The Suffering Servant - Part 2
Isaiah 53:1-3 · Vern Peterman · Dec 17, 2006
Isaiah, No. 48
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492601156307

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. We're venturing into this precious Isaiah passage here. Isaiah 53, first three verses there. The way we presented it last week is we're now beginning to munch on these verses. We're in the second of this passage series here, continuing until the first Sunday in January. One of the kind of pictures that we had here is because this passage is five sections of three verses each.

You have a sort of a sandwich to use an analogy. And as sandwiches go, we're right in the second section there. Sorry to have that right before lunch here, but oh well. The other reminder is that this passage is a mirror image in writing. We have what's known as a chiasm. And the first part that we covered last week was the enigma.

And we are beginning into the second part, which should be the first nine verses of chapter 53. And we'll finish off there in January with the last three verses of the passage. We're right here, okay? Chapter 53, 1 through 3. Now, a couple of questions for you, okay? Or, let's start with one.

If you were going to send somebody, we're going to have you do the planning here, at least hypothetically. If you're going to send somebody to save the world, to save all the people on planet Earth, and that person was the one single chance ever for all time, so it's got to work, it's got to be right, it cannot fail, how would you do it? How would you make certain that that person that you sent carried the job through, all the way to the finish? How would you plan it out? What would you do? After all, this has got to make it. Everybody on planet Earth is depending on this. The whole future of this universe counts on this. This has got to work. How would you do it? Isn't that something? That's what we'll be looking at here this morning.

Let's look at the he and the him of this passage. One of the things we notice as we go through it is the Lord, the Lord Jesus, is identified several times by he and him pronouns in this passage. And the only exceptions are, we have underlined there, the arm of the Lord and a man. The others are all he and him. It's referring to our Lord Jesus Christ. through and through. We will see that pattern continue as we go through the rest of the passage here as well.

This passage has a couple of questions that it addresses. So as we're addressing these questions, I want to make some things clear. We're not talking about this kind of address. It's not like a or something like that, okay? So just so you're clear. By the way, as we're talking about letters, at Holly Hills, we always push the envelope to the max. Do you know that? Check out what I mean by that. See? Alright. Okay. Anyway, enough funny stuff. Alright. This passage addresses these two questions. Verse 1 here asks a question.

Who believes the saving message about God's accomplishment through Christ as God has revealed in it. Who? Who believes it? Verses 2 and 3, the next part of it, answer this question. How do earthly-minded people view the birth and the person and life of Jesus in His first coming on planet Earth? How do earthly people view Him, Christ, as He came? You see, what Scripture makes clear is that each person's eternity depends on what that person believes about God's revelation and accomplishment through Christ. Their eternity depends on that.

Isn't that something? There's a lot of pivotal stuff in here, isn't there? Here's the first verse. Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? I've got a couple of questions here. What is the message that he's talking about? And what's the arm of the Lord?

What is it? Isaiah has already, as we've been going through it, and of course it's been some weeks now so you may not recall, but twice before he's already referred to a message as something that was revealed from and by God. It's God's message. It's God's initiative to reveal the truth. That's what he's referring to here with this word message.

The arm of the Lord has already been spoken of earlier in chapter 51 and 52. So it's like Isaiah has been laying the groundwork for the use of the word here. The chapters right before here lay out God's visible power and action on earth through Christ. It's not that His deity was visible directly, but He was deity revealed here on planet earth. Interesting, there are a couple of passages in the New Testament that quote this verse directly in whole or in part. Here's one in the Gospel of John 12.

These things Jesus spoke, the things that are quoted before this, and he went away and hid himself from them. That's very interesting, isn't it? He hid himself from them. It wasn't quite time. But though he had performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in him. Isn't that fascinating? Ever thought about that? He's performing a miracle and what are they thinking? Wow! Right? No. They're looking. They're saying He's performing a miracle. Ah! Wrong time. He performed a miracle and wrong day. Not good.

And so, John writes, this was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet, which he spoke, Lord, who has believed our report? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? These things Isaiah spoke because he saw His glory and he spoke of Him. Isaiah wrote seven centuries ahead of time of this first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here is Isaiah writing seven centuries in advance of these Pharisees who look at Jesus. They see Him heal the man born blind and send Him down into the pool of Siloam to wash.

