I just want to say how much of
a blessing it is for Trish and I to have been here with you
all this weekend. You all treated us like family
and we love you and just feel so at home here. I'm thankful
for Rupert and Betty and how merciful and gracious they've
been to us. We're just very, very grateful. Look forward to going home and
letting our folks know about you all. If you'd like to turn with me
in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 53. Isaiah chapter 53. We have a clock on the wall at
our church so it kind of helps me a little bit. I heard about
telling Rupert about two little boys that were friends. One of
them was Catholic and the other was Baptist. The Baptist boy
went to church with his Catholic friend and every time they would
do something he would say, what's that for? And he said nothing,
it's just ceremony. And so the Catholic boy went
to church with the Baptist boy and first thing the preacher
did was take his watch off and put it on the pulpit. He said,
what's that for? He said, nothing, it's just ceremony. There are some words that we
use to define the glorious truth of the gospel that the word itself
is not found in the word of God. We speak of depravity, and we
understand what that means, that we are totally depraved before
God, that we're sinners. We have no righteousness in and
of ourselves, that we are apart from the grace of God dead in
our trespasses and sins, and yet the word depravity is not
to be found in the Word of God, but it is the truth of it on
every page. We speak of the Lord being a
triune God, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit,
three persons in the one Godhead, and yet the word Trinity is not
found anywhere in the scriptures. We rejoice in the truth of imputed
righteousness. We are in need of God charging
to our account the righteousness of another. We may speak of it
as alien righteousness, a righteousness that's outside of ourselves,
and yet that phrase, imputed righteousness, is not found in
the Bible, but the truth of it is on every page. The word sovereignty
is a glorious word that reminds us of how our God rules and reigns
over all the affairs of man. and that he hath done whatsoever
he wills, and no man can stay his hand, no man can say unto
him, what doest thou? He's sovereign in creation, he's
sovereign in providence, and he's sovereign most especially
in salvation. And yet the word sovereignty
is not found in the Word of God. The truth of it is on every page.
The word I'd like for us to think about this morning is the word
substitution. You won't find it in the Word
of God, and yet the truth of it, like these other words, are
found so clearly, described in so many ways, on every page of
God's Word. And no place in the Word of God
is it more clearly declared than in Isaiah chapter 53. Isaiah
chapter 53 is a passage of scripture that declares the Lord Jesus
Christ as the substitute for sinners And I don't know of a
place where it's more clearly described, where the Lord is
more clearly described as our substitute. Now normally when
we think of a substitute, we think of a lesser. If you're playing sports and
they put in a substitute, well he's kind of the second string
guy. He's not as good as the first string guy, he's a substitute.
If you're in school and you have a substitute teacher, generally
that probably is going to end up being a babysitter for the
day. It's not good as the first string teacher. If you're reading
a recipe to prepare a meal and the recipe says, well if you
don't have real butter you can substitute it with margarine. And we use that word substitution
to describe things that are lesser than the original. When we speak
of the Lord Jesus Christ being our substitute, we are in no
way, in no way implying that He is lesser. To the contrary,
as our substitute, He's the one who enables us to stand in the
presence of God. He's the one who makes us acceptable
before God. The sinner understands that he's
in need of a substitute. One who will do all the work
on his behalf for him. One who, well let me illustrate
it like this. Last night we had a family here
from Charlotte. Eugene and Natalie and their
boys. Eugene is Ukrainian by birth and he's a master tile
worker and stone worker. He's a perfectionist. He was
at our home in Orlando and I was building a shower in one of our
rooms and I had plumbed it in but I hadn't put the tile in
yet. Eugene was there and I said,
Eugene why don't you help me out with this tile. And he looked
at me with his Ukrainian accent and he said, well, Pastor, he
said, I'll be happy to tile that shower for you, but only under
one condition. He said, you don't have anything
to do with it. He said, I've seen your tile work. I said,
well, you know, I can help. I'll carry the tile in. He said,
no, no, no, you don't understand. He said, I'm going to do it all
or I won't do it at all. And I said, well, okay. I said, well, let me go get my
tools. He said, oh, no. I said, I can't use your tools.
