Christ's Suffering Prophesied In Isaiah

It's wonderful to be able to prepare from week to week, but from then year to year for discussing what God is involved in doing in this earth. What His purpose for man is, why He has placed us on the earth the way we are, and of course why we need His Holy Spirit. And thankfully, the Holy Days' focus. They focus us on the really important aspects of His plan. The first one that we come to in the spring here is the Passover. And we've mentioned in the last few weeks, preparing for the Passover, examining ourselves, doing a self-examination, because that's the only kind that will really, terribly help us a lot.

And so, we can do that, and then we can also just be thinking about how it is that God has... It's incredible that God wants us to be thinking about the significance of Jesus Christ in our lives. You know, He has got to be a central figure in every single one of our lives. And when you read the Bible, you find that not only is the New Testament all about Jesus, all about what His life was involving, and then ultimately His death and His resurrection, but then how it was that He worked through the apostles and all the congregations of the Church to ultimately, at the end of the book, we see the prediction of the book of Revelation, that in the end of the age, Jesus and the kingdom of God will come.

So, it's about Him in the beginning, it's about Him certainly toward the end, and it's even about Him all through the Old Testament. Now, I want to go through some things that I think will point out this. I want to start here in the book of Acts, Acts 8. Acts 8 contains a... I guess you could say this is an unusual incident. This is the chapter that has the account of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. Here in verse 26, an angel of the Lord said to Philip get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.

And so, he got up and went, and there was an Ethiopian, an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians in charge of her entire treasury. So, obviously, this was a government official in a sense, but someone who had a lot of responsibility, who was in charge of the entirety of a treasury for the country. And it says, this man had come, verse 27, to Jerusalem to worship.

And so, clearly, he had a reason to be there. He was in Jerusalem in order to be a part of some of the celebrations that would go on there. And so, it says he came to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home and seated in his chariot. He was reading the Bible. He was reading this scripture that was available to him there at that time. And in this particular case, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the spirits had to fill up, verse 29, go over to the chariot and join it.

So, Philip did. He ran to it, and he heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. And he asked him, do you understand what you're reading? Now, all of us are familiar with. We, of course, have, in a sense, kind of a cheat sheet. We all have a Bible.

We all have several of them, probably at home. Some of you have it on your phone, on your tablet. You can get any number of different versions. You can get all kinds of different translations. And yet, at the time, when this man was reading the book of Isaiah, he had to have something kind of extraordinary there. That wasn't something that was easily distributed or commonly available. And how many chapters are in the book of Isaiah? You can all take a guess. Lowell thinks it's...

how many? 66. He said that with such confidence. And he's right! 66, I believe, would be correct, as far as I know. It's a long book. There's a lot of information in the book of Isaiah. It's actually called a messianic prophecy or prophet. He's called a messianic prophet because of so many different chapters, like chapter 2 or chapters 6 or 9 or 11 or 35, that talk about the kingdom of God. Talk about the coming of Jesus as a ruler and the entire change that's going to take place on the earth.

And so, in many ways, Isaiah is a very... it's a noted book. And you can read in the very last part of it. It talks about, again, messianic information about the coming of Christ to the earth, about the tremendous change that's going to take place on the earth and even the physical changes that are going to happen. But Philip asks the Ethiopian, do you understand what you're reading?

And his reply is really quite interesting. It's really instructive. Because he says in verse 31, how can I understand, unless someone guide me, unless someone teach me? See, now, clearly, he didn't already understand everything. He didn't know everything, and he wanted to start teaching Philip what he needed to know. Now, that wasn't the case. This man said, how can I learn? How can I come to understanding, unless there's someone to teach me? So he had a teachable, you know, very guideable attitude. And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. The passage of the scripture that he was reading was this.

Like a sheep, he was led to the slaughter like a lamb, silent before its shearers. So does he not open his mouth. In his humiliation, justice was denied to him, who can describe his generation, for his life is taken away from the earth. Now, where did he find that in Isaiah? Well, he was reading in what we would, at this time, identify as Isaiah chapter 53.

He's reading a section out of, you know, that chapter that really is a very important chapter in regard to Jesus coming to the earth as the Son of God, but also as the Lamb of God. And yet, the eunuch's question to Philip was, who's this talking about? You know, that's often my question. When I read things in the Old Testament and sometimes in the New, I go, who's talking to whom?

