"Christ" Tagged Sermons (Page 6)
Five general principles for reading the Psalms rightly open this series before turning to Psalm 2 itself, asking who is speaking and who is addressed. Christ’s kingship is the psalm’s real theme, not merely David’s own royal claims. Our triumph, as his people, rests entirely in the sovereignty of that King.
The five servant songs, reviewed together here, show a real progression: as the servant’s suffering grows more explicit, so does his glory, the two never separated. Christ’s own reading of this text in Luke 4 announces that progression as already fulfilled in himself. Our union is with the suffering servant in that glory, not merely in his suffering alone.
Christ appears in Revelation 5 as both lion and lamb at once, an image that only makes sense once Isaiah’s own lamb has already been introduced. The lamb figure offends us more than we usually admit, weakness where we expect strength. The servant in 53:7-12 is that same silent lamb, dying precisely so that his own lambs might be exalted.
The servant’s humiliation, described in 52:14-15’s disfigured appearance, points directly at our own hopelessness apart from him. God’s means of saving the servant, and saving us through him, look impossible by any ordinary measure. Isaiah 11’s picture of the root from Jesse growing out of a stump makes the same point in miniature.
‘Behold’ recurs across Isaiah at key turning points, in 52:13 as much as 41:27-42:1, always signaling something worth real attention. Israel’s own deliverance follows the same pattern God uses to deliver the servant himself. The cross is already present in 52:14-15’s disfigurement, prefiguring baptism, and in 53:1’s question about who has believed the report of the Lord’s arm.
Isaiah is driven to pray that God himself would awaken and act, a prayer answered across the rest of this passage. The shift from singular ‘thou’ in verse 12 to plural ‘thou’ in verse 16 marks a real change in who is being addressed. In the servant, God makes himself last, taking the lowest place, for the sake of his people.
The servant’s discipleship holds steady amid real opposition throughout this passage, obedience that does not waver under pressure. Verse 10 names our only real hope plainly: union with Christ, the suffering servant himself. Verse 11’s warning is just as plain, the alternative to that union is hell, not a neutral middle ground.
Isaiah’s own prophetic call comes with real historical circumstances worth tracing, not a timeless vision detached from Judah’s actual crises. Hezekiah reflects David in ways that already point forward to Christ. The suffering servant who threads through this whole book, seen first in shadow here, is Christ himself.
The nine qualities of love in 1 Corinthians 13 get walked through, with love meant to be exercised, not admired as an abstract concept. Read rightly, this chapter is less a portrait of ideal human virtue than a portrait of Christ, one that extends even to mercy toward enemies.
Any easy division between ‘major’ and ‘minor’ sins gets questioned, insisting God is never the author of temptation even while examining Christ’s own temptation in Matthew 4:5-7. Adam’s sin, read this way, is far graver than we tend to admit, which is exactly why Christ’s success on our behalf matters so much.