Now he lives in Charlotte. He got in his truck and drove
back to Charlotte, got all of his tile tools and came back
to Orlando. I wish you could see this shower.
I mean, it is a masterpiece. And I had absolutely nothing
to do with it. He wouldn't even use my tools. He had to do it all, or it wasn't
going to be done at all. Now, that's substitution. And
that's what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us. He said, I'm
going to save you. I'm going to be the Alpha and
the Omega, the beginning and the end. What I found with people
is that they will have the Lord Jesus Christ as their alpha. in that some will say well yes
he's the one who has to do the saving but once he saves you
then he takes you back to the law and the law becomes your
rule of life and you've got to keep yourself saved and so they've
got him as the alpha but not the omega. Others will say well
no you've got to take the first step And they deny the Lord Jesus
Christ as the Alpha, but you know, once you take the first
step, once saved, always saved, it really doesn't matter what
happens after that. And so He's the Omega, but He's not the Alpha.
In the Gospel of God's free grace, the Lord Jesus Christ is the
Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the
last. He does it all. or He won't do it at all. And
that's what this passage of substitution is about. Let's look at verse
1. The prophet Isaiah begins with,
Who hath believed our report? What child of God has not felt
this burden? The burden of wanting people
to believe, but they don't believe. They can't believe. They've substituted
the substitute with legalism, or with ceremonialism, or with
moralisms, and religion is a substitute for the substitute. And the prophet
Isaiah begins by saying, who has believed our report? Men will substitute the Lord
Jesus Christ with intellectualism. They'll substitute Him with anything. Anything will be fine as long
as Christ is substituted. And the prophet says, who's believed
our doctrine? That's what the word report means.
Who's believed our gospel? Who's believed the truth? of
who the Lord Jesus Christ is and what it is He's accomplished
in satisfying the demands of God's righteousness and God's
justice and securing the salvation of God's elect. Who's believed
it? And in our text, the next part
of that first verse is written as a question, but in fact, it's
the answer to the question. It's the answer to the question,
who has believed our report? To whom the arm of the Lord has
been revealed. The truth of the gospel can only
come to the heart of a sinner by divine revelation. And the
Lord Jesus Christ is the strong right arm of God. And He's the
one who does all the work. And so if the Lord doesn't reveal
Christ to us, the natural man cannot receive the things of
the Spirit. The Lord told Nicodemus, you can't perceive the kingdom
of God unless you're born from above. And so the prophet says,
who's believed our report? And he answers his question.
The one who's believed it is the one to whom the arm of the
Lord has been revealed. And what this causes the sinner
to do, what this causes the believer to do is to beg for mercy. Lord, I can't see it. I can't work it out. I can't
perceive it. This gospel, as simple as it
is, it's hidden. It's a mystery to the natural
man. Lord, I'm dependent upon You to open the eyes of my understanding
and to reveal the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ to me as my
substitute, so that I can have hope in standing before Thee. Look what he says in verse 2.
For he, the Lord Jesus Christ, has grown up before him as a
tender plant, as a root out of dry ground. Oh, he came into
a dry and thirsty land. He came into a place where there
was no life, a desert full of dead men's bones. And the Lord
caused him, the Father caused him to spring up, to grow, to
bring life in this dead land. He hath no form nor comeliness. It's nothing about Him that the
natural man would desire. People say, well, I want men
to see Jesus in me. They didn't see Jesus in Jesus.
