I think there's enough light if you brought a Bible.  Turn in your Bibles to see at least a few verses before it gets too dark and we take the Lord's Supper.  Turn to Isaiah Chapter 53 in your Bible in your Old Testament, Chapter 53 of Isaiah, actually part of 52 and in the 53.

Let's pray together.  Father, thank you for the testimonies that we all have.  And though they vary in the details, the salient points are identical.  We were lost, you found us.  You forgave us and now your children are part of your kingdom.  Thank You Lord for Your grace extended to us and we've come to celebrate that tonight and to do what Jesus told us to do often in remembrance of him.  To take these elements, the fruit of divine and the bread of the earth that speaks of the body and blood of a lamb.  But to us, the lamb Jesus Christ who takes away the sin of the world.  Thank You again for the fellowship for the weather and now for Your word in Jesus name, Amen.

There was a family that went on vacation.  And as they were getting ready to leave, there was a thief that was scoping out their house waiting for them to leave and planning to break in as soon as they left town.  So sure enough the family piled everything in the van, drove out of town.  When it was night, the thief picked the lock, walked inside the house.  It was pitched black.  He only had his flashlight, but he was being able to manage in the dark until he heard a voice.  And the voice said to him, "I see you and Jesus sees you."  And he froze dead in his tracks.  He thought, "That's weird."  And he kept moving a little bit closer, turned his flashlight on to see if he could find something or someone.  Nothing.  Again, he heard the voice speak, "I see you and Jesus sees you."  And he thought, "Again, where could that voice be coming from?"  Well he shined his flashlight in the kitchen and saw on the counter top a parrot.  And so he smiled in his side like no big deal.  It's a BirdBrain Parrot, not a big deal.

So he turns on the kitchen light and there next to the counter was a Doberman Pinscher, glistening teeth in a crouched position and the parrot said, "Attack Jesus, Attack!"  Okay, I know it's weird for a family to name their dog Jesus, but it does illustrate a problem.  It's a problem that a lot of people have when they think about God and that is they think that God is out to get them, that Jesus is like the attack Jesus.  He's got His arms folded.  He's got His brow furrowed.  He's waiting for people to make a mistake so He can pounce on them.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

What we discover is that Jesus is a servant.  He came to serve humanity by saving humanity.  Jesus himself said, "The son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many."  Not to attack but to save, to serve.  Paul the Apostle and Philippians too, echoes those same sentiments.  When he says that Jesus who was in very nature God and did not think equality with God was something to be grasped or held on to.  But he made himself of no reputation and being found in the fashion of a servant in the form of a bond servant.  Being fashioned like a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death even the death on the cross.

That introduction serves well for where we're at tonight in scripture.  Before we take communion, I want to go through a few verses in Isaiah Chapter 52 and 53 which speak about in advance, in prophetic fashion the servant nature of Jesus Christ.  Now just to bring you up to speed quickly, in the Book of Isaiah, there are four songs called Servant Songs.  And Isaiah 52 toward the end, beginning in Verse 13 on into Chapter 53 is the suffering servant.

Now just a heads up, we know that this speaks of Jesus Christ.  This shows us the incredible detail of prophetic scripture.  It details things like Jesus' death, His being killed next to criminals, His being buried in a rich man's grave.  The salvation he would bring to the world, many details that could not have been pre-arranged or set up while Jesus was on the earth.  But not everybody believes that these verses of scripture actually speak of Jesus, because they're so dramatic in referring to the suffering Messiah.

Many people if sad to say, "Well, they probably really doesn't mean that."  And about the 11th century A.D. a Rabbi came along by the name of Rashi who decided to take what most Rabbi's had said before him.  And by the way, most Rabbi's believe that Isaiah 52 and 53 would refer to the coming Messiah.  But he said, "No, it must refer to the nation of Israel, because there are other passages in Isaiah where God calls Israel my servant.  The problem however you have with that is around Chapter 49, when you have God identifying Israel as His servant.  But then speaks to another servant who would come and rescue His servant Israel.  And so we know that there is more than one servant.  This can't refer to the Nation of Israel.  But it refers to Jesus.

And so, in the New Testament, we discovered that many of the authors quote Isaiah 53 often.  Matthew quotes Isaiah 53, John quotes Isaiah 53, Peter quotes this chapter.  And you may remember that incident in the Book of Acts in Chapter 8 when Philip is told by the Holy Spirit to go down south on the round that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza which is the dessert and as Philip goes down there, he meets a man from Ethiopia, an official, the Ethiopian unic.  And it just so happen that the Ethiopian unic, his chariot was pulled off on the side of the road and he was seating in his chariot reading aloud and it just happened to be Isaiah 53.  And as Philip comes up he overhears somebody reading out loud, "As a lamb before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth."  Right out of the pages of Isaiah 53.

