Good morning. It's nice to have
Joy and Delfus with us. They'll be with us. Well, Joy
will be with us for a month, five weeks. All right, all the
way through conference, which is great. Anyway, good morning,
everyone. Let's open this morning's service
with hymn number 33 from your gospel hymn spiral hymn book.
And the tune to this will be, my faith has found a resting
place. It fits with the word. So let's all stand together. Behold, I come, our Savior said,
the Savior promised long. I come to do Thy will, O God,
and thus our hope was born. Behold, the virgin has conceived
and born a son of flesh. His name is called Emmanuel. God dwells in human flesh. The angels left their high abode
to see this mystery. The great almighty sovereign
God, a babe of feeble clay, Mortals beheld His lovely face, the Father's
only Son. How full of truth, how full of
grace, Christ came to save His own. His spotless life of righteousness
and sin-atoning death fulfilled His Father's holy will and satisfied
His wrath. Our glad Hosannas, Prince of
Peace, your glory shall proclaim. Enthroned in heaven as our King,
we love to praise your name. Please be seated. Good morning. We're going to begin this morning
where we left off last Sunday in Mark chapter 14. If you'd
like to open your Bibles there with me to Mark 14. And our jumping off place is
going to be verse 65. And some began to spit on him.
and to cover his face, and to buffet him, and to say unto him,
prophesy. And the servants did strike him
with the palms of their hands." Let's pray together. Our merciful, gracious Heavenly
Father, We come before thy throne of
grace thanking you that we have an advocate. We have one that
has given us complete access into thy presence and made us
accepted. We ask, Lord, that you'd be pleased
in this hour to reveal to us the glory of his person, the
accomplishments of his work. We pray that you would work faith
in our hearts and cause us to rest all the hope of our salvation
in thy dear son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that you've
brought us to this place. We thank you for the promise
that you've given us that where two or three are gathered together
in thy name, there you are in the midst of them. We thank you
for inhabiting the praise of thy people. Lord, it is our desire
to offer to you worship and praise and we confess to you our inability,
apart from you working in us, that grace of worship. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. I've titled this message Substitution,
Substitution and Satisfaction. The heart of the gospel is the
fact that God has made him who knew no sin to be sin for us
that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. The Lord Jesus
Christ as the sin bearer is our substitute and he provides for
us as our substitute everything that God requires so that God
is satisfied with him. The scripture tells us in Isaiah
chapter 53 that he was wounded for our transgressions, he was
bruised for our iniquity, and the chastisement of our peace
was upon him, for by his stripes we are healed. And then later
on in that same chapter, the scripture says that God saw the
travail of his soul and was satisfied. Now there you have substitution,
there you have satisfaction. The Lord Jesus Christ standing
in our stead before God and presenting to the Father everything that
God requires and God being satisfied with what he did. Now as we looked
at the accusations that the Lord that were made against Christ
last Sunday from Mark chapter 14, the only One that they could
get to stick was the false accusation that he was guilty of blasphemy. They asked him, tell us clearly,
art thou the Christ? And he said, I am. And they threw up their hands
and they said, what other evidence do we need? He's condemned himself. He has blasphemed. He being a
man has made himself out to be God. Now we know that that accusation
was false because the Lord Jesus is God. The fullness of the Godhead
bodily. In the beginning was the word,
the word was with God and the word was God. And the word dwelt among us and
we beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the Father,
the only one that's full of grace and full of truth. Why was that
accusation so significant for us? Because as our substitute,
the Lord Jesus Christ bore the guilt and the shame of the sin
that we are most guilty of, blasphemy. Blasphemy. We come into this
world with our fist raised against God, speaking lies from the womb,
drinking iniquity as if it was water. We're dead in our trespasses
and sins. Every problem that we have in
this world and every problem that you and I have in our lives
goes back to the garden. When Satan said to Eve, The reason
why God doesn't want you to eat of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, because he knows in the day in which you
eat of it, your eyes will be open and you'll be made like
God. And man ever since has wanted to set himself up on the throne
of God. You and I are guilty of blasphemy. In fact, even after the new birth,
after the new birth, every act of disobedience, every thought
of rebellion, is it not rooted in this idea that I will not
have this man to reign over me? I'm going to have it my way. I'm going to resist the authority
of God I refuse to bow. Is that not the root of all sin?
