Welcome to the Potter's House Salmon Arm podcast. We are a Bible-Believing Church located in
beautiful British Columbia, Canada. We are proudly part of the Christian Fellowship Ministries with
3,000 churches around the world. We are a church focused on world evangelism, discipleship, and
church planting. Here we will share recent sermons from P.H.S.A. Church and other sermons from
throughout our fellowship. I am Pastor David Bigford and I will be your host for this podcast.
I thank you for listening today and we hope these messages are a blessing to you and bring you closer
to God. Hello and welcome back to the Potter's House Salmon Arm podcast. My name is David Bigford.
I'm the pastor here in town and so you're more than welcome to come and visit us. We are hold
service at 1030 on Sundays just above the Bank of Montreal downtown Salmon Arm. So come on out
and see us in person. So the message I have put together today is Seeking the Messiah and this is
going to be looking into Isaiah chapter 52 and part of 52 and part of 53. And so if you're
going to follow along with me today you can go ahead and grab your Bible and get ready as
we get ready to go. So why don't you know a lot of Jewish communities read Isaiah 53 in their
synagogue? So this is a question that came to mind from a young Obadiah when he was just living in
Ethiopia as a boy. He grew up hating Christians for the way they treated him because of his Jewish
religion. After his family fled to Israel he expected to build a new and beautiful life but
he suffered racial discrimination in Israel and the life he had dreamed of failed to materialize.
Eventually Obadiah decided he didn't believe in anything. Now this is something that we can
relate to a lot in any place that we live is that when you come to realize something that you
believed in wasn't exactly as you'd been taught and the young Obadiah had come to the same conclusion
with the life that he had been brought up in. So let's get right ahead to our scripture today
and let's go ahead and read we're gonna read Isaiah 52 verse 13 all the way through Isaiah 53
verse 12. So I apologize for the lengthy scripture but it'll make sense as we get going. So this
portion of scripture has a pre-hitting that says he was pierced for our transgression. Behold my
servant shall act wisely he shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted as many were
astonished at you his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance in his form beyond that
of the children of mankind so shall he sprinkle many nations kings shall shut their mouths and
because of him for that which has not been told or has not been told them they see and that which
they have not heard they understand continuing into chapter 53 who has believed what he has
heard from us and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed for he grew up before him like a
young plant and like a root out of the ground and he had no form or majesty that we should look at
him and no beauty that we should desire him he was despised and rejected by men a man of sorrows
and acquainted with grief 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 our and the and afflicted 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
all we alike sheep have gone astray we have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on
him the iniquity of all of us or of us all he was oppressed and he was afflicted yet he opened not
his mouth like a lamb that was led to slaughter and like a sheep that before its shears is silent
so he opened it not his mouth by oppression and judgment he was taken away and as for his this
generation as for his generation who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living
stricken for the transgressions of my people 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 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 and shall prolong his days the will the Lord shall prosper
in his hand out of the anguish of his soul and 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 therefore I will divide him a portion with many and he shall divide the spoil with the
strong because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors transgressors
yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors let's pray dear Lord I pray
this word would penetrate the heart of man it would help people to come to a realization that
you are Christ you are Lord you are the Messiah and only through you can we have a chance for
salvation through grace in Jesus name we pray amen so in this book of Isaiah we have the announcement
of salvation this is dealing with God's atonement for Israel salvation is announced after the
anticipation is built up in the previous chapters of Isaiah 49 what you know 49 all the way up to
the where we started off in 52 this is the fourth and most famous of what is called the servant
songs the revelation from this section of scripture is that some of the most profound in all of the
Old Testament is a vindication of the servant it is made so clear and so true it lays out and
and defines our understanding of the Messiah so as a reader it promises that God will redeem his
people with a mighty arm found in Isaiah 50 51 and 52 and as you read this it's it's reasonable
to expect that that redemption would come with a great display of overwhelming power but the
