How Isaiah Foretold Christ’s Sacrifice | A Bible Study on Isaiah 52–53

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a

couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in

practical ways. Hey, everybody, welcome to the Bible Guys, and

thank you for doing And if this is your first time,

my name is Chris Zarbaugh and this is Jeff Forrester.

Wow. What is your full name? Michael, Jeffrey Michael Forrester.

That's right.

And Christopher.

John how did you know that? I don't know. It

just felt right for real?

Yeah, or did you see my lips about to say, Jay.

No, I didn't see it. You were like, so, No,

I didn't know. It just Christopher Johnson's great son of

a gun.

Well you know what, Jeff, that is the thing about me.

I just feel right.

Yeah, well something like that, yes, so something so.

Yes, Christopher John Zarba, that's it. So h. And by

the way, I was supposed to be Jonathan. You know that.

No, I didn't up until the second I was well,

not the second, but the hour I was born. I

was born at twelve fifty eight am. And uh.

And so we led into Palm Sunday.

And my mom grew up Catholic, so she named me

after Saint Christopher because it was Palm Sunday.

Oh okay, so that's what that's the story there.

Okay. So rather than the disciple Jesus loved you would

have been impossible to deal with if your name was John.

Yeah, right right, that's yeah, that's really funny.

But yeah.

But but instead, you know, Christopher means christ like. Is

it like christ Like?

No?

That's yeah, christ like, that's what it means. Yeah.

The fact that you questioned the meaning, if you will.

Well, I get confused sometimes because my son is named

Stephen and that means crown and for some reason I

get the too confused.

I see, but his name's crowned. And then Sarah's name

means princess.

So Jeffrey means God's peace, oh, old old English. And

then Michael means God's warrior. Oh so I'm a little conflicted.

Yeah, no peace by the warrior? Well, I mean warrior.

Does warriors bring peace? That's right, it's true. So hey, well,

walk softly and carry a big stick, Keddy Roosevelt. There

you go.

So enough about that, let's move right into our segment.

This is a would you rather segment? Okay, And so

I like these because we have to choose between two

terrible options. Number one, would you rather be an Olympic athlete,

which would that'd be nice? Or a world famous scientist?

Do you know that I don't like the existence of

either one of those people.

You don't like scientists or athletes?

No, no, no, I like them for the benefit of

the world.

I don't like their existence.

You said, no, no, no.

Let me let me clarify, Like an athlete is only

phenomenal because he spends or she spends every waking moment

on the one thing.

Right, Look, if it's a gymnast.

The power of focus.

Yes, it is, just like.

It was like, the existence of an athlete is actually

like it's sort of okay.

I hate it.

But we talked about this before. I think you had

another one one time, and it was about that would

you rather be great at one thing or good at

lots of things? And you said you'd rather be good

at lots of things?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and a scientist, think about it.

At least a scientists, though, would have a little bit

of variety, right, because science is pretty wide topic.

I don't know what what what if you were like

a Bunyan scientist, a world famous Bunyan scientist. You know

it doesn't say it doesn't say what kind of world

famous science.

Well, and to be honest, most scientists really specialize in

sort of one thing.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

I mean you don't make flower by accident.

Right?

Oh wait, no you do.

Okay, So which would you rather be? Uh? I think

you asked me scientist, scientist? Yeah, yeah, I think it'd

be the athlete for me, to be honest.

With you, Yeah, I only want scientists because of variety.

I mean, I mean athletes are awesome. Don't get me wrong,

you know what I mean. Scientists are nerds.

Okay. Would you rather live in an escape room or

a game of Clue?

Oh?

Wow?

An escape room or a game of Yeah, I live

in an escape room or live in the game of Clue.

I'm assuming they're meaning the mansion, so I would change

clue me.

Too, That's what I was just gonna say. I would

rather live in the mansion.

And by the way, I love escape room solely for

the secret passages in the mansion.

I love escape rooms, though I do, I do like them,

and I'm differ for them.

All right.

Number three? Would you rather be able to see only

in the dark or only see in black and white.

So every time the sun is out, you can't see

and you.

See it kind of the same. We're not really seeing

much color in the dark.

At least you can see at nighttime after the sun

goes down.

Yeah, but in black and white you can see everything

all the time.

But the other option is indicates that fifty percent of

your life you're blind.

Right, that's what I'm saying. I think I'd rather only

see in black and white because the end of the

day daylight, you couldn't see at all.

Right, right, which, by the way, is the time that

you want to see.

Yes, big fan, big fan, see end of the daylight?

Can you imagine only seeing when people sleep?

Yes?

Right, there's nothing to do. He I can see everybody.

Let's do something. Yeah, that's so.

Would you rather swim with sharks or walk through a

lion's den?

I'm assuming this is professional like swimming sharks meaning with safety.

I don't know. Are you walking through a lions down

with safety?

It depends. Yeah. Do you ever see like the line of.

The Gods doesn't say yeah, she doesn't give us the

she doesn't give us safety. She just says right, yeah,

it's all exposure here.

Okay, if it's danger then I think I would rather

face a shark. Oh, I don't know.

Depends on what kind of sharks.

I guess, so, yeah, but but I mean, lions are

going to get you, like wild lions.

They're going to get you sometimes. Yeah, I think I

would choose sharks.

Yeah, I think I would too.

Yeah. So my grandfather was friends with Jacqusto Jacques Cousto,

that's right, and they discovered a cave called the Cave

of Sleeping Sharks and yeah, and it's in don't sleep. Well,

I know that's what they thought, but it turns out

there's this current that makes it just right, and they'll

line up along the edges of the of the cave

and just stay in kind of a NonStop state right there,

and the current blows all the water, the water through

their gills in the way that works, So they think

they sleep there. So Jack Cousto found out My grandfather

was with him, and they were grabbing great big sharks

and just smacking them, grabbing by tell because they were sleeping,

and they grab them by a tail and then they

take off and pull them through. So my grandfather grabs one,

and it was a bull shark and it turned on

him and he was one of the guys that was

helping develop those underwater cameras, and he smashed the camera

in the shark's mouth and the teeth all come up

to the top and the bottom of the photo. Yeah,

it's a pretty crazy picture. Yeah yeah, wow. So anyways, yeah, yeah,

with sharks all the time.

Well, my mom's cousin is boom boom man seeing these

brother in law. Wow, So you know that makes me

a boxer.

Walking through Lionstone.

Yeah.

Yeah, Well, I'm just trying to live up to your

claim of you know, your gran.

I was the same thing. I was just saying that

my grandfather used to swim with sharks all the time.

Yeah. I know, But I'm overwhelmed with your connection to

Jacques I.

Okay, so what's the last one? Now? Am I reading

the last one?

Sure? Go ahead?

Would you rather have a vivid imagination or a photographic.

Memory, implying that what you trade one for the other? Yes,

it's oh, I would rather This is hard, actually, but

I would rather have a vivid imagination.

Really, yes, I would choose photographic memory. Yeah, vivid imagination

could lead you to insanity.

I think I have a vivid imagination case in point. Okay,

that was too easy, Chris, I'm just walking around.

That was great.

Hey, listen, I I think that life would be horrible

without a vivid imagination.

Yeah, I really do.

I love vivid imagination.

By the way, you would hate that because you read

books all the time, and books are only great with

vivid imaginations. Sure, so you're going to trade that for

on page eighty five, I just know exactly what it's Yeah, yeah,

I want to sacrifice life for facts.

Okay, yeah, so the facts of life, the facts of

life for us. I knew it. I knew it. Hey,

that should be the next that should be the next

theme song.

You take the good, you Take the Bad. I don't

even know that one. The facts are life.

