I'm sure there are some of you
who have been in the way of a disciple of Christ for some time, and
there are texts of Scripture that if they could become invalid
by using them again and again, you and I would have warned them
out. 1 John 1.9 is such a text. If we confess our sins, He is
faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins. To cleanse us from
all unrighteousness, James 1.5, if any of you lack wisdom, let
him ask of God. And one that would be worn out,
if God allowed his word to be worn out by use, is Luke 11 and
verse 13. If you who are evil know how
to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly
Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask it? Well, believing
that promise is as fresh and valid as though our Lord spoke
it thirty seconds ago, let us together ask our Heavenly Father
to give His Holy Spirit to the one who preaches and to each
one who listens to His Word. Let us pray. Our Father, we have worshipped
You in Your holiness. We have worshipped You as the
one true and living God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And now we come to petition you
as our loving, gracious, large-hearted Father. And we are asking not
for things to consume upon our lusts, but, our Father, we are
asking that you would send your Holy Spirit in fresh and copious
measures upon each one of us gathered in your presence, that
the one who seeks to open up and proclaim and apply your word
may do so not in word only, but in demonstration of the Spirit
and of power, and that each one who sits before the Lord Jesus,
the great prophet of this church, may be conscious of that word
coming to his or her heart with spiritual light and heat, and
with the blessing of your own unique work in every one of our
hearts. O blessed Holy Spirit, gift of
the ascended Christ, we plead that you will shine upon the
face of Christ in our hearts this night, that we may know
Him better, that we may love Him more fervently, that for
some they may come to trust Him for the first time. Blessed Holy
Spirit, come to us as we wait for your blessing. Through our
Lord Jesus Christ we plead. Amen. the whole of our Bibles are given
to us as a revelation of the mind and will of God, setting
forth the things that you and I must know and believe if we
are to be fit to live, ready to die, and prepared to go to
God in judgment. And this is true of the whole
of Scripture. Paul could write to Timothy in
his second letter and say, in what to us is chapter 3 and verse
15, from a babe, from a child, from an infant, Timothy, you
have known the sacred writings which are able to make you wise
unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Christ himself, in the uniqueness
of his person and in the perfection of his work, is the great focal
point of the whole of the Word of God. But along the way, within
the unfolding of his mind to us, God has given us statements
in the Scriptures in which he has summarized for us the very
heart, the very nerve centers of God's saving revelation to
us in Jesus Christ. And tonight we're going to look
at just such a summarizing statement in which God, by the Holy Spirit,
through the prophet Isaiah, gives us the distilled essence of the
whole message of the Word of God. The older writers used to
say the entirety of the Bible can be summed under one of two
heads. It is a message of the law and
of the gospel, a message of man's ruin in sin. and God's redemption
in Jesus Christ. And we're going to look tonight
at just such a text from Isaiah 53, verse 6. Familiar words,
I'm sure, to many of us, but I trust they will come home with
fresh understanding and power to all of our hearts in the midst
of this description of the suffering servant of the Lord that has
details in it that would cause us to wonder if indeed Isaiah
had been an eyewitness of the scenes surrounding the crucifixion
of Christ. I heard tell of a person who
was a Jew in his background in religious training who happened
to come into a Christian assembly and someone was reading Isaiah
53 and he said to the person who brought him, I'll not listen
to this stuff from the New Testament. And as Fred said, no, he's reading
from the prophet Isaiah concerning the suffering servant of the
Lord. And in the midst of that marvelous section that sets forth
our Lord Jesus with the details of an eyewitness, the prophet
tells us in verse 6 of that chapter, 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. And in this text, there are two
very obvious units of thought. We have set before us, first
of all, what I'm calling the bad news of our desperate condition
in sin. All we, like sheep, have gone
astray. We have turned everyone to his
own way. That's the bad news. And it is
followed, secondly, by the good news of God's gracious provision
for sin. And the Lord has laid on Him,
the suffering servant, the iniquity of us all. And so, in our time
together tonight, I want you to consider with me, from this
text, allowing the mind of the Spirit of God to cut our path
through the text, the bad news of our desperate condition in
sin, and the good news of God's gracious provision for sin. First of all, then, the bad news
of our desperate condition in sin. And I would be very surprised
if there are not some who, even now, by just announcing that
heading, find the hands of the soul reaching up for the curtain
pull of the mind and of the spirit. And when you hear the words,
desperate condition and sin, There is an instinctive reaction. We want to pull down the shade
over the light of God's Word that will show us to be what
we really are as sinners. Jesus addressed this very tendency
in John chapter 3. This is the condemnation, that
light has come into the world, and men love darkness rather
than light. Because their deeds are evil, neither will they come
to the light, lest their deeds should be reproved. And I would
be very surprised if there are not some boys, girls, young men,
older men and women sitting here tonight who just hearing the
words, bad news, Desperate condition, sin. These are things I don't
want to hear about. And we are told in our day, if
we are to reach modern men and women, we must not use such terminology. It bristles with negativism and
we have a generation that goes about with a bruised and tattered
self-image. And we must never, never offend
them by using such words as bad news, desperate condition, sin. Well, there is one problem with
that whole approach. It has absolutely no basis in
the Word of God. None whatsoever. And those who
refuse to tell men truly what their true condition is, under
the guise of being their friends, they're their worst enemies.
The prophet Jeremiah confronted this continually when he sought
to lay before the citizens of Judah the tragic state they were
in as sinners. There were a hundred false prophets
who came along and stroked them and said, all is well, saying,
peace, peace, when there was no peace. Robert Murray McShane,
the saintly Scottish preacher who died just before his 30th
birthday, told his people, never forget that the man who loves
you the most is the one who tells you the most truth about yourself.
And I want to love you in Christ's name by telling you the truth
that God gives us about each and every one of us. He sets
before us, first of all, this bad news of our desperate condition
in sin. And notice how He does it. First
of all, with a vivid picture of our desperate condition, all
we like sheep have gone astray, and then with a blunt assertion
of our desperate condition, we have turned every one of us to
his own way. And so, by the Spirit of God,
the prophet sets out the bad news in this vivid picture and
in this blunt assertion. Let's spend a few minutes on
each of those expressions of our desperate condition in sin. First of all, the vivid picture
of our desperate condition. The prophet says, all we like
sheep have gone astray. And kids, this is the proper
use of the word like. I'm carrying on a one-man campaign
in our assembly to purge from the working vocabulary of all
of our young people the excessive use of the word like. And whenever
they use it, I put my hand on their shoulder and I say, well,
what's the simile you're about to introduce? What is like something
else? Or about whom or about what are
you expressing mild affection? I like it, I like him, I like
them. And it's a standing joke that
Pastor Martin in his old age has got on a hobby horse and
he's determined to stomp out this excessive nonsense use of
the word like. And then my secondary campaign,
thank you sir, I like it when people like my campaigns. It's
the excessive use of the word awesome. Awesome about everything
except the one being who is awesome. Well, that's out of my system
now. We come back to the text. All
we like. And it's not filler for the prophet.
He's not using like because he can't think of a more appropriate
word. By the guidance of the Spirit
he is telling us all we like sheep have gone astray. Here the prophet incorporates
into this language the imagery of the entire human race as one
vast flock of sheep. And in an agrarian society, they
would have understood immediately the imagery. Back in chapter
40, he speaks of the Lord himself coming, and in his coming, fulfilling
the role of a sensitive, loving, caring shepherd, showing particular
sensitivity to the ewes that are carrying their little ones.
And so, when the prophet declared, all we like sheep have gone astray,
they would have understood the imagery that the entire human
race, including all those of God's privileged people within
Israel, were like one vast flock of sheep who had gone astray,
gone astray from their rightful shepherd, gone astray from the
path marked out by the shepherd. And it is right that this should
have that broad application because the Apostle Peter In the first
century, writing to people off in Asia Minor, with no relationship
whatever to the nation of Israel, he wrote of them, quoting this
very verse, for you were going astray like sheep. 1 Peter 2 and verse 25. Well, what's bound up in that
imagery? Well, think with me for a minute.
If a whole flock of sheep goes astray, from what, from whom,
does the flock go astray? In what sense are we then like
a vast flock of sheep that has gone astray? Well, the answer
of Scripture is that we have strayed from God Himself as the
object of our supreme desire and our supreme delight. We have
gone astray from God Himself. as the object of our supreme
desire and our supreme delight. You know your Bible well enough
to know that man alone was made as image of God. Let us make
man in our image and after our likeness. In the image of God
created he him, male and female, created he them. And in that
distinct identity as image of God, there is included this uniqueness
about us as human beings. We were made with a capacity
to know the God who made us, not merely to reflect His glory
and His power. The stars and the galaxies and
the sun and the moon and the grass upon the hill, all of God's
creation is smothered with His fingerprints. But it reflects
God with no consciousness of what it is doing. But we and
we alone as image of God along with angels and seraphim and
cherubim were made with a capacity to know God personally, to know
Him as human beings know and recognize and exchange thought
and affection one to another. We were made that in the knowledge
and communion with God we would fulfill the very purpose for
which we were created. Man and man alone was made with
this capacity, made so that loving God supremely and obeying God
implicitly, man would have his highest delight and God would
receive his optimum glory from man, the creature. But now the
prophet says, all we like sheep. have gone astray. We have gone
astray from God Himself as the object of our supreme desire
and our supreme delight. What is the first and great commandment?
The Lord Jesus was asked that, Matthew 22. What is the first
and great commandment? And what did the Lord say? The
first and great commandment is this, thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind, with all thy soul,
and with all thy strength. Now think with me. If that's
the first and the greatest commandment, what's the greatest sin you and
I can commit? Is it not violation of the greatest
commandment? The greatest sin you and I commit
is failure to love God the Supreme. to delight in God supremely. And the text tells us that all
of us, like a vast flock of sheep, have gone astray. We have turned
from God Himself as this object of our supreme desire and supreme
delight. One of the saddest verses in
all of the Bible, to me, is found in Romans chapter 3. where the
apostle is summing up his indictment of the entire human race as sinful
and in need of a righteousness that only God can provide. And
he says, as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understands. Now think of this next phrase.
There is none that seeks after God. Do you feel the pathos of
that? There is none that seeks After
God, man, the creature made with the capacity to know God, to
be wrapped up in His love and in His glory, to live before
His face with delight and joy, there is none that seeks after
God. That is the indictment. You and
I, like sheep, have gone astray. We have left the living God as
that object of supreme desire. and supreme delight. And furthermore,
we have strayed from the law of God as the governing rule
of our lives. We have not only strayed from
God's being and God's fellowship, but we have strayed from God's
law as the governing rule of our lives. A clear indication
of this in Romans 8, in verse 7, the carnal mind is enmity
against God. For it is not subject to the
law of God, neither indeed can it be. The carnal mind, that
is the disposition with which we are all born, is not possessed
of some enmity to God. The text says the carnal mind
is enmity itself. The carnal mind, the natural
disposition of our hearts, is a clenched fist against God Himself. The carnal mind is enmity against
God. And how does it show its enmity?
By standing out in the church parking lot and raising the fist
to heaven and saying, I do not believe there is a God. No. It
shows its enmity to God by its insubordination to the law of
God. The carnal mind is enmity against
God, for it is not subject to the law of God. And all of God's
thou shalts become the human hearts. I will not. And all of God's thou shalt nots
become our I will, I shall. Whatever God says, we show our
disposition of alienation against Him by our refusal to be subject
to his law. In the summary of that law, in
the ten words etched by the finger of God upon stone, God says we
are to sanctify his person. You shall have no other gods
before me. You shall not attach your heart
to anything else as an object of supreme delight and love and
desire. God's person, God's worship,
God's name, God's day, the sanctity of God's institutions of home
and government, the sanctity of life, of sex, possessions,
truth, the sanctity of the heart as we go down through all of
those ten words of God given in that unique way and realize
that they touch not just our outward deeds but the deepest
springs of the heart. So that unrighteous anger is
murder and the decision to lust in the mind is adultery. And
the fixing of the heart upon objects as objects of inordinate
love is a violation of the first and of the tenth commandment.
And each one of us has strayed from the law of God as the governing
rule of our lives. Now that's not a pretty picture.
But when the prophet wrote, All we like sheep have gone astray,
this is exactly what he is setting before us, what the apostle brings
before us in more extensive language, culling various portions of the
Old Testament in Romans 1, 18 through Romans 3 and verse 20. But now notice what the prophet
does in setting out the bad news. Not only does he set before us
this imagery, this vivid picture of our desperate condition, all
we like sheep have gone astray. Now he gives us a blunt assertion
of our desperate condition. We have turned every one to his
own way. You see what he does? He moves
from the group picture. We are all like one vast flock
of sheep. And now he says, We're going
to turn in the zoom lens on every single individual among those
who are like a vast flock of sheep, and we have turned everyone
to His own way. And what I want you to do with
this statement is what you and I instinctively do when we know
we've been part of a group picture. You're having an old church picnic
or fellowship time and someone's got a wide-angle lens and is
going to take a group picture of the entire church family.
The first time you see it, where do you look? Now, be honest.
Where do you look? You look to see yourself. Don't you? I do. Am I perverse? No. As you're going, well, I'm
perverse by nature, yes. But am I unusually perverse in
that, no. We instinctively look for ourselves.
Would God we did the same when we read our Bibles. And God is
forcing us to look at ourselves. It's not enough that we stand
back and say, yes, I do acknowledge I'm part of a human race that
in our first father Adam turned aside from the living God. I'm
part of a humanity that is like a vast flock of sheep that has
left the living God as the object of supreme desire and delight,
and has left the law of God as the governing rule of life. There's
the generic, there's the sweeping picture, but God says, I want
you to see yourself more distinctly and more particularly in the
mass, in the great flock of straying humanity. We have turned everyone
to his own way. In other words, each of us has
turned into a course of self-determination. I'm going to do what I want to
do when I want to do it. how I want to do it, for whatever
reason I choose to do it. You see, had the prophet said,
we have turned every one of us to, and then named a specific
sin, idolatry, there are many who would be able to wiggle out
from under the sense of conviction. No, I'm not an idol worshiper.
Or if it had said, we have turned each one of us to murder, There
are many of us who would be able to say, no, no, I've never taken
another life unjustly. I do not harbor a spirit of anger
that is the essence of murder. And we could wiggle out from
the description. But when the prophet says, we
have turned every one of us to his own way, see what he's saying? Each of us has his or her own
tailor-made course of self-will and determination to do what
I want to do, how I want to do it, when I want to do it, and
for what purpose I do it. Paul gives us the New Testament
commentary on this part of our text when he writes in 2 Corinthians
5 and verse 15, that he, Christ, died for all that they who live,
that is, those who receive spiritual life from his death, should no
longer live unto themselves. That's the description of every
person by nature. Living unto self. Now, in some cases, that means
a person becomes openly profligate, immoral, blasphemous, ugly. In some cases it means people
become very refined, and cultured, and educated, and impressive,
and very benevolent, and they do lots of quote, good deeds.
But the common denominator among all sinners is this, living unto
themselves. Living unto themselves. That's why when Jesus gave the
terms of discipleship, what was the first step in attachment
to Christ? If any man wills to come after
me, let him deny what? Deny himself. Doesn't say, let
him deny his immorality, his covetousness, his Sabbath-breaking,
his indifference to human government. No, he says, let him deny himself. That word deny is exactly the
same word used when Peter dissociated himself from Jesus. And they
said, you're one of them. And he said, I am not. They said,
yes you are, and he brings upon himself oaths and self-malediction. May I be cursed and die if I'm
not telling the truth? I do not know him. The Bible
says he denied him. God says that's what you and
I have to do with self-centered self, because it's the common
denominator of all of us. It's the prophet's blunt assertion
of our desperate condition. We have gone astray like sheep.
We have turned each one of us to His own way. And that's bad news because,
you see, God doesn't treat this with indifference. Some people
have a view of God that says, well, you know, boys will be
boys and children will be children and sinners will be sinners.
You want to know how God feels about people leaving Him as the
supreme object of desire and delight? Turning to their own
way as the rule of life? indifferent to the rule of God
and His law, then go back to the early chapters of Genesis
and picture Adam and Eve with heads hung in shame as God drives
them out of the Garden of Eden. In your mind's eye, try to picture
what it was like when the whole earth was inundated with the
flood and bloated dead corpses by the tens and hundreds of thousands. Stand back and think of what
it was like when God rained fire and brimstone upon the cities
of the plains and utterly consumed them. Go through your Bible and you
will see that God does not treat this lightly. He does not stand
back like an indulgent, nearsighted, unprincipled grandparent saying,
I'll spoil you because you're my grandkid. All we like sheep
have gone astray, We have turned each one to his own way, And
the Scripture says the wages of sin is death, The soul that
sinneth it shall die. We are by nature, in the language
of Paul, the children of wrath. That is the bad news of our true
condition. Bishop Ryle, the old Bishop of
Liverpool, said, the first step on the road to heaven is to know
that we are by nature on the way to hell. Have you made the
first step to heaven? In other words, have you personally
come to grips with God's description of your desperate condition in
sin? Has this matter of who and what
you are as a creature made in the image of God, but who has
rebelled and been alienated from God, has the reality of what
you are as a strange sheep and a self-centered, self-willed
rebel against God, has that become the most burning, pressing issue
with which you've ever occupied your mind and your heart? Am
I speaking to young people? Who are my friends? And where
will my next zit show up on my face? And what will my grades
be? Is that the stuff that really
grips you and possesses you at the level of your concern? Have
you ever spent a restless hour thinking about what you are in
your desperate condition as a sinner? If not, don't pat yourself on
the back. God has mercifully given you
life and breath and brought you to this hour when your very indifference
to what you are before Him is added reason for God to cut you
off in your sin. But He has mercifully spared
you and brought you into this place, and He is confronting
you not with some preacher's notions about reality, but God's
infallible declaration of your reality. All we, including you,
Like sheep have gone astray, we have turned, every one of
us, including you, we have turned to His own way. And in that condition,
we are liable and exposed and justly placed under the righteous
crown of a holy and an almighty God. And the Scripture says it
is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. And if that's all I had to preach,
I think I'd fold my Bible and say, Oh God, don't ever ask me
to preach again. But I bless God that here in
this very passage, the bad news of our desperate condition in
sin is followed by the good news of God's gracious provision for
sin. And it comes to us in these words,
And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Now, I want you to note with
me several things about this wonderful statement, this good
news of God's gracious provision for sin. Note with me, first
of all, its author. The first part of the verse,
when it's talking about us, it's bad news. All we have gone astray. We have turned, each one to his
own way. And then there's this marvelous
transition. And the Lord, in other words,
the living God, has intruded in grace and in mercy. And if
you want an acid test of any professed way of salvation, ask
yourself this question. Does it force me to think in
terms of an arrow coming down out of heaven, touching man in
his sin and helplessness and hell-deservingness? Or is it
set out a framework in which an arrow rises from earth to
heaven in which man makes his own way in some way or other
into the favor of Almighty God? The whole emphasis of the Bible
from Genesis to Revelation is that in this matter of dealing
with man's sin, Almighty God takes the initiative and the
Lord The Lord, the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, He
has chosen to do something to rectify our desperate condition. And isn't that the emphasis throughout
Scripture? You go back to Genesis. Adam and Eve have sinned. They
have an aversion to God. They try to hide among the trees
of the garden. God takes the initiative and
God comes to them. God says, Adam, where are you? God knew where He was. But He's
coming in grace as well as in judgment. He takes the initiative.
And remember what He said? When speaking to the devil, He
gives this word of gospel promise. He says to the serpent, I will
put enmity. I am going to establish warfare
between you, the serpent, and the woman, between your seed
and her seed. He's going to crush your head,
but you're going to bruise His heel. You see what God was saying?
Adam and Eve? Satan have aligned themselves
with you. They've gone over to your side. They accepted your
interpretation of reality. They embraced your lying notions
given to them that there was some fulfillment to be had in
the way of disobedience to me that they could not know in covenant
fidelity and obedience to me. They've aligned themselves with
you, devil. But I'm going to break up the alignment. I'm going
to put enmity between you and the woman. That's sovereign grace. God's breaking up the alignment. We aligned ourselves with the
devil in our first Father, and God says, I'll bust up that alignment. I'll put enmity. And as we read
through the Scriptures, we find that emphasis culminating in
what is perhaps the most familiar verse in all of the Bible. For
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Or in Ephesians chapter 2, after
Paul paints that horrific picture of what we are as walking dead
men, dead in trespasses and sins, walking about in lust, having
our whole lives directed by the powers of darkness, and we are
by nature children of wrath, and then verse 4 he says, That's what we are. That's our
condition. What's our hope? But God, who
is rich in mercy. Paul does the same thing in Titus
3. We ourselves who are one time foolish, disobedient, hateful,
serving, diverse, lust and pleasures. But he says, but God, who is
rich in mercy, for His great mercy has in Jesus Christ brought
cleansing, and part. The good news of God's gracious
provision, we're directed first of all to the author of that
provision. It is the living God, Jehovah
Himself. But now note with me, secondly,
the method of His provision. And the Lord hath closed His
eyes to our going astray and turning to our own way. No, the
Lord has laid on Him The iniquity of us all, the good news of God's
gracious provision, not only points us to the fact that God
is the author, but that the method of that provision is bound up
in what Jehovah, God, does with someone called here, Him. Who
is the Him? We go back to look for the antecedent
in terms of the proper noun, and we don't find it in v. 5. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised. Who is the He?
Who is the Him? We go back to v. 3, v. 2, v. 1. We still are not given the
clue, but when we go back to v. 13 of chapter 52, behold,
consider, look at, stand back and consider my My servant who
shall deal wisely. It is the servant of Jehovah
with whom Jehovah deals in this matter of making provision for
our sin. It is none other than our Lord
Jesus Christ. For you remember in Acts chapter
8 when Philip is told to go out into a desert place and he joins
himself to a chariot. And he comes upon an Ethiopian
eunuch who is reading from the scroll of Isaiah. And Philip
says, what are you reading about? And he says, this is what I'm
reading. And then he says, is the prophet speaking of himself
or another? And the text tells us, Luke tells
us, that from that portion of Scripture, Philip preached unto
him Jesus. Jesus is the servant of Jehovah,
and God's provision for sin has in some way or other to do with
what Jehovah does in reference to the servant of Jehovah. It is what Jehovah does in relationship
to His obedient servant. And what He does is wrapped up
in these words. Jehovah, the Lord, has laid on
Him, made to strike upon Him the suffering servant, the iniquity
of us all, stated in the simplest way. God's method of provision
for sin is the substitutionary curse-bearing, of His obedient
servant. It is in Jehovah making to light
or strife upon His suffering obedient servant the penalty
due to our sin that God has made a way for righteous pardon and
for just forgiveness. And I want us to sit and meditate
in our minds' eye for a few moments upon the significance of those
words. And the Lord has laid upon him
the iniquity of us all. What is he telling us? Well,
with this whole chapter as the backdrop to what I'm about to
say, he's telling us that God's method is substitutionary curse-bearing. In other words, if we are truly
to understand the sufferings of the servant of the Lord, we
must get beyond thinking of that suffering in terms of its horizontal
realities and dimensions. It was very real suffering. When they apprehended him in
the garden and bound him like a common criminal and dragged
him off to the high priest house and began to mock him, began
to bring false accusations, and then he's taken to Pilate and
up to Herod and back to Pilate, during which hours he is spat
upon, he is jeered, he is buffeted with fists and with rods, A crown
of thorns is placed upon his head. He is dressed in purple.
He is given mock worship. He is taunted, blindfolded. Tell us who struck you. Prove
to us you are God's final prophet. Then, staggering beneath the
load of the cross placed upon him, so that they wondered whether
he would make it to the place of execution, they conscript
another to carry his cross to Golgotha. And then he's impaled,
and you know the story. He's hung up between earth and
heaven, further jeering, further mocking, further despising. Even two people executed, to
the left and the right, the Scripture says, cast the same in his teeth. He was brutalized. It was cruel,
sadistic brutality. But my friend, you haven't begun
to understand the significance of the cross, if that's all you
see. It is not in what men were doing to Jesus that contains
God's method of provision for our sin. It's what God the Father
was doing with God the Son. And the Lord has laid on Him,
verse 10, it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. But you say, wait
a minute. I thought it was the soldiers
who buffeted him. I thought it was the chief priest
and the other religious leaders in the rank and file that they
stirred up to mock him and falsely accuse him. But the prophet says
it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He has put him to grief. And until we see the true reality
of what Jesus did in the vertical dimensions, it is what God the
Father is doing with God the Son. As Hugh Martin in his marvelous
book, The Shadow of Calvary, points out, God so ordered the
events of Jesus' execution that everything that was transpiring
in the human theater was to mirror what was transpiring in the invisible
heavenly theater of spiritual reality. From the time that Jesus
gives himself up in Gethsemane, Until hanging upon the cross,
he yields his spirit into the hands of his Father. Jesus is
seen in one light only, that of a guilty, condemned felon. Had you been a visitor to Jerusalem
on that weekend, and you witnessed the arrest in the garden, the
arraignment before the high priest, and then to Sanhedrin, and over
to Pilate, and up to Herod, and back to Pilate, and out along
the Via Dolorosa until he's hung upon the cross and he dies, you'd
say that man is one sure enough guilty, death-deserving criminal. That's the only appearance that
our Lord had in the human theater. Hugh Martin rightly points out
that God's so ordered events that that might set before us
the greater and the spiritual reality, that there was an appearance
before the court of heaven with God robed in His robe of righteous
judge. And when Jesus, who in the eternal
Spirit offers Himself up to God, appears before the tribunal of
the living, holy God of whom we sang tonight, And he is charged
with the iniquity, the hell-deservingness of our sins. He appears in court
and the plea is made. What do you plead? And he says,
Father, I plead guilty as charged. My son, you are charged with
all of the sins of a vast multitude whom no man can number out of
every kindred, tribe and tongue and nation. My son, do you willingly
Do you from the heart embrace the indictment, Holy Father,
guilty as charged? And the Father says, I must unleash
the sentence. The wages of sin is death. The essence of death is separation. And in the way that our minds
can never fathom, and I don't believe will fathom in all eternity,
the Son of God, bears in Himself the unleashed fury of the wrath
of God for every single sin that you and I committed because we
were straying sheep, because we had turned each one of us
to His own way. And God takes the just penalty
for our sins, and He charges His Son as guilty with them,
and He vents His pure and holy and righteous fury until the
son who was, as we read tonight, as a lamb before her shearers
was done. It was the pressure of the forsakenness
by God that at last he could bear no more. And three hours
of silence, three hours of darkness like the darkness in Egypt before
God delivered his people. No soldiers are taunting. No
chief priests are mocking. There is silence. Compare the
Gospel records in those three hours. Total, total silence. And out of the dark silence comes
a cry, My God, my God, why didst thou forsake me? And the Bible
records no answer. But the Bible gives us leave
to know what the answer is. My son, I've forsaken you because
I've laid on you their iniquity. And when, in a way that we shall
again never fathom, the Father makes known to the Son that all
the demands of His righteous law have been met, the Son cries
out. He doesn't whimper and expire.
It says He cries out with one more loud cry. to Telestai. It is finished. What's finished?
Not I am finished. It is finished. All that I must
do to carry the sins of my people into the land of forgetfulness."
And then he says, having had a felt sense of the restored
favor of his God, not my God into your hands, but my Father
into your hands. I commit my spirit. The work
is done. I have borne the iniquity of
straying sheep. I have gone into the bowels of
hell and felt the fury of your wrath, my holy father. And it is finished. That's what
the Bible means when it says in Galatians 3.13, Christ redeemed
us from the curse of the law. How? Becoming a curse for us. Everything it would mean for
you and for me to go down into an eternity of being the focused
objects of the wrath of God. Whatever the curse meant for
us, that's what it meant for Him. Or in the language of 2
Corinthians 5, 21, he who knew no sin was made sin for us. Without in any way being defiled
in his spirit, he comes in the closest proximity to our sin,
that he can, in our room instead, bear that sin on our behalf. The psalmist, speaking prophetically,
says, All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me. You remember
when Jesus said, I have a baptism to be baptized with? That was
his baptism, being overwhelmed and submerged in the wrath of
his Holy Father. This is God's provision for straying
sheep, for self-centered, willful sinners. God makes the provision. God makes it in the substitutionary
curse bearing of his own son. And over the years as I've sought
to find hymns that capture the heart of the biblical message,
none captures it better than the hymn that I want to quote
in your hearing now. I wish it were in our Trinity
hymnal. You'll notice the progression in the first stanza, Christ is
likened to one who bears a burden. In the second stanza, he drinks
a cup. In the third stanza, he feels
the rod of God. In the fourth stanza, an unleashed
tempest in the fifth stanza, a sword, and then in the final
stanza, a marvelous expression of faith in Christ, God's provision
for sinners. O Christ, what burdens bowed
Thy head, our load was laid on Thee. Thou stoodest in the sinner's
stead, its bear all ill for me. A victim led, Thy blood was shed,
Now there is no load for me. Death and the curse were in our
cup. O Christ was full for thee, but
thou hast drained the last dark drop. It is empty now for me. That bitter cup, love, drank
it up. Now blessings draft for me. Jehovah lifted up his rod. O
Christ, it fell on thee. Thou wast sore stricken of thy
God. There is not one stroke for me. Thy tears, thy blood beneath
it flowed. Thy bruising healeth me. The
tempest's awesome voice was heard. O Christ, it broke on thee. Thy open bosom was my ward. It braved the storm for me. Thy
form was scarred. Thy visage marred. Now cloudless
peace for me. Jehovah bade his sword awake.
O Christ, it woke against Thee. Thy blood, the flaming blade,
must slake. Thy heart, its sheath, must be. All for my sake, my peace to
make. Now sleeps that sword for me. For me, Lord Jesus, Thou hast
died, and I have died in Thee. Thou art risen. My bands are
all untied. And now Thou livest in me, when
purified, made white, and tried. Thy glory then for me." My friends,
our salvation is wrapped up in some oblique, secondary way with
something or other that Jesus did on our behalf. No, Jesus
died the just for the unjust. Our iniquities were laid upon
Him and charged with them He suffered the full way. of the
justice of Almighty God unleashed in the court of heaven upon His
dear Son. That is the good news of God's
gracious provision for sin. And if you sit there and say,
but Pastor Martin, how do we know that in His few hours of
agony upon the cross there is such a full satisfaction to the
justice of God that I can say with Paul, there is therefore
now, in the present hour, no condemnation for those who are
in Christ Jesus. I want to be able to say, for
me, as to any penal affliction from God for my sin, the judgment
day has come and gone. There is now, in the present,
no condemnation. How can I be absolutely certain? I know Jesus cried, it is finished,
but then He died. Ah, yes, my friend, the three
days letter, he rose from the dead. And I love to think of
Joseph's empty tomb as God's megaphone saying to the world,
it is finished! I've raised my son from the dead. Romans 4.25, delivered up for
our offenses, raised on account of our justification. You have
diah with the accusative, you Greek students. raised on account
of our justification. In the court of heaven, all of
the demands of justice are satisfied in the suffering of the servant
of the Lord. But then you ask, and rightly
so, how can I make all of that mine? Well, God here through
the prophet tells us. If you just turn over to the
55th chapter, Based upon the suffering servant's work, chapter
54 tells us of the great expansion of the kingdom of God, God's
grace extending to the Gentiles. And then in chapter 5, it's though
someone says, but oh God, how can I make all of this mine,
that I can know my sins are pardoned, that I will stand in the last
day acquitted and welcomed into the presence of my God, though
I acknowledge that I have been a straying sheep and a self-willed
rebel. Here in chapter 55, God takes
upon himself the role of a street hawker, a vendor of goods who
goes through the village and through the streets, offering
his wares. And I never think of this passage,
but what I think of a summer that I spent in Augusta, Georgia,
in what they call the white trash section. It was poor, poverty
of the worst kind. And as I was there ministering
in this little mission hall through the summer, several mornings
a week, I can still see her in my mind's aisle, a lanky black
woman would go through the streets, up and down the streets, with
a long stride with her basket of okra, saying, Okra! Here,
get your okra! Fresh okra! She was hawking her
wares. God says, Oh, everyone that thirsts,
come to the water. And someone says, but I've got
no money. He says, that's fine. He that has no money, come, buy
and eat. The only price is that you come.
It's all paid for. Oh, everyone that thirsts, come
to the waters. He who has no money, come, buy
and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without
money and without price. And then God reasons with people.
He says, you've got some money in your pocket. But you're spending
it on stuff that is not really bread. It can never satisfy.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and
your labor for that which does not satisfy? Hearken diligently
unto me. Eat that which is good, and let
your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear. Come to me
here, and your soul shall live. I will make an everlasting covenant
with you, even the sure mercies of David. Behold, I've given
him for a witness to the peoples, a leader and a commander to the
peoples. The servant is now exalted. He
is given the place of authority and power. And on the basis of
his accomplished work for sinners, God invites sinners to come to
this gospel peace of free pardon of all of our sins, peace with
God, the gift of the Spirit, all that God pledges to give
in covenant grace to those who will embrace His Son. Then he
goes on to give further directions saying, now if you're serious
about this, verse says, seek the Lord while He may be found.
Call upon Him while He's near. Let the wicked forsake His way
and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Now look, and let him return
unto the Lord, for he will have mercy upon him and to our God,
for he will abundantly pardon." As we close, park with me on
those words, verse 6 and 7. Seek the Lord while he may be
found. Call upon him while he is near. It is your responsibility to
seek this God who has made such a marvelous provision, a provision
suited to the need of the vilest of sinners. A provision that
is perfect in all of its parts. Seek this God while He may be
found. Call upon Him while He's near.
Well, in what posture, in what disposition should I seek Him
and call upon Him? In the way of repentance, let
the wicked forsake. What are the next two words?
His way. We have turned everyone to His
own way. God says, get out of the God
business. You weren't made to be in the God business. You're
my creature. made to find your delight in
doing my will. Get out of the God business.
Forsake your way. If any man would come after me,
let him what? Deny himself. It's one and the
same gospel, dear folks. It's not a gospel in the old
and a gospel in the new. A gospel that before the death
of Christ demanded repentance, but now you just need to tap
your head, tip your hat to Jesus and go tripping in the kingdom?
No! God says in every epoch of redemptive grace, let the wicked
forsake his way. Get out of the God business.
And the unrighteous man is thoughts. Be prepared to have God renovate
you from the inside out, for as a man thinks in his heart,
so is he. Repentance that doesn't touch the deepest springs of
the heart is no true repentance. And let him return unto the Lord. All we like sheep have gone astray.
We've gone astray from the God who made us for Himself, to delight
in Himself, to find our highest joy in Him. He says, return to
this God, that He will be to you all that God desires to be,
to every penitent, believing soul. Let him return unto the
Lord. and return in this confidence,
he will have mercy upon him, mercy based upon the work of
the suffering servant, and he will abundantly pardon. You say
that doesn't make sense. You mean in simply turning from
the very thing that would take me to hell and coming to God
in faith and laying hold of this promise of mercy and forgiveness,
this sounds too good to be true. God says, I know that, so that's
what I'm going to tell you. My thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are my ways your ways. Don't expect you can fathom God's
mercy. It's unfathomable. The infinite
God stoops to the role of a streetwalker, and He says, come. He says, come. And if you truly come, you will
not simply come to rest solely on the saving work of the servant
of Jehovah, but you will come so that 1 Peter 2.25 will be
true of you. Turn here, please, if you will.
for our last text this evening. 1 Peter 2, verse 25. For you were going astray like
sheep. As far as we know, Peter had
never visited what is now the land of Turkey. Asia Minor, suffering
saints to whom he writes, but he knows that part of Adam's
race, this was true of all of them by nature, you were going
astray like sheep. But now they've been converted.
And how does he describe them? But are now returned, not unto
the saving work of the shepherd and overseer, but you are now
returned unto the shepherd and the overseer of your souls. He
said you were straying sheep, but now you have a personal Savior
and a personal shepherd and a personal bishop. The Jesus who died, And
Peter has spoken of Him repeatedly in this epistle and will again
in chapter 3. Christ suffered for sins once,
righteous for unrighteous, that He might bring us to God. Peter
says, all who are truly part of that community of true saints,
they were as sheep going astray, but they have now been returned
unto a person. Not just to, quote, faith in
the finished work of Christ. I cringe when I hear preachers
say, admit you're a sinner. Believe Christ died for sinners. Trust in the finished work of
Christ and you'll be saved. No, no. It is Christ Himself
who is the object of saving faith. The Christ who finished the work.
The Christ who lives. The Christ who is Lord. The Christ
who is Master. Peter says that's how these people
were converted. were changed from straying sheep
to sheep that are comfortable under the government and the
rule and the saving mercy of the great sheep. And that's the
only two kind of people here tonight. As surely as they're
just men and women. He's and she's. Boys, girls. They're straying sheep and they're
our returned sheep. It's only two kinds. Now I want
to ask you, which are you? Can it be said of you that you
have now returned to the shepherd and the overseer of your soul,
that the Spirit of God has shown you not only the way of God to
pardon sinners through the work of Christ, but shown you the
loveliness of Christ, that you count it your joy to be His willing
bondsman? to be His obedient sheep, where
He says, My sheep hear My voice, present tense, and I know them,
and they are following Me, present tense, and I give to them eternal
life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them
out of My hand. He says, My sheep are held. But
what's the mark of His sheep? They have the open ear and the
obedient foot. They hear My voice. They follow. Why? They've been returned unto
the shepherd and the overseer of their souls. May God grant
that if you are still a strange sheep, you return to the shepherd
and to the bishop, the one who alone can confer upon you grace
and mercy, pity and pardon, and all that you need, that you might
stand in the last day acquitted in Christ and forever be with
him. The bad news of our desperate
condition, the good news of God's gracious provision. God grant
that for those of us who can say, by the grace of God, I'm
one of those sheep now nestled under the side and protection
of the shepherd. Dear people, this is your 10th
anniversary. Under God's blessing, what has built this church? It's
not the pious mush of feel-goody religion. It's been faithfulness
to the message of the Bible that tells us what we really are as
sinners, and has unashamedly proclaimed how it is that sinners
can be right with God. And if the Lord tarries and spares
some of you young people, upon your shoulders will rest the
responsibility that that message that is distilled in this text
of the bad news of our desperate condition and the good news of
God's gracious provision will be preached in this place or
in a larger place, if that's in the will of God, until the
Lord Jesus returns. You have an awesome responsibility.
Some of you have heard more truth before you reach your fifteenth
birthday than some of us knew when we were thirty. And to whom
much is given, of him shall much be required. Let's pray. Our Father, what thanks can we
render to You that there would be such a Gospel, one that proclaims
what You have taken the initiative to do in free, sovereign love
and mercy. We think of those angels that
rebelled and for whom no redemptive grace was provided towards whom
nothing but judgment has been and will yet be shown. And yet,
O Lord, we were part of that race that fell in Adam, and yet
You have shown mercy, and we thank You for that mercy. And
we pray that this night there would be some who, having discovered
for the first time their true state in condemnation and death
and rebellion, O Lord, would You not draw them unto Yourself
that they may pillow their heads this night as those who have
returned to the shepherd and the overseer of their souls.
Thank you for your people here who love this message, who seek
by every legitimate means to proclaim it to others, and we
pray that from this pulpit and from this assembly of your people
There will continue to go forth in the days and months and years
to come should you delay the coming of your Son. O Lord, may
the trumpet of Gospel truth sound a certain and clear note that
all in this part of the world that you have made would know
that there is an everlasting Gospel. that there is in the
Scriptures an abiding and a changeless message of condemnation and of
hope. May your blessing rest upon your
people in this place. Hear our prayers and continue
with us, we plead, in Jesus' name, amen.