This Lent, join us for our weekly devotional series in Isaiah 52-55.
As we journey towards Easter, discover the wonder of Jesus as promised in Isaiah more than 700 years before Jesus’ birth. Join us in exploring how the Old Testament points to the suffering servant who died for our sins and be amazed afresh by the beauty of the cross.
You can read Isaiah 52-55 here.
Sign up to receive this blog as weekly emails by clicking here.
On the desert road from Jerusalem to Gaza, the Ethiopian eunuch is in turmoil.
Usually, he oozes prestige. Erudite and religious, he’s used to advising and negotiating in the royal court. But on this day, he’s rattled – and not just by the rough journey. He reads again the ancient words of Isaiah and sees a lamb led to slaughter, an unjust death, a blurred image of a mystery man…
Pulse racing, he’s gripped by the powerful imagery. There’s something deeper, something profound in these words, but what!? Frustrated and bewildered, he’s desperate for more.
Notice how, as the Spirit of God nudges Philip forward, so He also humbles the eunuch to swing open the chariot door and welcome him in. A divine orchestration.
Has God brought you into the life of someone seeking more?
The next scene is both unbelievable and comfortingly familiar. Through the carriage window we see the Bible opened up between two very different men, smashing barriers of culture, race, and status – as surely only the gospel can.
Philip starts where the eunuch left off, but this time Isaiah’s slaughtered lamb has a name – Jesus. And as Philip walks him through the life, death and resurrection of Christ, everything slides into crisp focus. The ancient words of Isaiah come alive in the person of Jesus, each line bursting with promise and hope.
The eunuch’s eyes are opened, and his response is pure, unfiltered joy. Leaping from his carriage into the dust, he hurries Philip towards some water, eager to begin a new life with Jesus, the lamb who died to set him free.
One unlikely meeting, one gospel conversation, an eternal impact.
How does this challenge the way we think about the power of God’s Word?
How might this change the way we talk to our friends about Jesus?
It’s over 2,700 years since the book of Isaiah was written, but Truth doesn’t change. The gospel still gilds every line of God’s Word, and through reading it, we meet Jesus. This Lent, as we follow in the Ethiopian eunuch’s footsteps and grapple with Isaiah, let’s pray that we too will come humbly, see Jesus clearly, and be left rejoicing.
Heavenly Father, thank You for Your Word that reveals the truth about Jesus. As we study the book of Isaiah this Lent, open our eyes to see your Son more clearly, and deepen our understanding of your love for us. Help us to share this good news with others, just as Philip did. In Jesus' name, Amen. In Jesus' name,
Amen.
This devotional series has been written by members of UCCF Staff. This week's comes from Jo Auterson, Communications Manager.
How might our world measure someone’s glory?
Their status? Security? Recognition? Influence? Wealth?
As we journey further into Lent, and the start of Isaiah’s servant song in chapters 52-53, we’ll see that God’s definition of glory is about as far from ours as we can get.
Our introduction to the Lord’s servant probably fits our expectations, in verse 13. The language of exalting, or raising up, rings of honour and recognition. ’Of course,’ we might think, ’God’s chosen servant would be treated well!’
But we’re likely unprepared for what comes next.
Verse 14 is a jarring contrast – a wrenching discord at the start of this song. Personally, I find these some of the most painful words in the Bible:
’…his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being
and his form marred beyond human likeness…’
How is God’s servant treated? So violently, brutally rejected as to become totally unrecognisable as another human being.
What an horrific fate for any person.
But especially God’s servant - raised up, rejected, and suffering… Are we not led to the foot of Jesus’s cross? Perhaps, as we see him there, we wonder; surely this isn’t the kind of ‘lifting up’ that Isaiah had in view – Christ himself, raised up on a torture instrument?
How could this be glorifying to God?
And yet, in God’s forever plan, it is exactly what he had in mind.
As he tells his disciples, Jesus knew exactly how his earthly life would culminate. Lifted up not to recognition, but rejection.
The only human being who doesn’t deserve condemnation, condemned!
So… why?
Isaiah 52:14 shows us; to 'sprinkle many nations.'
This is the language of atonement, drawing from the Passover lamb – its sprinkled blood shielding God’s people from his judgement, as he killed Egypt’s firstborn for persistent sin.
