Isaiah 53. The message of the whole Bible
is found in Isaiah 53. If you want to know what the
Bible teaches, read this whole chapter. And really you can sum
up the whole message of the Bible in one verse here in Isaiah 53,
verse 6. Isaiah 53, 6. All we, like sheep,
have gone astray. We have turned every one to his
own way. And the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all. Titled this, The Gospel in a
Verse. Isaiah speaks here on behalf
of God's elect who God has called and given faith in Christ. When he says we and us, he's
speaking of himself and he's speaking of all those that God
has sanctified, called to believe Christ. Now, when you're reading
a scripture, you always want to find out who is writing and
to whom. You know, and every book pretty
much does that. It gives you that information. First Corinthians one, Paul said,
Paul called an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God
and soth the knees our brother unto the church of God which
is at Corinth to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus called
saints. With all that in every place,
call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.
This will tell us who the word refers to, who's it speaking
about. And when you see these personal
pronouns like we and us and words like all, now you know who it's
applying to. This is declaring what's true.
Isaiah's saying what's true of himself. He's saying what's true
of all God's elect called by Christ. And he's declaring here
what's true of Christ Jesus and of God the Father. So we know
who wrote it and to whom. Now let's read it again. All
we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his
own way. And the Lord hath laid on him
the iniquity of us all. The Holy Spirit declares three
vital gospel truths right here. This is something that when God
quickens you and he gives you spiritual understanding, gives
you faith, this is something all his people understand and
believe. We say amen, this is so. First,
we all became guilty in Adam. We all became guilty in Adam. It says, all we like sheep have
gone astray. And then secondly, we personally
have sinned against God. We have turned every man, every
one, to his own way. And then thirdly, here's salvation. God, our Father, in his Son,
Christ Jesus, has justified all his people by laying our sin
and our curse on the Lord Jesus Christ. the Lord hath laid on
him the iniquity of us all. You find out those three things,
God revealed those three things to you, and you're gonna be resting
in Christ from then on, if he reveals these three things. I
pray he does that today. I pray he reveals it to somebody
lost, and I pray that for us, he's called, I pray he grow us
and settle us and make us just rest right here. right in Christ. Now, first of all, we all became
guilty, guilty before God, guilty before God, and it was in Adam,
in Adam. All we, like sheep, have gone
astray. Now, this is true of all men.
This is true of everybody, because Adam is the federal head of all
men. God made him so to typify Christ. He's the head of all. So we all
went astray in Adam. We all sinned in Adam. We all
sinned in Adam. This is the doctrine that men
call original sin. Original sin. But this is speaking
particularly of God's elect. All we like sheep have gone astray.
Men get angry when we preach the doctrine of election. They
say that's not fair, but men don't want to take the place
and own what, how God describes his elect. Vile, God-hating sinners
who died in Adam, our head. Men don't want to take their
place. They don't mind, they hate the doctrine of election,
but they don't want to take the place of one who is truly ruined
in sin. This is so of his people that
he says, we're compared to sheep because sheep are They're dumb,
straying animals. Spurgeon said sheep are insulted
by the comparison. Men are like sheep, but we're
worse than sheep. Now that's the first lesson we're
going to have to learn here now. We all, like sheep, have gone
astray. Now that's God's Word. That's
the Word of God on this. This one-third of this verse
should be enough to shut every man's mouth because that's the
Word of God. God says that to us. And that
ought to just shut our mouth right now because it's so. But
the Lord said that Let every word be established by two or
three eyewitnesses, people who know what they're talking about.
And he sends you and me forth to be witnesses of him because
he's made you a witness through the eye of faith. He's made us
witnesses of Christ. So let me give you two or three
scriptures to back up this one third of this verse. Here you
go, 1 Corinthians 15, 22. We're going to keep it simple. Here it is. In Adam, all die. In Adam, all die. Here's another
one, Psalm 14, three. They are all gone aside. They
are all together become filthy. There is none that doeth good,
no, not one. All guilty in Adam. Romans 5,
12, let's go there and let's mark this. I wanna come back
and show you another thing from this verse here in a moment.
