Isaiah 53

Today, we are continuing in Isaiah, this time skipping to chapter 53. I plan on doing something a little different today. I want to focus somewhat on the crucifixion. It is fascinating to me that Isaiah saw this in minute detail approximately 700 years before it happened. The crucifixion and resurrection are obviously the focal point of Christianity, so that makes this chapter one of the most important in the OT.

He starts out,

Isaiah 53:1 NKJV

Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

Isaiah starts out abruptly. Who has believed? There are a few ways to interpret this, but he seems to be addressing the Jews. He seems to be looking into the future, and sees that many Jews will indeed reject the Messiah. Here he is, prophesying what will take place (as it did about 700 yrs later), and sees that many in the Messiah’s day will NOT believe, and will reject what Isaiah himself foretold. The good new, as in our day, some WILL believe.

John 1:12 NKJV

But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:

The “arm of the Lord”, here, denotes power. Beacon states, the word used for “arm” is “zeroa”, and it pictures, the Lord’s strong right arm, in this case, intervening in the affairs of men. In the previous chapter, we read:

Isaiah 52:10 NKJV

The Lord has made bare His holy arm In the eyes of all the nations; And all the ends of the earth shall see The salvation of our God.

The idea, here is God, with his sleeves rolled up, ready for action. (In our vernacular). He now points to the Messiah as this “power”.

Isaiah 53:2 NKJV

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 shall grow up”, is referring to the Messiah, and “before Him”, then refers to Jehovah.

There are a couple of ways to look at this as well. First of all, “Growing up before His”, is clearly telling us that the Messiah will be Human. He is the mighty “arm of the Lord”, but also very much Human. Or, as we would say, the “God-Man”. In another sense, the concept of the Messiah had and has grown in the mind of men over the centuries. He is first promised in Genesis,

Genesis 3:15 NKJV

And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.”

and this promise finally culminates in the Man, Jesus Christ.

The “tender plant” and the “root out of dry ground”, are also interesting. The wording, here, is picturing a small sprout, coming from the stump of a tree that has been cut down. The allusion is very real here. The “root” truly grew out of “dry ground”. At the time of Christ, the Jews were ruled by the Romans. However, the kingdom and even the ultimate Messiah was to be through the line of King David.

Isaiah 11:1 NKJV

There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots.

The Messiah, whom we shall quickly see to be the suffering servant, then, will sprout from what seems to be the past line of David, which seems to be, for practically purposes, dead. However, the root has been promised.

The second part of this verse, “He has no comeliness”, and “no beauty” has sometimes been misconstrued. It has been used by some to say that Christ was “ugly” in appearance, someone we would not want to look at. This is not, however, what it is saying.

Psalm 45:1–2 NKJV

My heart is overflowing with a good theme; I recite my composition concerning the King; My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. You are fairer than the sons of men; Grace is poured upon Your lips; Therefore God has blessed You forever.

This Messianic Psalm hardly describes someone who is “repulsive” to look at. Isaiah is, however, telling us that the Messiah will NOT be what the Jews, and people in general, will expect. They might think in terms of a “movie star”, (Theater star in those days), or a ruler of royalty with all of his pomp and importance. This would have been what many considered the “ideal ruler”. Instead, the Christ will/has come as a normal, typical looking, first century Jew. Instead of His appearance, His words and who He actually was will make all the difference.

Isaiah 53:3 NKJV

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.

In contrast to what man expected, Isaiah now begins to tell us how the Messiah will really be accepted.

The Hebrew word for “despised” is “nibhzeh”, and it means to look upon with disdain. The word for “rejected” is “hadhel”, which means “forsaken”. This certainly came true for Jesus. He was first rejected by the Jewish leaders of the day, then the throngs of people, and finally the disciples themselves forsook Him. His was a very lonely road to walk, what we now call the “Via Dolorosa”.

“Man of sorrows”, is a link to the next verse. He is going to carry our sorrows. It does indicate that the distinguishing characteristic of the Messiah is that He experienced sorrows. However, it was not sorrow as much for Himself, as it was also that He bore Our sorrows. He is also “acquainted with grief”. The word actually can be translated as “diseases”. We know Jesus healed many diseases while on earth. (There is no mention that He was sick, although we cannot doubt he “had a cold”, etc). However, “sorrow” is emotional, and “grief” or “disease” is physical. The Messiah, therefore, is here to turn us to God, but also to bear our emotional and our physical pain with us. (That is one of the beauties of Christianity, we never bear our problems in life alone).

