Getting On The Same Page
Tom Shrader explores the final movement of Isaiah 53, focusing on verses 10-12 which prophesy not only Christ's suffering and death but also His resurrection. He demonstrates how phrases like 'He will see His seed,' 'He will see light,' and 'He will prolong His days' are clear Old Testament references to the resurrection, challenging the scholarly view that resurrection hope didn't exist in Old Testament times.
“The pleasure of God is, of course, not in the suffering, but the pleasure of God is in what the suffering produces, and that's our salvation.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: CBCC August 2012
Recorded: 2012 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 42 min
Themes: resurrection, prophecy, suffering, hope, death, victory, promise, salvation, doubting resurrection, studying prophecy, seminary student, bible teacher, grieving loss, questioning faith, new to theology, pastor preparing sermon
Scripture: Isaiah 53:10-12, Isaiah 53, Romans, 1 Corinthians 15, Hebrews 12:2
Theological Themes: christology, messianic prophecy, old testament, biblical exegesis, resurrection theology, prophetic fulfillment, isaiah studies, eschatology
Full Transcript
Well, it's been a fun night. There's nothing like seeing your children or your grandchildren in those slides and thinking about the week that we've enjoyed together. It's hard to believe it's gone, but there it is, and I'm so grateful that I was able to be here again this year with Beverly, and we had an especially fun time bringing one of our grandchildren. So this has just been great.
Now, I'm going to get to the section in Isaiah 53 that talks about the resurrection. I'm so excited to take you there, but before that, I'm going to take a few minutes and show you some pictures from Thailand, because how many seminary professors do you know who've gone to Thailand to learn to do Thai massage? So that's fun, isn't it? I'm going to show you just a few pictures of one of my trips to Thailand. I've gone there twice to study Thai massage. I've also been there to do ministry.
The Journey to Thailand
When I went in 2008, I called Delta Airlines. I have mileage with them, and I tried to see if I could get a free ticket on a partner airline. The woman was very helpful, but she said, "Dr. Allen, the dates that you want to go and return, we just do not have a coach seat available." I heard her say coach, and I said, "Well, do you have any seat available?" She said, "Well, on Singapore Airlines, we do have a first class seat available." I said, "Oh, well, that would cost a zillion miles." She says, "Dr. Allen, you have a zillion miles." I said, "Well, then book it. Don't tell me how many miles it's going to take. I'll just wait and look at it on the statement."
So I was able to fly first class from Los Angeles to Bangkok, Thailand with stops in Narita and Singapore, and it was unbelievable. There were three flight attendants for five passengers, and in the first class cabin when we got to the point where they say it's all right to turn on your electronics, a gentleman in front, a Chinese man, went up to the restroom and came back wearing silk pajamas. Flight attendant came up to me, and she said, "Are you ready to put on your pajamas?" I said, "I didn't bring pajamas." She says, "No, we have them for you."
We had an extraordinary flight. When she brought the cheeses out for dessert, she says, "Which would you like?" And she says, "You'd like some of each, wouldn't you?" Yes, I would. And here I am in brand new pajamas on a fold-down bed seven feet long. I tell you, this spoiled me for flying. Tomorrow I'm going early in the morning to Tampa, and because of lots of flying, I have a first class upgrade, but it's nothing like this.
Exploring Thailand
Now, Thailand is a country on the Malay Peninsula, and the capital, of course, is Bangkok. While I was in Bangkok for a while, I went 400 miles north to Chiang Mai, way in the north. If you were to go a bit northwest, you'd get into Myanmar Burma. If you go north-north, you'll be in China, north-east, you're in Laos. This area is called the Golden Triangle, and it is exceedingly beautiful.
There's a moat around the old city that they recently cleaned and made very beautiful. They aerate the water so it no longer smells. It's no longer disease-carrying water. It's just absolutely beautiful. These walls around the city, and I stayed in a traditional guest house for very little money. I had a gorgeous room, and this was the hostess. Her name was Dong. She was just so lovely, and I just enjoyed being there so very much.
I met a number of students who came from all over the world. This young lady was from India. The 20 students that I was with, only one was from America, besides myself. They came from all over. I took my bike Friday, of course, and I went cycling on weekends and enjoyed that so much. I found Starbucks and a mall, and I knew I can do this.
Buddhist Culture and Spirit Houses
But temples everywhere. Thailand is 95% Buddhist, and the Buddhist presence in Chiang Mai is overwhelming. There are more temples per capita in Chiang Mai even than in Bangkok. Well, of course there are. Bangkok has 13 million people, Chiang Mai 200,000, but temples are everywhere, all different sizes, and they're very beautiful, and it's also very sad.
