Well, I hope that prepares your
heart to worship like it did me to preach. Alright, let's
open our Bibles again to Isaiah chapter 52. I've entitled the
message, Our Confession of Faith. I'll tell you where I came up
with that title. As I read this passage, I was
reminded of an experience I had 25 years ago. I had gone out
of town with Brother Tom Harding. He was still an elder at 13th
Street at that time. Tom had gone to preach at a place
where they didn't have a pastor. And a man showed up that morning
in the congregation. He'd never been there before.
And as young as I was, I knew almost immediately why that fella
had showed up. He had heard this church was
looking for a pastor and he wanted a job. So he sat in. And as soon as the service was
over, he ran up to Tom and he just cornered him and chewed
on his ear till everybody had left. And he was trying to impress
Tom with all of his religious knowledge. So Tom, you know,
would tell these folks, why don't you have this fellow preach?
And he kept asking Tom this question, what's your confession of faith?
What confession of faith have you all adopted? And he wanted
Tom to name one so that he could impress Tom with his knowledge.
Whichever one it was, he would know all the ins and outs of
it and he would impress Tom with his knowledge. He thought he would impress Tom
that he could adapt to any of the different confessions of
faith. Now some of you young people, you might not know what
a confession of faith is. Very simply, what it is, is somebody
sits down and they say, this is what we believe. And they
just start listing, we believe this, we believe this, just the
points of things that the most important things they believe.
And they say, this is our confession of faith. This is what we believe.
And Tom kept trying to turn that man. He wouldn't talk to him
about a confession of faith. He kept trying to turn that man
away from man's words to God's word. And he wasn't having it,
and Tom wasn't having it. Neither one was going to go the
way the other fellow wanted him to go, you know. And here I'm
standing. I'm just watching this go on,
you know. I kept my mouth shut. But I kept thinking, you know,
I don't want to be a smart aleck, but I wanted to tell this fellow,
why don't you read Isaiah chapter 53? That's our confession of
faith. But you know me, I don't say nothing. So we finally got
in the car to leave, and Tom said to start driving. He looked
over at me. He said, I know what that man
was asking. He said, but he said, I think brother Henry's adopted
a confession of faith, but I want to tell him that he said, because
I knew what he was trying to do. And I didn't want to talk
to him about those confessions of faith. I wanted to force him
to listen about Christ. I wanted to talk to him about
Christ. And then Tom said, I didn't want to sound like a smart Alec,
but really I want to tell him once you read Isaiah chapter
53. So this is our confession of faith. And this congregation
has not adopted a confession of faith. I don't think, I think
that's needless. If you want to know what we believe,
come listen to us preach. You'll figure it out real quick.
But if I was going to put down a confession of faith on paper,
it would be Isaiah chapter 53. And I want to go through this
passage this evening and give you 13 points of our confession
of faith. And don't worry, I'll be brief.
I looked this up this week because I didn't know it. The Westminster
Confession of Faith has 33 points that they call chapters. Each
point is so long, they don't call it a point, they call it
a chapter. And at the end of it, they have 578 scripture references. The Heidelberg Catechism, it's
shorter, it has 129 points, 129 questions, not all those scripture
references. So I'll be relatively brief with
my 13 points. And this is what I want us to
see from God's word, that everything we believe, we believe because
it's found in God's word. Everything we believe has to
do with Christ, with believing Christ. He is who Isaiah chapter
53 is all about. Now, all of the word clearly
is all about Christ, but Isaiah 800 years before Christ was born
is speaking in past tense of a person, And the eunuch knew
it. He's speaking of somebody, a
specific man. And 54 times in these verses,
Isaiah uses the personal pronoun he, him, or his. So that's obvious, isn't it?
Everything we believe has to do with believing Christ. Now
Isaiah 53 really begins in verse 13 of chapter 52. You remember
verse and chapter divisions are man-made. And you'll notice by
the verse 13, there's a little backwards P there. This is the
beginning of a new paragraph, a new thought, and this is where
chapter 53 ought to begin. And here's our first point in
our confession of faith. We believe that the Lord Jesus
Christ came to do for his people what they could never do for
themselves. Verse 13, Behold, my servant shall deal prudently.