Romans 5 12 is where we really learn very clearly here about
what happened in Adam and what happened in Christ Romans 5 12 for now. We're just
gonna read this one verse Wherefore as by one man sin entered into
the world By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin
and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sin. Now there it is, God made Adam
the federal head, representing all his children. He did it to
picture, to typify the Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 5 there and verse
14 at the end says, Adam is the figure of him that was to come.
God set him up as the head to picture Christ, the last Adam,
the head of his people. So by Adam's transgression, brethren,
we became, he not only became guilty, but we became guilty.
Guilty before God. Now that ends all possibility
that we could do anything to save ourselves. We're guilty. We're guilty. You think about
it in the earthly justice system, if a man is guilty, there's nothing
that man can do to make himself not guilty. Nothing he can do. He's guilty. Now, this is so vital to get. This is so important. Imputation
is of utmost importance in the scripture. Vital, vital doctrine
of scripture, and it's important to understand How God imputes. I've preached whole messages
on this thing of imputation, because this is where the real
issue, where the confusion and errors come in with people who
understand the gospel, but they get confused on this because
of tradition, because of how men have taught it in tradition,
passed down. Listen, with God, God only imputes
what a man has been made. He only imputes what a man has
been made. God's not pretending. He's not
treating you as if anything. When He imputes, He imputes what
a man has been made. And because we all really sinned
in Adam. Adam really sinned and we really
sinned in him. And so God imputed sin to us. We became guilty. We went from
fellowship with God to losing all access to God. We went from
life to death. We went from having liberty into
total bondage. We went from being in a peaceful
relationship with God to being the enemy of God, enmity against
him, from light to darkness. Now this is one of the first
gospel truths God will reveal to a sinner, because listen,
that verse before says we're healed by Christ's stripes. You
won't rejoice in that till you have a reason and know that you
need to be healed. That won't do you any good till
you know why you need to be healed. Here's why, you're guilty before
God. Do you want to face the holy
God by yourself? I'm telling you, God will not
clear the guilty. He is a holy God. He knows the
heart. He knows everything. In Adam,
we died. We became guilty. You don't want
to meet God trusting in yourself. You've got to have an advocate. Even in this earthly court system,
you don't go to court without an advocate. You've got to have
a lawyer. You don't speak the law. how to defend yourself,
and if you're guilty, you can't. We need an advocate, we need
Christ. Now, secondly, it gets more narrow than that. We personally
have sinned. Look here now, verse six, we
have turned everyone to his own way, personal. Adam passed to
us his corrupt nature, so we came We were conceived in sin
in the womb, corrupted, sinful in the womb.
Look at Psalm 51, Psalm 51. David said right here, he said,
Behold, I was shapen in iniquity. Remember we saw last time in
Psalm 139, the Lord speaking about how he was formed, the
body prepared for him was formed in the womb, and his body was
shapened in the womb. Well, he was holy in the womb. But look what David said, and
this is so of all of us. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me. Look at Romans 5. This is one other thing I wanted
to show you, Romans 5. It gives you, in the parentheses
here, there's about three or four verses in parentheses. One,
two, three, four, five verses in parentheses. Look here in
verse 16. It gives you some differences,
how Adam's transgression It's different. Look here, in the
grace of God, how they differ. 16, it says, not as it was by
one that sinned, so is the gift. The gift's a little different.
Here's how. For the judgment was by one to condemnation. There was just one sin committed
that condemned us. But the free gift is of many
offenses unto justification. See, we not only sinned in Adam,
we have sinned ourselves. We personally have gone astray
and sinned against God. And this is the issue, it's a
heart matter, it's so in the heart. We have turned everyone
to his own way in the heart. Jeremiah 17, nine says, the heart
is deceitful above all. The heart is deceitful above
all and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Nobody can know
their own heart. We're desperately wicked by nature. This is why men won't believe
this gospel. This is why men won't own themselves to be the
sinner. Our heart deceived us and keeps us deceived. We're
desperately wicked. Let's God intervene. We personally
go our own way and it's the personal way we want to go. He said every
one of us turn to his own way. Proverbs 16, 25, there is a way
that seemeth right to a man. Men are convinced they're right,
whichever way they go. There's a way that seemeth right
to the man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. You don't
wanna go your own way. No, no, you want Christ's way. You don't wanna be like that
old song, I did it my way. No, no, you don't want that.
