Jesus Despised & Rejected
[Read Isaiah 53:1-3]
As a youth director, I had numerous college groups who requested to come and do some ministry with the teenagers. I remember one of those times very clearly. It was painful. They were not very prepared in what they wanted to do. Most of them weren’t sure about what they wanted to say. Most of them struggled to say what they wanted to say. A couple of them tried too hard to be passionate—and it came across as manufactures. I remember cringing through much of their ministry presentation.
Yet, as they wrapped up their presentation, there was silence throughout the room. I looked around the room and saw numerous teenagers in tears, cut to the heart by the Gospel message. God has used these college students’ message and presentation to powerfully impact the students in my group. It was a mess, but God used it anyway.
Actually, God has a habit of using things that are overlooked and underestimated for His glory. As you read through the Bible take note of this theme. Everyone thought Saul would be an amazing king because he looked the part, but David was overlooked because he was small, young, and a simply shepherd. Yet, Saul didn’t turn out to much and David—despite his faults—became a great king. God has a habit of using the overlooked and the underestimated for His glory.
Yet, we don’t really like that do we? Especially in the United States, we don’t like being considered overlooked and underestimated. We don’t like it when people look down on us. We don’t like it when people see us as weak and powerless. So, we put on a show. We want everyone to see us as powerful, beautiful, flashy, prestigious people.
We do this in the church as well. We don’t want anyone to look at our church and say, “Meh!” We worry that people may look at our church and think we’re just some small, weak church. We are tempted to try to put on our own show of power, beauty, flash, and prestige. We are tempted to try to do things so that the world won’t look down on us or overlook us or underestimate us. Yet, God has a tendency to use the overlooked and the underestimated for His glory.
This is why the Jews has such a hard time acknowledging Jesus as the Messiah. Isaiah says this about the Messiah: “He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” (Isaiah 53:2, NIV). He was not beautiful. He was not majestic or powerful. There was nothing about him that would cause people to “oooh” and “ahhhh” over him. He was a plain-jane, boring—looking guy.
So, nobody believed he was who he said he was. They couldn’t believe that the Messiah would be so “Meh!” No way. The Messiah was supposed to be their Savior. He was supposed to come in and rescue them from the Romans. He was supposed to come in and bring them back into the Promised Land. He was supposed to be a super hero—big, strong, commanding presence, intimidating, powerful, prestigious, good-looking. Yet, when they say Jesus they didn’t see much.
Actually, this passage says that when they say Jesus, they considered him a ZERO—nothing. It says, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” (Isaiah 53:3, NIV). When it says “we esteemed him not,” it is using a term for making calculations. So, it is really saying that they looked at Jesus, and gave him a value of ZERO. He was NOTHING. So, they despised Him and rejected Him. They hid their faces from him—not because they were ashamed of him, but to shun him. They hid their faces from him as a way of telling Him they didn’t think he was worthy of their time and energy. Remember, they considered him a NOTHING.
So, hardly any believed. Isaiah cries out, “Who has believed our message?” (Isaiah 53:1, NIV). It’s a rhetorical question with the answer being NOBODY. Isaiah is distraught because he keeps telling people about the coming Messiah and nobody will believe Him. They won’t believe him that the Messiah will be some plain-jane man walking the earth without any beauty or power about him. They refuse to believe him. They refuse to accept that the Messiah will be this way.
The same is true when Jesus walked the earth. In the Gospel of John he writes, “When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them. Even after Jesus had done all these miraculous signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him. This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet: “Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”” (John 12:36–38, NIV). Isn’t that incredible? Even with the Messiah, the Son of God, standing in their midst, they refused to believe in him. Why? Because he didn’t measure up to their standards. He wasn’t the Messiah they wanted. They wanted to create the Messiah in their own image, rather than accept the Messiah God gave them. So, they refused to believe.
Even after Jesus died and rose again from the dead people refused to believe. Romans is one of the letters Paul wrote later in his life. He had been doing ministry for about twenty-five years when he wrote the book of Romans. So, he’d been around the block a time or two. In that letter he writes, “And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our message?”” (Romans 10:15–16, NIV). He knows this truth from experience. He’s been out in the streets, out in the cities, out in the marketplace preaching the Gospel—preaching Jesus as the Messiah—and people have refused to believe. He says, “This is exactly what Isaiah said over 700 years ago. They refuse to believe because he isn’t a Messiah of their own making!” They refuse to believe because he looks like some homeless beggar wandering around with nothing better to do than talk to people. He has no beauty. He has no prestige. He has no power.