Who is this referring to? Because there's often a he and a him and a they and an us, and I'm not always figuring out exactly who it is. But here in verse 34, he has said, About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this? Is he talking about himself? Because Isaiah was a noted prophet in Israel and among the people of Judah, the kings of Israel and Judah at a certain period of time.

There were several that he interacted with. And amazingly, even here in the last few weeks, you know, they've located in, what have they advertised? At least a find, archaeologically, that identifies the prophet Isaiah as a figure of the past. Of course, that's a fabulous thing to be able to see in some of the rubble around the area of Jerusalem.

But ask him, is he talking about himself or is he talking about somebody else? See, he had a section of Isaiah 53 that he was reading. It certainly was intriguing. It was interesting. It made it—he wanted to know who it was. He wanted to know, is this Isaiah? Is this the king? Is this somebody else that we ought to know? What's it about? And so Philip began to speak in verse 35, and he started with that Scripture and proclaimed to him the good news, the gospel about Jesus Christ.

And as they went along, you know, I'm not going to go through the whole discussion. I simply want to point out that in this particular case, he started teaching him about Jesus. He explained to him, well, no, Isaiah is not talking about himself. He's talking about the Son of God. He's talking about the Messiah, who were not too far removed. This would appear to be in the first few months after Jesus had been on earth, after he had been put to death, after he had been resurrected, and after the day of Pentecost.

So several months now have gone by whenever this is taking place. And so Philip was very thankful to be able to have the opportunity to explain to him who Jesus was, and even to explain to him that you need to be baptized, because then it shows that he did baptize him. But what I want to point out is just the section here of Isaiah 53, verse 7 and 8, that is referenced here in the New Testament.

It's amazing to see, and again, when we look at it from the standpoint of God, having written the entirety of the Bible, having written not only the Old Testament, which the people of Israel, the house of Judah were required to maintain, but then also writing, through the numerous authors of the New Testament, writing the entirety of the book that we call the Holy Bible.

But it's amazing to see how the Word of God, as this is in the Old Testament, predicts even some of the most specific details that would come to pass at the death of Jesus Christ. And I think we should keep that in mind as we study the Bible. I think I find it easier to study the New Testament, in that I understand the time frame a little better. It's about 100 years. You can see during the life of Jesus, and you can see during the beginning of the New Testament Church, and up until the life of John.

So essentially 100 years. It's a little easier for me to read that and understand kind of what's applicable as far as how it's written and what you might need to know as background. But the entirety of the Old Testament is also helpful. And all of us know, and I know I'm not talking to any of you who don't think this, and the entire Bible has been inspired by God.

It is God-breathed according to what Paul wrote Timothy, and it has instruction, not only in the New but in the Old Testament for us. And so let's look at Ephesians chapter 2, just to point out the fact that, as Paul was speaking here to the people who were in the congregation in Ephesus, he said in chapter 2, in talking about how that through Jesus Christ, all of them, some of them with the Jewish background, some of them who were not Jewish, some of them who would be Greek or who would be Gentile, they had been brought into the church by God.

And he says in verse 19, So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. And so he was explaining to them that, well, God has performed a great miracle of bringing all of us into His church, into His household, and that we are built, in verse 20, upon the foundation of what? The foundation of the apostles?

Like who? Matthew? Luke? Peter? John? Paul? You know, that would certainly be a part of the basis that we have, but it says we're built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. The prophets that you read about primarily in the Old Testament. Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel being major prophets, and then many of the other minor prophets that you read more so toward the latter part, but you even go back into history in the Old Testament, and you can go through the history of Israel and Judah and ultimately their destruction. But he says the church of God is built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Jesus Christ himself as the chief cornerstone.

He's the one who is always going to be the foundation, but see, he's spoken about, and he even told those that he was walking with in the latter part of Luke. He told them, well, I'll explain to you what all these scriptures in the Old Testament say about me, and I'm sure that would be one of the chapters that he would go over.

It's Isaiah 53. So, I want us to take a look and see some of the verses here in Matthew, and in Mark, and in Luke, and in John, and in Paul's writings, and in Peter's writings, all of whom are authors in the New Testament, New Testament books, and they all quote from Isaiah 52 and 53.