He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. Now God requires
perfection from all men. But the problem is all men are
lost in sin. They have a sin nature and they
cannot do what God requires. They can't be perfection. The
only thing they can be is the opposite of that, imperfection.
So Christ came to do everything that God requires and do it for
his people. Christ came to be the perfect
man, not to establish righteousness for himself. The Son of God is
already holy. He came to establish righteousness as a man that he
would freely impute to his people. He'd give it to them. And this
is why Christ is called the servant. The Son of God, equal with the
Father, became a servant to the Father. The Father employed him
to do everything that was required for the salvation of God's elect.
And I'm here to tell you, he got the job done. This servant
did exactly what he came to do. The Lord Jesus is the only perfect
man to ever live. And when his job as a servant
was done, when he had made all of God's elect righteous, when
he did for them, he made them what they could never make themselves,
he did for them what they could never do for themselves, the
Father highly exalted him, brought him back to glory, gave him a
seat at the Father's right hand. And God's elect, those who are
made righteous in Christ, they highly extol, they highly praise
Christ their Savior. Now Philippians chapter two tells
us, one day, all men will, won't they? One day, every knee will
bow, every tongue will confess, he Lord to the glory of God the
Father. But even now, those elect who are made righteous in Christ,
they extol and praise their Savior, because he did for them what
they could never do for themselves. He made them righteous. We believe
that by God's grace. Secondly, we believe that the
Lord Jesus Christ came to reveal the truth about God and the truth
about men. Verse 14, as many as were astonished
at thee, his visage was so marred more than any man and his form
more than the sons of men. Now, how did Christ reveal the
truth about both God and man? How did he do that? Well, if
you'll look to Calvary, you'll see. If you wanna see the holy
character of God, preachers tell you all the time, God's holy,
God's holy, God's holy, holiness is God's chief attribute. If
you wanna see the holy character of God on display, just look
to Calvary. When you see Christ at Calvary,
you see a man suffering more than any man has ever suffered
before or since. As he hung there on the cross,
His form, the form of his body, didn't even look like a man. If you could see it, if you could
see what that really looked like, you wouldn't have a picture of
it hanging in your house. It would make you nauseous to see
what he really looked like. He didn't even look like a man
and people who saw him suffering there were astonished at him.
They couldn't believe it. Well, why would he suffer? This
is the son of God. Why would he suffer like that?
Because the father's holy and the father hates sin. And we'll
see why that is in a minute. Why did he have to punish Christ
for that? Because he made sin. And that suffering is what it
took to put sin away. No more, no less, because God's
holy. If you want to see the gracious
character of God on display, if you want to see that God loves
sinners, all you have to do to see it is look to Calvary. God
must love sinners. If he's going to make his son
suffer like this to redeem them, he must love sinners. And God
says he'll be gracious. He's a gracious God. He'll be
gracious to whom he will be gracious. Well, how gracious God must be
to cause his son to suffer untold agony so his elect could become
recipients of God's grace. Oh, if you'd see God's grace
in love, look to Calvary. There's the truth of God on display
through the sacrifice of Christ. And if you want to see the truth
about man, you just look to Christ. Man is totally Depraved. Totally. Everything about man
is depraved. Man is lost in the depths of
sin. Lost in the depths of wickedness
and depravity. And this is true about man. This
is the truth of man. Man hates God. Yes, they do. Man hates God. This is how our sin is seen in
our hatred of God. You want proof of that? You just
look to Calvary and see what man did to God's son. They beat
him and they tortured him till his body did not look like the
body of a human being. Why'd they do that? Because man
hates God. That's why. That's the truth
about God and the truth about men. Well, here's the third thing. We believe that salvation from
sin is found in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. The blood
shed and the blood applied. Verse 15. So shall he sprinkle
many nations. The kings shall shut their mouths
at him. For that which had not been told them, shall they see.
