Anticipating Easter Part 5: Satisfied

Preparing Ourselves for Easter

Welcome to Day 5 of this 5-Day Devotional. If you are just joining us you can find Day 1 here, Day 2 here, Day 3 here, and Day 4 here.

Using the New Living Translation we are reading a section a day for five days this week (Monday-Friday).  The section of the day will be in bold italics. Please read the short section as if you have never read it before. Read it several times. Allow it to sink into your mind and heart. Think about how it must have been for Jesus to experience what is recorded. Why was it happening? What does it mean for us today?

I will comment about the section at the end of the entire passage. Finally I’ll suggest a question for you to ponder.

The post will end with a hymn or video appropriate for the section.

One more thing. Let’s approach this week’s readings with prayer. Ask God to open your eyes and your heart. What does he have for you in the reading. Maybe you don’t have much experience with prayer. That’s OK. God made you. He loves you. He wants to show himself to you. He’ll be glad to hear your prayer.

I am hopeful that Easter will have a deeper meaning for us all after we spend time in Isaiah.

Isaiah 52:13-53:12, NLT

The Lord’s Suffering Servant

52:13 See, my servant will prosper; he will be highly exalted. 14 But many were amazed when they saw him. His face was so disfigured he seemed hardly human, and from his appearance, one would scarcely know he was a man. 15 And he will startle many nations.Kings will stand speechless in his presence. For they will see what they had not been told; they will understand what they had not heard about.

53:1 Who has believed our message? To whom has the Lord revealed his powerful arm? 2 My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. 3 He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care.

4 Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! 5 But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. 6 All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.

7 He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth. 8 Unjustly condemned, he was led away. No one cared that he died without descendants, that his life was cut short in midstream. But he was struck down for the rebellion of my people. 9 He had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone. But he was buried like a criminal; he was put in a rich man’s grave.

10 But it was the Lord’s good plan to crush him and cause him grief. Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have many descendants. He will enjoy a long life, and the Lord’s good plan will prosper in his hands. 11 When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins. 12 I will give him the honors of a victorious soldier, because he exposed himself to death. He was counted among the rebels. He bore the sins of many and interceded for rebels.

Comment on Isaiah 53:10-12

In Part 1 Isaiah talked about Jesus being exalted. But by the second sentence we begin to see that people didn’t want to look at. They despised him, turning their backs on him. Indeed, all of the human race has rejected Jesus, assuming that he was being punished by God. Yet WE are the reason he suffered and died. In 53:10 we read that “it was the Lord’s good plan to crush him.” God allowed his own Son to be crushed for us. He died for us rebels so that we could experience his love and become his children.

The grave could not hold Jesus! On the third day he rose from the dead. He is alive now, in Heaven with the Father. According to Isaiah (53:11) he sees us as righteous because of Jesus,

Seven hundred years before Jesus was even born, God gave Isaiah this message to share with the people of Israel. The Son of God would come to earth and be rejected. He’d be beaten and despised. And ultimately he would give his life for those who rejected him. And it all happened as Isaiah prophesied.

Obedient even to the point of death, Jesus took our sins to the cross. His death brought us forgiveness and eternal life! He did for us what we could never do for ourselves.

And we see him now, with the eyes of our hearts, high and lifted up! Jesus, the Savior of the world, is highly exalted. He is in Heaven. All who trust in Jesus will be with him for eternity.

We get a glimpse of this in Revelation 7:9-10:

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. ¹⁰ And they cried out in a loud voice: