Who has believed our report? And to whom is the arm of YAHWEH revealed?
He is despised and abandoned of men, a Man of pains, and acquainted with sickness. And as it were hiding our faces from Him, He being despised, and we did not value Him. Surely He has borne our sicknesses, and He carried our pain; yet we esteemed Him plagued, smitten by Elohim, and afflicted.
For He comes up as a shoot before Him, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form nor majesty that we should see Him; nor form that we should desire Him.
But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His wounds we ourselves are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have each one turned to his own way; and YAHWEH made meet in Him the iniquity of all of us.
He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, but He did not open His mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter; and as a ewe before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth.
He was taken from prison and from justice; and who shall consider His generation? For He was cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgression of My people, the stroke was to Him.
And He appointed Him His grave with the wicked, but He was with a rich man in His death; though He had done no violence, and deceit was not in His mouth.
But YAHWEH pleased to crush Him, to make Him sick, so that if He should put His soul as a guilt offering, He shall see His seed; He shall prolong His days; and the will of YAHWEH shall prosper in His hand.
He shall see the life of light, the fruit of the travail of His soul; He shall be fully satisfied. By His knowledge shall My righteous Servant justify for many, and He shall bear their iniquities.
Because of this I will divide to Him with the great, and with the strong He shall divide the spoil; because He poured out His soul to death; and He was counted with those transgressing; and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for transgressors.
Don’t you wonder, after having the historical facts some 3000 years later, wonder who has believed the words that follow that very first sentence; a beginning sentence formed as a question. That question is the beginning of a prophesy which was written about 700 years before Christ. It speaks, and has spoken, beyond the limits of time. Amazing.
They are from the Tanakh, which is the Hebrew Bible, also called the Old Testament to non-Jewish peoples. These are the words of a prophet named Isaiah, taken from verse 53.
So Isaiah 53, which isn’t a long chapter at all, is where we begin this Chataquah. Thanks for gathering under the tent tonight. The weather was great last time, and I love to burn a fire. But today we needed at tent.
You see, Isaiah is an incredible verse to me personally. But I think that it is another key from Holy Scripture. And you’ll find some factual reasons why. Some will pop neuron synapses and grow pathways in your head like crazy. Others will experience that too. Eventually. It takes time to build a complex root system. We all said the same Apostle’s Creed together at the start, didn’t we?
Isaiah 53 is an Old Testament prophetic verse that the Jews are kept ignorant of. But let’s not be too critical. I’m a born-again Roman Catholic. I know that priestly Pope structure of education and worship pretty well. Something went terribly wrong with it not too long ago. But listen, all denominations used to be able to recite the same Apostle’s Creed. My generation is probably the last one to at least remember, many Roman Catholics today have it memorized. It was recited at mass in the Missalette books; mostly though, we’ve memorized and said the Nicene Creed.
It’s a creed. It’s what you believe in. The ground of your faith.
Well, I know we Christians could all recite that Apostle’s Creed together today. But recall that above someplace I mentioned Jews. G-d’s chosen people? The “people of the book,” the one’s our almighty creator tells their story, speaks to them, (really we should tie back to the Old Testament more), and it is all truth. It is to Jews, and it is to Christians.
