Isaiah 53:1

Ash Wednesday

Theme: Who has believed our message?

Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

Who can believe it? Who can believe our astonishing news about Jesus Christ? It is amazing! It is incredible! Who would believe that God would become a man and live on earth alongside us? Even more astonishing, who would believe that that very God would be so bitterly rejected, tortured by his fellow man, and the murdered? And as if that weren’t enough, who would believe that three days later, that dead God would come back to life?

In fact, such a message is impossible to believe. Except that the Holy Spirit reveals it to us, man is incapable of believing such a thing; it is foolishness to the gentile and a stumbling block to the Jew.

The message that is so hard to believe has to do with the “Arm of the Lord.” The arm of the Lord is God in action. It is God using his strength and power to accomplish deliverance for his people from His and their enemies. It was by his outstretched arm that the Lord delivered the Israelites out of Egypt and redeemed them. The Lord promised Moses: “I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage. I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm.” Afterward Miriam and the Israelites sang praised the Lord: By the greatness of thine arm the Egyptians are motionless as stone; until thy people pass over, o Lord, the people whom thou hast purchased.”

And now, God has stretched his arm anew and in a new way. God is reaching out his arm to rescue his people from the evil which threatens us. God’s arm is again in action, bringing salvation and blessing to us. But it is stretched out in a strange way. As way that is hard to believe. His arm does not look powerful or mighty, but weak as it takes the form of a suffering servant. Isaiah says: “He grew up like a tender shoot, and like a root out of parched ground. He has not stately form or majesty that we should look upon him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Like one from whom men hide their face, he was despised and we did not esteem him.”

God’s salvation is manifest in a man who is like a tender plant struggling to survive in a desert. A man who is rejected, even hated. A man who knows pain and suffering. When people see this man they are shocked, appalled and hid their faces from him. He has no visible majesty or beautiful appearance to attract us to him. As an infant King Herod tried to kill him and his parents had to flee to Egypt to protect him. As an adult even the people of his home town rejected him. He went through life hungry and thirsty, tired and weary. He was popular with the crowds when they could get what they wanted from him, but was scorned and rejected when he would not give them what they wanted.

As we go through the Lenten Season this year, our theme for the mid-week Lenten services is “Our Suffering Savior.” We will focus on his suffering for us. The price he paid for our sin. The cost the God had to pay to redeem us back from death. And in the end we will see than not only did he die to pay the price of our redemption but he rose again victorious and declares by his resurrection that the sins of the world are taken away.

Yet the prophetic message God spoke through Isaiah is that this man, scorned and shunned, despised and rejected, is actually the arm of the Lord reaching out to execute God’s salvation. This man of sorrows who looks so weak, is in reality the strength and power of God. He is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe. He is the power of God that overcame sin and death and bestows forgiveness and eternal life on us. No wonder this message is so hard to believe!

“Who has believed our message?” asks the text. It is our message to proclaim. It is our task to proclaim this message to all people, everywhere.

Many people in our world today do not believe our message. It is easy to see why. Who wants to admit that they are sinful and that if their sins are left unforgiven they will be forever condemned to eternal punishment and suffering? Who wants to admit that we desperately need help—someone to deliver us from what we deserve? What’s more, who wants to admit that we need a rescuer like the one we see in Scripture—a suffering servant who was hung on a cross and executed as a criminal.

Who can believe it? The answer is: We do. We confess it in the creed: I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Begotten Son who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead and buried.” We believe that Jesus Christ, this suffering servant, this man of sorrows, this man from whom so many hide their face, is our Savior from sin and death. Others may despise and reject him, but we believe that he is the salvation of God, the outstretched arm of God which saves his people from all evil and death.

Amen.

Study:

Arm of the Lord:

Isa 51:9 awake, put on strength, o arm of the Lord; awake as in the days of old. Was it not you…who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep and who made the depths of the sea a pathway for the redeemed to cross over?

Exodus 6:6 I will bring you out form under the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you. I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm…