Episode Transcript
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Welcome to Roots of Faith, the podcast that journeys deep into the world of God to discover his timeless truths and guidance for our lives.
Today we explore the profound imagery of the suffering servant from Isaiah 53. This passage portrays Christ as the Lamb of God who bore our sins, the root out of the dry ground, who came to redeem us.
Join us as we unpack these rich Old Testament prophecies and connect them to the fulfillment we find in Jesus Christ, the ultimate reflection of God's grace and love. Together, let's grow in our understanding and strengthen our walk with the Lord. Stay tuned and rooted in faith.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: This morning, I would like to share with you from the Book of Isaiah.
If you want to turn in your Bible or out of the Pew Bible and go to the Book of Isaiah.
And we're going to go to the 53rd chapter, Isaiah 53.
It's a very familiar portion, but in Isaiah 53 and the first seven verses, Isaiah is a prophet before all of Israel was taken into captivity in Babylon.
And Isaiah made this prophecy in chapter 53.
Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
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. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering and familiar with pain, like one from whom people hide their faces. He was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering.
Yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted.
He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.
And the punishment that brought us peace was on him. And by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each one of us has turned to our own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
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 the shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
Now, when we look at that portion of Scripture, I want to put it in context for you because I want to go back and reiterate that we're looking at pictures of Christ throughout the Old Testament.
And last week we had looked at the lion of Judah.
And yet there was a hint of this.
When we looked at Revelation, chapter five and verses five and six, it said, then one of the elders said to me, do not weep. See the lion of the tribe of Judah. The root of David has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.
Then John records. Then I saw a lamb looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. And the lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.
When John was told to look, he was told to look at the lion of Judah.
But when the eyes of John looked in that vision, he saw a lamb.
These are the two characteristics of God that are placed before us.
Because that line of Judah is one of authority. It is one of blessing that God said he will accomplish.
That goes all the way back to the blessing of Jacob back in Genesis 49, where we looked last week.
And that promise was out of that lineage. Out of that line would be the established kingship or authority that would never pass from between his feet.
That means that God's authority. Because when you come down through the tracing of the family Jesus, he was of the lineage of David. That's why he had to be in Bethlehem with that established.
It points out another problem when we approach the Book of Isaiah.
The problem with the Book of Isaiah is that basically from chapters one through 38, Isaiah was preaching.
He was still in Jerusalem, but the nation was divided.
Ten tribes in the north, two tribes in the south.
The two tribes in the south, Judah and Benjamin, those kings in the south were the ones that followed God more than the 10 tribes in the north.
So the first 38 chapters of the Book of Isaiah is dealing with God's judgment on the 10 tribes in the north, but on Israel as a whole.
When you come to chapter 39 and following, you come into this portion of time that actually Isaiah never saw.
Because this relates to what happened after all of Israel went into exile.
And God brought them out.
And it was what God was telling them would happen.
As I have studied this, I have become very aware that the church over 2000 years is following the same pattern as Israel.
What do I mean by that?
When I look at this, When God first delivered Israel out of Egypt, they were glad.
They were released from bondage.
When Christ died on the cross, our sins and the penalty of our sins was paid for.
There is release proclaimed in the cross and the resurrection for those who believe in Christ.
The simplicity is for those who believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and confess with their mouths that he is Lord.
Now, why do we go back and look at this portion when I Look at the later documents and the interpretations that the Jewish leaders took out of this passage and out of the portion of Isaiah that we're looking at.
What they did, they were discouraged. They think they didn't see God.
They didn't see him being victorious. They didn't see their king back, the king that they wanted.
And so they said, well, all of this just relates to us as a nation and our suffering, our problems.
They made it all reflective on themselves.
And I began to understand many of my Jewish friends because I sit there and think, how can you sit there at Passover and not realize that there is a Passover lamb.
There is a Passover lamb who took away your enslavement.
You know, many times we don't think about our slavery because, you see, sin enslaves, sin replaces our desires.
And what feels good when God says, follow me and I will greatly bless you.