You want it to be God's way. It's no great thing to get a
man religious. That's not a great thing. Every
man's religious by nature. Every man's religious by nature.
And it's a religion of our own making by nature, though. But
you take a man who's never entered to a church building, never heard
a message preached, even if it was false, and you ask him, and
he'll tell you what he thinks of God. And it's all false, it's
just imagination. And listen, the man that sits
in a church pew every single time the doors open, that hadn't
been born again and taught of God, has not been taught of God,
has not had divine revelation given him, that man's way, and
you ask him, he'll tell you what he thinks, how he thinks sinners
are saved, and his way is as vain and false and corrupt as
the man that never entered into a church building. All men are
natural by, they're religious by nature. I'll show you that,
Psalm 58, the Lord tells us that plainly. Look here. Here's what he says, Psalm 58,
do you indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? He's talking
to the congregation, If you imagine all the world into one congregation,
and he's speaking to everybody, do you indeed speak righteousness,
O congregation? Do you judge uprightly, O ye
sons of men? Yea, in heart you work wickedness. And here's our problem, though.
The problem's in the heart, but here's what we do. You weigh
the violence of your hands in the earth. You only consider
sin to be in your hands, but it's your heart that's the issue.
The wicked are estranged from the womb. They go astray as soon
as they be born, speaking lies. Their poison's like the poison
of a serpent. They're like the deaf adder that
stops his ear. which will not hearken to the
voice of charmers, charming never so wisely. That's God's description
of man's natural religion. It's just as natural as his heart.
Here it is. Man's heart's deceived, desperately
wicked, so everything that comes out of it's gonna be wicked.
Here's the heart. God saw the wickedness of man
was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts
of his heart, it's in here, brethren, it's inside. Every imagination
of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. We're
all born that way, but listen now, if you're gonna be saved
by God, he's gonna make you know. This is so of all his elect that
he chose to save. This is so of us, brethren. We
must be born again by the word of God. The Holy Spirit must
come into us and teach us because we can't know God any other way.
The natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God.
Not only does He not receive them, they're foolishness to
Him. Neither can He know them. He
will not and He cannot. They're spiritually discerned.
Listen, but eye has not seen, God said, neither I have not
seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man
the things which God has prepared for them that love him. Well,
how then do we know? How are we gonna know God if
that's so of all men? And it is. How are we gonna know
him? And how are we gonna love him? Men read a word like that
and they say, Sue, you have to love God, then he'll teach you.
Oh no, that's getting the cart before the horse. Listen, how
are we gonna know him? No man can know him. How then,
and it's never entered our mind, never entered into our thoughts,
how God saves, how then can we know Him and how can we be made
to love Him? But God hath revealed them to
us by His Spirit. That's the only way. Gotta be
born again of God. The Lord Jesus Christ gets the
glory here. He's the shepherd. You know what
that word means? It means pastor. It's translated
from the word, it means pastor. There's about four or five words
that mean the same office. Pastor, bishop, elder, those
three all mean the same office. And Christ is preeminently the
one and all. He gets the glory and all. But
he's the shepherd and bishop. He's the bishop of our souls. Same office. So he has to call
us and bring us home. He said, I'll bring them home
on my shoulder. All right, thirdly, let's get to this right here.
This is the third thing now. We sinned in Adam. We're personally
guilty. That's it for us. We're done.
We can't, nothing we can do. How are we gonna be saved then?