And that which they had not heard, shall they consider. Now he says
here that he'll sprinkle many nations. What will Christ sprinkle
all these nations with? Well, he's going to sprinkle
them with his blood. Christ must shed his blood as
sacrifice for sin. Atonement's in the blood. Life's
in the blood. He's got to shed his blood to
pay for the sin of his people. But now you remember this, the
blood of Christ must be applied or there's no salvation. And
when the blood is applied to sinners, Sinners who used to
have a whole lot to say about themselves, a whole lot about
what they are and what they've done, all the good things that
they've done. When the blood's applied to their heart, they're
going to shut their mouth. They're going to shut their mouth.
That'll be the end of them talking about themselves. They've never
heard the gospel before, but when the Holy Spirit comes and
enables them to hear, they'll be saved because the Spirit applied
the blood to their heart. They'd never seen Christ in faith
before. But when the Holy Spirit applies
the blood, they see. They see Christ. Look in Hebrews
chapter 12. I'll show you this blood of sprinkling.
The sprinkling that Isaiah talks about is the same sprinkling
that the writer to the Hebrews speaks of. In Hebrews chapter
12, he sprinkles the nations with his own blood, the blood
of his sacrifice. Verse 24. and to Jesus, the mediator of
the new covenant and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better
things than that of Abel. Now this is talking about the
blood of the Passover lamb. And after they killed that Passover
lamb, they caught his blood in the basin. They roast his body
in the fire. What did they do with that blood?
They took hyssop and they dipped it in that blood and they sprinkled
the blood on the doorpost. And if that blood wasn't on the
doorpost, the firstborn is going to die. But if that blood has
been sprinkled on the doorpost, the firstborn lived, didn't he?
And this is the blood of Christ that's applied to the hearts
of God's people, every one of them. And they live when the
blood's applied. And I like how this is written
here, that the blood of Christ says better things than that
of Abel, than Abel's blood. When Cain shed Abel's blood,
there his blood was on the ground. And God told Cain, your brother's
blood cries to me from the ground. What was that blood crying? Abel's
blood called for justice, didn't it? There'd been a murder. His
blood called for justice. The blood of Christ cries, justice
is satisfied. Abel's blood cried, sin had taken
place. The blood of Christ, Christ's
sin's been put away. Abel's blood cried, there's hatred
between brothers. And really the hatred between
brothers stem from my first point, man's hatred of God. You know
why Cain killed Abel? Because Abel brought a sacrifice,
the blood sacrifice that honored God. Really he hated God and
he took it out on Abel. Abel's blood cries, there's hatred.
There's hatred between brothers. Man hates God. The blood of Christ
cries, God loves sinners. And there's reconciliation in
the blood of Christ. Abel's blood cries, there's a
need for a sacrifice. Sin's taking place, we need a
sacrifice. The blood of Christ cries, there's
no more sacrifices. None of them are needed because
Christ elect have already been made perfect in Christ. When
were they made perfect? When the blood of the sacrifice
was shed and when it was applied to their hearts. We believe that
salvation's in the blood shed and the blood applied. Fourthly,
back in our text, Isaiah chapter 53. Fourthly, we believe that
faith in Christ is the gift of God. You know, it's impossible,
utterly impossible to believe the message of free grace until
God gives, unless God gives us the gift of faith in his son.
Isaiah says in verse 1 of chapter 53, who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the
Lord revealed? Now Isaiah says what all of God's
preachers say. Even our Savior said this. Who's
believed us? Nobody's believed our report.
Now our report is the gospel. Brethren, our report's a good
report. This is a good report. This is a true report. This is
a report of free salvation. And do you know, no one believes
it. No one left to themselves will
ever believe it. Nobody believes it. Well, not
nobody. I see a few people come out on
Wednesday night. Why'd you come? To hear the Savior. Somebody believes him, doesn't
he? By God's grace, some do believe the gospel. These ones up here
in verse 15, these kings and the Gentiles had never heard
the gospel before. When they heard it, they believed
it. Somebody believes. Well, who believes? Everyone
to whom the spirit gives faith. That's who believes. Isaiah answers
his own question. Who believed our report? Everyone
to whom the arm of the Lord is revealed. That's who. If the
spirit reveals Christ to you, you can't help but believe. You'll
believe him. And we must, now listen, we must
believe Christ. Faith in Christ is an absolute
necessity. He is the arm of the Lord. When
scripture talks about the arm, it's speaking of the power. Well,
the power of the Lord is the Lord Jesus Christ, isn't it?