And here, we see Jesus shedding his blood to deliver people from judgement for their own sin. And not just from among the Hebrews, but, incredibly, in John’s words – from all peoples!
The nations - formerly enemies of God, unable and unwilling to worship him - now offered forgiveness and right relationship through the risen Christ.
And that is us, if we trust in him! We are shielded from this judgement, because Christ has paid the debt of our sin in full. What incredible sacrifice.
As eyes are lifted to the cross, Jesus is exalted! What looked like defeat, like dishonour, was in fact his crowning victory, as he declared, ‘It is finished.’
Does he not deserve our praise?
If you don’t yet trust Jesus – do you want to know more about this servant, who suffered in your place?
If you are trusting Jesus – how does Isaiah’s depiction of his sacrifice help you to exalt him in your heart?
Let us all, praise ’the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!’
Heavenly Father,
We thank you so much for Jesus, your Son and servant, who suffered so horribly in our place. We are sorry for the ways we do not honour Him as he deserves. Thank you that He willingly gave Himself as a sacrifice for our sins, so that people of all nations might worship you as Lord. Please help us lift him up in our hearts and lives this Lent, and always.
In his name,
Amen.
This devotional series has been written by members of UCCF Staff. This week's comes from Tom Banks, Finance Administrator.
How do you picture Jesus? Do you see Him as a baby, surrounded by a sweet nativity scene, or as a man welcoming and embracing the lost, or as Jesus fiercesome and majestic in Revelation with blazing eyes, glowing bronze feet and a voice like a rushing waterfall?
The Bible is wonderful because it offers so many varied images of who Jesus is, and yet this description in Isaiah is one that perhaps we don’t immediately picture.
So, what difference does this passage make to the way we view Jesus? I find these servant songs a balm to bruised souls and as we journey through Lent to the foot of the cross and the glory of the empty tomb, I want to encourage you to see these precious chapters as such.
Where are you familiar with pain? What burdens of 2025 are you bringing into this Lent season? What shame makes you feel that people should hide their faces from you?
Call them to mind and then hear again this description of Jesus.
Jesus knows – and has done something about it. He was despised and rejected by mankind, so that He could welcome and embrace mankind to Himself. He was a man of suffering and of pain so that He could hold you in His arms as you weep, and whisper promises of eternity to come. He was despised and like one from whom people hide their faces, so that God Himself would never hide His face from you but instead shine his face upon you and invite you to show Him your face, for your face is made beautiful by Him (Song of Solomon, 2:14).
This is a picture of radical beauty beyond our human limitations. This is a message like no other, a message of a crucified, risen and exalted saviour who knows deeply the pain of being human.
‘He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.’
Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
Jesus tells us that we need to humble ourselves as little children in order to enter his kingdom (Matthew 18:3-4) and in John 12:37-38, Jesus also tells us that not everyone will believe the message.
How are you challenged by that call to humble yourself as one ‘to whom the arm of the Lord has been revealed’?
How can John 12:37-38 give us hope in the face of adversity and opposition to our attempts to share the good news of Jesus?
God uses the weak and foolish things of this world to shame the strong and wise. We see that in the cross. We see that in the life of Jesus. We see that in the spread of the gospel post-resurrection, and we see that today as we continue to labour on in weakness and rejoicing.
Who could you share Jesus as seen in Isaiah 53:1-3 with this week?
Heavenly Father,
We thank you for Jesus. Thank you that He took on the title of ‘Rejected’ so that we can become accepted. Thank you that He made Himself weak to draw close to us – to share in our tender humanity and walk with us through dark times.
As we grapple with burdens, shame and disappointments, please help us to look to your Son for the hope of future glory and the promise of grace today.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
This devotional series has been written by members of UCCF Staff. This week's comes from Phoebe Sleeman, CU Staff Worker.
Can we be sure our sin is taken away and dealt with?
In our most honest and aware moments, this is the question we really need an answer to. When we feel the weight of our sin and how God sees it, it makes all the difference to know what He plans to do about it. Let’s try and see afresh the incredible answer that Isaiah gives us in the Suffering Servant who takes our place.
The weight and consequence of sin shouts to us in these verses. Maybe we flinch at the violence of the language describing what the Servant of God is going through. He is pierced, crushed, punished, wounded (Isaiah 53:5).
These are words that spell death.
