 The Christian spin, the Christian interpretation of the 53rd chapter of Isaiah comes to meet an urgent need. We always say necessity is the mother of invention. And I believe that the Christian way of reading the 53rd chapter of Isaiah comes as a response to a very urgent need. What is that need? The need is that there doesn't seem to be even one passage in the Jewish Bible that supports the Christian vision of what the Messiah will be. If you were to try to collect the passages in the Jewish Bible that express the vision of the Jewish Messiah, the idea that there's going to be a descendant of David who comes, who is wise and righteous, and he'll be the ruler of the Jewish people as their king when the world has been restored to a utopian world where the Jewish people have been reunited into their homeland. Our temple has been rebuilt. We have peace in our homeland. We are functioning as a light to the nations. The teachings of the Torah spread to the whole world. Ultimately the whole world comes to accept one God and universal peace reigns throughout the world. That vision of a descendant of David who will do that is found in about a dozen passages clearly in the Jewish Bible and nondisputable. It's obvious that Jesus did not do that. Jesus did not bring peace to the world. He didn't bring peace to his own people. He didn't accomplish any of the things the Messiah is supposed to accomplish. And what Christianity needed to do in order to continue to believe that Jesus was the Messiah was to redefine the Messiah in a way that would accommodate a crucified Messiah. And so what is their new vision of the Messiah? The Christian job description. The Christian understanding of the Messiah is that he comes to the world in order to die as a sacrifice. And his sacrificial death atones and brings forgiveness for the sins of everyone who will believe in him. Anyone who will believe in him, their sins will be forgiven. And that becomes the new job description of the Messiah. The problem is that there isn't any place in the Bible that says that. You can't find anywhere in the Bible which says the Messiah is going to come and die as a sacrifice for the sins of those who will believe in him. And that's embarrassing. So the church had to very carefully go through the Bible and see can we find at least one passage that expresses our vision of the Messiah and they believe that it's the 53rd chapter of Isaiah. Why? Because it speaks about a servant, God's servant who will suffer from the sins of the world and bring restoration to those people and bring healing to those people. So on the surface it sounds like maybe they have something here. We're going to see there are numerous problems with this reinterpretation of the Messiah and with this reading of the 53rd chapter of Isaiah. I believe these problems with the Christian reading of the 53rd chapter of Isaiah are so serious that we can see it in the admission by numerous Christian commentaries which say and admit that this chapter of Isaiah is not speaking about the Messiah and it's not speaking about Jesus. Now that's a very serious problem. If this chapter were so clearly speaking about the Messiah and so clearly speaking about Jesus, why is it that there are so many Christian scholars and Christian commentaries who insist that no, it's not speaking about the Messiah and it's not speaking about Jesus? I believe the reason that they do this is because the text of Isaiah itself makes it clear. It's important to remember that the book of Isaiah does not begin with chapter 53 and one of the things that enables many Christians to read this chapter of Isaiah, the way they like to read it, is they really ignore the rest of the book. They plop down in the middle of chapter 53 and they're able to spin it the way they want to spin it, but they don't take into consideration the context of the book and the general context of the chapters surrounding chapter 53. One of the things that we see is that between chapters 41 and chapter 66, Isaiah clearly identifies who the servant of God is at least a dozen times. At least a dozen times, Isaiah identifies that the servant of the Lord, the servant of God is Israel, the people of Israel. And that's one of the strongest reasons why Christian commentaries say this is not torturing about the Messiah. It's speaking about the nation of Israel. Number two, if you study carefully the surrounding chapters around chapter 53, if you look at chapter 52 and you look at chapter 54, you see something very interesting. Chapter 52, without any difficulty, is a chapter about the historical suffering of the Jewish people, how throughout our history we suffered, we were degraded people, but that ultimately we will be redeemed. That's the context of chapter 52. It speaks about the Jewish people, our historical suffering and our ultimate redemption. Chapter 54, exactly the same. It's about the historical suffering of the Jewish people, that throughout our history we were persecuted and subjugated, but that ultimately we will be redeemed. And therefore, it would be reasonable to assume that chapter 53, sandwiched in between, is also speaking about God's servant, Israel, who suffered throughout their history and ultimately will be redeemed. So let's try to look at one point that makes this very clear. You have to understand that the chapter breaks in the Bible were