Written in Advance

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Isaiah 53:3-6 “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.”

Think

Imagine cleaning out an old storage closet and finding a sealed envelope. It is yellowed, dusty, and dated decades before you were born. Inside is a letter describing a person who would someday live in your town, what they would go through, and how people would treat them. As you read, your stomach drops. It is describing someone you know, in detail. You would want to know who wrote it, and how they could possibly have known.

That is close to how it feels to read Isaiah 53 for the first time. The prophet Isaiah lived roughly seven hundred years before Jesus was born. Yet read the passage again and ask yourself who it sounds like. Someone “despised and rejected.” Someone “pierced for our transgressions.” Someone punished, not for anything he did, but so that others could have peace. Someone whose wounds bring healing.

When the first Christians read this, they recognized Jesus immediately. In Acts 8, an official from Ethiopia is riding home in his chariot, reading this exact passage, and he asks a follower of Jesus named Philip, “Who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” Philip starts right there and tells him about Jesus.

A skeptic might ask a fair question. How do we know Christians didn’t just write this after Jesus died and claim it was older? That is where one of the most exciting discoveries of the last hundred years comes in.

In 1947, a young shepherd searching for a lost goat near the Dead Sea tossed a rock into a cave and heard pottery shatter. Inside were ancient clay jars holding scrolls. Over the next several years, researchers found hundreds of scrolls in the nearby caves, now known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. One of them is a complete copy of the book of Isaiah, made more than a hundred years before Jesus was born. Isaiah 53 is right there on the scroll, describing a suffering servant, written down long before anyone had heard of a carpenter from Nazareth.

There is a bonus, too. That Isaiah scroll is about a thousand years older than the copies scholars had before it was found. When they compared the two, the text was remarkably the same. For a thousand years, careful copyists had faithfully preserved Isaiah’s words.

But Isaiah 53 is not only evidence. It is personal. Read verse 6 slowly: “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.” “We all” includes you. Every time you have gone your own way, every wrong thing you have hidden, every moment you wish you could take back, Isaiah says it was laid on him.

Think about what it means that God wrote out the rescue plan centuries in advance. Your mess did not catch him off guard. Long before you were born, long before Jesus was born, God already knew what it would cost to bring you home, and he decided you were worth it.

So read Isaiah 53 one more time, and this time, put your own name in it. Jesus was pierced for your wrongs. Jesus was crushed for your failures. By his wounds, you are healed.

Apply

Personalize the prophecy – Read Isaiah 53:3-6 again and rewrite verses 5 and 6 in your own words, using “I” and “me” instead of “we” and “us.” Read what you wrote out loud once before you go to bed tonight.

Pray

God, it’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that you planned my rescue hundreds of years before Jesus came. Thank you that Jesus took what I deserved. I don’t always feel worth it, but you decided I was. Help me to live like someone who has been forgiven and healed. In Jesus’ name. Amen.