In the 53rd chapter of Isaiah,
in verse 6, we looked at this last week. Just a few things
concerning this chapter. We saw the Lord Jesus in it. I want to use this one verse
this evening to speak to you about actual substitution. Actual substitution. Verse 6, all we black sheep have
gone astray. We have turned everyone to his
own way. And Jehovah, God, the Lord, hath
laid on Him, Christ, the Son of God, the iniquity of us all. All we, like sheep, have gone
astray." Now, that's the testimony of this divine, infallible Word
of God. Man has erred from the way. Man has erred from God. Man has
erred from the truth. Man has erred from the way of
life. All we like sheep have gone astray."
Now, that's not my personal testimony. I don't have to look at people
and say that this is my experience, this is what I found out down
through the years, but this is the testimony of God's Word. As by one man, sin entered into
the world, and death by sin, so death passed upon all men,
for they all have sinned. The wicked go astray as soon
as they be born, speaking lies. The imagination of man's heart
is only evil continually. There is not a just man upon
this earth that doeth good and sinneth not. There's no exceptions
to this rule. All have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. There is none that doeth good,
not one. That's the testimony of divine
scripture. And Isaiah, as I understand it,
is speaking here of God's elect, that they're not the exception.
All we, like sheep, have gone astray. The elect, though they're
chosen to salvation, they went astray too. Paul said there was
no difference in them and everybody else. They were children of wrath
by nature, just like everybody else. Paul was writing to Titus,
and he said there was a time when we ourselves were sometimes
deceived. We served divers lusts and pleasures. We lived in malice. We were hateful
and hated one another. Peter said there was a time when
we walked according to the will of the Gentiles. We lived in
excess. We lived in lust. We lived in
rebellions and vanquishing. and abominable idolatrous. There's no exception. David said of himself, I was
shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Always,
all of us, like sheep, have gone astray. Jesus Christ came to
save His people from their sin. They're guilty, like everybody
else. But then he says here, we have
turned every one to his own way. All we, like sheep, have gone
astray. And every one of us has his own
way. Every one of us can examine ourselves. And the honest man who will be
honest about this can examine himself, and he will have to
acknowledge that I have gone my own way. Our ways vary. Sometimes, when I was a younger
person, my way was the way of ignorance. I didn't know any
better. And then my way was the way of
self-righteousness, legality. Then my way was a way of vain
show. I was just a hypocrite, trying
to fool people. But God knew me. Every one of
us, personally, as we walk through this world, we've got our own
way, we've got our own walk. It's ours. It's ours. And it's
our way. I don't care what kind of a way
it is. It's our way. And our way, though it may seem
right in our eyes, it's the way of death. Your way may appear
better than my way, But it's the way of death. Sin brings
death. There is a way that seemeth right
unto man, and that's man's way. But the end thereof are the ways
of death. The wages of sin is death. Sin,
when it's finished, brings forth death. The soul that sinneth,
it shall die. That's our way. That's the end
of man's way, is death. The Scripture says your iniquities
have separated between you and your God. That's what hell is. That's the end of sin, is separation. It separated man from God back
there in the garden. It separates us in our life from
God. And if this sin is not removed,
it will separate the soul and God for all eternity. Sin brings
separation. Nothing else brings separation.
Sin has separated you from your God. And your iniquities have
hid His face from you. God cannot look upon sin. He is of two pure eyes than to
behold Him. That's why you and I, in our
sins, cannot come into His presence. We cannot pray to Him to be heard
of Him or commune with Him. He is of two pure eyes than to
look upon sin. And who has sin? All of us. Who is one astray? All of us.