We can't know him. Can't believe him. He's never
entered our heart. We're just ruined. That's ruined now. That's
as ruined as it gets. So that means it's gonna have
to be God that saves us, isn't it? There's nothing in us. Nothing
in us for God to choose or love or no reason in us. Nothing we
can do, so here it is. God our Father, in his Son, the
Lord Jesus Christ, justified all his people. He made his people
the righteousness of God, and he did it by laying all our sin
on Christ, by making him sin for us. Here it is. Verse six,
and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. Now this
is how we know that this verse speaks only of God's elect because
Christ accomplished what he came to do and he really did justify
all his people. So that excludes some people
because not everybody's gonna be brought to believe. Christ
did this for a people and he did it and accomplished it. Amazing
grace, brethren, that the very God we offended, we offended
holy God, and the very God we offended, before we ever offended
him, he had already chosen a savior to represent us, to be our head,
and to save us, before we sinned against him. And then after we
sinned against him and offended him and trespassed, that's what
sin is, it's trespass. Imagine how you'd be offended
if somebody came You've got a boundary around your property, and they
just barge right past it, tore the sign down, and act like they
didn't care whatsoever. That's trespassing. Worse, they
just came through your door and walked right in your house and
just helped themselves to everything that belonged to you. That's
trespassing. That's what we did against God.
And this God, who we offended, provided his only begotten son
for us. He provided His only begotten
Son for us. Amazing grace. The very God we
sinned against sent His own Son. He came in flesh to bring in
a perfect righteousness for us and to be that righteousness
for us. That's amazing grace. Now listen, there's no other
way. There was no other way this could
be accomplished. No other way. For God to uphold
His justice means He's gotta kill us, He's gotta slay us.
And for God to be merciful, He has to give us life. But there's
no way we could make those meet in harmony. And the only way
this could be done is by God coming and doing it in the person
of His Son. Him being God and Him being man
in one person. And so the Lord Jesus came forth.
Turn with me to Proverbs 17. You need to, oh I pray the Lord
make us See this and understand this and bow to this Word of
Scripture right here. Proverbs 17, 15. God made His
spotless, sinless Son sin for us and He did it to reveal His
righteousness. Why did He not just pour out
the curse on His Son before making Him sin for us? Why did He do
that? Here's why. Verse 15, Proverbs 17, 15. God
says, he that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth
the just, even they both are an abomination to the Lord. See,
that means God judges right. He judges strict justice, what
is just and right. That's what righteousness is,
it's what's right. And in order that the just judge
of heaven and earth might justly make his son a curse for us,
he first made him sin for us. That lamb, when that lamb, they
brought that lamb, they didn't bring that spotless lamb to the
high priest and that high priest just killed that lamb. First,
a ceremony was done to show a picture of all the sin being put on that
lamb. And our father made his son sin
for us. He really was made to bear all
the sin of his people. I said to you Thursday, Peter
said it this way, and he himself bore our sins in his own body
on the tree. If Peter was a man in this day
and preached that and nobody knew, you know, he was in the
scripture and he was an apostle and he preached that, I know
men that would take him to task over that and condemn him for
saying it like that. That's what he said. He, his
own self, bear our sins, and he his own body on the tree.
Look at verse, and then when he bore our sin, God made him
a curse. That's when God made him a curse.
That's the justice, the wrath, the punishment poured out. There
are two different things. To be made sin has made Him worthy
and made God just to pour out the curse on Him. But then He
made Him the curse. Then He slew His Son because
He's righteous. Look here. He was wounded for
our transgressions. Verse 5, He was wounded for our
transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities.
The chastisement of our peace was upon Him and with His stripes
we're healed. Oh brethren, this is the good
news right here. Every sinner that God's given
faith to believe, and He's going to give everyone Christ did this
for, He will give you faith to believe Him. And everyone He
has, God made us the righteousness of God in Christ His Son. I said
to you, God only imputes what a man's been made. That's the
only thing. God will not impute sin to His
people. Go with me to 2 Corinthians 5.