You see, there's that liberation not only for that, but also the blessing that we have in eternal relationship with Jesus Christ. We have a fellowship. We have closer than a twin because we have the Holy Spirit living within us.
And when I look at this passage, what was happening in Israel was they were going into what we would term apostasy.
It just simply means moving away from your stand, not your tree stand, but the place where you have rooted your faith.
And that apostasy, when we look at it, was going away. And by the time of Christ's birth.
Think of all that you have learned in the New Testament about the time of Christ.
What were the Jewish leaders doing?
They were trying to satisfy themselves. They were trying to secure their own power.
They wanted to be out from under the domination of the thumb of Rome.
And they were trying every way that they could to make sure that they retained the power that they could tell people what to do.
And they kept talking about a Messiah.
But it certainly was not the Messiah of Scripture.
In John chapter 12 and verse 36, it says, Believe in light, in the light while you have the light. Jesus was speaking, and there were Pharisees around, and he was speaking to them. And he says, believe in the light while you have the light, so that you may become children of light.
When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them.
Even after Jesus had performed many signs in their presence, they would not believe in him.
Because as Isaiah says elsewhere, pardon me, this was to fulfill the word of Isaiah, the prophet Lord, who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
Isaiah 53:1, talking about the arm of the Lord Being revealed is, if you can think of it this way, I hate to say it's poetry, but it is.
But it's not the poetry that we think of.
What is it? Roses are red, violets are blue?
I don't know. You. No, that's not it.
Not talking about that type of poetry. We're talking about visual poetry here.
And what he's saying is that he had come and Isaiah prophesying for what would happen after Israel returned.
They had been in exile.
God had brought that on them, to bring them up short in judgment so that they would repent and know him.
And what he did, he proclaimed his message. And everything after the exile are prophets who are speaking God's word. And when you look at the prophets, you look at Jeremiah, the Book of Lamentations, the weeping prophet of Jeremiah.
You look at Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, all of these spoke to Israel and revealed himself. And he says, who has believed us?
Who has believed our report? And when he says, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Think about this.
What's a guy want to do after he goes to the gym and he goes and he works out? Yeah, we're going to be Popeye, grab our can of spinach, pop it in, and then our arms will go like this.
But it's actually talking about the strength of God.
God revealed his strength and Israel didn't believe.
Now, beginning at verse two, you come to the pictures of Christ, because in verse two, it's talking about the servant. That's what Isaiah has been talking about throughout the book, from chapter 40 on the servant who comes.
And the servant, he says he grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like the root out of dry ground.
Well, what is that picture?
Well, when you think back on Scripture, and you think back when Jesus was 12 years old, it says now, in Jewish culture, 12 years old is when you get your bar mitzvah.
I always like going to bar mitzvah parties. I had to put the little yarmulke on, but that's okay. They had good food.
But that was a time when a Jewish son was declared to be a man.
He could meet in the meeting of men.
A synagogue could be established if there were 10 men, 10 Jewish men, you could count all the boys who had been bar mitzvahed over 12.
So you might have nine boys and one man. You could still have a synagogue here.
When Jesus was with Mary and Joseph, they had gone up to the feast and those festival days.
It was basically mayhem in the city of Jerusalem.
And so they would, I don't know about you, but when we used to go out with a number of different parents and their children, you always hope to corral the children and keep them with you.
I didn't lose any under a trash can.
But you see, when Jesus came up there with his parents and that great feast was going on, they were going back home and all of a sudden somebody said, where's Jesus?
I don't know. I thought he was with you. No, I thought he was with you.
And so all of a sudden they panic and they say, oh, I lost Jesus. I've got to go back and find him. So they turned around, they went back to Jerusalem and they looked all over Jerusalem and where did they find him?
In the Temple.
And it says in Luke chapter 2:41, 52, after the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. They were unaware of it, thinking he was in their company. They had traveled for a whole day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. And when they didn't find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him after three days.
So now this was four days later.
After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.
Can you imagine a 12 year old asking you theological questions?
It says that everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.
A tender branch, a tender shoot, who has come?
And then it says that he was like a root out of dry ground.
