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Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

Wrapping The Week In Isaiah 53

Death Then Life In The Prophecy

Resurrection As The Missing Step

Justification Credited Not Earned

Ongoing Intercession And Final Call

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Alright, guys, it has been a pleasure to be with you this week, but let's go ahead and close it out. So all week we've been looking at Isaiah 53, and so it's just an incredible prophecy that described what would happen to Jesus of Nazareth 700 years before it actually happened. And so far this week we've looked at a summary of the first 52 chapters of Isaiah, and over the last few days we've covered the first nine verses of Isaiah 53. And today we're going to focus on the last three verses to close out the chapter. We're going to start in verse 10. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him, he has put him to grief. When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied. By his knowledge shall be righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors. So I'm sure a lot of people that were reading this during Isaiah's day would have been just incredibly confused, because verses seven through nine just described how a man will die. Okay? He will be separated and cut off from the land of the living. When verse fifty or verse ten comes in, it says that he shall see his offspring and he shall prolong his days. And so it's like, well, wait, wait a minute. We just had this guy dying in seven through nine, but now we have verse ten and he's he's thriving? Like, what's that about? Again, we we see that he's killed, he's he's killed among the wicked and wicked, and he's assigned to a rich man's grave. Like, what are you talking about? So, how could a dead man see his offspring? How could a dead man prolong his days? How does a dead man watch God's plans prosper in his hand exactly? It's obviously an impossibility unless that person is brought back from the grave. You see, these passages make no sense at all unless the resurrection is real and unless it actually happens, unless death has been defeated. And if we're being honest, I bet you Isaiah was really confused as he was writing all this down as well, right? I mean, divinely inspired, but he had to be confused when he read back later, he's like, What in the world? I mean, we're 700 years before Christ, and he likely wouldn't have even had the vocabulary for the resurrection, because that vocabulary isn't really even fully expressed and established until we get to the writings of the New Testament, which obviously took place after the resurrection, right? And if we look at it in context, verses seven through nine show us that this servant dies, and then in verses ten through twelve, we see that this same servant thrives. So there's no way to really reconcile these two realities without something that happens between verses and ten nine and ten that undoes the finality of death, right? And the apostle Peter actually gives us some vocabulary for this in his sermon at Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 2, verse 24, where he says, God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. And then we see in verse 11 of Isaiah 53 the talk of how this servant will make many to be accounted righteous. So this is the language of justification. So this is a legal definition saying that the guilty people are now considered not guilty. And in this context, guilty sinners are now considered to be not guilty in the eyes of a holy and just Father God. And it's not because they got their crap together, it's not because their good deeds started to outweigh their bad deeds, it's not because they followed the law to a T. We obviously have no way of working our way into the good graces of God. But God, in his mercy, imputed to us the perfect righteousness of Christ, the righteousness that we could not attain on our own. It is credited to us. And we see this in verse 12 that the servant poured out his soul to death, which just as an aside would be a great way to approach a prayer life. So it ends with the fact that he makes intercession for the transgressors. The verb tense is very important here. So it's in the present tense. That means that it is ongoing. That it's it's not just something that happened in the past, but Jesus' work on the cross, when he said it is finished, counts now and for forever. The finished work of the cross provides the work of intercession for those who are saved and for the rest of time. And so just think about where we've been this week and where we are now. So Isaiah 53 doesn't land in the grave, but at the throne of God. The servant was despised and rejected, even in his hometown. He was pierced and crushed for our iniquities and transgressions, he was silent before all of his accusers, he's unjustly killed for the crimes that he didn't commit, he's placed in a tomb, and yet now he is vindicated, exalted, and standing between us and the wrath that we all deserved. And my call to you today is that if you have never placed your faith in that reality, I compel you to do so. Give your life to Christ, transfer your faith for your eternity from your works to the finished work of Jesus. It is literally your only hope. Thank you for your attention this week. Stay sharp.

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