No beauty or majesty…

What was the ultimate purpose for which Jesus became the Son of Man - and why could God's purpose only be fulfilled in this way?

Even the closest disciples of Jesus failed to understand this purpose until after his death and resurrection. Nevertheless, the whole plan of God was unfolded in amazing detail and accuracy by the prophet Isaiah 700 years before it was actually fulfilled in history.

This prophetic revelation is contained in Isaiah, chapter 53. We are going to read that entire chapter, but we are going to do it in four successive sections - each section containing three verses.

“Who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? [He, that's the arm of the Lord, this person] 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. 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 53:1-3, NIV)

First of all, we're warned right at the beginning against unbelief. "Who has believed our message ?". The great barrier to understanding this is unbelief. Then we see that a person is unfolded who's called, "the arm of the Lord." The arm of the Lord is that part of God, if I may use that phrase, with which He acts, with which He performs His will. So this person is somehow God's main instrument to perform His will.

And then it speaks about his own frailty, "he was like a tender shoot." We’ve already seen how the type of Baranush, ‘Son of Man’ in Aramaic, particularly focuses on human frailty. And then it speaks about the spiritual barrenness of the situation, "he was like a root out of a dry ground." Then it emphasizes his humility as a person and also his social humility, he was not a prince or ruler, he was not from the priestly tribe or caste, he was just a humble man.

Don’t be deceived by the idea that God needs strong, charismatic, powerful people to perform His will. Biblical history shows again and again how God chooses the humble and low, and ultimately, He chose Jesus Christ!