Look back in chapter 51 of Isaiah, verse nine. We looked at this
arm of the Lord in the last couple of weeks. He says, awake, awake,
put on strength, O arm of the Lord. Awake as in the ancient
days and the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut
Rahab and wounded the dragon? Who is this arm of the Lord with
all this power to do all these wonders and miracles? Well, it's
Christ, isn't it? The strength and power of God
to save is the Lord Jesus Christ. And Christ not only has the power
to save, He has the power to give life in the new birth and
to make his people believe him. He has the power to give them
faith. Fifthly, this is our confession of faith. We believe that the
Lord Jesus Christ, the son of God, became a real man so that
he could be the representative of his people. Verse two, for
he should grow up before him as a tender plant, as a root
out of a dry ground. He hath no form nor comeliness.
And when we shall see him, there's no beauty that we should desire
him. Now the Jews knew that the Messiah would be the son of David.
Our Lord asked those Pharisees, what do you say about the Messiah?
Whose son is he? Well, he's the son of David.
They knew that. But you know, by the time Christ was born,
the house of David was almost non-existent. The descendants
of David weren't royalty anymore. Not at all. They were poor people. You know who the house of David
that we read about? A no count maid and a no count
carpenter. That's the house of David. Boy,
that's a dry ground, isn't it? This looks like a dry ground. There's no hope of life coming
out of it. Certainly there's nothing here
for a king to come out of. But God in his providence had
reserved a root under that dry ground. It looked dead. The root,
you couldn't see it over that dry ground, but God gave it a
little water and life sprang forth. Life did. And that life
sprang forth in the form of the life of a human baby. Almighty
God became a baby. The ancient of days became an
infant of days. And he had to do it. If the Son
of God is going to be our representative, He had to be just like us in
every way. He had to come into the world
like us. He had to live like us. He had to be like us in every
way, yet without sin. And that's just exactly what
He did. The Son of God was born as the
baby son of the Virgin Mary. Mary gave birth to a baby boy. a baby that was frail. She had
to wrap him in swaddling clothes. She carefully laid him in that
manger with hay in it. She had to be careful with him.
He's frail, just a baby. Recently, I got the pleasure
of holding our new baby, Daisy. She's so small and fragile, just
fit in my hands. She's just like a tender plant.
Here it is spring. Four-long stuff's going to be
springing up out of the ground. And when it first springs up,
just a little blade, just a little nothing's going to spring up.
Now, that thing's going to grow to a big old plant. Maybe it's
a big six-foot tall corn stalk or whatever it's going to be.
It's going to grow into something pretty big. But right now, it's
just a tender plant. You step on it, you're going
to kill it. You just kick a clot of dirt over on it, you're going
to kill it. That's that baby, baby Daisy. I held her just so
because she could be so easily hurt. Her fragile little life
could be snuffed out by just nothing. That's what the Son of God became.
Mary held salvation, eternal salvation in her hands. If she
had dropped Him, she would have killed Him. But that's what He
had to become. Because that's what you and I
came into this world as. Frail little babies. And as that
baby grew, He looked just like every other baby, every other
boy, every other teenager, every other man. There's nothing special
about his physical appearance that would make us want him to
be our savior or want him to be our king. Actually, the opposite's
true. The Lord Jesus was unattractive
to men. You know, you see these pictures,
you see these people play the Lord in movies. Who's the actor
that plays Jesus of Nazareth? He's always tall and he's, you
know, the disciples all shorter than him, he stands. No. The
Lord was a very unattractive man physically. Nothing about
his upbringing, nothing about his family heritage, nothing
about his education, nothing about him at all was attractive.
