The Messiah Anna Longed For

Isaiah 53:1-3 Who has believed what we have heard?

And who has the arm of the Lord been revealed to?
² He grew up before Him like a young plant
and like a root out of dry ground.
He didn’t have an impressive form
or majesty that we should look at Him,
no appearance that we should desire Him.
³ He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of suffering who knew what sickness was.
He was like someone people turned away from;
He was despised, and we didn’t value Him.

Movies get it wrong when they cast Mary as adorably pretty and sweet.

She was sweet, that they get right. She had an internal beauty that even got God’s attention. But based on what the Scripture says about Jesus, she had to be rather average in appearance.

In both the Old and New Testaments, it says that Christ, the Messiah, was not particularly handsome. He was of average looks—just like everyone else. You could see him in a crowd and forget him instantly. He was predominantly quiet, soft-spoken and didn’t appear to have ‘natural’ charisma.

In other words, he was not a replay of Saul.

Israel’s first king had been tall and amazingly handsome. He looked royal. He stood out in a crowd. And after getting over his initial shyness, he was a good motivator and speaker. If they had had movie cameras in his day, they would have adored him. But in spite of Israel’s hopes for their first king to make them like all the other nations or better, Saul was way too human. He was not and could not be their savior.

Israel’s true and forever king, however, was not noble because of how he looked or spoke, but because who he was and what he did. It wasn’t the sound of his voice that swayed audiences, it was the power of the truth in his words. It wasn’t the way he moved through and ‘worked’ a crowd, it was the way he stopped to notice and heal a woman who touched him or to call a tax collector out of a tree.

No one attributed much value to an average carpenter from Nazareth. At least not until they needed the touch of his hand.