We have to read this with vs 4 to understand this better:

Isaiah 53:4 NKJV

Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted.

We now see the Servant “bearing” our griefs and sorrows. This idea seems to be borrowed from the writing’s of Moses.

Leviticus 16:22 NKJV

The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to an uninhabited land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness.

Here the Messiah is seen bearing the “griefs” and “sorrows” (in the next verse, we see He also bears our transgressions). This is clearly indicating the idea as Christ as our substitution. As opposed to a King in all His glory, He sees the coming of the Messiah more as a substitution sacrifice at His first coming.

What was the response that Isaiah predicted? In vs 3, the Jews hid their faces from Him, and did not “esteem Him”. Beacon describes it like thes:

“We took no account of Him, for we regarded Him as an isolated fanatic; hence no one sympathized with Him”.

In vs 4, He is not only ignored, but they decide it was God who was “punishing” Him. He is described as “stricken”, “smitten by God”, and afflicted. Those crucifying Him, and those watching (other than a few faithful followers), Had decided it was punishment from God. In one sense, they were right. It WAS punishment, but it was OURS, and Isaiah tells us the Servant is taking our punishment.

Now we come the one of the most important verses in the entire OT.

Isaiah 53:5 NKJV

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.

I want to do something different with this weeks lesson. This verse means everything to me as a Christian, because “by His stripes I am healed”

There are a couple of ways I could go here. I thought about just continuing a verse by verse analysis. I could bore you all to tears by reading long quotes from Adam Clarke, etc. Or, I can tell you what I find most interesting about this story. In general, the most interesting speakers are those who love their topic, so I decided to discuss crucifixion today. I did this some a few years ago in a Wed night prayer meeting, but not to this extent.

To lay the ground work for this, I have to give a little history. I suppose I got my enthusiasm for this topic from my father. Obviously, we have both studied medicine, anatomy and physiology, etc. When I was young, he happened to pick up a book entitled “A Doctor at Calvary”, by Pierre Barbet, a French surgeon. He really did not know what this book was about, but in it he discovered a famous relic, the Shroud of Turin.

Now, before going any further, I want to specify that you do NOT have to believe everything I am about to say. In general, religious relics have a bad name. They are mostly fakes, and the Catholic church has used them for worship, which is clearly wrong. With selling of indulgences, prayers to saints, etc, it is hard to tell how much money has been stolen from the public.

I am not intending to say at all that we worship the shroud, because we do not. I bring it up, because it has given profound insight into crucifixion, and what took place.

So, what is the Shroud of Turin? In one short sentence, it is rumored to be the actual burial cloth of Christ, as is written in the gospels. I am going to give a very brief description of it, NOT because you have to believe it is genuine, but because it give us MANY details of crucifixion. To me, it brings out the statement “by His stripes we are healed”.

The “science” of this really began in 1898. Until then, it was just another relic, often considered a “fake”. (how many pieces of the “true cross” were there, etc). However, in 1898, a man named Secondo Pia, a french lawyer, and amateur photographer took the first pictures of the shroud. What he found amazed him. What he found was that in essence, the shroud is a photographic negative. In other words, the lights and darks are reversed. Therefore, when he developed the picture for the first time, the negative actually stared back at him as a perfect human image! It was not blurry, like he thought it would be, but was a perfect image. It was imaged again in the 1930s, and the same result occurred. This could NOT have been known until the 1800s, as this is when photography was invented.

To this very day, no one can explain the image. NO one can recreate it. It is the body of a crucified man, and he has been crucified EXACTLY as is described in the gospels.

*describe front and back image* it is 14.5 x 3.5 ft long

The book, A Doctor at Calvary, was a surgeons description of the body, the cause of death, etc. It is a fascinating book, but again, it can’t explain the image. First of all there IS blood. It has soaked through the linen cloth. Then there is an image imprinted into the cloth by an unknown means. It Is darkest wherever there is contact with the body, and it fades and is lighter where ever there is NOT contact with the body (such as the eyes). The body has no decay, and seems to have been dead for 36-72 hours. There is rigor mortis, but NO decay. The body has NOT been removed from the shroud, but it isn’t there. What I mean is that is has NOT been unwrapped. The blood clotting would stick to the cloth, and distort the image if you tried to take it off, but this has NOT happened. The body left the cloth, but was never taken out, as best as we can tell.

So, what does it show?

The head: first, there is a crown, really a CAP of thorns. Blood runs down the forehead, and MULTIPLE puncture wounds all across the scalp.

There are swollen check bone areas, one more than the other where the man seems to have been struck.

The nose has been broken. ? is this possible?

Psalm 34:20 NKJV

He guards all his bones; Not one of them is broken.

The nose is offset, meaning the cartilage is broken, not the bones.

Moving down, we get to the beard. It is “forked”. It appears that it has had the middle section “plucked out”.

Note, Isaiah informed us this would happen as well.

Isaiah 50:6 NKJV

I gave My back to those who struck Me, And My cheeks to those who plucked out the beard; I did not hide My face from shame and spitting.

Moving down, on the shoulders/upper back, there are abrasions, apparently from carrying something heavy (the cross beam).

From the chest, back, and legs, there are scourge marks all the way down. These include the anterior body and legs, as the whip would curl around and cut into flesh. Dr. Jeremiah Johnston has estimated approximately 700 laceration wounds! (Remember, each lash would cut into the body at least 2-3 x, as there were metal barbels in the whip).

In the side, going into the heart, there is a spear wound. On the back of the image, one can see where the blood pooled by gravity as it came out of the wound.

In the hands, there are nail wounds. However, they go through the wrists (the Greek word used in the NT for hands includes the wrists). This is also fascinating.

Describe Dr. Barbet and his experiments. Would hang weights to cadaver arms, the palms would NOT hold, but the wrist did.

Another very interesting point: the median nerve is cut during the nailing. The thumbs would always fold in. On the shroud, the thumb is NOT seen, only the fingers. The thumb seems to be hidden behind the had. (no forger in the 1200s would know this! Crucifixion was outlawed in the 4th century by Constantine). I believe the thumb can be detected by some of the newer 3D analyzers, but not in the photograph.

Death is thought to be from asphyxiation. One has to keep writhing up and down on the cross in order to breath. You can even measure the different angles of blood flow depending on which position the man is in! The images are correct both in anatomy, physiology, and gravity!

In the feet, there are also nail wounds. There is a bloody footprint. To understand this, one must imagine that he was nailed directly TO the cross, not on a platform attached to the cross. The knee would be bent, and the sole of the foot nailed directly to the cross (the other foot likely on top, although there are differing opinions on this).

Our story continues. In 1978, a team of multidisciplinary scientists were given access to the shroud for study. If you look for authors, you will find many authors that are fascinating to read from the team, such as Ian Wilson (at the time an agnostic), Barry Swartz (Jewish), Kenneth Stevenson, Gary Habermas, and many others. These were NOT preachers, they were professional photographers, chemists, physicists, NASA scientist types, literally. Some had worked on top secret government issues, such as nuclear weapons. Many thought they would prove the shroud was a forgery, and they would go home after a few hours having proved it a hoax. Some went, because they thought they would enjoy a “free trip to Italy”. However, after 24 hours, none were laughing.

They found that with the technology of the 1970s (far more sophisticated that Pia’s camera), they could NOT explain the image. There is to this day, no explanation. No one can reproduce it, and no one can explain it by ANY know physical phenomenon in our world today.

The perfect realism of the image is astonishing. Forensic Pathologists have looked at it and declared it accurate. Even the blood is interesting.

First, it IS blood, this has been proven. However, when looked at using flourescent technology, you can actually see were the serum has separated form the blood! (Not seen with the naked eye).

Example of separating in a tube.

John saw “blood and water” flowing out, he was describing serum and blood. This is seen with modern technology. The blood is still red, why? Blood usually turns black. It is due to the high levels of biliruben in the blood. This makes sense, because the liver would have released a large amont of biliruben due to the trauma, and also do to hemolysis.

The team even found there was three 3D info embedded into the image. They used a VP 8 analyzer to show this (you don’t get the same effect with a picture. They came to the conclusion, it is NOT a painting, there are no brush strokes. There is no added pigment. It is NOT a scorch, it is not a burn. In short, WE DON’T HAVE ANY IDEA what caused the image.

The shroud of Turin is “the image of a crucified man at a molecular level embedded into a linen burial wrap”. Its formation is a mystery. The conclusion is that it is NOT a hoax.

