[The following devotional was written by Wildwood Community Church Student Pastor Jonathan Holmes and is a part of our 2014 Advent Devotional Guide. We will be posting a devotional each day on this blog between November 30 – December 31, 2014.]
This is Our Guy!? by Jonathan Holmes
Read: Isaiah 53:1-12
Isaiah 53 is quite possibly the most well known Old Testament prophecy about Jesus Christ. Isaiah wrote this detailed description of the coming Messiah in his prophecy around 700 years before Jesus came. The first six verses talk about the kind of death Jesus would suffer.
How different do you think Isaiah’s prophecy was than the expectations of the people?
Isaiah wrote of a suffering servant. You can imagine how this flew in the face of the kind of person the people expected to deliver them. Dreaming of a king, the people hear/read of Isaiah’s prophecy of a Messiah that comes in humility to face a life of punishment and shame. “Wait…this is our guy!?”
This is HIM! We celebrate the reality of a suffering Savior today, but it missed the expectations of the people in Isaiah’s time and even a lot of the Jews (Pharisees and Sadducees) during Jesus’ time.
Question
- Can you think of a time in your life that your expectations didn’t match up with the reality that God provided for you?
Advent Prayers
- Thank God that His plan is greater than any of your expectations.
- Pray that in missed expectations that you would see the beauty of God’s plan above yours.