I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (55 page)

(3) He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.

Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

(4) Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten 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 upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

(6) We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his 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 her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

(8) By oppression and judgment he was taken away.

And who can speak of his descendants?

For he was cut off from the land of the living;

for the transgression of my people he was stricken.

(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 a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

(11) After the suffering of his soul, 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.

To whom do you think this is referring? Barry had a good idea who. Reading out of his own Tanach, he was startled at the parallels to Jesus, but he was still a bit confused. He wanted to give his rabbi a chance to explain it.

“I vividly remember the first time I seriously confronted Isaiah 53, or better still, the first time it seriously confronted me,” Barry explains. “Being rather confused over the identity of the Servant in Isaiah 53, I went to my local rabbi and said to him, ‘Rabbi, I have met some people at school who claim that the so-called Servant in Isaiah 53 is none other than Jesus of Nazareth. But I would like to know from you, who is this Servant in Isaiah 53?’”

Barry was astonished at his response. The rabbi said, “Barry, I must admit that as I read Isaiah 53 it does seem to be talking about Jesus, but since we Jews do not believe in Jesus, it can’t be speaking about Jesus.”

Barry didn’t know a lot about formal logic at that point, but he knew enough to say to himself, “That just doesn’t sound kosher to me! Not only does the rabbi’s so-called reasoning sound circular, it also sounds evasive and even fearful.” Today Barry observes, “There are none who are as deaf as those who do not want to hear.”

For those who do want to hear, Larry Helyer does a fine job of summarizing the characteristics and accomplishments of Isaiah’s Servant. Beginning with the first Servant Song in chapter 42, Helyer makes the following observations of the Servant:

1. He is elected by the Lord, anointed by the Spirit, and promised success in his endeavor (42:1, 4).

2. Justice is a prime concern of his ministry (42:1, 4).

3. His ministry has an international scope (42:1, 6).

4. God predestined him to his calling (49:1).

5. He is a gifted teacher (49:2).

6. He experiences discouragement in his ministry (49:4).

7. His ministry extends to the Gentiles (49:6).

8. The Servant encounters strong opposition and resistance to his teaching, even of a physically violent nature (50:4-6).

9. He is determined to finish what God called him to do (50:7).

10. The Servant has humble origins with little outward prospects for success (53:1-2).

11. He experiences suffering and affliction (53:3).

12. The Servant accepts vicarious and substitutionary suffering on behalf of his people (53:4-6, 12).

13. He is put to death after being condemned (53:7-9).

14. Incredibly, he comes back to life and is exalted above all rulers (53:10-12; 52:13-15).
³

In addition to Helyer’s observations, we note that the servant is also sinless (53:9).

Just a casual reading of the passage should leave little doubt that the Suffering Servant is Jesus. In fact, the traditional
Jewish
interpretation of the Servant passages was that they predicted the coming Messiah.
⁴
That is, until Jews began having more contact with Christian apologists about a thousand years ago, at which point they reinterpreted the Suffering Servant to be the nation of Israel. The first Jew to claim that the Suffering Servant was Israel rather than the Messiah was Shlomo Yitzchaki, better known as Rashi (c. 1040–1105). Today Rashi’s view dominates Jewish and rabbinical theology.

Unfortunately for Rashi and many present-day Jewish theologians, there are at least three fatal flaws with the assertion that Israel is the Suffering Servant. First, unlike Israel, the Servant is sinless (53:9). To say that Israel is sinless is to contradict and negate virtually the entire Old Testament. The recurrent theme of the Old Testament is that Israel has sinned by breaking God’s commandments and by chasing after other gods instead of the one true God. If Israel is sinless, then why did God give the Jews a sacrificial system? Why did they have a Day of Atonement? Why did they constantly need prophets to warn them to stop sinning and to come back to God?

Second, unlike Israel, the Suffering Servant is a lamb who submits without any resistance whatsoever (53:7). History shows us that Israel certainly is not a lamb—she lies down for no one.

Third, unlike Israel, the Suffering Servant dies as a substitutionary atonement for the sins of others (53:4-6, 8, 10-12). But Israel has not died, nor is she paying for the sins of others. No one is redeemed on account of what the nation of Israel does. Nations, and the individuals that comprise them, are punished for their own sins.

