Foretelling Christ’s Coming

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⟦Transcript⟧ Well, over the last several weeks, we’ve been exploring some of the arguments and some of the evidence for our Christian faith, some of the things that give us good reasons why we believe what we believe. We spent the first three weeks looking at three of the classical arguments for God’s existence. Now, there are more arguments than that, more reasons than that to believe in God’s existence, but we looked at three that I think are particularly compelling, reasons why we believe God exists.

Then we spent three weeks around Easter time looking at some of the evidence that supports Jesus’ claims, supports the idea that Jesus was exactly who he claimed to be. And who he claimed to be was the Son of God, the Messiah of Israel, and the Savior of mankind. And there is good evidence.

It’s not just a fairy tale. There is good evidence to believe those claims that he for himself. We spent time looking at that.

And we started last week looking at some of the evidence for why we believe that the Bible is the Word of God as it claims to be. And it matters immensely whether we believe the Bible is God’s Word or man’s Word. It matters immensely.

Where a message comes from determines how we respond to that message. Think, for example, if I were to get a text message that said, I’m coming to get you tonight. How I react to that text message depends enormously on where it came from.

If it came from my dad who has said, let’s go fishing or let’s get dinner, and he says, oh, by the way, I’m coming to get you. I’ll pick you up instead of meeting there. Great.

Dad’s coming to get me tonight. If, on the other hand, it comes from my neighbor, who’s, y’all know where that’s going, comes from my neighbor who’s already made it clear he does not like me. And quite honestly, I’m a little afraid of sometimes.

If I got a text message from my neighbor that said, I’m coming to get you tonight, well, guess what? Everybody’s getting inside the house. We’re locking the doors, turning the alarm on.

We’re each going to have a gun. I don’t care if they’re children. We’re each going to have a loaded gun.

And we’re going to be ready. Okay? Where a message comes from determines largely how I respond to it.

And when it comes to the Bible, whether the Bible is God’s word or man’s word is a matter of authority. And so we respond differently to the authority of the text depending on where it came from. And those of you who were with us last Sunday morning will remember the story I told you about what happens frequently in my house, where we will tell one of the kids to go give a message to the others.

And we’ll send Benjamin, for example, and we’ll say, Benjamin, go tell Madeline to clean up and get ready for dinner. And so Benjamin will walk to Madeline’s room, and we’ll say, Madeline, clean up and get ready for dinner. And we’ll hear the next thing, You’re not my boss!

you need to clean up and get ready for dinner I said you’re not my boss and he comes back in there and tells us she said she doesn’t have to get ready for dinner Benjamin go back and tell your sister daddy said clean up and get ready for dinner and he’ll walk in there and say daddy said clean up and get ready for dinner and guess what slowly dinner. Because there’s a difference in daddy’s authority versus Benjamin’s authority. And it’s not just Benjamin who does that.

Madeline does it too. There’s a big difference between mom’s authority and Madeline’s authority. Well, when we look at the Bible, some people will tell us that it is a book of human opinions written by men, decided on by men, that it’s all just a human book like any other.

But there’s a big difference between the authority of a human book and the authority of God’s word. And so last week we looked at how do we know it’s God’s word and not man’s. And 2 Peter says that it was all written by holy men as they were inspired by God.

Paul told Timothy that all scripture is given by inspiration of God. But how do we know? I’ve written a couple of books and I could easily tell you they’re inspired, that they’re God’s word, but if you flip through them, you’ll figure out quickly, no, they’re Jared’s opinion.

And I do refer to God’s word in them, but they’re Jared’s opinion. There’s a big difference between my authority and his. How do we know?

Anybody can claim that what they’re saying, that their message is from God. How do we know? The Old Testament, as we saw last week in the book of Deuteronomy, gives us a very high standard and says, if the prophet says he speaks for God and he brings you a message that does not come to pass, you write that prophet off.

And it’s not as though we’re having to wait and see if that message comes to pass, whether it’s true or not. We can look at the whole ministry of the prophet. And has there been a time where he said, God said this, and it didn’t come to pass?

Then we don’t have to be afraid of that, God. Because if he ever said, God told me this, and it didn’t happen. If he ever said, thus says the Lord.

If he was ever acting as a prophet, saying, I have a message, a revelation from God. If he ever did that and it didn’t come to pass, then what he says now does not matter. And see, when we look at people in our world today who claim to be able to tell the future or have special revelations, we hold them to a much lower standard.

You know, psychics like Gene Dixon or Sylvia Brown, they got a few things right and people said, oh my goodness, they know so much. They can tell the future. But it was only a very small percentage that they ever got right.

The Bible says it’s not enough to get a few things right. It’s not even enough to get most things right. God’s standard for how you know whether this message came from him or from man is that it only came from God if it is 100% accurate.

God holds himself and his prophets to the highest possible standard. And so with that in mind, we looked at some of the things last week that are in the Old Testament, some of the prophecies that are given that validate the message of the Old Testament, And we see how we know when these things were written, we know who wrote them, and we see years later how they came to pass in incredible ways. These are not lucky guesses.

These are things that only God could have known. How sometimes hundreds of years later these things came to pass, just as God said they would. We looked at the book of Jeremiah and how he prophesied the Babylonian captivity.

He foretold it about four years before it started, but he also foretold how in 70 years they would be restored after the captivity and the Babylonians would have been punished. Now, Jeremiah might have been able to guess in four years the Babylonians are going to take over. He might have been able to guess that.

But even the people living near the end of the captivity couldn’t have fathomed the idea that God was going to restore them soon. And 74, 75 years beforehand, Jeremiah said God, after 70 years, is going to restore the Israelites. And it happened exactly on the timetable that God laid out.

We looked at the book of Ezekiel and the prophecy against the city of Tyre. Hundreds of years beforehand that Ezekiel had said, here’s how the city of Tyre is going to be utterly destroyed, and we see how history tells us that prophecy was fulfilled exactly how God said it would be in successive invasions by Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander the Great. And we looked at some of the prophecies that Daniel gave us about the four kingdoms, and how Daniel foretold a succession world empires, starting with Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon, then them being taken over by the Persians, then them being taken over by the Greeks, then them being taken over by the Romans, then the Roman empire splitting and weakening, and eventually all of the world empires, all of the kingdoms that would succeed the Roman empire, being eventually smashed and destroyed by the rock that was not hewn by human hands.

The rock that was Jesus Christ who will come, and that rock will turn into a mountain that covers the whole earth, meaning there’s a day when Jesus will come and establish a kingdom that absorbs the whole world and has no end. And we see where all the parts of that prophecy that can have been fulfilled up to this point have been fulfilled. And folks, that’s just a sample.

And you look at the Old Testament prophecies, and without fail, you will see that every prophecy that can have been fulfilled has been fulfilled. There are still prophecies that refer to future things, but anything that deals with an event, a circumstance that can already have come to pass, it has been fulfilled perfectly just as God said it would be. And if we hold the Bible to its own incredibly, impossibly high standard, we see that it meets the test. It lives up to its claims. Everything about the Bible in terms of prophecy supports the idea that it is God’s Word and not man’s.

And this week, I want to take you to what I consider to be one of the most important prophecies. Those prophecies we looked at last week, those are important, but they all pale in comparison to this one, Isaiah chapter 53. If you haven’t already, take out your Bibles, take out your smartphone, take out your tablet, whatever you have, a copy a copy of the scriptures, however you can get access to God’s word in your hands to follow along this morning, take that out and turn with me to Isaiah chapter 53.

We’re going to look at the whole chapter, just 12 verses here, that I think this is possibly the most important prophecy in all of the Old Testament. Isaiah chapter 53, starting in verse 1, it says, Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness, and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid, as it were, our faces from him.

He was despised, and we did not esteem him. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray.

We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare his generation? For he was cut off from the land of the living. For the transgressions of my people he was stricken, and they made his grave with the wicked, but with the rich at his death, because he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He was put to grief. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied by his knowledge. My righteous servant shall justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Now this prophecy in Isaiah chapter 53 is a prophecy about the coming Messiah. It’s a prophecy about the coming Messiah, but it describes the Messiah in some unusual terms that were very different from what the Israelites expected. If you’re familiar with what the Israelites were looking for, you’ll know that they were expecting a political leader, which at this point, they’re not even there yet.

By the time Isaiah wrote this, the Romans were not anywhere around them. But by the time a few hundred years They’re looking for a political leader, a military leader, who’s going to rise up, who’s going to kick the Greeks and later the Romans out and is going to establish a golden age for the kingdom of Israel. They’re looking for that kind of mighty man.

And yet this prophecy of the Messiah in Isaiah 53 describes him in terms like a tender plant in verse 2, something that starts out small with humble beginnings, a tender plant. Tender plants are not tough. I have some plants in my garden that this week are about that high.

