Isaiah’s wonderful Picture – Isaiah 52:13-53:12.
Despite the dreadful truth that, “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not,” Isaiah 53:3, we read in the next verse: “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted,” Isaiah 53:4.
To “esteem” means ‘to form an estimation of’. Christ was counted of no value. “And Herod with his men of war set him at nought, and mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him again to Pilate,” Luke 23:11.
1. The people for whom Christ suffered are the people who despised Him.
Not one of the millions who will get to heaven through the redeeming work of the Lord Jesus will ever be able to say: “I never despised Him, rejected Him. I never hid my face from Him or did not esteem Him.” Paul’s testimony is really the testimony of all believers. “I verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Which thing I also did in Jerusalem: and many of the saints did I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death, I gave my voice against them. And I punished them oft in every synagogue, and compelled them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them even unto strange cities,” Acts 26:9-11.
2. The chief sufferings of Christ were at the hands of God.
“Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted,” Isaiah 53:4. The view formed by the people of the Saviour in His sufferings was that He was rejected by God. He was rejected on the cross by His Father but the people were wrong in their thinking of why this happened!
They deemed him a sinful man, unrighteous and therefore rejected by God. But the Saviour’s rejection was because the Father “Made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him,” 2 Cor 5:21.
On the cross the Father dealt with Christ as He would deal with us sinners. He forsook Christ, He judged Christ, He punished Christ. But was God acting in mercy to us and judging His So rather than us! “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” Romans 5:8.
Click to stream or download, Bible pictures of Christ, Pt124