When Philip had found the Lord, he immediately went to Nathanael and he said, nathanael, you got to come and see. You've got to meet this Jesus of Nazareth.
You want to talk about a root out of a dry ground? Nathanael had the perfect answer.
Nathanael said to him, nazareth, can anything good come from there?
You see, even in the dust, God made no mistakes about where Jesus was and where he grew up. Because it fulfilled the testimony that Isaiah said hundreds of years before this shoot, this root out of dry ground had come.
And that's the very picture of Jesus.
Later on, Jesus comes back to Galilee and he goes to his home synagogue.
And it was the custom to go ahead and give a visiting teacher.
And Jesus had already been teaching.
It was their custom to give him the scroll to read for that day.
It says in Luke 4 in verses 16 to 22, he went to Nazareth where he had been brought up. And on the Sabbath day he went in the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up and read the scroll of the prophet Isaiah that was handed to him.
And he unrolled it.
And he found the place where it is written, the Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim the good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
Now, this was dramatic because he did what was normally done. He rolled the scroll back up, handed it over to them.
And normally the teacher would make some comment.
And it said, the eyes of everyone in the synagogue was fastened on him.
And he began by saying, today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.
Everyone spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips.
But they said, isn't this Joseph's son? You know, the carpenter root out of dry ground.
And throughout his ministry we find that Israel, for the majority of Israel, not the faithful remnant the majority of Israel, was rebelling against him.
In John, chapter seven and verse 40 to 43, it says, on hearing his words, some of the people said, surely this man is a prophet. Others said, he is the Messiah. Still others asked, how can the Messiah come from Galilee root out of dry ground?
I want to take you to the portion of Scripture that's most important as we talk about this, because it says, he's a man of suffering.
He was acquainted with grief.
But when you come to verses four through seven, we get to the Lamb, because verse four says, surely he took up our pain and he bore our suffering.
We don't even understand the suffering that we should have had.
That's why Christ was the one who was beaten.
And it says in these verses that he was the one who took up our pain, our sorrow.
And yet they considered him to be punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted.
You can picture the crowds at the foot of the cross who were saying, if he's God, then let him get himself down off the cross.
Verse 6 says, we all, like sheep, have gone astray, and we have turned everyone to his own way.
And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity, the sin of us all.
He made the full punishment. As a matter of fact, when you look at the words that refer to the Lamb, it actually refers to the sacrifice that was associated with the peace offerings.
Not just the sin offerings, but primarily to the peace offerings.
So that is the Lamb that we're talking about.
And it says in this portion, and I Want to skip right back to verse five for just a minute because I want you to understand this clearly.
The NIV translation, I think, is much closer, actually, to the original Hebrew than some other portions.
The King James, you may recognize it says, he was bruised for our iniquities.
What scripture here says in the fifth chapter, or fifth earth, rather. But he was pierced for our transgressions.
He was crushed for our iniquities.
When you talk about that type of treatment of this lamb, to pierce means to push through.
It means to actually think of it as affliction that was put on him.
But more so the word crushed means to come with a full weight on someone to push them down.
That's what Jesus did, the cross and all that he suffered for you and for me, so that he could give us a gift of eternal life.
I love the last portion of this in verse 7. Says, he was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth.
He was led like a lamb to the slaughter as a sheep before her shearers is silent.
So he did not open his mouth.
I remember going to some county fairs and watching the sheep shearing.
I never paid that great amount of attention to it. So I had to go look on YouTube and I pulled up Penn State training on how to shear sheep. I'm not quite qualified yet, but I was watching that, and they were showing you the first position that you get the sheep in, then the second position and the third position. And you're taking those shears and you're taking off all of that wool. And it has to be done every year because a sheep will gain about 20% or 20 pounds of weight.
Do not think this is a new diet. Do not think that you can go out and be sheared and lose £20.
But I was amazed because it kept saying in here, as a sheep before shearers is dumb.
It's quiet, doesn't open up its mouth. I was watching that. I watched that sheep just sit there.