not there originally. Isaiah didn't write down, here's chapter 5, here's chapter 6. You see the scroll of Isaiah, it's one long scroll. These chapter breaks were put in by Christian clergy in the Middle Ages. So the truth is they really divided these chapters often inappropriately. What is known as the suffering servant passage in Isaiah 53 really begins three verses earlier at the end of chapter 52. And there what it says is very critical. Isaiah there says the following. That ultimately God's servant, we're told this, God's servant is going to be elevated, exalted and lifted up very high. That's what we're told, that God's servant one day is going to be exalted, lifted up and raised very high. And then Isaiah tells us that when this happens it's going to produce an effect. Isaiah tells us the effect is going to be it's going to come as a total shock and surprise to the nations and kings of the world. So we're being told here that one day God's servant is going to be elevated, lifted up and raised very high and exalted. And when it happens the nations and kings of the world are going to be totally shocked and surprised. Their minds are going to be blown. Now if this, again we want to analyze it now. If this passage is speaking about Jesus as the Messiah and that one day he will be exalted, elevated and lifted up in the eyes of the whole world. Would that come as a surprise and a shock to the nations and kings of the world? Imagine today, let's say today Jesus shows up and he's revealed as the great Jesus, the Messiah, the whole world is able to see him on cable news network. Would the whole world be shocked by that? Would that shock the entire world and nations and kings? The truth is that if you were to take a poll of the entire world today and ask them, well who would not surprise you if they were to come and be exalted in your eyes? They'd all say, well Jesus that's who we're expecting. So it's obvious Isaiah cannot be speaking about Jesus because he would not shock the nations and kings of the world. However if it's Jesus who will be exalted and lifted up in the eyes of the world, who would be surprised? Israel, the Jewish people would be surprised. But Isaiah does not say that when the servant is exalted it's going to shock the Jewish people. It says it's going to shock the nations and kings of the world. But we know Isaiah has told us who is the servant, it's Israel. And so now it all makes sense. Isaiah is telling us that in the future Israel is going to be exalted, lifted up and raised very high. And Isaiah tells us, you know what? That's going to come as a big surprise to the entire world. It's going to shock them. They're going to be surprised because they never expected this. And what happens in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah is that the nations of the world confess. They confess how they persecuted the Jewish people and how they scapegoat the Jewish people. But the 53rd chapter of Isaiah is very clearly a speech that will be made by the nations and kings of the world. It hasn't happened yet because Israel has not been exalted. But the prophet here is predicting that when Israel is exalted and lifted up in the eyes of the whole world it's going to shock them. It's going to surprise them. And they're going to think back about their history with the Jewish people. And they're going to wonder because they always assumed, why have the Jews always been suffering? So the world always thought we're suffering because we're evil. The Jews are evil. They rejected Jesus. They rejected Muhammad. Meaning the whole world looks at us as evil, as wicked because we don't have the truth. But Isaiah 53 is telling us that in the future the truth will become clear. It will be clear that the Jewish people were the ones that were right all along. And that we were right for not accepting Jesus and Muhammad. And therefore the whole world is going to be a little bit shocked. How do we explain now the fact that the Jews suffered throughout the history? They're going to confess and they're going to say we were the ones that were evil. We always assumed that it was the Jews that were evil and God was punishing them for their evil. And now the world's going to admit, oh, we have an aha moment now. We see that we were the ones that were wrong. We were the ones that unfairly persecuted and scapegoated the Jewish people for our own wicked ends. This chapter is not a chapter about one person who dies and takes on the sins of the world. That is refuted by the rest of the Bible. Throughout the entire Bible, God gives us the program for atonement, for forgiveness. And God says that if a human being sins and doesn't live properly, the antidote to that is not to believe in some person that's going to die for your sins. Throughout the Bible, in numerous places, the prophets express the idea that if we do something wrong, we turn away from our evil ways, we stop doing that which is wrong, we turn back to God, we begin living properly and righteously, and then God will forgive us. This chapter here in Isaiah has nothing to do with the system of atonement that was laid out in the Jewish Bible. So even though Christianity would love to use this chapter as a hook to prove their vision of what the Messiah is, upon closer examination, it really evaporates. There's no basis in this chapter to substantiate their beliefs.