Why is it if you’re in the synagogue on Shabbat and you’re reading through the Bible that you read through one chapter in the book of Isaiah and then another chapter in the book of Isaiah and then you skip a chapter? And then you keep reading in the book of Isaiah. I wonder why that is?
Why is it there’s one chapter as you’re reading it, reading here, reading here, and then oh, we skip this chapter in the synagogue. Why? Well we don’t know exactly why it gets skipped, but Isaiah 53, Yeshaayahu nun gimmel, it gets skipped every year in the synagogue reading. Could it be there’s something in there that you need to see? Could it be that there’s something in there if you read it, it would change your life? Could it be if you read it you’d realize there’s something the synagogue didn’t tell me? You say, “Well what’s that chapter talk about?”
Well it talks about an individual, it doesn’t mention Him by name, but it describes Him. And it starts by asking the words “who has believed what we’ve heard?” And it tells us a report about someone. He’d grow up in kind of an obscure place, nobody would really think much about Him. Nobody would really pay much attention to Him and yet through Him God’s arm of salvation was being revealed. And then it goes on to tell the story.
Remember, in the synagogues we skipped this chapter for whatever reason. We skip it. We don’t read it. Why? And it goes on and it talks about this one that we didn’t pay attention to, in fact we rejected Him. Aww, something wrong with Him. And he suffered terribly. And he died a terrible death, a painful death. And yet, while he was dying we said aww, he’s suffering for his own sins, he’s dying for his own sins. And it says in Isaiah 53 that we didn’t realize he was dying for our sins. He was suffering for our wickedness.
And then it goes on to say that all of us have sinned, but God put the punishment of all of us on Him. You say, “That’s in the Bible, that’s in the Tanakh, in our Hebrew scriptures.” But we skipped this chapter in the synagogue. And then it speaks of Him dying a criminal’s death, being with the wicked and yet He ends up with a rich person in his tomb. And how does this happen?
But, yet he goes on: He’s cut off from the land of the living and yet He goes on living. In other words He rises from the dead. You say, “That kind of sounds like that Jesus, Yeshu, Yeshua.” The one that the Catholics and the gentiles worship. No, no, no. That’s our rabbi. That’s our Mashiach. That’s our Savior. Read Isaiah 53 for yourself and find out why that chapter is skipped in the synagogue.
