Good evening to each of you.
Tonight I would like for you to turn with me to the book of
Isaiah chapter 53. A very, very familiar passage
of scripture. And it's my prayer tonight that
the Lord would once again show us the beauty and the lily of
the valley. that we might once again smell
the fragrance of the rose of Sharon, our Lord Jesus. Tonight, for the sake of time,
I want us to look at the first six verses. Isaiah 53. Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the
Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him
as a tender plant, as a root out of dry ground. He hath no
form nor comeliness, and when we shall see him, there is no
beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected
of men, a 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. 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
and he was bruised for our iniquities and the chastisement of our peace
was upon him and with his stripes we are healed all we like sheep
have gone astray And we've turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord hath laid on him
the iniquity of us all. Of the many that hear the gospel,
the true gospel, there still seems to be few, very few, that
believe it. The message of the gospel of
Christ is so worthy of all acceptation that one would think it would
be universally received and believed and loved. But it's quite the
opposite. Quite the opposite. In the days
of our Lord, few believed the prophets who spoke before of
Christ. And when he came himself in the
flesh, none of the rulers of the synagogue, none of the Pharisees
followed him. Just, it seems like here and
there, maybe one of the common people believed. When the apostles
carried this report all over the world, some, it seemed, in
every place believed, but compared to those who did not, it was
a few, just a few. And even today, today, of the
many that profess to believe this report, there are few that
truly embrace Christ, and acknowledge that salvation is of the Lord
from beginning to end. Men by nature want to have a
hand in their own salvation. Why do people not believe the
report of the gospel? Well, Isaiah asks that question
and answers it immediately. Because the arm of the Lord is
not revealed to them. By nature men cannot discern
nor will they be brought to acknowledge that God Almighty has mercy on
whom He'll have mercy and compassion on whom He'll have compassion
and whom He will He hardeneth. Men by nature say that's not
fair But who art thou to replyest against God? What is man that
he can say unto God, What doest thou? What can the clay say to
the potter who forms the clay in his own hands? They will not bow to the truth
that God is sovereign in the salvation of his elect. You ask an elect, you ask a believer,
you ask a child of God, and he'll say unequivocally, salvation
is of the Lord. That's my hope. That's my only
hope. That God might reveal Christ
to me and in me. But it's essential to know that
only those of whom God has compassion will ever believe the truth.
Only to those whom God has mercy will ever believe what Scripture
says about our Lord. The truth about God. I hear people
say all the time, God is love. And yes, yes He is. But God is
holy. Holy. They refuse to believe
the truth about themselves. We're all sinners, depraved maggots
in the eyes of a holy God. They refuse to believe the truth
about Christ, who He is, what He's done. I'll tell you this, most don't
know that he's a just God and a Savior. He's 100% God, 100%
man, he's 100% just, and he's 100% justifier of them that believe. The arm of the Lord is made bare,
it's not revealed to many. Just turn back a page or two
in Isaiah 52, look at verse 10. The Lord hath made bare his holy
arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth
shall see the salvation of our God. My. Made his arm bare. His holy arm. One day the eyes
of the nations and all the ends of the earth shall see, they
shall see, the salvation of our God. I would tell you tonight
it would be best for your soul in eternity to beg for seeing
eyes now. If I don't know you Lord, I want
to know you tonight before I leave this place. We must see Christ. And he's
called in chapter 52 verse 10, the salvation of our God. There's no other salvation. He's
the salvation of our God. To whom is the arm of the Lord
revealed? To those whom the Father chose
and elected, called and drew by His sovereign hand." That's
to whom. That's to whom. Now in verses
2 and 3, notice the contempt that they put upon the person
of Christ because of the lack of beauty in His appearance.
For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, as a root
out of dry ground. He hath no form nor comeliness,
and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire
him. He is despised and rejected of
men, a 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." This seems to be the reason they rejected his doctrine
because they were prejudiced against his person. When he was
on earth, many heard him preach and rejected him still. He was
the truth. He was the truth and the good
news that he himself proclaimed. And yet, people didn't believe
Him. They would not hear Him because
He was one who was made of no reputation, Scripture says. His
appearance, His birth location, did not meet their expectations
concerning Him. And still people today see Him
as nothing more than a defeated Savior who's trying to save but can't.
I hear people say, God wants you to have a victorious life. God's never wanted to do anything. He does as He pleases in heaven
and in earth. It was expected that the Lord's
entrance into the world would be very great and noble. This was one of the disappointments
of Judas. He thought that the Lord was
going to establish a kingdom on earth. And yet, as he walked
with him day by day, he saw Christ make himself of no reputation.
He said, the foxes have holes and dens. I don't have a place
to lay my head. This was contrary to what the
Jews believed that the Messiah would be. And I believe this
is what is meant here of Him being a root out of dry ground. Being born a poor of a poor and
despicable family, coming from Nazareth. He was like a dry and
desert ground. Nothing green, nothing great,
nothing expected. You remember one day, Nathaniel
came and he said, one of the disciples came to Nathaniel and
said, I found the Lord. And then asked Jesus of Nazareth,
and he said, can there be any good thing come out of Nazareth?
You see, Nazareth was a country of such small repute that it
was thought that no good thing could come out of it. Yet our
Lord, like a dry and desert ground, He grew up as a tender plant. silently, unnoticed, and without
any noise. I hear a lot of noise these days
when it comes to preaching. It's just brass, tinkling, sounding
brass, just noise is all it is. And it seems from our text that
it was expected that there would be something about him that would
charm the eye or attract the heart or raise the expectations
of all that saw him. But that was not the case, for
Isaiah tells us that he had no form or comeliness, nothing extraordinary
which one might have been drawn or attracted to him. He truly was a man of sorrows
and acquainted with grief. And yet scripture tells us that
God made him to be sin for us. He that knew no sin, he knew
no sin. But he knew sorrow. He was acquainted
with grief. You see, in being made sin for
us, He underwent the sentence that sin had condemned us to. That we should eat in sorrow
all the days of our life. That's what I deserved. That
was my sentence of death. But He did that for us. He did
that for us. Because of our sinful disobedience
to God's command, Christ was made to be sin. His condition was, upon many
accounts, sorrowful. He was unsettled and, as I said,
had nowhere to lay his head. He was so worn and in such continual
grief that when he was a little above 30 years old, He was taken
to be nearly 50. You remember that, don't you?
I said, you're not yet 50 and you tell us that before Abraham
was, you were? Grief was his intimate and continual
acquaintance. Grief. My grief. My grief. Man and woman by nature, men
and women by nature, look on the outward appearance with the
sight of the eye. So none of us by nature saw any
beauty in Him that we should desire Him as
our Savior. But there was and there is a
great deal of true beauty in him, my friends. The beauty of
holiness. The beauty of goodness. There
was beauty to render him, Scripture says, the desire of all nations. But most of those among whom
he lived and conversed saw none of this beauty. It was spiritually
discerned and yet is the case today. Unbelieving hearts cannot
see the excellency in the Lord Jesus Christ. They're spiritually
bonded and only God can open the eyes of the spiritually dead. Not only was Christ not desired,
but He was and still is today despised and rejected, abandoned
and abhorred, a reproach of men. He was despised as a weak man. He was rejected as a bad man. And yet that defines, once again,
this sinner who stands before you tonight. He was the stone, Scripture says,
that the builders rejected, refused. He's the one whom they would
not have to rule over them. And in our text it says, we hid,
as it were, our faces from Him. We looked another way, and His
sufferings were as nothing to us. There's never been sorrow. Now
listen, there's never been sorrow like unto His sorrow. He hid,
as it were, His face from us. He concealed the glory of His
majesty. He drew a veil over it and therefore
He was despised and we esteemed Him not because we could not
see through the veil. We see through a glass darkly. But one day, I will see Him as
He is. And the most glorious thing about
that is that I'll be like Him. I'll be like Him. Oh yes, He was acquainted with
grief and sorrow, and He bore them. He persevered to the end
and one day He said, it is finished. It is finished. Salvation is
accomplished. I've come to do the work that
the Father gave me to do. And of all that Thou has given
me, I've lost not a one. Now, I don't know about you,
but I'm glad that I have a sovereign Lord. He's not trying and wanting
to do anything. He says, I will, they shall. I will, they shall. Oh, He had blows. He had bruises. He was stricken, smitten, and
afflicted. His sorrows bruised him. He felt
pain and hurt from them. He was a man, a real man. And yet God Almighty in the flesh. He was smitten with the hand,