As spirit houses, the Thai people live in fear of ghosts, of spirits, and they put a house out in front about the size of a mailbox, and they decorate it, and they put food out every morning. The idea is if the spirit is detained by the beauty of the spirit house, the spirit won't come into the real house, and it's all very sad.
The Massage Culture
Now, massage in Thailand is huge, and ordinary people get massage frequently, and often they get a two-hour foot massage. This is on a pedestrian mall. It's also in front of a regular mall, and sometimes on the weekend I counted 300 women giving foot massage at a time. It's just absolutely incredible.
Then Thai massage, the full body, is done in a variety of places, from an elegant salon such as this, where the prices were American prices, to a place like this, which was really a former garage. This was really funny. I came into this place, and I got a two-hour Thai massage for about $2.50. So it was not elegant, but it was terrific, and the lady who started working on me turns out to be grandmother, and this is mother and this is daughter.
The grandmother's been doing this for so long, she's ruined her hands, and she wears gardener's gloves when she does this. She was working on my inner thigh, and she was pressing too hard, and I went, "Ow!" She looked at me with incredulity, and she pressed again, and I went, "Ow!" Now she thinks, well, I don't know, and she's now using her elbow, and I go, "Ow!" Then she grabbed a stick, and "Ow!" Finally, the granddaughter realized what was happening, and she said, in our dialectic of Thai, "ow" means more.
A Massage School Encounter
After the last clients left, all three massage therapists worked on me for two hours. It was an incredible time, and I finally managed to leave there with a limp in one leg. The breakfast at the guest house featured fresh fruit cut that morning—this was like a Cannon Beach breakfast—with freshly squeezed orange juice, coffee, and yogurt with granola. I absolutely loved being there.
I was eating breakfast one morning when this woman came down and asked to join me. Her name was Lynn. She pointed upstairs to where her husband was, and he waved. She said, "May I sit with you and have breakfast?" That sounded a little odd, but I said all right.
She said, "I noticed a couple of things. My husband and I were looking down, and we saw you sitting here, and we saw you have a Bible and a textbook from the massage school." She says, "I just graduated from that school last Friday"—this was Sunday morning. "I saw the Bible, so I'm assuming you're a Christian. And I saw the textbook, which is distinctive. Clearly you're going to the same school that I went to. I need to warn you about something. My husband said, 'Just go down and talk to him.'"
A Warning About Buddha Prayer
It turns out she and her husband were Christians from Australia. On her first day of class, she went in unaware of what the protocol might be. She sat down on a mat in the classroom with a number of other students. The first thing the teacher said to all the class members was, "Now we begin our day with prayers to the Lord Buddha. I've given you handouts, and you start reading these with me. By the end of the week, you'll have them all memorized. It's time to pray to the Lord Buddha."
She said she heard that and just gasped, "I can't pray to Buddha, I'm a Christian." She didn't mean to offend anyone, but it turned out to be very offensive to the teachers at the school. So she said, "I just want to help you not do what I did."
She told me what the layout of the classroom was and said, "When you go to school tomorrow morning, take the very last mat against the back wall. You'll face the back wall, because pictures of Buddha are at the front. When they do that, just bring your Bible and read your Bible quietly without saying anything. You won't be bothered, and you won't bother them, and it won't cause a problem."
Finding a Solution
That's what I did. I took my Hebrew Bible, and while they were reading prayers to Buddha, I was memorizing a psalm. This was a gift from God, because it turned out the teachers who were aware of all this were very appreciative that I didn't say anything and that I just did what I wanted to do.
Here's the front of the massage school. Here are some of the students on the first day. The fellow in red is from Cyprus. Here's my—yes, everyone applaud—there's my diploma. These two women on the right were from Holland. The two girls on the left were from England.
I called them all lovable lunkheads, because none of them is Buddhist, and they're all praying to Buddha. But they were all aware I wasn't. I say that because at the end of the time, I had an opportunity to share my faith with this beautiful woman from England. It was at the very last day, at her request, and I gave her a copy of the book "And I Will Praise Him." She and her boyfriend received it with tears in their eyes. It was really exciting.
Weekend Fellowship
On the weekends, I would go to the home of Dallas Seminary graduates, Dave and Jenny, who have a ministry of counseling to missionaries. Missionary families need lots of help. Wendy works with single women missionaries as a counselor. This threesome was a huge help to me on weekends when I got away from the school.