So Philip goes up and says, "Hey, do you understand what you're reading?"  And the Ethiopian unic said, "How can I unless somebody guides me?"  And Philip probably thought at that point, "Yes!  I really did hear from the spirit."  So the guy invites him up to sit in the shotgun in the chariot next to him.  And it says, beginning at that scripture, Isaiah 53.  He preached Christ unto him and made plain how the Messiah was predicted.  That he would suffer and then he would die.

So if you have a Bible and if you can read and if the print is big enough, in Isaiah 52, beginning in Verse 13, we have the introduction to this whole Servant Song.  But it speaks about the cross and this is the anticipation of the cross.  The prophet says, "Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high."

Now, how was Jesus extolled and brought very high?  Well, two ways, eventually after he would rise from the dead, he would ascend into heaven and be exalted in glory.  Paul writes in Philippians that God exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name.  But also Jesus said, "If I'd be lifted up, I will draw all men into myself."  And he was speaking about the crucifixion being raised up, lifted up on the cross.  So here is the picture of my servant being extolled and lifted very high.  It goes on.  Listen to this, "Just as many as were astonished at you so his visage or his face, his continents -- his visage was marred more than any man and his form more than the sons of men."

We know that Jesus suffered before the cross.  He was beaten up by Roman soldiers.  They beat Him in the face, they whipped Him with a cat of nine tails and he was physically disfigured.  The living Bible says that He didn't even look like a man when they looked at Him.  That's how it's translated.  That he was so scarred and disfigured physically that you didn't know that it was a man standing in front of you.  And if you remember when they brought Jesus back to Pontius Pilate and Pilate looked at Jesus after he'd been beaten up.  He said incredulously in Latin, "Ecce Homo."  Behold, the man.  As if to say incredulously, "This is that man?"  Because he didn't even look like a man, he'd been beaten to such a pulp.  He's visage was marred or contorted.

But listen to this, "So he shall sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths at him; for what had not been told them they shall see; which they had not heard they shall consider."  Did you hear the word sprinkle?  He will sprinkle many nations.

Here, he's speaking about someone lifted up, brutally beaten but he will sprinkle many nations.  And the word that is used is a sacrificial word familiar in the writings of Moses in the Torah.  When the ceremonies were accomplished and the blood of the animal was sprinkled upon the tabernacle.  It was the word used for sacrifices in the efficacy of those sacrifices when the priest or the high priest would sprinkle the blood.  And notice he will sprinkle many nations.  Not just one nation, Jesus didn't just come as the Messiah of the Jews.  He came for the whole world.  John the Baptist said, "Behold, the lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world."

Don't buy into the non-sense that people will tell you, "Oh well, Christianity is a Western religion."  It's not a Western religion.  It started -- it was inaugurated in the Middle East.  It came to the West.  Jesus is the Messiah for the Jew and for the Gentile.  The Gospel started in Jerusalem.  And then it went through Judea, Samaria and the outer most parts of the earth.  And guess where we live in comparison to where it started.  The outer most parts of the earth.  So we've been sprinkled, our nation has heard the Gospel.  Even Christ, the sacrifice would sprinkle many nations.  So that's the anticipation of the cross.

Now as we get into Chapter 53 and I can see it's probably too dark for most of you, but I bet most of you know this chapter, so it's familiar even as I read it.  Beginning in Verse 1 of Chapter 53, we now have the abandonment of the cross, what Jesus went through.  Listen to what Isaiah writes, "Who has believed our report?  To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?  For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground.  He has no form or calmliness and when we see him there is no beauty that we should desire him.  He is despised and rejected by men.  A man of sorrows acquainted with grief and we hid as it were our faces from him.  He was despised, we did not esteem him.  Surely He has born our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.  But he was wounded for our transgressions.  He was bruised for our inequities.  The chastisement for our peace was upon him and by his stripes we are healed.  All we like sheep have gone astray.  We have turned every one to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the inequity of us all."

Notice how that chapter begins with a question, "Who has believed our report?  To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?"  Now we know that Jesus had disciples, he had followers.  But by enlarge he was rejected by the nation of Israel itself.  The Bible says, he came unto his own, that is his own people and his own did not receive him.

