JOURNEY TO THE CROSS WEEK THREE

CALL TO WORSHIP SCRIPTURE: ROMANS 12:1

CHILDREN’S TIME SCRIPTURE: JOHN 9:1-6 HAVE KIDS CLOSE THEIR EYES AND ASK THEM WHAT THEY SEE AND HOW FOR BLIND PEOPLE THAT IS WHAT IT IS LIKE, AND THEN TALK ABOUT HOW JESUS HEALED THE BLIND MAN IN JOHN 9:1-3

You ever try to repair something that you have no idea how to repair but you’re stubborn and try to fix it anyway? Or you have a cord that you try to hold a certain way because the connection is broken? And the more you mess with it, the worse it gets. But you’re stubborn and so you keep fighting it. Or you try to superglue something together thinking it will work but then it doesn’t? You ever try to do a home repair project by yourself without ever having done it before and it totally fail? (Have some fun with this)

In a lot of ways we are like that broken item that we can’t repair ourselves. For the past few weeks we have been journeying to the cross and have been looking at who we are in light of who God is. We talked about how Christ had to come simply because of our sin and disobedience in the garden through Adam and Eve. How even in the Fall, there was the hope of a promised redemption. Last week, we dove into the reason why God wants to save: that it was out of His deep love you and I. Not on anything we have done to merit it, but out of the overflow for who He is.

And I’m so grateful that God is the one who can heal, restore and redeem us. But that redemption as we will look at today comes at a great cost.

Open your Bibles to Isaiah 53. The prophet Isaiah vividly describes the reality of the suffering servant who, despite being rejected and afflicted, is the instrument through which God's grace and healing are abundantly given to humanity. Isaiah 53 reveals Christ as the fulfillment of the suffering servant archetype, illustrating that through His rejection and suffering, He becomes the very source of healing and hope for all who believe in Him, exemplifying God’s redemptive plan throughout Scripture.

God's love is most profoundly displayed when we embrace our brokenness, allowing His grace to transform our pain into purpose and healing for ourselves and others.

There are three things that I want us to look at as we journey to the cross that Isaiah points out:

THREE THINGS FROM ISAIAH 53:

THE MYSTERY OF THE MESSIAH

THE MESSIAH WOULD BE REJECTED

THE SACRIFICE OF THE MESSIAH

1. The Mystery of the Messiah

Isaiah 53:1 CSB

1 Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

Have you ever stopped and thought about message of the Gospel? The idea that God sought to redeem humanity from Sin is a wild idea. It isn’t something that we do. Someone wrongs us, we usually react poorly. Maybe we decide we are done with them. We don’t want to have anything to do with them, we take our family and avoid them like the plague. At work, we go an alternate route to avoid running into them. We take our family and go to a different church. We stare them down at family functions and stay on opposite sides of the room.

How does God respond to our wrongdoing? He gives us a second chance. He becomes flesh and is named Jesus because He desires to save us. To us it doesn’t make sense! Yet, to God, it is perfect sense. That’s the mystery of it all!

This is what Isaiah is getting at in light of what he just talked about. The passage that we find ourselves in is a part of this discussion of what is known as “The Mysterious Servant.” Now we read about this servant before hand when read about a child who will be born:

Isaiah 9:6 CSB

6 For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders. He will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

This child that we sing about at Christmas is the mysterious servant who Isaiah refers to in Isaiah 52. In Isaiah 52:13-15, Scripture says:

Isaiah 52:13–15 CSB

13 See, my servant will be successful; he will be raised and lifted up and greatly exalted. 14 Just as many were appalled at you—his appearance was so disfigured that he did not look like a man, and his form did not resemble a human being—15 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.

Isaiah here is proclaiming that the servant will be a mystery. We see this played out in the time of Christ. The people were looking for a physical military messiah who would come in and overthrow the Romans. They interpreted what Isaiah meant when he writes about “the arm of the Lord” to be about the might of the Lord from a military standpoint. They failed to acknowledge that what Isaiah was really talking about was much deeper and more devastating than what they were going through.

When Isaiah writes about the arm of the Lord here, it is not from the standpoint of a military power. It isn’t about conquering a nation - it is about the redemption of humanity. So when Isaiah asks in Isaiah 53 about who has believed the message and who has received the might of the Lord? It is those who placed their faith and their trust in this mysterious servant.

That’s the beauty of God’s ways - they often defy expectations. When we want something done, or we want people to know - we will spend money on advertising, social media, celebrity endorsement. I mean, think about it. Where would Nike be without Michael Jordan? That’s what we do to get the message out, to reveal something — we recruit someone of influence to share the message.

