shawnethomas

In the mid-1900s, a young English college student by the name of Brown Patterson went to Oxford to study English literature. Before classes began, he went out for a walk. There he saw a middle-aged man, wearing  baggy corduroy trousers, “a shapeless tweed jacket over a loosely fitting sweater.” He said: “On his head was an old tweed hat with its brim turned down. I identified him — to myself, of course — as one of the gardeners.”

(Harry Lee Poe, The Completion of C.S. Lewis, p. 55)  Brown was shocked when he later went to class, and discovered that the “gardener” he’d seen out by the Cherwell River, was none other than C.S. Lewis! He just wasn’t who he had expected at all!

That’s very similar to the picture of the Messiah that God gives us here in Isaiah 53. Everyone pictured the Messiah as a great military hero, riding a white horse, leading in victory over their enemies. But Isaiah 53 says the Messiah would actually suffer and die — this was very difficult for those who heard it, to believe. 

That’s why in Matthew 16, when Jesus told Peter and the disciples He was going to suffer and be crucified by the Jewish leaders, Peter took Him aside and rebuked Him, and said, “Lord, this will never happen to You!” He couldn’t believe it. It just didn’t make sense to him, that Jesus, God Himself, would come to earth to suffer and die. He was supposed to come and be this “Glorious King” and lead them to victory!  

But Isaiah 53 shows very clearly, for all who read it, that the Messiah, would indeed be a Suffering Servant. And this message is still hard for people to believe. Paul wrote in I Corinthians 1 that “to Jews (it’s) a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness.” And that’s understandable. Sometimes Christians criticize people for not believing the message of the gospel, but the truth is, it’s a hard message to believe! We need to remember that if God didn’t help us, NONE of us would have believed it at all! 

This morning as we kick off our verse-by-verse study of Isaiah 53, this first verse tells us some very important things about the Message of the “Suffering Servant/Glorious King”:  “Who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?”