Isaiah 53. When our family moved here in
June of 87, we took a trip, and I know I've
told you this story before, but it's a good way to introduce
this particular passage of scripture. We took a trip so that we could
visit our families and also some of the churches that we regularly
got to visit from time to time, but now we were going too far
away to be able to see them. We did that over a period of
about three weeks. One of the places we stopped,
we stopped to see my sister, who at that time lived in the
Washington, D.C. area. We took advantage to do the obligatory
sightseeing stuff in Washington, D.C. I'd been there before. When I was four years old, we
moved to that area and stayed there until I was seven. Of course,
every time relatives came, we went to the Washington, D.C. sites. I've been to the Smithsonian
several times and Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, things
like that. We went there, and there was
a memorial that had not been there before. It was a Vietnam
memorial. And I was anxious to see it simply
because it was the war of my generation. I missed being involved
by one year. They did draw draft numbers for
my birth year, 1955, and they did not draft anybody.
I was at my first year of Bible school and they sent me a note
that said, would you like to be deferred because you're studying
for the ministry? And I would have been willing
to take any deferment that they were willing to give me. So I
said yes, and a little later I got my draft card back and
it says random sequence number, which they called your draft
number, 001. So had there been a draft that year and they'd
been in the thick of the war, I don't think my ministerial
studies would have kept me out of Vietnam. But I didn't go,
but I wanted to see that wall. I wanted to see it too because
I knew that Our brother, Henry, had lost a son. I believe it
was 1969. He'd just been there two weeks
and was killed. So I thought I'd go there and take a picture.
I didn't know if anybody had given him a picture of his son's
name there on the wall, but I thought I'd get a picture and find out
if he wanted it. The Vietnam War Memorial is different
than any other war memorial you've ever seen. Most war memorials
stand tall. They are designed to swell the
chest with pride. Yes, there'll be some remembrances
of those lost, but they generally speaking have something of the
grandiose about it. When they designed this memorial,
in my understanding, it was an Oriental woman that designed
this memorial. She didn't make something that
stood up. She dug a hole, Adam dig a hole,
and then put this wall that I think it hardly sticks above ground
level at all. You go down into this memorial, black stone, with
about 53,000 names, essentially a huge tombstone. And I started walking down in
it. You know, of course, when you first start it, you know,
it's only about that tall and it just keeps getting taller
and taller. And I walked down in there. And I am one of those
people that I detect other people's emotions and start to absorb
them. And it was very difficult to
be in there. I didn't, I don't know anyone
personally who died in that war. But when I was down there, it
felt like I knew them all. And when you're doing sightseeing
in Washington, around the other monuments, there's noise. You
hear the traffic. You hear people talking. Moms
calling after their kids, you know, because you're getting
too far. Just all the normal stuff. You go down in there,
you don't hear a thing. You can't see anything else.
And even though at first many people thought the design was
awful, in my estimation it was absolutely perfect. It's exactly
the kind of memorial that war needed and the kind of memorial
that the surviving soldiers needed. Now I told you all that story
to illustrate something. That was what we might call a
civil holy place. There were no kids playing in
there. Nobody greeted one another there. Everybody seemed to understand
that that space was special. And it was for only one thing.
And you did that and you did nothing else. It had been set apart as a place
to memorialize those who lost their lives in that war. And
I think the woman who designed it realized that it was also
going to be a place for the survivors to go and mourn. Most of you here this morning
weren't alive during that war, but I remember how they treated
returning soldiers. It was simply awful. Awful. And therefore, when they would
get back, they would pretend like they hadn't been to war.
There were no ticker tape parades, no people lining them up, thanking
them for their service. And so that all got stuck inside. Well, they can go to this place and maybe let some of it go.
That's why it's a holy place. And when I come to this chapter,
It is, to me, a holy place. I know that all the scriptures
are called the holy scriptures, and yet there are places that
we come to in the scriptures that are so powerful, that grip
the heart and the mind so much, that it's as though we're removed
from the rest of the world. Just like those that would go
down into that area of the Vietnam wall. You go down in there, you
can't see anything else from in there. You can't hear anything
else. Your whole world is shrunk down
to that spot. And when I read this scripture,
it's like there's nothing else. It's not one of those scriptures
for theological discussion. That is, it's not something that
you can look at clinically and walk away from. If you can, if
you can, I just wonder if you know anything about what's really
being said here. We have gathered together in
this one chapter all the holy things of God. I want you to
think of that. All the holy things of God are
in this chapter. And so we enter it with a certain
sense of solemnity. And we enter it, and I hope that
we'll all be able to do this, quieten our hearts, that we may
hear what is said in this scripture. That we may, as it were, go down
to where you can't see anything else or hear anything but what's
here. Because if you can hear and see
what's in these scriptures, you will have heard and seen the
whole counsel of God. You will have heard and seen
everything you need to know for the salvation of your soul. And
if God is pleased to give you the hearing ear and the seeing
eye, You will fall on your face, if not literally, but in your
heart and worship the one spoken of in this chapter. It begins
with, who has believed our message? We don't worship according to
emotions. Now, I hope this has an emotional
impact on you. Well, it has had an emotional
impact on me. I hope it does again. I hope I'm moved. But
I know sometimes we're unmoved, not because we're spiritually
deficient. Sometimes you're just too tired
to be moved. The emotions just aren't working. But I hope that
everyone's moved. But while emotions are enjoyable,
We're glad to have them involved in our worship. Our worship is
based upon a message, an objective reality. It's based upon things
that are true. And we go out and when we're
preaching, we're telling people things. We're saying words hopefully
to be understood. and words that plug people into
eternal truth that never changes. When God came into the world,
he came into the world under the name, the word. And in the
Greek language, their words, they expand in their meaning
and they use them in different contexts, but it could be the
word, it could be the message. We have a message of words and
yet our message is not just words, it is he who is the word, who
has believed him. And then we have the question
asked in another way. And to whom is the arm of the
Lord been revealed? And yet the second question actually
provides the answer to the first question. Who is believed, I
report? The ones to whom the arm of the
Lord's been revealed. Now, I know that we try to teach
truth, the truth of Scripture, we teach it to our kids, and
we teach it to them much the same way we might teach them
the alphabet or how to count and things like that. And there's
a certain amount of that that's gotta go on. But in the gospel,
there must be something more something more than merely having
our minds confronted with these objective facts. And the response
to them must be something more than someone reaching a certain
age, the Baptists like to call it the age of accountability,
and they figure it's about 12 years old, you know, and other
religions, they have their confirmation ceremonies and their confessions
of faith, but it's when they think Someone has achieved a
certain age and they've gone through all the instruction,
they've been properly instructed or catechized or whatever occasion.
Now it's time for you to declare that you believe this. Who said
it's time for them to declare that? Paul said, when it pleased
God to reveal his son in me. When is it time for a person
to profess they believe? when they believe. When God takes
this preaching of the gospel beyond the mere teaching of truth
and makes it a revelation in the heart. Now there is nothing
that I could tell you that would enable you to look at someone
else and say, okay, they've had it revealed to them. Why? Because it's a heart thing. And
all we can do is look at the outward appearance. And there's
nothing wrong with that. I mean, that's just the way we
are. We can't see one another. We can't see a man's heart to
know if he believes. We can hear what he says. We
can hear what a woman confesses. We can hear what a child declares,
but that's all we can know about them. And it is our practice here at
Grace Community Church, we'll take people's word for it unless
they give us a reason not to. I mean, if they come in here
staggering drunk and say, well, I believe somebody baptized me.
Well, we're not gonna do that. We're gonna say, let's wait until
you're sober and then let's talk about it. But what I'm saying
is if someone comes up and they've sat here and they've heard what
we preached and they say to me, I believe. I'm not gonna say,
well, prove it. Why? Because they can't. It's
a heart thing. The apostles didn't make people
prove it. And some people profess to the apostles that they believed
and later proved that they didn't. And the apostles never did get
all up in arms about it and say, oh, we've got to start putting
them through a test. No. But here's the thing. God does look on the heart. Who's
believed our report? The one to whom God has revealed
the arm of the Lord. He believes, she believes. This business of believing the
gospel requires a work of grace on the part of God. And it's
not a work of grace that God does in response to what a person
has done. Until this work of grace is done,
a person can't even make a positive response. He can't do anything
that God is going to be pleased with. When Jimmy Carter ran for
president, he was this conservative Southern Baptist Sunday school
teacher. And that became a big deal, you
know, because folks get scared if somebody religious runs for
government. And he came up, I said, are you a Christian? He said,
I'm a born again Christian. And so this phrase, born again
Christian, and what they meant by that, at least how the world
took it up, I don't know what Jimmy Carter meant, but I know
how they took it. Well, a born again Christian
is a step above just your regular nominal Christian, you know?
And you're really on fire for the Lord, that kind of thing.
That's not what a born again Christian is. In fact, when you
say Christian, you don't have to say born again, because there's
no such thing as a Christian that's not born again. But here's the thing, the Lord
called it a new birth, or it could be translated a birth from
above. The prefix that starts that word can mean again or from
above, either way. And both of them fit. And both
of them are true, because we are born from above, and we are
spiritually speaking born again. And I'll ask you this, how much
did you have to do with your first birth? Did your mom and
dad ask you for permission to conceive you? We say, well, they
couldn't, I didn't exist yet. Well, there's some good theology
in that. Spiritually speaking, you didn't
exist until God gave you that birth from above. You have as
much to do with your second birth as you have to do with your first
birth, and that's nothing at all. But you know, once a child
is born, you can tell why. They start crying. They start
wanting, if they're healthy. Babe comes forth from the mother's
womb, and you know something, without anybody telling them
how, without anybody saying, well, now you need to go, you
need to find your mother's breast and begin to feed. Nobody tells
them that. Mom cuddles them up and it's
just natural for her to do that. It's like nobody said, you need
to cuddle that baby, you know. No, you're heading the baby.
They cuddle them up and they hold them right there. And that
baby finds what is natural for it to look for. And when a person
is born again by the Spirit of God, I tell you, you don't have
to tell them what to do. You don't have to beg them. You
don't have to say, now, pray this prayer after me. You don't
need any of that kind of stuff. Why? They're alive. And they're
hungry. And they've been taught. Not
just by men, they've been taught by God. That's what the scriptures
say in the new covenant. They shall all be taught of God. And the scriptures say, he that
hath heard and have learned of the Father comes to the Son. The arm of the Lord's been revealed.
The arm being the symbol of strength. Jesus Christ is the arm of the
Lord. And in the new birth, he is revealed,
not in a vision, not necessarily even in an ecstatic
experience. I do think that in the new birth,
And I wanna be very careful about this, because I know that, boy,
as soon as a preacher says something like, boy, if you're born again,
you'll do such and such, then people start looking themselves
to see if they've done such and such. So I don't ever wanna say
something outside the scriptures. And the scriptures do not give
us a way to detect whether or not we've been born again, except
it, I've heard this from a lot who have been born again. It's
like all at once, Oh, I see. Now I understand why they may
have had good theology before. They may have been able to argue
very well from the scriptures about the truth of the gospel,
but it's all at once, oh, it's that. There have been men who've preached
for years and what they preached was true. And I wouldn't deny
that God had saved some people through their preaching. And
they're preaching for several years and all at once, oh, that's
what I've been saying. Christ was revealed to them.
And you know what? God doesn't just do that once.
Oh, bless his name for that. How many times has he revealed
the Savior to you? I can tell you when he's revealed
the Savior to you, when you needed him. The problem is, even after
he's revealed him the first time in the new birth, flesh gets
in the way so much, and we get so self-sufficient, and the world,
things going our way, and we say, oh, I'm happy, this is just,
my life is just great, I've got the, the world on a downhill
pole, you know? And we begin getting wrapped
up in the things of the world. And people will even think that
that's the blessing of God. Oh, God's really blessed me.
I'm making more money this year than I ever made. That might
not be a blessing. In fact, I think it is more difficult
to deal with prosperity than it is with poverty. Those that are poor are naturally
inclined to look elsewhere for their needs. And oh, if we would
learn to stay poor in spirit. Blessed are the poor in spirit,
says the scriptures. Why? Because the poor are always
looking for someone who can provide what they need. But when we get
full of ourselves, the sight of our own glory Our own imagined
glory hides Christ from us. But then we get needy. And our
father, blessed be his name, reveals his son to us again.
And our broken hearts are mended. Verse two, he grew up before
him, that is this Christ grew up before the Father like a tender
shoot and like a root out of dry ground. God looked down,
we say look down, that's because the only way we know how to describe
it. But he looked at that Jewish nation, what did he see? Dry
ground, a bunch of dead, dry ground. They had a temple, they'd
spent 40 years working on it. I mean, they already had a temple,
but they'd spent 40 years really fixing it up nice. Probably one
of the finest temples in the world. And they had lots of religious
people. They had Pharisees, they had
Sadducees, they had the scribes, the teachers of the law, they
had the priests and all of this going on. And they probably thought
this is as good as it's ever been in Israel. And God looked
down and he saw like the dust ball, a dry ground. But out of
that dry ground, one, one little tender shoot comes up. The only
living man in Israel. Everybody else was dead in trespasses
and sins. Jesus Christ grew up before him
like a tender shoot, like a root coming up out of a dry ground,
finding water where no one else could. And yet though he's the only
living one, it says he had no beauty or majesty to attract
us to him. He grew up before God and God
saw him and said, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well
pleased. And we saw him said, well pleased,
well pleased with what? I don't see anything special
here. When it says that he had no beauty or majesty, It doesn't mean necessarily that
he wasn't a good looking fella. It meant that he did not have
a regal bearing about him. That is the kind of regal bearing
they were accustomed to. You know how those kings back
then, so full of themselves, just like politicians today are
full of themselves. Everywhere they go, they got an entourage. People waiting on them hand and
foot, secret service agents. Well, you know that this guy
must be important. Look at all the people around
him. The Lord Jesus Christ, well,
he had an entourage, but they weren't taking care of him. He
was taking care of them. And they were fishermen. and described
by the other religious leaders as ignorant and uneducated men. Our Lord, as to his person and
as to his ministry, there was nothing there that would have
attracted the natural mind, the natural thoughts. He didn't stand head and shoulders
above everybody else. He didn't, unlike what Hollywood
likes to present him, or did back, you know, when they used
to do what they call those blood and sand movies. Is that over
in the Middle East? You know, the Bible movies of
the 50s, you know. Well, Jesus always looked better
than everybody else. A good chiseled chin. Oddly enough,
looked very Anglo-Saxon. Didn't look Jewish at all. Nothing. Nothing in his appearance that
we would desire him. What does that say about us?
That we don't know how to look at people. We don't know where
glory really is. They looked at Jesus and he did
not wear the same kind of clothes they wore. And I'm talking about
the religious guys, because man, they had the finest of robes.
And then they would put those phylacteries, those boxes with
little scrolls of scripture inside of them. And they go around,
oh, they looked so good. Lord didn't look like that. They
didn't travel into the little hamlets and little villages here
and there and get dirty and you know, with their hands dirty
and feet that needed washing and they weren't sweaty and they
weren't hungry and they didn't go to the poor and the needy
and meet their needs and tell them wonderful things. They stayed in their seminaries.
