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The prophet seems to be registering a complaint because his message is not believed. This which was revealed to him is not received by men, and this is always the sad office of the prophet. When God called this man Isaiah, back in chapter 6, He told him, “You are going to get a message that the people won’t hear. When you tell them My words, they won’t believe you.” That certainly was Isaiah’s experience.

God’s messengers have not been welcomed with open arms by the world. The prophets have been stoned, and the message unheeded. That is still true today. After World War I, when everyone was talking about peace and safety, it was very, very unpopular even to suggest that there might be another war. Public opinion then demanded that we sink all the battleships and disarm ourselves, because our leaders told us that the world was safe for democracy. There were a few prophets of God in that period, standing in the pulpits of the land. They were not pacifists, but they did not care for war either. They declared in unmistakable terms that God’s Word said there would be wars and rumors of war so long as there was sin, unrighteousness, and evil in the world. They stated that war was not a skin disease, but a heart disease, and they were proven correct when we entered World War II. When others declared that Christ was a pacifist, they called attention to the fact that He had said that a strong man armed keepeth his palace. I can recall that the church I attended as a boy had just such a minister. He was a faithful servant of Christ, and he sought to please God rather than men. But his message was largely rejected, and he was not popular with the crowd—they preferred the liberal preacher in the town. But time has now proven that he was right, and current events demonstrate that he was a friend of this nation, not an enemy. He was a prophet of God and could say with Isaiah, “Who has believed our report?” There are a few prophetic voices lifted up right now in America. They are trying to call this nation back to God before it is too late, but the crowd is rushing headlong after another delusion.

Personally I am overwhelmed by the marvelous response to our Bible teaching program on radio. But every now and then we are reminded that we are in a Christ-rejecting world. Our program has been put off the air by several radio stations because they did not like our message. One radio manager called in to say that he did not like the kind of “religion” I was preaching. He wanted to know if it weren’t possible to give something a little bit more cheerful, because mankind was on the up-and-up and getting better and better. They weren’t sinners, and things were not as bad as I seemed to think they were. This man’s call, and others like it, simply serve to remind us that we are in a Christ-rejecting world, and we must accept it as such and keep on going. We rejoice today that we have as large an outlet as we do. I believe that there are many prophetic voices in our nation today trying to call us back to God before it is too late. In spite of that, the majority of the people are following any Pied Piper of liberalism who has a tune they can jig by and who makes them feel like everything is going to be all right.

Paul said the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. From ideas publicly expressed we are given to know that there are many to whom the preaching of the cross is foolishness. I admit there is a lot of foolish preaching, and I offer no apology for it. But God said they would identify the preaching of the cross with foolishness. This message is a challenge to those folk, for there is a reason for their thinking as they do. God says, “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14). Would that they would give God a chance to talk with them!

It must be remembered that God does not use man’s methods and ways to accomplish things. God chooses the weak things of the world to confound the mighty and the foolish things to confound the wise. If we were to call in a specialist in a time of illness, we certainly would not expect him to use the same home remedies normally used by us. His procedure might appear foolish to us, but we would follow it faithfully. Then should we not accord to God the same dealing of fairness as we do to the specialist?

There is a very definite reason why men do not believe in God’s gospel. Men like to think of God as sitting somewhere in heaven upon some lofty throne. The ancients spoke of the gods whose dwelling was not with mankind. The Greeks placed their deities upon Mount Olympus, and the Romans had Jupiter hurling thunderbolts from the battlements of the clouds. It is foreign to the field of religion that God has come down to this earth among men and that He suffered upon the shameful cross. That is too much to comprehend. The modern mind calls that defeatism—they do not care for it. A suffering deity is contrary to man’s thinking.

However, there is a peculiar fascination about this fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. There we see One suffering as no one else ever suffered. There we behold One in pain as a woman in travail. We are strangely drawn to Him and His cross. He said, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me” (John 12:32). Suffering has a singular attraction. Pain draws us all together. When you and I see some poor creature groaning in misery and covered with blood, our hearts instinctively go out in sympathy to the unfortunate victim. Somehow we want to help. That is the reason the Red Cross makes such an appeal to our hearts. Our sympathy is keen toward those who are war’s victims, or the victims of twentieth century civilized barbarism. Pain places all of us on the same plane. It is a common bond uniting all the frail children of suffering humanity. Therefore look with me upon the strange sufferings of the Son of God. Let Him draw our cold hearts into the warmth of His sacrifice and the radiance of His love.

Isaiah enlarges upon his first question by asking further, “To whom is the [bared] arm of the Lord revealed?” “Bared arm” means that God has rolled up His sleeve, symbolic of a tremendous undertaking. When God created the heavens and the earth, it is suggested that it is merely His fingerwork. For instance, Psalm 19:1—“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork.” That word handiwork is literally “fingerwork.” Dr. T. DeWitt Talmage used to say that God created the physical universe without half trying. When God created the heavens and the earth, it was without effort. He merely spoke them into existence. When He rested on the seventh day, He wasn’t tired; He had just finished everything; it was completed. But when God redeemed man, it required His “bared arm,” for salvation was His greatest undertaking. One of the objections offered to God’s salvation is that it is free. If by that is meant that for man it is free, then this is correct. Man can pay nothing, nor does he have anything to offer for salvation. The reason that it is free for man is because it cost God everything. He had to bare His arm. He gave His Son to die upon the cross. Redemption is an infinite task that only God could perform. Salvation is free, but it certainly is not cheap.

McGee, J. Vernon: Thru the Bible Commentary. electronic ed. Nashville : Thomas Nelson, 1997, c1981, S. 3:311-313