“Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”
Isaiah 53:1-3
There really is no middle ground. Either Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, or He wasn’t. If He was, how is it that the Jewish people by and large didn’t recognize him when he came 2000 years ago? Isaiah tells us that the people misunderstood Jesus when He came. How did that happen? Each verse gives us one part of the answer.
I. They did not believe His message.
“Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?” Isaiah 53:1
The question is asked regarding who believed the message? The answer is, almost no one. Jesus came as the Messiah, but Israel wanted nothing to do with Him. We know that for a time Jesus had a powerful and growing ministry, especially in Galilee. Thousands flocked to hear Him speak andwatch Him heal the sick. As His reputation grew, the common people heard Him gladly. If they did not know who He was, they instinctively knew He was not like the other religious leaders.
We also know that many people followed Him for shallow reasons. They thought He would proclaim Himself king and lead a revolt against Rome. Or they liked His miracles. Or they admired His courage. Or perhaps they were drawn to the beauty of His teaching. But multitudes turned back when confronted with the call to become His followers. So many left that at one point Jesus asked his inner circle, “Will ye also go away?” John 6:67
By the time Jesus came to Jerusalem for the final time, the nation was deeply divided over Him. Even though the common people heard Him gladly, they did not know who He was. They liked Him, but they did not worship Him. To them He was a great teacher and a great miracle-worker, nothing more.
The leaders were a different story. With few exceptions, they wanted nothing to do with Him. They accused Him of being in league with the devil. They hated Him so much that they plotted to kill Him. As we all know, in due time they succeeded.
John says it this way: “He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11). He came to His own people—the nation of Israel, and they did not receive Him. They should have known better. They knew He was coming. God had told them over and over again many times and in many ways. They had ample warning. Even some pagan astrologers in Persia figured it out when they saw His star in the east.
He came to His own people, to the one place where he might be welcomed. He came to His “hometown” and to “His own family.” Yet, they did not want Him. They did not receive Him, nor did they believe Him. Finally, they crucified Him. That rejection continues in large part to this very day. The next verse explains why the nation misunderstood who Jesus really was.
II. They judged Him insignificant.
Jesus was not born in Rome. He wasn’t even born in Jerusalem. When God decided to enter the world, He came in a most unlikely way. He came not as a conqueror or a world leader but as a helpless little baby, born in a stable, in the little village of Bethlehem. He came as a tender plant. Years later His critics dismissed Him by asking, “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” (Matthew 13:55)
Jesus wasn’t born to royalty. Sometimes we look at someone and say, “He’s an average kind of guy.” That’s exactly what the leaders said about Jesus. They didn’t see any reason to take Him seriously, so they didn’t. He didn’t come with the usual marks of greatness, so the rulers completely misunderstood Him and his mission on the earth. He had an ordinary appearance. The Bible says He had, “no form nor comliness.” He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance indicated that we should desire Him.
For 2000 years people have wondered what Jesus looked like. Artists in every era have painted Jesus as they imagined Him to be. Most of those paintings tell us more about the artist than they do about Jesus. Perhaps that is inevitable since the gospel writers tell us virtually nothing at all about Jesus’ physical appearance. We know He was Jewish, and that He was raised in the Middle East, and we know He was raised in a workingman’s home. But that doesn’t tell us anything about His height, His weight, the color of His eyes, or anything about His distinctive features. Sunday School children in North America usually see pictures of a Jesus who is taller than His disciples, with long flowing hair, light skin, and dark brown eyes.
I have no real quarrel with the way Jesus has been portrayed across the centuries, so long as we all remember that no one knows what He really looked like. We have a pretty vivid description of Him later in Revelation but not so during His earthly ministry.
In most Hollywood productions, Jesus almost always stands out from the crowd. But Isaiah makes the opposite point. The people who rejected Him did so precisely because He wasn’t very impressive. He was not a natural head-turner. He was not a born leader, at least not in the way we normally use that phrase. Though He was the Son of God, He appeared on the earth as an ordinary man. Though He came from the majesty of heaven, He hid that majesty behind a workingman’s face.
The Jews of Jesus’ day missed this, just as many people miss it today. Jesus’ contemporaries had various opinions about our Lord, most of them quite wrong. In this instance, they concluded that Jesus simply could not be the Messiah. Let me remind you of this. You can be wrong about many things and still go to heaven, but you can’t be wrong about Jesus and still obtain salvation. That’s the reality of unbelief then and now.
III. They despised him for his suffering.
Isaiah 53 contains the good news we all need. He was bruised—for us. He was wounded—for us. He was beaten, betrayed, mocked, scourged, crowned with thorns, crucified—all for us. Our sins drove Jesus to the cross. But He did not go unwillingly. If our sins drove Him there, His love for us kept Him there.
“and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”
Twice Isaiah reminds us that people “despised” our Lord. That goes beyond rejection to a kind of settled hatred. They saw His suffering, and concluded that He could not be the promised Messiah. “We esteemed him not” means something like, “He’s a nobody to us.” The Hebrew word means to calculate or to reckon something, to add up all the facts and come to a settled conclusion. The Jewish leaders added it all up and decided that Jesus was worth, well…maybe thirty pieces of silver at the most.
That the Son of God should become a man is mystery enough, but that He should become a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering, should drive us to our knees in holy wonder and awe. And yet, Isaiah says, “We esteemed him not …we considered him stricken by God, smitten and afflicted.” And basically, mankind could care less.
Jesus was truly the misunderstood Messiah. His own people misread Him completely. They had Him in a box labeled “Insignificant Rabbi from Nazareth.” The more He proved He didn’t belong in that box, the more they hated Him, counted Him a nobody, and ultimately despised Him. No wonder they were so rabid to kill Him in the end.
May I say, He is still misunderstood today. The greatest mistake is to ignore Him as if He doesn’t matter or to think that you can postpone a decision. He came to this earth 2,000 years ago as the promised Messiah who is the Son of God and the Saviour of the world. Christ has come!
Jesus died for sinners. Are you a sinner? Then come near to the cross of Jesus. Look upon the Saviour. See His arms outstretched in love for you. Look, and believe, and receive the free gift of eternal life.
To those who receive Him He gives the right to become the children of God. What will you do with Jesus?
Dr. Worthington has been in the ministry for over forty five years and serves as President of Pathway Ministries and Christian Bible College.