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The first thing that jumps immediately to my mind when you ask about Jesus and parallels between the gospels and Isaiah is the passage from Luke chapter 4 where Jesus says, after reading from Isaiah 61:"The Scripture you

The terms "many" and " many nations" are used, but in 53:6 it says: "and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." That means conceivably what is almost an infinite number to our human minds -- every person who ever has been or will be born. In the sense that every sin committed by every person was laid on Jesus at the cross. The sacrifice was made for everyone. Every person who claims it by faith will receive salvation through the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross. Not everyone WILL, but everyone CAN. I don't know if can be said, exactly, to have ever been wasted, because everyone has the opportunity to take advantage of it. However, many will acknowledge that there is indeed a God, but refuse to accept Him on His terms. They know there is a God, but they never admit that they need saving, or they won't believe that a God who is love can judge and condemn people to hell. If you know that Jesus died on the cross but you won't follow Him you have, in a sense, willfully rendered His sacrifice a waste in your case.

God was trying to teach people how absolutely horrible sin is from His perspective, Yes, there is the message that sin must be paid for and it must be paid for with the lifeblood of the sinner...except God made provision for a substitution to be made. When I think about the scene that was surrounding the altar in the Temple and in the Tabernacle before that, the main thing that comes to my mind is the bloodiness and the smell. It must have been horrible! It was a place where all day long innocent animals had to give their lives in order for the sinning people to made right with God. All day, their throats were cut, they were disemboweled, their blood was thrown on the sides of the altar, their flesh and entrails were burned. What a sight! What a smell! What a terrible, awful thing! I believe all of it was to illustrate to the people what a terrible, awful thing their sin was from God's perspective. It teaches us that God is holy. He loves us more than anything else He created, but His holiness cannot abide any unholiness or sin. Therefore, the sins must be paid for before the person can be reckoned holy and allowed to be near God for eternity. Holiness implies justice and justice must be evenhanded and impartial to be justice. Sacrifice teaches us that God is holy and that He is just and righteous. It also teaches us that He is love and that He is merciful because He made a way for the payment for our penalty for sin to made for us by Jesus. Imagine the love that allows an only son to take on all of the awful depravity and corruption and hideousness of every person's sin for all time and pay all of our penalties at once (like billions or even trillions of animal sacrifices at once!) so that we can all be made righteous and holy in the sight of our holy God. We can't even begin to really imagine love like that, but we can respond to it by giving our entire lives and beings to Him by faith.

When someone has mercy, they don't give someone else what they deserve as punishment, but they let them escape from it. Hebrews 9:22 says that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. God showed mercy by not shedding their blood, as they deserved, and letting the blood of animals be shed instead. No. If they were, then Jesus would never have had to submit to crucifixion. I believe they were to point the way to Jesus and to show people how horrible their behavior was to God, that all that blood had to be shed to atone for their sinful behavior.

1. Confession or acknowledgement of sin 2. A sacrificial animal 3. A close identification between the sinner and the sacrifice. 4. Killing the animal is very personal. It is not done for the sinner by a third party but by the sinner himself. I think all the elements are the same except that Jesus replaces the animal and the individual Christian becomes the priest. Confession and repentance are still necessary for each sin, but the sacrifice doesn't have to be repeated, it was once for all.

They like to think of themselves as having evolved beyond such primitive and barbaric practices. Killing is messy, nasty business and people don't want to think of it being done in order for them to live. It has something to do with an urban rather than rural lifestyle, perhaps. I've told a cousin of mine that his outrage and snide jokes about us as hunters and barbarians had more to do with himself than with us. I told him the real difference between him and me was that I didn't try to kid myself that meat comes from a grocery store in a styrofoam package. I am willing to admit that animals have to die for me to live, and I am willing to do the killing and butchering myself. When he really looked at it, I believe he agreed, because the comments ceased. I believe, however, that most of the reaction to the idea of sacrifice comes from the increasingly "rational" and humanistic world view that so many today have. They don't acknowledge God. They don't believe God. They don't listen to God. They don't understand His holiness. They think of themselves as basically good people even though God's Word tells us that there are no good people. They refuse to believe that they have ever done anything that requires death and blood as payment.

To sin is to break God's law and turn your back on His righteousness. Just as it angers us when our children, for instance, continually and willfully go against our wishes, it angers God when we, as His children, do the same. Capricious or uncontrolled anger can be like having a temper tantrum. A person's unconsidered and uncontrolled reactions when very angry could easily bring about very hurtful, counterproductive and unintended results. Justice, by definition, is righteousness. It is to equally apply a set of known consequences for actions in an evenhanded manner. The anger about the sin brings the same punishment for any who do it, rather than different ones for different people based on mood or anger level at the time.

John was raised a Jew . The Jewish religion revolved around sacrifices of many kinds to admit their guilt of sin, repent of their behavior and make reparations. The only way to atone for sin was by shedding the blood of their sacrifices. John had to be talking about a sacrifice because he was talking about taking away sin. Before that, atonement for sin was mostly on a case-by-case basis, and available only to Jews. To say that there was to be a once-for-all sacrifice for all people was far removed from the idea that forgiveness was only available to God's chosen people, the Israelites.

Jesus was a radical in many ways. He was throwing the established rituals and prejudices of God's chosen people right on it's ear among other forms of radical change to people's outlooks and world view. He was calling their attention to the radical nature of His calling and mission, and trying to, in no uncertain terms, give them an idea of the radical nature of His commitment, and the commitment that is required of those who follow Him. He is telling them that God will not accept excuses. It's either in or out, for or against, all the way. It is also, perhaps, his own anger and hurt at the rejection of the offer of his marvelous, matchless grace. The call is urgent because time is limited. Human life is a temporary thing. No one knows what the next day, or even the next hour, might bring. The time to decide is now. In light of the sacrifice Jesus made, our sacrifices pale by comparison. He said to his Father, "not my will, but yours", and did what he was called to do. Any excuse we might make in the face of such love, commitment and obedience is lame in the extreme.

The people who are invited have done nothing to merit the invitation. The poor people and other later invitees are even less worthy. It is a picture of ourselves and our total unworthiness for the invitation to God's Kingdom. Those who reject the invitation are then shut out, and they have themselves to blame. In the same way, if we die without accepting God's invitation into His family, then we bring His judgement on ourselves. The people who already serve the master are to go everywhere and invite everyone they meet to the banquet. It is a picture of the Great Commission. The Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

Right now it is small because it mainly exists in the hearts of his followers. It is not yet the rule of Jesus as Lord over all creation. It grows both in the number of believers include and in the sense that one day Jesus will be Lord over all creation. Right now, Satan is the ruler of this world, but that will change when God decides that the time has come. It is narrow because Jesus is the only way into the Kingdom.It is hard to find because many don't want to believe that he is their only hope. It is large and diverse in that people from all walks of life and from all times will be represented. Also because every single person who was ever born is invited. It is selective because the only way to get in is to accept the invitation by repenting of your sins and following Jesus, and most people will never accept that they have to do that.

I would say that the purpose of the contrast is to show that no matter how huge or seemingly insignificant, a debt is a debt and must be paid (or forgiven). We are the ones who owe the huge debt to God. The small debt would be like any that might be owed to us. Any earthly considerations pale by comparison to the issue of our salvation. Because he forgave the servant and all his mercy and grace inspired in the servant was uncompromising unforgiveness. Of course this is all a figure of what God has done for us by giving Jesus as payment for our sin debt. It is illustrative of the principle, from Matthew chapter 6, that if we cannot forgive those who have wronged us, God the Father will not forgive us.