Isaiah 53

Isaiah 53 is an incredible prophecy—by his own admission in verse 1—which cannot be discarded as uninspired or not revelatory without at the same time a total disregard for the honest and reasonable explanation a simple reading of the text offers. It is prophetic insight into a divine plan to offer Jesus for the sins of mankind.  It is a prophecy that could not be explained until we were able to look back in history and see for ourselves that it happened as Isaiah described.^⁠1 One is disingenuous  who expresses a disinterest in this chapter because it fails to support a hoped for corroboration with evolutionary or new-orthodox theory.  To conclude, therefore, that Isaiah’s “Suffering Servant” cannot be Jesus, or that chapter 53 does not specifically reference his vicarious and sacrificial death, is to shut the mind’s eye to an obvious truth that like a blinding sun outshines the logic of other interpretations.

Philip and the Ethiopian

Philip didn’t have John 3:16 or Acts 16:4 or Romans 3:23-25 to discuss God’s salvation through Christ …but he had Isaiah.  And he had a translation not any original Hebrew.  Ethiopians were fluent in Greek not Hebrew and they had the Septuagint version, the Greek translation, of Isaiah’s “Gospel.” The Ethiopian eunuch, whom Philip met in the wilderness, was reading it which was Philip’s opportunity to explain Calvary. Should we need any more to convince us of the providential hand of God, the irrefutable  evidence, that confirms and validates a christian faith in Isaiah’s work as the Word of God!?

And if it is God’s Word, we have been given one more miracle of the visible reality of an immanent God of Love.  Here in this simple account of 2 men in a chariot discussing the message of the Suffering Servant are seen the two biggest miracles:  Salvation has come to this Eunuch who was a Gentile, not a Jew, and the miracle of that book that he held in his hand over half a millenium after the prophet first transcribed it.