And Charlie’s dog and his idiot friend next door got to chasing each other around our yard this week and knocked over one of the buckets that I plant in. Guess what? Those tender green bean plants didn’t make it.

Because they’re tender. They got dumped over and they’re done now. So a tender plant is something that starts out small.

It starts out weak. It starts out with humble beginnings. That’s not what they would have expected for the Messiah.

Verse 2 also calls the Messiah a root out of dry ground. Somebody that would have grown in a place we would not expect. They lived in a desert environment.

And they would have understood, you get out in the desert where it’s too dry, you’re not going to see too many plants growing, especially tender green plants. But it was an unexpected presence, this root growing out of the dry ground. The Messiah was going to come in a way and from a place that they would not expect.

Verse 3 calls him a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. They’re looking for a majestic conqueror. They’re looking for somebody who’s going to bring joy to Israel when he throws out the foreign powers.

But Isaiah, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says he’s going to be a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Verse 7 calls him a lamb to the slaughter. Surely the idea of the Messiah coming as a sacrifice was not something that they were anticipating.

Again, verse 10 calls him an offering for sin. Again, a sacrifice instead of a conqueror. A spiritual savior rather than a political one.

Somebody who would deal with their spiritual problems before God rather than their political problems with the Romans. It calls him in verse 11, my righteous servant. Somebody who was focused not on his agenda but on fulfilling the will of God who sent him.

That’s how it describes the Messiah throughout this. Those are the titles that it applies to the Messiah throughout this prophecy. And this is so counterintuitive to what the Jews were expecting.

And yet the prophecy is so substantial and so explicit in its description of the Messiah that it has changed minds over the years. I remember the story of a man, of a Jewish man, many years ago, I want to say back in the late 60s, early 70s. He had grown up as something of a secular Jew and wanted nothing to do with Christianity.

Christians would talk to him about Jesus Christ and he would say, I can’t believe in Jesus Christ, I’m a Jew. What are you crazy? You know, it’s like a betrayal of my people.

And one day he recounts meeting with some of the people from the Jesus movement, you know, kind of the hippies in Southern California who instead of drugs, they were into Jesus back during that time. He ran into some of these people and they were talking to him about Jesus. And he told them again, I don’t want anything to do with your Jesus.

I’m a Jew. And they said, well, here, they tried to hand him a Bible. He said, I don’t care what your Christians say about Jesus.

Again, I’m a Jew. And they said, go to the Old Testament and see what the Jews have to say about Jesus. It’s all, he’s found all in there.

He said, fine, I’ll take your Bible, but I’m only reading the Old Testament. I’m not reading that New Testament because I don’t care what the Christians have to say. And the man tells the story.

It’s a true story, by the way. It’s not a preacher story that’s made up. The man’s name is Louis Lapidese, who’s now a pastor.

He told the story in The Case for Christ to Lee Strobel. He went and read through the Old Testament. And when he got to Isaiah 53, he had to stop because he said the description was so clearly about Jesus Christ that he assumed those Christians had done something to alter the Old Testament and make it sound more like Jesus.

And not trusting those Christians, you’ve got to admire somebody who is skeptical but doesn’t just shut it all down. He says, I’m going to keep looking. Not trusting those Christians, he contacted his Jewish grandmother to get a copy of the scriptures from her to see what the untainted copies said.

And when he saw the same thing there, that was sort of the cornerstone of his coming to realize that him believing in Jesus wouldn’t be a betrayal of his Jewish heritage. It would be the culmination, the fulfillment of his Jewish heritage, because he realized the Old Testament prophets pointed to Jesus Christ as the Messiah. And so from there, he went on to read the New Testament and became a Christian.

I believe he’s now a pastor. And it all hinged on Isaiah 53. And the realization that this prophecy of the Messiah as this suffering servant points so clearly to Jesus Christ that as I read through it, I can’t imagine it talking about anybody else besides Jesus Christ. Isaiah wrote this under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit around 700 BC.

That’s 700 years roughly before Jesus was even born. And so if this prophecy regarding the Messiah was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, then it demonstrates again that Jesus, as we looked at a few weeks ago, that Jesus is exactly who he claimed to be, but it also validates the Bible’s account of redemptive history. If God could, 700 years before the fact, say, I’m going to save you in this exact way, and then it came to pass just exactly as God said it would.

If the Bible foretells 700 years before, things that only God could know about how he would save us and through whom, And then it came to pass exactly as he said. And it validates the whole message of salvation taught from cover to cover in the word of God. Let’s look at this a little more in depth.