Almost said they stayed in their air-conditioned offices, but
I guess they didn't have air conditioning, but I'm sure they had nicer places
to stay than others did. And they'd sit around and talk
about theological things that didn't matter, and look down
their long noses at everybody else. He was despised, verse three,
and rejected by men. Can you imagine that? Rejected. He came unto his own, says John,
and his own wouldn't have him. Wouldn't have him. Despised. A man of sorrows, acquainted
with grief. If you see a preacher on TV and
he tells you that the life of faith in Christ Jesus is gonna
give you a life of unending giddy joy, Change channels. Our Lord himself didn't have
that kind of life. If believing God gives you a life of little
conflict and great success, well then our Lord must have missed
something. He believed God and his faith, and I realize he's
God, I gotta say that, I understand that, and yet as a man, he believed
God, and his faith caused him trouble in this world. They despised
him because he believed God. He truly lived in obedience and
submission to God, and they despised him for that. Like one from whom men hide their
faces, he was despised. and we esteemed him not. That which is highly esteemed
among men is an abomination to God. But you can turn that right
around, that which is highly esteemed by God is an abomination
to man. And it was proven in Christ Jesus.
They didn't hide their faces from him. I don't think that
this is what this particular thing means. They did not hide
their faces from him in the sense that they just didn't wanna look
at him. They didn't want him looking at them. You know how little children, they
think if they can't see you, you can't see them. And so they'll,
if they're upset, they'll run over to the couch or something,
bend over and cover up their eyes and they think, okay, now
nobody can do anything to me. They're hiding their face from
their parents. Why? They think in so doing that
they cut off the communication and the parents not involved
anymore. And that's what we did. We hid our face, we turned our
back on him. They did it in Isaiah's day.
They did it when the Lord was here. And we're born with our
back turned toward the Lord and our face turned away. But then verse four, surely he
took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows. Do you have infirmities? Oh, we all got infirmities in
the flesh, don't we? That's just part of being a human
being in a fallen world. And I do notice this, the older
you get, the more you talk about how you feel. You gotta, like
someone says, don't ask so and so how they are, because if you
do, they'll give you an organ recital. And, oh, well, I'm down
on my back, you know, and my stomach's kind of, you know. That's not the infirmities they're
talking about. It's talking about our spiritual
infirmities and our spiritual sorrows. I know it's written, I guess
it's in the catechism or something, you know, something about what
you need to know. I don't know the questions and
answers, so I get these things wrong, but I just remember this,
to know how great your sins and miseries are. Do you realize
there's only one person in the universe that knows that? And
the Lord Jesus knows exactly how great your sins and miseries
are. If you're one of his people, he knows the full measure of
them. Why? Because he bore them in his body
on the tree. He knows them. Now I realize
he was also tried in every point just like you and I are yet without
sin. And so he can identify with us even in our natural sorrows. But this is, I think, referring
primarily to spiritual things. But when He took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows, and He carried them to Calvary, but
what did men do? They looked at Him, and we considered
Him stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted. That's what they did. They crucified
him and those religious folks that thought they were so good
and said, all right, he said he was the son of God. Let's
just everybody back up and see if God will come help him. They
mocked him. They figured he was getting what
he deserves, because he was a blasphemer. Because he called himself God's
son, making himself equal with God. But you know something? He was stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. What they didn't understand is
why. They thought it was because he
was bad. They thought it was because God saw him the same
way they saw him. Verse five, but he was pierced for our transgressions. He was bruised or crushed for
our iniquities. The punishment that brought us
peace was upon him and by his wounds we are healed. They were right. He was stricken
of God and afflicted, smitten by Him. They were right. But
they didn't understand why. Think of this now. If you can
imagine in your mind what it was that our Lord bore, and the
best we can do is imagine it, that was done because of what
we had done, not because of what He did. He had done everything that pleased
the Father. He didn't deserve that. He deserved to be taken
up to heaven in a glorious display. He deserved to be vindicated.
He deserved that God himself descend from heaven and tell
the whole world once again in a way that they cannot deny.
This is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. And you that
are mad at him, you're supposed to be acting like him. No, they looked at him and said,
well, look at there. He thought he was something.
Well, he'd been cursed by God. Why do we love our transgressions
so much when we realize that that's what pierced him? Why
do we delight in our iniquities so much when it's our iniquities
that crushed him? And how come we appreciate our
peace with God so little when we realized that it was purchased
by the horrible punishment that Christ endured? See what I mean about this being
a holy place? Our mouths are made silent. There's
nothing for you and I to brag about in this scripture, is there?
