation as a doctor cuts a cancer away from healthy tissue. God does not tolerate sin. So, in the words of Ezekiel, "the soul that sins shall die."

But in Isaiah 53 we also discover the good news -- that God provides a substitute for our death in the death of his own Son. And we see that the providing and accepting of a substitute for sinners is an act of grace.

If I owe you twenty dollars, it doesn’t matter who pays the twenty dollars as long as it's paid. That's the way it is in money matters but it’s not how it works in criminal cases. If Latrell Sprewell chokes his coach, Latrell Sprewell pays the price.No admiring fan can volunteer to take her place.

In God's case, if He had said in the infinite sovereignty of His absolute will, "I will have no substitute, but each person shall suffer for himself or herself -- the soul that sins shall die," that is God's right. It was grace, and only grace which led God to say, "not only will I accept a substitute but I will be the substitute. I cannot just ignore sin. It must be punished. But I will carry the punishment Myself."

Make no mistake. The death of Jesus on the cross was entirely in the will and plan of God. So in verse 10, we read "but the Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief."

The person who reads Christ's life as mere history traces the death of Christ to the enmity of the Jewish leaders and the fickle character of a Roman governor. But the person who reads the Bible with the eye of prophetic knowledge sees something more in the Savior's death than Roman cruelty, or people’s malice. He or she sees the solemn decree of God fulfilled by people who were the ignorant but guilty instruments of its accomplishment. He or she looks beyond the Roman spear and nail, beyond the high priests taunts, and sees God Himself. He or she believes as Peter declared at Pentecost: "Him. being delivered by the counsel and foreknowledge of God you have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified.,and slain."

Underneath the church are the everlasting arms of God. But underneath Jesus on the cross there were no arms at all -- only His Father’s hand pressed heavily against Him. It pleased God to bruise Him; he was put to grief" verse 10 declares.

Verse 10 tells us that on the cross Jesus made Himself a sin-offering. He took our place and by taking our place and bearing our sin he fell under the curse of the Father.

This awesome fact is made clear in the two most outspoken statements about the meaning of Christ's death in Paul's letters. One is 2 Corinthians 5:21: "that God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us." The other is Galatians 5:15: That Christ has "redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us." Note that in both cases what happened to Christ on the cross -- "made sin', 'becoming a curse" is said by Paul to have been for us -- on our behalf and for our benefit.

The sinless one was "made sin for us', which means that He bore the penalty of our sin instead of us. He redeemed us from the law's curse by "becoming a curse for us", which means that the curse of the law lying upon us for our disobedience was transferred to Him, so that He bore it in our place.

But both verses go beyond these negative truths to a positive outcome. On the one hand He bore the curse in order that we might inherit the blessing promised to Abraham. On the other, God made the sinless Christ to be sin for us, in order that in Him "we might become the righteousness of God." When we are united to Christ a mysterious exchange takes place. He takes our curse, so that we may receive His blessing. He becomes sin with our sin, so that we may become righteous with his righteousness.

For, of course, the cross was not the end of Jesus. And the cross is also not the end of Isaiah’s great prophecy. After the cross comes the resurrection. Isaiah concludes of the one who has died and was buried:

"He will see His offspring, he will prolong his days and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand. As a result of the anguish of his soul, he will see it and be satisfied. By His knowledge the Righteous One, my servant, will justify the many, as he will bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will allot him a portion with the great and He will divide the booty with the strong because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors."

That is the present and the future of the Gospel. Jesus will see His offspring. People shall be saved by Jesus Christ. Isaiah saw this 600 years before the event. Isaiah saw us here almost 2600 years ago.

Men and women have offspring by life. Jesus has an offspring by death. People die and leave their children, and they do not see their descendants. Christ lives. Every day he sees men and women being brought into the unity of the faith. He sees His offspring. He sees us.

In 1 Peter 1:8-13, Peter says of us: "And though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of' glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. As to this salvation, the prophets who 'prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful search and inquiry, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things."

That’s amazing. Peter tells us that Isaiah, as he wrote the powerful words of this prophecy, did not really understand what he was writing. He knew he didn’t understand even as the Holy Spirit wrote through him. But he also knew that there would be people in a distant age who would read his words and find life.

Peter tells us that Isaiah’s prophecy, as great as it is, was not for His benefit but for ours -- so that we may believe in Jesus Christ and obtain as the result of our faith the forgiveness for sin and place with God and His people for eternity. That’s the very best Christmas present you could possibly give yourself and your family.

Some years ago a young girl once asked her mother, "Why are you so ugly, mother? Aunt Mary is so beautiful?" The mother was naturally taken aback at first but she knew that her face was disfigured with scars and that these scars were an embarrassment to he daughter.

Finally she told her daughter what had happened. Years before, when the little girl in question was a baby, a fire broke out in their home while the mother was outside talking with a neighbor. Seeing the flames the mother ran into the house for her little girl was asleep in the nursery. Without thought for her own safety she plunged into the flames and was able to save her baby. However, it was not without cost. She was frightfully burned and bore to her dying day the marks of her devotion.

From that moment, the mothers scars ceased to be an embarrassment to the daughter. They became beautiful for they were a symbol of her mother's love.

Isaiah in his prophecy states that Jesus' appearance was marred But it was marred because the chastisement of our well-being fell upon Him and by His wounds, we are healed.

There are scars. But the scars are for you.

If you do not have a relationship' with Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord, it is not hard to establish. Jesus promises that if we open the door of our life, He will come in.

We are going to bow in prayer. I am going to pray a simple prayer... phrase by phrase. If you would like to receive God's gifts of forgiveness and eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ, pray this prayer with me.

Jesus, thank your for your love.

Thank you for coming at Christmas.

Thank you for dying in my place.

Thank you for the gift of forgiveness.

I'm tired of trying to do it on my own. I can't be what I want to be without Your help.

Jesus, I open my life to you. I need you as my Savior and my Lord.

Come into my life now and make me alive.

If you prayed this prayer with me here's something else you need to do.

You need to talk to me after the service or give me a phone call this afternoon -- even though it’s Christmas -- for two reasons.

There are some very important things I need to tell you about your new life. But, the most important is that Jesus says that a trust in Him we keep to ourselves and don’t share with others isn't really faith at all.