Just moments before I walked up onto the stage to preach this last Sunday, I glanced down at my phone to check the time. As soon as I did, this Apple News notification lit up the screen:
Oddly enough, it's the second time this year I've seen a headline of this nature. Back in March, I wrote up a news story for Disrn that detailed how a group of Russian researchers claimed they had figured out how to bring humans back from the dead.
I found it more than a little fitting that the message I was delivering just moments after reading that headline was from Isaiah 53, perhaps the most memorable series of Old Testament Messianic prophecies ever delivered. The prophet, speaking more than 600 years before Jesus would walk the face of the earth, unambiguously clarified clue after clue of how mankind could identify God's "suffering servant" sent to redeem and save us.
- He would look like an average, ordinary person (v2)
- He would be rejected by His own people (v3)
- He would experience grief and suffering (v3)
- He wouldn't be recognized for what He was here to do (v3)
- He would be punished to bring us peace with God (v5)
- He would be pierced for our mistakes (v5)
- He would bring salvation and healing (v5)
- He would bear the sins of people as a substitute (v6)
- He would suffer but not complain (v7)
- He would be convicted in a dishonest court (v8)
- He would die innocent (v9)
- He would be given a rich man's burial (v9)
- He would die because it was God's will (v10)
- He would make many righteous before God (v11)
Of course, all of that screams the name Jesus of Nazareth, but what stood out to me in light of modern man's apparent renewed interest in living forever, were verses 10 and 11 of that famous passage.
Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.
These words would have held special meaning to those in Isaiah's day, living under the Old Covenant's practice of guilt offerings. To temporarily cover over the sins of those who had offended God, this system of sacrifices was established wherein the blood of an animal would be shed as a substitute, satisfying the death wage of sin. But Isaiah's words, like every page of the Old Testament, foreshadowed the coming of something…Someone…far greater.
A once for all guilt offering, poured out to eternally justify mankind before the perfect Creator against whom we'd foolishly rebelled. That Offering, sacrificed at Calvary, would see the sinless Son become sin for our sake. By the act of this long-awaited "suffering servant" Isaiah predicted and the Apostles revealed, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."
Read in 21st century parlance, Jesus paid God's price for us to live forever. And that's why there's no other way.
It's why Russian researchers can't offer immortality, and science can't help us receive eternal life. It's why no other thought system, belief system, ideology, prophet, priest, or king holds the key. None of them – not Muhammad, not the Buddha, not Confucius, not Joseph Smith, not Zoroaster, not Mahavira, nor any other – bore our iniquities, buried them in a tomb, and rose victorious to offer us freedom from the grave.
Consider as but one example the dying words of Siddhartha Gautama, revered historically as "the Buddha," founder of Buddhism and a number of subsequent meditation-based, Eastern religious offshoots. On his death bed, the Buddha told humanity, "strive on, untiringly." Keep reaching, keep pursuing, keep trying, keep ascending, keep evolving, keep attempting to attain to the highest plane of the universe – reach up to the level of gods. It's the theme of every major world religion before and since. Except one.
The dying words of Jesus offered a far different approach: "It is finished." There's no more striving, no more reaching, no more futile and fruitless efforts at attaining something that was eternally out of reach. He has made a way – the only way.
How remarkable, the suffering servant Isaiah spoke of nearly 3,000 years ago still beckons to busy souls today checking Apple News stories for a way to achieve eternal life: "put down your iPhone, and come, follow me."
