We've been thinking this week on things unseen about some passages in the prophecy of

Isaiah, or more exactly we've been thinking about someone Isaiah wrote about.

And yet if you think about it, if Isaiah's boys had asked who it was he was writing about,

he'd have had to see he didn't really know.

He certainly didn't know exactly who he was or when he would come.

Peter reminds us of this in 1 Peter chapter 1 verses 10 to 12.

The prophet's wrote about the grace that others would experience in the future.

And God especially enabled Isaiah to write about how the Messiah, Savior, would suffer

before he entered his glory.

Even if he didn't know who he would be or exactly when or how he would come.

Today I want to draw attention to the fourth song.

It's the best known one.

I suppose most of us think about it as the suffering servant song of Isaiah 53.

I remember having to memorise the whole chapter in the King James version of the Bible when

I was about eight or nine in the very ordinary state elementary school I attended.

How times have changed.

So what my school teacher didn't know is that the song doesn't begin at Isaiah 53 verse

1 but at Isaiah 52 verse 13.

It begins with the same words as the first servant song, behold my servant.

And we should look because the opening stanza in the song speaks first about the exaltation

of the servant.

He shall be high and lifted up.

...