Isaiah 53:1-3 - The Beauty of Jesus

SERMON TEXT:

Let’s open our Bibles again this morning to the 53rd chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah.

I will begin reading at the 13th verse of the previous chapter, and will read through verse 3 of chapter 53.

[READ ISAIAH 52:13-53:3]

If you remember last week, we began looking at this six-verse song, focusing on the first three verses.

This week I would like for us to dive deeply into the last three verses that make up 53:1-3.

And if you would look with me at verse 2, I would like us to consider the phrase at the end of the verse:

He had no beauty that we should desire Him.

It would be entirely understandable to wonder how we could have hymns, such as we sang this morning , that talk about the beauty of Jesus Christ.

Beautiful Savior/ Lord of the Nations/ Son of God and Son of Man...

The Lord, My Savior, is my light.

And there are others:

Oh Lord, You're beautiful/ Your face is all I seek/ For when Your eyes are on this child/ Your grace abounds to me

Jesus, the very thought of thee/ with sweetness fills the breast;/ but sweeter far thy face to see,/ and in thy presence rest.

He all my grief has taken, and all my sorrows borne,/ in temptation He's my strong and mighty tow'r;

I have all for Him forsaken, and all my idols torn/ from my heart, and now He keeps me by His pow'r.

Though all the world forsake me, and Satan tempt me sore,/ through Jesus I shall safely reach the goal;

He's the "Lily of the Valley, the Bright and Morning Star,"/ He's the fairest of ten thousand to my soul.

Jesus, I am resting, resting/ in the joy of what Thou art;/ I am finding out the greatness/ of Thy loving heart.

Thou hast bid me gaze upon Thee,/ as Thy beauty fills my soul,/ for by Thy transforming power,/ Thou hast made me whole.

Refrain: Jesus, I am resting, resting/ in the joy of what Thou art;/ I am finding out the greatness/ of Thy loving heart.

As believers, we long for the day we shall see our Savior face to face, enjoying Him forever.

So for Isaiah to say, even under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that Jesus had no beauty -

Well - it almost seems like someone saying about your spouse - “Not much of a looker.”

Fortunately for all of us, Isaiah isn’t talking about the physical appearance of Jesus any more than these hymn writers were.

And Isaiah explains to us what he is talking about.

Even for him, the bared arm of the Lord in the person of Jesus Christ was going to be a glorious sight.

I see for us, then, six things I plan to look at this week and next that Isaiah tells us to explain this assessment of the coming Messiah.

And he knew it is amazing, even unbelievable:

That’s why he said “Who has believed what he has heard from us?”

The truth of God is more amazing, is so vastly higher, than anything we could predict, understand, or conceive.

And I would remind you of last week, as we looked at this glorious Savior who was marred from the very beginning, becoming flesh and dwelling among us;

We need to keep that in mind as we look at these un-beautiful, un-glorious, things about the King of Kings.

Because it is the very fact that He put aside His glory that we can anticipate sharing in His glory for eternity.

But I don’t have time to unpack that statement this morning.

The first thing we learn is that the Messiah, Jesus, would be born and grow up unremarkably.

For he grew up before Him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground.

It should have come as a surprise to no one that Jesus’s appearance was a surprise to everyone.

He was born in Bethlehem, as the prophet Micah (a contemporary of Isaiah) had foretold,

Micah 5:2 “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.”

Jesus was born there, but if people were looking there for the Messiah to arise from there, it was too late.

He wasn’t raised in the land of Judea, the name for the land of the tribe of Judah.

But when the Magi from the east came looking for the new king, that is where they came - to Jerusalem, and then to Bethlehem.

Then, when He was still an infant, Joseph took them all to Egypt for a while because an angel told him to.

Where, I am sure, the gifts the Magi offered to Jesus helped them to live there.

Then, as prophesied in Hosea 11:1 “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.”

An angel told Joseph to return to the land of Israel.

