AGAINST ALL ODDS

From the series, What Are the Odds?

Against All Odds, Sermon 1

Isaiah 52:13-15, 53:1-5

Isaiah 52:13 (TLB) See, my Servant shall prosper; he shall be highly exalted. 

Isaiah 52:14 Yet many shall be amazed when they see him—yes, even far-off foreign nations and their kings; they shall stand dumbfounded, speechless in his presence. For they shall see and understand what they had not been told before. They shall see my Servant beaten and bloodied, so disfigured one would scarcely know it was a person standing there. 15 So shall he cleanse many nations. 

53:1 - 5. (KJV) 1 Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed? 2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. 3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. 

Good morning, everyone! I’m excited about the new series we’re launching today! We are several weeks from celebrating Easter, the most miraculous day in history. So, for the next few weekends I want to prepare us for that great day by learning and recalling all that Jesus did to make it happen. On Easter, God did what only God could do, In order to do what only God could do. So, what does Easter mean? Well, God saw that human beings were racking up sin. We couldn’t make up for the things we were doing wrong, justice needed to be served, and we couldn’t pay for it. We were helpless to help ourselves. So, God helped in a way only God could: He sent His Son, Jesus, to make a substitutionary payment for our sins: His life for ours.

How many of you have ever rolled through a stop sign… or how many of you have ever driven over the speed limit?

I won’t ask how many of you have ever texted while driving. The point is… WE CAN’T POSSIBLY PAY FOR ALL THE THINGS THAT WE HAVE DONE THAT WE SHOULDN’T HAVE DONE. AND WE CERTAINLY COULD NOT PAY FOR OUR SINS.

What if you had to pay a $200 fine every time you broke a traffic law? You would be incapable of paying the price. It would be too high.

The Bible says every time you cross a moral line, there’s a price to be paid. Every time we cheat on a test. Every time we fudge on the truth. Every time we take something that isn’t ours. Every time we say something intentionally to hurt someone else. Every time we cross a sexual boundary. Every time we… you fill in the blank.

God knew we couldn’t pay the price, so He sent His Son to pay it for us. Only our punishment isn’t a monetary fine, it’s a spiritual one: when we do something that separates us from God and we don’t get right with God, we have to live separated from God… forever. God doesn’t want it that way! God so loved the world that He didn’t want there to be separation from any of us. So, He sent His Son, Jesus to pay for our sin. The only thing that disqualifies us from receiving this sin-payment is an unwillingness to accept His sin-payment on our behalf.

But here’s the deal: we wouldn’t have believed this offer of sin-payment unless God had done something extraordinary to make us sit up and take notice. So, what Jesus did was historic, supernatural, and sacrificial.

I’m calling this series, what are the Odds. This sermon today is entitled, Against All Odds, even though what Jesus did was predicted.

PROPHETIC PREDICTION

Hundreds of years before He came to earth, God sent a series of prophets to tell us what Jesus would do. One of those prophets was named Isaiah. Isaiah lived 700 years before Jesus. He wrote one of the longest books in the Bible and he lived one of the longest lives of a prophet. His active ministry lasted 60 years. Somewhere during that time, he wrote a powerful chapter of scripture. This chapter, written 7 centuries before Jesus, is so accurate that God had to be the author.

Isaiah 52:13 (NIV)See, my Servant shall prosper; he shall be highly exalted.  

According to Isaiah, one day, God will send His Servant to earth, and that Servant will be successful.

Lots of people have been successful, so God clarifies further: His Servant will be so successful that one day He will be “raised and lifted up and greatly exalted.” Let me show you how exalted Jesus is.

Revelation 1:17 is a picture of the resurrected Jesus in heaven. The Apostle John sees Him there and writes…

And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: 

18 I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. 

Prophecy fulfilled: Successful. One for Isaiah. One for the Bible. And one for Jesus!

There was a moment when it didn’t look like any of this success would happen.

14 Yet many shall be amazed when they see him—yes, even far-off foreign nations and their kings; they shall stand dumbfounded, speechless in his presence. For they shall see and understand what they had not been told before. They shall see my Servant beaten and bloodied, so disfigured one would scarcely know it was a person standing there.

Why were they appalled? Because Jesus was beaten so badly that He was almost unrecognizable.    

The final verse of chapter 52 says…15 (NKJV) so he will sprinkle many nations. Kings will shut their mouths because of him, for they will see what had not been told them, and they will understand what they had not heard.

“The sprinkling of nations” refers to receiving the Good News. Messengers of Jesus have sprinkled the Good News in every nation of the world. Often, when a king, like King Agrippa in Acts 26, heard the Good News, he asked Paul, "Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?" (NIV)

So fulfilled another prophecy, Jesus's message…Reached nations & kings. Moving along, the first verse of Isaiah 53 doesn’t have a prophecy, just a question.       

Isaiah 53:1 (KJV) Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?  I want to know today, whose report will you believe?

2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. 

The unique thing about this is… He grew up! Until the birth of Jesus, no one believed that when the Messiah came, He would come as a baby. But God, through Isaiah, prophesied this would happen.

3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 

He was despised and rejected. The Sanhedrin rejected Him during three trials that took place during the night,

and the people rejected Him when Pilate asked if he should release Jesus or Barabbas as a gesture of good will for the Passover holiday. The crowd chose Barabbas and shouted, “Crucify Him” about Jesus.

4 Surely, he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 

This was true from His very first days of ministry. Everywhere Jesus went, He bore people’s sicknesses by healing them and carried their pains by counseling with them. On the day of atonement, a special goat, called “The Scapegoat” was brought into the Temple and stricken by the sins of the people. This scapegoat, called “Azazel,” (uh-ZAY-zel) was then led away into the wilderness as a way of illustrating that the people’s sins had been taken away.

In John 19:15, when Pilate asked if he should release Jesus, the crowd shouted, “Take him away.” – The word for “take him away,” in Hebrew is “Azazel.” (uh-ZAY-zel)

5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. 

Jesus was crucified between two criminals. Normally it took 2 or 3 days for the victim to die by crucifixion, but the Jews didn’t like it when people were writhing in pain during the Passover, so just before sundown, the Roman guards broke the legs of the two criminals on either side of Jesus, so they would suffocate faster. When they came to Jesus, He was already dead, having died of a broken heart when God laid the sins of the world upon Him. So instead of breaking His legs, they pierced Him in the side with a spear to verify that He was really dead. APPLICATION

We will celebrate Jesus's life, death and resurrection on Easter. And you should also celebrate your resurrection from the death of sin right now. According to Saten’s plan for you, it is against the odds that you are alive and saved today. 1Peter 5:8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: * HOLY GHOST TAKE US HOME!!! Against All Odds.