It was crazy, the facts. Okay, Hey, we should move on.

We went long on that segment.

Yep, we did. We went a minute and a half over,

but we should have.

We're going to be reading, uh and not for a

long time. In this next chunk Isaiah chapter fifty three,

there it is. There's a transition, and this passage is

the Lord's suffering servant, right yep, And you know what

I think. I might go back to Isaiah fifty two

thirteen and read through, because that's where it starts. It says, see,

my servant will prosper. He will be highly exulted. 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. 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. Who

has believed our message? To whom has the Lord revealed

his powerful arm? My servant grew up in the Lord's

presence like a tender green shoot, like a root and

dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance,

nothing to attract us to him. 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. Yet it was

our weakness 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. 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 here, 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. He was oppressed and treated harshly, Yet

he never said a word. He was led like a

lamb to the slaughter, and as the sheep is silent

before the shears, he did not open his mouth. 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.

He had done no wrong, and he had never deceived anyone.

But he was buried like a criminal who was put

in a rich man's grave. But it was a lord's

good plan to crush him and cause him grief. For

when his life is made as an offering for sin,

he will have made many descendants. He will enjoy a

long life, and the Lord's good plan will prosper in

his hands. When he sees all that is accomplished by

his anguish, he will be satisfied. And because of experience,

my righteous servant will make it possible for many to

be counted righteous, or he will bear all their sins.

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. Well, I wonder who that's talking about.

Yeah, yeah, this is as you know, we just got

through Easter, yes, and so on Palm Sunday, we did

a journey of the passion of the Christ and we

read much of this passage here.

And you know.

What is what is not referenced a lot I think

in Sermons is where he says that he's barely recognizable

as a man, right it says it says his face

was so disfigured that he hardly seemed human. From his appearance,

one would scarcely know he was a man. So it

just goes to show you that when the Lord was

you know, when Jesus broke the bread and said, this

is my body which is given for you, and the

symbolism of breaking to pieces. You know, that's it's just

part of the imagery of like when you try to imagine,

you know, listen, when you've seen the Passion of the

Christ the movie remember when that came on the scene

two was a four something like that. It really was

the closest movie. The movie that's closest probably represented the

brutality for us.

Yeah, and and.

It was so and even then it wasn't No, even then.

It probably fell short, right, yea by a lot.

Well, you can still tell that Jim Cavizel was a man, right, right,

And this says that you could not even tell he

was a man.

Yeah, yeah, barely recognizable. And so yeah, it's just a

sobering thought. And it's a sobering scripture. And then and

then the scripture talks about normally the brutality of it,

but then places it, you know, the guilt. It's for us, right,

because of us and for us right, yeah, so it's

it's it's he was eat all this because of my sin,

so in other words, my fault and uh and and

that's one of the most sobering things ever, right, And

there's so many songs and so many uh, you know,

writings and so many different sermons, famous sermons that that

point back to that idea that it was because of

my sin they put Jesus on the cross. And it's

not designed to make us feel guilty other than repenting

for our sins. Right, So like, the guilt isn't supposed

to be like shame for the rest of our lives

because of our character. It's more like we have shame

for our sin, and then that guilt propels us to repentance.

And then when we repent, you know, we we shouldn't

live underneath that guilt, I don't think any longer. But

we should always carry with us the reminder that it's

that that Jesus died for us and because of us.

But without repentance, right, without forgiveness of sins, we should

be guilty of our sin. Right, and God is like

frustrated that humanity is not guilty, right, acknowledging the fact

that they're sinners. But it's because of the repentance turning

from our way and turning to Christ and accepting his

sacrifice and forgiveness for us sins that then lets us

walk out of the guilt and out of the shame

because He bore it for us, right, he took it.

That's what this passion, that he took it for us,

that's right. And then that's what lets us walk past

that get out of that thing. Otherwise that the guilt

for sin is. It should be a natural, normal thing.

