Surely He Has Borne Our Griefs
By Pastor John Piper

     “Behold, My servant will prosper, he will be high and lifted up, and greatly exalted. Just as many were astonished at you, My people, so his appearance was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men. Thus He will sprinkle many nations, kings will shut their mouths on account of Him; for what they had not been told them they will see, and what they had not heard they will understand.”
    “Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.”  (Isaiah 52:13-53:6)
    Nowhere in all the Old Testament does the Gospel of Jesus Christ shine more clearly than in Isaiah 53. Seven hundred years before Jesus came into the world, God opened the eyes of His prophet to see into the very heart of Christ's saving work. And the heart of that saving work is substitution. The Messiah is pierced and crushed in our place. The righteous in the place of the unrighteous. The Loving Shepherd in the place of the lost sheep. The exalted king in the place of the rebel subjects.
    So, when we look at Isaiah 53 what we have is not only a beautiful revelation of Christ's saving death in the place of sinners, but a stunning validation of its truth. Christ not only died for sinners so that we could be saved, He died for sinners in fulfillment of explicit prophecy so that we could know more surely that we are saved. When you read the story of your salvation in detail 700 years before it happened, you have not only revelation, but validation.
    And so I invite you not only to revel in the great substitutionary work of Christ that takes away your condemnation, but also to be strengthened in your confidence that this is no myth, but the historical work of God Who told His story long before it happened.
    This passage of scripture is about the "Servant of the Lord." Notice 52:13, "Behold my Servant will prosper . . ." (cf. v. 11).

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Islam or Easter
By Rev. Steven Cakouros

    “I did not see a temple in the city because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” (Revelation 21:22)

    Recently a politician with designs on the White House said that he is both a Muslim and a Christian.  This is altogether impossible.  In their purest form these two religions exclude each other.  There is no middle ground between Islam and Christianity, no place of appeasement.  Christians and Muslims are forever separated by two books, the Koran (Qur’an) and the Holy Bible; two cities, Jerusalem and Mecca; two prophets, Mohammed and Jesus; and two temples, the Kaaba in Mecca which belongs to Islam, and Jesus in heaven--who is to Christians the true temple, the place of atonement.
    Islam and Christianity are derived from different sources and are governed by radically different principles, not the least of which is that Christianity glorifies God in a way that Muslims believe is dishonoring to God.  An essential tenet of Islam is that the faithful can never be vanquished.  This is why Mohammed, Islam’s prophet and sole voice of authority, told his followers that Jesus was stolen away before His enemies were able to kill Him, and in His place a “shadow” was crucified.  On the other hand, Christians believe that the God of the Bible always comes to us with power kept back.  The cross, despised by the world as a symbol of weakness, glorifies God as nothing else can for He is not just power and brute force; God is mercy and grace.  The underlying principle of Islam is the love of power.  The underlying principle of Christianity is the power of love.  “The message about the cross doesn’t make any sense to lost people.  But for us who are being saved, it is God’s power at work.  As God says in the Scriptures, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of all who claim to be wise.  I will confuse those who think they know so much.’” (1 Corinthians 1:18-19 CEV)
    Islam has offered Christians a crumb by telling them that the prophet Mohammed admitted that Jesus was not born of a human seed and that he spoke of Him with reverence.  This acknowledgement comes with a price.  We must accept what follows it, which is that Mohammed is a greater prophet than Jesus because he came after Him.  This same reasoning is used to explain why the earlier parts of the Koran are contradicted by later revelations, for what comes last is superior to what has gone before it.  Mohammed, a mere man coming after Jesus, is given the respect Christians reserve for God, while Jesus who fully demonstrated through His miracles and the resurrection that He is the Son of God is looked upon by Muslims as if He were a mere man.

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