Christ Despised and Rejected
A Short Meditation on Isaiah 53:1-3
March 30, 2018 (Good Friday) · Download this article (PDF)
In our meditations this Good Friday, we divided Isaiah 53 into three parts. In verses 1-3, the Suffering Servant is despised and rejected by his people. In verses 4-6, he bore the sins of his people in his sufferings and death. And in verses 7-12, by the will of the LORD, he is crushed but is victorious over his enemies. So let us read our texts for this first meditation:
Isaiah 53:1–3: Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Luke 23:11: And Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him. Then, arraying him in splendid clothing, he sent him back to Pilate.
Acts 4:11 This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.
Isaiah prophesied that no one, except for a few, would believe the preaching of the Suffering Servant. Jesus’ own family, hometown, and nation were in disbelief that the Messiah will be the Servant of the LORD who would suffer and die. They all believed that he would come as a conquering King to deliver them from the Roman oppressors. After three and a half years of preaching and teaching, how many disciples followed him? One hundred twenty, a fraction of today’s megachurches, because he did not please his people with promises of liberation, health and wealth. And today, the whole world despises and rejects him.
The Jews did not want to hear Jesus’ gospel of repentance and faith in a suffering, dying Servant. Verses 2 and 3 even tell us that the Messiah had no form, majesty or beauty. He was not a handsome King Saul or King David. He doesn’t have the glitz and glamour of today’s celebrities. In fact, it was difficult to look at him, so they turned their faces away from his disfigured face and form at the cross. He had no beauty because he would bear the sin of all his people. And those who looked at him looked in disgust, hurling mockery and insults on him (Psa 22:7-8).
He was despised and rejected by his own family. Because his own brothers did not believe in him (John 7:5), they said, “He is out of his mind” (Mark 3:21). As Jesus was mocked then, he is still being mocked today. Pastors of liberal churches even doubt that the words of Jesus in the four Gospels are not his own, but only manufactured by the writers. They also doubt his virgin birth, miracles, death, and resurrection. These churches are like Jesus’ own family who were skeptics and doubters.
He was despised and rejected by his own hometown. When he first preached in Nazareth, he claimed to fulfill the words of the Messiah in Isaiah 61:1-2 when he said, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The Jews were shocked and skeptical of his Messianic claim, so Jesus said to them, “no prophet is acceptable in his own hometown.” They were so furious of this pretentious, blasphemous Messiah that they wanted to throw him off a cliff outside the city (Luke 4:16-30).
He was despised and rejected by his own nation Israel. On his way back to Jerusalem the day after he entered the city for the last time, Jesus cursed a fig tree that had no fruit. The tree immediately withered. Because Jesus knew that his own people the Jews would despise and reject him, he used the fig tree as a picture of Israel’s rejection by God. Israel would wither, and God’s people will not be Israel alone, but all the nations of the world would be grafted into a single olive tree representing one people of God: Jews and Gentile believers (Rom 11:17; also Eph 2:14-16). So he tells the Jews, “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits” (Matt 21:43).
Pharisees accused Jesus as being from the devil (Matt 12:24). Many towns in Israel rejected him after he preached to them (Matt 11:20–24). They tried in vain to trick him with hard questions, but Jesus always silenced them (Matt 22:34-45). So they always sought to arrest him and kill him (Matt 22:15–40). The same Jews who acclaimed him, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Hosanna in the highest!” (Matt 21:9) also shouted, “Crucify him!” (Mark 15:13) In Mark 8:31, Jesus foretold his sufferings and death at the hands of the Jews, “the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed.” He is “the stone that the builders [Israel] rejected,” yet this stone has become the true Cornerstone of God’s holy temple, the Church (Mark 12:10). This is why John 1:11 says, “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.”
He was despised and rejected by the world. Again, John 1:10 says, “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.” Psalm 22:6 says – in David’s words – that Jesus will say, “But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people.” His words are an offense and a stumbling block to the world because the world chooses the way of wickedness (1 Cor 1:23). No other human being was despised and rejected by the world like Jesus. The world was created by God through his Word, yet the world disavowed and rejected him (John 1:10). He came as the light of the world, yet the world loved the darkness of unbelief (John 3:19).
Christ was despised and rejected by the world. This is somber exhortation to us Christians. Not only would many of our relatives and friends – but also those in other churches who do not believe the true gospel of Christ – would despise, reject, mock and laugh at us. Slowly but surely, the noose around the neck of true churches preaching the life, death and resurrection of Christ for sinners is tightening. But many churches also have become like the unbelieving world that despises Jesus and the Bible. Christians all over the world, including those in nations where there is “freedom of religion,” are being persecuted and martyred. The laws of the Bible are being discarded in favor of utter lawlessness. In the name of political correctness and tolerance, truth has become falsehood, and falsehood has become truth. Two thousand years ago, Paul already described his culture and ours in 2 Timothy 3:2–5:
For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.
This is the state of the world that rejects and despises our Savior, the Suffering Servant.