God will not impute sin to His people. And God only imputes
righteousness to us. He counts us righteous. Because Christ, He won't impute
sin to you because Christ put our sin away and we don't have
any. And He imputes righteousness to you because Christ made us
sin. This is for your comfort, brethren. This is for your joy.
You've been made the righteousness of God. Look, verse 19, to which
God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing
their trespasses to them. Well, here's why he'll never
impute sin to his people. Verse 21, for he hath made him
sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him. Listen, payment God cannot twice
demand. First at my bleeding shirt, His
hand, and then again at mine. He's just. God our Father and
His Son, the Lord Jesus, justified His people from all our sins. That means we have no sin, brethren. Before God, the way God sees
you, you don't have any sin. So every time we commit sin,
Christ has already put that sin away before God. That's why God
won't pour out wrath on you. That's why God will correct you
and chasten you in love and keep you looking to Christ, knowing
He already put it away. He's not going to let you use
that as an excuse to sin. And when you do sin, He's not
going to come and cast you out because He's going to make you
know that His Son dealt with that sin already. And God imputes
nothing but righteousness to you. This is the good news. When
God imputed sin to us, he wasn't treating us as if we sinned.
He imputed sin to us because we were guilty. It was true. We'd been made so by Adam. And
when he imputes righteousness to you, he is not treating you
as if you're righteous. He has made us righteous in Christ. In Christ, we're righteous. In
Adam, all men were made sinners. In Christ, all God's elect are
made righteous. Go to Romans 6 with me just real
quick. Brethren, by Christ's death,
you are dead. By his death, you are dead. And
your life is in Christ at God's right hand. Look here, Romans
6, 11. I said God only imputes. what
the man's been made, and he tells you now, here's what he tells
you, believer. 11, likewise reckon, same word
as impute. You impute ye also yourselves
to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus
Christ our Lord. That's the only way. You're not
gonna let sin have the dominion over you. That's the only way.
It's this good, It cannot have dominion over you. You're going
to sin. You're going to fall. You're
going to have your fall. But the reason you're not going
to be cast out, the reason you're never going to be permitted to
depart from Christ, the reason you're going to be kept is because
Christ has totally put away the sin of His people and made us
the righteousness of God in Him. Oh, I feel so sorry for sinners
who just come to hear a message that tells them how they can
get by tomorrow at work, and how they can get through the
week, and how they can do this and that in the neighborhood,
and how they can win friends and influence people. I hate
to hear that for them. I feel sorry for them, because
that won't help you. That won't do anything with you
with God. Here is the comforting message
for God's people. God himself who we must deal
with one day, God before whom we must stand has already settled
justice for us. Judgment is accomplished. We're
going to meet God and Christ is going to present us faultless
to God. That's the good news and he's
not going to lose you because his very glory is at stake. His very glory demands you be
preserved. His justice demands it. His holiness
demands it. Righteousness demands it. So
that's the security we have. That's the only thing that's
going to assure our hearts is knowing this is so of us in Christ,
brethren. Nothing else will do it. Listen,
grace chose us, grace redeemed us, grace quickened us, grace
called us, grace gifted us with faith, repentance, and all things
that pertain to godliness, grace preserves us, grace shall present
us faultless to God. God does it all, and God gets
the glory. Aren't you thankful? Let's thank
him, brethren. Our God and our Father, our great
Lord Jesus, our Savior, how we thank you, Lord. Oh, you did
all this for us and then come and revealed it in us. You keep
showing us, you keep keeping us. And here we are, so cast
down and sinful and just cast down and fretting all the time. One day we're up, one day we're
down. And Lord, you change not. You are constantly our Savior,
constantly our keeper. Lord, we don't have any reason
to fret. We have reason to be thankful
and happy and joyful every day. And Lord, thank you so much for
what you've done for us. Thank you. Thank you for saving
your people and your dear son. Lord, we praise you and honor
you and glorify you. You deserve all the glory. Thank you, Lord, for what you've
done. In Christ we pray. Amen.