In a water cooled, internal combustion engine, it is possible to have the oil mix with the water and coolant. The water and coolant then will get extremely hot and will burn off producing steam. Meanwhile, the oil will become diluted and thus be far less able to perform its function and will also cause rust to form in the engine and cause the engine to overheat. Now, you may read this and wonder what on earth I am rambling on about. However, this is what I think of when I hear the phrase, ‘watered down.’ That phrase was common among cooks as they ‘watered down’ the soup and barmen as they ‘watered down’ drinks. There it means to make something stretch at the expense of taste and potency. But to me, it has always meant a slow and steady destruction.

    When someone says that the Word of God is being watered down, most would likely think that it is being made more gentle and even lovely. I see ‘watering down’ the Scripture as a way of destroying its power. Even when it ‘helps’ to makes sense or eases a harshness.

    The Book of Isaiah is a good example of this thinking. For hundreds and hundreds of years it was considered a book of prophecy written by Isaiah. The ancient Jewish scholars, some of whom were contemporaries to Isaiah, all considered it prophecy written by Isaiah. Christians also considered it to be prophecy written by Isaiah and held to that for almost 2,000 years. But then it began to rankle one Jewish scholar in the later twentieth century. Some of it seemed pretty harsh and some of it, if read a certain way, indicated that someone who acted exactly like Jesus was going to be Messiah. This Jewish scholar suggested that there were two Isaiahs, who lived a couple of hundreds of years apart. Their writing styles differed and the second Isaiah was recording events historically that were once thought to be prophetic. When so called Christian theologians locked onto this in the last quarter of the twentieth century, they made three Isaiah and essentially diluted the prophetic word. They found three different styles of writing, so there had to be three Isaiahs. Now, Isaiah wrote over an extended period. He started out as a young man and lived to see peace and war and natural disasters and along the way became elderly. Personally, I have been writing regularly for forty years. If you were to go back to the beginning and read what I wrote, it would be decidedly different than now. To make it 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd Isaiah weakens it all.

    Which is the point to ‘watering down’ the Word.

    Originally, it was a very real effort to ‘water down’ Isaiah 53, because that really looks like Jesus. Of course, it is Jesus. The prophet was seeing 700 into the future. But if this is really Jesus and He is really crucified, then He is the Messiah, and Judaism cannot allow that. After all, the Ethiopian eunuch was reading Isaiah 53 when Philip used that passage to lead him to the Lord. Isaiah needed to be ‘watered down.’ This is Lent, so is a good time to look into what the prophet Isaiah said of before the ‘scholars’ got to it. We will look at this passage for a few weeks.

    Isaiah 53:1-3: 1 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.

    In verse one the prophet asks who has believed in what he, Isaiah, has said. The answer is very few of the Jews really believed. They knew what the prophecies said, but to embrace them meant giving up their way of life. We can shake our heads at the foolishness of the Jews, but do we, as Christians, really embrace the Way?

    In verse two we see the Son of God growing up before the Father like a plant growing out of dry ground. Imagine. God not being able to help His Son. Not only that, but Jesus was nothing special to look at. Remember, there were no paintings or drawings from those day. The Jews didn’t do that, taking the commandment of not making any images to also mean drawings. All the pictures we see of a pleasant looking Jesus are false. We only have descriptions, and this description is not very good. He didn’t look like a king and He didn’t have amazing good looks. He was a carpenter, and probably looked the part.

    In verse three Isaiah is looking forward and he talks of Jesus being despised and rejected. People didn’t accept Him. Some sought to kill Him. And when the time came, most called to crucify Him. Why the sorrow and grief? He knew these people, HIS people, were rejecting the only way to salvation. I imagine it crossed His mind to wave His hand and save them all, but that was not part of the plan. No one wanted to reach out to Him. Even His own disciples were looking at the coming kingdom as though it were an earthly kingdom that they would rule. He was despised, and even His friends did not help him.

    It is not about colored eggs and a bunny and new clothes and all of those things. It is not about that fine ham dinner on Easter day. (Have you ever wondered about us celebrating a Jewish man with a ham dinner?) It IS about a man, a perfect man, despised and rejected, filled with sorrow and anguish. It is about what He did for us.

    Please, don’t ‘water down’ the message with all the other stuff.