All of us. There's only one thing, as I
read the Bible, that God hates and must be punished, and that's
sin. I know of no other thing in all
the world that God is angry with and that His wrath is upon but
sin. I know of no other reason for
hell being created than sin. And all have sinned. Therefore,
all are worthy of God's wrath and His justice. We may have
sinned ignorantly, but we've sinned. Our sins may be deliberately,
it may be willingly, but we've sinned. We've sinned against
God, we've sinned against life, we've sinned against His Son,
we've sinned against the Holy Spirit, but we've sinned. And God either must punish our
sins in us, and I don't know how else He can punish our sins
except He punish it in us who has committed it. Therefore, He must punish sin
in us, and us because of our sins, or he in his wisdom must
find another means of punishing us. Because it's for sure that
we've sinned, and it's for sure that God is holy and cannot look
upon it, and therefore must punish it. And this brings us here to
the last portion of verse 6. The Lord Jehovah has laid on
him the iniquity of us all. Now, as to the truth of this, we have but one source that tells us of the truth of
such a glorious thing. That God hath laid on Jesus Christ
our iniquity Brothers and sisters, we have but one source. It's
not the writings of the Puritans. It's the writings of the prophets
and the apostles. And that Jesus Christ accepted
those sins as His own to be punished for it, we have but one source
of this. It's not in our own understanding.
This thing is foreign to us. We can't by nature understand
such a thing. But that He did it is plain from
the teaching of the Holy Scripture. I want you to turn with me. Old
Isaiah 53, if you'd like to. And turn to Leviticus chapter
16. As you and I read the Scriptures, if we read in the ceremonial
law, It soon becomes clear that these
shadows, these types, these pictures, picture something to us that's
astounding, that's wonderful, that's marvelous that only God
Himself can do. And that is the transference
of sin from the one who has committed those sins to an innocent victim,
and then to punish that victim and their sins in that victim.
That becomes evident. And we see it here in the types
and the shadows. In Leviticus chapter 16, and
you can begin here in verse 15, this is the day that the Jews
call the Day of Atonement. Once a year they brought different
sacrifices, but we have these two goats. And one goat is chosen
of the Lord, the lot fell upon him, and that goat was slaughtered. His blood was brought into the
sanctuary, the holy place, and sprinkled upon the earth. And
then there was the live goat. The sin was transferred to him. He was let go into the wilderness.
This is what this account teaches us. I want to read it to you
and just show you a few things quickly out of it. Look in verse
15. Then shall Aaron kill the goat
of the sin offering that is for the people, and bring his blood
within the veil, and do with that blood as He did with the
blood of the bullock, and sprinkle it upon the mercy seat and before
the mercy seat." So first of all, what do we see about this
goat? He's a sin offender. He's a sin offender. He wasn't
slain for an example. slain that one may look at him
and say, boy, I tell you, that's such a beautiful picture of self-denial. I want to emulate that. Whatever
else it was, first and foremost, it was a sin offering. Now, don't the Scripture teach
us every word that that's what Jesus Christ was, a sin offering?
His death was for a sin offering? Listen to this, Christ offered
himself without spot to God. Christ gave himself an offering
and a sacrifice to God. He gave himself for our sins. This is my blood of the new covenant
which is shed for many, for what? For the remission to atone for
those sins. This scapegoat that died He was
for sin offering. And look here in verse 16, And
he shall make an atonement for the holy place, because of the
uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their
transgressions and all of their sins. And so shall he do for
the tabernacle of the congregation that remaineth among them in
the midst of their uncleanness. And verse 18, And he shall go
out into the altar, that is before the Lord, and make an atonement
for it. And he shall take of the blood
of the bullock, and the blood of the goat, and put it upon
the horns of the all around about. And he shall sprinkle the blood
with his fingers seven times, and cleanse it, and hollow it
from the uncleanness of the children of Israel. Secondly, this blood
was to cleanse the place where God was to meet and commune with
the children of Israel. The Bible tells us that everything
was anointed by blood. The tabernacle, the altar, the
book, all the instruments had blood poured upon them and the
reason that took place in figure was that God was going to meet
the children of Israel there and commune with them. Now, why
do we need the blood of Jesus Christ in our worship? It's because
you and I are yet sinners, and God is yet holy. And when we
approach unto Him to commune with Him and Him with us, we
still need the blood of Christ to cleanse away the sin, the
iniquity of the holy things. When we pray, there's sin in
our prayer. When we sing, there's sin in our singing. There's sin
in our meditation. So the Scripture says, as we
walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship
one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses
us from sin. We need to be cleansed from sin
when we come into His presence. And even entering into His presence,
in Hebrews chapter 10, we do so by the blood. We enter the
holy place by the blood. So the goat was not only for
an atonement to put away sin, but it was to cleanse the place
where God was to meet in communion with the children of Israel. And thirdly, in verse 17, notice
this, And there shall be no man in the tabernacle of the congregation,
when the priest goeth in to make an atonement in the holy place,
until he come out and have made an atonement for himself, for
his household, and for all the congregation." There was to be
nobody. in the holy place, in the tabernacle,
but one man, and that was the priest. And he went there with
his blood. What is that? What is that a
beautiful picture of? Jesus Christ Himself, cleansing
away our sins there upon the cross. There was nobody with
Him. He hanged there alone. He by
Himself purged our sins. Now in verse 21 and verse 22,
we come here to this live goat. He had two goats. You know it
always takes more than one. It took these two birds to represent
the Lord Jesus. You just can't take these types
and accurately represent them. They're so weak. Two goats. The one was slaughtered as we
just saw. But look here now at the live
goat in verse 21. And Aaron shall lay both his
hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all
the iniquities of the children of Israel, all their transgressions,
and all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and
shall send him away by the hands of a fit man unto the wilderness. And the goat shall bear upon
him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited, And he
shall let the goat go in the wilderness. Now here's the first
thing we see in this shadow, this type. We see the transfer
of sins. See that in verse 21? Aaron shall
lay his hands upon the head of the live goat, confessing their
iniquities and sins and transgressions, putting them upon the head of
the goat. Now what does that tell us? Well,
it tells us that the children of Israel were familiar. They
had an understanding of the transfer of sin. They believed that it
was possible because for years they practiced this. They believed
this. It wasn't nothing strange to
them. We think it's strange today,
don't we? How can God transfer sins from the man who has committed
them to an innocent victim? They knew that God was going
to do it because He preached to them in type. And that these
sins and iniquities were transferred in figure were told twice here. In verse 21, putting them upon
the head of the goat. And then in verse 22, When the
goat was led away, He took the sins with Him. He took the sins
with Him. They were no longer on the people.
They were on the goat. And when the goat was led out
into the wilderness, He took the sins with Him. The sins became
His. The sins were removed from them
to Him. The sins of Israel? were transferred
to the head of the live goat. Now that's so very, very important. The goat bare those sins to a
land not inhabited. That word not inhabited means
to a place that's cut off. A place that's cut off. It's
separated. No one went there. It's separated. Away. It's away. And this teaches
us in figure what actually took place upon the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ. That our sins were actually transferred
to Him. The Scripture is plain in its
language. This is a type. But what took
place in type actually took place upon the cross. I read the passage
to you in 53.6 of Isaiah. Oh, we like sheep have gone astray,
and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. And then
verse 11, He shall bear their iniquities. And then verse 12,
He bear the sins of many. And then 1 Peter chapter 2 verse
24, Who His own self bear our sins in His own body on the tree. That's something that actually
took place, brothers and sisters. And here's something else that
we see, that when sin was transferred to Him, and He bore on them,
He was still alive. Just as the live goat was never
slaughtered, when Jesus Christ actually had our sins put upon
Him, He was alive upon the cross. They weren't put upon Him at
the point of death, They were put upon Him after He died. He
did not bear on all His life, but they were put upon Him three
hours upon the cross, and He lived with those sins in His
own body upon the tree. A lie He bore. He bore our sins
in His own body, where? On the tree. It is written, Cursed,
cursed, is every man who what? Who hangs on a tree. That's where
the sins were put on Him, and that's where He bore the curse
of those sins. And by burying our sins upon
the cross, until He breathed out His last breath, Jesus Christ,
our Substitute, took those sins away, just as the live goat took
them into a land where nobody ever went. Jesus Christ took
those sins away. He took them to a place where
God can never see them. He took them to a place where
God Himself never visits, where God can never find. Where are
they? They're away. They're taken away. Once in the end of the world
hath He appeared, not just to suffer for sins, not just to
bear sins in His own body, but to put them away. Do you think
this goat could take sins away in a land that's not inhabited,
and the Son of God could bear them and not put them away? Would
we give more credit to a goat than we would the Son of God?