And you won't either. And I won't either. Why? Because
to the natural man there's no form to Him. There's no comeliness
to Him. There's no beauty to Him. But
when you see Him, when He reveals Himself, then you'll say with
Daniel, Daniel said, when I saw him, my comeliness, my beauty,
my strength was turned into corruption. I realized that he's the one
who's comely, he's the one who's beautiful, he's the one who's
strong. When we were yet without strength,
Christ died for the ungodly. There we are. We've got to be
left powerless. We've got to be left impotent,
without any power, without any ability to save ourselves. And
then the Lord shows us His comeliness. And when we shall see Him, there
is no beauty that we should desire Him. There's nothing in the natural
man that would seek after Him. No man seeketh after God at any
time. He is despised and rejected of
men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. We hid, as it were,
our faces from Him. He was despised and we esteemed
Him not. Now, I want to make a statement. That may sound shocking to some,
but it's true. If you've never hated God, if
you've never hated Christ, you still do and you don't know it. You say, well, I've never hated
God. Maybe you've not raised your
fist to heaven and cursed God. Maybe you've not expressed your
hatred towards Him in that way. But you're born into this world
spiritually dead. You're born into this world blind.
Let me illustrate it like this. I have found that in a marriage,
as long as there is some animosity involved in a marriage that is
perilous, a marriage that is headed for divorce, as long as
there's some animosity involved between those two people, there's
hope for reconciliation. But I tell you, when the marriage
is dead, is when neither one of them care anymore. And that's
when it's over. I don't care about them. I don't
care what they do. I'm done. And when that's the
attitude, there's no reconciling that marriage. Now that's where
you and I were. Maybe there wasn't an overt animosity
towards God that was expressed in your attitude towards heaven. But I know this, that you came
into this world the same way I did. You didn't care. You didn't
care about Christ. You didn't care about what He
did. You esteemed Him not. And that's the height of hatred. It's the height of it. To not
care? To not have any interest in the
things of God? To not be moved by the love of
Christ? To not have any desire for Him? But that's how we were, weren't
we? And if you've never been there, if you can't see that
you were once there, then you still are, and you don't know
it. God says, you esteemed Him not. If God said that, then that's
the way it is, isn't it? A substitute. Look what he says
in verse 4. Surely He hath borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows. When the Lord Jesus Christ hung
on Calvary's cross, God imputed to him, charged to him the sins
of God's people. And he bore in his body upon
that tree our griefs, our sicknesses, our sorrows, our sin. And he suffered under the hand
of God. And he said, the Lord Jesus Christ said unto us, Come
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy burdened, No, the truth
is there's a whole lot of people laboring, laboring under the
burden of sin, trying to relieve themselves of the guilt and shame
of their own sin, and trying to achieve some hope of salvation
by their own works and by their own righteousness. And they're
working, working, working. That's what religion's all about,
isn't it? You all used to have it here. I had it where I was.
You had committees and jobs for every person in the church, didn't
you? And men were glad to take them. Why? Because that just
gave them something to do. Working. But they were never
heavy burdened. The work was, though it wasn't
enough, they were never overwhelmed with their sin. And so they never
came to Christ. All you that are laboring and
are heavy burden, come unto me. Take my yoke upon you. Learn
of me, for my yoke is easy, my burden is light. Why? Because
I bore your burden for you. I'm your substitute. Look, look
what he says. Surely He hath borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows. If the Lord is ever pleased to
put the burden of your sin on you, you'll know you've got a
weight that you can't carry. You just can't carry it. You'll say with Cain, who was
a fugitive and a vagabond, my punishment is more than I can
bear. I've heard people say, well,
you know, God will never put more on you than you can bear. They
take that passage in 1 Corinthians 10, 13. There hath no temptation
taken you, but such is as common to man. But God is faithful,
who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you
are able, but will give you with that temptation a way of escape
that you might be able to bear it. And they'll interpret that
verse and say, see there, God won't put more on you than you
can bear. That's not what that verse says at all. If God doesn't
put more on you than you can bear, then you'll never need
Him. But the burden that you can't
bear, the burden that I can't bear, is the guilt of our sin. The burden of God's wrath and
God's justice against us for our sin. That's a burden we cannot
bear. And if He puts that on you, you'll
be looking for what that verse means, a way of escape. A way
of escape. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I
am the way, the truth and the life. He's that way of escape,
isn't He? He's our substitute. Do you need
a substitute to bear the burden of your sin before God? There's
only one that can do it. There's only one that's satisfied
the demands of God's justice. There's only one that God's pleased
with. And He's the sinner's substitute. And He's the one being spoken
of here. Look at verse 5. For he was wounded for our transgressions,
and was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was upon him, and with his stripes we." Notice the tense of that
verb, that next little word. By His stripes, we can be healed. By His stripes, we might be healed.
