Morning, brethren. Let's turn
in our Bibles to Isaiah 53. We'll ask the Lord's blessing
before we begin. Our gracious Heavenly Father,
Lord, we thank you for this day that you've made. Thank you for
bringing us here together, and we pray now, Lord, that you would
be exalted and that you would be the teacher. Make us to worship. In Christ's name we ask it, Lord.
Amen. Now we've been looking at these
verses, taking them phrase by phrase, and I'll read verses
eight and nine again, and we'll finish up today, Lord willing,
with verse nine. Verse eight says, he was taken,
our Lord Jesus, he was taken from prison and from judgment,
and who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the
land of the living, For the transgression of my people was he stricken.
And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in
his death, because he had done no violence, neither was any
deceit in his mouth. Now, the first thing we see here,
we're concentrating on verse 9. It says, he made his grave
with the wicked. He made his grave with the wicked.
Our Lord Jesus, willingly, voluntarily, voluntarily made his grave with
the wicked. He did that voluntarily. Wicked
men who were very religious but unregenerate, they meant to shame
him by crucifying him at a place called Golgotha, the place of
the skull. It was outside of the walls of
Jerusalem where they crucified convicts. The place was It's
called the Place of the Skull because it was supposedly littered
with skulls from prior convicts that had been crucified there,
and it was a place of shame. And they meant this to be a shameful
death. It's the most glorious. It is
the glory of God. This death was the glory of God.
We see here the grace of our Lord Jesus and the love of our
Lord Jesus for His helpless, sinful people. He willingly gave
Himself to the Father. You think about, you know, you
have a brother or sister, somebody that's sinned, maybe they offended
you. We offended Him. When we think
of sin, we should think about it this way. We offended the
Lord God. He is God and we offended Him. And say a brother's done that,
and it would be like you stepping in between him and whoever is
condemning him and saying, condemn me, don't condemn them. That's
what our Lord did for us. But with him, what it involved
was more than just stepping in and saying, condemn me more than
them. It meant really being made sin
for us. We can't enter into that. understand
how that could be done. We don't understand how the Lord
made him sin, but he really and truly made him sin for us. You
know, when you sin and you know you're guilty, there's things
involved, the conscience and the shame, and there's a lot
involved in it internally. Our Lord suffered all of that.
He suffered every bit of that. He really was made sin for us. And then because he was made
sin, God justly made him the curse. He made him cursed for
us. He poured out on him the curse,
the condemnation of the law that all his people deserved. And
our Lord did that willingly. He did that willingly. Verse
12 says he was numbered with the transgressors. He gave Himself
to be numbered with the transgressors. That's what He did for each and
every individual sinner who God the Father trusted to Him, who
God the Father gave to His Son and said, redeem these, save
them. Christ said, I lay down my life
for the sheep. That's His people. I lay down
my life for the sheep. He prayed in John 17 to the Father
and said, Father, I pray not for the world. I pray for them
Thou hast given me, for they are Thine. Christ was laying
down His life for His people because He loves His people.
How do you know who His people are? Do you believe Him? Has
He given you faith to trust Him? That's the only way we know who
the elect are. The elect are given faith by
God to believe Christ and trust Him to be all our salvation.
If you've been given faith by God, if God did it, and you can
say, the Lord did this for me, by his grace, he gave me faith. He gave me life, he gave me faith
to know him, he gave me a new will to know him. If you can
truly say that, Christ was doing this for you. He was willingly
giving himself for you. You know, what's amazing about
this is the Lord Jesus is holy God, and yet he came down and
identified himself with sinners. He identified himself, took the
place of guilty, vile sinners. We're talking about even when
we didn't know him, even when we hated him. And you know, we
think, well, I wasn't born for over 2,000 years later, He's
eternal God. Everything is right now with
Him. So He knew you as real as you are sitting there right now,
even then, and knew what a sinner we were, and yet laid down His
life for us. Go with me to Mark 2. You know
this scripture, but I just, in context with what I'm saying,
I think this is important. Mark 2. I wanna be more like my Redeemer. I pray the Lord would make me
have this spirit right here. Mark 2, 16, now we're gonna see
the opposite spirit in the scribes and Pharisees. These are very
religious men. I mean, the most religious of
the day. And look, verse 16, Mark 2, 16. And when the scribes and Pharisees
saw him eat with publicans, That was somebody who collected taxes,
and what they did was the Roman government would pay them to
collect taxes for Rome, and when they went, if they were supposed
to collect a dollar from you, they would get two dollars from
you, and they'd give one to the Romans, and they'd keep one.