And their question for Him not recognizing who is this we're talking to. Their question for him is, how come you did it this way? Why today? What was this man's sin? Not recognizing this is the long promised one that Isaiah spoke of seven centuries in advance. One of the questions you might have here, you notice it said report here in John, Our translation in Isaiah says, message.

Why this slight difference there? One of the things we want to bring up here, because that could cause us to be a little puzzled, even a little bit concerned. Why do we have differences between the New Testament quote of the Old Testament and then the same verse or passage when you read it? Well, we want to explain why there's a difference there, okay?

Just so you understand it, not only for this, but for other places where you might read it. A lot of times we'll have translations in the Old Testament from Hebrew, typically, into English. So we got just one translation, right? So it'll be the Hebrew word and then it comes into an English word, okay? So it'll be like this, okay? Alright. Now, a lot of you may be thinking, Oh, Vern just cooked up this picture, okay? But this is not just me cooking up this picture. I want you to understand that. Carol had a hand in this. There it is, right there in the picture.

So, when there is a translation from Hebrew, and now we have in the New Testament, it goes from Hebrew to Greek to English, then you've got a situation where there's now two translations. Therefore, you may get some change in the wording, but the essential meaning will get through. And so that's one of the reasons why you'll see some differences there. Still, you see Carol's hand in this thing. OK. All right. So keep that in mind as you look at these quotes in the New Testament, quoting the Old Testament. All right. Here's another instance. Paul quotes the first part of the verse. However, they did not all heed the good news.

That is, the Jews reading Isaiah. Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed a report? So faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ. One thing that's quite clear from both this and the John passage is what we're reading about here in Isaiah 53 is about Jesus Christ. In spite of the pictures, Verne hasn't cooked that up. So who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

Isaiah brings out some essential points of salvation in this passage here. It is a point of salvation for all time. And that's to be remembered. It's from time in the Garden of Eden into the end of this present heaven and earth for those who live right after the time of creation and the time when Adam sinned, to the time of Noah's flood, to the time of the day of Moses, to the time of Isaiah, to the time of Peter and the apostles, to our time today, and the time a thousand years to come. Salvation will consist of these things. Salvation is for people.

Notice the who and the to whom. With the strong implication that not all people will come to that point. Notice that's part of the point of the questions that are asked, shown in the Gospel of John and in Romans there. Not everyone will believe. So who? Some will, some won't. Who's going to believe it? There's a distinction there between those who believe and those who don't, even if they've heard the message revealed by God.

Point two, God took the initiative to do the revealing essential to the truth of salvation. Salvation isn't something that somebody invented. Salvation isn't something we stumbled upon. God deliberately revealed the facts. God deliberately laid those things out for us. The essential truths that are necessary for salvation isn't something we could arrive at by our own human conclusions.

Any human investigation or logical process is not going to get there. We're not going to arrive at the truth. God is the originator of truth. Human beings do not originate truth. Nothing in the created world originates truth. Nothing in the physical realm, nothing in the spiritual realm. God alone is the one who is the ultimate revealer of truth.

We have this chart here, which a number of you have seen before, and we'll reproduce it even though we'll not go into the detail on it. It's important to recognize that God has multiply revealed the truth, and Scripture lays out a number of those ways quite clearly as to how the truth has been revealed by God. Scripture, of course, is what we're looking at this morning, and that scripture points to Jesus Christ, the two special revelations of God.

All right, now, continuing on here, the bottom line for each human being as a descendant of Adam, who is obviously in great need of salvation, by the arm of the Lord, by God's doing, by God's accomplishment, The ones to whom this message has been revealed is, do I believe it? Bottom line. Do I believe it? Just being aware of it is not enough. Having intellectual assent. Yeah, I can kind of conceptualize that. Yeah, it seems agreeable.

Having printed material on my bookshelf. Oh, I've got lots of Bible books, right? They all collect dust just the same. or even having the data on my hard drive is not sufficient. Hard drives don't go to heaven. And some are quite convinced they go elsewhere. Anyway, that is not sufficient. That's not sufficient.

