| Church School Lesson: How Do You Spell Relif? |
How Do You Spell “Relief”?
September 28, 2025
Background: Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Print: Isaiah 53:1-7;
Key Verse: Isaiah 53:6; Devotional: Matthew 12:14-21
Isaiah 53:1-7 (ESV)
1 Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
2 For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
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 pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds 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; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.
Isaiah Chapter 53 (Commentary)
53:1-6 The great sin of Israel’s leaders and people was their failure to recognize their Messiah when he came. A relative few in Israel believed (53:1). Most of the Jews in Jesus’s day, though, did not even regard him as a person of importance. There was nothing impressive about Jesus’s physical appearance (53:2). He was despised and rejected. People turned away from him in his suffering (53:3). These verses couldn’t more clearly depict what Jesus Christ endured. The use of language is precise regarding the kind of death he would die: he was pierced (53:5). But God also makes clear through Isaiah the reason that the Servant-Messiah would die: because of our rebellion . . . because of our iniquities . . . the Lord . . . punished him for the iniquity of us all (53:5-6). Hundreds of years before it would happen, the prophet testified to the substitutionary atonement of Christ on the cross.
53:7-9 Although he died for sinners, it is clear that the Messiah himself is innocent: He had done no violence and had not spoken deceitfully (53:7, 9).