They were cheats, crooked, and sinners. These are harlots and
immoral people. That's who he was sitting and
eating with. And they said unto his disciples,
how is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners? They considered this to be just
a blight on his character that he did this. They would never
be caught with these poor sinners. Go with me to Isaiah 65. Well,
hold your place there now. Hold your place in Mark 2. I'm
going to come right back. But I want you to look at Isaiah
65. You know, when you hear me say
religion, I'm usually speaking of false religion. Because that's
what you got going on the majority in this world today. And the
most common thing taught among religion is, that men are getting
progressively holier by their works. And that necessarily results
in one sinner saying he's holier than another sinner. One who
professes to believe saying he's holier than this other one who
professes to believe. And it creates every kind of
malice and envy and competition. It's just, it's nothing good
about it. Well, in scripture, There is no place in scripture
where it is said that one believer is holier than another, or one
man is holier than another man. It's never said that in scripture,
but one place, and this is the one place, Isaiah 65, five. They say, stand by thyself, come
not near to me, for I am holier than thou. Now hear what God
says. These are a smoke in my nose,
a fire that burneth all the day. What's he talking about? He's
talking about a trash dump where you burn refuse and it stinks. He said, they stink to me. See,
that's not the spirit of our Lord. Now go back with me to
Mark 2. Here's the spirit of our Lord.
He willingly made his grave with the wicked. He made himself first
to be represented, he represented all his people on the cross,
made sin for us, made a curse for us, and this was his spirit. They said, why is he eating with
these publicans and sinners? Verse 17, Mark 2, 17, when Jesus
heard, he said to them, they that are whole have no need of
the physician, but they that are sick, I came not to call
the righteous, but sinners to repentance. There are none that
are whole. We're all guilty, sick sinners
by nature. Isaiah chapter one says, from
the top of the head to the sole of the foot, there's wounds and
bruises and putrefying sores. Only Christ the great physician
can heal us. But he said, I didn't come to
heal whole people. They don't need a physician.
I came to heal sick sinners who cannot heal themselves. That's
his spirit, that was his spirit. Look to Luke 15, I'll show you
what his spirit is. If one of his people, you that
believe, sitting here now, if we stray, and we do often stray,
our Lord has the ability, the sovereign ability, to turn your
heart, to go back under the gospel, where he will speak to you through
the preaching of the word. He has the ability and he always
does it. If we stray and we depart, he's
the shepherd. This gospel is the shepherd's
crook that the shepherd used to pull the sheep back in. But
to get you under that gospel, he has the sovereign ability
to put it in your heart to know I need to get back under the
gospel. and he will come and find you. He knows where you
are, and he will seek you and bring you back under that gospel
and save you, and he'll do that for all his lost sheep. Look
at, this is his spirit. Look at Luke 15, four. What man
of you, having a hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, does
not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness and go after
that which is lost until he find it? And when he hath found it,
he layeth it on his shoulders rejoicing. And when he cometh
home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying unto them,
rejoice with me, for I found my sheep which was lost. I say
unto you that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner
that repenteth more than 99 just persons which need no repentance.
See, our Lord, he's sovereign God. He has the ability. to turn
the heart of the king, the scripture says. And we all think we're
kings by nature. We come to this world thinking
we're king. And he has the heart to turn the king's heart and
work everything in your life in providence to bring you under
the preaching of his word. And at the same time, he's given
his pastor just the message that he'd have him to preach. And
he brings that sinner and his pastor together and it's Christ
working the whole thing and he speaks to his lost sheep or his
straying sheep and he brings us back home. And that's what
he'll do. He won't lose one. He's never
lost one and he will never lose one. He laid down his life for
his people. He justified his people. He must
save us. Remember when he said, he was
talking to Israelites and he said, I'm the good shepherd.
The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep and he said, And
other sheep I have which are not of this fold, he meant they're
not among the Israelites. And that's good news for us,
because most of us, I think, sitting here are not natural
Jews, we're Gentiles. And what he meant was, I have
some lost sheep who are Gentiles. And he said, them I must bring. Why must he bring them? Because
he's holy, and God's holiness made him have to send Christ
to justify us before God could receive us. Because we got to
be holy to be accepted of God. So he came and justified his
people. And because we've been justified,
we must be brought to him. We must be brought to the Father.
