The lesson this week was from Isaiah 52:13-53:12. As I read the passage, I came to the realization that Jesus probably read this passage about Himself when He was reading in the Synagogues during the Friday evening Sabbath services as He traveled from town to town. As I led the kids down a path to understand that Christ might have actually read these verses about Himself aloud (as we were doing), I had a better emotional understanding about Him doing so than ever before.
The basic understanding to be gained from these verses for the authors of the lesson was that Christ was the suffering servant. My goal was to translate their example of an emotional high when standing on top of a mountain to the emotional high of knowing Christ paid the penalty for our sin.
My lesson plan had a comment or question from each verse.
13 – Christ acted wisely.
14 – Do we picture the appalling, disfigured, marred unhuman shape of Christ after he was beaten and brought to trial?
- Jesus has always been the angelic figure in the framed scene I was given as a child. The real impact of the movie “The Passion of the Christ” was the brutality He suffered during His last night as a human.
15 – The truth when seen transcends all excuses for ignorance.
1 – Who believed?
- The Jews were chosen by God to hear the message of the Old Testament and to expect the Messiah. The believers were Jews who expected Christ to come in the future.
2 – How much of our lives are impacted by the physical attraction to others that Christ simply did not have?
- Even before He was beaten, nothing about His appearance gave any clue to His Glorious position above every known thing or being.
3 – The suffering servant. What does it mean?
4 – Are you glad Christ took our infirmities and sorrows? Why did God make His Son suffer?
5 – We have peace and are healed from our transgression and iniquity. This is the Gospel, the Good News, here is the Old Testament.
6 – Do we not all want everything to go our own way? He paid for all or sin.
7 – Did not open His mouth. Jesus took the suffering, willingly.
8 – He was stricken and cutoff.
9 – No violence and no deceit. He did not fight His suffering for us. Did this seem wise?
We took a detour here to discuss why the people were making Jesus suffer. The law God gave to the Jews demanded that anyone who claimed to be God was to be killed. Jesus was God and in Him was no deceit. Therefore, every time He read Isaiah in the synagogue and read the part where Isaiah is quoting the prophetic vision of the future Messiah, Jesus is claiming to be God. He is telling the people that they have to kill Him. The interesting part of prophecy is that Isaiah tells of the details of crucifixion that before the Romans was not how a Jew claiming to be God would have been killed. Most likely they would have been stoned (remember Christ and the woman when He told the people who had not sinned to be the first to cast the stone). It was only when God has orchestrated the Romans (and their terrible method for killing) into place that His Son could come and fulfill the plan.
10 – The Will of God. This was all God’s plan to glorify Himself.
11 – Do we see how wise it was for Christ to suffer?
12 – Intercession. His suffering was for us to have the opportunity to have a right relationship with God and necessary for us to glorify God and to fulfill His will.
One of the tragic aspects of prophecy is how many Jews rejected the idea of the suffering servant and fully expected God to send them a new king to conquer all their earthly enemies and raise them up to prominence over others. God sent His Son to conquer their enemy alright, but the enemy was their own sinful nature and the sin it brought out in their lives. Our true position is humble and lowly before God and over no one. Christ came to be killed and He was killed, but not by a bunch of Jews or a bunch or Romans or any form of “them”. He was killed by us and our own sin, each of us, individually. That is why it is only individually that we can be saved and thank God for sending His Son to suffer for us.