In the 17th century, the Jewish historian explained why the Jews no longer read Isaiah 53 in synagogue. It was causing confusion and arguments for hundreds of years. The chapter clearly deals with Messiah. Everything that happens to the Messiah in Chapter 53 happened to Jesus. The Jews, still waiting for Messiah, had to question whether or not Messiah had already come in Jesus. Finally, the rabbis decided that the best way to handle this was to forbid the reading of Chapter 53 in synagogue. Even today, the chapter is not read.

    We, however, have looked at the Chapter 53 for the last three weeks. The rejection, the brutal violence, the killing, is all there. But that isn't all of the chapter. Now we will look at the last three verses.

Isaiah 53:10-12---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.

    Verse 10 indicates it was part of God's plan. Imagine that! God loves us so much that His plan was for His Son to meet a horrible sacrificial death for us. The Messiah made this offering FOR US, willingly, with love! We are God's offspring and Messiah is our brother! And because days have been prolonged, we are bearing witness.

    Verse 11 tells us of the anguish, but He was satisfied because others were coming to Him. He was pleased when Thomas believed and He was pleased when a headstrong high school athlete dropped to his knees by a tree at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes encampment at Dennison University in 1973. He rejoiced for me. An insignificant no one.  

    Verse 12 tells us that Messiah is making intercession for you and for me. He is pleading our case.

    You can see why the Jews do not want that chapter read, but what a price to pay to maintain one's way of life.

    Over 700 years before Jesus was killed, Isaiah wrote about the horror. Messianic Jews are Jewish Christians. They believe in Jesus as Messiah, just as we do. I once had a class that was predominantly attended by Messianic Jews. On a warm, sultry Florida night, the professor asked one of the men why he had left traditional Jewish faith. The man said that in his personal reading, he read Isaiah 53 one day. He had never heard it read. Suddenly, it all became clear to him. 

    So we see in the first nine verses the horrible treatment, and then in the last three verses we see the reason why and the outcome. Remember, it is not Easter Sunday. It is Resurrection!

        Isaiah 53, which we have looked at for the last two weeks, gives the suffering of Christ in detail. Many have said over the last thousand years that it is to bloody of a story. It is bloody and vicious, but it is also true. But to me, the amazing thing is that it was written over 700 years before Jesus lived and died! However, the skeptic will say that the story of Jesus was made up to go along with Isaiah's account and all the Old Testament prophecies concerning His life and death. Such a person, however, is either poorly educated or simply chooses to ignore facts. The Romans were extreme record keepers, and the story of Jesus is written in their histories. Believing then, that the histories and the Scripture are true, let's look again at the first six verses of Isaiah 53. We have looked at these over the last two weeks, so let's revisit them to bring us up to speed.

Isaiah 53:1-6; 1.) Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 2.) For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. 3.) He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 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 wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him. And by His stripes we are healed. 6.) All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, everyone, to his own way. And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

        Wow! Christ went through torment for us! But there is more in the next three verses. 

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.

        Isaiah was the one who told us that Jesus would be born to a virgin, and we marvel at the perfection of that prophecy. Here he also gives another exact prophecy, but it has to do with the manner in which He died. He didn't rant and rage at the unfairness of it all, He didn't curse the people who laughed at Him and spit on Him, He didn't condemn His executioners. He had a job to do, a prophecy to fulfill. How we face our death really tells of the life we led. Jesus was more than brave. And then, he was buried in a rich man's tomb. What kind of false prophecy would that be? Jesus had no control of where He was buried. The 700 year old prophecy was fulfilled on the spur of the moment. It was not faked.

        The Bible is amazing. Those who say it isn't all true and say that those who believe it without question are foolish are, themselves, foolish. The Bible delivers good stories and the Bible delivers painful stories. Simply, the Bible is truth. And next week, this truthful story is wrapped up.

