The servant in Isaiah 52 and 53 is one of the most intriguing figures in the prophetic Scriptures. The questions about this passage are many, the interpretations are diverse, and the answers always seem to be different.

Some have looked to Isaiah 52 and 53 in search of Jesus, others to reclaim Israel’s role in the world, and some to find a historical explanation for this prophetic text that seems to have no precedence.

Here's my translation of part of Isaiah 53:10–11:

If she places his life a guilt offering, he will see offspring, he will prolong days ... From the trouble of his life, he will see light. He will be satisfied. In his knowledge, my righteous servant shall make many righteous and he will bear their iniquities.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of those historic events theologians and Christian apologists have worked very hard to "prove."  And rightly so.  No less a biblical authority than the apostle Paul says the faith of all who follow Christ is "futile" if Christ has not been raised from the dead (1 Cor. 15:17).  So it's not enough to believe Jesus is some kind of life force that fills all people, and it's certainly not acceptable to conjecture that God is going to rescue humanity apart from the risen Christ.  Either Jesus is alive today  and the Christian faith is true, or Jesus is still dead and the Christianity is a joke.

The good news is that there is enough historic evidence to reasonably believe the resurrection of Jesus Christ took place as the Bible describes.  There's the proof of the empty tomb, the proof of hundreds of eyewitnesses, and the proof of transformed believers who sacrificed everything for what they knew to be true.

Holy Saturday is the perfect limbo-day to think about both death and resurrection ... the two sides of the Easter coin .  Pursuant to my previous post about the value of Good Friday, my friend Justine asked if I would share the following lyric.  This is a fairly new song that will be featured on my upcoming cd (to be released this fall) -- more to the point, it's my diary!

As always, I'd be thrilled to hear how it hits you.

MY FAVORITE LIE 

Words (and music you can't hear on a blog) by Carolyn Arends

I'm a caterpillar who will not cocoon

Feels like  a tomb

The death of Jesus on the cross is central to the Christian life, but it is also part of a larger story, one that includes the resurrection. Without the resurrection of Jesus, the cross would be meaningless, because without the resurrection, there would be:

No Messiah. The true Messiah must fulfill the Messianic prophecies found in the Hebrew Scriptures, including the prophecy that the Messiah would die for the sins of the world (Isaiah 53:7,8), and that God would raise Him from the dead (Psalm 16:9,10). If Jesus did not come back to life after dying, then He wasn’t the Messiah. And if Jesus wasn’t the Messiah, then both Jews and Gentiles alike are still waiting for salvation.

No Eternal Life. Jesus didn’t just say that He would be resurrected. He also said that He would be a resurrection for us:  I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die like everyone else, will live again. They are given eternal life for believing in me and will never perish (John 11:25,26).  If Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead, then Jesus was a big fat liar, and there’s no hope for us to have eternal life.

No Heaven. Do you think about heaven? There’s no loftier thought we human beings can have. Now think about this: Without the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, we’ll never get there. Jesus made it very clear that He is our connection to heaven. Not only is He designing and building a place in heaven for all who believe in Him, but He has also promised to take us there personally (John 14:1-4). As wonderful and amazing as heaven sounds, it doesn’t mean a thing if Jesus is still dead.

No Hope. The bottom line is that without the resurrection, we’re sunk. Oh yeah, we can appreciate the teachings of Jesus, we can do our best to imitate the life of Jesus, and we can feel good about living good lives here on earth. But what good is that if there’s no hope of a life with Jesus beyond this one? If Christians are merely putting their faith in a dead guy, they are just what Ted Turner once called them—a bunch of losers. Or as the apostle Paul put it, we are to be pitied (1 Corinthians 15:19).

When I was Austin, Texas screening my movie Purple State of Mind at the Alamo Drafthouse, my friends at The Work of the People grabbed a few minutes with me outside.    They produce the smartest and snappiest and most gut punching videos for churches around the world.  Nobody creates resources for worship with more originality and verve.   

Ever the provocateur, filmmaker extraordinaire Travis Reed launched a few loaded questions my way.   No planning, no prep, just spontaneous riffing.   His camera rocked and rolled across an array of issues.   Fifteen minutes later, our conversation had concluded.  

And yet, through the miraculous power of editing, Travis turned those fifteen minutes into three potent short pieces about the danger of televangelists, how to 

It is undeniable and indisputable.  Jesus was the most extraordinary person the world has ever known.  Even atheists and those who are cynical of any spiritual nature in Christ and humanity readily acknowledge the overwhelming impact Jesus has made on our civilization.  The famous historian--and self-professed skeptic--W.E.H. Lecky conceded the importance of the life of Jesus Christ with this statement:

"The character of Jesus has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive in its practice, and has exerted so deep an influence, that it may truly be said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists."