William Varner

Christians often overlook that Isaiah 53 describes the death of the Messiah and his return to life! Isaiah 53:10 affirms, “Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him, he has put him to grief.” Could anyone write a clearer presentation of the Gospel than this? And to think that it was written over 700 years before Jesus died and rose again in AD 30.

Two millennia of Christian believers have championed the great prophecy of Isaiah 53. They see it rightly as portraying the death of the Messiah. But this marvelous chapter also contains something that even Christians often overlook.

Golgotha was an ugly place, and Jesus was crucified between two ugly criminals. I remind the reader of the contrast between Jesus’ transfiguration and his crucifixion. That foretaste of His glory stood in stark contrast to the portrait of His suffering on Golgotha.

The Gospels say Jesus and the 11 left the room of the Last Supper and went across the Kidron to a place called “Gethsemane.” We must not lose sight that Jesus’ suffering, which was not limited to his later beatings and pain on the cross, began here in Gethsemane, under some lovely olive trees.

We know what hymn Jesus and his disciples sang at the Last Supper. It was Psalms 116–118. It was a sober song about rejection. That song, however, ended triumphantly because the day of the rejected stone became, for Jesus, the day of his installation as the cornerstone.

Jesus issued a blistering diatribe about the hypocrisy of the Jewish leaders in Matthew 23. Scripture offers no greater example of the uniting of divine holiness and divine love than this statement. After delivering this denunciation of sin, Jesus revealed a heart bursting with compassion for sinners.

One of His first acts after entering the city was Jesus’ famous cleansing of the Temple, where he overturned the moneychangers’ tables and the seats of those who sold animals. He got away with it because the common people believed in him—and protected him!

We should rejoice in the apparent “triumph” of that Palm Sunday. But we should also remember that for Jesus to be Israel’s Messiah, rejection and suffering were bound up in the initiation of this “Passion Week.”