Why Isaiah 53 Is The Most Important Prophecy Every Christian Needs to Hear (No Ads)

Welcome back to the Bible Stories. As you watch to day,

you will notice there are no ads playing on this video.

That is because YouTube has completely demonetized our channel. We

now depend on support from viewers like you to keep

making these videos. If the videos on our channel have

blessed your life, please consider supporting us by scanning the

QR code on your screen or clicking the link in

the description. Buried deep inside the Book of Isaiah, there

is a riddle that nobody in the ancient world could solve.

A servant of God is described in stunning detail. He

was cut off out of the land of the living.

He is dead, his grave is assigned, his body is

laid in the ground, and then just two verses later,

the same text says, he shall see his seed and

prolong his days. A dead man who sees children, A

d dead man who looks back at his own suffering

and is satisfied with what it produced. How do you

solve that? How does someone who has been cut off

from life go on to see the results of what

his death accomplished. For centuries, readers stared at those words

and had no answer, And then one weekend in Jerusalem,

the answer walked out of a tomb. This is Isaiah

chapter fifty three. It is the most detailed prophecy about

the death and resurrection of the Messiah in the Old Testament,

and it was written hundreds of years before Jesus was born.

But to truly understand what this passage says and why

it matters so deeply, you need to see something that

almost everyone misses. The Suffering Servant passage does not start

at Isaiah chapter fifty three, verse one. It starts three

verses earlier, at Isaiah chapter fifty two, verse thirteen. Behold,

my servant shall act wisely. He shall be exalted and

lifted up, and shall be very high. Just as many

were astonished at you. So his appearance was marred beyond

human likeness, and his form beyond that of the children

of men. So shall he sprinkle many nations. Kings shall

shut their mouths because of him. For what had not

been told them they shall see, and what they had

not heard they shall understand. Look at what God says

about this servant in just three verses. First, he will

be exalted and lifted up and made very high. That

is the language of ultimate honor in the Book of Isaiah.

Being lifted up and exalted is used to describe God himself.

This servant will reach the highest place imaginable. But then

his appearance was marred beyond human likeness. His body was

so damaged, so broken, so disfigured, that he barely looked

human any more. Many were astonished at the sight of him,

not astonished in admiration, astonished in horror. And then this

same disfigured servant will affect many nations, Kings, the most

powerful people on earth will shut their mouths because of him,

not because he threatened them, not because he conquered their armies,

but because they will see something they were never told

about and understand something they had never heard before. Exaltation, disfigurement,

global impact, all in three verses, all about one unnamed servant.

This is the doorway into Isaiah chapter fifty three, and

you cannot understand what happens inside unless you walk through

this door first. But there is something even deeper going on.

This servant does not appear out of nowhere in Isaiah

chapter fifty two. He has been appearing throughout the Book

of Isaiah, in a series of four passages that scholars

call the Servant Songs. The first song is in Isaiah

chapter forty two. God introduces his servant. Behold my servant,

whom I uphold, my chosen one, in whom my soul delights.

I have put my spirit upon him. He will bring

justice to the nations. The servant is gentle, he does

not cry out in the streets. He will be a

covenant for the people and a light to the gentiles.

At this point, the servant could be the nation of Israel.

God calls Israel his servant earlier in the book. The

second song is in Isiah chapter forty nine, and here

something changes. In verse three, the servant is called Israel,

but then in verses five and six, God says the

servant's mission is to restore Israel and to be a

light to the nations. Read that again carefully. The servant

is called Israel, but his job is to bring Israel

back to God. That does not make sense. The servant

is being distinguished from the nation even while being connected

to it. The third song is in Isaiah chapter fifty.

Now the servant speaks in his own voice. He describes

being struck and spat upon. He gives his back to

those who beat him, and his cheeks to those who

tear out his beard. He does not hide his face

from shame, and yet he trusts God completely. The servant

is choosing to suffer. This is not random punishment, It

is deliberate surrender. And then the fourth and final song

begins in Isaiah chapter fifty two, verse thirteen, and runs

through the end of chapter fifty three. Everything the first

three songs have been building toward arrives Here. The servant's

identity narrows from a nation down to a single person.