See, now, there are many Old Testament references in the New Testament. You can use any kind of concordance, any kind of even indexed Bible has a lot of references. If they're referring to something in the Old Testament, if you have a center cross-reference, then you can often see that pretty easily. But I'm focused only on this one chapter, only on a little bit more than the one chapter, the end of chapter 52 and the beginning of chapter 53. So, let's look at this in Matthew 8. Matthew 8 has an incident here that, again, we're familiar with, I think. Verse 14, Jesus entered Peter's house, and his mother-in-law was lying in bed with a fever.

Luke says it was a great fever. He touched her hand, and fever left. She got up and began to serve them. Now, that is solving the immediate problem and producing the benefit of serving and helping, taking care of one another. And that evening, they brought to him all who were possessed with demons. He cast out the spirits with the word, and he cured all who were sick.

And this was to fulfill what had been spoken about from the prophet Isaiah, where it says, he took our infirmities, and he bore our diseases. Now, that's quoting out of Isaiah 53, verse 4. See, this was predicted six, seven hundred years, written down even before Jesus would ever come. See, is God in charge of his plan or not? Does he know where we're heading? Sure. And yet, this is simply a reference to one of the things that Jesus not only is able to do or was able to do, but is able to do as we look to him in faith.

See, that's a part of what he's wanting us to do. Now, all of us would like to be healed like this lady. We would like to have our favor disappear immediately and fill up to serving and cooking hamburgers and passing out the fries and having, you know, help for everybody else. And yet, that isn't what we always go through. We sometimes endure, as we're going to also see that Jesus endured an incredible amount. Between what we go over this week and what we go over next week, I think we will all conclude that Jesus Christ endured and suffered a considerable amount even before he died.

And we want to be appreciative of that, but this is just one of the references in Matthew where he is quoting from Isaiah 53. Let's go over to the book of Mark. Now, Mark is another account of, of course, Jesus' life, but he's writing mostly from what Peter would have told him. He was kind of an understudy of Peter's, and so he was recording a gospel.

He appears to be a younger man, so he got this information from someone else. If he was writing it down, you know, then he was kind of following the outline or the teaching or even preaching of Peter. And yet, here in Mark, Chapter 15, this is toward the end of the book and toward the time when Jesus will be taken and crucified. Here in Mark 15, it says in verse 25, it was nine o'clock in the morning, and they crucified him.

And so Passover Day, the year that Jesus died and was buried and then later resurrected, Passover Day that year was extremely significant. He had earlier the night before met with his disciples. He had eaten a Passover meal, and he had designated the bread and the wine that would signify his body and his blood. He's the author of that. He's the one who created it. He's the one who says what it means. And then throughout the night and throughout the morning, all of the other things that had to take place took place.

But then it says if it's nine o'clock in the morning when he was crucified, and the inscription of the charge against him read the King of the Jews. And so he was identified as the King of the Jews, and yet the Jews hated him. Hated him enough to want to put him to death. Even whenever he was being by Pilate offered what he wanted, Jesus, to, you know, I don't see any reason to kill him, or do you want Barabbas?

Now he's a murderer, and he's an instigator of riots, which you want. And of course they wanted Barabbas. And well, what do you want to do with Jesus? Well, crucify him. And they were not just saying it like that. They were screaming that. They were yelling. That's what should happen. And so with him, in verse 27, they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left.

And those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads. See, they were mocking him. And yet the reference that I want to point out here is in verse 28. Verse 28, I'm sorry, I think I left that part out. Verse 27, they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left. And in verse 28, and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, and he was counted among the lawless, or counted among the transgressors. See now, where was Mark getting that from? Well, that was coming out of Isaiah 53, verse 12. He was counted among the transgressors. He even, Jesus, made the point whenever he was about to be taken.

Well, do we have a sword? He said, yeah, well, we have a sword. Okay. Well, they're looking for me, and they're acting like I'm abandoned. They're acting like I'm going to try to get away. They're acting like they need this whole army out here to bring me in.