                               

 

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        I know you have heard this before because I have commented on it before. But, in ancient Rome, and in all the lands they conquered, there were forty one major gods. Imagine that! Forty one gods to keep happy. Lucky for the Romans, their gods all possessed very human characteristics, so to keep them happy you merely had to keep yourself happy. And then the Romans had non-Roman gods and goddesses, adding the gods of conquered lands in order to keep the locals satisfied. One such goddesses in Western Europe was Eastre, goddesses of fertility. The Romans already had Venus to fill that position, but you really cannot have to many goddesses of fertility, especially since the worship of such goddesses involves sex. Eastre was unique in that worship for her included rabbits or hares and colored eggs, all signs of fertility. In time, when the Roman Catholic Church came into power, they retained Eastre as a symbol of springtime and the fertility of nature. In doing so, they retained the rabbit/hare connection as well as the colored eggs. By the 1500s the Roman Catholic Church had linked Eastre to the Resurrection of Jesus and began calling Resurrection Day, Easter. And we still have that grand old pagan tradition complete with rabbits/hares and colored eggs. I know people get upset with me when I point these things out, but truth is more important than feelings.

        We have drifted so far away from truth! Is it any wonder that society has followed the great lie? People like color and flash and feelings. And, really, the truth is kind of ugly.

        Isaiah 53 is the prophet Isaiah seeing the future and seeing the time of the death of Messiah. Last week we looked at the first three verses; Isaiah 53:1.) 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.

        Well, no wonder! Who wants to tell their child of a homely man who didn't look like he was important, who was filled with sorrow and grief and who was despised? So much more pleasant to have cuddly, cute little bunnies and brightly colored eggs and chocolate and all those things. And Wal-Mart has all that ready to go, including fake grass!

        The truth can be ugly, but shouldn't we express the truth? In the nine years I worked at the funeral home I was often asked to talk to the children and explain the death of grandma or grandpa or whoever. Why was I asked? Because the parents could not bear to share the truth.

        In Isaiah 53 it does not get any better. In verses 4-6 we have this; 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—everyone—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

        Sure, that is very harsh. Those 'griefs' and 'sorrows' from back in verse three are not His, but ours that He took on Himself. There is more to this Jesus than a baby in a manger, and even more than a Man on a cross. And verse five tells us that all His suffering was because of us.  Verse six says we were just headstrong and stubborn and did wrong things and Jesus took our sin! That means we are the guilty ones. His suffering was because of us. 

        Pretty serious stuff. When I was in junior high my father, a jack of all trades, was hired to get rid of blood stains in a house. Back in the 1930s a wife had beat her sleeping husband to death with a hammer while he slept. The blood stains on the wall had been painted over multiple times, but always showed through after a short while. We wound up removing the plaster and cutting out the wood beneath, and then replacing it all. But people had started making joes about it, saying all kinds of things about the murder house. That is the way people are. We take the things that make us uncomfortable and gloss them over.  The birth was desperation time for Mary and Joseph. The death was horror for Mary and the others. We cannot shy away from the truth. Especially not with the Bible. Colored lights do not make the confusion and fear of Mary and Joseph any less real and colored eggs do not make the death any less horrific. 

        Amazing that Isaiah saw this all clearly just over 700 years before it happened and less that 600 years later, we were celebrating Easter instead of Resurrection.                  

  

     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.

 

You have to look forward to something in February. Such a bleak month. There really isn’t much to anticipate in February, unless you have a birthday or maybe a wedding anniversary. And whoever actually gets married in February? I have been doing this a long time and I have only done one February wedding. No, to get through February, you have to look forward.

And I always looked forward to baseball. Spring Training is going on for the pros and high schools and colleges are letting players throw in the gym. But even Little League coaches are looking at their rosters, trying to imagine who will play where. I know that to many of you, baseball is a slow moving game, but I love it. I have played it, coached it (“Somebody tell me why William is picking daises out in right field!” “Uh, Coach, it’s better than last week when he was picking his nose.”) and umpired it. And I have watched it. Where I come from, baseball is big. Most churches had softball teams and they all played in leagues. Each denomination had league. If you were an independent church, you played in the league that most closely fit your own beliefs.

Eleven years. I played church softball for eleven years. It was huge fun. My son and I got to play together, which meant a lot more to me than it did him. If you swore you would be kicked out of the game. If you swore in the next game, or anytime the rest of the season, you were kicked out for the remainder of the year. (Except for the Catholic leagues. Swearing was just a part of it.) However, if you ran over the catcher to score, you would be congratulated. You played all out. And our league had a rule that each team was expected to enforce; Each player had to attend at least one service a week to play.

 First year at an elderly church. One of our men had played minor league ball until WWII had changed things. He had coached since 1947. Always limped from a German bullet that had torn through his leg, but Lou was awesome. He was a baseball encyclopedia. He and I went to a lot of games over many years. Didn’t matter if it was Little League or the majors, you didn’t talk to Lou about anything except what was happening on the field. Between innings you could talk about anything, so long as it was baseball related. He was an intense old guy. But that first year at the new church, he was no longer going to coach. Finally hanging it up. And in February, he was pretty bummed.