It's not. Humanity just goes on and does whatever they

want to do, right, right, But God is horrified by

that fact, and we should feel guilty for us in

and that's what killed Jesus. But Jesus did it willingly.

And then you know it hints that here, this is

the one of the hints at the resurrection, because it

says he had done world wrong. He was struck down

for the rebellion of my people. He was condemned and

led away. No one cared that he died without descendants.

So there's his death. But then you get down to

verse ten. But it was the Lord's good plan to

crush him and cause him grief. Yet when his life

is made is 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. There's the resurrection. Yeah, right,

So there's the death on the A few verses earlier.

Then it begins to hint at a resurrection. And the

people reading this could not have totally understood this, right,

they couldn't understand it, and that's the nature of prophecy.

But when we look back we can see, Wow, there's

so many accuracies. So I've got the idea that his

beatings were so bad. He didn't look like a human.

You've got the fact that he grew up in the

Lord's presence, but there was nothing beautiful or majestic about

his appearance. Nothing. He wasn't a handsome man. He was

just man, and he was despised. We didn't care all

those those things. He was pierced for our rebellion. There's

the nails, right, he was crushed for our sins. He

was beaten. That's the cat of nine Tales, this mention.

He was whipped so we could be healed. And then

we've all gone our own way. We've done our own thing.

The Lord laid on him the sins of us all.

That's what happens when when the sun goes dark and

the veil splits, right, that's what's happening there.

It's also what happens when God turns his back, yes,

and Jesus says, why have you forsaken me? Jesus literally

and the New Testament says he became our sin.

Yeah, it says he was led like a lamb to

the slaughter, and as a sheep is silent before the shears.

He didn't open his mouth. It's interesting before Herod, he

didn't even answer Herod's questions right at all. When he

was on the when he was getting ready to go

to the cross, he had told the disciples, listen, nobody

takes my life from me. I'm going to lay it

down freely. And so he didn't fight, He wasn't screaming,

he wasn't casting judgments on the governor, on the soldiers,

as matter of fact, that his father forgive them. Right.

It was this gentleness there where he didn't open his

mouth in a negative way. It was unjustly condemned. Remember

the faults trials and the fake accusations, and they brought

in people to write and then.

Even the proceedings.

It was illegal to rush it the way that they did,

but they wanted to do it before the Sabbath, right,

so even the proceedings were illegal because of the time constraints.

So this is what's so amazing for me. There's a

couple things I wanted to highlight. One, this is written

seven hundred years before it actually happened. And while you

could say Jesus could orchestrate a few of his things,

he couldn't orchestrate that he wasn't handsome. He couldn't orchestrate

that he would be crucified necessarily, or that he would

be whipped to the point where you couldn't tell he

was human. He couldn't have orchestrated that he could have orchestrated.

You know, he could have decided he wasn't going to

say anything to anybody. He could have decided he wasn't

going to have any descendants. Those two things he could

have done. But there's so many of these things that

he could not have orchestrated. And this is one of

the things I love about the Bible is some prophecies

we don't recognize until afterwards, but when you see them,

you realize he didn't orchestrate that he was born in Bethlehem,

like we talked about, right, he couldn't orchestrate so many

of the prophecies about the Messiah, and yet he fulfilled

every single prophecy about the Messiah.

Yeah, so in the past, I've done this and you've

heard this. This was made famous by another mathematician. But

they had taken out of the hundreds of prophecies that

Jesus fulfilled, it took just twelve of.

Them, right, you remember that it took just twelve of them.

Now think about that, just just that alone, twelve of

the how many prophecies were there?

Some people say four hundred.

Three, yeah and something.

Yeah, so so out of just twelve of them. And

they said, the odds that.

One day they isolated out twelve that could not have

been or randomly orchestrated, right, And they said or intentionally orchestrated.

