“The Fifth Gospel”

Isaiah 52:13-53:1-12

There are four gospel accounts in the New Testament that refer to the life of Christ.

1. They are Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. I have heard it said that the fifth gospel is the
gospel according to you. Perhaps that is so, because we are the only Jesus some people
will ever see.

The fifth gospel I want to look at is found in the Old Testament in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah.

1. When you read Isaiah 53, it’s almost as if Isaiah was at the foot of the cross taking notes.

The only problem with that is he wrote his prophecy about Jesus over 700 years before the

events actually happened.

           a. I was in a home one time talking to a lady who had been coming to the church. Her
                husband piped up and said, “I don’t believe the Bible.” I said, “If I could predict
                events in detail over 700 years before they took place, what would you conclude about
                me? “Well, I would conclude that you were a prophet.” It was at that point that I
                went to Isaiah 53 and pointed out all of the prophecies about Jesus.

He said, “Well, the Bible has been changed and that was written after the fact, but

made to look like it was written before.” It was at that point that I shared with him

                about the Dead Sea Scrolls. They were found in 1947, but they were placed in the
                caves at the northwest end of the Dead Sea about 200 years before Jesus ever lived.
                Those scrolls contained the whole Old Testament except the book of Esther showing
                very plainly that the Old Testament we have has not been written after the birth of
                Christ.

C. There is no text in the Old Testament that is quoted more in the New Testament than Is. 53.

   1. It is quoted 7 times in the New Testament. We believe that Isaiah 53 is all about Jesus
          because the New Testament says it is all about Jesus in the following texts: Matthew 8:14-
          17, Mark 15:28, John 12:37-41, Luke 22:35-38, 1 Peter 2:19-25, Acts 8:26-35, Romans
         10:11-21.

D. I want note five truths that Isaiah said about Jesus in the fifth gospel.

I. HE WAS RAISED IN AN UNLIKELY LOCATION.

“like a root out of parched ground”

A. Isaiah said Jesus was like a root or a tender plant out of parched ground.

1. You wouldn’t expect to see an oak tree growing out in the middle of the desert.

2. Jesus was raised in the backwoods in Nazareth of Galilee. Nazareth was a little

village off the beaten path in Galilee. It was not a famous place like Jerusalem,

Athens, or Rome. It was the hither land, the jumping off place and yet Nazareth

was the dry ground where the Root of David of David grew up.

a. When Philip found Nathanael and told him about the one whom Moses and the

prophets spoke, Nathanael said to him, John 1:46 “Can anything good come out of
Nazareth?” Jesus never did any miracles in Nazareth.

     3. When you think about it, Jesus didn’t have the “right” parents (teenage mother) and a
          carpenter father not a scribe or Rabbi. He didn’t have the right location for growing up.
          He didn’t have the best schooling that would have been available in Jerusalem.

a. I think Isaiah is telling us that no one would have expected the Messiah to come out of
Nazareth with common parents.

B. God raises up servants from unlikely locations.

1. Don Nash was a Greek professor at KCU. He said he was in a street gang in Cleveland,

OH as a youth.

2. I have the biography of R.M. Bell former president of JBC. His mother died when he was

8 days old and his father abandoned him at 6 months of age. Grandparents raised him.

3. Ed Bousman said he was a terrible student in high school.

4. No one saw a preacher coming out of the dysfunctional family that I was raised in.

a. Perhaps God is still searching the back woods, the dry ground, the unlikely locations

for locations for people who want to be in His service.

II. JESUS WAS A MAN OF SORROWS.

“a man…acquainted with grief”

A. Isaiah said Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

1. Matthew records the death of John the Baptist as he was beheaded by Herod. John had

been Jesus’ forerunner. He was Jesus cousin obviously on his mother’s side.

a. Matt 14:13 “Now when Jesus heard about John, He withdrew from there in a boat to a
secluded place by Himself.” (I have an idea Jesus shed some tears over John’s death.)

2. Did you know Palm Sunday was a day of sorrow for Jesus?

a. Luke 19:41 “When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it.”
Why? Rejection.