It is the simple question, do I believe it? Do I believe it? And it's belief, genuine belief. So what is the message? This message is the gospel of Jesus Christ, which in fact is going to be laid out as we go through the rest of this passage in Isaiah. Jesus Christ who died for our sins and was buried and rose again. That's the primary question in front of every person born. Do I believe it? That's the message. Who's believed it? Have I? That's the question.

How about what is the arm of the Lord? Let me correct the question. Who is the arm of the Lord? The arm of the Lord is Jesus Christ, as we're going to see abundantly clearly this morning, who is God's revelation, the one God chose to reveal, to express the power of God to save a ruined race. That is the arm of the Lord. Who is the arm of the Lord? Jesus Christ. Now, how about verse 2 here? We have, "...he grew up before him like a tender shoot." Now, there's some things we need to make clear. The kind of shoot this is. It's not this kind of shoot. Okay? And it's not this kind of shoot. Alright? None of those.

Here is the Hebrew poetry pattern. And one of the things we pointed out about the Hebrew poetry pattern is there is a tendency to repeat, a tendency to further explain or to restate truths. And so here's our logo for the Hebrew poetry pattern. This tender shoot and root are actually not identical, as we'll see shortly here, but they are related plant analogies designed to convey a truth. There is also this second part here, no stately former majesty that we should look upon him. No appearance that we should be attracted to him. A restatement. All right.

The other thing to notice about this verse is He grew up before Him. Who's that? Before God. And to look upon Him. Christ, though fully God, was before Him. Before God. We think of how here are the apostles. They were right there with Christ walking the earth and they wrote down things that they saw and heard that took place. That was all before God. That was all before God. God looked upon all that Christ was doing and who He was and all that took place. Christ also was fully man, however, and human beings looked upon Him. And how did most human beings look upon Him? That's what this verse addresses. Okay? He grew up before Him.

This is the time of year when we look at the birth and the early life of Christ. And we observe that time and we take a special attention towards it. We'll be looking at the details of that at our Christmas Eve service, looking at some of the smaller details. Right now, we want to take a look at this.

It's how God views the things that happened on what we observe as Christmas that matters, doesn't it? How does God view this? And what's even more interesting, remember we asked the question earlier, how would you design the coming of a person on planet Earth if that person had to fulfill their mission? Would you have picked that this person be born into a small and fragile community? powerless, relatively speaking, within the eastern part of the Roman Empire, and among the least thought of villages. After that, after seeing what God says, how God views Christ, it ultimately matters how we come around to God's viewpoint, doesn't it?

Now, he says, like a tender shoot and like a root out of parched ground. Now, using this like-like, Isaiah has not gone Valley Girl on us, just to assure you, okay? Isaiah has made a comparison in Jesus Christ and two plant analogies. They're not identical, as we'll see shortly, and the words are actually carefully chosen. We'll see what the meaning is behind there. They are to represent the birth and early life of Christ. That's what these two analogies, these plant pictures, if you will, represent. They're similar, but they're not identical. They're not just restatements. Now, a tender shoot is, I'm going to tell you, that's a sucker. And it's not this kind of sucker. And it's not one of those peachy barnum suckers either. A tender shoot is this kind of a sucker.

It's the plant growth that starts coming up at a tree out of the base or out of the roots and grows up like you see here a lot of rather useless undergrowth. It doesn't contribute anything to the growth of the tree. As a consequence, those who are involved in pruning for agricultural or horticultural purposes, they'll come up to one of these and snip it. That's the right thing to do with one of these. Like a tender shoot, you snip it. You cut it off because it's going to sap the strength and overall it's not good for the health of the tree. So you cut it off, you get rid of it. How about a root out of parched ground?

What is that? What are the odds that this little sprout that you see here, and I won't point at it because I know that doesn't work, right? Up there. That this little sprout is going to make it. over the long haul out in a desert. Look at that nice, fresh little sprout out in the desert. See the sand around it? How much water do you see there? Not so much, right? Here's your desert.