His suffering is revealed to be substitutionary, and his death

is followed by something the text can only describe as

life beyond death. Now we arrive at the heart of

Isaiah chapter fifty three, and it begins with a question

who has believed our report? And to whom has the

arm of the Lord been revealed? Some one is speaking

a group. They say aur and we, and what follows

is a confession. These speakers are admitting that they completely

misjudged the servant. They looked at him and saw nothing

worth admiring. They watched him suffer and assumed God was

punishing him for something he did wrong. And now they

realize they were wrong about everything, for he grew up

before him like a tender 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. He was 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. The Servant did not

arrive the way anyone expected. He did not come from

a palace. He grew up like a small plant, struggling

to survive in dry soil. There was nothing physically impressive

about him, no outward sign of power, no royal appearance.

He was despised, rejected, familiar with pain. People turned their

faces away from him because they did not want to

look at him. This already does not match what most

people expected the Messiah to be. Israel was waiting for

a king who would overthrow their enemies, a warrior, a

political deliverer. What they got instead was a man of sorrows,

and that mismatch between expectation and reality is exactly why

the speakers confess that they misjudged him. But then come

the real shock Surely he has borne our griefs and

carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God,

and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He

was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us

peace was upon him, And by his wounds we are healed.

The speakers are saying, we thought God was punishing him.

We thought his suffering was about him, But it was

about us. He was carrying our grief. He was wounded

because of what we did wrong. The punishment that should

have fallen on us fell on him instead, And through

his wounds we were healed. This is substitution. The servant

takes the place of the guilty. He bears what they

deserve so they can receive what he deserves. And then

comes one of the most carefully structured verses in all

of Scripture. All we, like sheep, have gone astray, We

have turned, and everyone to his own way, and the

Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us. All

look at the shape of this verse. It opens with

all we, and it closes with us all. It begins

with the universal problem. Everyone has wandered, everyone has gone

their own way. No one is exempt, and it ends

with the universal solution. The Lord has taken all of

that wandering and placed it on one person. The first

all is the diagnosis. The last all is the remedy.

The sin of everyone was placed on someone. And between

the diagnosis and the remedy stands the servant, carrying the

full weight of what the entire human race has done.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened

not his mouth. He was led like a lamb to

the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers, is silent,

so he opened not his mouth. The servant does not

fight back, He does not defend himself. He does not

cry out for justice, even though he is innocent. He

goes to his death the way a lamb goes to

the altar, silently, willingly, without resistance. He was taken away

by oppression and judgment, and who considered his fate, for

he was cut off out of the land of the living,

struck down for the transgression of my people. Now pay

close attention to that phrase, for the transgression of my people.

He was struck down. Whether these are the words of

God or the words of Isaiah, my people refers to Israel.

So the servant is struck down for the transgressions of Israel.

If the servant is Israel, then Israel is dying for

the sins of Israel. That does not work as substitution.

Someone else is dying in their place. The servant and

the people he dies for are not the same. Then

comes a prophecy, so specif it reads like a signature.

They made his grave with the wicked, but with the

rich man in his death, because he had done no violence,

nor was any deceit in his mouth. His grave was

assigned with criminals. That was the plan, but he actually

ended up buried with a rich man. These two details

seemed to contradict each other. How can someone be buried

with the wicked and also with the rich? Now turned

to Matthew Chapter twenty seven. Jesus was crucified between two criminals.

He was scheduled for a criminal's burial, but Joseph of Arimathea,

a wealthy man and a follower of Jesus, went to

Pilot and asked for the body. He wrapped it in

clean linen and placed it in his own new tomb

cut from rock, a tomb that had never been used

buried with the wicked, but with the rich at his death,

both details separated by the word but fulfilled in a

single weekend. This was not something any one could have engineered.