Can you find anything in here talking good about you and me?
In fact, we go on to verse six, we all like sheep had gone astray.
That's what we did. Each of us has turned to his
own way. The Bible says there's a way that seems right to a man,
but the ends thereof are death. And most of religion is the way
that seems right to a man. People don't say, well, I don't
agree with that church, but I'm gonna go there. No, they go there because
that's what they agree with. It seems right to them. And they
follow that path, and it's the broad way that leads to destruction,
but they don't realize that. In fact, they think the fact
that so many people are on it is proof that it's true. How
can all these people be wrong? Our Lord said, wide is the gate
and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many there
be that find it. Why, it's got a lane for every
denomination there is. Got several lanes for the Reformed
churches, not that I think that they're any worse than anybody
else, it's just there's so many different kinds of them. But
then the Baptists got even more. There's so many different kind
of Baptists. No wonder the road's so broad. You got all the pagans on there. Gotta have a wide road to handle
all that traffic. But narrow is the gate and narrow
is the road that leads to life and few there be that find it.
Why is it narrow? Why is the gate narrow? Brother
Maurice Montgomery used to say, well, it's narrow because there's
only room for you to go in, just enough room for you to get through.
You can't go through with somebody else. You can't get in with your
parents. You can't get in with the preacher. You can't get in,
he said, you can't get in carrying a suitcase of your own good and
righteous works. There's not room for you in that.
He said, in fact, that gate is so narrow, you can't even get
through it with your own clothes on. You go through naked. The Bible often describes our
nakedness being uncovered as the revelation of our sin. And
one of the things that God does as He reveals the Lord Jesus
Christ, that reveals that we are nothing like Him and that
we have no righteousness. And they who enter that narrow
gate under the narrow road, they go through with nothing of their
own righteous garments on. They go through completely naked,
spiritually speaking, but blessed be His name. The moment they're
through the gate, They get through the gate. There is handed to
them a glorious robe made of the righteousness of Christ in
which there is no defect. There's nothing been sewed up
or patched over. It said that our Lord, you know,
when he was crucified, it was common that the soldiers would
strip the garments, you know, and everybody tried to claim
whatever it is that poor crucified man had. And they took the Lord's
garment and it was made of one piece. It's not like his mother
had to just find a scrap here and there and try to sew them
together to make a covering. Our Lord did have a robe, a robe,
or yeah, it was kind of like a big poncho type thing, what
they wore, but it was made of one piece. And that's why they
threw dice for it, because they said, we don't want to, you know,
rip this thing in four pieces to share it. But that's a picture
of his righteousness. It is of one piece. It is whole. It's not something patched together.
It's not something that had holes in it and got worn out or been
eaten by moths. It is a perfect righteousness.
It's a righteousness that's been tested by God and approved by
God. And those who come through the
narrow gate stripped of their own righteousness, they are immediately
given that righteousness. That's why we rest. We don't
have to produce a robe of righteousness anymore. He's been handed to
us. We got his righteousness. Why
is that? Because the Lord has laid on
him the iniquity of us all. I don't know about you, But the
only way I ever startle myself is when I startle myself about
how sinful I can be. I've never been able to be good
enough to be startlingly good. I can be startlingly sinful,
I'll tell you that. So can you. Whether or not it
startles you, you can be startlingly sinful. And God took that. He took, if
you're his, he took all that sin, all that rebellion, all
that awfulness. And if you're a child of God,
you may have fun while you're all embroiled in your sin, but
when it's over all at once, how did I do that? I can't believe
I'm like that. I thought that was gone, but
it's still there. And like David, you're brought
down and he said, I cannot even look up. And then the sweet word of Isaiah
comes, the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. I tell you, that doesn't make
you love the Lord Jesus Christ, nothing will. That doesn't make
you love the Father who loved his people with such a love that
he was willing to take their sin, the awful, the awfulness
of it, Not just lay the punishment of the sin on Christ, lay the
sin on him. One of the punishments they used
to use on people for all kinds of infraction was the pillory.