And Matthew makes it sound like he was ready to settle in Bethlehem or somewhere near Jerusalem:

Matthew 2:19–21 “But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.” And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel.”

That would make sense - both Joseph and Mary knew who this child was.

And they knew He had come as the Messiah from God.

But then, when they had gotten back into Israel, we read in Matthew 2:22–23 “But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.”

If you wanted to get away from everything that looked religious, Nazareth was a good place to be.

It was the religious boondocks.

In the middle of “Galilee of the Gentiles”.

Just like Abram had been called by God from the pagan city where he had grown up, Jesus was called from the middle of that pagan city.

You might be thinking: “But if there was a prophecy about the Messiah coming from Nazareth, then people would have been looking there.”

Except there is no such prophecy in the Bible.

Nowhere does it say in so many words that the Messiah will come from Nazareth.

Nothing like the Bethlehem or the Egypt passages - there is nothing that would make people look to Nazareth for the Messiah.

But Matthew doesn’t SAY the prophecy predicts Jesus will come from Nazareth:

He says that He will be CALLED A NAZARENE.

And there are a couple of prophecies, quite veiled, that are there if you know what to look for.

First is the word: Nazarene.

To say it loses a lot in translation would be an understatement, but follow along with me just a minute:

Aramaic is the language Jesus, His disciples, and the people all around Him commonly spoke.

Hebrew is the language most of the Old Testament was written in.

The Aramaic word for “Nazareth” and the Hebrew word for “Branch” are almost identical homophones, meaning they sound alike.

Like the words “blue” the color and “blew” to blow something - in the sentence “I blew out the blue candle”

So in this way, we can see a play on words in Isaiah 11:1 “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.”

And it is a play on words Isaiah may have been totally unaware of when he wrote it under the Spirit’s inspiration.

Because it is a prophecy he points to here in verse 2:

Isaiah 53:2 “For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground;”

Another prophecy that the term “Nazarene” can point to is that the name “Nazarene” indicates a damaged reputation.

In John 1:46, we see an example of this: “Nathanael said to [Philip], “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

The modern-day American equivalent might be San Francisco or Las Vegas:

Can anything good come out of San Francisco?

Do you really want to follow a man from Vegas?

So the very name “Nazarene” would instantly make you suspect.

An outcast from polite company, particularly righteous or self-righteous company.

The powerful will look down on you for your questionable upbringing,

And the common people will look down on you because you are not from Jerusalem.

And what is a prophecy that tells us he will experience this?

This very passage:

He was despised and rejected...

On every page of the gospel accounts - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - we see something over and over again - the normalcy of Jesus.

I know, that sounds a little odd, but let me explain.

We see great, godly teaching by Jesus.

We see His righteous life.

We see signs and miracles on every page.

But we also see people opposing Him just like He was any other man with whom they disagreed.

For the Pharisees, the greatest crime of Jesus was claiming to be anything more than a mere man.

The fact He would suggest He was the Messiah, or that He and the Father are One, was nothing short of damnable blasphemy.

For the crowds He fed, the people He healed, some followed Him...

But most went home after their encounter with Jesus.

Perhaps they were more grateful to God, but otherwise most of those people were UNCHANGED by their encounter with Jesus.

The only way those people could abandon Him so quickly, or oppose Him to His face, is because He was veiled in flesh.

He had poured His divine nature into this jar of clay.

And He did ordinary things for most of His life.

He was a carpenter.

He hung out with fishermen.

He picked grains when He was hungry.

There was a collection kept by Judas Iscariot to allow them to buy bread or provisions as they had need.

Jesus gives dignity and importance to the ordinary.

His final called apostle, Paul, did ordinary things, worked ordinary jobs making leather tents, while he preached the gospel in new lands.

And God blessed that ordinary activity so much that Acts 19:12 “so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.”

The aprons here are the ones that held Paul’s leatherworking tools - tools of his trade.

Do not despise the ordinary.

