December 9, 2001

Isaiah 53

A Studly Guy, Pie in the Sky, or a Message from on High?

  1. Introduction
    1. Illustration – From Homiletics magazine: A man was bothered with continual ringing in his ears, bulging eyes, and a flushed face. Over a period of three years, he went from doctor to doctor to find out what was wrong. One took out his tonsils, one his appendix, another pulled out all his teeth. He even tried the goat gland treatment in Switzerland, all to no avail. Stem cell therapy held no hope. Finally, one doctor told him there was no hope. He had six months to live. The poor fellow quit his job, sold all his belongings and decided to live it up in the time he had left. He went to his tailor and ordered several suits and shirts. The tailor measured his neck and wrote down 16. The man corrected him. The tailor measured again: 16. But the man insisted he’d always worn a size 15. "Well, all right," said the tailor, "but don’t come back here complaining to me if you have ringing ears, bulging eyes and a flushed face!"
    2. Context – You know, very often we think we know the solution to our problems, only to find out we’re dead wrong. In Isaiah 53, God gives us the ultimate solution to our problems. Let’s make sure that we aren’t wrong in our perceptions of what He says.
  1. Scripture Passage
    1. Isaiah 53 – Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? 2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4 Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. 8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken. 9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. 10 Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand. 11 After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
    2. As some of you have figured out, Isaiah is talking about Jesus. But all of us need to figure out Who Jesus really is. In other words, what’s He really like when we get past all of our ideas and preconceptions?
  1. Two Dangers We Face
    1. I often find myself trying to get past two extremes when I think of Jesus and how He appeared here on earth. One is to think of Him as being a tall, dark, and very handsome dude who was extremely popular with the ladies and who was very influential with the men. In other words, as a total stud. The other extreme is to think of Him as a glowing, angelic type of being who could be touched only at the risk of having your arm blown off by His holiness. Have you ever had problems with these extremes? It’s crucial that we get past our own imaginations and understand what Jesus was really like.
    2. If I think of Jesus as the popular, good-looking stud, it’s easy for me to think of Him as someone who has nothing to offer me. Kind of like in high school, where you couldn’t even be seen near the jocks or the ladies’ men. They’re okay to have around, and we even admire them and wish we were like them, but we don’t really see ourselves as being able to relate to them or them as being able to relate to us. So whether or not we love Jesus, if we have this kind of image of Him in our minds, there is no way we’ll allow Him to get close to us. If Jesus is the studly jock, He or His groupies will just shove us away when we get near. Or worse – go out of His way to embarrass us in front of everybody. It doesn’t matter how popular we are or how much people think of us, there is always going to be someone more popular or more highly thought of than us. We can’t afford to put Jesus into that category. We can’t afford to distance Him from us because we’re afraid He’s just like those people in school who caused us so much trouble. Jesus isn’t like that at all. He’s someone totally different.
    3. Likewise, we can’t afford to think of Jesus as being an angelic-type person who is so much of heaven that things of earth turn to smoke when they touch Him. There was an ancient heresy called docetism, which said that Jesus didn’t really come as a man but only appeared in human form. We catch ourselves thinking the same thing if we’re not careful. Yes, Jesus is God-in-the-flesh. But we think of Him as being kind of ethereal, otherworldly, anything but having been totally human. And guess what? When we do that, we get to distance ourselves from Him and tell ourselves there is no way He could relate to us and what we’re going through. Well, Jesus isn’t like that either. He’s someone totally different.
    4. Verse two tells us, He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. In other words, He was an average looking Jewish man of His day. That would have made Him around five feet tall, with dark skin and hair, and that trademark Jewish nose. He wasn’t six five with a nice tan and a gorgeous face. He was average in appearance. He had His Father’s holy nature within Him, but He was average for His time in everything else. Jesus can relate to all of us. He went through everything we go through – all the temptations, the heartaches, the loneliness, the sorrows. And that makes Him the perfect Holy One to meet all our needs.
    5. Illustration – William Muehl, in Why Preach? Why Listen, wrote, One December afternoon many years ago, a group of parents stood in the lobby of a nursery school waiting to pick up their children after the last pre-Christmas session. As the youngsters ran from their lockers, each one carried in his or her hands the "surprise," the brightly wrapped package on which the class had been working for weeks. One small boy, trying to run, put on his coat, and wave to his parents all at the same time, slipped and fell. The "surprise" flew from his grasp and landed on the tile floor with an obvious ceramic crash. The child's first reaction was one of stunned silence. But then he set up an inconsolable wail. His father, thinking to minimize the incident and comfort the boy, patted his head and murmured, "Now that's all right. It really doesn't matter, son. It doesn't matter at all." But the child's mother, somewhat wiser in such situations, dropped to her knees on the floor, swept the boy into her arms and said, "Oh, but it does matter. It matters a great deal." And she wept with her son. The redeeming God in whom we hope is not the parent who dismisses our lives with a pat on the head and murmured assurances that they do not really matter in cosmic terms. It is, rather, the one who falls to the earth beside us, picks up our torn and bleeding spirits, and says, "Oh, but it does matter. It matters eternally." Jesus really is Someone who can relate to us and Who understands our needs.
  1. What He’s Done for Us
    1. Considering Who Jesus really is and how well He can relate to us and us to Him, let’s take a look at what He has done for us. He was despised, rejected, sorrowful, familiar with suffering. He was not valued in the least by men. He was oppressed, afflicted, condemned, killed. He suffered horribly. He was, in the eyes of almost everyone, the least popular man around. He didn’t protest. He didn’t fight back. He didn’t try to escape all this suffering and sorrow. He stuck with it. Why?
    2. Jesus suffered for us. I don’t care how familiar you are with this passage or how sound your theology is; the fact is that we don’t even have a clue about what Jesus suffering for us really means. Isaiah begins verse one talking about the message of the Lord, His power being revealed on earth. Jesus is God’s message of good news to us. He took upon Himself the consequences of the sin that separates us from God. He took upon Himself the sorrows we suffer because we’re sinful and separated from God. He was punished for our sin so that we wouldn’t have to be. His wounds provide the healing salve for our broken hearts and lives. We went our own way, getting as far from God as possible. He took on Himself the consequences of that action. He suffered and was killed for us. God sacrificed Him so that we can enter into the loving relationship with God that sin took away. God sacrificed Him so that our deepest pain can be healed. And God brought Him back to life so that our lives can be filled with His power and love. Jesus interceded for us when no one else could. When are we going to decide that this is the best news in the world and accept His gift?
    3. What gift does He offer us? First, He offers us eternal life through a personal loving relationship with Him. Second, He offers us the power to overcome sin in our lives. Third, He offers us healing for our deepest emotional and spiritual pain. Through the sacrifice Jesus made, the relationship God intended to have with us when He created us can be restored. We once again can be His sons and daughters, adopted back into His family. We don’t have to let sin run our lives any longer. Jesus died to take it away by the power of His blood, and rose again to give us the help we need through the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome sin’s power in our lives. That’s awesome! We get to be God’s kids again and we get to be able to resist the temptation to sin! But we also get to be healed – as we learned last week, sometimes God heals physically, but He always wants to heal us spiritually and emotionally. He always wants to start that process. It’s up to us whether or not we want to be in a loving relationship with God. It’s up to us whether or not we will allow Jesus to help us overcome the power of sin in our lives. It’s up to us whether or not we will allow Him to begin that process of healing us. It’s up to us to decided whether or not we’ll accept the gift He’s offering each one of us this Christmas season. It’s up to us to decide.
    4. Illustration – In Surprised by Children, Harold Myra wrote, One afternoon my older brother Johnny and I were walking home from school when we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by four older boys we didn’t know. Johnny was a good fighter, but they pushed us into a field, threw ropes around us, and shoved us down to the ground. "What did we do?" we demanded. "We didn’t do anything to you." They laughed, tying us up, tangling us together, cinching the knots tight. They thoroughly enjoyed themselves, taunting us and pulling on the ropes. Then the bullies left us in the secluded field – just left us trussed up. We yelled at them to free us, but they were soon gone. At first a wave of relief rolled over me. They’re gone! Now we can squirm free. We yanked at the ropes, thinking we could surely get loose somehow. But we couldn’t. We strained and strained, feeling panic building as it started to get dark. We lay there as the light slowly vanished. The moon and stars appeared. We wondered how anyone could find us in the dark and how long this could go on. At long, long last, under the evening sky, we heard our father’s voice. He had searched all along the way to school and found us in the field. Our heavenly Father waits for us to allow Him to untie the ropes that bind us. And He won’t quit pursuing us until we give in to His love.
  1. Conclusion
    1. Where are you right now? Do you need to ask Jesus into your heart and life so you can enter that loving relationship with the Father that He is pursuing? Do you need to ask Jesus to help you overcome the power of sin in your life? Do you need to ask Jesus to begin the process of healing your wounded heart, soul, or body?
    2. If you have answered any of those three questions "yes", now is the time to do something about it. Come forward and we’ll pray for you and with you. Receive the gift that Jesus has for you this Christmas season. Don’t let Satan defeat you any longer. Come forward now.
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