Isaiah voices the stark truth that this is what transgressions and iniquities deserve, and so it looks to all the world (Isaiah 53:4) like the Servant’s agonies must be the result of some terrible sin. Surely they are God’s punishment laid on Him?
The shocking twist is that this is true: the Servant is suffering for sin – but not his own. He is facing God’s deep anger at that sin – but He didn’t earn that anger Himself.
The point of the image of us like ‘sheep gone astray’ (Isaiah 53:6) isn’t that we’re sort of cute-but-hapless in a cartoonish way. It’s a picture of foolishness, and of mortal danger. When the sheep wanders away from the Shepherd, it puts itself at great risk of death from predators. So, Isaiah presses the point again: sin leads to death, and all of us have a devastating tendency to wander into it time and again. We are the ones who face death for our sheep-like behaviour.
Yet He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.
Who would do such a thing for me, and for you? Only our beautiful, selfless, glorious Lord Jesus Christ.
Isaiah’s words echo in the New Testament and the apostle Peter’s words to scattered believers throughout the world - that Christ Himself ‘bore our sins in his body on the cross… “by his wounds you have been healed.”’ (1 Peter 2:24).
Our sin and all its effects, Jesus carries for us. He shoulders the burden of the sin we all walk into every day – the grief that it brings into our lives and the terrible punishment it merits – and He faces it on our behalf.
Not only that, but in dying the death we should die, Jesus gives us what we don’t deserve and could never earn: peace between us and the LORD, and healing from all the sad, eternal consequences of our sin.
How precious and undeserved that by faith in Jesus we can say, surely He has taken up my griefs and borne my suffering. Surely He has been pierced for my transgressions and brought me peace by His punishment. What incredible love and what unimaginable sacrifice!
Heavenly Father, we are amazed and humbled as we consider Jesus, your suffering Servant. Thank you that He willingly shouldered that crushing burden of our sin and took all its consequences on Himself. Our hearts sing with wonder and thankfulness that He would take our place. Thank you that because of Him, we can know peace and a whole new life with you.
In His precious and powerful name we pray,
Amen.
This devotional series has been written by members of UCCF Staff. This week's comes from Liz Hume, Executive Assistant to the Director.
When might your silence cost you?
If someone had accused you of lying, the natural next step would be to protest your innocence. You might even call on a witness to prove your truthfulness.
Maintaining your silence, however, might easily be seen as proof of guilt.
Perhaps the only instance you might not protest your innocence would be to protect someone you love; someone who could bear the punishment less easily than you. In that situation, you may be resigned to taking the blame, and your willingness would grant someone else’s innocence.
In Chapter 27 of Matthew’s Gospel, we meet Jesus at the hand of Pontius Pilate. Beaten and mocked, anyone would forgive him for protesting His innocence to find some way out of the fate that looms. But, with His ministry at an end, and His cup not taken away as He prayed it might be in Gethsemane, Jesus remains silent.
I never tire of reading the words of the prophet Isaiah. More than four hundred years before Jesus became incarnate on earth, Isaiah’s prophecies are a testament to God’s eternal plan, and his never-ending faithfulness. The words of verse 7 of Isaiah 53 more than echo the passage in Matthew’s Gospel.
Was He ‘oppressed and afflicted’? Certainly.
Did He ‘not open his mouth’? Absolutely.
And was He ‘led like a lamb to the slaughter’? Well…
...read on in Matthew’s Gospel and you’ll see that He was slaughtered in the worst way possible. But what does that phrase mean? And why is Jesus ‘slaughtered’ like an animal, least of all like a lamb?
Read Exodus 12:1-13, particularly verses 5-7
Matthew’s Gospel is aimed at a first-century Jewish audience; for whom the story of the Exodus was well known. Matthew needed to show them that the gospel is the fulfilment of the sacrificial culture so poignantly displayed in Exodus. He does this through language that the Jews will understand:
Jesus is depicted as the spotless lamb raised to be slaughtered, the one on whom the blame falls that the firstborn Jews might go free. Not only is He utterly innocent of the blasphemous crime he is said to have committed, and ‘though he had done no violence’ as Isaiah puts it, Jesus’ record is faultless. He was without blemish, just as the Passover lamb.