“Hey, Lou, how about we have a church softball team this year? You can coach it and make it just as you want it!” I had been called to the church the previous August and I had learned that I could joke around a little bit with Lou. But Lou didn’t find this amusing. “Pastor, we have no Youth. You are the youngest man in the church, then David (three years older than me) and then everyone else is at least over 60. How can we ever have a team?” “I don’t know, Lou. Let’s just announce it and see what happens.”

 Turned out that the older folks who were past their playing years had sons and sons-in-law and grand kids and we had a blast that first year. We went 2-20. We won one game 25-23 and we lost one game 64-2. We weren’t very big on playing defense and we really weren’t very good hitters. Lou tried his best coaching techniques, but we were one sad team. Sometimes he would just stand and stare and sometimes he would have to sit down because he was laughing so hard. At the end of the season we gave him a plaque inscribed, We Can’t Win and You can’t Make Us! He had a room in his house for trophies and all sorts of memorabilia from his coaching days, but that plaque went into the living room. He told me it was the most fun he ever had coaching.

It took us a while, but we improved every year. Eventually, I got to present to him the league championship trophy. By this time he really was an old man. He broke down and wept.

            Our last game together. We didn’t know he would pass the coming winter. We sat in the empty dugout watching the team warm up. “You know, Pastor, we done good.” “No, Lou. You done good. I am just along for the ride.” “I don’t just mean the team. Look out there. All those people come to church all the time. Not just so they can play ball, either. The team might have started it, but this church has grown. No, Pastor, we done good.”

            You have special people in your life. I had Lou and I had Dennis. Dennis loved to sing in the choir, but Dennis was blind, so I worked with him on the music every week. When he could still see I would write the music out for him by hand in very large print. We became close. And Dennis was really good. People would come just so they could hear him sing. It was his service to the Lord. Dennis died on Tuesday and Lou died the next day. It was January. Dennis had sung for Christmas and Lou was starting to get ready for coming season. Appropriately, the weather was awful. It matched my mood. I walked up to the casket at the visitation for Dennis and looked at my friend. Rolled up in his hand was one of the songs I had enlarged by hand for him. My mood began to change. He had touched so many hearts with his song, and now he touched mine. When I went to Lou’s visitation that evening, his wife walked with me to the casket. This wonderful man who had molded so many young lives over so many decades, had a plaque on his chest. We Can’t Win and You can’t Make Us! “And, he wanted you to have this.” At the end of each season we all would sign a ball and give it to Lou. The ball his wife handed me was the ball from the first season. 2-20. “I think he didn’t want to have to explain that one in heaven.” And then the dear lady hugged me.

            You have special people in your life. The day after the funerals, one of our ladies, Mari, came into my office. She sat down and pulled out her knitting. “Mari, is there something I can do for you?” “Nope. Just don’t want you to be alone.” And she quietly began to knit.

            A white man, a black man and an Asian lady. Each one serving the Lord in their own way. I have been richly blessed by having His servants around me. How have you blessed the people around you?  

        Is anyone listening to me?

        When you are talking to someone, are they really listening or are they hearing what they think you are saying?

        For instance, I went into the hospital in July of 2021 with an infection I didn't know I had. The infection was causing external issues as well as internal. I was really sick. One of the doctors told me later that they thought I might die. One day in the hospital I told a doctor that my back had been hurting for a while in a different way than before. I have had chronic back pain since 1978, but this pain was different. The doctor told me the infection was likely causing the pain. I told him again that it was different than before. This young, thirty something doctor, put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Well, as we get older, there are things we could shrug off when we were younger." And I got it. Young doctor who knows nothing about aging, assuring this old coot that he is fine. You just have to endure it.

        Next visit is with my nurse practitioner. Very nice young lady (maybe 40?), seems knowledgeable, very professional. I tell her about the back problem. "Well, Mr. Wade, as we get older, the things we could handle when we were younger become more pronounced.

        So, the back gets worse. I can't walk right. I hobble, I can't make visits, I miss some funerals. The walk from the office to the restrooms is agonizing. I am so unsteady that Brian Chamberlain is on the edge of his seat as lay leader in case I should start falling. Life is miserable. And when I tell a heath professional it is chalked up to aging.