All of our problems are rooted in that, aren't they? The sin
of blasphemy. You say, well, what's the difference
between the believer and the unbeliever then? Well, the unbeliever
doesn't know he's being blasphemous. The believer knows that he is.
And the believer has an advocate. The believer has a substitute.
who satisfied the demands of God's righteousness and God's
justice for all his blasphemy so that he doesn't have to fear
standing in the presence of God based on himself. He has a righteous
sin-bearer, a substitute. This is the problem. The Lord Jesus Christ, now after having been condemned
to death, condemned him, notice in verse 63, and the high priest
ran his clothes and said, what need we of any further witnesses?
You have heard the blasphemy. So here's the charge for which
the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, and it is the cause of all our
sin. And if there's any sin that needs
forgiving for you and for me, it is the sin of blasphemy, rebellion
against God, setting ourselves up on the throne of God and rejecting
His authority. Notice that some began to spit
on him. Now what is the significance
of this thing of spitting in the scriptures? Well, the Levitical
law makes it clear that if one who is unclean spits on someone
who is clean, then that person becomes unclean until the evening
of that day. What a picture. Here we have
unclean men spitting on the Lord Jesus Christ. This matter of
substitution is seen in every detail of his death. It's seen
in the fact that he was accused of blasphemy. It's seen now in
this idea of men spitting on him and making him unclean until the evening. When the Lord
Jesus Christ went to Calvary's cross, he bore in his body all
of the sins of all of God's people and suffered the full wrath of
God's justice because of the shame of our sin. God made him
who knew no sin to be sin. There is substitution. And the
idea that you remember the Lord used his spittle to give sight
to the blind, to loosen the tongue of a dumb man and to open the
ears of a deaf man. And so we have just the reverse
of what's happening here and what was declared in the law. We have the one who is holy making
the one who is unholy clean by his very spittle. And they began to cover his face
and to buffet him and to say unto him, prophesy and the servants did strike him with the palms
of their hands. Now the servants made reference
to here were the slaves. And a slave would never be so
bold as to, the word buffet here means to strike with the fist
in the face or in the mouth. And so they were, The Roman soldiers
were striking the Lord Jesus Christ in his mouth with their
fist and the slaves slapped him in his face. Now, every time you and I are guilty of blasphemy, we have
an advocate. We have one who suffered the
full justice of God for all of our blasphemy. But is it, can
we not see ourselves here as these slaves, these servants, slapping the Lord Jesus Christ
in the face? Every time we rebel against him,
every time we're tempted to to not have him to reign over
us. This is substitution in every
way. We were there. See, every child
of God was here in this experience and he was bearing our shame
and our guilt in himself. Now that passage I quoted in
Isaiah chapter 53, termed me there, if you will, Isaiah 53. Verse 1, who hath believed our
report? And to whom is the arm of the
Lord revealed? Really, the second part of that
verse is the answer to the first part. Who has believed our report? To whom the arm of the Lord has
been revealed? When Christ, who is the arm of
the Lord, has been revealed, then we believe the gospel. We
believe God. We believe ourselves to be blasphemers. We believe ourselves to be sinners. We believe ourselves to be in
need of a substitute. We believe ourselves unable to
satisfy the demands of God's holy law and God's justice and
God's righteousness. We believe the report when the
arm of the Lord has been revealed. That's why Paul said we preach
Christ and Him crucified because the Lord Jesus Christ said, and
I, and if I be lifted up, you see, we can't see ourselves until
we see Him, can we? We really can't. We cannot see
ourselves until we see Him. Isaiah experienced that. I saw the Lord high and lifted
up. Woe is me. I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean
lips. For he shall grow up before him,
now that first he is the Lord Jesus Christ and the him is the
father. So the Lord Jesus Christ shall
grow up before the father as a tender plant and as a root
out of dry ground. He hath no form nor comeliness
and when we shall see him there is no beauty that we should desire
him. The natural man will not come
to Christ because he has no interest in Christ. He has no need for
him. He has no desire for him. And
it's not until the Lord Jesus Christ makes himself known that
we're brought to that place. He is despised and rejected of
men. The Lord Jesus Christ in his
glory. Now the Christ who is, not the
one who is imagined in the in the hearts of men, but the Christ
who is, the scripture says, God says, He is despised and rejected
of men. You see, it was you and I that
was there spitting upon Him. It was you and I that was there
buffeting Him. It was you and I that continue
as servants to slap Him. And we hid, as it were, our faces
from him, and he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely,
surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet
we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted." They believed that this was the
just punishment that the Lord Jesus Christ deserved because
of his blasphemy. And as he bore our sins and took
the charge of our blasphemy upon himself, he was stricken and