In Christ's inner covenant to bring us to the Father. And he
said, them I must bring. And when he's brought his people
together, he said, there'll be one fold. That's what you call
sheep when they're brought together, a fold. There'll be one fold.
and there'll be one shepherd. That's the true redeemer. That's the shepherd who is sovereign. The word shepherd means pastor.
He's the pastor who is sovereign God, able to call and seek out
his lost sheep and bring us to one another. That's our hope,
brethren, for one another. That's our hope for our brethren.
That's our hope for our lost family. Our hope is. We have
a savior who is sovereign to save his people and he identified
himself with his sinful people and redeemed us and he will call
every one of his and not lose one. That's the great shepherd. So yes, wicked sinners nailed
Christ to the cross, but they only did it fulfilling what God
had already purposed to be done. God just took the restraints
off, let them do what was in their heart, and their heart
was to reject God, and they rejected Christ, nailed Him to a cross,
but God was working His purpose, and by that He redeemed His people.
The Lord Jesus laid down His life. He made His grave with
the wicked. Now secondly, back in Isaiah
53, as I said, this phrase refers
to the fact, we've been looking here in verse eight and nine,
This is what wicked men did to him. And it refers to the fact
that wicked men meant to shame him. They meant to shame him
by giving him a burial like the wicked. They crucified him like
the wicked and they meant to bury him right there in that
place of the skull. Just a dishonorable casting him
out into a field. But God overruled them. He overruled
them to vindicate his son and give him an honorable burial. God is writing this through Isaiah
hundreds of years before it came to pass. And he declares everything
that took place. And God overruled those men in
our Lord's day to give him an honorable burial. How did he
do that? He made his grave with the wicked
and with the rich in his death. How did he do that? You remember
when Nicodemus came to him by night and he was lost? He had never been regenerated.
He was a master in Israel. He was a teacher. Some think
he was part of the Sanhedrin, the Council of Seventy. And there
was another man named Joseph of Arimathea. He was a rich man. Both of these men were wealthy.
Both of them were teachers, rulers in Israel. And God had quickened
Nicodemus, and he had quickened Joseph of Arimathea, and both
of them were afraid of their fellow Pharisees, and so they
were secretly believing Christ. They had not confessed Him. Go
with me to John 19. But when the Lord, He continued
to work grace in their heart, and they heard the gospel, they
heard Christ preach, they heard everything that was said, The
seven sayings Christ said from the cross, they heard some of
the things that men said against him, which the men said that
against him to condemn him, but some of the things they said
was the truth. They said others he saved himself he cannot save. That's true. He could not save
himself if he was going to save his people. He had to suffer
that death to save us and justify us. And they heard all that,
and the Lord increased their faith. When they beheld Christ
and Him crucified, the Lord increased their faith. That's when you're
gonna be given faith, is when God turns you to behold Christ
crucified and makes you know He bore that in your place. When
God makes you know that, that's when He'll give you faith to
trust Him. And that's what they beheld. And look here, John 19,
31, they're not secret disciples anymore. John 19 The Jews first 31 the Jews therefore
because it was the preparation that the body should not remain
I'm gonna read a little bit more to you here because what I want
to show you is this was also Christ fulfilling the scriptures
He has to fulfill all the law and the prophets and this was
him fulfilling the scriptures. I'll just give you an example
here They saw the Sabbath day was coming, and there's Christ
hanging on the cross. Think of the hypocrisy here.
They don't want to break that law of the Sabbath day. And there's
Christ who is the one the Sabbath day pictured, who is the rest
for his people. And so in order not to break
that day, they sent some men out there to break his bones
in his legs, because when you're crucified, you'd push yourself
up so you wouldn't drown. They sent him out there to break
his legs so that he couldn't hold himself up so that he would
die so they wouldn't break the Sabbath day. That sounds crazy, doesn't it?
That's religion without God teaching you. That's what it is. It says here, Sabbath was a high
day to them, so they besought Pilate that their legs might
be broken, that they might be taken away. Then came the soldiers
and break the legs of the first thief and the other which was
crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and
saw that he was dead already, they break not his legs. But
one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, just out of
the blue, this soldier just shoved the spear in his side. And it
says, and for with there came out blood and water. Christ is
justification by His blood and He's sanctification by the water,
washes us wholly. And it says, And he that saw
it bare record, and his record is true, and he knoweth that
he sayeth true, that you might believe. Now watch this. For
these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled,
a bone of him shall not be broken. And another scripture said, they
shall look on him whom they pierced. That was Christ's fulfilling
scripture. So is this next portion. This next portion is him fulfilling
our text. Verse 38, and after this, Joseph
of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear
of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body
of Jesus, and Pilate gave him leave. He came, therefore, and
took the body of Jesus. And there came also Nicodemus,
which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture
of myrrh and aloes, about 100 pound weight, Then took they
the body of Jesus and wound it in linen clothes with the spices,
as the manner of the Jews is to bury. And now in the place
where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden
a new sepulcher wherein was never a man yet laid. There laid they
Jesus, therefore, because of the Jews' preparation day, for
the sepulcher was nigh at hand. Both those men were wealthy,
very rich men. He made his grave with the wicked
and the rich in his death. They were rich in temporal riches.
They were rich in their vain religion. Both were rulers among
the Pharisees, but they were secret disciples. He had given
them a new heart and they believed him, but they were afraid they
would be put out of the synagogue and killed. But when they beheld
Christ crucified, the Lord increased their faith. And when you behold
Christ crucified, you'll do what they did. They came begging for
Christ. They came begging for His body,
but you'll come begging for Him. You'll come begging Him for mercy.
Any unbelief or fear of men or sin, that's of us. But when we
talk about faith and them trusting the Lord, that's all of God's
grace, what they did here. And you see the grace of our
Lord, because though they were Though they believed Christ,
but they wouldn't confess him publicly. Remember, Christ said,
if a man won't confess me publicly, I won't confess him before my
father. Well, surely the Lord just gonna reject them since
they wouldn't believe him publicly, profess him publicly. Though
the scripture says, a bruised reed shall he not break, and
the smoking flax shall he not quench. Meaning, when a believer's
weak and full of unbelief, and even appears like he doesn't
even believe, the Lord's not gonna break him. The Lord's gonna
save him. He's gonna keep, if he's smoking,
there's no fire, there's just smoke, like old stinking smoking
flax, he won't snuff it out. He's gonna keep growing his child,
and that's what the Lord did with both these men. He was patient
with them, he increased them in faith, he made them rich with
the unsearchable riches of Christ. He said, all the Father giveth
me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me, I will in
no wise cast him out. Brethren, don't you ever shut
the door. If somebody else wants to shut
the door, let them shut it, but you keep the door open. Keep
the door open, and always welcome brethren, always welcome brethren,
and don't treat them like there was anything that went wrong.
The Lord knows, and the Lord deals with his people, and if
he brings his people, if you depart and the Lord brings you
back, you don't want your brethren setting some bar that you have
to fulfill and treating you like you've, shaming you. You've already
been through the shame, you've already been convicted in your
heart, you wouldn't be coming back. And when they come, when
your brethren come, You don't shame them, you receive them.
Because that's what Christ does for us every day. Every day,
the Lord is merciful and longsuffering to us. That's what he did with
these two men. You see where he brought them?
He brought them to publicly go before Pilate and say, we want
the body of our Savior. And they took this, these spices
they used were expensive. And they took these, now they're
using their riches for Christ. their earthly riches, because
He's enriched them by His grace and His mercy. And they publicly
identify with Christ, and the Lord worked all of that. The
Lord worked that. The Lord's able to save His people.
Me and you, if we're not careful, we get in the way. And the Lord
has to end up correcting us for what we do. But the Lord is able
to teach His people. You speak Christ to you. to his
people, and you encourage one another with what the Lord's
done for us, and then you pray to the Lord, and then you wait
on the Lord. That's what being a preacher's
about. Preach, pray, and wait. Preach, pray, and wait. That's
the work right there. Preach, pray, and wait. And the
Lord will work it. But you picture these two men.
These two men had to go out publicly on that hill out there where
everybody could see it, They had to go out there on that hill
publicly and take down the body of our Savior. Men who before
wouldn't profess Him openly, now they're out there taking
down the body of the Savior, and they take Him to Joseph's
tomb where no man had ever laid, a dead man had never laid there,
and they bury Him in this rich man's tomb. That's also a fulfillment
of the law of the red heifer. And the law of the red heifer,
it was a law which pictured Christ, they would take a red heifer
and slay this red heifer in the place of the people, and they
would make a mixture out of his ashes and what have you, and
they would set it up, and the scripture says this, A man that's
clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and lay them up
without the count in a clean place, and it shall be kept for
the congregation of the children of Israel for a water of separation. It's a purification for sin. Christ is the clean man. And
Christ was laid in a tomb where never... If you touched anything
dead, it was unclean. Christ was laid in a tomb where
never a dead man laid, a clean place. And Christ is that water
of separation. He is that fountain open for
sin and uncleanness. You go to Christ and believe
on him, trust him, confess your sins to him, and he washes his
people white as snow. Perfectly innocent before God
Almighty. So he fulfilled Isaiah 53, and
he fulfilled the law of the red heifer right there, and those
other scriptures we saw. Christ fulfilled all. He must
fulfill the law for us because we can't keep it. And he did. And everything in the book, from
Genesis all the way to the Revelation, everything in this book speaks
of Christ. And he fulfills everything written. Everything. He's the smitten
rock. He's the Passover lamb. He's
the high priest. He's the lamb. He's the mercy
seed. He's Noah's ark. He's the temple. He's everything. Everything in the book pictures
Christ. Everything. And we're the sinner. That's it. All we get to say
that we can take credit for is we sinned. That's it. He does
all the saving. Lastly, here's why Christ was
the only one who could fulfill the law and the prophets. He
was the only one who could make his grave with the wicked. He
was the only one who could represent His people on the cross, and
here's why. Verse 9, because He had done no violence, neither
was any deceit in His mouth. God made Adam upright. Adam had never sinned. God made
him. God created the world, created everything, and put him in this
garden. Everything was done for him.
It was all complete. And He made him upright. No sin. Gave him one law. Said, of all
the trees in the garden you can eat, but don't eat of that one
tree. What'd he do? He ate of that one tree. In a
perfect world, with a perfect heart, with one law, he broke
it, and he's the father of us all. He plunged us all into sin
and guilt, death. Christ comes forth, not a grown
man, He comes forth from his mother's womb, took a body, prepared
him, was born, grew up from an infant, had over 600 laws in
the law of Israel, circumcised the eighth day, which meant you
come under the law, you gotta fulfill the whole law, lived
with Satan against him, evil angels against him, wicked men
against him, self-righteous religious men against him, Went all his
days, he established his church, called out his 12 apostles to
send them forth to preach. Went to the cross, laid down
his life, justified us from our sin, made us holy by his holy
heart, his holy will, fulfilling the law for us. Went to the grave,
came out of the grave and ascended. There's only been two men that
started their life without sin, Adam and Christ. As you sit here
today, if you don't believe Christ and trust Christ, you're without
Him. If you trust Christ, what you're
saying is, He's my only hope. I have no other hope. He's it.
I believe He is my salvation. I believe He is my only acceptance
with God. And I rest in Him. He's the only
other person beside Adam that was holy. Adam had everything
for him, Christ had everything against him, and yet he remained
holy. In Scripture, oh, this is so
important to remember. Scripture, wherever Scripture
tells you that Christ was made sin, it also tells you he knew
no sin. He was really made sin for his
people, but he really knew no sin himself. He really bore the
sin of his people, He hath made him sin for us who knew no sin,
that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Because he had
to be holy. He had to be holy. Peter said
he did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth, who his own
self bare our sins and his own body on the tree. Both were necessary. There's two sides to the law.
There's the positive side where you gotta be holy and willingly,
perfectly fulfill the law. That's why it was necessary Christ
be holy, no sin. But the other side of the law
is if you break it, you gotta die under it. That's why Christ was made sin
and made a curse. Both at the same time, He's holy
in heart, perfectly doing the will of God, trusting the Father
to raise Him when it's all done. And at the same time, He's bearing
the sin of His people, justifying us from our sin. That is the
total fulfillment of the law of God. Positive and negative. And that's what Christ did. That's
why He was the only one that could do this. Here's what I'm
saying to you. We're the sinner. We can't contribute
to our salvation. No way. Christ alone is the way,
the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but
by Him, only by Him. If you don't believe Him, you'll
die in your sin, because you can't please God. If you believe
Him, He said, you shall be saved. That's His promise. I pray you
give us the heart to believe Him. We never stop coming to
Christ. We never stop believing Him. Believe on Christ and you shall
be saved. Let's go to him. Our gracious
God and our Father, how we thank you for sending your son. How
we thank you, Lord, that you were holy and perfect, loved
your people with a perfect love, laid down your life for us and
saved us from our sin. Lord, we're thankful you revealed
this to us, made us to know Christ, who is our righteousness and
our holiness. Make us rest in Him, Lord. Make
us look to Him alone. Lord, give us the heart our Savior
had. Make us merciful in longsuffering.
Make us forgiving to one another. Let us be helpers together of
one another. And use only the word, use only,
speak of only our Redeemer. Pray to you, trust you, and wait
on you to work. Lord, make us to do this for
your sake. It's in your name we pray, amen.