        Then on December 29 of 2022, a pain hits me that I have never experienced before. I am at the church, and I yell so loud I think the neighbors will come running. Lights are exploding and there are strange sounds and I can't take a deep breath. I manage to get my phone and call 911. To Wabash ER, then to Huntington ER, then to Parview, Regional in Ft. Wayne. Even with pain injections I am trembling. Steve and Cindy Runkel come in to see me and I am feeling better, at least until I move. I get an MRI and am admitted. Being a holiday weekend, there is no one to read the MRI, but the hospitalist puts me on steroids and in a couple of days I am feeling better. 

        I am discharged and in a week I get in to see a specialist. She examines the MRI (and the CAT scan and X-ray) and she shows me the arthritis spurs on the outside of my spine and on the inside of my spine. The spurs on the outside have been causing the years of chronic pain and the spurs on the inside have irritated the spinal cord and have caused it to gradually swell until the pain is overwhelming. The specialist gives me a stern look and says, "Mr. Wade, this did not happen overnight. Why didn't you ever tell your doctor?"

        ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? I am not just an old guy who has nothing better to do than gripe!

        Many of you have been through the same thing. Trying to explain what is going on and the person you are talking to is thinking right past you and you wonder (or perhaps you yell) ARE YOU LSTENING TO ME?

        In Isaiah 30, the Lord, speaking through Moses, is talking to the people about their rebellious spirit. In verse 21 He speaks to the leading of the Lord. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, "This is the way, walk in it," when you turn to the right, or turn to the left. We have a choice; listen to the Lord, or don't listen to the Lord. He has set a path before us, He shows us the way, but we make the decision which path to follow. 

        We do that, don't we? Just like that doctor or our children or our spouse or whoever, we don't listen to the Lord. 

        ARE YOU LISTENING? I'll have to get back to You, Lord.

        Be aware of that still, small voice in the wilderness.

        

 

    Allow me to get somewhat personal. I would greatly appreciate it if you folks would make this situation a matter of prayer.

    My son, Adam, and his wife, Kim, are getting a divorce. Most of you know that neither wanted children to begin with. The pregnancy was completely unplanned. So, when they found out that Kim was pregnant, they planned on putting the baby up for adoption. However, when Kim got that first ultrasound, it became real. Studies have shown that when an expectant mother has that ultrasound, 80% of the women who were planning to abort or adopt out will decide they want to keep the baby. Kim was not different, and I could not blame her. Adam, however, was furious. He felt like Kim had betrayed him. He called me and was shocked that I took Kim's side on the issue. In the end, we had words, and our relationship is strained. Adam came around, to a point, and seemed to be accepting the new situation. However, it must not have been enough for Kim, and she is the one who filed.

    They saw the lawyer and Adam called me to go over what the lawyer had told them. I asked him about how visitation was going to be set up, and my son told me he was not going to seek visitation rights. Later, Marsha called me and told me I needed to retire and come home and sit them down and talk sense into them and then be there for when I am needed to talk more sense into them. She also told me that if I had retired two years ago, then there would not be a problem now. Way too much confidence in my abilities. 

    Here is where many of you will disagree with me. If they divorce, Adam will still support the baby and Kim, as well. He would never shirk his responsibilities, but he would still pass on visitation. At some point, Kim will probably remarry. Kiri (my granddaughter) will naturally call him Daddy. Adam will be fine with that, and so will I. Every little girl needs a Daddy. If he has parents, they will become her grandparents. Every little girl needs grandparent. She already has Kim's parents, and she has Adam's parents. However, we are intermittent. Marsha, I assume, will fight to see her, but I feel it will be more of a confusion to Kiri. I told Marsha the other day that I am going to put Kiri's needs above mine. I will continue to put money away toward her education (for as long as I can) but I will not fight to see her once or twice a year.

    I have said for years that people do not disappoint me. People are people and are very prone to making mistakes. However, I am disappointed in Adam and Kim. Adam, because he really didn't work at it enough. Kim, because she didn't give it enough time. But I am grateful to both of them that abortion never came into the conversation. 

    I was thrilled to be a grandpa. I still am and will be until I die. But it is, of course, different now. I have prayed about this and have made the decision. So, you will not be able to talk to me about visitation. In time, the divide between Adam and I will go away. Marsha, well, that is another story. And for me, I put Kiri in God's hands and that will be enough.