A dead man does not choose where he is buried.

But the God who wrote the prophecy also orchestrated the fulfillment.

Now we reach Isaiah chapter fifty three, verse ten. Yet

it pleased 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,

and the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

There is so much in this single verse that most

teaching barely scratches the surface. First, notice who is behind

the servant's death, not just the people who killed him,

the Lord, God himself. It pleased the Lord to crush him.

This does not mean God enjoyed the suffering. It means

God's will, God's purpose, and God's plan were being accomplished

through the servant's death. The cross was not an accident,

It was not plan B. It was what God intended

from the beginning. But now look at the word Isaiah

uses for the servant's death. In Hebrew, the word translated

offering for guilt or offering for sin is asham. It

is a specific term from the Book of Leviticus. The

asham is the guilt offering, also called the trespass offering

described in Leviticus Chapter five and chapter six, and the

guilt offering was different from every other sacrifice in Israel's system.

Here is what made it unique. The guilt offering required restitution.

If someone had wronged God or wronged their neighbor. They

did not just bring an animal to the altar and

receive forgiveness. They had to restore what was stolen or

damaged and then add a fifth of the value on

top of it, twenty percent more than what was taken.

The usham was not just about paying a penalty. It

was about making things more than right. It was about

restoring what was lost and adding to it. When Isaiah

says the servant's soul becomes in a cham, a guilt offering,

he is saying something extraordinary. The servant does not just

cancel a debt. He does not just absorb punishment. He

restores what sin has broken, and he adds to it

through his death. The outcome is not merely that people

return to where they were before Sin entered the picture.

They receive more than what was lost. Grace does not

simply undo the damage. Grace exceeds it. This is why

Paul would later write, where sin increased, grace increased all

the more. The seed of that idea is already planted

right here in Isaiah Cha up to fifty three in

the single Hebrew word asham. And now we arrive at

the riddle we began with. The servant has been killed,

he was cut off from the land of the living.

He was buried, And yet verse ten says he shall

see his offspring and prolong his days. Verse eleven says

he shall see the result of the suffering of his

soul and be satisfied. But how there is only one answer.

The servant comes back to life. Isaiah does not use

the word resurrection, but the logic of the text demands it.

You cannot say someone was cut off from life and

then say he will see results and live long days

unless something happens between those two statements, something that reverses death,

something that brings him out of the grave. The text

creates a problem that it does not explicitly solve. It

builds a paradox and then leaves it hanging in the air.

And for centuries that paradox had no resolution until a

man from Nazareth was crucified on a Friday and walked

out of a tomb on a Sunday, and suddenly the

riddle had its answer. But there is one more detail

about this part of the passage that most people do

not know. In nineteen forty seven, a Bedouin shepherd near

the Dead Sea stumbled into a cave and found ancient

scrolls hidden in clay jars. Among them was the Great

Isaiah Scroll, the oldest complete copy of any book of

the Bible ever discovered. It was dated to roughly one hundred,

twenty five years before Jesus was born. When scholars compared

this ancient scroll to the Hebrew Bible used in synagogues

and churches today, they found that the two texts were

remarkably similar. After more than a thousand years of being

copied by hand, the text had been preserved with extraordinary accuracy.

But in Isaiah chapter fifty three, verse eleven, there was

one small difference. The traditional Hebrew text reads, he shall

see the result of the suffering of his soul and

be satisfied. The verb c has no stated object, he

shall see What the Dead Sea scroll answers that question.

It includes one additional Hebrew word, or light, he shall

see light and be satisfied. Three separate Dead Sea scrolls

manuscripts contain this word. The ancient Greek translation of the

Old Testament, called the Septuagint, also contains it. It was

present in the oldest copies, and at some point during

the centuries of hand copying, the word was lost from

the text that became the standard. Why does this matter

because in Hebrew to see light is an idiom. It

means to be alive. In the Book of Job those

who die before birth are described as never seeing light.

