Isaiah 53:1-12
The Suffering Servant
1 Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 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.
3 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.
4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 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.
6 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.
7 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.
8 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.
9 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.
10 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.
11 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.
12 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.
1 Corinthians 13:8-13
Faith, Hope, and Love
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
The One that Isaiah writes about would be born in a most unusual way and would be born in a most unusual place...He would grow up like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry land...His appearance was not something that would grab the attention of others...He would grow up and be despised by many men and be rejected by mankind...And once grown, He would become a Traveling Rabbi...And as He taught He was not particularly held in high esteem by others...But He would be the One to take up our pains and would bear our sufferings and our sins...And yet as He lived, He was full of paradox and mystery...And in His Mystery and Paradox, we find that His punishment and crucifixion and great suffering on the cross somehow brings us peace...So He has moved us from Mystery and Suffering to Peace...From suffering to peace is a most unusual message, yet that message meets the needs of mankind...He brings us this peace, not as this world gives, but as only as He can give...And this peace given through Him was not a peace through force or war or with soldiers, but with a group of Twelve Disciples...It is a peace that comes from Him making His life completely centered around His Father...And after He suffered and died on the cross, He became the Light of Life because He overcame the sting of death...
His followers and Disciples follow Him out of faith, hope, and love...Things that we really cannot see...His followers and Disciples had strong belief in these great things that cannot be seen like faith, hope, and love...And the faith of His Disciples is the confidence they had in Him and in those things that they could not see, yet they held His teachings and deeds in both hope and assurance...They knew He was unusual and different...This is what the Disciples were commended for after His death and resurrection...Their belief in Him and that He did overcome death...They were commended for their faith in Him after His death...By the Disciples and the Acts of His Apostles was the faith we understand that the universe was formed by God’s voice...And the universe was created through this Servant of God's...He created the universe which He made visible, but originally these visible things were created out of nothing and from nothing...From nothing we get to life and the universe and world, by the Word of God...And we have these great things of life that we cannot see, yet believe in, like faith and hope and love...And the greatest of these things that cannot be seen is love -His LOVE...LOVE never fails...