careful reader of the previous servant songs should also have picked up some hints that the
servant would not fit the mold of the traditional action hero rather in this passage Isaiah
filled out this the the full fuller picture of what the servant will be he provides more detail
about his work his character and what kind of a nature he will have God's greatest power is
evident in his ability to return love and forgiveness when he's receiving hatred and injustice
and he doesn't come to crush his opposition but rather to save and Isaiah 53 we see the
great atonement chapter being fulfilled in the Old Testament it teaches us that Jesus Christ bore
our sicknesses and sins on that fateful day on Calvary we learned that through this prophecy
Isaiah of Isaiah that these events would not unfold for hundreds of years at time after the
hundreds of years of time until you know Isaiah had passed Isaiah marveled at the message that
the Lord had revealed to him and that he believes the Israelites were declared to to the world as
light of nations it was it was unbelievable to him so amazed with the prophet that the Lord you
know to reel this to him so that when the when the Lord would bear his arm to save humankind and
Isaiah 51 52 and 63 that manifestation of strength was not at all impressive we might say that when
God rolled up his sleeve the arm that he exposed was not the powerful arm of a of a superhero or a
weightlifter but a very ordinary looking human and Jesus Christ nevertheless that arm would
prove to be stronger than any other arm the arm of the Lord appears as a person distinct from the
Lord himself namely our Lord and Savior the servant of the Lord Jesus Christ it's brings me
to my first point as we look at Isaiah's servant songs the chief question that has to be asked is
invariably you know we were going to be thinking about this is we're gonna have to question or
ask did he do the work he was sent to do did the servant do what he came to do there's no
doubt that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ understood and undertook his father's will as
his days on the earth drew to a close he prayed to his father and John 17 for I glorified you on
earth having accomplished the work that you gave me to do Isaiah's servant song provides us with a
a fuller view but almost panorama or panoramic view of what the Messiah was there was no hesitancy
on the part of Isaiah to assure that the reader of the servants successful service he begins
by proclaiming the Messiah in triumph linking this victory to his wise or prudent actions
Jeremiah later watched the collapse of the Jewish society and when he prophesied of the wise reign
of the Messiah he said this in Jeremiah 23 5 through 6 behold the days are coming declares Lord
when I will raise up for David a righteous branch and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and
shall execute justice and righteousness in the land and his day Judah will be saved in Israel will
dwell securely and this is the name by which he will be called the Lord is our righteousness
his greatness would be bound up and ascribed to him Yahweh the Kenu the Lord our righteousness
and I probably slaughtered that you want the spelling you could you can under you could
probably spell Yahweh yourself and the other word is TZ ID KENU and of course that would be
phonetically Hebrew and not so it'd be different there but his wise course of action would bring
salvation to his people the first servant song is found in Isaiah 42 its verses 1 through 9 and
and I won't read the whole thing but it talks about the Lord's chosen servant in verse 1 behold
my servant whom I've uphold my chosen and whom my soul delights I have put my spirit upon him and
he will bring forth justice to the nation and contrast all of the other idol worshipping nations
around God presents his servant as the only hope of the nations this is later cited in Matthew in
the gospel in 12 in Matthew 12 18 through 21 and then we find the second servant song in 49 verses
1 through 3 where it talks about the servant of Lord it's going to restore Israel and save the
nations this song clarifies that the servant is distinct from Israel but is also called Israel so
here we see the servant stands as a representative of the whole nation of Israel and Isaiah 49 3 it
says and he said to me you are my servant Israel in whom I will be glorified so this shows us why
it is correct to believe that the servant is a messianic figure it's part of the Davidic covenant
as a as David's heir represents and embodies the people as a whole it's also shows that he'll have
an expansive rule which is going to include the Gentiles and then also that the later prophets
are going to describe an heir of David and especially the Messiah as a servant so these
all summed up with other books of the God of the of the Bible and it's a very powerful thing to
again fill out this picture of our Lord Jesus and how he is a fulfillment of so much of the Old
Testament scriptures all of the Old Testament scripture in regards to the messianic scriptures
of course so then the third servant song is found in Isaiah 50 4 through 9 this song focuses on the
servant as a rejected prophet now we get a little bit more interesting because we're building up to
the culmination of this of Isaiah 53 but here we see the servant being rejected his willingness to