No, by His stripes, we are healed. It is past tense. It was accomplished
on Calvary's cross. We don't look to an experience
that we had for the hope of our salvation. We look to what the
Lord Jesus Christ did 2,000 years ago. And in fact, faith looks
beyond that. Faith looks further back than
that. Faith looks before time ever
began and knows that the Lord Jesus Christ is that Lamb that
was slain before the foundation of the world. In the covenant
of grace, God satisfied the demands of His justice. when he gave
his son as a sinner's substitute, when he, as this verse tells
us, was wounded for our transgressions. He is a crushed substitute. And when John saw him in the
book of Revelation, John said, I saw a lamb standing in the
midst of the elders as it had been slain. That's how we're going to see
the Lord Jesus Christ. That's how we see Him now. As
the Lamb of God, John said, Behold the Lamb of God which taketh
away the sins of the world. And for all eternity, we're going
to see the wounds on that Lamb and know that He's the substitute
that got us there. We wouldn't be there apart from
his wounds. He's the one who was wounded
for our transgressions. He was the one that was bruised. The wages of sin is death. God
demanded the death penalty. He told Adam in the day in which
you sin, you shall surely die. God's not satisfied with anything
less than death. And our physical death is not
going to be sufficient. It's only the shed blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ. For without the shedding of blood,
there can be no remission of sins. What a glorious substitute
we have. This is the substitute I need. This is a glorious description
of the Lord Jesus Christ who has healed us by His stripes. Look at verse 6. He is a God-punished
substitute. All we like sheep have gone astray. God has placed on him. Look what
he says in verse 6. All we like sheep have gone astray.
We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord. It pleased
God to bruise him. The Father laid on him the iniquity. Iniquity. I like that word. You
know, God's Word uses different words to describe our sin problem. But when He uses this word, iniquity,
it's not speaking of those things that we're ashamed of. It's not
speaking of those things that we don't want other people to
know about. Look at the word, iniquity. If you have equity
in your home, then that's the value that you have that's over
and above what you owe on the home. And if you are upside down
on your house, then you are iniquitous. You don't have any equity. That's what that word means.
And so to be iniquitous or to have inequity means that we have
no value. In other words, it's the good
things that men present to God in hopes of their salvation.
And God says it doesn't measure up. You're still upside down.
You're still upside down. You still owe more than it's
worth. You can't make up the difference. So iniquity is the
things that men do in hopes of earning favor with God. And God
says that our substitute, all our iniquity was laid on Him. I know you've heard it said before,
it's not men's sin that keeps them from Christ, it's their
righteousness. And that's what He's speaking
of here. It's man's self-righteousness that God placed on the Lord Jesus
Christ. In fact, we talked the other
night about how God sees things all the way they are, and that
wisdom is seeing things as God sees it and believing that it's
so. In fact, self-righteousness, the things that men pat each
other on the back for, the things that they'll put you in the newspaper
for, On the front page, you know, presenting your good works. You
do something really marvelous and everybody will tout you for
it, won't they? That's in the sight of God. In the sight of God, our self-righteousness
is worse than the things that we're ashamed of. That's the truth. That's the
way it is before God. The Lord Jesus Christ bore that.