And yet, you know, that wasn't the case. And then he was crucified with those who truly were guilty. And even when you read the account in Luke, you find, well, they said, yeah, well, we're getting what we deserve. We deserve to be up here being crucified, but he doesn't. He's innocent. He's completely innocent. And certainly, you know, a testimony to the Son of God. Let's go over to Luke 22. So we've gone to Matthew and Mark and Luke, and here in chapter 22. 22, verse 35. Let's start in verse 37. For I tell you, this Scripture must be fulfilled in me, that he was counted among the lawless. So this is a similar one to the one in Mark. But indeed, what is written about me is being fulfilled. And so they were talking about swords in this case, and yet he was thought to be or viewed as a criminal. And yet, clearly, he was not a criminal at all, but completely innocent of everything.

Let's look at the book of John, John 12. John 12, verse 37. Though he had performed so many signs in their presence, they didn't believe in him. And so here you see John writing about how that even though Jesus had done so many things, there were just incredible, remarkable miracles and signs. Even though he performed that many signs, they didn't believe in him. And it says in verse 38, this was to fulfill the words spoken by the prophet Isaiah, Lord, who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? And so they could not believe because, again, Isaiah says he has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart so that they might not look up with their eyes and understand what their hearts and God would heal them. See, here he actually quotes Isaiah in two different places, but one of them, the first one here, Lord, who has believed our message, is from Isaiah 53, verse 1. It's the first few verses or a couple of verses of Isaiah 53. Now, we already read the one in Acts, which again was written by Luke, and we read that. This was even studied by the Ethiopian who was brought into contact with Philip, and it was talking about how he was taken as a lamb, and yet he didn't respond. See, there's actually a great deal to be learned from what Jesus did and what it was predicted he would do. And even when you read through an account, any one of the four Gospels, the last few verses or chapters, if you read through them, you'll see that often Jesus wouldn't respond. Sometimes he would just say, well, you say so. Or he would explain, as he did with Pilate, you know, my kingdom is not of this world. If it were of this world, then my servants would fight that. I wouldn't be delivered to the Jews, but my kingdom is not right now. My kingdom is not being set up right now. So he explained a few things that needed to be explained, but as he was being ridiculed, or as he was being persecuted, or as he was being mocked, or even in the case of Pilate or others of the religious leaders accusing him, he just doesn't answer. And there's a reason again for that. And that's what we read in the book of Acts. Let's look at Romans chapter 10. Now, Paul wrote this book of Romans, as he did in 14 other books here in the New Testament. And Romans is written to a given church, a church in the city of Rome, a church that Paul would later become more familiar with, and it would appear he would be there at some time.

But here in Romans chapter 10, he says in verse 14, and here in this case, he's talking about how that, even though God has been dealing with Israel, he will ultimately deal with those who are not Israel. Ultimately, he will deal with Israel and the entirety of the rest of the world. And Paul is making that point in verse 14.

How are they to call on him in whom they have never believed? And how are they to believe in one that they've never heard? How are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent, as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news?

But not all have obeyed that good news, says Isaiah, because here he quotes in verse 16 Isaiah 53 verse 1, Lord, who has believed our message? And so Paul continues here in verse 17, so faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes from the Word of God. And so why do we study the Word of God? That's what we're going to go over every Sabbath as we come to church services. We want to study what the Bible has to say, and we want to be conversant in that, and we want to be able to explain the Bible, not only to ourselves, but to others who might ask, be able to be ready always to give an answer.

Here in chapter 15 of Romans, chapter 15, in talking about Paul's role as he had been called, not one of the original apostles, but he was called later to be an apostle, in this case to be the apostle that would reach out beyond Israel and go to the Gentile world. Here in Romans 15, in verse, let's see, let's start in verse, well, he's talking about his life here in verse 19. Now, verse 18, I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to win obedience from the Gentiles by word and deed. He says, that's my job. By the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and as far as way of Lyricum, up into Greece and beyond, I have fully proclaimed the good news of Christ.

And thus, in verse 20, I make it my ambition to proclaim the gospel, to proclaim the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, so that it could not build on someone else's foundation, but as it is written, those who have never been told of him shall see, and those who have never heard of him shall understand. Now, here he quotes not only talking about his work and the work of Timothy and Titus with him and others, but he was talking about something that we're going to read here in Isaiah 52.

Isaiah 53 is one whole chapter. There are a few verses in Isaiah 52 that seem to be directly connected. And so Paul is quoting that, and applying that, to what God had been preparing for long before, but he at least predicted it 600 years before it would come to pass. And he wrote this down through the prophet Isaiah. And then finally, let's take a look here at 1 Peter 2.