Everything was unattractive to men. But I'm telling you, this
man, all but this man, He's special, the only perfect man to ever
live. That's how he came as a servant
of God to establish righteousness. But in order to be the savior
of sinners, God had to become a man, a real man with all the
limitations of a man. Now, yes, he's still God. Yes,
he worked miracles and wonders, but never for himself. He never
worked a miracle for himself. When he was hungry, he didn't
work a miracle to feed himself. No, he didn't do that because
you can't do that. He's your representative. And he had to
be tempted in all points like as we are. Yet he could never
sin in any of those temptations. Now you and I sin every time
we're tempted. 100% of the time we're tempted,
we sin. The Savior never did one time,
not once. That baby, never cried unless
something was really wrong, never. That toddler, never one time
threw a two-year-old fit, never. I bet Mary's second child, she
wondered what on earth is going on with this kid because the
first one didn't do that. That young boy always did what
his mama told him to do, every time. That teenager, Never sighed
and rolled his eyes at his mother. Not one time. That boy and that
man never did one sinful thing. And further than that, he never
wanted to. He never had a sinful thought.
He never had a sinful desire. He's perfect. And his sinless
perfection as a man is the sinless perfection he gives all of his
people. That righteousness that he earned as a man is the righteousness
of his people. Everything he did, we did in
him if he's our representative. He became a man, a real man to
be the representative of his people. Sixthly, we believe this,
that man is totally depraved. Man is lost in sin and he cannot
do even one righteous thing. Verse three. He is despised and
rejected of men, man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And
we hid as it were our faces from him. He was despised and we esteemed
him not. Now our sin nature is revealed
most clearly in this. What do you think of Christ?
That's the question our Lord asked. What think ye of Christ?
Well, I can tell you what we think of Christ by nature. We
think He's just not much, so we hate Him. We despise Him. That's what God's Word says,
we despise Him. I'll tell you the reason men
don't believe the Gospel. It's not that they don't understand
what we're preaching. They reject the Gospel because
they hate Christ. That's why. Men don't come to
Christ. We tell men all the time, you
come to Christ, you come to Christ. You know why they don't? because
they don't esteem Christ to be worthy of me coming to Him. Now,
if that's not dead, I don't know what is. A maggot thinks Almighty
God is not worthy of me? The only reason you'd think that
is you're dead, dead spiritually. God's servants tell us, look
to Christ. You look to Christ. Look to Christ.
And you know what we do by nature? We hide our eyes. It's not just
that we can't see Christ. We do everything we can to make
sure we don't see Him. We cover our eyes and close them
so we don't see Him. It's not that we don't know where
to look. Now, I've told you this many
times. Oh, if I had a nickel for every time Brother Henry
said, look to Christ. And I thought if you tell me
where he is, I'll look. That wasn't a problem. The problem
is not that we don't know where to look. It's we hide our eyes
so we can't see. That's our problem. Man is so
sinful. That we do not want to be associated
with the Lord Jesus Christ at all. Isaiah says, we hid as it
were our faces from him. You know what that means? It
means we wouldn't make eye contact with him and we wouldn't associate
ourselves with him because we didn't want to have to talk to
him. We didn't want to have to be associated. We didn't acknowledge
him because we didn't want to be associated with him. He might
hurt my reputation. Have you ever been out in public
somewhere and you saw somebody you knew, but you pretended you
didn't? Why'd you do that? You hid your
face from them. Why'd you do that? Well, either
you don't like them, you despise them, and you want to get away
from them, you don't think much of them, you don't esteem them
at all, and you don't want to lower yourself to talk to them,
or you're so important, so much more important than them, you
don't have time for them. They might stand and talk to
you for a while. Man's sinful nature is most clearly
seen in this, that we hide our face from the Son of God. We don't want to lower ourselves
to talk to him. We don't want to be identified
with him. Aren't you glad he humbled himself
to be identified with his people? Aren't you glad he's not ashamed
to call us brethren? Man hides his face from Christ
because I just don't have time. Aren't you glad? Christ took
all the time that was needed to save his people from their
sins. He came to seek and to save that which was lost. He
had to do it because we're totally lost in sin. Seventh, we believe
this. The only way that our sin can
be taken away from us is if Christ takes it from us and bears the
punishment for him himself. Verse four, surely he hath borne
our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken,
smitten of God and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities.
The chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes
were healed. Now this word born, surely He
hath born our grace. Do you know what that word means?
It means to lift off. That's what Christ did for His
people. He took their sin and He lifted it off of them. Now
what's that mean? Look at 2 Corinthians chapter
5. I'll tell you what scripture says that means. He's born our
grace. He lifted the sins of His people
off of them. It means that He put it on Himself.
2 Corinthians 5 verse 21. For He hath made Him sin for
us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. Christ bore the sin of His people
because the Father made Him sin. That's why He bore it. We believe
that so strongly, we put it on the front of our bulletin every
Sunday, because this is our hope. Christ being made sin is the
only way our sin can be taken away from us and purged. He had
to take it himself. And when the Father made Christ
sin, He punished Him fully for that sin. He punished Christ
as sin itself. Now, I know it was men. who beat
Christ. They beat Him with their fists.
They just took a close fist and beat Him in the face. They took
a whip, a cat of nine tails, and lashed His back with it 39
times. I know men did that. I'm telling
you, He was stricken by the Father. Each strike laid to His soul
was the lash of justice my sin deserves. And thank God it will
never fall on me. because it fell injustice on
my substitute. I know it was men that drove
those nails through the hands and feet of the Savior, nailed
him to that hunk of wood, stuck it up there to watch him die.
I know they nailed him there. But I'm telling you, he was smitten
by the Father. Christ was put to death by the
Father for the sin of his people. That word smitten, I'll tell
you what it means. It means slaughtered. Slaughtered
as the sacrifice for the sin of his people. He was slaughtered
so that his people would be accepted. I know it was men who wounded
the precious body of our Savior. But don't you ever forget it
was the Father who put him to death. That word wounded, he
was wounded for our transgressions, means tormented. Strong's concordance
tells me it means dissolved like you would a profane person. Now
that's hard to say about the Lord, isn't it? But that's what
the word means. The father treated him as a profane
person when he was made sin and he tortured him. He tormented
his soul so that his people would never be dissolved, so that they'd
never be tormented for eternity in hell. In three hours, The
Lord suffered hell for his people. And I'll tell you what, Christ
did all this as a substitute. It wasn't for sins he committed
that he died. He did this for somebody. Isaiah
says he did this for us. He bore these things for us.
He bore our griefs and our sorrows. This happened for our transgression,
for our iniquities. For our peace. Christ died as
a substitute for somebody, didn't He? Who is this are He's talking
about here? That's His elect. Those that the Father gave Him.
And by the death of Christ, in Adam, we got to war with God. We declared war on God in Adam. And in the death of Christ, we
have peace with God. He made peace through the blood
of His cross. God's not angry with His people
anymore. Because He already poured out His punishment, His wrath,
the chastisement for the sin of His elect on Christ. And the
Father satisfied. So there's peace. Now our souls
are defiled and diseased by sin. But by the death of Christ, all
of God's elect are healed from all of our sin sicknesses. He
bore all the spiritual sin sicknesses of His people. And he suffered
death for that sickness and gave us his help. We believe that. Eighth, we believe this, that
salvation is by grace alone. Verse six, all we like sheep
have gone astray. We've turned everyone to his
own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Now, sin is not something that
just happened to us. Adam didn't do it to us. Adam
did. We became guilty when Adam sinned. We became sinners when Adam sinned.
But don't blame your sin on Adam. Don't blame your sin on your
mama and daddy. Our sin is our own fault. My sin is my fault. I did it and I did it willfully. Just like that sheep wanders
off willfully. He did it on purpose. We've got
a little dog, Dummer, and a box of rocks. And he does things
and you think, my goodness sakes. And Jay says, no, he didn't mean
it. Yeah, he meant it. He meant it. He meant to do it
every single time. We won't even get into that.
But I'm telling you, I look at that little dog and there's a
spot on the floor that he pees. He meant to do it every time.