What are the odds? What kind of odds are you going to give that? Not so good, right? Good. The expected end of a root-out-of-parts ground is something like that, if it gets that far. Not so good chance, right? What is he saying here? Like a tender shoot, like a root out of parched ground. If we were to look at the birth and early life of Christ, just from a human viewpoint, looking at it from the way human beings assess, oh those are good odds, oh that looks pretty good, that's a great start. How would we assess it?

The Jewish leaders thought this, the best thing for the people of Israel is just cut them off and get rid of them. He's like one of those suckers at the base of the tree. You just snip it. You just get rid of it and that's the best thing. We'll all be healthier for it. Snip it off. Like that. Or, this guy doesn't stand a chance. In a word, hopeless. Hopeless. Not happening. This isn't going anywhere. That's what the assessment was of the Jewish leaders. And that's frankly the way a lot of the world would have looked at how Christ began. So, is Jesus Christ awesome? Is He impressive? Are you impressed by the way He came?

At least from a worldly viewpoint, the answer is not. Jesus Christ was not only one thought worthless, one you just snip off. You get rid of him. You clip it off. You get rid of it. But also one who would be overwhelmed by the circumstances. that shoot on that root coming out of parched land. This little tiny sprig coming up and it's just dry and hot. It's going to be gone. It's toast.

His human appearance didn't draw people to him either. That's what the verse says. Think about this man Jesus. What did people think of him? Well, let's give it a look. His siblings were not impressed with him. One of the things that comes out as we look through the New Testament, we'll only look at just a couple of passages here, but it'll be a sampling.

The evidence from Scripture is that Jesus' siblings did not believe that Jesus was the long-promised Messiah until after Christ's resurrection. Can you imagine being James or Jude and growing up with Jesus? Can you imagine what Mom and Dad said? How come you're not like your older brother?

He always does stuff right, you know? It would make you jealous at least. How come He always gives the right answers to the rabbi? That would really bother you. But it would finally, I think, hit them in the face, you know, He really did rise from the dead. That's got to grab hold of you somehow.

And that's what happened. Notice 1 Corinthians 15, and the Lord did not simply appear to everyone. Can you imagine James, for all his life, a skeptic about this older brother of his? Saying, whoa, here's my older brother, and I know he died, and a whole bunch of us saw that, and here he is. That's got to grab you. And it did.

In Acts chapter 1, the last place incidentally where Mary, the mother of Jesus, is personally named in the New Testament. Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. There they are. The first time they're gathered with the Christians. At least those who are about to become believers there in the church.

Now, his siblings were not impressed with him. His townspeople were not impressed with his siblings. How about that? Matthew 13, first part of 57, Jesus came to his hometown, began teaching them in their synagogue. By the way, that is the inside of the synagogue at Nazareth. So that's where Jesus' family would have gathered. So they were astonished and said, where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?

Now you see the shade begin to draw down. Is not this the carpenter's son? And is not his mother called Mary?" And you know what reputation she has. And his brothers, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas, and his sisters, aren't they all with us? They're just regular everyday townspeople in this poor little village. We've seen them all the time. Where did this man get all these things? The teaching, the miracles. And they took offense at him about that. You hear teaching from God Himself. You see miracles at his hand. Nah, we're going to discount it all. We know his brothers. We know his sisters. His own people were not impressed with his town. How about that for a sequence? His siblings weren't impressed with him. The town's people weren't impressed with his siblings. His own people were not impressed with his town.

Here in John chapter 1, the Lord is calling disciples in Nathanael After Philip's introduction, Nathanael said in verse 46, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Now, I've got to share something with you. I went to high school in a town called Boonville in Northern California. That's about where I spent half my high school years. That's the track and football field. So here in this little town, a couple thousand people, that's where I spent my time. As interesting as I got to see people in other areas of that county and that general community, they asked the question, can any good thing come out of Booneville?

Anyway, I'll let you decide. But the thing is that even Nathaniel, one who became Christ's disciple, questioned this lousy, no-name town, this crazy place. We hear the name throughout the New Testament, especially in the gospel, Jesus of Nazareth. And yet, what did that title convey? It's like Vern of Boonville, you know? What did it convey? It was not an impressive title.