I thought I'd just show you a few of these pictures, and my dear friend Jennifer. On the very last day, I was able to share my faith in Christ with her, because I wasn't praying to Buddha and she wanted to know why. It was very nice.
The Fifth Movement: Resurrection Promise
Now, we're going to go to our fifth movement of this magnificent poem, one of the most moving sections in the Prophets. The section at the end, the fifth movement, is where we have the promise of the resurrection of the suffering servant. I suspect that if Isaiah 53 means anything to anyone, it refers to the suffering of Jesus in Bible prophecy.
But I've talked with lots and lots of people—professors, students, graduate students, even as I mentioned a person coming for his oral comprehensive exam—and people are aware of the emphasis on the suffering of servant. But they seem to be unaware of the significance of the last movement, and that's where I want to end today.
The Startling Statement
The words of verses 10 to 12 of chapter 53 are very surprising. Look at how this begins. It says, "It pleased Yahweh to bruise Him." What an odd and even awful thing. Did you hear that? "It pleased Yahweh to bruise Him."
This has to do with a sequence of actions that lead to the death of Savior Jesus. If it pleased God to bruise Him, someone might think that means God is a ghoul, some monster who takes pleasure in suffering. The thing is exacerbated by the verb that is used, and I have this verb on the screen.
It's the verb "hafez," and "hafez" is a very important word in the Psalms and in the Prophets describing the joy of God. The word is a word for laughter. It's a word that describes the smile of God, the pleasure of God, the enjoyment of God. There couldn't be a more inappropriate use of this word, it would seem, than for the death of Christ, and yet that's the verb that is used.
The Double Usage
It's not only used of the attitude of God the Father, but it's also used of the Son at the end of the verse where it reads, "The pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand." So this word in two different forms is used in this verse, and we have to ask, what in the world is going on with this verb in this verse describing the Father as He relates to the
The death of Christ is not something that happened as a last-moment decision. This is a part of God's plan from the beginning, knowing of human sin, and planning for the remedy that comes only in the death of His Son. The pleasure of God is, of course, not in the suffering, but the pleasure of God is in what the suffering produces, and that's our salvation.
The New Testament writers speak of much the same thing from the vantage point of the Son. It was for the joy that was set before Him that Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame, so that Father and Son found and took enjoyment, not in the suffering and not in the pain, not in the agony, surely, but in what those things produced, and that's our salvation. When you think about that, it just brings a whole new dimension to what the death of Christ really was.
The Meaning of Propitiation
I teach the book of Romans at Dallas Seminary in a course that combines the book of Psalms. It's an odd course. It's for non-language students, and because we teach the book of Romans as a full semester in Greek, we teach the book of Psalms in another semester in Hebrew, and those students are in MA programs that aren't doing biblical languages. Well, I get to teach them these books in English Bible, and there is a word in the book of Romans that you know and maybe have stumbled over: propitiation.
The word propitiation is a word that means the death of Christ brought full satisfaction to God. That's not the Catholic view, by the way. The Roman Catholic view that was solidified at the Council of Trent, it was taught by some before, but then it's taught by all since, the view is that the death of Christ paid the larger part of the bill, as it were, but not the full bill.
One Roman Catholic priest told me, it's like being invited to dinner, and your host pays most of it, but asks you to chip in, and you pay the tip, and that's what God does. He said with salvation, the death of Jesus pays the bulk of the bill, but you have to finish it off, and that's not the Bible view at all. The Bible view is that the death of Jesus is payment in full, and it brought full satisfaction to God. The word propitiation then in the book of Romans is a New Testament commentary on the word kaphet here in this passage.
A Different Understanding of Salvation
Evangelical Christians who believe that salvation is by grace through faith plus nothing, we really have no idea what it would be like to believe that the bill isn't paid in full. One year when I was teaching at Western Seminary, I was invited to be a speaker during commencement activities at the University of Portland, a Catholic institution, and I was asked to speak at a banquet for honor students. Beverly went with me, and we were at the head table together. To my left was the Master of Ceremonies, a man named Father John, and to the right of Beverly was the president of the university, Dr. Walshman.
I was talking with a priest on my left, and he said he'd had a difficult day, and I said, what happened? He said, well, my best friend, a former professor at the university, died today, and I rushed. I'd been visiting him daily, and I rushed to get to the hospital when I got word that he was failing, and I got there after he had died, and it was very hard. I was so sorry I missed that last moment with him, but he said when I walked into the room, the nurses were crying and laughing at the same time.