I try not to get so upset with him because you know what? That's
my nature. I'm meant to do it every time. Sin is what we love, what we
are. That sheep didn't wander off
just not knowing what he was doing. He did it on purpose.
The shepherd called and where did he go? The other way. He
did it on purpose. Yet, the father didn't punish
his sheep for that. He didn't punish his elect for
that. Instead, he laid our iniquity on Christ, our substitute. And
we are redeemed from all of our willful sin by that sacrifice. Now, the only possible explanation
for that is grace. It'd be one thing to suffer for
a substitute, as a substitute for somebody that didn't mean
to do it. It's another thing altogether. to suffer as a substitute
for a rebel who willingly sinned against you. Now that's grace. By grace, you are saved. That's the only way a sinner
can be saved. We believe that it's by grace. Ninth, our confession
of faith says this. We believe that the transfer
of sin to Christ was real. When God put his son to death,
he wasn't playing games. The father could only put his
son to death if he did it in justice. God's holy. God can't
do something unjust. Then why did he put his son to
death? But just one reason. He was guilty. Verse seven. He was oppressed and he was afflicted.
Yet he opened not his mouth. He brought as a lamb to the slaughter
and as a sheep before her shears is done. So he openeth not his
mouth. Do you know why Christ, 800 years
later, fulfilled that scripture and never opened his mouth to
defend himself? Do you know why? Because he was
guilty. Every charge was true. He was
guilty of the sin of his people. Now we say that Christ was falsely
accused, and he was. He never sinned, he knew no sin,
he did no sin. But in reality, Christ, our substitute,
was not falsely accused. He wasn't falsely accused because
we're guilty of every accusation they threw against Him. Every
one of them. When He took the sin of His people,
He actually became guilty of His sin. It wasn't like He was
guilty. He actually became guilty of that sin. Verse 10 says, When
thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, you know what that means?
You can look this up when you get home. It means made guilty. made sin. He was made guilty. Now, as long as I live, I'll
never understand that. How that Christ is the sinless
sacrifice, yet he's guilty of all this sin. I'll never understand
it. But Eric, I believe it. Because God's Word says it. I
mean, it's as simple as that. God's Word says it. Just believe
it. Because God didn't lie when he wrote it. And that's the only
hope I have. that all of my sin and all of
the consequences of that sin has been taken away from me if
Christ was made sin for me. My hope of eternal life, my hope
of my sin being forgiven is that the transfer of my sin to Christ
was real so he could put it away through the sacrifice of himself. Tenth, we believe this, that
the death of Christ is the believer's death to sin and to the law.
Verse 8, he was taken from prison and from judgment, and who shall
declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the
land of the living, for the transgression of my people was he stricken. Now the man Christ Jesus actually
died. He died for the sin of his people
because that's what sin demands. Sin demands death. He was cut
off out of the land of the living. That means he actually died. Now I'll tell you why that's
so important. Because if Christ died for you, you can never die. Never. You must live if Christ
died for you. Sin cannot kill you. The law
cannot condemn you if Christ died for you. Because you died
to sin and you died to the law in Christ. Eleventh, we believe
this. that the death and the resurrection
of Christ guarantees the new birth for everyone for whom Christ
died. Now there's no salvation of the
soul without the new birth. Our Lord said you must be born
again. And the guarantee of the new
birth is that Christ died and rose again. Verse nine, and he
made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death.
because or though he had done no violence. Neither was any
deceit in his mouth, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He hath
put him to grief. When thou shalt make his soul
an offering for sin, he shall see his seed. He shall prolong
his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his
hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied. By his knowledge shall my righteous
servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities.
Christ died in shame and humiliation, but he was buried in honor. He
was buried in a rich man's tomb. You know why? Because once he
died, his time of humiliation was over. Now, it pleased the
Lord. It pleased the Father to bruise
the Son. It pleased the justice of God.
It pleased the holiness of God to punish Christ, our substitute.