He bore all our self-righteousness on Calvary's cross. God punished
him for it. God laid on him the iniquity
of us all. Abraham told Isaac, he said,
God will provide himself a sacrifice and that's exactly what he did.
God did the providing. God provided himself and God
provided himself to himself. And that's what was happening
on Calvary's cross. God was doing business with God.
The Lord Jesus Christ didn't die on the cross in order to
make an offer of salvation to sinners. He died on Calvary's
cross to offer himself to God on behalf of sinners. And he
satisfied what God required. He's our substitute. God did
it. People talk about, well, who
killed Jesus? I'll tell you who killed Him. God killed Him. It
pleased the Father to bruise Him. When God Almighty saw the
sins of His people on His dear Son, He had no choice but to
pierce Him through. The cup that the Lord prayed
that might pass from Him was the cup, the bitter dregs of
God's wrath that He knew He would suffer on Calvary's cross. And
the thing that you and I can't enter into except by faith. We're
so accustomed to sin. We're so accustomed to living
moments and hours and days without thinking about the things of
God. We're so accustomed to it. It wasn't so with the Lord Jesus
Christ. He was in perfect harmony, in
perfect union with the Father for all eternity. And when God
placed our sin on Him, the sky was blackened for three hours. And God was forced to forsake
His Son, and to pierce His Son through. He had no choice. And so when the Lord Jesus Christ
cried on Calvary's cross, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken
Me? He was forsaken of the Father. Why? So that those for whom he
bore their sin would never have to be forsaken of God. Look at verse 7. He was oppressed and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth. He's a silent substitute. Now in the Old Testament there
are stories when God would send one angel with a flaming sword
to destroy an entire army of the enemies of Israel. One angel
would come in and slay a whole army. What do you suppose, how
many angels there are in heaven? I don't know. What do you suppose they were
all doing when they peered over the portal of glory and saw their
Lord hanging on Calvary's cross. What do you suppose they were
doing? They couldn't understand what was happening. I believe
I know what they were doing. Every single one of them, every
single one of them had his sworn drawn and was waiting anxiously
waiting for their God to speak one word. All He had to do was
say, it's enough. All He had to do, a legion of
angels would have come and delivered Him from that cross. All He had
to do was say, come get me. I'm done with this. All He had
to do was speak one word and every angel from glory would
have come and delivered Him from that cross and destroyed this
world in its entirety. But he opened not his mouth.
He went as a lamb before his shearers and was dumb. He didn't
speak a word. He didn't call to be delivered. Why didn't he? Because he was
guilty, first of all. He had no defense. He couldn't
say, I'm not worthy of this. God had already imputed the sins
of His people to them. He had owned them as His own
sin. He couldn't be delivered. He
was guilty before God. He did it in complete submission
to the Father. God said, a broken spirit and
a contrite heart I will not despise. He's the one who had the broken
spirit. He's the one who had a contract heart. And God the
Father received him. And he opened not his mouth to
be delivered. To please the Father. And out
of love for his bride. He did it to save his wife. When I kept silent, Psalm 32,
my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. He went as a silent substitute. Verse 10. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise
him, for he hath put him to grief, when thou shalt make his soul
an offering for sin. The Lord Jesus Christ was a sin-made
substitute. I don't pretend to understand
what all that means. But I know that God made Him
who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the
righteousness of God in Him. Somehow, somehow God was able
to charge the Lord Jesus Christ with the sins of His people.
And God was able to charge us with the righteousness of Christ.
He made His soul an offering for sin. This is not a pasted-on
imputation. This is not something that He
wasn't just bearing our sins on His shoulders. He was bearing
them in His soul. Look with me to Psalm 38. Verse 2. This is the Lord Jesus Christ
speaking in Psalm 38. There is no soundness in my flesh
because of thine anger, neither is there any rest in my bones
because of my sin. For mine iniquities are gone
over my head as a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me. My
wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. I am troubled, I am bowed down
greatly, I go mourning all the day long, for my loins are filled
with the loathsome disease, and there is no soundness in my flesh."
