As you take your seats, you open your Bibles to a couple of texts, one in the New Testament,

and one in the old, our sermon text this morning will be 1st Corinthians chapter 1 beginning at

verse 18 first Corinthians 1 beginning at verse 18 but before you before we get there I want to look for

a moment at Isaiah I'm a 53 I know I say that I say that name incorrectly but forgive me.

Part of the world where I'm from it's Isaiah not Isaiah but you get the point, right?

Isaiah 53, my assignment was to talk about the attractiveness of Christ.

And immediately when I received that assignment,

I recognized that theological paradox.

And here is the paradox.

The paradox is that the Bible tells us

that Christ was not attractive.

And yet we sing songs like that that say beautiful Savior. That's the theological paradox.

Isaiah 53 beginning verse, beginning verse one.

Who has believed what he has heard from us and this is the this is the

the him if you will of the suffering servant

Isaiah 53 and and as we read Isaiah 53 I always have to tell

this story I've had the privilege a number of times pre-travelling in Israel doing leading tours in Israel and in fact was supposed to go last year to lead a tour in Israel.

I was supposed to leave for Israel on I think October 12th and then of course October 7th happened so that that tour didn't happen

but I've been to Israel a number of times and have friends who are there now and friends who

live there who I've been praying for regularly but they do evangelism in Israel they do evangelism among Israeli Jews and one of the things that they use is

Isaiah 53 and it's really interesting that in many of the reading schedules, right, that the

Jewish people would have they will read through much of the Torah but Isaiah 53 is often skipped and so a

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