And the father looked at the sacrifice of his son, and he
said, that's enough. Christ gave up the ghost because
the father said, it's enough. I'm pleased. I'm satisfied. And
since he was pleased, the father raised Christ from the dead to
never die again. He shall prolong his days. Not
only does that mean he'll live forever, he rose again to never
die again, but it means he will reign eternally. And when the
father saw the sacrifice of Christ and said, I'm satisfied, you
know what else he saw? He saw that he was satisfied
with everyone who's in Christ. He was satisfied that everyone
Christ died for. And every last one of them is
going to be justified because Christ bore their iniquities
and he died for them. So while they're born into this
world dead in sin, they got that dead nature of Adam. They must
be born. They've got to be born to eternal
life because Christ died for them as their substitute and
took their sin and death by sin away from them. So everyone for
whom Christ died has to be born again. God does not have any
stillborn children, not one. He shall see the travail of his
soul. That word travail is birth pains.
He'll see the birth pains of his soul. He'll see the results
of that. What's the result of his birth
pains? He'll see every one of his children born again and redeemed
with him in glory. They're born again. Twelfth,
we believe this, that the transfer of Christ's righteousness to
his people is real. That's obvious. It's the only
way a sinner can be justified. Verse 12. Therefore will I divide
him a portion with the great and he should divide the spoil
with the strong because he's poured out his soul into death.
He was numbered with the transgressors and he bear the sin of many and
made intercession for the transgressors. Now Christ won the war. He wasn't
defeated at Calvary. At Calvary he won the war. He
crushed Satan's head. He got all the spoils of the
victory and he divides those spoils with his people. The strong
it speaks of here. There are those who are in Christ.
Paul said, when I'm weak, then am I strong. We're strong by
relying in Christ. Cecil prayed in the study tonight.
Lord, teach us to rely on you. We need you for everything. That's
being strong. That's the strong, those who
know we need Christ for everything. And Christ is gonna divide those
spoils with his people. And I'll tell you chiefly what
he's talking about here. they're going to receive the
righteousness that Christ earned for them. And it won't be pretend. God's not going to just pretend
you're righteous and take you into glory. He's going to take
you into glory because you're perfectly righteous. God's elect
are made righteous just as truly to the same extent that Christ
has made sin for them and took their sin away. And then lastly,
we believe this, that the salvation of God's elect is sure because
Christ lives to guarantee it. Christ died, but now he rose
again. He ascended back to the Father,
to the Father's right hand. Well, what's he doing there?
He's not sitting there hoping somebody might believe on him.
He's not just hoping and wringing his hands hoping somebody will
decide to accept him. No, he's there making intercession
for his people. He's there pleading his sacrifice
for his people. And when he makes intercession
with the Father, do you know, he's silent audibly. The Savior
doesn't have to plead audibly with the Father. He's right in
the Father's presence, right in His right hand, where the
Father can see Him. The mere presence of the Savior
in glory is all the intercession we need. Still yet, to this moment,
when the Father sees the scarred body of His Son, the scarred
body of the Lamb slain, He said, I'm satisfied. And He forgives
His people freely because of that sacrifice. There's our confession of faith.
And you see that everything we believe has got to do with Christ,
doesn't it? Now you believe Him. You look to Him. What we believe
is a who. It's who He is. Our confidence
and our hope is who Christ is and what He's done for His people.
Our confession of faith is Christ, isn't it? Maybe that would have
been a shorter message. One point, our confession of
faith is Christ. We'll save that for next week. All right, let's
bow in prayer. Our Father, we thank You for
Your Word. As we dare tread on this high mountain of Your Word,
peak of your word that so clearly displays salvation in our Lord
Jesus Christ through his sufferings, through his sacrifice, through
his victorious reign, through his intercession as he sits now
King of Kings and Lord of Lords making intercession for his people.
Father, we thank you. How we thank you for our Lord
Jesus Christ. Father, it's my prayer. that
we leave here this evening, each soul would leave here this evening
with the name of Christ, not just on our lips, but on our
heart. Cause us to look to Him, to rest
in Him, to see Him as He is in all of His glory. Father, forgive
us our sin for Christ's sake. See us and hear us only in Him. Cause us only to rely on Him. for everything that you require
and everything we need. It's in his precious name we
pray and give thanks.