In the Psalms, it says, for with you is the

fountain of life. In your light we see light. So

what the oldest known copy of Isiah actually says is this,

After the servant's soul is made an offering for guilt,

after he is cut off from the land of the living,

after he is buried, he shall see light. He shall

be alive again. The resurrection was written into the text,

and it took a shepherd boy stumbling into a cave

two thousand years later for that word to come back

to the surface. Long before Christianity existed, ancient Jewish interpreters

read this passage and recognized that it was about the Messiah.

In the Babylonian Talmud, in a section called Sanhedrin ninety

eight B, the rabbis discuss the name of the Messiah.

One answer given is the leper, scholar, or the sick one,

and the reason they give is a direct quotation from

Isiah chapter fifty three, verse four. Surely he has borne

our sicknesses and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken,

smitten by God, and afflicted. The Talmud is not a

Christian document, it is the foundational text of rabbinic Judaism,

and in that text the rabbis link Isaiah chapter fifty

three to the Messiah. Even more revealing is what happened

in the Targum, the ancient Aramaic translation of the Prophets

that was read aloud in synagogues. The Targum opens this

passage with a stunning addition. Where the Hebrew text says, behold,

my servant shall act wisely, the Targum adds two words,

behold my servant, the Messiah shall prosper. The targum identifies

the servant as the Messiah. There is no ambiguity. But

then something remarkable happens. The Targum rewrites the rest of

the passage. Every line about suffering is changed so that

the Messiah is no longer the one who suffers. Instead,

the Messiah is the one who causes suffering to the

enemies of Israel. The exaltation stays, the suffering is removed

and reassigned. This tells us something important. The ancient interpreters

could see that this passage was about the Messiah. That

was clear to them. What they could not accept was

that the Messiah would suffer. A suffering Messiah did not

fit their expectations, so they kept the identification and changed

the description. It was not until the eleventh century that

a rabbi named Rashi, the most influential Jewish commentator in history,

introduced the interpretation that the Servant represents the nation of

Israel suffering among the nations. Rashi lived during the First Crusade,

when Jewish communities were being massacred by armies marching toward Jerusalem.

His interpretation may have been shaped by the terrible suffering

his people were enduring. Before Rushi, the Messianic reading was

the dominant view. After Rushi, the national reading became standard

in Judaism. But even centuries after Rushi, Jewish scholars continued

to acknowledge the older tradition. Rabbi Moshe Alshitch, writing in

the sixteenth century, stated plainly, our rabbis with one voice,

accept and affirm the opinion that the prophet is speaking

of the King Messiah. The history of interpretation is more

complex than either side usually admits, but the evidence is clear.

The earliest and most widespread reading of this passage in

Jewish tradition was Messianic. But there is something even more

important than how the ancient interpreters read this passage. It

is how Jesus himself read it. On the night before

he was crucified, Jesus gathered with his disciples for a

final meal. He knew what was coming. He knew he

would be arrested, tried, beaten, and killed, And in that

moment he reached back to Isaiah chapter fifty three and

claimed it as his own. The Gospel of Luke records

his words, for I tell you that this scripture must

be fulfilled in me, and he was numbered with the transgressors.

For what is written about me has its fulfillment. Jesus

quoted Isaiah chapter fifty three, verse twelve, and said it

must be fulfilled in him. He did not leave it

to his followers to connect the dots. After his death,

he told them in advance. He walked into his suffering,

knowing exactly which ancient text he was stepping into. And

this was not the only time. In Mark chapter ten,

verse forty five, Jesus said, for even the son of

Man came not to be served, but to serve, and

to give his life as a ransom for many. The

phrase for many echoes Isiah chapter fifty three, verse twelve.