1 Peter 2, you see Peter writing about the incredible example of Jesus and how he was willing to suffer. He didn't deserve to suffer. He was innocent as he was being accused and as he was being ridiculed. And yet his example is one that we're to follow. Verse 21, for to this you've been called because Christ suffered for you, leaving an example. So that you should follow in his steps. And he quoted here in verse 22, Isaiah 53 verse 9. He committed no sin and no deceit was found in his mouth. When he was abused, he did not return abuse.

When he suffered, he did not threaten, but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that free from sin, we might live for righteousness by his stripes or his wounds. You have been healed. And so here Peter, in this case, he quotes not only verse 9 of Isaiah 53, but also verse 5.

And so he quotes two different things out of the Old Testament and directly out of Isaiah 53 that were applicable, directly applicable to Jesus Christ. So let's go back to Isaiah, and I hope that this kind of helps you put together the facts that God has written the Bible in such a way, you have to realize that, you know, sometimes it's written here a little and there a little, and you have to be able to put those things together.

And other times, you've got pretty clear kind of a chronological order, like when you read through the life of Jesus, most of those are somewhat chronological. They're all, in a sense, put together. And so they're all put together in a way that is, you have to add them up in order to maybe identify exactly what, you know, what we are to understand. So here in Isaiah 52, let's go back.

This section in Isaiah is, actually it's the fourth section in Isaiah that's talking about Jesus. This one is directly talking about how the Jesus is, and you probably have it in your subheadings, in many cases, talking about the suffering servant. Now you see some songs about Jesus that are talking about His wisdom, talking about His deliverance, talking about His justice, and we're not going to go through those. But this last one, starting in chapter 52, verse 13, is about how He was the suffering servant.

Now this is not obviously describing Revelation 19. It's not describing Him coming in power and glory as the King of kings and overtaking the earth. That's what at least some of the Jews misunderstood. Well, why doesn't He come and take over? Well, that wasn't why He came the first time, but He did come to be a suffering servant. He did come in order to fulfill many of the prophecies that we're going to read here in these verses. So here in Isaiah 52, verse 13, see, my servant, and here He's referring to the servant that Jesus Christ would be when He came to the earth. My servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. So you find an exclamation that He's going to deal in an incredible way. And then you go ahead and it starts talking about how it was that He would suffer. Whenever the Son of God would come to the earth, He would suffer in an incredible way. Verse 14, just as there were many who were astonished at Him, so marred was His appearance beyond human semblance and His form beyond that of mortals. So here He's describing a certain amount of beating, a certain amount of flogging or scourging that would cause His visage to be so marred. And yet this was predicted for Jesus Christ. And yet in verse 15, yet He will startle. The nations, many nations, kings, will shut their mouths because of Him, for that which has not been told them, they shall see, and that which they have not heard, they shall contemplate. See, that's what we read that Paul quoted in Romans 15. See, he was applying it to what he was saying. I'm giving this information new to people who don't really know. But here in Isaiah, he's talking about it in a much more expansive way that there are going to be kings over the whole earth who will come to acknowledge who Jesus Christ is. In verse 53, or chapter 53, verse 1, who has believed what we have heard, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

See, that we quoted out of Romans chapter 10. For He grew up before them like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground, and He had no form or majesty, that we should look at Him, and nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him.

See, when Jesus came to the earth, the Son of God was sent through the miraculous birth through Mary, and through the Father having His Son come to the earth. He was going to grow up in a normal Jewish family. Now, I'm sure Mary, she had to know this is not normal. This has got to be incredibly different. I can't believe how wonderful this little boy is. And yet, He was going to grow up, and He was going to look like everybody else. You see different accounts of Him later on in the crowd sometimes, and if they were putting too much pressure on, and He didn't need to reveal Himself at that point, He just disappears into the crowd. He just, all of a sudden, disappears. Not that He just disappears instantaneously, but He just gets lost in the crowd. It wasn't that He could easily be picked out, but that's what this predicted. He had no former majesty that we should look at Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. He was, in verse 3, despised and rejected by others. He was a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity. And as one from whom others would hide their faces, He was despised, and we held Him of no account. See, that prediction was about not so much what Jesus would endure all His life, although at times it seemed, in the last three years, every time He encountered the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Scribes, and they were always trying to put Him down. They were always trying to get the best of Him. They were always trying to undermine Him, and of course He became their nemesis. He became someone they so despise that we will do anything to get rid of Him. But here it talks about Him being a man of suffering or grief, acquainted with grief.

