Back To the Future

Hello Everyone,

Of all the messianic prophecies that can be found in the Bible, there is nothing out there as wonderful or as powerful as Isaiah 53.

Isaiah wrote this some 700 years BEFORE the birth of Christ.
It’s almost as if the prophet Isaiah was sitting at the foot of the cross as he wrote these beautiful words describing our Lord’s life, death, and resurrection.

In our society today people have the mentality that they do not need Jesus because they are too good to need a savior or they feel that they can follow the path of their choosing to heaven.
People today look at Jesus and they wonder, if He was the Son of God, why did He die like He did?

People have a hard time believing that a loving God would allow His one and only Son suffer and die. In verses 3 and 4 Isaiah tells his listeners that when the Messiah suffered, people would turn their backs on Him because they believed that He had to have done something to deserve the punishment that He was receiving.This is part of the reason that verse 3 says that He was despised.

At the end of verse 4 we see “yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted”. People could justify His treatment because they thought He deserved it.

Look at how this was fulfilled in Matthew 27:39-44. 39Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads 40and saying, "You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!"
41In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. 42"He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself! He's the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, 'I am the Son of God.' " 44In the same way the robbers who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

The only way that people could be so cruel to Jesus was to write Him off as a sinner. Today people write Jesus off as just a good teacher, a fable or anything else to justify not following Him.
Today we put Jesus on a lower level than we should because we do not want to have anyone tell us how to live our lives.
Isaiah and the rest of the Bible tell us the real reason that Jesus suffered. This week let’s look closely at Isaiah 53 and see the true reason for His suffering.

Oh HOW He loves US!
Pastor Phil