All right, we've looked at verse 2. Let's shift gears and go to verse 3 here. One of the things to point out is verse 3 is what I would call a small chiasm. Now I remind you, a chiasm here does a couple of things. One is it allows repetition because it starts and begins with a similar idea. In this case, it's an identical set of words to begin each one. And so the repetition allows emphasis. Isaiah has done this emphasis before. We give examples here. Peace, peace in Isaiah 26 is translated perfect peace. Okay? Double peace. In the beginning of Isaiah chapter 40, comfort, comfort. Double comfort. Okay?

Emphasis. Emphasis. Here, he starts off the verse and then finishes off the last line. He was despised and. Emphasis. Jesus was not just a little bit despised. a lot despised. So here we have this mirror image in the one verse. This mirror image in writing. He was despised and, and again, he was despised and. Very clear. What do you think he was? Despised? Yeah.

This word despised in the Hebrew text has this idea. It's certainly put there for emphasis, it says, being dismissed, written off, and mocked. That's the full sense of the word that is written there in Hebrew. Dismissed, written off, and mocked. Don't you get an idea? Isaiah is underscoring this idea. The Lord, when He comes, that'll be how He'll be received. Dismissed. Written off. Bonk. Mocked. And it was only the start. Mocked even on the cross, was He not? This is the King of the Jews. Come down and save everybody. Save yourself. Mocked. The typical human assessment of Jesus was He is disgustingly worthless.

Imagine being born out of a situation where Joseph and Mary, this baby started developing in Mary before they were married. In the Jewish culture, that was just profoundly shameful. Profoundly shameful. The third verse here also points out, He was despised and forsaken a man, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Not just one sorrow, many, multiple, plural. Not just, oh, I know what grief is, but acquainted with it, some familiarity. A shameful birth outside the Jewish law.

Imagine Mary, who was selected by the Lord. The Lord comes and says, through Gabriel, I want you to bear this promised child, the Messiah. And she will, for the rest of her days, bear shame for it for nothing. For nothing. But can you imagine in this little town, Nazareth is about 80 people, in this little town saying, but God told me I was going to have a baby by the Holy Spirit. Yeah, right. Joseph comes alongside, Oh, but I had a dream and the Lord told me. Yeah, right. We know.

He was raised in a poor, small village of no repute or economic status. Some Roman military records say Nazareth is just a garbage town. Just a trash heap. It was a rural slum. And notice that Joseph, in an earlier passage, was called the carpenter. That's it. There's the carpenter in Nazareth. That's the one you get. He was a man whose father seems to have died when he was still fairly young.

The last we read of Joseph was at the temple, about age 12. It's the last we hear of Joseph. So Jesus, probably at a fairly young age, had to take on providing for the family for a while. Neither His townspeople nor the siblings, at least at first, believed in Him, or anything that His mother and father said about who He was. Can you imagine James as a teenager?

Hey, you're older brother, that's the Messiah. That's God incarnate. Yeah, right. Have you noticed that people's reactions to Jesus were not neutral? Typically not neutral. People are not nonchalant, casual, neither here nor there about Jesus. Have you noticed that? People tend to take a direction one way or the other. Jesus wasn't just categorically ignored, however, as of no consequence. You don't matter.

Instead, he was notably shunned, considered extremely disgusting. One of the titles that they gave him was, you're from Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies. King of the Dung Heap. Really good, huh? He was considered extremely disgusting. Cut him off. Get rid of him. We did not esteem him.

Alright, it's time for you to rate Jesus Christ. Get your pen out. Put a ranking down. How do you rate Jesus Christ based on His birth? Grew up in a little garbage town. Real tiny. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Even one of the disciples said that. Born in circumstances where it's hard to find room in Bethlehem. and we'll talk Christmas Eve night about why. Hard to find room. And then he goes and grows up in this town of 80, nowhere to hide, where his mother and father have to keep telling people, and I imagine they gave up after a while, but God gave us this baby. This is God's baby and this is holy. Yeah, right.

What value do you place on a man like that? What priority do you give His presence? Are you going to turn and look at Him and look in awe? Are you going to respect that man? Or are you going to say, oh no, oh no, not Him. Isn't it amazing that we who believe are made to be in Christ and He in us? considering the response. What's the world's assessment? Snip this guy off. He doesn't have a chance. He's hopeless.

