CHRISTMAS’ BEGINNING

Isaiah 53:1 ask the question, “Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”  I ask the question, do you believe this to be the beginning, the foretelling, if you will, of the Christmas story?

This being the beginning of the Christmas season, I find it appropriate to talk about the beginning of the real meaning of Christmas…Christ.  This message speaks about God, even before He was born in the flesh and come down to save our souls.  I don’t normally write out this much scripture in these messages, but I fill the need to do so today so that I can walk with you through this powerful story. 

Isaiah 53:1-12 says, “Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.  Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.  After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied by his knowledge, my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

These verses tell us about the real truth of the Gospel message; that God, our Father, came down from heaven and made Himself to be a human, despised, rejected, grief stricken, to save us from ourselves.  Verses 1-6 go into explicit detail about how God as Jesus came to carry our weaknesses, our sickness, our troubles, our sins, our deserved punishment on Himself even though we despised Him, turned our backs on Him and decided to go about running our lives as we saw fit. 

Verses 7-9 talks about the harsh and horrific treatment our Savior received.  He took this chastisement and did nothing to defend Himself against the cruelty He did not deserve.  He never even opened His mouth to proclaim His innocence as He suffered insult and deadly injury.  They killed Him and buried Him like a criminal in the borrowed tomb of a rich man. 

Verses 10-12 go on to tell us about our Christmas gift, the greatest and most valuable present we have ever received.   These verses tell us how, as a result of our God’s gift and the plan that He had for the gift, we now have the promises of many other gifts: righteousness, prosperity, victory, long life, the continued intercession to the Father on our behalf. 

This passage of scripture is usually associated with Easter and the celebration of Resurrection Sunday.  However, I wanted to share it in a different light.  We don’t normally hear about Christmas and its story until we get in to New Testament Bible reading.  But here in Isaiah, we learn about the story before it even comes to pass, even though it is spoken in past tense, as if it had already happened.  Isaiah shares with us the promise of God to deliver to us a gift better than anything Santa Claus could ever come up with.  Isaiah delivers to us the message of the Lord from the Lord to all who would dare believe that Christmas was coming.