And they said, the odds of Jesus fulfilling those just

those twelve is equivalent mathematically. So it's not this isn't

this isn't this is this is proven math that this

is calculated ods. They said it'd be equivalent to filling

the entire state of Texas one feet deep full of

They said, silver dollars. Silver dollars, Yeah, so one foot deep.

You know, you know, how how many silver dollars would

it take to fill this room?

Yeah? Yeah, right, get one foot deep.

Yeah, one foot deep. I mean, come on, I mean

you almost couldn't count them.

Right, But you fill the state of Texas, Texas to

drive from where I lived to El Paso, so I

lived on the eastern border, that's eighteen hours. Yeah, to

drive from the top all the way down to the

bottom of the boot is eighteen hours. That's how big

it is. It's almost fathom about how huge.

And I probably couldn't count the number of silver dollars

it would take to fill this room.

Yeah, I don't know that there's a number we could say.

Yeah, so you have to fill the entire state of

Texas one feet deep with silver dollars and then mark

one of them with an X, and then shuffle them

all up, and then give a person one chance, not

multiple chances, one chance wait out to find the one

silver dollar on the first try. And the odds of

that person finding that silver dollar in the first try

are the odds of Jesus fulfilling those twelve prophecies.

Yeah, and amazing, And that's just twelve. Yeah, So when

you read a passage like this, it should just give

you confidence that, hey, God knew what he was doing. Yeah,

then one of the other things that I love that

God included this prophecy in the Book of Isaiah is

you know, the Dead Sea Scrolls really changed. Did you

go see where Kumran, where they fill the Dead Seas grows. Yeah,

So in nineteen forty seven, the first of the Dead

Sea scrolls were found in Kumran, which is near the

Dead Sea and in Israel. And a little shepherd boy

was just throwing rocks up into caves and heard some

pots break. He climbed up in there and found all

these old texts that began digging in. Well. One of

the texts was the Book of Isaiah. And they begin

to dig into the Book of Isaiah and they discover

up to that point, the oldest version that we had

of a complete copy of the Book of Isaiah was

was from one thousand a d. The Massoretic text from

one thousand and eight when we found nineteen forty seven,

when we found Isaiah in the Dead Sea scrolls, it

was from somewhere around one fifty BC. Yeah, so one

hundred and fifty years before Jesus right right, as opposed

to eleven one hundred and twenty five years later. So

this this new text is word for word. This new

text was eleven hundred and twenty five to eleven hundred

and fifty years older than the oldest version, and it

was almost exactly the same, almost exactly the same. So

it really drove home for us the fact that over

a thousand years there were almost no variations, and the

variations that were made were spelling variations, but it was

almost word for word exactly the same. And so the

book of Isaiah that you and I are reading today

is the Book of Isaiah and Jesus read right, right, right,

exactly the same. And that copy that we found in

Kumran was one hundred and fifty years before Jesus was born,

only what five hundred and fifty years after it was

written right right. The accuracy of this book Isaiah is

beyond comprehension in ancient archaeology, in the ancient history. Yeah,

it's word for word, almost letter for letter. And so

when you and I read a passage like this, we go, well,

maybe the christ You know, sometimes prior to the Dead

Sea scrolls, people say, well, Christians change this passage. We

did not. We have copies of it from before four

Christians even existed, one hundred and fifty years before Christians existed. Right,

that'd be like us going back to the Civil War ages. Right,

that's what we're talking about. And so when you read

a passage like this and you realize God wrote this

seven hundred years before, you can have absolute one hundred

confident on confidence. This is exactly what he wrote, and

it describes perfectly who Jesus was and what he was

going to do for you and me.

Right, Yeah, I love it.

Yeah, it's amazing, and it's a great scripture to live in.

And we didn't even scratch the surface and scratch it

of the brutality of it, the significance of it.

We could spend weeks just on this one pass Oh.

My goodness, it's a whole series, isn't it.

So Okay, well, that is our time, definitely, So we

will see you tomorrow hopefully on the Bible, guys,