Now before we turn to the reading
and preaching of the Word of God, I do want to seize this
final opportunity that I have to face you, many of my brothers
and sisters, who are old acquaintances that we have had the joy of renewing
fellowship with during this visit. Many of you new acquaintances,
it is always a tremendous encouragement to meet one and another who come
up to me and say, Pastor Martin, we've not met, but, and then
they begin to say how God has used this or that particular
tape or series of messages either to bring them to Christ or to
establish them in Christ as those messages came on what we back
home affectionately call our little mechanical preachers. And it has been a great encouragement
to know the truth read in our hearing that the word of God
when it goes forth does indeed accomplish that for which God
himself sends it. And it has been a great encouragement
to my wife and to me to see what God is doing here in this part
of the country in the raising up of churches committed to the
old paths of biblical faith and life and worship and ministry
and though we go back exhausted, this has been like a triple marathon
of preaching over the past 10 days, we go back renewed and
refreshed in the inner man in terms of what our eyes have seen
and our ears have heard and be assured that as I report to our
own people and to that circle of churches with which we have
our most intimate ties of fellowship back on the East Coast, that
there will be much joy amongst God's people, and there will
be intensified prayer that God will continue and expand the
work of His grace in your midst in the days to come. And finally,
I do want to express sincere thanks for the many tokens of
love and affection shown to my wife and to me, the homes opened,
the tables spread, the transportation given. All of these acts of kindness
will simply remind those of you who have been involved in them
of the words of the Lord Jesus that not a cup of cold water
given in his name shall fail of its reward. And now will you
open your Bibles with me to the same prophecy, but two chapters
earlier, the same prophecy from which Pastor Blackburn read,
that of the prophet Isaiah. And chapter 53, this very well-known
chapter, in which we have an account of the suffering of the
servant of Jehovah, given in such details that one would think
Isaiah the prophet had been an eyewitness of the very events
recorded in the latter chapters of each of the gospel writers. In fact, this is a true story.
We know of a woman whose background was Jewish. She had never been
within the walls of a church where the gospel had been preached.
And she somehow found her way into such a church, and when
the servant of God stood and began to read the scriptures
from Isaiah 53, she thought for sure the man must be reading
from the New Testament gospel records. But to her surprise,
he was reading from this famous chapter of the suffering servant
of Jehovah, and eventually was brought to faith in Israel's
Messiah. And we're going to consider a
text in this passage that is of peculiar benefit to us for
this simple reason, that while the whole of the Bible is God's
written revelation concerning the things that you and I must
know, believe, and experience in order to be fit to live ready
to die and prepared to go to judgment, God has given to us
within the Bible some succinct summary statements which capture
the very heart of the message of the entire Word of God in
a very concentrated and pointed way. And one such portion of
the Word of God is found here in Isaiah 53 and verse 6, where
in a very real sense, the entire message of the Bible is condensed
within the compass of one verse. And that text is Isaiah 53 and
verse 6, where the prophet declares, 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. Within the compass of this brief
text, God has set before us two very clear, basic units of thought
And I want, with the help of God, to expound them as simply,
as clearly, as passionately as God will enable me to do so. And those two units of thought
are these. We have, first of all, the bad
news of our desperate condition in sin. All we, like sheep, have
gone astray. We have turned every one of us
to His own way. That is a statement of the bad
news of our desperate condition in sin. And then it is followed
by what I am calling the good news of God's gracious provision
for sin. And the Lord has laid on Him
the iniquity of us all. So we have the bad news followed
by the good news. And you see even the order in
which these things are set before us follows the order of God's
gracious dealings with the hearts of men. For until you and I have
heard, received, and acutely felt the pain of the bad news
of our desperate condition in sin, we will never appreciate
and will never receive with faith and with joy the good news of
God's gracious provision for sin. Seek to stuff your ears
to the bad news, and you forfeit forever any delightful reception
of the good news. Take seriously and lay to heart
the magnitude of the bad news of your desperate condition in
sin, And then indeed the good news of God's gracious provision
for sin will be the best of news you have ever heard, and with
all of your heart and soul you will embrace it. Following then
the very track cut for us by the text itself, think with me
as we contemplate what the prophet sets before us as the bad news
of our desperate condition in sin. And he does so in two ways. First of all, he gives us the
vivid picture of our desperate condition in sin, and that in
turn is followed by what I am calling a blunt pronouncement
of our desperate condition in sin. So we have a vivid picture
and a blunt pronouncement. Look first of all at the vivid
picture of our desperate condition in sin. All we like sheep have
gone astray. And here the prophet incorporates
imagery that would have been familiar to all of his hearers. Perhaps there are not a few of
you here who have never seen a real bonafide flock of sheep. let alone seeing flock of sheep
day after day as a part of your ordinary experience, but to those
to whom this word came in its original setting, this would
have indeed conveyed very vivid imagery to their minds. For what
the prophet is doing is likening the condition of his hearers
and of all humanity to that of a vast flock of sheep that has
strayed from the presence, protection, and guidance of its rightful
shepherd. He views all of humanity as one
vast flock of sheep that has strayed away from the presence,
the protection, and the guidance of its rightful shepherd. And as such, all of these sheep
are exposed to danger and even destruction. Predatory animals
can consume them. Thieves can take them to themselves. And when the prophet declared,
all we, like a vast flock of sheep, have gone astray, he was
setting out a vivid picture of our desperate condition in sin. And if you were to ask the question,
well, in this straying, from what have we strayed? Well, the
Scriptures answer that question very clearly. We have strayed
first of all from God Himself as the object of our supreme
desire and our supreme delight. The scriptures make it clear
that man was made in the image of God with the capacity to know
and to hold delightful communion with God. And when the Scriptures
tell us that man and only man was made in the image of God,
at the heart of what it means to be an image-bearer of God
was this capacity that man had, in contrast to all of the other
creatures which God had made, personally to know and to hold
communion with the living God. The most beautiful animal made
by the creative Word of God could not consciously reflect upon
its beauty and say, thank you God for making me the beautiful
creature that you have made me, or were it a creature that was
to crawl upon the earth, or one whose wings would split the air,
regardless of its assigned place in the purpose of God. It had
no capacity, consciously, knowingly, to hold communion with God its
Creator. But man was made that he would
have this communion with his God and that he would find in
his God his supreme desire and his supreme delight. And you
remember when our Lord Jesus was asked, what is the first
and the greatest commandment? He answered, quoting from the
Old Testament, the first and great commandment is this, you
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all
your mind, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And
the second is like unto it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And when the prophet says, All
we, like sheep, have gone astray, he is setting forth this reality
that the whole mass of humanity has gone astray from its God
as the supreme object of its desire and its delight. Some of the saddest words to
be found anywhere in the Bible are found in Paul's description
of universal sinfulness in Romans chapter 3, verses 10 to 18. And he begins with these words,
as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. Now here are the sad words. There is none that understands. There is none that seeks after
God. None that seeks after God. Think of it. The only creature,
along with angels and seraphim, cherubim and seraphim, made with
a capacity consciously to know and hold fellowship with and
appreciate the wonder and the glory and the majesty and the
beauty of God, and yet there is none that seeks. after God. All we, like sheep, have gone
astray. We have strayed from God Himself
as the object of our supreme desire and delight, and further,
we have strayed from the law of God as the governing rule
of our lives. For when sheep stray from their
rightful shepherd, they not only leave the place of communion
with the shepherd, the place of interaction with the shepherd,
they leave the place of the government of the shepherd. They get beyond
His staff and His crook and the instrument by which He guides
them. And the prophet is likening all
of humanity to a vast flock of sheep that in its straying has
not only strayed from God Himself as the object of supreme desire
and delight, but have strayed from the law of God as the governing
rule. of life. And what the prophet
sets out in this vivid imagery, the apostle Paul states in explicit
language in Romans 8 and verse 7 where he writes, the carnal
mind is enmity against God For it is not subject to the law
of God, neither indeed can it be." And what that means, kids,
when it says the carnal mind, it means the disposition with
which you were born. The disposition with which all
of us was born. The internal disposition of heart
to God is enmity itself. It doesn't say the carnal mind
is at enmity with God. The scripture says the carnal
mind is enmity itself. In other words, every one of
us by nature is one big clenched fist in the face of God. The carnal mind is enmity against
God. It is not subject to the law
of God. neither indeed can it be, so
then they that are in the flesh cannot please God." Now that's
not a flattering statement. I'm sure the man who holds forth
in the Crystal Palace not too far from here would not look
approvingly upon my telling you, even you dear children, you were
born with a clenched fist in God's face. Carnal mind is enmity against
God. It is not subject to the law
of God. Neither, indeed, can it be. It cannot be. There is no human
force or power that can change that. So then, they that are
in the flesh cannot please God. All we, like sheep, have gone
astray. But that straying is not just
an innocent ambling away here and there from the norms of God. It is a deliberate, resolute,
determined abandonment of God's law as the rule of our lives. And all we need to do is take
those ten words spoken not by Moses, but by the mouth of God
upon Sinai, written by the finger of God in tables of stone, placed
in the ark of God in the immediate presence of God. And in the presence
of the God before whom all things are naked and open, we bring
our hearts and our thoughts and our motives and our desires and
our words and our deeds. Before those ten words of God,
then we see indeed the prophet is telling the truth. We have
gone astray like a vast flock of sheep, not only from God Himself
as the object of our supreme desire and delight, but from
the law of God as the governing rule of our lives. He said, You
shall have no other gods before Me, and we by nature make a God
of everything and anything we can put our affections upon.
