Have You Seen Jesus?

If you painted a portrait of Jesus, what moment in His life would you try to portray? If an artist were to try to capture the complete essence of His life and ministry, it would be a collosal project. What is your favorite “snapshot“?

As a baby in the manger?

Presented in the Temple?

Talking in the Temple with the teachers?

Baptized by John the Baptist?

Confronting Satan?

Calling His disciples?

Turning water into wine?

Feeding the multitudes?

Raising the dead?

Healing the sick?

Walking on water?

On the mount of transfiguration?

In the Garden of Gethsemane?

Nailed to the Cross?

Risen from the dead?

Ascending into heaven?

Over seven-hundred years before His birth, Isaiah the Prophet penned the last of his four “Suffering-Servant” Songs, and he captured the essence of why Jesus came to Earth in just a few, short verses. Isaiah 53 is the most-quoted Old Testament prophesy in all of the New Testament.

Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 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.
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.

4 Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 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.
6 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.

7 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.
8 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.
9 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.

10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,
And He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors. (Isaiah 53)

Forget the pasty-white complexion, the elegant flowing robes, the dainty, manicured hands and the flowing-locks. Who was the REAL Jesus?

Had John the Baptist not known who Jesus was, He would not have stood out in the crowd of those who came to hear him preach and get baptized. Jesus didn’t have a stately-stature or kingly-appearance. Throughout His ministry, He was often identified by people around Him as “the son of Joseph and Mary” because He looked like “one of the boys“. He was born into an ordinary working-class Jewish family, so He looked like any other Jewish man, and as much as artists would like to portray Him in “regal” attire, He told some of those who wanted to follow Him that He didn’t even have a place to call His own. He is recorded as having spent time in the home of Peter and Andrew in Capernaum, and that may have been His “headquarters” when he was in that area.

The hands that touched the eyes of the blind were strong, tough and calloused from working as a carpenter for most of His life. The arms that embraced little children and swung the whip when He cleansed the Temple were strong and muscular from hefting heavy pieces of wood and swinging a hammer. Heavily-muscled legs and calloused-feet carried Him all those miles He walked during His earthly-ministry. He was a man’s-man, strong yet gentle.

The only thing that made Him stand out in a crowd was the power and authority with which He spoke. He baffled the Jewish leaders of His day with His wisdom and knowledge of the Scriptures. He was the Son of God, the eternal Word, Immanuel, God with us, the Messiah, the Son of Man, Jesus.

Have YOU seen Jesus?

Steve