I’m going to have to move through this fairly quickly. But let’s take these things and see what they say about Jesus and God’s redemptive plans. So we have verses 1 through 3 here.

Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground.

He has no form or comeliness, and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid as it were our faces from him. He was despised, and we did not esteem him.

So when it talks about believing our report, he’s saying, who’s listening? Who has heard this message to understand how God will send salvation? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

God revealed his arm in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Meaning, when it talks about God’s arm, it’s usually referring to the power of God. So God has revealed his power to save in Jesus Christ to anyone paying attention. And by the way, we can take from this that these events were not accidents.

This was part of God’s plan from eternity past. And he told us about it 700 years before and said, the demonstration of my power that I’m going to send Jesus Christ and I’m going to bring all these things to pass for your salvation. God’s arm, his power was demonstrated in Jesus. And Jesus, it talks about the fact that he was despised.

It talks about the fact that there’s nothing about him that we should desire him. There was no beauty, no comeliness. Jesus didn’t look like a movie star.

He didn’t speak with a golden tongue. He didn’t have all the best words. He didn’t rely on his eloquence.

He didn’t rely on his charisma, his attractiveness, his wealth. There was no physical characteristic that would have drawn people to Jesus. Now, when people are drawn to Jesus, even today, just as then, when people were drawn to Jesus, it wasn’t some parlor trick of some charismatic guy who knows how to manipulate people.

when people are drawn to Jesus, it’s because of the power of the Spirit of God testifying and saying, he’s the one. When we’re drawn to Jesus, it’s not because of attractiveness or charisma. It’s not for any other reason than the Spirit of God draws us.

If we’re drawn to him, we’re drawn by the Spirit of God. And yet, this passage tells us that mankind as a whole in his day rejected him. He came first to be the Savior of the Jews and then ultimately the Savior of the world, but his own people, by and large, rejected him.

And by the way, if they had not rejected him, they would not have sent him to the cross. So this was all by design. At no point in this did God ever say, oops, I didn’t see that coming.

Where’s plan B? This was all by God’s design. All right, look at verses four through six.

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities.

The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

So verse 4 tells us that Jesus bore our griefs and our sorrows. The consequences of our sin he bore, including the separation from God. When we hear Jesus on the cross say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

It was because Jesus in human flesh experienced for the first time what Jesus as fully God had never experienced before, which was separation from his Father. Because I believe it was in that moment that our sin was laid on him. Responsibility for our sin was laid on him.

As the Apostle Paul wrote, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us. God put our sins on him, and those sins were nailed to the cross with him. Jesus had no sin of his own.

And so he’d never experienced the separation from the Father that comes about as a result of sin until our sin was put on him. And he took all the consequences of our sin. The wrath of God on sin was poured out on Jesus Christ. The penalty that we owed was paid by Jesus Christ, and Jesus experienced even our separation from the Father.

He bore our griefs and our sorrows. And verse 4 actually tells us that God struck and afflicted him. It wasn’t the Jews and the Romans who put him on the cross that struck and afflicted him.

It was God. It was God’s plan. He was stricken of God, it says in verse 4.

We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. So God poured out on Jesus his wrath toward our sin. And he was wounded for our sins and bruised for our iniquities, paying for them.

Every stripe he received, every thorn in the crown digging in, every lash of the whip he received, every thrust of the spear, every nail print, every drop of blood that was spilled was the result of our sin and was the payment for it. He was chastised for our peace. He was disciplined.

He was crushed there on the cross so that you and I could have peace with the Father. His peace with the Father was ripped away from him so that we could have peace with the Father. He healed us by his stripes.

Literally, he was wounded so that we could be healed. And why would this need to happen to begin with? Because verse 6 tells us that you and I were like sheep that went astray.

I’ve never raised sheep, but I know people who have, and they tell me they’re stupid animals. They wander away, first chance they get. We’re like that.

We’ve wandered away from God. We’ve turned our backs on him. We’ve lived in open rebellion against him and we’ve loved it.

And so we’ve incurred a penalty for our rebellion against God. And God laid our sins on Jesus and he took responsibility for them instead. Verses 7 through 9.

He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before its shearers is silent. So he opened not his mouth.