In verse 4, He bore our infirmities and carried our diseases. We read that in Matthew 8. Matthew connected that with the healing ability, the power that God has, and that Jesus extended to the world. Surely His born-air infirmities carried our diseases, and yet we encountered Him stricken and struck down by God and afflicted. He was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities, and upon Him was the punishment that made us whole. And again, quoting Peter, by his bruises we are healed. Of course, it wasn't that they were quoting Peter. Isaiah was long before Peter. Peter was quoting Isaiah. This was what Jesus was to go through.

And then verse 6, what we read in Acts 8, all we, like sheep, have gone astray. We've all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed. He was afflicted. Yet He didn't open His mouth. Now, why is that so significant? It's significant because that is clearly not the human tendency. The human tendency is to retaliate, to have some type of revenge, to have some type of a comment or some type of a response. As I told you the numerous times, you can read in the accounts of the Gospels how when Jesus is put under the greatest pressure, and asked questions, or in a sense even lied about, He didn't respond. He says, this has to be, and I'm not going to fall prey to Satan's influence around me because he knew it was there.

But He says, He was afflicted and oppressed, yet opened not His mouth like a lamb, that is led to the slaughter, like a sheep that before it shears its silent, He didn't open His mouth. See, too many times, and of course we read in other parts of the Bible how learning to say the right thing, learning to say the right thing at the right time, learning to not say anything at times which is the right thing, and whenever James writes, you know, we need to be quick, not to speak, but to listen. Quick to listen, and slow to speak, and slow to wrath. See, that's incredible advice. James 1, I think it's 19, 20, 21, it says, you know, that we are much better off if we learn to listen instead of always have a quick response. Isaiah goes on to say in verse 8, by a perversion of justice, He was taken away. Who could imagine His future? He was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgressions of my people.

They made His grave with the wicked and His tomb with the rich. There were a couple of other prophecies that were going to be fulfilled whenever Jesus is crucified between two bandits. You know, it talks about His grave being and being lumped in as a criminal or as a robber whenever they came to take Him away. And then as He's crucified, He's crucified with all the other, you know, despicable criminals that actually, as they admitted, we deserve what we're getting, but He doesn't. But it talks about His tomb with the rich. You know, we read a verse in, I think, Matthew the other night, and talked about, you know, what kind of tomb was Jesus put in?

Well, after He was put to death, after He was verified to have died, well, then someone came. Someone came to take Him away and to bury Him, someone a very decent man named Joseph, Joseph of Arimathea. Let's see if I can quickly find that, and we'll read it. If not, I'll just tell you what it says.

Here in Matthew 27.

Matthew 27, verse 57.

When it was evening, this is, as Jesus is then going to be on that Passover day, toward the end of that day, taken down off of a cross, and then put into a tomb.

What kind of a tomb was it? Was it one that was in, you know, the potter's field, you know, back, way in the back of the cemetery, and, you know, that's not the case at all. What we find here, it came, then came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple, and he went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus, and Pilate ordered it to be given. So Joseph took the body, wrapped it in clean linen, laid it in his own new tomb.

See, it wasn't that Joseph, as a rich man, didn't have some type of preparation for himself. This was his new tomb, and I'm sure it was among others that were notable, as far as in, you know, this particular burial plot, this tomb in a rock. So he laid it on his new, in his own new tomb, which he, which he had hewn in the rock, and he then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away.

See, again, when Isaiah predicted that Jesus would make his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, you know, there were references to what would actually happen whenever Jesus did come and fulfill everything that the Old Testament did.

And then, although, again, in verse 9, although he had done no violence, there was no deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the will of the Lord, in verse 10, this is in Isaiah 53 again, yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain when you make his life an offering for sin. See, there's no other human being who has ever lived and then died who is an offering for sin like Jesus Christ. He is the Lamb of God and the offering for our sins.

He shall see his offspring shall prolong his days through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.

In verse 11, out of his anguish, he shall see light. See, out of what Jesus endured for us, we have hope, we have light, we have encouragement, we have life beyond the grave.

He said, if you believe in me, even though you die, you will live. And so, it was through Jesus Christ and his sacrifice that we have, you know, that the abundance of things that he offers us out of his anguish, he shall see light, he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge.

The righteous one, in verse 11, my servant shall make many righteous and he shall bear their iniquities.

Dear brethren, we're not righteous on our own. We're not righteous just by how much good we do. We're righteous because Jesus Christ paid for our sins.

We're able to seek righteousness. We're able to seek his attitude and his mind and his heart because he's bought us with a price.

And so, in verse 12, the last verse here of Isaiah 53, therefore I will allot him a portion with the great. He shall divide the spoiled with the strong because he poured out himself. He poured out his life to death.

His blood was shed for us. And he was numbered with the transgressors. Again, they point that out.

When he was taken, later when he was crucified, he was numbered with the transgressors, yet he bore the sin of many. And he made intercession for the sinners.

See, that's us. That's why we want to be mindful of what the Passover is about.

The Passover in the past was about being delivered. The Israelites were delivered out of being enslaved in Egypt. They were delivered through the blood of the Lamb. They were delivered. They were protected. They were secured. They were given life.

Now, they went through a lot of other things. They had much to learn. But see, the symbolism was that that blood would be shed and that they would be given life.

And, of course, as we apply it to Jesus, his blood would be shed so that we don't have to shed our blood in order to pay for our sins. He pays for those sins.

Now, he doesn't want us to continue to live in sin. He wants us to be transformed. He wants us, as Paul says, to be a new creation. To be an entirely new being because of who Jesus is, who he was, as we're reading about here, and who Isaiah wrote about in Isaiah 53.

But he's the one who bears our sins and takes away our transgressions.

I want to look at one other verse here before we close because we go over some of these same things every year.

We would go over some of the similar things, as I think back over many decades, of being aware of the Passover and the need for it, and being aware of the Days of Unleavened Bread.

We go through similar things every year, but we should learn more about what the Bible says.

What about how it is that it applies to us? How it is that God reveals Himself in His Word.

I want us to look at 1 Peter 1. We were in 1 Peter earlier, but in this case, we'll just look at 1 Peter 1 because He urges us because that we have been bought and paid for by Jesus Christ about His life being given for us.

Peter urges us to live our lives always aware of that sacrifice, always aware of what the Lamb of God makes available to each of us on an individual basis.

He says in verse 13, therefore, this is in 1 Peter 1, verse 13, Therefore, prepare your minds for action.

Discipline yourself, said all your hope on the grace that Jesus will bring you when He is revealed. And like obedient children, don't be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as He who called you is holy, be holy yourself in all of your conduct.

For it is written, You shall be holy as I am holy.

Here He points out that our conduct of the past before being drawn to Jesus Christ by God the Father needed to be atoned for. We needed to be forgiven, and we needed to change.

And so He says, if we change like He wants us to, then we're going to become holy.

And in verse 17, if you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, then live in reverent fear during the time of your exile, during this physical existence.

You know that you have been ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers, and you've been ransomed not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

Like that of a lamb without defect or blemish, He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. And through Him you have come to trust in God, who raised Him from the dead and who gave Him glory so that your faith and hope are set on God.

We have an incredible future to look forward to, but we have that because of the Lamb, because of Jesus Christ, because of His blood being given, and because, even as it says here before the foundation of the world, the Father and the Eternal Word had already determined how they would redeem man from sin.

He knew that would be needed. He knew what He was going to do, but when Jesus was here as a physical being, we're going to go through some of this next week, when He was here as a physical being, He endured an incredible, incredible amount of abuse and of suffering and of pressure.

See, many times we think that we have a lot of pressure in our lives, and admittedly we do. I'm sure Satan allows or wants for that to be the case, and God allows it. But I would say none of us go through the pressure that Jesus did. Again, we'll reference next week. So, I hope this is helpful to go through Isaiah 53 and to see what God predicted six, seven hundred years before Christ would come, how He would completely fulfill that in every way, and how is the Lamb of God. As the Lamb of God, He today awaits. Awaits our actions, awakes our responses, awakes all of us being motivated to serve and honor God because of our big brother.