You may not know it by that name, but that's that thing, they'd
have a post and on top of it, you know, it's got one big hole
for your neck and two of your arms, and they'd lock you in
there so you couldn't get away, and people would throw things
at you. And of course you couldn't protect your face, And generally
in movies you see them throwing food, but I want you to imagine
starving medieval people. They're not going to throw their
food at you. No, they picked up what the horses left behind. They picked up the filth and
every rotten and disgusting thing and threw it out, threw it all. And God picked up what you left
behind. He picked up the rottenness and
the awfulness and the pollution and the corruption and the wickedness
and the transgression. Every way you can think of evil,
He gathered all that up and He dumped it on the Lord Jesus Christ. Made Him filthy with our filth.
Made Him guilty with our guilt. He was oppressed and he was afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth. Somebody accuses us of something,
well, we're right at our defense, aren't we? Even if we're guilty,
we'll do everything we can to appear not guilty. Our Lord actually
wasn't guilty, but he didn't open his mouth. He never said to them, I'm no
sinner, Rather, He took our name, took
our sin, and appeared in the presence of God as the guilty
sinner. He appeared there as me. In fury in Him, He appeared there
as you. In all the ugliness of what I
am and what you are. And he made no defense. He didn't
say, well, Father, really, you realize I wasn't the one that
did this. I'm burying their sins, but they're not really mine. No, he owned our sins as his
own. That one hymn, I guess there's
a lot of good things in it, but I can't, that one line, he took
our sins and our sorrows, he made them his very own. And like a sheep before his shearers
is silence, so he did not open his mouth. Well, we don't have
time to do all of this, but let me. It says at the end of verse
eight, for the transgression of my people was he stricken. Verse 10, yet it was the Lord's
will to crush him and cause him to suffer. And though the Lord
makes his life a guilt offering, He will see his offspring and
prolong his day. How does someone who gets killed
have offspring? He comes back from the dead. He will see the results of his
travail. Why? Because God did not leave
his body in the grave, but brought him out of the grave And it says the last line of
verse 10, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hands. Whatever the will of the Lord
is, it prospered in Christ's hands. When I was young, I'd hear him
say so often, God's got no hands but your hands and no feet but
your feet. Well, then I ain't gonna worship
him, he needs to worship me. Paraplegic God, that's what he
is. Quadriplegic, I guess, if he
doesn't have any hands or feet but ours. I tell you, he's got
some wonderful hands, and the will of the Lord prospered in
those hands, the hands of our Lord Jesus Christ. That means every sin he bore
is gone. Yeah, God laid him on him. If God laid the sin on Christ
and then punished Christ, that sin's gone, it doesn't exist. It says, he shall see the travail
of his soul and he will be satisfied. Why? Because he will have saved
everyone he came to save. He will have accomplished every
bit of work he came to do. I can't point to anything I've
ever done and stamp the word success on it, except maybe making
a mess of things. I'm pretty successful at that.
But Jesus Christ can look at everything he came to do and
stamp success on it. Done. Finished. And everyone for whom he did
that work, They will believe the message. Why? Because God will reveal the arm
of the Lord to them. And they will see the suffering
of his soul, and they too will be satisfied. They'll say, I
see what Christ did, and I realize, sinner that I am, that's enough
to put away my sin, even mine. And they'll trust him. Oh, may God add his blessing
to it. Heavenly Father, we've entered into that text
of Scripture, but like David, we gotta say, such things are
too wonderful for me, they're high. I cannot attain unto them. We go over that Scripture time
and time again, and every time we do, Lord, we say, well, I
haven't gone deep enough, or I haven't reached high enough.
There's too much there, Lord, Oh, what a blessing to be able
to take a walk through that scripture and for a while be in that holy
place and see what was done. Now, as we observe this table,
we ask that you'd bless it to our good in Christ's name, amen.