suffer being you know obvious and apparent confident that God is going to help him and
that he's going to rule finally it's a confirmation that as he suffers it's not because he is guilty
but because others are guilty we are guilty you are guilty I am guilty and he is here to cover
that guilt he is our righteousness this very is the very heart of all of the Gospels because of
his successful ministry as the servant of the Lord he has become our righteousness our holiness
and our redemption and that resonates with first Corinthians 130 the gospel tells us in whom we
can trust and brings God's life-changing power the Messiah's victory comes from this vindication
he declared that he would and and that he would not be disgraced but rather honored in the eyes
of his God so this brings me to the next point which is behold my servant Isaiah and we get back
to our story of Obadiah one day some men approached him and he began to ask him questions about the
Messiah and when they started using the word Yeshua the Hebrew word for Jesus he realized that
they were Christians and became enraged he never expected anyone in Israel to talk about Jesus but
the conversation about the Messiah prompted him to think about what he did believe soon afterward
we're walking down a street in Nazareth Obadiah saw an advertisement that asked why don't you read
Isaiah 53 in the synagogue Isaiah 52 13 through 15 is the first five stanzas each with three verses
which together compromise the largest climactic section of the servant it is set appropriately
at the center of Isaiah's book of consolation a massive two-volume compilation of the ancient
modern rabbignik thought or yeah on this portion of Isaiah by Jewish orthodoxy fails to reach any
firm decision regarding the identity of the servant
Rashi a prolific expositor of the highly regarded 11th century French Jewish or
a high a prolific exhibition exposition or sorry my it's getting late in the day here when recording
this and I'm not even going to cut that out you guys can see me flail a little bit with my words
just for fun so this Jewish scholar consistently maintained that Isaiah's servant was the nation
of Israel a position that the venerable you know that may omids believed was untenable so as one
reads the opinions of these well-meaning scholars it's like a breath of fresh air to study an event
which involved a first century believer named Philip and a foreigner who had been worshiping
in Jerusalem we get this picture in the in the gospel you know in the gospel of acts
Luke tells us that Philip approached the chariot of an Ethiopian eunuch who after the the ancient
fashion was reading aloud the scriptures Philip asked him if he understood what he was reading
in Acts 830 the man responded how can I unless someone explains it to me the text in question
was Isaiah 53 7 through 8 and it's concerned in and is concerning the sufferings of the servant
comparing him to a lamb who had been unjustly slaughtered so the eunuch asked Philip tell me
please who is the prophet speaking about himself or someone else then Philip began with a very
passage of scripture and told him the good news about Jesus so the straightforward account in
Acts should make us aware of how very you know dependent we are upon God's help his revelation
if we're going to interpret his word accurately although the Jewish community has traditionally
thought of this final servant song in messianic terms how wonderful would it be in that day when
the multitudes of Israel accept the scripture's reliable witness through such men such as Luke and
Philip regardless the fact remains that the final song's 15 verses fit none other so well as the
messiah Jesus Christ as he was revealed in the first century Palestine if they do not refer to
Jesus we do not have the remotest idea of whom Isaiah was speaking we recall that in the 40th
chapter Isaiah began his God-given message of comfort assuring the people and their sin had
been paid for and their hard service ended he spoke words of hope the heart of downcast nation
God would pass through the devastated wastelands of their lives restoring the bruised and fallen
even transforming them into a highway for the manifestation of his presence in the world
the sure foundation for every aspect of God's consolation is the well-developed subject of this
final song the unparalleled honor bestowed upon him marks both the beginning and the conclusion
of the fourth song commenting on the 13th verse the a Talmudic midrash says that Isaiah's servant
he shall be exalted above Abraham lifted up above Moses and be higher than the ministering angels
that interpretation reveals a sensitivity to the sequential character of the
of the conjunctions one event event flowing logically on the heels of another raised and
lifted up and highly exalted if we view the prophecy through the lens of history it's not as far
it's not a far reach to see the anticipated glory bursting forth in Jesus resurrection
his ascension and the fact that he was he's being seated at the right at the father's right hand
right at the father's right hand through the ultimate ultimate triumph of calvary God's light
and peace will be manifest to the nations so as we you know have seen having announced the servant's
glorification we are immediately returned to the school of suffering and confronted again with one