By enlarge people did not believe their report.  And now you're familiar, if you've been with us on Sunday and our Believe: 879 studies.  In John Chapter 12, in Jerusalem Jesus was performing miracles but this is what John writes, "Even though Jesus did many miraculous signs in their presence, they did not believe that it might be fulfilled by the prophet Isaiah who has believed our report and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed."  John quotes this very verse.  That he was rejected.  The Bible says that the cross, the suffering Messiah -- the cross is a stumbling block to the Jews and to the Gentiles out of foolishness.  So yes, there are disciples, there were disciples, and there are a lot of Disciples of Christ here tonight. "But by enlarge, who has received our report?  To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?"  We are still the minority.  Once they talked about a Christian majority in this country, I doubt there ever was one but certainly not now.  We're the minority and the majority has not received our report.  But listen to this, this is the Messiah -- "For He shall grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground.  He has no form or calmliness, and when we see him there is no beauty that we should desire him."

I think that if you were to see Jesus in the flesh 2000 years ago, I don't believe that He would look like the paintings that you have seen in art galleries or in Bibles or on holy cards like I had when I was growing up.  First of all, all of those paintings showed Jesus with a big halo.  I don't think you'd walk down the street and go, "Look, there's the guy with a halo.  He's got to be somebody special, let's follow him."  He looked like anybody else.  I remember in the '70s, it was popular to see Jesus, at least where I grew up.  They painted him like a surfer.  He did not look Jewish.  He didn't look Middle Eastern.  His hair was sort of light brown even with streaks of blonde and it was cut real nicely and layered.  And in some pictures even with a mullet, disgusting.  Trying to make him -- this is what he's like and I remember they made him look so handsome, a chiseled jaw and very Anglo-looking.

"He has no form or calmliness.  There's no beauty in him that would attract you to him."  He looked just like a normal person, fit in with the crowd 2000 years ago.  But here's what I want you to get.  Isaiah describes him as a root that comes out of dry ground.  What does he mean by that?  The ground spiritually, religiously, of the nation of Israel, 2000 years ago was hardened and dry.  It was callused.  It needed to be broken up.  You see, the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees had polluted the waters.  If you were a Sadducee you denied the resurrection, you denied miracles, and you denied the existence of angels.  Anything supernatural was denied by that group, that religious group.  Then there were the Pharisees, they were very legalistic.  So that the common people felt, they didn't relate to these groups.  The ground had become hardened.

Now do you remember, I've told you before when we've discussed it how that in Isaiah the nation of Israel was called Gods' vineyard.  And it was like a vine plant.  In chapter 5, it says, "I will sing to my Well-beloved, a song about his vineyard, my Well-beloved had a vineyard on a very fruitful hill.  And he dug it out and he cleared away the stones and he built a watchtower in it.  And he expected it to bring forth good grapes but it brought forth bad fruit."  The ground had become dry and as a result of that ground becoming so dry, the people were anticipating refreshment.  Did you know history tells us there was Messianic Fervor among the Jewish people 2000 years ago that had mounted up and was growing and it was stronger than ever before?

There was an anticipation that Messiah was going to come because the Romans had occupied the land, the Scribes the Pharisees the Sadducees that sort of hardened the ground.  And the people were parched.  They were thirsty, they wanted refreshment.  And so Jesus came and he came as a root, a fresh tender plant growing out of dry ground.  Back in the Book of Genesis in Chapter 49, there is a prediction.  And it is a prediction of one particular tribe, the Tribe of Judah.  And the prophecy said, "The scepter which is the right to rule or the authority to rule will not depart from Judah, the Tribe of Judah nor a lawgiver from between its feet until Shiloh comes."  Shiloh is a word that means "the one to whom it belongs".  And the rabbinical sources through out the ages believed that that would be a reference to the coming Messiah that Shiloh was the Messiah.

But there was a problem, when the Romans came in and occupied the world -- took over the world and occupied Judea, that Southern Kingdom and Jerusalem, they took away the right of the tribe of Judas to administer judicially in all court cases especially when it came to adjudicating capital crimes, administering capital punishment.  So they had to run everything through the Roman Government.  That's why they wanted to kill Jesus, but they had to make sure the Romans would kill Jesus.  They didn't have the right.  When the Romans came in and took away their right to adjudicate in their own cases, according to the Talmud, one of the ancient writings of the Jews.  The priest in Jerusalem puts a sack cloth on their bodies and ashes on their heads and paraded through the streets of Jerusalem and they cried out, "The scepter has departed from Judah, but Shiloh has not come."