1 Corinthians 1.30, Paul begins with, but by His doing, God's doing, you are in Christ Jesus. You are positionally made in Him. Isn't it amazing that we who believe have been made to be in the One who was considered worthless? What's your assessment of him? Ah, he's just not worth the time of day. Or he's awful. Perfectly disgusting.

That's the one we're in. In Christ. Crucified. Christ crucified. A term so disgusting in the Roman court that the officer the court officer who gave the command for crucifixion could use alternate terminology in order not to be using foul language. We were in Christ as he was crucified.

We in these earthen vessels are the holders of this once disgusting man, now valued as Paul writes treasure. 2 Corinthians 4, 7a, but we have this treasure, this one who was assessed as disgusting, repulsive, you turn your face from him. We have that treasure in earthen vessels, these things. Isn't it amazing that we who believe are transformed from glory to glory as we behold the one from whom others deliberately turned away, as if overwhelmed with disgust.

Have you ever had an experience, and I won't ask you to think about it in too much detail, but something where you opened a lid or you opened a door and went, ugh! Your gag reflex kind of took over, either by sight or smell or both. Anyway, that's enough detail. That kind of a response is what people had at heart when they saw Christ.

It's beholding that one by whom we are transformed from glory to glory. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit. As we behold the disgusting one, as we behold the one that was repulsive, that was put there as a billboard by the Roman Empire that says, don't mess with Rome.

I'm going to shift now to Revelation chapter 5, and I think this is one of the places that illustrates the extremity of the enigma that we looked at last week. Here this one who is so ultimately disgusting in the world's assessment is due ultimate glory. And John wrote this way, and I saw between the throne with the four living creatures. He described them before and the elders.

These, as we said before, represent the church. And you can look this up online. Listen, if you like. On the church website. A lamb standing as if slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. Now, literally, that's quite a sight, OK? We understand as we went through this passage that these indications of seven horns and seven eyes are not to be looked upon as, here's how it looks, but here's what it means. Anyway, continuing on.

And he came and took the book, translate scroll, because they didn't actually have books with a binding like we have until just a few years after John wrote this. out of the right hand of him who sat on the throne. And when he had taken the book, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb, each one holding a harp and a golden bowl full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints."

Now, picture this. Here is God himself with the scroll. Here is the Lamb, the Lord, coming to take the scroll. Here are the elders who represent the raptured church. Here are the angelic beings of all kinds, including the four living creatures, a special dedicated group of angelic beings. They're praising the Lord. This is after the Lord has taken the church up. So I want you to imagine there, one of these guys is Hal Malloy, and you're there too, right next to him. Good to see you, Hal, but it's real good to have both of us seeing the Lord. And they sang, so here's Hal singing, okay, imagine that.

Worthy are you to take the book and to break its seals, for you were slain and purchased for God with your blood, men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign upon the earth. You there? Then I looked and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders and the number of them was myriads and myriads and thousands of thousands saying with a loud voice, What?

This is the disgusting one. Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing. This is phenomenal stuff. The world's assessment? Absolutely disgusting, repulsive man. Worthless, hopeless man. This is the one to be worshipped for eternity. Astounding, amazing.

The passage finishes off this way, and every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea and all the things in them, that includes you and me, To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb, Jesus Christ, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever." And the four living creatures kept saying, Amen. And the elders, it's you and me, fell down and worshiped. Worshiped the Lord.

The one who was profoundly disgusting, rejected of men. given glory and honor for eternity, one who is so glorious as to occupy us for eternity, and we won't be looking at our watches for the next coffee break. There is so much to be occupied in Him, to be occupied with Him, to be holding to be beholding Him. That's a wonderful thing. Let's pray. Lord, as we come before You, what an awesome thing this is to see the world's assessment. Disgusting! Repulsive! Look away. Cut it off.

And then to see the assessment that you have for eternity. And how this One who was of no consequence at best, by the world's assessment, is now the one of all consequence for all eternity for each one of us here today. Thank you, Lord, for this glorious insight into our loving Lord, the Lamb. In Jesus' name, Amen.