When the Jews had returned from Babylon and had begun rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem, it was a good bit smaller in area than it had been when it had been destroyed seventy years earlier.

Zechariah 4:10 “For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice, and shall see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel.

Don’t despise the ordinary.

This is especially true in the context of the work of God.

There are a lot of people who are looking for great works of God, miracles that shake the world, or power that will be recognized by everyone.

But Jesus, even when He did these miraculous signs, did them in the context of teaching, His gospel, and as signs of who He is.

And the most earth-shaking signs still didn’t bring everyone who saw them to repentance and faith in Jesus.

The work of the Spirit is like the wind in this way: John 3:8 “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.””

There are some forests south of here where all the trees are bent in the same direction.

All of them, not leaning over for the most part, but bent like bows all in the same direction.

Do you know what did that?

Some might think a great hurricane or tropical storm blew in and shaped them - but that’s not what did it.

It was the wind, but not the cataclysmic and devastating wind that comes from a great storm.

That broke some, to be sure, but after that violent wind passed through, the trees that stayed rooted returned to their normal posture.

It was the breeze blowing in from the gulf, day after day, that did it.

Always in the same direction, always blowing with a gentle force.

And inch by inch, the saplings grew, but as they grew, the wind was shaping them little by little.

Until they were all uniformly shaped in one direction.

Don’t despise the ordinary.

Our Lord has given us what we call “ordinary means of grace” to help us grow in our obedience and devotion to Jesus Christ.

Prayer, worship, Scripture reading, the preaching of the word, and the sacraments of the Lord’s Table and baptism are used by the Holy Spirit to shape us for His use.

The progress seems slow at times.

But remember: the giant winds break some of those great trees and uproot others.

Our Lord loves every one of His people so much that He won’t even break a bruised reed.

Don’t follow the common quest for the extraordinary and the flashy.

Don’t go after the things that charge you up only into a heightened emotional state.

These ordinary things are given to us because they are effectual.

They work.

To be sure, we still have to obey.

But that obedience flows from faith and training by the Spirit to live in the Spirit.

It is these ordinary things that God has blessed to us, given as gifts to us, to make us into holy people with a gentle relentlessness.

Every one of these things is used by God to bring us to love Him more and the world less.

They are used to bring us to depend on Him more than we depend on ourselves.

If our glorious Lord can come in an ordinary way and live most of His life in an unremarkable manner, we can follow Him by not seeking the limelight, or the praise, or even, in some cases, the acknowledgement we might think we are due.

The heart of almost all your disappointments are unrealistic expectations.

Are you disappointed in something?

Take a look at what you expected beforehand. Often, WAY too often, you will find, as I have, that at the root of that expectation is a covetous heart,

A heart that tells you that you DESERVE that recognition or that award.

That you DESERVE a thank-you.

Now, brother and sisters, we should all practice gratitude with each other, and be quick to tell others how thankful we are for them,

But the minute you start expecting or demanding that recognition, you have crossed from humble servant to entitled Pharisee.

Praise God for the quiet ordinary, and live faithfully in that.

Be thankful for your employment.

Delight in your wife or husband.

Love your children or your parents.

Care for your home and car as caretakers and stewards of the gifts of God.

Learn to enjoy simple pleasures that don’t require others to perform for your entertainment.

The list can go on and on.

Because our Lord has brought His dignity and glory into our lives at a minute-by-minute level, not just in the sweet by-and-by level.

He has saved you now.

To enjoy Him now.

And forever.

END WEEK 1

The second thing we learn is Jesus would not be born to royalty.

Like a root out of dry ground

The third thing we learn is His eloquence would be because He spoke the exact words of God, not from flattery or manipulation.

He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him

The fourth thing we learn is He would not exact revenge or press His rights.

He was despised and rejected by men

The fifth thing we learn is He would become sorrowful to make others glad.

A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief

The sixth thing we will look at this morning is He would be undervalued by His own people.

WE esteemed Him not