They were bewailing the fact they thought that the Prophecy has not been fulfilled, that God broke his promise.  The scepter has departed.  We don't have the right anymore to adjudicate.  We don't have sovereign authority anymore.  The Romans have come in.  The scepter has departed but Shiloh has not come.  While they were having their little parade in Jerusalem, little did they know that a young man was laying down his carpentry tools up in Nazareth named Yeshua, named Jesus who would within a few years time be on a donkey and parade himself through the Mount of Olives into the City of Jerusalem where some would cry out Hossana.  Yes, the scepter had departed, but Shiloh had come, the one to whom it belongs had come.  And he comes as in dry ground, in hard spiritual atmosphere, this root, this tender shoot out of dry ground.

And that's why the Bible says, the common person heard him gladly they thought, "We love hearing this guy."  This guy is a breath of fresh air.  He's not like the Scribes or the Pharisees or those religious nuts.  He's real, man.  He's like us.  He speaks to the heart.  Shiloh had come, a root out of dry ground.  Isaiah says that he's despised, he's rejected by men, he's a man of sorrows acquainted with grief.  Then he talks about the Atonement that he would make on the cross, perhaps the most famous passage.  Surely he has born our griefs and carried our sorrows.  We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.  You may remember that while Jesus was on the cross, some people seeing him crucified thought this is God's punishment on him for his own misdeeds, his own sins.  They reckon the cross as God's judgment.  He is abandoned by God.  He is smitten by God and afflicted.  But said Isaiah, "But he was wounded for our transgressions."  Literally he was pierced for our transgressions.  He was bruised for our inequities.  The chastisement for our peace was upon him and by his stripes, we are healed.

Now, that little verse that I just read sums up one of the cardinal beliefs that we Christians hold to.  Theologians call it the Vicarious Atonement of Christ or here's another term, the Substitutionary Death of Christ.  We should have died.  We should have paid the penalty for our sins.  We didn't have to because He took them.  He was pierced for us.  He was wounded for us.  He took the punishment instead of us.  He was our substitute, a Vicarious or Substitutionary Atonement.

Paul neatly sums it up in one verse, 2Corinthians 5:21, "God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be the righteousness of God in Him."  In other words, God traded Jesus as if He had committed every sin ever committed.  Or let me put it in another way, God, the Father treated Jesus like you and I deserve to be treated, so that God, the Father could treat you and I like Jesus deserves to be treated.  God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might be the righteousness of God in Him.  Isaiah speaks about the cross doing that.  All we like sheep have gone astray.  We have turned everyone to His own way and the Lord laid on Him the inequity of us all.

Now, I mentioned that I see this as the abandonment of the cross.  We saw the anticipation of the cross.  This is the abandonment of the cross.  The Lord laid on Him the inequity of us all.  I want you to remember the fourth statement that Jesus made when He was hanging on the cross.  The fourth statement was, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?"  Quite a statement.  Throughout that night, Jesus was in the process of being forsaken.

In the upper room, there were 12 disciples.  One of them got up to betray Jesus, and that was Judas.  So, now we have 11, 11 of those men.  Those 11 disciples went with Jesus to the Garden of Gethsemene.  They were all pretty tired, Jesus asked them to pray.  And then Jesus took out of the 11, three, Peter, James and John and drew then aside and asked them to be with Him and to pray with Him.  They fell asleep.  Again, he was abandoned.

Jesus was arrested and taken to the courtyard of Caiaphas.  John followed Him, Peter followed Him, Peter denied Him.  Eventually, all -- the Bible says all of them forsook Him.  So Jesus was in this process of being abandoned by His closest friends, first one and then another and then eventually all of them.  But, all the while, there was still an intimacy with God.  He was never abandoned by God.  He never felt abandoned by God.  In fact, He said the Father is always with me, but they're on the cross.  I believe as God, the Father laid all of the weight of all of the sin of humanity on Jesus.  The feeling for Him was being cut off from the Father's separated.  And so He said, "My God, my God why have You forsaken Me."

Judas was bad enough.  Peter's denial bad enough.  These men, their departure bad enough of why have you forsaken him?  He was experiencing what sin does.  Sin separates us from God.

Next time you're thinking about engaging in something you know is wrong, just think of what your sin caused Jesus.  And as you hear Him say, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?"  You get a graphic picture of the true nature of what sin does and how bad it really is.  It separates us from God.  Even as for that moment, it separated Jesus as the Lord laid on Him the inequity of us all.  "As a sheep, He continues before it shearers the silent, so He opened not His mouth."

In Verse 9, it says, "They made His grave with the wicked, but with the rich at His death because He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth."  In other words, when Jesus died He was assigned a grave with common criminals.  Now, back in those days when the person was crucified by the Roman Government often they were put in the grave with the cross or at least the upper portion of the cross, the patibulum, the cross beam.  But because somebody advocated on Jesus, behalf it was Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.  They took custody of the body and Jesus was buried in a rich man's grave, the grave of Joseph.

