Isaiah (Program #20) – Christ as the Servant of Jehovah (6)

Friends, please listen to the words of the prophet Isaiah, spoken some seven hundred years before the coming of Christ:

“Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of Jehovah been revealed?  For He grew up like a tender plant before Him, And like a root out of dry ground. He has no attracting form nor majesty that we should look upon Him, Nor beautiful appearance that we should desire Him.  He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised; and we did not esteem Him.  Surely He has borne our sicknesses, And carried our sorrows; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God and afflicted.  But He was wounded because of our transgressions; He was crushed because of our iniquities; The chastening for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we have been healed.  We all like sheep have gone astray; Each of us has turned to his own way, And Jehovah has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.  He was oppressed, and it was He who was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter And like a sheep that is dumb before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth. By oppression and by judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who among them had the thought That He was cut off out of the land of the living For the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due?  And they assigned His grave with the wicked, But with a rich man in His death, Although He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.  But Jehovah was pleased to crush Him, to afflict Him with grief. When He makes Himself an offering for sin, He will see a seed, He will extend His days, And the pleasure of Jehovah will prosper in His hand.  He will see the fruit of the travail of His soul, And He will be satisfied; By the knowledge of Him, the righteous One, My Servant, will make the many righteous, And He will bear their iniquities.  Therefore I will divide to Him a portion with the Great, And He will divide the spoil with the Strong; Because He poured out His life unto death And was numbered with the transgressors, Yet He alone bore the sin of many And interceded for the transgressors.”  A beautiful and more fitting portrait of Jesus Christ the Savior has not been written in either the New or the Old Testament.  We come today to one of the most sobering yet enduring chapter ever written, Isaiah chapter 53.

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