He says we are to worship Him only as He commands, and man
continually invents his own instruments of worship. God says you shall
honor My name, and we take it lightly. God says you shall remember
My day to keep it holy, and we say, who is the Lord to say that
He shall have a day holy unto Himself? And He says honor My
instituted framework of government. Children, obey your parents. Honor your father and your mother. And we say, who is he? Who is she? Who are they to tell
me what to do? God says, regard and respect
the sanctity of human life. regard and respect the sanctity
of the marriage union of sexual relations, the sanctity of possessions
and truth, and the sanctity of the heart. And when we bring
ourselves to those ten words of God that touch the full spectrum
of our thoughts and motives and desires and deeds, we say, surely
the prophet was not indulging in rhetorical overkill when he
said, All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every
one of us to his own way. And this is why the scripture
says, by the law comes the knowledge of sin, that sin by the commandment
might become exceedingly sinful. Yes, this is bad news. This is
bad news of our desperate condition in sin, set before us first of
all in this vivid picture of a vast flock of sheep going astray. But then notice in the second
place how the bad news of our desperate condition is not merely
set before us in a vivid picture, it is set before us in a blunt
pronouncement. A blunt pronouncement of our
desperate condition. Look at it in your own Bibles
with your own eyes. It says, all we like sheep have
gone astray. We have turned everyone to his
own way. Now the language could not be
more simple. We have turned every two or three
syllable word in terms of how you give the emphasis to the
vowels. We have turned everyone to his own way. Here's a blunt statement and
pronouncement of our desperate condition. Notice it doesn't
say we have turned every one of us to this or that particular
sin. It doesn't say we have turned
every one of us to drunkenness. We have turned every one of us
to swearing. We have turned every one of us
to cheating. We have turned every one of us
to thievery. We have turned every one of us
to blasphemy. That simply would not be true.
There would be some who could rise up and say no. I have been
honest to a dime and to a penny in all of my dealings with my
fellow men. I have not knowingly stolen a
cent from any human being on the face of the earth. But it
does say we have turned every one of us to his own way. In other words, every one of
us has chosen to go into the God business and run the show. We have turned, every one of
us, to his own way. What's a way? A way is a pattern
of life. A way is a course of action.
We say of someone, well I don't like the way he does things. What we mean is we don't like
the course or pattern in which the person acts. And the text
says we have turned every one of us to his own way. We have said, I am going to mark
out the path for my life and live it by the standards that
I choose. I don't care whether or not God
has said thou shalt or thou shalt not. I don't care whether God
has marked out a path. I will do what I want to do. I'm my own man. I'm my own woman. I'm going to do my own thing. And that is true of every single
one of us by nature. The Prophet said, we have turned
everyone to his own way. What we have described by the
Prophet is underscored in the language of the great Apostle
Paul in the New Testament, chapter 5 of 2nd Corinthians. And I ask
you to look for a moment at this parallel passage. Here the Apostle
declares in 2 Corinthians 5 verses 14 and following, For the love
of Christ constrains us, because with us judge that one died for
all, therefore all died, and that he died for all, that they
that live, now follow closely what it says, that they that
live should know longer live unto themselves. but unto him
who for their sakes died and rose again." He says, Christ
died so that all for whom he died, when they received the
virtue of the death that he died, will no longer live to themselves,
clearly teaching that until the power of the death of Christ
has entered a man's life, he's living unto himself. Every one
of us. You see that in the text. Christ
died that they who live through his death should no longer live
unto self, but up to that moment, each and every one lives unto
himself. He makes himself his own God. He's gone into the God business.
Oh yes, God says, you shall not steal, but if it pleases me to
take the possession of another, I'll take it. God says you shall
not bear false witness, but if it spares my hide to lie about
my brother or sister and say they did it when I really did
it, then I'm prepared to lie. What are you doing? You're going
your own way. You're saying God's way marked
out by God's law is not going to regulate my life. God says
thou shalt not commit adultery. And you say, I don't care what
God says. I like her. She likes me. We
make out in bed well. We're going to do as we please
between the sheets. Who is God to stick His nose
under our sheets? I'll tell you who He is. He's
the God who made you and will roast you in hell. If you go on living in your fornicating,
adulterating life and don't repent, this is serious business. All
we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his
own way, so that the rule for us is, I will live in terms of
what I want, when I want it, why I want it, and I'll pursue
it. Now the question is this. Our
text tells us something of our desperate condition in sin. By a vivid picture, all we like
sheep. By a blunt assertion, we have
turned to his own way. The question is, how does God
look upon all this? Will you go right back to the
Garden of Eden? And when our first father went astray like
a sheep, when he turned to his own way, how did God react? Did
God just say, oh well, you know, boys will be boys, and kids will
be kids, and Adam will be Adam? Oh yes, I told him. You shall
not eat of that tree, and the day that you eat, you die. But,
you know, man is man, and what can be expected? And did God
indulgently pass over Adam, going astray like a sheep from God
as the supreme object of his desire and delight, and turning
to his own way? No, God came and banished him
from Eden. And when the generations soon
became so cumulatively wicked that God says, it's grieved me
I even made man, God says, I'll blot out the entire human race,
saving one family, Noah and his family, and the bloated bodies
upon the heaving billows of the flood, are a witness to how God
looks upon man, the creature saying, I'll cast off God as
my supreme object of desire and delight, and I'll do my own thing. And Sodom and Gomorrah and the
judgments of God throughout human history are a witness that God
does not take sin lightly. The soul that sins, it shall
die. The wages of sin is death. And I ask you before we leave
this first part of our text, that sets before us the bad news
of our desperate condition in sin. I want to ask you a very
simple, personal, pointed question. Will you regard yourself as sitting
right here next to me, 18 inches between our noses, and my eyes
looking into yours, and I ask you this question. Have you,
not your mother, father, brother, sister, the guy behind you, the
woman to the left of you, your husband, no, no, no, have you,
you my friend, sitting there looking into my eyes, my eyes
into yours, in the presence of God, have you ever felt the reality
of your desperate condition in sin? Simple question. But I want to ask it. Have you,
you, you, you, and you, and you, and you, have you ever felt the
reality of your desperate condition in sin? I didn't say have you
felt it to the point where you wept seven buckets of tears over
the course of 13 days. I didn't say, have you felt it
to the point where you couldn't sleep at night for six successive
weeks? No, I would not set standards
beyond the Word of God. But Jesus said, I did not come
to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And no one ever
embraced Christ as Savior who did not keenly feel His desperate
condition. as a sinner, apart from Christ. So I ask you the simple question,
have you ever felt, you notice I didn't say, have you ever admitted
you're a sinner? I've only met one person in all
of my life that wouldn't admit he was a sinner. Only one. People
go, yeah, none of us is perfect. I'm a sinner, sure, you're a
sinner, I'm a sinner, we're all sinners. Sort of like the measles,
when it hits a household, everybody gets them. that nobody is too
upset, no one feels moral guilt and culpability, and they treat
sin like a universal case of the measles. No, it is your individual
case of rebellion against Almighty God. You, as part of that flock,
with your spiritual feet, you went astray. from God is your
supreme object of desire and delight. You, with your feet,
went astray from His law as the governing principle of your life.
You, with your heart and your carnal mind, have purposed to
do your own thing, to live unto yourself. And it's only when sin becomes
to you the burning, all-consuming, disruptive reality that you will
ever take seriously the gospel of the grace of God. There's
some of you sitting here tonight, you know what it is. to have
the issues of guys and gals and face and form and grades and
promotions and salaries and benefits. You know what it is to have those
issues, burning issues, that you think about, you plan about,
you scheme about, but you've never spent 30 seconds of serious,
intent thought about what it is to be a sinner before God
your maker. My friend, every one of us will
take our desperate condition seriously in this life while
the door of mercy is open, or in the day of judgment when the
door of mercy is shut. But take your desperate condition
in sin seriously, you shall. You shall. You shall. And if that's all I had to preach,
I don't know that I could go on preaching. But blessed be
God, the whole of the Bible, as well as this text, takes us
on from the bad news of our desperate condition in sin to the good
news of God's gracious provision for sin. Notice the emphasis
of the text. As long as the prophet is talking
about us, it's nothing but bad news. All we, like sheep, have
gone astray. We have turned, every one of
us, to his own way. But when he's going to give us
good news, the emphasis now shifts from what we've done to what
God has done, notice, and the Lord. has laid on him the iniquity
of us all. I want you to note two basic
things about the good news of God's gracious provision for
sin. First of all, note with me the
author of this provision for sin. Look at your Bibles. Who
is the author of this provision? And the Lord the Hebrew word
Yahweh, Jehovah, the great I am that I am, the one who declares
I will be that I will be, the great God of total self-sufficiency,
the God of gracious self-revelation, of covenantal faithfulness and
grace. And the Lord has done something. The author of this provision
for sin is the Lord Himself. God has come forth as the offended
party to do something on behalf of the offenders. And that's
the great emphasis of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. When
Adam and Eve sinned, what did they do? They ran. to hide from
God. But the scripture says the Lord
God came in the cool of the evening and God sought out man. Adam, where are you? And he came as the great inquisitor,
not only to confront him with his sin, but to say, look, you've
aligned yourself with the devil, but I'm going to break up the
alignment. I will put enmity, warfare between
you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. God takes
the initiative to break up man's alignment with the devil. God
takes the initiative. And from that first indication
of it on to the wonderful statement of John 3.16, For God so loved
the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Ephesians 2 and
verse 4, after describing our condition in sin in verses 1
to 3, the Apostle transitions into describing God's mercy with
these words, But God, who is rich in mercy for His great love
wherewith He loved us. If you've never heard the late