But not God. God’s way, His truth doesn’t work that way. His ways defy human expectation. The people were expecting a physical ruler who was going to establish His physical kingdom. Yet God sought something much deeper and much more valuable. He was concerned with something far greater than a physical kingdom — His eternal kingdom. He wasn’t locked in on destroying people, rulers, and kingdoms. He prioritizes redemption over destruction. But the people didn’t understand that. So when God the Son shows up, many don’t see the Messiah standing right in front of them. Despite Christ’s majestic origins, they failed to see Him and they refused Him.

Except for those who believed in Him. Those who trusted in God’s truth.

You and I have the benefit of Scripture to see and recognize how God fulfilled the prophets’ message. Yet if we are honest, we have, at times, done what we wanted to do, and claim it to be God’s way when it really wasn’t. We try to do things our own way claiming that it is how God wants, instead of seeking to follow Him. Instead of trusting in the mystery of God’s way, we seek the way that we think we know is the answer, and yet where does that lead us?

Empty

Cold

And full of regret.

Scripture proclaims in the Psalms that God’s word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path, but the whole path is not revealed before us. God reveals it more and more as we trust in Him. If we want to follow God, we have to be willing to trust in Him fully and completely. We have to trust in His way, even if that way is unknown or seems crazy. We have to marvel at the mystery. And that's what Isaiah was getting! To embrace the mystery of the messiah requires trusting in God to do things His way and not ours.

2. The Messiah Would Be Rejected

Isaiah 53:2–3 CSB

2 He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He didn’t have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at him, no appearance that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from; he was despised, and we didn’t value him.

The prophet Isaiah reveals that the way that the Messiah grew up was not going to be the way that Kings grew up. The Messiah did not come in grandeur and regality. He wasn’t from wealth. Again, God’s ways are so different. Isaiah describes this mystery servant - who we know to be Christ - as a young plant and root growing up from dry ground. I’ve heard scholars argue about how this is to signify the appearance of Jesus as being ugly physically. (Have some light fun with this, like talk about of all the things to debate and discuss about Jesus, this is one?) However, I think there is something much more profound than that. In Isaiah 11, Isaiah uses the same kind of wording to share that the Messiah is revealed as a king in the line of David who will shoot up to redeem Israel. Marvin Sweeney points out that the contrast is striking: that what Isaiah writes in Isaiah 11 as a shoot to restore Israel is the same wording to describe the rejection and humiliation of this same figure, resulting in His suffering and that through His suffering, Israel will be restored.

When Christ came, there were those who followed Him, and believed in Him. Yet He was rejected. In verse 3, Isaiah describes this rejection as being despised, someone who knew what sickness was, and suffered. People would turn away, despise, and wanted nothing to do with Him. This is fulfilled in the life of Christ. In the Gospel of John, John writes:

John 1:11 CSB

11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

And in Mark 6, we read how Christ was rejected by the people because they could not get past who they thought He was. This is what Mark writes:

Mark 6:1–6 CSB

1 He left there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. 2 When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished. “Where did this man get these things?” they said. “What is this wisdom that has been given to him, and how are these miracles performed by his hands? 3 Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And aren’t his sisters here with us?” So they were offended by him. 4 Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown, among his relatives, and in his household.” 5 He was not able to do a miracle there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. 6 And he was amazed at their unbelief. He was going around the villages teaching.

And again in John 6:66

John 6:66 CSB

66 From that moment many of his disciples turned back and no longer accompanied him.

So here we have this paradox in Isaiah in that just as a withered plant is thrown away, so also would the Messiah be rejected. This rejection and sacrifice is foreshadowed in Genesis 3:15 and in John 3. God told the serpent that he would be crushed and strike the heel of the redeemer who would be lifted up for all to look on and be healed. Isaiah reveals that this will come about because He was despised and rejected.

And the kicker of it all?

He was willing to do it. He was willing to go through not only rejection, but He was willing to go through that.

Yet, not only does this passage remind us of the mystery of the Messiah, and that He will be rejected, but that He will also be sacrificed.

3. The Sacrifice of The Messiah

Isaiah 53:4–5 CSB

4 Yet he himself bore our sicknesses, and he carried our pains; but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds.

Here is the apex of this prophecy. The prophet Isaiah reveals that our pain, and sickness which is sin Christ will bear. He will bear the punishment of our sin, despite our rejection of Him. Christ will experience the consequences of our sin.

And the cost? His life. The prophet in verse 5 draws out that the Messiah will be pierced, crushed and wounded. That is what Christ did - He gave His life for us.

And the result? We can be healed. “Fixed” if you will, from sin, the thing that separates us from God. Reconciled back to him. That is what it took. Christ was willing to be despised, rejected, and punished so that you and I can be healed and forgiven of our sin.

So as we journey to the cross, let us do so reflecting on the depths of Christ’s sacrifice. This is the incomprehensible measure of God's love. His wounds become the very means of our healing and peace. And all we have to do is trust Him.

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