What He did in figure, Jesus did in reality. Bless His holy
name for us. The Scripture says He purged
away. He purged away our sin. And I tell you what, if you can
find them, you've done better than God can. Because He can. And He says, I've looked for
them. I've took diligent search for them. And I can't find them.
Because there is none. That's how far away. That's where
they are. That's where they are. And I have no doubt, as I read
the Scriptures, That Jesus Christ actually bore our sins in His
own body upon the tree. For I read that God has done
it. That Jesus Christ had no sin
of His own, that's plain. That's plain. He was born a holy
thing, and though He was sorely tempted in His lifetime, He did
no sin. And in his death he offered himself
without spot to God? And it is plain that devils nor
men never forced sin upon him? Neither could any man transfer
their sins to him. With man this is impossible. If anybody has any problems with
the transference of sin, let this, brothers and sisters, settle
the issue. Man had nothing to do with it.
Man cannot do it. But what man cannot do, God can. With God, all things are possible.
He can take our sins from us and put them upon His Son. And
not only can He, but He did. Lovingly and mercifully and graciously
He did. But it's His work, not man. The Lord have laid on Him." It's
God's doing. Everything was God's doing. Everything
concerning Christ was God's doing. God made Him flesh. God gave Him a body. God made
Him of a woman. God made Him under the law. God
made Him to be sin. God made Him a curse. The Lord
said, I'll provide myself the lamb. God did it. God did it. And God did not smite his son
because he hated him. He did not bruise him because
he had any sin of his own. In himself he was holy, he was
harmless, he was undefiled, and God delighted in his son even
as he hanged upon the cross. But the Father smote him, and
the Father bruised him out of great love for us who had gone
astray, who had turned everyone to his own way. And God did it,
that mercy might now come to us in a way that's consistent
with justice. I have no doubt that Jesus Christ
actually bare our sins when I read who put our sins upon Him. God
can do it. I have no doubt that Jesus actually
bare our sins in His own body when I read that He actually
died. The wages of sin is death. Jesus died. There was no cause
of death in Him personally, yet He died. Why did He die? It could
not have been because He was sinner. It could not have been
because of His own sins. He had no sins of His own. Why
then did He die? Our sins upon Him is why He died. If our sins had not been upon
Him, He would never have died. The wages of sin is death. He had no sin, and no gall was
found in his mouth, and yet he received the wages of sin. Why? Because he died for our
sins. Brothers and sisters, justice
would have never demanded the death of Christ. And justice
would never have accepted his sacrifice as an atonement for
sins if our sins had not actually been upon Him. The wages of sin
is death. The judge of all the earth must
do right. And justice could have never
exacted anything from Him if He had not have actually hung
upon that cross guilty because of our sins. Justice punished Him. Justice
put Him to death. Justice cursed him because our
sins were actuated upon him. That's why he died. But you say,
Bruce, what about the saints? They die. They don't die cursed. They don't
die because of their sins. Death is a blessing to the saints.
Yes, and you know why? They have a mediator. If they
didn't have a mediator, I tell you right now, death wouldn't
be a blessing. Death is a blessing to us because
we got a blessed mediator, but when Jesus Christ died, He had
no mediator. Look over here to your right.
Look over here back toward your text. Look over in Isaiah chapter
59 and verse 16. Look at this. Here's why I say
He must have had our sins actually upon Him. Because He died under
this curse. And the reason He died under
this curse, there was nobody there to relieve Him. There was
nobody there to plead His cause. There was nobody there to take
the sin from Him. Look in verse 16 of Isaiah 59. Here's the Lord Jesus speaking.
And He saw that there was no man. No man. And he wondered that there was
no intercessor. Therefore, his arm brought salvation
to him, and his righteousness, it sustained him. Look in chapter
63. Look in verse 5. You read the
first few verses and you'll see what the Lord Jesus was going
to. He was up on the cross. His garment stained with blood.