Dr. Lloyd-Jones sermon on those two words, But God, beg Biden,
I was almost going to say steal, but don't steal. But what a marvelous
exposition of this truth. But God! But God! Again in Titus 3, Paul describes
in the first several verses the tragic state all of us are in
by nature. And then he says, but God, who
is rich in mercy, mark it down. as a very, very accurate litmus
test of all religious teaching, when it comes to the issue of
how man gets right with God, does the teaching start with
an arrow that begins on earth with man reaching up to heaven? Or does it start with an arrow
coming out of heaven, reaching down to man? All saving religion
begins and ends in God. False religion begins and ends
in man. And our text, as it sets forth
the good news of God's gracious provision for sin, first of all
underscores the author of this provision and the Lord. It is God Himself who has come
forth to do something for man in his sin. But then notice secondly,
and this is the heart of our study tonight, the focus of this
provision for sin. What is the focus of it? Look
at the language of the text. And the Lord has laid or made
to light or made to strike upon him the iniquity of us all. The author is God. But the activity
has to do with something that God does with one who is set
before us in this pronoun, Him. The Lord has laid on Him the
iniquity of us all. And who is the Him? We go back
to verse 5. And we can't identify Him. We
simply read, He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised. The chastisement of our peace
was upon Him and with His stripes. But who is the Him? Who is the
He? We go back to verse 4 and we
get no more light. He has borne our griefs, yet
we did esteem Him, stricken smitten of God. Verse 3, He was despised. Verse 2, he grew up before him,
but pray tell Isaiah, who is he? And you work back through
chapter 53, back to chapter 52 and verse 13, and there you have
the proper noun. There is the one concerning whom
all the pronouns are used. Behold, Lift up your eyes, marshal
your attention, behold my servant." It is the servant of Jehovah
who is the focus of this entire section. And when we come to
verse 6 and read, the Lord has laid on him It is Jehovah doing
something with respect to the servant of Jehovah that constitutes
the good news of God's provision for sin. And what is he doing
to his servant? The language says Jehovah has
laid on him or made to light or rest, or some Hebraists suggest
a better translation, made to strike upon Him. The iniquity of us all. The focus
of this provision for sin simply stated is this, the substitutionary
sin bearing of the servant of Jehovah. God's provision for
us in our sin is bound up in the substitutionary sin-bearing
of the servant of Jehovah. And what is this laying upon
Him or making to light upon Him our iniquities? Well, it is nothing
less than Almighty God is the sovereign, righteous judge of
the universe, legally crediting His Son with the sins of all
of those whom He represented by willing covenantal engagement
to be their substitute and surety and representative. And what
the prophet is saying is this, that in that capacity the servant
of Jehovah has the sins of his people laid upon him, and when
they are laid upon him, charged to his account, Jehovah comes
forth dressed in robes of the judge of the universe. He sets
his day in court. And He beholds His servant charged
with the guilt of the sins of His people, and He deals with
him in strict justice, unmixed with mercy. And in opening up
this gracious, glorious truth, my friend, let me say this, until
you see in the cross of Christ what happened between the Father
and the Son, the Son and the Father, you never understand
the cross of Christ. If all you see when you read
the gospel records is the wretched, rotten, sneaking, shriveling
betrayal of Judas, coming to Jesus in the place where He knew
He would find Him, for He oft times went there to pray. If all you see is His sickening
smothering of Jesus with His kisses of betrayal until you
want to vomit in the face of His wretched hypocrisy, if that's
all you see, you've never understood God's provision for sin. If all
you see is the wickedness of the chief priests and the religious
leaders who stir up a mob and seek to incite them to make up
stories and bear false witness and none of them can even agree.
If all you see is the Lord Jesus, the object of their lying taunts,
you've never understood the cross of Christ. You never understood
God's provision for sin. If all you've ever seen is those
who made that crown of thorns and put it on his head and pressed
it down and the blood burst forth as those sharp thorns pierced
his holy brow. If all you've seen is the cruelty
of those who blindfolded him and then struck him and cuffed
him and said, ha ha, if you're what you claim to be, who prophesied,
prophesied, who has struck you, then we'll believe on you. If
all you see is the ribald heartless cruelty of the soldiers who mock
him, who taunt him, who beat him, who scourge him. You've never understood God's
provision for sin. If all you see is the activity
of those who stretch out His arms and set the nails and pound
them through His flesh, fix Him upon the cross and hang Him up
between earth and heaven, and then the taunting and the mocking
that continues, and you say, how sad, how grievous, how horrible,
how unfair that He who healed the sick and raised the dead
gave back infants to their mothers from the dead, who touched the
eyes of the blind. How wretched and tragic! It's
a horrible scene, the worst act of cruelty ever committed on
God's earth. My friend, if that's all you
see when you read the account of the death of Christ, you don't
understand the good news of God's provision for sin. Hear me carefully. For the good news of God's provision
for sin is to be found not in what man did to the servant of
Jehovah, but what Jehovah did to the servant of Jehovah. Look
at our text. And Jehovah has done something. It is the activity of Jehovah
that is in focus. Look at it again in verse 10.
Yet it pleased Jehovah, the Lord, to bruise him. He has put him
to grief. But I thought it was the chief
priest and the religious leaders that put him to grief. I thought
it was the soldiers in the mocking, jeering crowd. But the prophet
says, Jehovah has put him to grief. It pleases Jehovah to
bruise him. What's he talking about? This
is what he's talking about. He is saying that in the mystery
of the cross of Christ, when his sufferings so clearly described
in this passage were brought to their apex in all of the events
surrounding and culminating in the crucifixion and the blackened
heavens and the cry of abandonment the true meaning of the cross
is to be found not looking out at the horizontal plane but looking
upward in the vertical dimension Because there in the unseen but
real world of spiritual reality, there was inner Trinitarian activity. Jehovah is bruising Jehovah Jesus,
his servant. There in the court of heaven,
God is taking all of the legal guilt, the cumulative guilt of
all of the people of God of all ages, and He is crediting His
Son with that guilt, and He is bringing down upon His soul the
full, undiluted fury of that guilt. In the language of our
Lord Jesus, It was that which constituted the cup before which
he trembled, and from which he shrank in Gethsemane. You remember,
kids, that account of Jesus going into Gethsemane? It says he began
to be sore amazed And what was it that caused this tremendous
paroxysm of soul, this disruption, this volcanic agony that caused
him to fall to the ground? And the Greek in Mark's gospel
is emphatic. He was like a man staggering
and falling and rising and staggering and falling again. And in the
focus of all of that was this thing called the cup. Oh my father,
if this cup cannot pass away except I drink it, not my will
but thine be done. If it be possible, take this
cup from me. What was this cup? What was it? It was nothing less than the
cup full to the brim. with the pure, holy, undiluted
wrath of God against the sins of those who had gone astray,
like sheep, who had turned to their own way. and every deed
and thought and word and disposition and attitude and desire that
was the cumulative outflow of going astray like sheep, turning
to their own way, all of that, of all of His people is credited
to His Son. And the full wrath of God for
those sins is in that cup. And when our Lord sees that,
He says, Oh, my Father, if possible, let it pass. Jesus would have
been guilty of impiety had He said, No big deal. I'm the Son
of God. I'm being upheld by my Father.
He had said to me in the covenant engagements of eternity, My Son
whom I uphold, no big deal. It would have been impiety not
to shrink. before the cup and he did shrink
but then he said not my will but thine be done not thy will
be done upon me but thy will be done by me if the only way
for the cup of the cumulative wrath of God against all the
sins of all of his people of all ages if the only way the
cup can be drained is for him to take it to his lips and to
drink and to drink and to drink and to drink until the last bitter
drop is gone. He said, Father, thy will be
done. I will drink the cup. And when he went to the cross,
according to our very chapter, and men did their worst, it says,
as a lamb before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his
mouth. When the chief priests accuse
him, he doesn't say to them, O leaders of Israel, why do you
lie against me? Why do you stir up the rabble
mob to concoct these false charges and hurl them in my face? As
a lamb before her shearers, he was dumb and even pilot in all
of his wickedness. The scripture says he knew that
for envy they had delivered him. He knew all their charges were
trumped up charges. But what caused him to marvel?
It says Pilate marveled that he was silent because Pilate
knew all their accusations were a bunch of bunkum. He knew they
were lies. And yet Jesus is utterly silent. And it says all his disciples
forsook him and fled. And there's no word that comes
from the Son of God, O my disciples, my disciples, you whom I've nurtured
and loved in these years of intimate fellowship, why have you abandoned
me in my hour of need? No word when even His disciples
forsake Him. No word when the Roman soldiers
no doubt amidst their mockery and amidst their foul soldier's
language impale him upon a cross. But the scripture tells us that
there was darkness over the whole land from the sixth hour till
the ninth hour. There was at high noon a total
eclipse of the heavens. It became blacker, as one old
poet said, blacker than a hundred midnights down in a cypress swamp. God, as it were, takes the curtain,
and He pulls it across the sun, and He turns the noonday into
the blackest darkness of night, while the soul of the Son of
God is plunged into the felt pangs of outer darkness. And the Scripture says, toward
the end of the three hours, then He did cry, And what was the
direction of his cry? Not horizontal, but it was vertical. He didn't say, my great leaders
in Israel, why? My disciples, why? But my God,
my God, why? Why have you abandoned me? And the heavens were silent.
No answer was forthcoming. Do you know the answer? Do you
know the answer? It's here in our text. The Lord
has made to light upon him the iniquity of us all. And when
Jesus is legally, really charged with the guilt of our sin and
dealt with by God in pure justice, He receives our hell, though
as one of the old Puritans said, not in a hellish manner, that
is with despair and no hope. of the re-shining of the face
of God, but while He was bearing our sins in His body upon the
tree, He knew in those dark hours, in that pure, holy, spotless
soul, the felt pangs of abandonment by His When the scripture says
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse
for us. This is what it means when it
says he who knew no sin was made sin for us. This is what it means. I shall never forget the first
time I read in Rabbi Duncan's masterful work. I'm sorry, Hugh
Martin's masterful work, The Shadow of Calvary. an exposition
of Gethsemane and he made this point that from the time Jesus
was apprehended in the garden, you remember how they came and
they bound him? They dragged him off to Annas
and Caiaphas and Pilate and Herod and back to Pilate. From the
time he was bound there outside the wall of the Garden of Gethsemane,
voluntarily giving himself up at the first approach, Whom seek
ye? Jesus of Nazareth, I am He! And it says the soldiers fell
backward upon the ground. Apparently there was either in
his voice or temporarily in his very countenance an outburst
of his own inherent glory as God, and they were smitten and
fell to the ground. Our Lord then is saying, in essence,
look, I'm in control, not you. And when they got up off their
faces, came back to their senses, he gave himself up to be bound,
carried off from one puppet court to another. Hugh Martin makes
this perceptive observation. in the theater of the activities
on earth that men could see with their eyes. Had you kids been
awake that night and stood by mom and dad and gone from the
high priest's place over to Pilate and then up to Herod and back
to Pilate from the very moment he is apprehended in Gethsemane
until he bows his head after he cries, Tetelestai! It has been accomplished! Father,
into thy hands I commend my spirit." From the very moment of Gethsemane,
till he bows his head in death, in the theater of human activity,
Jesus appeared in one capacity, in one perspective, in one visible
representation only, that of a guilty felon. Had you showed
up in Jerusalem that night, and you didn't know what was going
on, and you happened to see the crowd taking this man, bound
with his hands behind him, and perhaps cords about his torso,
and they're dragging him to a certain place, and you fell in behind
the crowd, had you known nothing of what preceded or who was involved,
and you followed all the events from his apprehension to his
appearance before the high priest and Herod and Pilate, you would
have said this is a guilty criminal. No way to regard him as anything
other than a felon, a violator of the law, one whom the law
has finally seized upon and upon whom it is venting its rightful
hand of justice." And Hugh Martin says, God so ordered those events
that in all that the human eye could see, Christ appears only
as a guilty criminal. that we might understand that
what we could see and hear and observe in the phenomenal realm,
in the physical, visible realm, was representative of what was
truly being enacted in the invisible, spiritual realm where God sits
in court, where the books of God are set, where the throne
of God is planted. God is making it plain that His
Son is a guilty felon, not with guilt of His own sin, but the
guilt of imputed sin. Look at our text again. And the
Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. And so old Rabbi Duncan
said it was damnation, and he bore it lovingly. That's the
only good news there is for sinners like you and me. The good news
is not, let's all kind of get our collective optimism together
and hope that though God took sin seriously in Eden, God took
sin seriously in the days of the flood, and Sodom and Gomorrah,
in the judgment upon national Israel, though God took sin seriously
here, there, that let's all get our collective optimism working,
and maybe somehow God won't take sin so seriously with respect
to me and to us. No, my friend, The cross of Christ
is the eternally irreversible monument that God will never
treat sin lightly. For if ever God was going to
treat sin lightly, He would have treated it lightly when His Son
was the sin bearer. If anyone was going to have something
a little less than pure justice, it would be His well-beloved
Son. But Romans 8.32 says, He that spared not his own son,
but delivered him up for us all. That is God's provision for our
sin. A crucified Savior on whom Jehovah
lays the sins of all who will ever come to believe in his Son,
And you say, well, how can we be sure that when the cup was
drunk, there wasn't at least one or two drops in there that
comprised my sin? Jesus cried, it is finished. And the tense of that verb means
something has come to completion and it remains in the state into
which it has come. It stands accomplished. And you know what the resurrection
is? It's God's validation on the last cry of Jesus. It is
finished! The resurrection is God's amen. It is finished. And that's not
just human logic. Romans 4.25 said He was delivered
up for our offenses, raised for our justification. That's God's
gracious provision for sinners. I don't know how to make it any
plainer. And yet I know you'll go out
of here whistling Dixie, talking about the weather, inquiring
if there's any news about the Super Bowl, and you won't care
a twitch about this unless God Almighty does a work that I can't
do. But if He's been doing that work,
and as you've sat here tonight, you've said to yourself, oh God,
I came for this reason or that reason, But one thing is clear. I don't know who else has needed
what the preacher has expounded from Isaiah 53, 6 tonight. I don't know if anyone else needed
to hear about his desperate condition in sin and your gracious provision
for sin. But God, I know it is exactly
what I needed to hear. And you may be saying now, what
do I do in the light of this? I see it. I'm part of that flock
of sheep that has gone astray. I'm one of those who's turned
to his own way. I see that's my condition. And
I see as I've never seen before the meaning of the cross of Christ. But what do I do? I close by
turning you to the very passage with which the pastor opened
the service tonight, Isaiah 55. And God answers you in very clear
words in verse six and following. Here's what you're to do. Seek
the Lord while he may be found. What Lord? The very Jehovah who
laid upon the servant of Jehovah the sins of men. Seek this God. This God now can be favorable
to sinners. without in any way ceasing to
be righteous and holy. He can be both just and the justifier
of those who believe in His Son. He has made a way to preserve
the integrity of all of His character and still rescue you from sin
and never forget it. God's maintenance of His character
is more important than you getting out of hell. And God would not
deliver one soul from hell if the price he had to pay was to
stain his own holy perfect character. But he's found a way that far
from staining his character, he displays it in all its glory. His love, his righteousness,
his justice, his holiness, all of his attributes shine in their
most intense brilliance around the cross of Christ. Seek the
Lord. When? While He may be found. When is that? Right now. Today
is the day of salvation. Today, if you hear His voice,
harden not your heart. Seek the Lord. Have dealings
with God now. Call upon Him while He is near. He is near in the preaching of
His Word. God will never be nearer this
side of the second coming to any sinner than He is in the
preaching of His Word. The word of faith, Paul says,
that we preach is near you, in your mouth and in your heart.
What are you to do? Seek the Lord. Call upon Him. But you say, in what way shall
I seek Him, and how shall I call upon Him? Look at verse 7. Let
the wicked forsake his way. Ah, we're back to that way business
again. You've been in the God business.
God says, stop it. You've been called in the shops.
Stop it. And don't do it half-heartedly.
Forsake your way. Abandon your way. Your way of
running your own life, setting your own standards for right
and wrong and virtue and sin. Stop it. Let the wicked forsake
his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Stop making a god
of your brain. with respect to what is truth
and what is error, what is right, what is wrong. How can man be
right with God? You abandon your thoughts and
bring them subject to God's thoughts in Holy Scripture. Seek the Lord,
that is, seek Him in the way of repentance. And look, look
at the promise. Let him return to the Lord and
He will have mercy upon him and to our God. for he will abundantly
pardon. You mean to tell me, preacher,
that if I simply call upon this God, turning from my own way
and my own thoughts, that this God, for the sake of Christ,
will fully, completely, irreversibly pardon all of my sins forever? Yes. You say, that's too good
to be true. God says, I know it is, so read
on. Yes, God anticipates your thinking. Read on. My thoughts
are not your thoughts. Neither are my ways your ways. If you and I were God and anyone
had treated us the way we've treated him, we'd say, crawl
in your muck for a while. Put you on probation for a while.
Behave yourself for six months. Then I'll see if I welcome you.
God is not like My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are
my ways your ways, for as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your
thoughts. Oh, may God grant that this night
you may go to this God who dealt with our sin in the person of
His Son and His servant. I go back to Rabbi Duncan's words
quoted several nights ago. There's nothing but Christ between
us and hell. And thank God we need nothing
else. But nothing less will do. Thank God there is nothing between
us and hell but Christ. Thank God we need nothing else. but nothing less will do. Some of you, dear young men and
women, reared in godly Christian homes, catechized in your Bibles,
read to you and memorized and wonderfully restrained from the
sins of the neighbors, kids and all the rest. But, oh, dear children,
listen, listen, listen. You can't have Christ by proxy. Christ is not yours because He's
moms and dads. He's yours only when you embrace
Him to be yours. And he welcomes children who
are sinners. He welcomes teenagers who are
sinners. He welcomes old, hardened, sour,
bitter sinners. The scripture says this is a
faithful saying worthy of all acceptance. Christ Jesus came
into the world, sinners to save, and no qualification before the
word sinner. In the original, the word sinners
comes first. He came, sinners to save. Young sinners, old sinners, polite
sinners, rotten sinners, sweet-smelling sinners, stinking sinners, sinners! Jesus came to save. And dear friend, He stands in
the livingness of His power, not only ready and willing, but
entreating that you come to Him. to be saved. Are you almost persuaded? Almost? I closed by reading the
words of a young woman known to me personally, who was so
burdened for her fellow teenagers who had heard a message similar
to this, that she went home and penned these words based on the
words of a gripper who said to Paul, almost you persuade me
to be a Christian. Almost a Christian. Almost not
quite. Almost persuaded by what is right. Almost just. Almost what a mistake. How can you dawdle? Your soul
is at stake. Almost escaped from judgment
and wrath. Almost you would joy on the only
straight path. Almost, you taste of the bliss
of His will. Almost, won't save you. Condemned you are still. Christ, He has come. The price
has been paid. He lived in perfection. To death
He obeyed. Salvation, redemption, the way
He has paved. God can forgive you and you can
be saved. What here is keeping you? What
makes you stay? Stay not just almost, but go
all the way. What sin is worth the torture
of hell? For earthly treasure would heaven
you sell? Would you for friends in this
fickle world out into darkness forever be hurled? Would you
for seconds of trifling fun be damned forever without anyone?"
Almost persuaded, thus stayed the king. Agrippa was lost over
some little thing. Left out in darkness in agony
great, almost just, almost But now, it's too late. How can you linger? How can you
wait? How can you dare risk that horrible
fate? All we, like sheep, have gone
astray. We have turned every one of us
to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity
of us all. There are many of you whom, no
doubt, I shall never see again until the Day of Judgment. But
in that day, you will not be able to point your finger at
me and say, Preacher, you didn't tell me the truth about myself
or the truth about Jesus Christ and His salvation. My hands are
clean of your blood. But I don't want simply to leave
California on this trip with clean hands. I want to leave
with full hands to take some sinners to heaven with me. Oh,
go to Christ. He stands ready, graciously inviting. Come. And I will and will receive. Let us pray. Our Father, how we thank You
for Your Holy Word. We thank You for the glorious
Gospel of Your beloved Son. And we pray that the Holy Spirit
will take the truth preached this night, and oh, that He would
make it effectual in many hearts. that many would mark this night
as the night when they did indeed see by the work of the Spirit
what they were as straying sheep, as self-centered rebels, and
beholding your glory in the face of Christ. This night laid hold
of you and your salvation. We thank you for your people
and pray that as they have heard again the old, old story, may
their hearts burn within them with gratitude and love and renewed
zeal to tell abroad this glorious message of all that you have
done in the suffering servant of Jehovah. Thank you for the
privilege of meeting in this way And may your spirit seal
the word to our hearts, we plead through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.