History can tell us where the shroud was from 1354 on. Were is was prior cannot be stated with certainty. However, it was likely at Edessa, hidden in a wall for centuries. The history of the shroud goes way beyond the scope of this talk. However, it seems to have found its way into France, likely stolen as spoils of the crusades. However, if you research any on the shroud, you will find one main objection. That is carbon 14 dating. It came out in the 1980s that the Shroud dated between 1260-1390. However, this is EASY to disprove. The shroud has amazingly survived 3 fires. At one point, water has even been thrown on the shroud. There are repairs and patches in the cloth. The image itself was not damaged, other than the elbows. After 25 years, the methods of the testing were finally released. It seams they took samples of the repaired area!

Newer dating techniques (Wide angle spectral imaging) has actually dated this to approximately 2000 years old!!!! This was very recently released in the Heritage Journal, which is NOT a Christian organization at all!

One of the books I read (I don’t remember which one), had one of the best summaries in it. There is no way to explain the image. The closest thing the author could come up with was a tremendous burst of energy apparently hit the body, energy something like an atomic bomb, and imprinted the image forever on the cloth! It would be like the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which incinerated people, and left their shadows on cement walls, etc. Only in the shroud, the body was not destroyed, but it is no longer in the shroud!

One last point that I find interesting is Christian art. There are NO descriptions in the NT that tells us what He looked like. Very early painting of Christ reflect this, as they are all different. However, about the sixth century AD, they all begin to look the same. It is almost unbelievable, but the painting all begin to resemble the shroud image at that time. It seems someone who had been told what it was, was given access and painted accordingly. This was apparently felt to be accurate, and so the pictures of Christ we see today are STILL based off of the original image it seems. A French biologist, Paul Vignon, did a study on this in detail. He found at least 15 similarities based on the shroud and early Christian paintings. They are distortions, because the image has been marred by crucifixion. For example, the left nostril is often painted as slightly enlarged on the left (his nose was broken). The eyes were often painted large (they looked large on the image, as they did not actually touch the cloth). There are many other similarities.

So, why did I spend so much time on this today? Well, first of all, it is of profound interest to me. Again, it doesn’t matter if you believe everything I just said or not, but you MUST believe Christ died and rose again to be a Christian.

However, even if the shroud could be proven to be a hoax tomorrow (which it will not be), it still gives us an incredible look at crucifixion. By His stripes, we are healed. My goal, then, has NOT been to make you believe the shroud is authentic, but to help us all (including myself) realize once again what He went through for you and me. I love the song Arise my Soul Arise, but I cringe every time we sing “five bleeding wounds he bears”. I know what they mean, but it was SO much worse that that. Every time I study this, my heart cries out, thank you, Jesus! Thank you Father for sending Jesus, and I love You Jesus! I absolutely want to be your servant and your child forever! It once again makes us say with Isaiah, “Here am I”. Please, God, let my be on Your side!

To conclude:

Isaiah 53:6 NKJV

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.

It is clear that all of us, NOT just the Jews during the time of Christ, have rejected Him at one time. Sheep that are unattended and not fenced in will wander away. Men and women are no different. We all wanted our own way. Isaiah once again shows that the Messiah will bear our sins for us.

The next few verses describe Good Friday. It is interesting to note that Isaiah saw he would make his grave “with the wicked”, (the thieves on the crosses), but also the rich (the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea).

According to the Mishna, if the Sanhedrin put someone to death by the authority of the Romans, then the Sanhedrin were responsible for burying the body. Fascinating to note that two members of the Sanhedrin DID just that, namely Joseph and Nicodemus!

Isaiah 53:10 NKJV

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.

This clearly shows the Messiah WILL be the sacrifice for sin. But, it also lets us know that He will NOT be finished here, because He will “prolong His days”.

The prophet then ends this chapter with a note of victory:

Isaiah 53:11–12 NKJV

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.

There is great news for us! Because of His sacrifice, we can be justified! What a privilege. In the end the Suffering Servant will finally be seen in reality, He is and will be great! He is the seen here as the ultimate Conqueror.

So, how will this end? The Suffering Servant, was our sacrifice. He was in effect our sacrificial Lamb. In Revelation, John tells us how this will end, as the Suffering Servant becomes the Mighty Conqueror and ruling King.

Revelation 5:11–13 NKJV

Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures, and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain To receive power and riches and wisdom, And strength and honor and glory and blessing!” And every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying: “Blessing and honor and glory and power Be to Him who sits on the throne, And to the Lamb, forever and ever!”

Praise be to God, Who sent His Son to be our sacrificial Lamb! I love Him for what He did for me, and what He did for you! We MUST not turn down the Wonderful Gift, the sacrifice give to us through Jesus Christ!