So, listen to that prediction again.  They made His grave with the wicked but with the rich at His death.  Again, a Prophecy about what would happen during that horrible time, so detailed it could not have been arranged.  Just not like Joseph and Nicodemus said, "Hey, there's that scripture in Isaiah.  And you know what, we could like work this out and get this thing fulfilled."  Too many details.

Now, I'm going to finish with just a few verses then we'll take the Lord's Supper.  Here's the best part.  Here's the accomplishment of the cross.  We've seen the anticipation of the cross, the abandonment of the cross.  Here's what it accomplished, here's what it achieved.

In Verse 10 of Isaiah 53, "Yet, it pleased the Lord to bruise Him."  It pleased the Lord.  That sounds weird.  That sounds odd because in Hebrew, it actually means an emotionally delightful experience.  It pleased the Father to bruise His Son?  How could God take such delight?  How could Jesus take delight?  And by the way, Jesus did take delight in the cross.  It says, "Who for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross though He despised the shame."  What He did and what the Father did is looked beyond the pain, beyond the momentary separation, beyond the sins squeezing hard upon the blessed Son of God to the after effects.  He saw the results.  It pleased the Lord to bruise Him and put Him to grief when you make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see his sin, He will prolong His days and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hands.

Now, listen to this.  He shall see the labor of His soul and be satisfied by knowledge.  My righteous servant shall justify many for He shall bear their inequities.  The prophet says by knowledge, my righteous servant shall justify many.  Here's the better translation.  By the knowledge of Him, many shall be justified.  In other words, because Jesus atoned for our sins as our atonement are Vicarious Atonement, He enables us to know God personally.  And because we know God personally, it satisfies the soul of the Father as it satisfies our own soul.

So, Jesus was able to look beyond the cross, beyond the pain, beyond the blood, beyond the nails, beyond the spear, beyond the crown of thorns and see you and you and you and you and you and me.  And see that we would respond to that gift of salvation.  And it was as if Jesus said, "Father, this is worth it."  That's the joy that is set before me, I'm willing to endure the cross even though I hate this ignominy is death, the shameful death.  And it even please, gave great delight to the Father because it meant you would be His son or His daughter.  That's the accomplishment of the cross.

Therefore, I will divide Him a portion with the great and will divide the spoil with the strong because He poured out His soul unto death.  He was numbered with the transgressors and He bore the sin of many, and He made intersession for the transgressors.  That's interesting.  This suffering servant, this one who would take our sin, the Son, one who would be the atonement for the world not just Israel, but for the world.  It says He made intercession or prayed for the transgressors.  Did that happen?  Did it happen when Jesus was on the cross?  Yeah, there was Jesus hanging on the cross and He started praying.  He started making intercession for sinners.  He said, "Father, forgive them.  They don't what they're doing."

And do you know that Jesus is still making intercession for us before the thrown of God?  Do you notice what it says in the Book of Hebrews, that He ever lives to make intercession for you and I.  He's talking to God the Father about you.  He's praying for you.  He's holding you up.  He's your advocate, it says in 1 John.  You say, "Why do I need an advocate?  Why do I need a lawyer?"  Really, you have to ask that?  You don't know your record?  You don't know your propensities?  You don't know your sinful thoughts?  You don't know the struggle you have with sin?

Savings the accuser of the Brethren and He doesn't have to make stuff up.  He can just show God or remind God of what he already knows about us that we have fallen natures.  And even though we're redeemed we still struggle.  And Satan can point at you and may go, "There's your Christian, look at him, look at her."  But Jesus can step in and go, "Wait a minute, Father.  You know the deal.  By the power of my shared blood, that one is mine, that one is mine.  They belong to me."  Satan has no jurisdiction and God will throw the devil down on the bench and say, "Case dismissed."  He makes intercession for the transgressors.

So you see, Jesus is not on the attack.  It's not attack Jesus, attack!  But God sent His Son into the world and said, "Save Jesus Save, Serve my Son, Serve."  And He served as well.  He took the punishment. He took the pain.  He took the judgment.  So you and I are free.  He's put a new song on our mouth as David said in Psalm 40, "Even praise unto our God."

So, Jesus said to take these elements and to do it often in remembrance of Him.  Remember Him, remember your suffering servant, remember the one who stood in your place and took your sin and mine and as you take the bread, remember His body broken.  When you take the juice, the fruit of divine, remember the blood that was shed.  Do this in memory of Me and do it as often.  And you speak of the Lord's death Paul said, "Until He comes again."  So, we think back to His First Coming.  We look forward to His Second Coming.