In verse 5, and here's what he said, And I looked, and there
was none to help. And I wondered that there was
none to uphold me. Therefore my own arm brought
salvation unto me, and my fury, my fury against sin, I'd set
my heart to punish it. It upheld me. Now, brothers and
sisters, you don't die. You won't die under the curse.
You won't die for your sins. You won't be punished. But the
reason is, you've got a mediator that's already suffered in your
place. He didn't have one. He bore the wrath of God alone. He hung on the cross alone and
nobody hung with Him. If Jesus Christ had not actually,
therefore, had our sins, He would not have died. And thirdly, I
have no doubt that Jesus Christ actually bore our sins in His
own body. When I read of the load of guilt that He bore. He bore guilt. And you know what
guilt is associated with. Every place you find guilt in
the Scriptures, you look it up sometimes. Everywhere you find
guilt in the Scriptures, it is directly associated with sin. It even says, if a man sins,
though he is ignorant of it, yet is he guilty and shall bear
his iniquity. See where guilt comes from? It
comes from sin. There is no way to bear guilt
without bearing sin. And our Lord Jesus was under
the load of guilt. Why? Because he had sinned. Not his, but ours. And what I remember also, the
amazing sorrow that he bore. And that he felt the burning
anger of God against his soul. If Jesus Christ was merely to
come to this world and lay down his life upon the cross, that
would have been easy enough. My goodness, some of us were
talking the other day, there have been men, there have been
men who have died horrible deaths and took it much easier than
he did. There have been saints of old that they pulled them
limb from limb. They threw them into the beast
to let the beast eat them. They boiled them to death in
hot oil. They put them on a pile of wood
and set them on fire and burned them. And yet they died such
easy deaths. What was it about the death of
Jesus Christ that filled Him with so much sorrow and amazement
and heaviness? There was something about the
death of the Lord Jesus Christ, brothers and sisters, just anticipating
it, caused Him to sweat drops of blood. I think it had to be
more than just physically laying down his life. He could have
went to the cross and did that. He could have suffered for three
hours. A lot of other men have did that and suffered. But I tell you what, he went
there to the garden and he was so uneasy. He was so full of
heaviness. And he had no reason to be that
way. My soul, could he not have died easy? He had no reason to
fear death. He was in the favor of God. I
knew always those things that pleased my Father. He had the
Spirit without measure. He abode in the Father's love.
What reason did he have to fear death? Considered in himself, he had
no reason to fear. But what was it that amazed Him?
What was it that filled Him with heaviness and sorrow of soul
during the Garden of Gethsemane? The Scripture says He became
sore amazed and to be very heavy. He said, My soul is exceeding
sorrowful, even unto death. And He began to pray. He began
to agonize. He began to cry. And he began
to fear. Father, if You be willing, if
there be any other way, let this cup pass from me. There was something
in that cup that filled him with astonishment and sorrow and heaviness. It was more than just a physical
death. What was in that cup? You know
the Scripture tells us something about this cup. Let me read you
just three or four places. Isaiah 51, 22. Thus saith the
Lord, the Lord thy God, that pleadeth the cause of his people,
Behold, I have taken out of your hand the cup of trembling, even
the dregs of the cup of my fury, and thou shalt drink it never
again. What is this cup? It's dregs
of fury, God's anger. It's dregs that when a person
begins to drink it, it causes horrible trembling. But he said, you'll never drink
it. That's what he said to Israel.
You'll never drink it. Well, somebody has to drink it.