[00:34:40] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:34:42] Speaker B: Get under this guy's leg over here. Okay.
All right. You're taking all of this off me. Okay. God, if God could have an animal. So picture what Christ did for us. He did not even complain because he loved you and gave himself for you. Can think of Isaac when Abraham had to offer up Isaac. Isaac on the way up, said, dad, where's the lamb?
Don't worry. God's supply.
What do you think he thought when Abraham bound him and put him on the altar?
It doesn't say that he complained.
Abraham lifted up the knife.
Jehovah Jireh, God supplied.
Even when he was before the high priest and before Pilate, Jesus did not say a word.
I remember the song that says he could have called 10,000 angels to destroy the world and set him free, but he died alone for you and me.
If that is the Lord that you have come to put your trust in, I want to take you as we close to the book of Hebrews and In Hebrews chapter 12.
In Hebrews chapter 12, and I lost my place in there.
But In Hebrews chapter 12 and verses 2 through 4, Hebrews 12, 2, 4, read this.
Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him. He endured the cross scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Consider him who endured such opposition for sinners. So that you will not grow weary and lose heart in your struggle against sin. You have not resisted to the point of the shedding of your blood.
What this portion of scripture says by way of application to us.
If we have so great a Savior who is portrayed back thousands of years before as the lamb who would go as a sheep before its shearers is mute and did not resist but shed his blood.
How much more when we wrestle with those sins that what scripture says doth so easily beset us.
The sins in our lives. That when you say, I'm not a sinner, I'm not a bad person, oh, but there are those things that would take us away. And I go back to my definition of sin. Sin is missing the mark of glorifying God in my life.
Those sins that doth so easily beset us, those things that distract us, those desires that we want and they take us away from God.
I hate to say this to you, but I wish you were all like me.
Well, maybe not always.
Some of you get better sleep than I do.
But what I am saying to you, I wish that in your lives you would take the word of God and so want to be absorbed with it.
And don't get confused when I sit there and I quote Greek or I quote Hebrew. Don't worry about that.
They said that Harry Ironside didn't know Greek that well.
And Harry Ironside used to prepare for every sermon by reading the portion that he was going to preach on. He read it 50 times before he thought he was even ready.
How frequently do we delve into God's word to let God's word work in our lives?
That's why I try in any way I can to share with you methods, ways of digging into God's word so that 24, 7, 365 days a year you have resources that you can go to that you might glorify God.
I want to close with this something that hit me this week. It didn't hurt bad, but it hit me when I was looking at scripture and thinking upon the fact that we are made in the image of God.
It struck me.
We're to be mirrors.
We're to be mirrors so that Christ is reflected in me.
Oh, that the Lord would just open our hearts.
And I want to say I'm available to any one of you. Just call.
If I'm not available right at that point in time, I'll be glad to get back to you.
So that when we look at God's Word and want to apply it to our lives, I would love to share with you.
That's an open invitation.
If you can't reach me, call Cindy. She'll talk to you.
Because the Lord has brought us through many places to come to our place of trusting him as Lord and Savior of our lives.
Oh, that today Christ might be seen in you, begin to grow.
And that old phrase that you either grow in grace or you've grown in disgrace.
Oh, that we might grow in grace together, building one another up in Christ Jesus.
Let's bow in prayer, Father.
Speak to our hearts from your word, Lord, that we might be the ones reflecting you in all things, Lord, that you would just make our lives the rich testimony of you working in us from where we're at.
Because, Lord, we're sinners saved by grace.
And no matter where you find us, you by your Holy Spirit are willing to work in us to willing to do your work so that you might be seen. So, Lord, let us commit ourselves to you today and we'll ask you this in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
[00:44:34] Speaker A: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Roots of Faith, a ministry of Lawn Evangelical Congregational Church in Lawn, Pennsylvania. We hope today's message has uplifted you and deepened your relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember, whether you're new in the faith or have walked with him for years, God's word is always fresh and powerful to transform. If you were blessed by this episode, share it with a friend. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an update. Until next time, stay rooted in the Word, stand firm in faith, and keep growing in Christ.