He was taken from prison and from judgment. And who will declare his generation? For he was cut off from the land of the living.

for the transgressions of my people he was stricken and they made his grave with the wicked but with the rich at his death because he had done no violence nor was any deceit in his mouth folks there I’m going to give you the rest of my notes this morning there’s so much more I could spend time on this is such a rich and a deep passage of scripture we are just scratching the surface but I want you to see how it describes jesus christ and what he went through it says in verse 7, that he was oppressed and afflicted in our place. Oppressed and afflicted in our place for things that he didn’t do. He was given punishments he didn’t deserve, so why, so how did he respond to that undeserved suffering?

Because you know how I would have responded to that undeserved suffering. I pitch a fit when I suffer and I deserve it. I throw a fit when I get the consequences I deserve, and yet Jesus got consequences he didn’t deserve.

How did he respond? He kept silent before his accusers. That’s hard to do, isn’t it?

Somebody says something ugly to you or about you, you want to set the record straight. He kept quiet. He kept silent before his accusers.

Verse 8 tells us even when he was imprisoned and he was judged, even when he was killed with brutality beyond comprehension, even when he was killed for sins that he didn’t commit, he kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t there to defend himself and get out of the cross. he was going willingly because he knew that was the only way that you and I could ever be saved and have peace with God.

And verse 9 tells us he was set to be buried among the wicked, but was ultimately buried in a rich man’s tomb. Now, that sounds backwards from what we know the story to be. I looked at the New American Standard Version, and here’s the way it translates it, because some of the verbs there in Hebrew can be used in different ways.

I think the New American Standard Version translates the Hebrew correctly when it says, His grave was assigned with wicked men. Ordinarily, somebody like him would have just been taken off the cross and tossed in a trash heap. His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet he was with a rich man in his death.

He was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, a rich member of the Sanhedrin, who had this rock-hewn tomb and willingly let Jesus use it. There’s a little detail that only God could have known. And verse 9 teaches us that he went through all of this willingly, even though he had committed no sins of his own.

Let’s look at the last few verses here. Verses 10 through 12. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him.

He has put him to grief. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied.

By his knowledge, my righteous servant shall justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great. He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul unto death.

And he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. Something that’s hard for us to understand sometimes is that Jesus’ punishment on the cross was pleasing to God. It says it pleased God to bruise him.

Now, this is not because God enjoyed hurting Jesus. This is not because God’s some kind of sadistic monster. Okay?

Punishing our sins in Jesus pleased God because it fulfilled his redemptive plans for us. Okay? It satisfied the demands of God’s justice.

God can’t just ignore sin. What kind of judge just lets criminals go free? We wouldn’t like that very much unless we were the criminals who went free.

A righteous judge can’t just say, well, I know you killed that guy, but look at all the other people you didn’t kill. Go free. He can’t just do that.

There’s a penalty that has to be paid for our crimes. So when God punished our sin in Jesus Christ on the cross, God was then able, his justice was satisfied because the punishment was meted out. The penalty was paid.

And it enabled God to show mercy to us, which is what he wanted. So don’t get the wrong idea when it says it pleased God to bruise him. It’s not that God, you know, oh yeah, drive the nails in a little harder.

Jesus has made me so mad. It was not that. is that God’s plans were being fulfilled where he could show mercy to us.

God was pleased that sin was being punished and put aside in Jesus Christ. So by making Jesus an offering, this ultimate offering for sin, God accomplished some incredible things that it spells out here in the text. Verse 10 teaches us that Jesus brought forth multitudes into the family of God. says he shall see his seed.

He shall prolong his days. Jesus, through his death, brought multitudes into the family of God. If you are a born-again believer in Jesus Christ this morning, you are in the family of God, not because of any good you’ve ever done, but because of what Jesus did right here on the cross of Calvary.

Not only that, but Jesus lives again throughout eternity. He said he will prolong his days. Wait a minute, he was just offered as a sacrifice for sin.

There’s the resurrection right there. That Jesus died and he was in the grave. His body was in the grave for three days and three nights and then he came out again and he was alive, not as a spirit, not as a hologram, not as a mistaken identity, not as a hallucination, but he was back alive in the same body that had been crucified and he lives never to die again.

He’s alive, just like God said he would be. And verse 11 says that Jesus was even satisfied by the work that he had accomplished. even Jesus he shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied he justified many by bearing their iniquities folks he bore every sin you’ve ever committed past, present or future it was nailed to the cross with Jesus Christ and he won the ultimate victory by dying among sinners for sinners as verse 12 teaches us so that now he’s able to intercede on our behalf with the Father You know, we all have those times where we feel like we pray to God and our prayers don’t go any further than the ceiling.

First of all, that’s not true. It’s just how we feel, and our feelings will lie to us. If you’ve ever be

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