Getting Ready For Sunday: How To Prepare For The 10/11/09 Sojourn Gathered

This Sunday at Sojourn Gathered our pastor will talk about one of the most famous, moving chapters in the Bible: Isaiah 53.  This prophecy of the coming messiah, written 700 years before the advent of Christ, is so jaw-dropping in its clarity that some scholars have said “It’s almost as if Isaiah stood at the foot of the cross when writing his account.”

For this reason we’ll sing songs together like “The Power of the Cross,” “Nothing But The Blood” and “In The Shadow Of The Glorious Cross.”  The latter is a Sojourn original from our Before The Throne CD, as is another song we’ll sing this Sunday, “Lead Us Back.”  If you don’t have Before The Throne you can hear each of these two songs (and download the lyrics) at sojournmusic.com.

Isaiah 53 is “the gospel in a nutshell.”  Although it describes suffering and torture, it is the only true good news — the only way to become friends with God and triumph over the grave.  This Sunday our pastor will call all of us to share this good news and to invite friends into our community.

Sometimes the reason our friends, neighbors and family members don’t go to a church service is simply because we don’t ask.  Think of the people in your sphere who are lost.  Think of those who, for one reason or another, do not currently have a home church.  Look for opportunities to invite them and to share our good news.

Between now and Sunday, perhaps the best way to prepare for Sojourn Gathered is simply to meditate on Isaiah 53.  If you’ve read these words so many times that they don’t seem fresh to you, try a different translation and experience the passage “for the first time” again.  Here is Eugene Peterson’s version in his paraphrase The Message:

1 Who believes what we’ve heard and seen? Who would have thought God’s saving power would look like this?

2-6The servant grew up before God-a scrawny seedling,
a scrubby plant in a parched field.
There was nothing attractive about him,
nothing to cause us to take a second look.
He was looked down on and passed over,
a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away.
We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried-
our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him-our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.
We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost.
We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong,
on him, on him.

7-9He was beaten, he was tortured,
but he didn’t say a word.
Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered
and like a sheep being sheared,
he took it all in silence.
Justice miscarried, and he was led off-
and did anyone really know what was happening?
He died without a thought for his own welfare,
beaten bloody for the sins of my people.
They buried him with the wicked,
threw him in a grave with a rich man,
Even though he’d never hurt a soul
or said one word that wasn’t true.

10Still, it’s what God had in mind all along,
to crush him with pain.
The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin
so that he’d see life come from it-life, life, and more life.
And God’s plan will deeply prosper through him.

11-12Out of that terrible travail of soul,
he’ll see that it’s worth it and be glad he did it.
Through what he experienced, my righteous one, my servant,
will make many “righteous ones,”
as he himself carries the burden of their sins.
Therefore I’ll reward him extravagantly-
the best of everything, the highest honors-
Because he looked death in the face and didn’t flinch,
because he embraced the company of the lowest.
He took on his own shoulders the sin of the many,
he took up the cause of all the black sheep.