As sure as we've sinned, somebody has to drink it. As sure as God
is holy, somebody has to drink it. But he looks at his people
and says, you'll never drink it. And Jesus Christ comes now
and he says, if this cup may not pass from me except I drink
it, who drank it? He drank it. Revelation 14, verse 10. Speaking
of the damnation of the wicked. The same shall drink. of the
wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture
unto a cup of his indignation, and shall be tormented." What
is this cup? It's the cup of God's indignation,
a cup of torment. Revelation 16 and 19, the cup
of the wine of the fierceness of the wrath of God Almighty. That's what's in that cup. Brothers
and sisters, you go through the book of Psalms sometime and through
the prophets, and you look at the sufferings of Jesus Christ
as they're predicted there. And you read about Him being
filled with heaviness. and His sin going over His head
as a heavy burden that You have for me. All Thy waves and Thy
billows have gone over me. They come into my soul. You've
brought me into the dust of death. Behold and see if there's any
sorrow like my sorrow, wherewith God has afflicted me in the day
of His fierce anger." And you wonder, you wonder, this has
to be more than a physical death. And that tells us When we see
the Son of God, He was strong, and He was holy, and He was good,
and had every reason to hope. When we see Him grappling with
sin there in the garden, and we see Him sweating drops of
blood, and weeping, and fearing, We know that it must be because
our sins and the wrath of God met together upon His Holy Soul.
Thou hast made His Soul that offering for sin. I'll tell you
one of the saddest things, when I hear some dear brother say it was as if, as if it happened. He didn't really take our sins
actually, but it was as if He took our sins. As if? Now, I'm not accusing any of the dear
brethren. God forbid that I ever offend
any of them. They are my dear brethren and good preachers,
fine preachers. And I'm sure that they would not say that
that was a pretense. But what do we mean when we say
it's as if? The Lord Jesus didn't talk that
way. It wasn't pretense with Him. Oh,
He'd have never, He'd have never even hinted at anything He did
being as if He did it. Pretend that he did it? Punish
me as though I had the sin? The reason he rebuked the Pharisees
is because they were full of pretense. They were full of show. But oh, he was sincere. He was
honest. When He said He was going to
do something, He meant He was going to actually do it. Really
do it. He had no guile in His mouth.
When Jesus Christ took our sins, He actually did it. And how many
sins did He actually bear? Oh my, how many did He bear?
How many did He bear, Brother Glenn, on the cross? There's
no way we could number those sins. There's too many. All of
His elect from all ages. Oh my, how many sins have you
committed? Oh dear child of God, think of
your sins on Him. How many deaths did He die on
the cross that day? He died your death. He died my
death. He took your sins. He took my
sins. How many sins, how many deaths
did He die? He took all the sins of all His
people, and He took all the wrath due to those sins, and all the
death that those sins deserved, of all of those who would ever
be saved. And there was not one ounce of pretense in it. It was
not as if. It was real. It was actual. The
Father transferred our sins to Him. Jesus owns them to be His
now. He feels the guilt of them. He
feels the shame because of them. He feels the awful wrath of God
against His soul. And all of this is plain Scripture. It's plain Scripture. How did He burn them? How did
He ever raise from the dead? because of who he was. Because
of who he was. He wasn't an angel, was he? He
wasn't just a good man. He was the eternal Son of God. And the reason those sins did
not finally overwhelm him and send him to utter despair and
darkness was because there was more merit in him than there
was damnation in those sins. He put them away by His merit,
by His holiness, by His worth. All of them. One sin brought
the angels from heaven down to hell. One sin brought our parents
out of the garden into a ruined humanity. But the Son of God
in our humanity took an innumerable company of sins, and He took
God's wrath too. And He put the sins away and
satisfied the wrath. Nobody else could do it but Him. And now the Holy Spirit comes
to every elect sinner and says, I have redeemed you. Thou art
mine. Turn to the stronghold, you prisoners
of hope. Turn, because I've redeemed you. You've fallen by yourself, but
you're redeemed with that price. Return to Me. And if you're one
of God's elect, you will turn. You will turn. You'll turn with
all your heart to God in Christ. And you'll see more merit in
Him to save you than sin in you to damn you. You'll believe Him.
And then when you're approaching to God, you'll approach with
this assurance, that though you're a poor sinner in yourself, and
though God is eternally holy in Himself, yet when He looks
upon you, He sees nothing but the blood. Nothing but the blood. Bless His holy name. A real substitution. Real substitution. Not as if,
but real.