Father John said about his friend, Father Jen, "He told a joke as he died, didn't he?" And one of the nurses says, "Yes, forgive me, Father, he told a joke, and we were all laughing as he died." Well, what was the joke? Well, we're not going to tell you the joke. You tell me the joke. It's the last thing he said.
Father Jen's Final Joke
Well, it's a joke about an Irishman who works at a beer brewery, and he was on the scaffolding doing some cleaning, and there was a lot of moisture that was collecting on this large rafter, and he slipped, and he fell, and he wound up in a vat of brewing beer, and he drowned. And the plant chaplain, his story says, went to meet with his wife and tell of the sadness of his death, and she's crying, and she says, "Well, did he suffer long?" "Well, he wouldn't have, but three times he got out of the vat to go to the bathroom."
That's pretty funny, isn't it? So three times he'd been guzzling so much beer he had to get out before he finally drowned. So I'm thinking, what a strange story, and this is the dying words of a priest. And the president of the university was over on the right, and he says, "You shouldn't tell stories like that about one of our priests."
An Unexpected Appointment
Beverly had a good question. She said, "We heard on the television as we were leaving home tonight that you've just been appointed bishop of Eastern Oregon." And he said, "Yes," and he put his knife and fork down in anger. And she said, "You're not happy about that?" He says, "I am absolutely disgusted. I am broken. I can't tell you how unhappy I am about that."
And Beverly said, "Well, tell me what the issue is." And he says, "Well, it's been this way all my life. I went to seminary in hopes of being a pastor, a pastor of a parish. And when I was ordained, I determined to be the finest pastor there's ever been. I got every book I could get on pastoral care. I went to conference after conference. I visited older pastors. I got their advice. And just about the time I felt I was really in the groove of being a terrific Catholic pastor of a local parish, I got word from Rome that I was to come to Rome to begin doctoral studies."
"I didn't want to become a scholar. I wanted to become a great pastor. But when they say, you do. So I went to Rome, to the Pontifical Biblical Institute, I love to say that, where he earned a Ph.D. in systematic theology. And he was given an appointment at the University of Portland as a professor of theology."
The Price of Legalistic Religion
Going to be a theology professor, he said, "I'm going to be the finest one the church has ever known." He says, "I got every book on my discipline, and I had done really well in my dissertation. But I also studied teaching, and I went to special classes on how to teach university students in a Catholic context. And I started getting awards, and I started getting noticed. And it was so exciting to be able to do something really, really well."
"And I was just about to the point I wanted to be when I got word I was to become the president of the university. That's one thing I never wanted to be, the president of the university. I had to sell all my theology books, and I had to buy books on raising funds and meeting people and creating donor lists and things that administrators have to do. This is the last thing I wanted to do. But if they want me to be university president, I'm going to be the best university president there's ever been."
"And I did the same thing I did before. I bought every book I could get. I went to every seminar I could go to. I met with university presidents. And we have built the student body. We've raised faculty salaries. We've raised the number of students. I think we're just about at the point where I can look at my work and be happy in it. And I get word today from the pope that I have to become a bishop."
And Beverly said, she was so good in her questions, Beverly said, "Why don't you say no?" And he looked at her, and he said, "My dear young woman, a priest only says no to the holy father of the pope if he wants to go to hell." Did you hear that? "A priest only says no to his father of the pope if he wants to go to hell. I have no chance for heaven if I don't do everything I'm told to do. And you can tell jokes about a dying priest, but there's no joke in death if you've said no to his holy father."
And I think, here's a person who feels it's all on him as he adds to the merit of Christ. And a believer in Jesus Christ in the evangelical tradition says, it is all by faith, it is all by grace, it is all of God, and God is so happy with the death that Christ died that it pleased Him. And Paul says He has full propitiation, He's fully satisfied.
The Promise of Resurrection
Now in this verse, verse 10, look at the rest of the verse. It says, "When He made His soul an offering for sin, He will see His seed, and He shall prolong His days. And the pleasure of Yahweh shall prosper in His hand." The first line of the verse, the first couplet, talks about death. But look at what it says about the Son who's died. He will see His seed. And how can that happen? Only by the resurrection. Do you see that? In this verse is the hope of the resurrection.
I only skipped one question I think today. And one of the questions was, what was the Old Testament period view of life after death, and the issue of Sheol and all of that? Well there is a view that is held by many professors of Old Testament studies today that people in Old Testament times had no real idea of heaven, no real idea of life after death, no real idea of the resurrection. In fact, that has been said so loudly and so strongly and so often by powerful voices that even some evangelical scholars, some of my friends, began to doubt that there was any real hope for life after death in Old Testament times.
Standing Against Scholarly Skepticism
I mentioned earlier today that I recently finished the revision of my commentary on Numbers, and when I sent in the manuscript to a very well-known editor and writer, an Old Testament scholar, he wrote me back very nice letters, several of them. He was very happy with most of it. But there was one thing he wasn't happy with at all. In one small section, I talk about the hope for the resurrection of the body in biblical times, and he wrote me this very personal note, and he said, "Ron, do you realize what you're setting yourself up for? Don't you realize that scholars are going to read this, and they're going to see that you hold to a view that they have totally rejected? Are you willing to be a butt of ridicule by saying that you believe that people in Old Testament times believed in the resurrection?"
And I wrote him back, and I said in a friendly manner, "Bring it on." Bring it on, because it is to me a shameful thing that evangelicals have capitulated in large numbers to the liberal view that the idea of life after death and resurrection, those ideas didn't develop until the second century B.C.
Archaeological Evidence for Resurrection Hope
One of the reasons I bring artifacts with me so you can see them and touch them is then I can say, do you know where those were found? They were found in tombs. And why were they in tombs? For the same reason stuff is found in tombs in Egyptian burials. Things were in tombs because people believed in life to come. And this was a symbol of their confidence of life to come.
Now many of these people are pagans. They don't believe in God. They believe in gods. And wouldn't it be odd if all of the neighbors of Israel who believed in false deities had a hope for the resurrection of the body, and the Hebrew people, the only ones who knew living God, were the only ones in the neighborhood not to believe in the resurrection? What an odd thing that would be. It makes no sense whatever.
So I look at this passage, and I say this passage shows the doctrine of resurrection of life after death of heaven in Old Testament times. And frankly for this purpose it doesn't matter whether this passage was written by Isaiah the son of Amoz, as I believe, following 700 B.C., or if it were written by a second person who's called Second Isaiah in the 6th century, the point is that's still a long time before the 2nd century. And these words are hope of resurrection.
Clear Resurrection Language in Scripture
Look at this. "He will see seed. He will prolong His days." That's resurrection language. And that's a part of the warp and woof of biblical faith. Now did everyone have a clear idea of heaven? No. Did everyone have a confidence that they knew what was beyond the grave? No. And the word Sheol is a word that sometimes
speaks of uncertainty and perhaps even fear. But despite that, look at these words: He shall see His seed. He shall prolong His days. That's the language of resurrection of the body, and it's the predictive language of the person of Jesus.
The Dead Sea Scrolls and a Missing Word
Now we come to verse 11, and here we have a verse where we have help from the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the Hebrew Bible, a word has fallen out of this verse, and this is one of the 19 superior readings in the Qumran text of Isaiah. This is something that's so extraordinary.
1947, you know the story perhaps. In the winter, the winter just before the declaration of the statehood of Israel in 1948 in May, in that cold winter with all kinds of hostility of all things, a shepherd boy, an Arab shepherd boy, Muhammad the Wolf, and a friend were looking for a lost goat, and they saw some caves. They wondered if the goat had fallen into a cave. They're not going to get into the cave until they know what's in there and what's not in there. So they threw some rocks, and if they heard some growls, they'd get out of there. But if they heard a baa baa, they'd have courage to get down. But instead, they heard the clinking of broken pottery, and so they steeled their nerves, and the one lowered the other into the cave, and that was the discovery of the first cave at Qumran of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
That discovery is overwhelmingly important, and for the first time, we have texts of the Bible. Some are just fragments. In the case of Isaiah, it's the complete scroll twice, but a thousand years earlier than the most ancient scrolls that we had up to that point.
My Hebrew Bible is printed from Bible scrolls that, for most of the 20th century, were in Leningrad under Soviet control and dated 1010 A.D. So my Hebrew Bible is printed from a text called Leningrad 1010, and all of a sudden, 1947-48 and following, we have a complete book of Isaiah, two complete books of Isaiah, a thousand years older than the oldest manuscript. It's overwhelming.
The Remarkable Accuracy of Bible Copiers
You would think, wouldn't you? Logic tells you there would be thousands of superior readings in a thousand years of copying. And you know what? In the Great Isaiah Scroll, there are only 19 places where we have a superior reading in the Dead Sea Scroll from the 11th century scroll that Bibles are based on. Do you know what that says to me? That Bible copiers were unbelievably careful in what they did. Only 19 superior readings in the Great Scroll from Qumran.
Here's where they're displayed in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. The upper picture is the area of caves, and the Great Isaiah Scroll facsimile is on display in this magnificent museum in Jerusalem, and the architecture is really something. You go underground as a symbol of going into a cave, and before you go underground, you see this huge monolithic building that's all black, and you see the Shrine of the Book. Here's the top of it. That's all white, representing the war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. And inside, you're actually, as it were, inside the jar, and here's a scroll handle, and here's the scroll, and this is the underside of the lid that's up above. The architecture is just marvelous.
Here's a facsimile of the entirety of the Great Scroll of Isaiah, 1Q Isaiah A, and on this scroll, the text is so legible that all you have to do is adjust your understanding of the way letters are shaped, and you can read this as easily as you can read the Hebrew Bible that's printed on the page.
The Missing Word Restored: "Light"
This scroll is so marvelous, and it turns out there's a textual puzzle in this verse because verse 11 says, "From the travail of His soul, He will see," and there is no object to the verb "see." It's dropped out, but the Qumran text has the lost word, and once we found it in Qumran, we find it as well in the Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagint, demonstrating that this is a true and valid reading, and the word "light" was dropped. We need to put it back in. Modern translations indicate this. In the New King James, we put it in a footnote. Other translations are putting it in the text where it belongs.
"From the travail of His soul," that's His suffering, that's His death, "He will see light." What does that mean? He will be resurrected. He whose body is put into the tomb in darkness, He will see light. This is resurrection, and will be satisfied. He'll be satisfied for what He's done. "And by His knowledge, the righteous one, My servant," second use of the word "servant" in the passage, begins in 52:13, and now it is 53:11, "will justify many for their iniquities He will bear."
I look at this verse, and I see, as in verse 10, here's a clear representation of the hope of the suffering servant for the resurrection of the body.
Resurrection Hope in the Old Testament
Don't tell me there's no idea of resurrection in the Old Testament. Paul says that the gospel is given in Hebrew Bible. And the gospel has two parts, 1 Corinthians 15, that Christ would die for our sins, and would be raised again on the third day. And Paul says of both of these, these are according to the scriptures. This is in the Bible. And here it is, in the Bible, it's in Isaiah 53, 700 years before the fact, these words are here. He will die, and He will be resurrected, and be satisfied, and it'll be the work of God. It's so wonderful.
Now we come to the next verse, verse 12, that follows: "Therefore I will divide with Him a portion with a great." Look at this, a portion with a great, what does that mean? Well, that's victory talk. He'll divide the spoiled with the strong, because He poured out His soul to death.
In verse 10, He will see His seed, He will prolong His days. Verse 11, He will see light. Verse 12, God says, I will divide Him a portion with a great. As powerful as the words are for the death of Christ in Isaiah 53, so powerful are the words of the resurrection of Jesus in the very same passage. This is overwhelming. It is so important, and unfortunately, many,
Many people do not know this great truth. It grieves me when I teach this in class and I have students say, "I've never heard this before." It grieves me when I'm with seminary professors in other schools, and I'll mention this, and they'll say, "Oh no, that's not there," and I show them, and one professor said to me, "Well, I'll be, I never knew that." Why not? It is so clear.
Look at these words again: "He will see his seed, he will see light, I will give him a portion with a great." That's all Bible language about the hope of the Savior who died for our sin, that He would be resurrected gloriously, and great praise come to God. I absolutely love this passage, and when we look at a tomb, wherever the tomb is of Jesus, wherever the tomb was of Jesus, that tomb is empty. He's not here, He is risen, and this is the hope, this is the belief, this is the gospel, this is the teaching of the church.
The passion of the Christ is overwhelming, and the gospel of our God, He's broken and shed for you, and the enormity of it all. We have long known predictions of Christ's death and resurrection are in Hebrew Bible. What we haven't appreciated is how powerfully these speak of the grace of God in Hebrew Bible.
Dear Father, I want to thank you for the opportunity you've given me to share these ideas with these dear people. I pray that they will hear how important I feel these words to be, and they will take encouragement themselves, that we would each be ennobled by these words, and we would grow in confidence in your word, and in the message about our dear Savior, the Lord Jesus. And I thank you for the opportunity to show some pictures from Thailand as well, one of the many needy countries in the world, where the gospel is only beginning to be heard by many, though it is heard by some. I pray your blessing on each of us, and help these words to encourage us, I pray, in Jesus' name, Amen.