Remember the Ethiopian eunuch from the first devotional in this series? The passage he was reading when he met Philip was the very passage that we started with today. Through Philip’s testament, God opened the eunuch’s eyes. He understood that the Jesus whom Isaiah prophesised about loved him so much, He was willing to remain silent in front of Pontius Pilate, to carry out His Father’s will in being obedient to death. The eunuch realised Jesus had granted his innocence and set him free from a punishment he could not overcome.
Jesus was willing to be led like a lamb to the slaughter so that you and I might be spotless in the eyes of the Lord. The question is, have you remained silent in your guilt, or have you accepted that Jesus’ sacrifice is enough to grant your innocence?
Father,
we are eternally thankful that You sent Your son into this world, like a spotless sacrificial lamb raised only to be slaughtered. Thank you that Jesus, by his innocence, made a way for us to be free from sin through his willing sacrifice. Thank you that you raised him to life and, with our penalty paid through His blood, we are set free to be with Him.
Amen.
This devotional series has been written by members of UCCF Staff. This week's comes from Thomas McBride, Communications and Supporter Relations Officer.
Why did Jesus die?
Miscarriage of Justice? Mob mentality gone too far? Tragedy?
Isaiah is clear that it was the Lord’s will. Easter wasn’t some horrible end to the story of Jesus’ life. Nor was it a miscarriage of justice. Throughout this Lent series we have been soaking in Isaiah’ prophecy.
We have sat alongside God’s people
waiting…
longing…
A Messiah. A saviour. God’s chosen king.
It was always God’s plan. God’s servant, the serpent crusher, would be crushed. The one who would one day wipe away every tear would suffer and die. The innocent Son of God would give His life as an offering for sin.
Consider the depth of love and sovereignty in these verses. It was the Lord's will to crush Him, not out of cruelty, but out of a profound love for humanity.
Jesus' sacrifice was not a tragic accident but a divine plan to redeem us. His suffering would bring ultimate victory over sin and death!
Jesus closest friends, His disciples, didn’t understand the nature of Jesus’ mission. They wanted to be great. But Jesus demonstrates to them that their need is not worldly status but forgiveness. Jesus came not to give us a status that could never be earned or bought. A status as those justified, righteous, redeemed, and all because Jesus would pay the ransom that we could not.
Where do you need to be reminded that it is not status but ransom that you require?
Jesus Himself refers to Isaiah's prophecy, affirming that He is the fulfillment of the suffering servant. His mission was clear, and He willingly embraced it for our sake. He would fulfill it just 24 hours later, as He hung on a cross flanked by criminals.
The reality is that we too are transgressors and as Jesus hangs on the cross, he identifies with us. So that we can find a saving identity with Him.
Praise God that it was always His will to humble Himself, even to death on a cross.
Jesus explains to His disciples that His suffering was necessary to enter His glory. The cross was not an unfortunate end but had always been the plan. The gospel message is one of weakness. It can often feel embarrassing to us to introduce our friends to a suffering saviour. Imagine how it felt for the disciples under Roman rule! But Jesus reminds them and us that this had always been God’s powerful plan for glory.
Where do you need to be reminded that the gospel is the power of salvation for many?
Good Friday is followed by Easter Sunday. Death is swallowed up. For all who believe in the long-promised suffering servant, there is a defiance that springs forth from that first century garden tomb. A defiance that would redefine history. ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’
Ben Slee’s song ‘Where O Grave’ helps us celebrate this truth.
‘On that glorious final day
I will not sleep or fade,
but gazing on His nail-pierced hands,
I'll instantly be changed.
Where, O grave, is your victory?
Where, O death is your sting?
Eternity is won for me
by heav'n's eternal King.’
Spend some time praising God for his perfect plan.
Heavenly Father,
We come before you in awe and gratitude, reflecting on the profound love and sovereignty revealed in our Word. As we meditate on Isaiah 53:10-12, we are reminded that Jesus' sacrifice was not a tragic accident but your divine plan to redeem us.
Thank You for sending your Son to be crushed for our iniquities, to bear our sins, and to bring us ultimate victory over sin and death. We repent of our sinfulness, lament our unbelief and rejoice that you invite us to share in your victory over sin and death.
Lord, we praise you for your perfect plan. In worship we gaze upon your nail-pierced hands and celebrate the eternal victory of the empty tomb.
In Jesus' name, we pray.
Amen.
This devotional series has been written by members of UCCF Staff. This week's comes from Benedict Harding, Director of Ministry Operations.