blow after blow. He had wounds and stripes. He
was scourged, not under the demands of the Jewish law, but under
the wrath of God Almighty. To where the nothing appeared,
but wounds and bruises. Scripture says that he was beaten
until he didn't even resemble a man. for you those who trust in him
verse 7 tells us he was wronged and abused he was oppressed and
mistreated he was dealt hardly with in all the sins of God's
elect throughout all time was laid to his charge though he
was perfectly innocent all God's wrath for us was laid upon him though he did
not deserve it. He was afflicted both in mind
and in body. He was judged and imprisoned
according to verse 8 as implied in his being taken from prison
and judgment. God having made him to be sin
for us and he was condemned as a murderer. You know why? Because I'm a murderer. Have I actually ever taken a
life? No. But I've hated in my heart. And that's the same thing in
the eyes of a holy God. He was cut off by death from
the land of the living, though he lived a perfectly holy life. Why? Because of me. Because of you. He was apprehended,
taken into custody. He was made a prisoner. He was
judged, accused, tried, condemned in the place of his people. He did so many good works and
for them he was many times threatened to be stoned. I know I've said this before. I've heard men say, oh, if I'd
have been there that day, I would have stood up and tried to stop
them. No, you wouldn't have. You'd
have been the one with the stone in your hand going, let's stone
him. Let's stone him. You'd have been
just like me, the one in the crowd saying, release unto us
Barabbas and crucify this Christ. He was stricken to death and
to the grave. And He was crucified between
two thieves as if He had been the worst of the three. He who
did no sin, knew no sin, thought no sin, never sinned and thought
word or deed, nailed on a cross in the middle of two murderers
as though He was the chief of sinners. And you know what? In one sense he was, because
he took our sin upon himself. And the justice of God exhausted
itself upon him as our substitute. What think ye of Christ? You
ponder that question in your heart. Who is He? Is He a wannabe Savior who's
defeated at all He tries to accomplish? Or does He accomplish all things
according to His own will and purpose? The latter of the two
is the God of the Bible, the Savior of the Scriptures. And
He is the one who one day you'll have to deal with. There was none that could truly
lay anything to His charge. He was perfectly righteous and
holy, yet they esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
And this commandment was received from His Father, and therefore
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter." His words were not my will. But thy will be done. Lo, I come in the volume of the
book. You see, by his death we're sanctified. God made his soul, his own life,
as an offering for our sin. And it's for our good and in
our stead that Jesus Christ suffered. suffered and died. The just for
the unjust. The just for the unjust. It's
certain, it's certain that we are all guilty before God. We're
all like sheep. We've all sinned and come short
of the glory of God. We're all like sheep gone astray,
one as well as another. The whole race of mankind lies
under the stain of original corruption, and every particular person stands
charged with his own transgressions. There's none that doeth good.
No, not one. We've all gone astray from God,
who is our rightful owner. Is He not? And we've alienated ourselves
from Him. Like sheep, we're prone to wonder. Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel
it. Prone to leave the God I love. Even now, as believers, we're
prone to wonder. But the Great Shepherd, He'll leave the 99 and go get
the 1. And this is our true character. We're bent to leave God. But all together unable of ourselves
to return to Him if we left. We insult God by going astray
from Him when we turn aside everyone to His own way and thereby we
set ourselves and our own will in competition with God and His
will. Why do we do that? Instead of walking obediently
in God's way, we've turned willfully and stubbornly to our own way. We've turned willfully to the
way of our own heart, the way that our own corrupt appetites
and passions lead us. We've set up for ourselves to
be our own masters, our own judge, to do what we will and have what
we will. Unless the Lord changes our will,
we'll die in our sin. God chose him to be the Savior
of poor sinners and would have Christ to save them by being
made what we were. Substitution. Oh, I love that
word. I love that word. You see by
laying our sins on Christ like the sins of the people of Israel
laid upon their sacrifice and just like Israel who laid all
the sins upon the scapegoat. The laying of our sins upon Christ
implies, strongly implies, that He took them off us. Does it
not? Oh, I love that. By putting all