who even though he was despised did not hide himself from beatings shame and spitting and the
picture becomes even more graphic his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man has
formed marred beyond human likeness Isaiah uses the word shaman which conveys an image so horrifying
that the people who see him are left speechless this is the reality of our of our Lord Jesus Christ
this brings me to my final point which is finding Jesus and Isaiah I recommend you read Isaiah get
a good study Bible that gives you better correlation between old and new but read Isaiah because it's
such a powerful thing for a Christian to read because of the story of Jesus Christ that we know
Obadiah had wondered as well
he decided to ask several rabbis why the chapter is disregarded in the synagogues
but every person every person he asked every rabbi asked they refused to explain it
since he couldn't get an answer from the rabbis Obadiah decided to ask some Christians about the
chapter they explained the Christian belief that Isaiah 53 is a prophecy of Jesus Christ the Messiah
and before parting they invited Obadiah to a Christian conference so what do they tell
Obadiah what kind of what kind of things was he were they able to explain to him and show
him the relevance and the connectedness of the old and the new testament
I believe they would have talked to him about his exaltation in 52 13 and how that lines up with
what we know in Philippians 2 9 and Hebrews 1 3 or his disfigurement in verse 14 and how that's
depicted in Mark 15 15 his rejection by the people of Israel and Isaiah 53
and how that's depicted in John 12 the burdens that he had to bear in 53 4 and how that's
represented in Matthew 8 as well as in first Peter 2 and of course the sacrifice of our Messiah's
blood in Isaiah 53 5 and how that's talked about and represented in Romans 3 and first Peter
but then we would move on to the fact that he died for sinners which can be looked at
in second Corinthians 5 Hebrews 9 how his death was voluntary in John 10 and John 19 his burial
the justifying nature of his work his death with sinners his sharing his spoils so at the conference
Obadiah reluctantly went forward during an invitation for prayer as a pastor prayed for
him Obadiah sensed the Lord telling him Yeshua is Messiah Yeshua is the Savior
experiencing a deep peace in that moment he placed his faith in Jesus Christ
today Obadiah serves as a pastor he has been persecuted repeatedly even attacked once while
preaching in his church or telling others about the Messiah who changed his life
still he has a strong desire to see more members of the Ethiopian community join God's kingdom
he requests for prayer for protect prayers for protection for more gospel workers and that his
church will clearly demonstrate God's love to Ethiopian Jews who have lost hope so as we come
to a close the story being fulfilled is that we find ourselves with the Jewish Ethiopian
coming to the revelation that is in Isaiah 53 and seeing how how improbably it lines up with the
with the story of Jesus Christ and then we see the most important thing happen we see the Holy
Spirit intervene into his life and we see a radical conversion take place in Obadiah's life
and he's a preacher today and he's believer today because of the power of logos the power of the
word of God the power of these messianic portions of scripture in Isaiah and all the Old Testament
and how they direct us you know straight as an arrow to Jesus our Lord and Savior and we see
the power of the word of God in Isaiah 53 and we see the power of the word of God in Isaiah 53
and we see what the power of the word spread through that Sunday ministry to our life as a
Lord and Savior for站 on that stage for man see what power of the word will occus us to those
who want to cloves차ness you know to all as the nation we must focus on what we are doing
You want to give Jesus your life. You can do that and I'd like you to signify with an uplifted hand
even though I can't see you, God knows your heart. And so if you rose your hand I want you to just
understand that you can be a child of God. And all it takes is for you to repent of your sin and
accept Him as your Lord and Savior. If you don't know what that means, it's very simple. It's just
dear Lord I know that I'm a sinner but I know you sent your son Jesus who died for my sins and rose
from the grave. I repent of my sin and accept Him as my Lord and Savior. It's a pretty simple thing.
Amen. And with that I would love it if you took the next step. The next step is to find a Bible
believing church. If you live in salmon arm come to church. Come and be challenged to live a life
for Christ. Come and you know partner with us as we build a work of God here in salmon arm.
If you need a Bible we'll get you a Bible but you should be reading the word of God. You should be
praying and crying out to your Creator and thanking your Savior. And then you can go ahead and with
that radical change in your life you're gonna you're it's gonna be impossible for you to not tell people
about Jesus Christ. Because if you truly give Him your heart He will radically change you.
And you'll be like Obadiah. It'll be impossible for you not to go and share the message
of the cross. So with that I just want to thank you for listening today.
And I'm gonna let you go and I can't wait for you to come back next time. God bless.