He bore the sin of many. Jesus understood his mission

through the lens of this passage. After his resurrection, the

connection became even clearer. In the Book of Acts, chapter eight,

an Ethiopian official is traveling home from Jerusalem, sitting in

his chariot, reading from a scroll of Isiah. The passage

he is reading is Isiah chapter fifty three. He comes

to the verse about the lamb led to slaughter and

asks a follower of Jesus named Philip, who is the

prophet talking about himself or some one else, and beginning

from that very passage, Philip told him the good news

about Jesus. This is the only recorded account in the

New Testament of someone being brought to faith through a

specific reading of Isaiah chapter fifty three. And it happened

because the passage was so vivid, so detailed, and so

clearly describing someone that a man reading it for the

first time could not rest until he knew who it

was about. Now, look at what the passage says, this

servant actually achieved by his knowledge. My righteous servant shall

justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. The Servant

justifies many. He does not just suffer, He does not

just die. He makes people righteous. And the way he

does it is by bearing their iniquities. Their guilt is

placed on him, and in exchange, his righteousness is given

to them. This is not a vague promise. This is

the foundation of what the New Testament calls justification by faith,

and it appears here centuries before Paul ever wrote a

letter in the words of an Old Testament prophet. Therefore,

I will divide him a portion with the Great 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. The servant poured out his

soul to death, he was counted as a criminal, he

bore the sin of many, and even while dying, he

made intercession for the very people who were killing him.

Now turn to Luke chapter twenty three, verse thirty four.

As Jesus hung on the cross, he said, Father, forgive them,

for they know not what they do. He was making

intercession for the transgressors, exactly as Isaiah had written. Here

is the final thing you need to see about this passage.

The passage does not begin with suffering, and it does

not end with suffering. It begins with glory. Behold, my

servant shall act wisely. He shall be exalted and lifted up,

and shall be very high. And it ends with glory.

Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great,

and he shall divide the spoil with the strong. The

suffering is real, it is terrible. It fills the center

of the passage with some of the most intense language

in all of scripture born, carried, wounded, crushed, stricken, oppressed, afflicted,

cut off, poured out. Every word adds weight to the cost,

but the suffering is enclosed by glory on both sides.

It starts with exaltation, it ends with victory. The cross

is not the end of the story, it is the middle.

This is the structure of the Gospel itself. Before his death,

Jesus existed in glory. After his resurrection, he was exalted

to the highest place. And between those two glories, he

walked through the valley of suffering and death, carrying the

weight of what the entire human race had done. Isaiah

saw it, he wrote it down. He captured the shape

of the story hundreds of years before it happened. And

that is why this passage is the most important prophecy

every Christian needs to hear, because it does not just

predict that the Messiah would suffer. It explains why. It

reveals what his death accomplished. It shows what was happening

behind the rejection that no one at the time could see.

The people who watched the servants suffer thought God was

punishing him for his own sins. They were wrong. He

was carrying theirs The people who saw him die thought

it was a defeat. In reality, it was the plan

of God, an offering that would restore more than what

sin had ever stolen. The people who buried him thought

the story was over. But this was only the beginning.

He would see light again, he would see his offspring,

He would prolong his days. He would look at the

result of his suffering and be satisfied. Because the servant

who was crushed did not stay crushed. The lamb who

was led to the slaughter was also the one who

would divide the spoil with the strong. And the man

of sorrows, who was despised and rejected by men, was

the same one of whom God said he shall be

exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high. This

is Isaiah chapter fifty three, written centuries before Jesus was born,

confirmed by the oldest scrolls ever discovered, recognized by the

ancient interpreters as Messianic, claimed by Jesus himself on the

night before he died, and fulfilled in every detail by

one man in one city, on one cross during one

passover week end in Jerusalem. If you have never read it,

slowly read it now, and when you do. Do not

start at chapter fifty three. Start where the passage actually

begins Isiah chapter fifty two, verse thirteen, because the introduction

changes everything. Thank you for watching until the end. To

help us keep this channel alive and these stories free

for every one, Please consider supporting us. You can scan

the QR code on your screen or use the donation

links in the description. Whether you give financially or simply

keep us in your prayers. I am deeply grateful for you.

God bless you, and I will see you next time.