3. John 11:35 “Jesus wept.”

B. God had one Son without sin, but no sons without pain and suffering.

1. Life is not fair, but God is not life. Sometimes, we suffer because we are Christians.

2. 1 Pet. 2:21 “For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you,

leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps.”

III. HE WAS CRUCIFIED BY GOD.
“Smitten of God, and afflicted”

A. The execution of Jesus was executed by men, but it was God’s idea.

1. v.4 says, “Smitten of God” and v.10 says, “But the Lord was pleased to crush

Him.” (The Lord was pleased with the results, but not the suffering-darkness)

2. Who crucified Jesus? God crucified Jesus. Our sin made us guilty, sick, and lost in the
mind of God. Therefore, God devised a plan to reconcile us to Him not Him to us.

a. Roger Chambers said, “It was not our plan and if we would have had the plan

we would not have the man.”

3. John 18:11 “the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?”

4. Acts 2:23 “delivered up by the predetermined plan of God.”

5. Rom. 8:32 “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all.”

Before God ever made the world, He could look through the telescope of foreknowledge

and see Jesus on the cross.

Eph. 1:4 “Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.”

2. The Lord had previously told Abraham to sacrifice His son, but he stayed his human

sacrifice, but God didn’t grant a stay for the execution of his son.

a. God understands what it means to lose a Son?

b. Marshall Leggett said, “If you or I had a son who was dying we would do everything

possible to try to save Him, but our heavenly Father didn’t lift a finger as His son went

from the hails of glory to the nails of Calvary.”

IV. HE WAS A WILLING SACRIFICE.

“So He did not open His mouth”

A. The Lamb of God was like the lamb of the flock that was led to slaughter.

1. Is. 53:7 “Yet He did not open His mouth; like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a
sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth.”

2. When you kill a hog it will squeal to its last breath but not so with a lamb.

3. John 1:29 “The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God
who takes away the sin of the world!”

          a. A mother and her small son were window shopping at Christmas time. They came
                upon a store front with a nativity scene displayed. The boy asked his mother who it
                was. She said, “That’s Mary and her baby Jesus.” The boy said, “Huh, I thought Mary
                had a little lamb.”

B. Jesus was like Isaac in that he was a willing sacrifice.

     1. John 10:17,18 “For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down my life that I
          may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own
          initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This
          commandment I received from My Father.”

2. There were times in Jesus ministry when the religious leaders tried to kill Him, but

          He just slipped away from their grasp because it was not yet His time to die, but Jesus did
          not go to the cross kicking and screaming like a child that doesn’t want to take a bath,
          when it was His time He was a willing sacrifice.

3. Sometimes you will hear a well-intentioned communion mediation that says, “Jesus didn’t
really have to die.” That is not true. HE DID have to die.

a. Matt. 16:22-23 “Lord this shall never happen to you.” But He said to Peter, “Get
behind me Satan! You are not setting your mind on God’s interest, but man’s”

4. The fifth gospel says Jesus was a willing sacrifice.

V. HE BORE THE SINS OF THE WHOLE WORLD.

“the iniquity of us all to fall on Him”

Jesus bore your sin and my sin.

1. 1 Pet. 2:24 “And He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross that we might die to

sin and live to righteousness; for by his wounds you were healed.”

2. The message of the cross is basically twofold. #1 Sin is bad, #2 Sinners are worth

dying for.

B. God treated or viewed or credited Jesus as if He was guilty, but nothing was done to

Jesus physically in regard to sin being applied to Jesus.

1. 2 Cor. 5:21 The Living Bible “For God took the sinless Christ and poured into him our
sins. Then, in exchange, he poured God’s goodness into us.” (Sin is not something God

smeared on Jesus like you smear salve on a wound.)

     2. 2 Cor. 5:21 “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might
          become the righteousness of God in Him.” (Jesus was credited by God with the sins of
          the entire world.)

           a. I heard about the man who bought a Rolls Royce and he went on vacation. While he
                was on vacation, it broke down. He called the company and they flew a mechanic to
                fix it. After waiting several weeks without receiving a bill, he contacted the company.
                They sent an immediate reply which said, “We have no record of a Rolls Royce with
                mechanical failure.”

b. “Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be white as snow.” Is. 1:18

c. If we are in Christ, God has no record of moral failure.