Project 119: Meditations on the Suffering Servant - Isaiah 52:13-15

April 06, 2020 | Project 119

“Time to Look Up”

Have you ever heard someone tell you to “look up”? That word of instruction is somewhat unique in that it can come our way either as a warning or as an encouragement. Our attention is either some place it doesn’t need to be, or we can’t see our way forward because of how something in our past has us down. Both situations merit a change in us, which a look upward in the right direction can make happen for the better.

The book of Isaiah contains such instructions that direct us to Jesus. Written about 600 years before Jesus’ death on the cross, Isaiah’s prophecy prepares us for the humiliation and anguish Jesus was to suffer on our behalf so that we might experience a deliverance only He could make possible.
The first word of Isaiah’s message turns our gaze to Calvary. “See” is how some translations render it. “Behold” is how others interpret it. When I was serving as a pastor in south Alabama, people there had what I thought was a charming expression (and still do): “Look here!” Maybe it reminds me of my first reading lesson with Dick and Jane and how even as a young child I could already envision the possibilities before me by directing my attention in the right direction. Unfortunately, Isaiah could see how when Jesus came, many would fail to recognize Him because of how His death would be the last thing they would have expected God’s Messiah to have gone through. What is the old saying? “Appearances can be deceiving.”

As we begin this most holy of weeks, fix your focus on Jesus, high and lifted up. Don’t allow your attention to be misdirected on things that others may tell you are important but really don’t amount to a hill of beans. And if you’re discouraged over how nothing seems to have worked out as you thought it might, the cross assures us that hope springs eternal, even if it does so in a way no one would have guessed.

So, “look up!” Your redemption is drawing nigh and what Jesus promises to do is something none of us can afford to miss.