Isaiah 53: An Ordinary Savior Series

ISAIAH 53 SERIES: AN ORDINARY SAVIOR

ISAIAH 53:1-2 | #Isaiah53

PERSON IN THE CONGREGATION READS ISAIAH 53

READ ISAIAH 53:1-12 (ESV)

“Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 2 For He grew up before Him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him. 3 He was despised and rejected by men, a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. 4 Surely, He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on a Him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. 8 By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? 9 And they made His grave with the wicked and with a rich man in His death, although He had done no violence, and there was no deceit in His mouth. 10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush Him; He has put Him to grief; when His soul makes an offering for guilt, He shall see His offspring; He shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. 11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by His knowledge shall the Righteous One, My Servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and He shall bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the many, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.”

INTRODUCTION

The passage we are going to look at for several weeks beginning today is Isaiah 53. Isaiah is counted in the Major Prophets of the Old Testament. Isaiah has 66 chapters, 1,292 verses, and 37,044 words. We are only going to look at Isaiah 53… so 1 chapter, 12 verses, 406 words.

Believe it or not, in some circles, Isaiah 53 is a chapter that has some controversy to it… or I should say… some alleged controversy. I found contradictory statements all around Isaiah 53.

One author states: “Often called the “Forbidden Chapter,” Isaiah 53 is a significant source of controversy. Not just between Judaism and Christianity, but even within Judaism itself. Up until Christ came, the Jewish sages and rabbis roundly agreed that Isaiah 53 was a prophecy about the Messiah. But once the Christian Gospel started to spread, this chapter in Isaiah began to cause problems within Judaism because of its overt resemblance to the life and work of Jesus as the Messiah. According to Eitan Bar, a native Jewish-Israeli scholar: “The 17th-century Jewish historian, Raphael Levi, admitted that long ago the rabbis used to read Isaiah 53 in synagogues, but after the chapter caused “arguments and great confusion” the rabbis decided that the simplest thing would be to just take that prophecy out of the Haftarah1 readings in synagogues. That’s why today when we read Isaiah 52, we stop in the middle of the chapter, and the week after, we jump straight to Isaiah 54.” (rlsolberg.com/isaiah-53/)

That sounds awfully convenient so I did some digging the other way.

In an article from Jews for Judaism, they state: “No rabbinic edicts exist that prohibit Jews from reading any portion of the Jewish Bible. On the contrary, the Jewish Bible, including the Book of Isaiah, is accessible to anyone who wants to read it… If there is a conspiracy, it is by [Christian] missionaries. They hide the plain and obvious meaning of Isaiah 53 by reading it out of context and mistranslating crucial words to fit Jesus into the chapter.” (jewsforjudaism.org/knowledge/ articles/debunking-the-isaiah-53-forbidden-chapter-conspiracy)

So, I found two different sources that contradict one another about Isaiah 53.

In addition to this, last week I was reading a biography about Richard Wurmbrand (‘Richard Wurmbrand: Love Your Enemies,’ J & G Benge, YWAM, 2017). Richard Wurmbrand, was a Romanian Evangelical Lutheran priest of Jewish descent who ministered in the 1940s. Wurmbrand preached at bomb shelters and rescued Jews during World War II and spent significant time in prison and was severely severely tortured by the Nazis. In describing how he came to believe that Jesus was the Messiah… for he was Jewish in religion and culture… he stated that rabbis told him to stop reading Isaiah 53 and asking questions about it because “that passage is only for rabbis.” Isaiah 53 was one major influence on him becoming a believer in Jesus.