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Is God Dead?
Last week we began to look at the historical writings of the prophet Isaiah in the fifty-third chapter. Even so, my feeble description there failed to convey the proper weight due to Isaiah’s words being written some 700 years before the Servant was born; seven hundred years. Read for yourself: See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.
Just as there were many who were appal led at him—his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness—so he will sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him.
For what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand. 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 (Isaiah 52:13-53:12 NIV).
It seems to me; that Isaiah 53 is talking about the crucifixion of a particular man deemed “God’s Servant. This historical document is considered to be “the complete gospel in prophetic form,” a horrific foretelling of what the Messiah would endure in order to put away “the sins of His people forever.”
In fact, it so explicitly speaks of the same Messiah that Christians hold has already come (Jesus of Nazareth), that the orthodox Jews refuse to read Isaiah 53 by skipping over it during scheduled public readings from the prophets.
Michael, the Bible skeptic, says; “so what? What does Isaiah have to do with whether God is dead or not?” Actually, quite a lot. The argument we have been presenting to the Michaels of the world has been that the Creator God created human beings with intentionality and with purpose.
Christians hold that one aspect of that intentionality is relationship. It is the most compelling reason human beings stand alone among the animal kingdom by virtue of possessing an immaterial soul: a spiritual reality that can be tuned to commune directly with God.
If all of this is true, then there must be some point where the Creator has utilized these endowments in humans to reach them and to speak with them. After all, isn’t that what we were designed for?
The Jews have maintained since time out of mind, that God has communicated with man, and that He will send a future messiah to save His people from their sins. It turns out that Isaiah prophesied of just such a man to come; the Messiah.
Orthodox Jews convinced the Messiah has not yet come, still await the Suffering Servant of Yahweh to come and fulfill the promise of God. At any rate, there is compelling evidence from history, to support the Christian claim that such a man may have lived in the first century AD.
A man who claimed to be the Son of God, come to redeem fallen mankind and fulfill all that Isaiah had prophesied in the process. And it is the history of this man, and the claim that He was raised from the dead that is the topic of the next several weeks.
Gloria in excelsis Deo! Ty B. Kerley, DMin., is an ordained minister who teaches Christian apologetics, and relief preaches in Southern Oklahoma. Dr. Kerley and his wife Vicki are members of the Waurika church of Christ and live in Ardmore, OK. You can contact him at: dr. kerley@ isGoddead. com.
