We like stories where the mighty hero vanquishes the enemy through force and strength of arms.  Evil is defeated as he flexes his muscles, fires his weapon, and saves the day.  Something inside us loves the idea of a rescuer, a deliverer, coming to set everything right.

Many of the prophecies surrounding the Jewish deliverer, or Messiah, referred to him as "the son of David."  This stirred national hopes of a king like David, a military leader who would make Israel great again by winning battles and restoring her tarnished glory.  

However, when the Messiah did come, he couldn't have been more different.  Born in a barn to a peasant family in a tiny village, he spent most of his life in obscurity.  And in the three years he lived in the public eye, he didn't follow the script of cultivating friendships with the rich and powerful and politically connected, but rather wandered the countryside with the riff-raff, telling strange stories and healing the sick.  Rather than occupying an opulent palace and commanding a powerful army, he was poor and homeless.  

By society's standards, he was a loser.

Yet there was one prophecy that saw all of this coming.  Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12 describes a mysterious figure, a suffering servant who would vicariously die for the sins of his people.  Isaiah writes, "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by others, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain." (53:2-3)

Even though Jesus didn't fit his people's understanding of what Messiah should be, Isaiah is clear that he came for them nonetheless.  And that through his suffering and apparent defeat, he would bear their sin, carry it away, if you will: "But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed." (53:5)

So maybe rescue doesn't always look like we think it will or want it to.  Even today, Jesus doesn't come into our lives and make all of our problems magically go away.  Rather, he comes to be with us in those struggles, offering to take those sins on himself, offering us healing.

Happy Easter!