our sins upon Him, they're no longer upon us. I've more than likely told you
this before, but I was talking to Brother Todd Nybert one day
and he said, Dave, do you know why when God looks at you he
doesn't see any sin? I thought for a good scriptural
answer and before I could answer he said, you don't have any. You don't have any. In Christ
my Lord, I'm perfectly holy and righteous in Him. Substitution. Oh, I'm so glad. For we fall not under the curse
of the law when we submit to the grace of the gospel. It was God that laid our iniquities
on Christ. He made this way of reconciliation
and salvation. You search the scriptures for
the but-gods. But God, who is rich in mercy,
wherein He loved us. Oh, aren't you glad that God
intervened? None but God had power to lay
our sins upon Christ, for our sin was committed against Him
and Him only, David said. Therefore, to Him, God, the satisfaction
had to be made. God laid upon Him our iniquity. Did He consent to it? Yes, He
did. Yes, He did. He told his parents
one day, he said, did you not know that I'd be about my father's
business? And from the time that he spoke
those words until he said it is finished, he was perfectly
always in the will of his father. Having undertaken our debt, he
underwent the penalty of our debt. Christ bore our sins and our
griefs. He took them off of us. Took them off of us. That we
should receive His perfect righteousness. Oh, I had a colt. It was like
filthy rags. Torn, dirty, nasty, corrupt. And He took it off of me and
He put on a perfect robe of righteousness. He was wounded for our transgressions. Our transgressions. He had none
of His own. And He made atonement for them
and to purchase for us the pardon of them. Our sins were the thorns in his
head. Our sins were the nails in his
hands and in his feet. Our sins the spear in his side. Wounds and bruises were the consequences
of sin. What we deserved, dear friends,
and what we have brought upon ourselves. Christ was wounded
for our transgressions. You make that a personal thing. Christ was wounded for my transgressions. Oh, if that don't put a little
jump in your step, you're still dead. Still dead. He was wounded for our transgressions.
He was bruised, crushed for our iniquities. Our sin was the cause
of His death. Hereby we have peace. We have
peace. The chastisement of our peace
was upon Him. Christ made peace for us by the
blood of the cross. He is our peace and therefore
we have healing for by his stripes we are healed. Sin, dear friends, is not only
a crime, it's a disease which tends directly to the death of
our souls. Like leprosy of old, there was
no cure. And until our Lord came, there
was no cure for our disease. The dreaded disease of leprosy
sin, which so easily besets us. But the good news is the gospel
I proclaim to you tonight is our sovereign God has provided
a cure. Is he not called the great physician? He's provided the cure for our
dreadful disease. By His stripes, that is the sufferings
that He underwent, we were healed. There's no doubt. There's no
concern. If Christ died for me, I stand
holy in the eyes of my God. Look to Christ. Can you see? He's high and lifted
up. Look to Him and live. Look to
Him. You'll see it was God that put
us in Christ. It is God that made us unto us
all. that He required of us. I love the words in 1 Corinthians
1.30, I'll leave you with this, but of Him, but of Him. You hear that terminology a lot
in Scripture, but of Him. Are ye in Christ Jesus? Is that
not saying God put us in Him? That's what it's saying. But
of Him are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us." Wisdom. I had no wisdom. A dumb old sheep. He's made unto us wisdom and
righteousness. My righteousness is filthy rags. He's made unto us wisdom, righteousness,
sanctification. Someone recently asked me, do
you feel like you're getting better? I said, I'm as good as
I'll ever be, sanctified in my Lord. You can't improve upon
perfection. And in Christ, I'm made perfect. And most importantly, He's made
unto us redemption. You see, I did the sinning. God
did the saving. Who there hangs upon that tree? Is it my Lord who died for me? I say it is. I say it is. There's a hymn. I know you know
it and sing it. I want to just read the words
to you. Man of Sorrows, what a name! For the Son of God who came,
ruined sinners, that's what we are, to reclaim. Hallelujah, what a Savior! Bearing
shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned He stood. Sealed
my pardon with his blood Hallelujah what a Savior Guilty vile and
helpless we spotless Lamb of God was he Full atonement can it be Hallelujah
what a Savior Lifted up was he to die it is finished was his
cry now in heaven exalted high Sitting at the right hand of
God in all power Is he who gave himself for me? Hallelujah what
a Savior and when he comes our glorious King all his ransomed
home to bring Then anew this song we'll sing. Hallelujah. What a Savior.