That's the Lord Jesus Christ speaking. He owned the sins of
His people. Now that's true. And I've got
no sin. I'm justified before God without
sin. Who is He that condemneth? It is God that justifieth. There's
now therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
Why? Because my sin-bearing substitute
took all my sin in his soul. And God made his soul an offering
for my sin and satisfied his divine justice once and for all. That's the substitute I need.
That's the substitute you need. Substitute every sinner needs. When Aaron went before God, As our high priest, the scripture
says that he had the names of the children of Israel on his
shoulders and he bore them before the Lord. And that's exactly
what our high priest did when he went to the cross. He bore the names of his people
on his shoulders and offered them up before God. What a substitute. This glorious hope of salvation
has nothing to do with what you and I do. It has nothing to do
with what we don't do. You didn't do anything to get
in to Christ and you can't do anything to get out of Christ.
That's why Paul said that I might be found in Him. Not having my own righteousness,
which is of the law, but that righteousness which is by the
faith of Jesus Christ. He's the faithful one. He's the
one God's pleased with. What a glorious substitute. And
I want you to see in verses 11 and 12, that he's a rewarded
substitute. He, the Father, shall see the
travail of his Christ soul, and shall be satisfied. You know what the greatest reward
that a servant can receive of his master? It's for the master
to be satisfied with him. I'm satisfied with you. I'm pleased with you. What a
glorious reward. And if God's satisfied with Christ,
then He's satisfied with those who are in Christ. God's satisfied
with me. He is. Oh, what? That's my hope? If
He's not satisfied with me, I'm in trouble. If there's any justice
for Him to execute against me, it will be to the eternal damnation
of my soul. But here He says, I shall see
the travail of His soul, and I shall be satisfied. Look, by His knowledge, My servant
shall justify many. Here's the reward. He's a rewarded
substitute. He's justified us in the sight
of God. That means those for whom Christ
lived and died have no sin. Have no sin. They're perfect. As He is, so are we. He that
sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all as one. for
which cause he is not ashamed to call them his brethren." Brethren. The brothers of Christ standing
before God. And look at the rest of this.
He shall justify many. He didn't justify everybody.
He didn't justify all. He justified many. And he shall
bear their iniquities, therefore I will divide him a portion with
the great, and he shall divide the spoiled with the strong,
because he has poured out his soul unto death. He was numbered
with the transgressors, he bare the sin of many, and made intercession
for the transgressions." What was the spoil of war that the
Lord... Isaiah tells us in Isaiah 40,
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people. Tell them their warfare is accomplished. The Lord Jesus Christ fought
that battle for us. And He got all the spoils of
the war. That's what He says here. That's
His reward. What are the spoils of war that He fought? It's His people. It's His bride. It's His children. God gave them
to Him. That was His dowry price that
He paid to the Father for His bride. What a glorious substitute. The morning they were to crucify
our Lord, There was a man on death row that morning, down
in the dungeon in Jerusalem, being held by the Roman guards. His name was Barabbas. Bar in the Bible means son of,
and Abba means father. Barabbas's name means a son of
the Father and he symbolizes everyone to whom the Lord Jesus
Christ became their substitute. Barabbas, the scripture says,
was a murderer. He deserved to die. He heard
the jailer coming down that stone pathway to his dungeon. He heard the keys However proud
and brash he was in his life, I am certain at this moment,
knowing what crucifixion meant, Barabbas was a man filled with
fear. The jailer came, opened the door,
Barabbas expecting to be drug out and nailed to a cross. The jailer looked at him and
said, you're free. We're free. Someone else has
taken your place. You need a substitute. You need
a substitute. Every Barabbas, every son of
the Father, every child of God has this substitute. A sin-bearing
substitute. to stand in their stead before
God and make them acceptable in His presence. Let's take a
break.