Jesus Looking at His Own Cross

A Walk with Isaiah

#isovs Gu Na3i Ir Qa[in

Ysa3ii Tidangivnen

Isaiah 53:3-8

We continue our journey to the cross as we walk with the Prophet Isaiah, a prophet who wrote his book a thousand years before the coming of our Lord Jesus to this earth. Many passages in the Book of Isaiah refer to Jesus. However, today we will take some verses from the famous Chapter 53.

I will take three short songs within this chapter.

The first song: The Parable of the Ugly Man (3-4)

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.

Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.

In the Old Testament, we find many writers who used this poetic form called inverted parallelism.

What do we find here?

The first theme is that he, the Suffering Servant was despised and rejected by men; at the end we see the same theme, as if He is being rejected and afflicted by God. I don’t think God rejected Christ, but the pain of the suffering is so much, that the author says as if even God had left him. Jesus also said on the cross, “My God…why have you forsaken me?”

The second theme in the poem is that He will suffer sorrows and grief; on the reversed side, we read that this suffering servant will carry our suffering and sorrows. It is not just any suffering. No, he is carrying my pain and your pain and my sin and your sin.

The climax of the poem is always in the middle. In this case, we find a mini parable right in the middle. Whenever we see the suffix “as” or “like” it means a picture is coming to describe something.

Let us call this parable the Parable of Ugly Man.

I remember in the Middle East, there were beggars on the street. Some were poor, some had physical handicaps, and some wore very ugly clothes and tried to arouse the emotions of the people, so they could get some help. Sometimes they would be so ugly that you couldn’t even look at them. I remember from my childhood the man who showed his hands that were burned so he could get more money from people. The agony of that man was so enormous that I could not watch him.

How about now, when we see the homeless? Sometimes it is hard to watch them.

Isaiah describes the Suffering Servant as the ugly man from whom we hide our faces. Jesus, the son of God became the “ugly man”.

What does this mean for you? (The subjective way of looking to the cross)

We will continue in English.