Expository Sermon on Isaiah 53
by Maylan Schurch
8/2/2025
©2025 by Maylan Schurch
(To watch this entire service, click the link just below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnkaxUSFNOo&t=5215s
Please open your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 53.
Most of you know that I’m suggesting that we read the Bible through this year based on a chronological reading plan, which is much as possible puts the Bible passages together so you can see the parallels. You can always find out where we are in the reading when looking in your bulletin, where the box will give you the exact date of a certain passage.
As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t literally follow the day-by-day approach, but I do read all the passages as I get a sermon ready. And today’s sermon is on Isaiah 53, which is one of the passages for this week.
This past Thursday, maybe about 12:30, just after noon, something very startling happened to me. I was driving up to the church, and I knew that the Blue Angels fighter jet team would be rehearsing from about 11 till 1 o’clock. So I wondered whether I would spot them on my trip. I’d been hearing a distant rumbling in the background
I-405 was busy, so I was driving on a Newcastle Street which paralleled 405, when suddenly a large black shadow passed over me. Even though it was there and it was gone, just like that, I got the impression that the shadow was big, and jagged, and pointy.
I thought to myself, “Whoa. I’ll bet that’s a Blue Angel jet.” And as I drove, I glanced up in the sky in the direction where I thought it had gone. And then, through a gap in the trees, I saw that fighter hurtling away, going northwest over Lake Washington.
As I worked on my sermon, deciding which direction to go with it, my mind kept coming back to that shadow. Because if that fighter jet had been fully armed, that would be a pretty dangerous shadow, if I happened to have been in its gunsights.
From what I found out online, these Blue Angel pilots are flying the Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet. The Super Hornet is a strike fighter capable of air-to-air and air-to-ground missions. I don’t know how fully armed these demonstration jets are, but when it goes into combat, the Super Hornet has an internal 20mm M61A2 rotary cannon and can carry air-to-air missiles, air-to-surface missiles, and a variety of other weapons.
That rotary cannon is a M61 Vulcan, and it is a six-barrel, air-cooled, electrically fired Gatling-style rotary cannon which fires 20 mm × 102 mm (0.787 in × 4.016 in) rounds at an extremely high rate, typically 6,000 rounds per minute).
I mean, talk about a shadow of death. From what I learned, the Super Hornet has seen extensive combat use in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. It has also been involved in operations against Houthi targets in the Red Sea. And its shadow flickered over me on Thursday.
As I read through Isaiah 53 this week in several Bible versions, it struck me that there are gloomy shadows looming over those verses. Isaiah 53, of course, is one of the Old Testament’s clearest prophecies about Jesus. Isaiah 53 is quoted several times in the New Testament, where they make the connection between those prophecies and Jesus Himself.
As Jesus walks through these Isaiah verses, He is covered with shadows. In fact, shadows have loomed over Jesus since before the creation of the world. Revelation 13:8 calls Him “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”
That verse tells me that even before Jesus and His Father, and the Holy Spirit gathered around this planet and began to shape and populate it, even before then, Jesus had already agreed to be the eventual sacrifice for all humanity, all who would accept it.
So even as Jesus knelt on Eden’s garden sod, and began to form the body of Adam, even then, the shadow of death was hanging over Jesus. That shadow was not like the one made by the Blue Angels Super Hornet which flickered over me on Thursday, and was gone. No, Jesus’ shadow was one which would chill the Savior’s heart until 3 PM on a certain Friday afternoon on a Roman cross.
And Isaiah 53 describes some of the shadows Jesus stepped beneath. He could have sidestepped them. He could have remained at a safe distance in heaven, watching this old planet tumble through space as its inhabitants destroyed each other.
Instead, Jesus stepped beneath the shadow, and began to walk toward the final shadow of death.
Let’s spend a few moments watching Jesus walk beneath the shadows. Because what He put Himself through for us give us incredible hope.
Isaiah 53:1 – 2 [NKJV]: Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
You know what I think is the first shadow which covered Jesus, according to Isaiah 53? If you’re taking down sermon points, you can call this one Sermon Point One.
Jesus’ first shadow was invisibility.
Why do I say that this first shadow is invisibility? Well, as you know, some people look more impressive than the average person. They entere a room, and all eyes turn to them. Other people don’t have a particularly dramatic appearance, and they can easily slip through crowds, or slip through life, fairly invisibly.
Jesus chose invisibility. Except for when He stood with his friends Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration, His face shining like the sun, Jesus didn’t attract much visible attention. Of course, as soon as He started healing people, or multiplying bread and fish, or kicking over money-tables in the temple, then He would catch attention. But He was humble and self-effacing.
Jesus chose to be ordinary -looking. He was the Son of David, and 1 Samuel 17:42 described David as rosy-cheeked and good-looking. But David’s most famous Descendant is described as having “no form or comeliness” (the NIV says “no beauty or majesty”) to make us attracted to Him by His looks.
In fact, Jesus was so ordinary-looking that when Judas betrayed Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, he actually had to signal who Jesus was by giving him a Middle Eastern male-to-male kiss on the cheek.
Why would Isaiah go to the trouble of referring to Jesus as basically a homely man? I think one reason is that it fits right in with Paul’s description of the four-step descent Jesus made as He became human.
Philippians 2:5 – 8: Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.
why would he
So, what could this possibly have to do with me? Well, maybe there are times when you and I feel invisible.
I know that my ancestors probably felt fairly invisible when they landed in New York and went through the Ellis Island immigration processing. Here were these guttural German-speakers, with these strange-looking and unpronounceable last names, all crowding into the country. I know that a lot of times, the Ellis Island immigration officials were careless about writing immigrants’ names correctly. My own last name, Schurch, is spelled over 70 different ways in America, mostly because of this carelessness on the part of the immigration clerks.
And Jesus chose to join us in this invisibility. Maybe it was to assure us that, as He once told Samuel in 1 Samuel 16:7, “man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
So if you feel the invisible from time to time, just remember that you’re in good company, and He considers you top quality. “I’m a child of the king, the child of the king, with Jesus my Savior I’m a child of the King.”
Jesus moved through life under the shadow of invisibility. Not only does it seem that He was rather homely, but He was invisible in another way: but except for a few of His close friends, no one knew that He was the Son of God.
But there’s another layer of shadow that covered Jesus.
Isaiah 53:3: He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Here comes Sermon Point Two.
Jesus’ was first overshadowed by invisibility. He was also overshadowed by contempt.
It’s one thing to be “looked through” as though you are not there. It’s worse if, when people look at you, they do so with contempt.
And that’s what happened to Jesus. But why? Where did this contempt come from? Of course, not everyone felt this way about Jesus. But in the last 12 hours of his life, from the Gethsemane on, the majority of people expressed nothing but contempt for him. When Pilate offered the crowds the choice between the sinless Jesus and the murderous Barabbas, the crowd howled that Barabbas should be freed. The spirit of Satan aroused the mob, and only a few reached out to help Jesus as He staggered on His way up the hill of Calvary.
Women wept for him, and a man named Simon, from Cyrene in what is now northern Libya, stepped in to help carry Jesus’ cross. But the general harassment continued, all the way up the hill of death, and even as Jesus hung on the cross, the sneers of the religious leaders cut Him to the heart.
But this isn’t just another tragic human story. There was a reason why He was suffering.
Verse 4: Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows . . . .
Here comes Sermon Point Three.
Jesus’ was overshadowed by invisibility. He was overshadowed by contempt. And all because He was overshadowed by our sins.
And here is where you and I need to step under the shadow with Jesus as He suffers for us.
Verse 4: . . . Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted.
Remember how the unrepentant thief on the cross joined the priests and the rulers, taunting Jesus to prove He was the Son of God by coming down from the cross?
But as we join Jesus beneath His cross, beneath that shadow, that literal darkness which hung over the land for a few hours, let’s listen as Isaiah preaches the gospel to us. Remember, Jesus Himself knew this very prophecy. He had studied it, and memorized it.
That upcoming Sunday evening, as the risen Christ walked to the town of Emmaus with two stunned, shell-shocked disciples, this was one of the passages which He would use to explain to them how all through Scripture, though He felt the chilly mists of death’s shadow, there was a reason for why all this had to happen.
Verses 5 – 9: But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken. And they made His grave with the wicked— But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth.
Because, you see, even though for most of His life, Jesus’ was indeed overshadowed by invisibility. He was indeed overshadowed by increasing contempt. And on His cross the shadows grew dreadfully dark, because He was overshadowed by our sins.
But let’s not linger here. Instead, let’s travel to that grave, the wealthy Arimathean Joseph donated grave, and let’s watch the shadows vanish. Let’s go to Matthew 28 and see this happen.
Matthew 28:1 – 4: Now after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat on it. His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. And the guards shook for fear of him, and became like dead men.
Can you see any shadows around Jesus now? I can’t. We might walk through some shadows this week, but we must remember that Jesus has banished His shadows forever, and will evaporate our shadows completely when He returns.
He had been overshadowed by invisibility, but not any more. Instead, He is visible, in your faces, through your voices, through the faith that brings you here this morning, on the worship day He created, the faith that sends you out to be an influence for Him, a light to the world for whom He died.
Jesus had been overshadowed by contempt, but that shadow is vanishing too. Because He was also overshadowed by our sins, and if we ask Him to forgive our sins, He is faithful, and just, to do it, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Because He has paid for those sins with His life, and He is worthy not of our contempt but of our love.
What I would like, right now, is if you could keep your hymnals closed for a couple of moments. I’m going to ask you to just listen while I read the words of ancient poetry which make up our closing song. Sometimes when we sing words like this, we can’t fully grasp the words because we’re having to perform them.
So first, let’s just listen to them, and then we can stand and sing them. And this isn’t just a poem, this is an appeal to us to let Jesus into our hearts again.
O sacred Head, now wounded,
with grief and shame weighed down,
now scornfully surrounded
with thorns, thine only crown:
how pale thou art with anguish,
with sore abuse and scorn!
How does that visage languish
which once was bright as morn!
What thou, my Lord, have suffered
was all for sinners’ gain;
mine, mine was the transgression,
but thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Savior!
‘Tis I deserve thy place;
look on me with thy favor,
vouchsafe to me thy grace.
What language shall I borrow
to thank thee, dearest friend,
for this thy dying sorrow,
thy pity without end?
O make me thine forever;
and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never
outlive my love for thee.