smitten of God. It pleased the Lord, the scripture
says, to bruise him, but he was wounded for our transgressions. This is the transgressions of
God's people that the Lord Jesus Christ was wounded for. He was
bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was upon Him and with His stripes, notice the verb tense, we are
healed. What the Lord Jesus Christ suffered
on Calvary's cross satisfied the Father and all the sins of
all those for whom he died were put away when he bowed his mighty
head and said, it is finished. It's finished. And the proof
of that is his resurrection. We are healed. Now we have to
experience that healing in our own lives through the new birth
and through the sanctifying work of the Spirit of God that keeps
causing us to see our need for Christ and keeps bringing us
back again and again and again to Him for our cleansing. But
before God, before God, and that's what's important. He has been
put away. You see, there's a difference
between relationship and fellowship. You can have a relationship with
someone and not have fellowship with them. And that's what happens,
your sin has separated you from your God. You see, every time
we slap our Lord in the face, we lose fellowship, don't we?
It doesn't change our relationship. And the Spirit of God is the
one who convicts us of our sin and brings us once again to see
that the Lord Jesus Christ himself has satisfied God's demands and
that God is satisfied with him. He was wounded for our transgressions,
bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was upon him. And by his stripes, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray.
We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord hath laid
on him the iniquity of us all. God the Father laid on the Lord
Jesus Christ the iniquity of us all. He was wounded for our
transgressions. The scripture speaks of transgressions,
iniquity, and sin. And in this verse we see that
He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquity. Our sin was laid upon Him. Transgression
is rebellion against the law of God. Iniquity are those things
that don't measure up. to the demands of God's righteousness.
And sin is what we are by nature. By nature, what we are is sinners. Buffeted. Why the particular
wounds that the Lord Jesus Christ suffered? Why the particular
wounds? He was wounded for our transgressions. And the first wound that's mentioned
in the scriptures that the Lord Jesus Christ suffered is being
struck in the mouth with the fist of Roman soldiers. Now,
I've never been struck in the mouth before. I don't wanna be. But the Lord Jesus Christ was.
And when he was struck, the scripture says, you and I come from the
womb speaking lies. Scripture says that by your words
you'll be justified and by your words you'll be condemned. Every
idle word will be judged before God. Scripture says the tongue
is a world of iniquity set on fire by hell itself. I mentioned
Wednesday night, somebody says, you know, sticks and stones will
break your bones, but words will never harm you. That is not true.
You know that's not true. You can heal a lot quicker from
a physical wound than you can from the wounds of words caused
by someone that you love. Isn't that true? How many words we've spoken that
if God judged us by them, we would be condemned. We'd be condemned. Well, here's the one who had
unfeigned lips. Nothing came out of his mouth
but the Word of God. Every time he opened his mouth,
he spoke the truth. Every time he opened his mouth,
he spoke in love and in mercy and in grace. And now he's being wounded for
the transgressions of his people. That's substitution. The Lord
Jesus Christ was buffeted in his mouth in order to put away
the sins of his people, satisfy the demands of God's justice. Secondly, The scripture goes
on to teach us that after they buffeted him, they scourged him. They stripped him naked, tied
him to a pole. The Roman soldiers took a cat
of nine tails with sharpened bone at the end of each strip
of leather and they took turns in beating him until bone was
exposed in his back. Now, if you were a Roman citizen,
40 lashes were the most you could get. And the Roman soldiers would
do 39 just in case they miscount because they didn't want to break
the Roman law if you were a Roman citizen. But if you were a Jew,
you weren't protected by the Roman law. Many Jews died from
scourging. They never made it past the Roman
whip. Now what's the significance of
that? The Lord Jesus Christ was wounded for our transgressions. He was the one who had the governments
upon his shoulder. All the kings, he's the king
of kings, he's the Lord of lords, all the governments of this world
and all the things of this world are on his shoulders. And more
than that, The Lord Jesus Christ is bearing the weight of all
the sins of all of God's elect in every generation on his shoulders
as he goes to Calvary's cross. It's pictured by Samson. You
remember when Samson went to Gaza and they were going to kill
him the next morning They knew where he was and they had plotted
his murder. And the scripture teaches us
that at midnight, Samson got up, took the gates of the city
Gaza with their post and hinges, the scripture says. I have no
idea how big these gates were, but he carried these gates on
his back and went outside the city and mocked the men of Gaza
because he had opened them up to the the destruction of the Israelites. Here's our strong man, bearing
the sins of his people. When he asked the disciples,
he said, whom do you say that I am? And Peter said, Thou art
the Christ, the Son of the living God. And what did the Lord say?
Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah. Flesh and blood didn't reveal
that to you. My Father which is in heaven has made that known
unto you, so that you can know who I am. And upon this rock,
the declaration that you've just made that I am the anointed one,
the Messiah, the Christ, the one sent of God to accomplish
the salvation of God's people, based on that truth, I'm going
to build my church. And the gates of hell shall not
be able to prevail against it. Like Samson, the Lord Jesus Christ
came and took the gates of Gaza, comes into the city and takes
captive those who were held captive. and delivers them. That's the
significance of his scourging here. He's bearing all the weight. You see, our backs are not able.
David said in Psalm 38 verse 4, mine iniquities have gone
over my head as a heavy burden. As a heavy burden. They are too
heavy for me. You ever had someone say to you,
you know, God will never put more on you than you can bear.
That's not true. If God never puts on you more
than you can bear, you'll never need Him. And the one thing that
God puts on every one of His children that they absolutely
cannot bear, regardless of whatever circumstances they might be going
through in this world in need of His help for, the one thing
that He puts on His children that they cannot bear is the
guilt and shame of their sin. You can't bear it. It's too heavy. It's too heavy. The Lord Jesus
Christ, the only one. Paul in Romans chapter 7, he
says, Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the
body of this death? And it's clearly a picture of
a guilty criminal who's carrying the dead corpse of the one that
he had killed through the streets of the city. And there's every
believer's experience. Lord, I've got a burden on my
back. I've got an old man. Lord, I'm still guilty of blasphemy. I can't get away from myself.
Lord, I need one who was able to bear the guilt of my sin on
his back and satisfy the demands of God's justice. He was wounded
for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was upon him. And by his stripes, we are healed. We are healed. You see, all of
man-made religion is based on you doing something or getting
better in order to earn favor with God. It's all based on that. The gospel is all about what
the Lord Jesus Christ has done in satisfying the Father and
in being the substitute of his people. That was God that was
wounding him. It pleased God to bruise him. The chastisement of our peace,
the only way that we can have peace with God, is for the Lord
Jesus Christ to bear the guilt and shame of all our sin. We can't bear it. We can't bear
it. Scripture says that they took
a plat of thorns made a mock crown
out of it, placed it on his head and took a reed and beat that
crown until the sharpened thorns blunted themselves on the skull
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I don't describe these things
this way in order to get you to feel sorry for him. The Lord
didn't die in order for us to feel sorry for him. The Lord
died in order to show us what our sin deserved. In order to show us what he did,
in order to put it away. Why the wounds of his head? He's
wounded in his mouth, he's wounded on his back, he's wounded in
his head. Isaiah tells us in Isaiah chapter 1 that our heads
are sick. Every one of us, sick in the
head. and you can't see that until
you see him. He never had a thought that wasn't
holy. Not a single thought went through
his mind. The scripture says, my thoughts
are not like your thoughts as the heavens are high above the
earth so are my thoughts above your thoughts. My thoughts are
pure and I know your thoughts I know your thoughts before you
think them. Aren't you glad we don't know
each other's thoughts? Yeah. I know you are. I am. I am. Why? Because our minds are full
of sick thoughts. And the Lord Jesus Christ had
to be wounded in his head. The scripture says From the top of our head to the
bottom of our feet, we are full of wounds and putrefying sores. From what we think to where we
walk, we can do nothing but sin. Turn with me to Leviticus chapter
16. Verse 20, and when he, that's Aaron, that's
Christ, Aaron was the high priest and a type of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And I remind you that Aaron had
holiness to the Lord written on his headpiece because he had
to bear the iniquity of the holy things. You know, you and I can't
even, you know, when the Lord said to to Peter, James, and
John, could you not bear with me, pray with me for one hour?