This Johnny-come-lately interpretation of Isaiah 53 appears to be motivated by the desire to avoid the conclusion that Jesus is indeed the Messiah who was predicted hundreds of years beforehand. But there’s no legitimate way to avoid the obvious. Remember, the Great Isaiah Scroll was written some 100 years before Christ, and we know that the material it contains is even older. The Septuagint, which is the translation of the Hebrew Old Testament (including all of Isaiah) into Greek, is dated about 250 B.C. So the Hebrew original must be even older. Furthermore, manuscripts or manuscript fragments of all the Old Testament books except Esther were found with the Dead Sea Scrolls. So there’s no doubt that the Old Testament, including the Suffering Servant passage, predates Christ by several hundred years.

H
ITTING THE
B
ULL
’
S
-
EYE

If Isaiah 53 were the only prophetic passage in the Old Testament, it would be enough to demonstrate the divine nature of at least the book of Isaiah. But there are several other passages in the Old Testament that predict the coming of Jesus Christ or are ultimately fulfilled by him. These include (table 13.1):

Question: Who, in all the history of the world,

1. is from the seed of a woman;

2. from the seed of Abraham;

3. from the tribe of Judah;

4. from the line of David;

5. was both God and man;

6. was born in Bethlehem;

7. was preceded by a messenger, and visited the Jerusalem temple before it was destroyed in A.D. 70;

8. died in A.D. 33; and

9. rose from the dead (Isa. 53:11)?

Jesus Christ of Nazareth is the only possible candidate. Only he hits the bull’s-eye. Of course, the case is strengthened further when you consider the other aspects of Isaiah 53. Jesus meets all of those criteria as well.

The prophetic case for Christ is strengthened even further when you realize that the Old Testament predicted that God himself would be pierced, as happened when Jesus was crucified. As recorded by the Old Testament prophet Zechariah (also written well before Christ),
God says,
“I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on
me, the one they have
pierced,
and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son” (Zech. 12:10). Later, Zechariah predicts that the Lord’s “feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem” (Zech. 14:4). These predictions refer to Christ’s second coming, but the reference to God having been “pierced” (i.e., crucified) by the “house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem” obviously refers to his first coming. In fact, the apostle John quotes Zechariah 12:10 as prophetic of the crucifixion (John 19:37).

You can see why Barry realized he was “in trouble.” These messianic prophecies are beyond coincidental. These are far beyond predictions any psychic could make.
⁶
Something truly supernatural is going on here, but many of his fellow Jews didn’t see it. Barry realized that while the Jews have been waiting for a political messiah, they failed to recognize that the Messiah would first have to come as a lamb to be slaughtered for the sins of the world (Isa. 53:7, 11-12; John 1:29).

With a sense of intrigue, Barry contacted Hal once more. They reviewed the messianic prophecies again, particularly Isaiah 53. Hal then offered Barry a small booklet.

“This is an account of Jesus’ life by a young man who knew him and followed him,” Hal said. “Why don’t you read it and tell me what you think?”

Once Barry picked it up, he couldn’t put it down. The story had many Jewish elements, from priests to Passover. And this Jesus was an amazing figure—a miracle worker who had great insights, and spoke with authority but with kindness as well.

Barry didn’t know it at the time, but he was reading the Gospel of John. He was particularly struck with the free gift of eternal salvation that Jesus offers to anyone who will receive him. “Everything I ever wanted out of life I had to earn myself,” Barry remembers. “And yet, here was Jesus offering himself and all his best gifts for time and eternity as a free gift of his love. Who wouldn’t want to embrace such an offer?”

It was April now, more than three months after that glorious Rose Bowl victory. “I suddenly realized that I had nothing that withstood the test of time, let alone the test of eternity,” Barry recalls. “This was most graphically demonstrated to me by the Rose Bowl victory itself. Just a few mere months after the most significant event in my life, and perhaps in my
entire
life, all the glory, everything involved, was now slowly fading away into a distant memory.”

“Is that all there is to life?” Barry thought. And then he remembered that Jesus the Messiah was offering
eternal
life! Barry knew
intellectually
that Jesus was the Messiah weeks earlier when he found those messianic prophecies in his own Tanach. But believing
that
Jesus was the Messiah wasn’t enough (after all, even the demons know
that
Jesus is the Messiah—James 2:19). Barry needed to believe
in
Jesus as the Messiah. In order to accept the free gift of eternal salvation from the punishment he deserved, Barry needed to take a step of the will, not just of the mind. After all, it would be unloving of God to force Barry into heaven against his will.