Or does he?
Isaiah uses a term here that we are probably not that familiar with. In verse one he asks two questions. He says, “Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?” (Isaiah 53:1, NIV). Who has believed his message? Who has the ARM OF THE LORD been revealed to? Again, this is a rhetorical question. He’s frustrated that nobody will believe his message. He can’t believe that THESE PEOPLE, people whom God has revealed himself to, would reject the message in unbelief.
Yet, he talks about the “arm of the Lord” being revealed. This terminology is used all over the Old Testament, but let’s look at just one of those passages from earlier in Isaiah. He writes, “The LORD will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.” (Isaiah 52:10, NIV). Make sure you get this image in your mind. When it says the Lord will lay bare his holy arm in front of all the nations, what do you picture? I picture some ripped, body-builder type, rolling back his sleeves and flexing his bicep. He’s doing it to show his power and might and strength. This is the picture we have of our God. He is rolling back his sleeves, flexing his muscles before the nations, so that they would see that He is powerful to save. So, the arm of the Lord is always connected with the power of God.
Now, in this passage Isaiah describes the Messiah as “the arm of the Lord.” So, when the “arm of the Lord” is revealed before the people, the Messiah is being revealed to the people. The power of God is being revealed to the people—God’s power to bring salvation. It’s an amazing thing, because the “arm of the Lord” had always been an invisible presence, guiding, protecting, and saving God’s people. Now, that “arm” is going to be revealed—it will no longer be invisible. The power of God is going to take on flesh and enter the world.
Yet, when the power of God takes on flesh and enters the world, he has no beauty or majesty about him. There’s nothing that will attract us to him. Exactly the opposite is true. People see him and despise him and reject him and spit on him as being worthless. They do it because they cannot believe that the power of God could possibly look like THAT. Yet, God has a tendency to use the overlooked and the underestimated for His glory. God has a pattern of revealing his power in unexpected places and unexpected people.
One of the most humbling passages of the Bible comes in 1 Corinthians. Paul writes, “Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.” (1 Corinthians 1:26, NIV). Alright, take a moment to think back to when you became a Christian or joined the church. Were you a big deal? No. He looks at the whole church and says, not many of you were that smart, not many of you were powerful, not many of you were prestigious. You are kind of a pathetic looking group of people—a gathering of the overlooked and underestimated—a gathering of those who are not beautiful, not majestic, despised, rejected, considered NOTHING.
That’s the picture of the church because that’s the picture of our Savior. We are not as big of a deal as we think we are. We are not as cool as we think we are. We are not as important as we think we are. Our Savior wasn’t any of these things and we won’t be either. Everybody saw Jesus and looked right past him as not being much of a big deal—pretty pathetic looking.
“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no-one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”” (1 Corinthians 1:27–31, NIV).
But God has a way of using the overlooked and underestimated for His glory. God has a way of using weak people to shame the strong, a way of using foolish people to shame the wise, a way of using despised and rejected people—people the world consider NOTHING—and using them to bring the world around them to nothing.
Why does he do this? So that when we boast, we boast in Him. When God does something powerful in our lives, in our families, in our churches, in our communities, we realize that there’s no way we could have done it ourselves (I mean, look at us!)…but God could do it. So we give him the glory. If we were powerful, rich, influential and made some big changes in the community, we would be tempted to think WE were the ones that did it. We would be tempted to boast about all of the work that WE are doing. Yet, when we realize that we are just a rowdy bunch of weak, despised, rejected, overlooked, and underestimated people, and then we recognize that something is happening because of our work in the world—THEN we praise and glorify God because we know that the ONLY way it could ever happen is through Him and His power.
We are not greater than our master. Jesus was not outwardly beautiful, powerful, or majestic. We don’t need to be either. Jesus was despised, rejected, and considered nothing. We will be too. Yet, underneath all of that lays the power of God. We can experience that too. As we faithfully live out our Christian lives in the world—seemingly boring on the outside—the power of God will flow through us into the world and bring the world to nothing. And people will look at that powerful work and they will not praise us for it—there’s no way we could have done it. They will look at that powerful work in the world and give praise and honor and glory to God. It will be like in Nehemiah where it is said, “When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God.” (Nehemiah 6:16, NIV).