And we think, Lord, I'm that way. I come to worship you. And my thoughts are so unstable
and so perverted and so I can't even concentrate on the gospel
for an hour. How many thoughts pass through
our minds? And Lord, I need the Lord Jesus Christ to bear the
iniquity of my holy things. I'm sinning right now as I'm
coming here to worship you. As I'm standing here to preach
to you, I'm sinning. And so Aaron made an end of reconciling the
holy place and the tabernacles of the congregation and the altar
and he shall bring a He shall bring the live goat and Aaron
shall lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess
over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel and all
the transgressions of all their sins, putting them upon the head
of the goat and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man
into the wilderness. Now that scapegoat is the Lord
Jesus Christ. here's a picture of God the Father
placing on his hand on his hands on his head as that crown of
thorns is being beat into his scalp why to bear the iniquity of our
sins bearing our transgressions because so I what Solomon said
in the song of Solomon's, my beloved is white and ruddy, the
chiefest among 10,000. His head, his head is of the
most fine gold. You see, God's not pleased with
your thoughts or my thoughts, but he is pleased with the thoughts
of our substitute. And he's satisfied with the bruising
that he did to him for the transgressions of his people. What do we do? We cast all our care upon the
one who cared for us. We, Paul said, I just put everything,
everything on Christ, everything on Christ. I'm persuaded that
he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him, the
saving of my soul and the forgiveness of my sins. The Lord Jesus Christ, after
they placed the crown of thorns on his head, was laid on a Roman
cross and nails pierced his hands. Now God asked this rhetorical
question, who shall stand in thy holy place? God's saying
to you and me, who's going to stand in the presence of a holy
God? And then he answers that question, he that hath clean
hands and a pure heart. Now our hands represent our works
and you and I have never been able to work a work that's pleasing
to God. What happened? When the Lord
instructed the children of Israel to build the altar, he said,
don't put your hand to it. Don't just take the rocks just
like you find them, stack them up, and put the sacrifice on
that altar. As soon as you try to improve
those rocks by chiseling them or putting your hands to them,
you've defiled it. And everything that you and I
put our hands to are defiled. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
only one who had perfect works and God satisfied with his works.
And he was wounded. He was bruised for our iniquity
and wounded for our transgressions, the chastisement of our peace.
was put upon his hands so that God's not looking to your works.
He's not looking to my works. He's looking to the works of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And then they took those nails
and they pierced him through his feet. The scripture says
that our feet are swift to shed blood. We can't stand upright
before God. We can't walk a straight line.
But he did. He did. His feet are pure. And what's he do? He washes the
feet of his children by the blood that he shed through his feet,
making us acceptable in the presence of a holy God. He was wounded
for our transgressions. And finally, after they declared
him to be dead, a Roman soldier took that spear And they knew
exactly which rib to go between in order to find the heart, and
he put it right into the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
out came water and blood. Water, our sanctification, our
cleansing before God, and blood, our justification. When I see
the blood, I'll pass by you. Why was he wounded in his heart? Well, the Bible says that our
heart is deceitful. above all things and desperately
wicked. Who can know it? People say, well he's got a good
heart. No he doesn't. Maybe if you compare his heart
to another man's heart, you might say it's a good heart. But if
you compare it to God's heart, it's desperately wicked, it's
deceitful above all things. You don't know your own heart. But he was wounded. in his heart
for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. Substitution. And God saw the travail of his
soul and God said, I'm satisfied with him. I'm satisfied with
him. This is my beloved son. Hear
ye him. Our Heavenly Father, we ask that
You would be pleased now to bless Your Word with Your Spirit to
our hearts, enabling us to rest all the hope of our salvation
in Thy dear Son. For it's in His name we pray,
Amen. Okay.