Resurrection Sunday - 1 Peter 1:3-7 - Pastor Jeremy Haynes

Please remain standing for the reading for our preaching this morning. We're reading out of 1 Peter. It says this, 'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to his great mercy. He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power and who by by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials so that the the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Please take your seats. Let's pray. God in heaven, we thank you for this day. We ask you to speak to us today on this this Resurrection Sunday, the day that we come before you to know you, to trust you, to be called, to walk according to your ways in all that we do, Lord.

We ask you to bless this time now. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Well, good morning, church. This morning, we have the privilege of hearing from the apostle Peter, a man who on the night that Christ was betrayed, he he looked into the eyes of his master, his Lord, and people asked him if they knew him, and he denied even knowing his master and his Lord on the night he was betrayed. Those same eyes, he looked into the eyes of his master and betrayed his master on the night he was betrayed. Then three days later to have the same moment to look into the eyes of the resurrected Christ and to be offered grace, to be offered mercy, to be offered forgiveness as Jesus looked at him and said, Feed my sheep, and restored him to a life, to a hope, to an inheritance. That apostle Peter is the one we get to listen to this morning. He speaks through this letter to a people who are struggling, a people who have been persecuted, people who are burdened, people who are confused. And he has a word for them. And the first word he has for them is about the resurrected Christ.

So this morning, we come to this word from Peter about the resurrected Christ, and we receive the same encouragement he had for them. And that encouragement is twofold. First, The resurrection of Jesus Christ gives you a living hope. He encourage you. The second is that the resurrection of Jesus Christ gives you an inheritance. An inheritance that's kept for you in heaven. Let's look at this living that Christ has for us through the resurrection. It says here in the beginning of our passage, 'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. ' He bursts forward with praise and blessings to our God and our Father, the Lord Jesus Christ. All throughout the Old Testament, there are times, about 27 times, where this blessing to God springs forth. Barak Adani is what it says. Bursting forth to bless God. But this is different. This is a blessing to God in the name of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the God of Israel, but this is the God of Jesus, our savior, who comes, who is blessed, who we receive the benefits of the resurrection from. Blessing, blessing, praises to him, Peter starts with.

And then now he is going to go into all the things that God gives to us through this blessed God and Father. He starts with, according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So first we have this great mercy. What is this great mercy? This great mercy. Over the last few weeks and even month, we've been studying Isaiah 53. In Isaiah 53, we heard that there was this Messiah coming through the prophet Isaiah. And this Messiah who was coming would be the one who would take all of the burden, all of the wrath, all the sins that would fall on him. In fact, the passage says, we, his people, God's people, we are like sheep who've gone astray. We've gone our own way. And God caused our sins, our iniquities, our transgressions to fall on him, the Messiah. This is that great mercy. That our sin, otherwise God set a mark and we kept missing it. God, in our transgression, set a line and we kept stepping over it. God had a desire for us to be righteous, and we kept deceiving.

Our sins, our iniquities, our transgressions, all of those things, all of those sins, fell on Jesus and not on us. This is God's great mercy that all the things you've done wrong fell on Christ. This is great mercy. You see, grace, we hear this word often. Grace is favor we do not deserve given to us. But mercy is God holding back the wrath that we deserve that should fall on us. Now, as a parent, I know mercy. I want to know mercy. When your kids disobey you, I grew up in a home where we received spankings in my home. Okay. That's the girl home I grew up in. On some occasions, you might not get a spanking, but you get sent to your room. So either way, you still have punishment that you have to pay. That's not how God does this, though. Not only does he hold back the spanking, he doesn't send you to your room. There's no punishment. All of the punishment that you deserve falls on Christ. There's no more pain for what you deserve because of Christ. This is the mercy that he gives to us. So it's great mercy.

This is why it's great, because it's more than you can offer. You don't know this mercy, but God does. Because he gives it to you. So it's great mercy. But then he also, he says this statement, and it's, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So what is this 'born again'? This 'born again', we hear this often. Maybe it's two different types of Christians. We're not sure, but this 'born again' seems to be important. I don't know what this thing is, but Peter's pointing right to it because God's caused it. So what is it? Well, a verse over, he says this in chapter 1:23, he says, Since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through a living or through the living and abiding word of God. All flesh is like grass. All of its glory is like the flower of grass. The grass withers, the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that was preached to you. So it's born again in this word that comes.

But then the apostle John tells us exactly what it is. Here's what he says. The apostle John, the disciple that Jesus loved, says it like this. When he was talking to Nicodemius, Jesus says this to Nicodemius. He says, Truly, truly, I say to you, Nicodemus, unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. He goes on to say, Do not marvel that I said this to you. You must be be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. God's word comes about in our lives, and the spirit of God works. It's like the wind. We can't control it. We can't channel it. We can't stop it. We can't shape it. It just moves. And when it comes, it comes on a person's their life, and it births something new in their life. He also says this in chapter one about being born again. But to all who did receive him, Jesus, who believed in his name, God, he gave the right to become children of God who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but they were born of God.

Born again. They're born again by God, not by my power, not by your power, not by the smartest guy or the brightest woman, no one can bring about a new birth in your life besides God. And God has caused this new birth, according to Peter. The this new birth. And this new birth is powerful, and it comes to all of those who believe. I think about this new birth, and I wonder, What are the signs of life for this new birth? I have four kids, so I know the signs of life for a new baby. What happens when a baby is born? They cry. You hear it. You hear it ring out in the birth room or if you have a home birth, the baby cries of this new birth. But this is different for the spiritual birth. For the spiritual birth, we don't have crying. Maybe in some cases, we might have crying. If it was me, I might be crying. But the new birth, there's something different that bursts forward from this new believer, this new spiritual being that's following God. What happens? They begin to birth out a living A living hope.

A living hope begins to emanate from their lives. They want what God wants. They hope for what God hopes. They dream of what God dreams. All the things that God has for them, they want for their lives because they're in God's grip. Because they're birthed by God, and they want what he wants, and they hope for what he hopes. It's a new hope, a living hope. The baby's born, the baby doesn't cry. It's not alive. When the new birth happens, if the Christian is not hoping, can they be alive? There's a hoping we have in this living hope. And this living hope comes to us through the resurrected Christ. He's the grounding for our new hope. He's the grounding for our lives. It's all grounded in this Christ who's resurrected from the grave. It's the roots. When life sways, the roots point back to this fact that we believe that Christ rose from the grave 2,000 years ago. We have eyewitness, and we have all these things that have happened to point back to the fact that there's a down payment that was given to us through Christ in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is our living hope.

Our living hope is birth through him and through his life. This is the life we have through Christ. So similar to Peter, as he's writing this to these people, they have burdens, they have struggles, they have needs, and they need this encouraging word about a living hope, because sometimes life gets so hard that we could start to believe that you are your life and there's nothing else. There is no hope for you. Life gets hard and you could start to I believe that. Back in 1940, there was a man named Jean-Paul Sartre. He was a philosopher, and he's a philosopher in French, in France. He had a one-act play that he put together. It was called No Exit. It was his vision of what hell would be like. What he had is he had this room that was this ornate room, and there were three couches in this room, and then three people ushered into this room. The rules of this space were that you could never sleep. Your eyes were always open, and it was bright. In this one room, they could never leave. They had to be forced into this intimacy of talking.

They all came into the room with their pretense of who they were, their best person. The one man, his name was Garcine. He showed up as a strong hero that was a journalist for the military. The one woman showed up as a faithful mother, but she died in untimely death. Then the other woman showed up as a woman who lived a wonderful life and enjoyed her life. They had this picture of who they were that they wanted people to see. But then after a short while in this hell that Jean Paul Sartre Gary puts together, their hypocrisy is unraveled. All their secrets are laid bare. All their lies are opened up. All their failures are exposed. Before you know, we learn that Garcine is actually a liar. Who was a traitor. He was a coward, and he ran, and he was killed. We learned that the woman who said she was a great mother actually killed her own child. We learned that the woman that was also out running the streets and being what she thought was a nice person, she actually was mistress, and she was killed by the spouse of her mistress. All their secrets came out.

They were exposed. In the statement that one of the ladies named Estelle says at the height of this story, she says to the other group, she says, You are your life and nothing else. This is the height of hell for this philosopher. You are your life and nothing else. Brothers and sisters, I want you to think about your life. Imagine if you were your life and nothing else. Imagine if you were your life and nothing else to stand before a Holy God to present your life All the things you've done, how great you are to a Holy God, you'd have no hope. You'd have no chance. But God, But Christ, the resurrected one, you have hope. You have a chance. Colossians 3:3 says, For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. We think about a living hope. We have a living hope because there is no hope for our life in God without Christ and the resurrection he offers. This is our life, and it's not all there is. It is him. That's a living hope that he offers to us. He also offers us an inheritance, an inheritance. This is beautiful, this inheritance he offers to us.

He starts off with this language here. He says, To an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. I like this language, and it's an important language. We have God as Father, we have Jesus Christ as Son, and we have us being children who are born of the spirit of God. This is familial language. And this familial language, I think it's natural and normal for every parent that wants to be a great parent, wants to leave an inheritance of their kids. Hopefully, they leave more than just a good name. First of all, a good name is worth more than silver or gold. A good name is good. But I would imagine a lot of parents want to leave a good name, and they want to leave blessing and maybe a home, maybe some land, maybe traditions. They want to leave all this inheritance to their kids. This is natural and normal that we would see things this way and want this for us. And guess where we learned it? We learned it from God because he's always promised us an inheritance.

If we were the nation of Israel, the inheritance was the land that flows with milk and honey called Israel, the land and the promise of God. But for us, we look forward as Christians, our inheritance is beyond the land of Israel. Our inheritance is something that God offers to us. Now, what are these words that God uses to explain this inheritance that's so important that he's offering to his children? Well, first, it's imperishable. Emperishable, otherwise, it is everlasting, never to break down. It's also undefiled. Everything in the world seems to have some cracks in it if you look close enough. Everything in the world has a little bit of tainting. If you get a little more comfortable with it, it begins to taint. Even the great people that you maybe admire, there's some tainting when you get closer. Well, this inheritance is undefiled. No taint. There's this virtue, there's goodness, there's beauty to it. There's a sense of even a wholeness to this. Then Also, there's an unfading. I mean, who wants an inheritance that's everlasting, that when you get there, it's dilapidated? This inheritance is a type of inheritance where It's not only in heaven waiting for you, but it's durable, it's bright, it's shining, it's glorious.

And most importantly, it's kept in heaven for you. I love the way Pastor John ended our Good Friday service. He looked at the students, the children in the room, and he says, Students, look at me. That goes to all of you now. Students, look at me. The promises God has are for you. Of course, adults, they're for you. All the things that God has in that inheritance kept in heaven is for you. It's for you. And so this you and the next word are connected, the you and the who. So it's not only that it's guarded in heaven for you, but the who, you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. So it's kept in heaven for you, and then it's being guarded, and better yet, you're being guarded until you get there. You see that? It's kept for you, but then it's being guarded. You're being guarded until you get to heaven. It's being guarded for you. It's being guarded for you. I think about being guarded. The day the President is inaugurated, he gets the secret service. The secret service, they're around him all the time.

They're guarding him at every door, every Every opening, every spot. In fact, we have a gentleman in our church who is guarding our church. Jason Meyer is always guarding, thinking about how he can protect our church in the same way the President has this guard around them, watching, guarding, protecting, planning ahead. That's what's happening. This is what they do for the president. Well, take these mere men and let's ratchet up to God guarding you. God is guarding you from now until you receive the inheritance that's kept for you. I don't know about you, but I struggle sometimes. Do you ever struggle? Do you ever struggle? I mean, I struggle. I often wonder, will I make it to that gift that's kept for me? I know he's guarding it, but will I be able to hold on? I wonder. I want to say there's really good news to this because the wonder of our hope is that the same power of God that keeps our inheritance also keeps us. It's not that we have to hold on to what he's guarding in that sense, that we're holding the guarding until it gets there. It's That by faith, we hope in the fact that he's the one who guards it, not us.

He's doing the guarding. We just trust that he's going to guard it until that day. That's where our faith is. We don't have to will it. We just trust that he's going to do it. I'll say it again. The wonder of our hope is that the same power of God that keeps our inheritance also keeps us. We have this inheritance that God gives to us, and now he continues to shower on this. Then we have to face the realities of life along with this. It says this next verse here, In this, you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials. When I read this now for a little while, I almost want to say that's life. A little while, I mean, Lord, I mean, wow, a little while? How long is a little while going to last? It's hard sometimes. Peter even says it. But he says, In this, you rejoiced that the inheritance is here, but then you're also going to be grieved. How are you grieved and joyful at the same time? That's a tension to manage for a little while. Well, I love the way that 1 Corinthians says this.

Actually, 2 Corinthians 6:10 says it like this. This is the Apostles talking about the way they live their lives. They said, As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. This tension they manage about this life between this life where they get to faith and trust in this inheritance that God gives them through this resurrection. They are sorerful, yet always rejoicing. They actually go on to say a number of amazing things about this life they live as they trust and have faith in Christ. And so as we look at our passage here, In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, and if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so the tested genuance of your faith, more precious than gold, that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in the praise and glory and at the revelation of Jesus Christ. We have rejoicing, we have this grieving, we have this now for a little while, struggle. We have trials, and I think we all can name different trials that we face in life, whether it's relationship or different struggles. Maybe you might have lost a job, or it might be a health diagnosis.

Might be a financial struggle. The grief trials come to us. But there's this if necessary word in here that's important. In this, if necessary, is God's way of saying that he's a part of using your struggles, using your challenges to refine in you what he's trying to build. God sees you as a child, that he's growing up until the day of your resurrection. We know that our hope is this living hope that Christ has been resurrected from the grave, therefore we will be resurrected. But until that day, he's maturing you through the challenges, through the struggles, through the burdens. This encouragement that Peter has for us is that if necessary, God is going to apply and going to allow hardships in your life. It's like a father who disciplines. Hebrews talks about a father who disciplines as God disciplines his children. I think about for us, there's I know this makes sense for most of us. We had parents who use challenges for us to help us to mature. In the back of my mind, I always hold two examples of how my parents challenged me to grow and to become mature, to become a man of God.

One is my mother, where whenever I saw her going through challenges, she would always say the words, God will not forsake the righteous. I would see that, and that would be God's way of working in me by watching her in the trials that our family might face. Then on the different side, I work with my father. Back in 2005, we started a truck wash business. Through that truck I'm not a truckwash business. I wash business, I washed trucks for five years. Trash trucks. Trash trucks. And through washing those trash trucks, I had to learn something about endurance and hard work to become the man that will do the things that God is calling me to do no matter what. All these small things that you might seem to be meaningless, God is using, if necessary, to train you up, to mature you. Some are harder, harsher challenges. Some are small things that God is working in you. Peter knew this. He offers it to us because here's the point. The whole nature of suffering is changed for the Christian when he or she realizes that our struggles bring honor to Christ. The struggles that we face all the way until the day of resurrection are an opportunity of glory and honor to Christ.

No matter how hard it gets, we remember the hope we have, the living hope we have in Christ, who gave us the down payment of our faith in the resurrected Christ. We come to a night like Good Friday, we remember the fact that the God of the universe died for us, and it seemed so hopeless, so dark. But then we come to a morning like this where we point to the fact that Christ rose from the grave and it's bright again. All of your hopes renewed, all of your struggles overcome because of Jesus. He brings us into a living hope. He offers us an inheritance inheritance, and that inheritance is guarded by him, and we, by faith, trust him, and he brings us through all the trials that we face in our lives. So on our worst day, we can rejoice because we know there's more for us. On our worst day, we can rejoice because we know there is more for us in that living hope, our salvation, the salvation of our souls. I want to close this with the last words that Peter says here. He says, Though you have not seen him, this is verse 8, Though you have not seen him, you love him.

Though you do not know him, you see him. You believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressable and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Peter's hope and Christ's hope is that we may be found a people who at the end of our lives will stand when God calls us to our resurrection, we'll be able to give what the passage says, praise and glory and honor to God, because he's done it all. He caused it, he's keeping it, and he's bringing it to completion. Let's pray. God in heaven, we thank you for this day. We praise you for the life you give us. This hope you pour out on us. I pray that you'd help every every woman, every child, every man in this room, receive the words that have been preached today, that there's a living hope we have through Christ, and that all can come to him, and that our life is not merely our life, but that our life is hidden with God in Christ, that Christ is our life. What we ask you now to bless us and strengthen us and help us to remember and be fortified by the resurrection of Christ that has passed and to look toward the resurrection of our bodies, our souls in the future to come.

We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Isaiah 53:12 - Pastor David Deutsch

Go ahead and have a seat this morning, church. As you do, please open your Bibles to Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53. It's fitting that this is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. For a number of us, this will be the last day that we reside together and worship together in this building that the Lord provided for us when we were wandering in the wilderness as a church, moving from backyard to backyard, and then eventually to the parking lot that the Lord gave to us. We've had the privilege of receiving the word in this building. We've had the privilege, some of you, of being baptized in this building. We've shared the Lord's Supper more than 100 times in this building, in this facility. We have praised, we have prayed, we have seen healing, we have seen answered prayers, we have, with tears, laid hands on people whom the Lord has moved off to other places and goodbye. We have welcomed family members gifted to us as well. This facility will always be a part of our story. It's more than a gymnasium. It was our cathedral for three years. As we walk out of the doors this morning, possibly never to return here again as the Lord moves us to our new facility beginning Good Friday.

Then on Sunday, a day of new beginnings for us as a church in a new facility. Let it not be lost on us the gift that this building has been for us, the gift that this facility has been to us as a people, the gift that Caesar has been to us as well as a church. He did not have to be here on Sundays. He chose to be here for three years so we could be here on Sundays. We are truly blessed this morning to be able to walk out of here into a new future, but with this particular facility as part of our story. Amen. We should be a grateful people that the Lord has never left us without a home as we move towards our five-year anniversary. So this morning, we are finishing up Isaiah 53, and we will be looking at verse 12. Hear the word of God. Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors.

That's the word of the Lord. Our God in heaven, we have come to see Jesus this morning, and him alone. On the beginning of Holy Week, we would have our eyes and our hearts and our faith and our doubts and our weariness and our sufferings and our prosperities all oriented to the Lamb slain, the Lamb raised, the Lion of Judah, Jesus Christ, the one who rode in on the donkey of peace 2,000 years ago, the true King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And we lend our voice to the Hosanas that were praised on that day. Hosana to the King this morning, the King whose glory it was to enter suffering before exaltation. And today, Lord, I pray that you would seal not simply this word to us, but the whole of Isaiah 53 and the tour and trek that it has been to follow Jesus in his own prophetic footsteps here. We pray this in Jesus' name and Amen. We have spent the past six weeks moving through the prophetic humiliation of Jesus Christ as it's recorded for us in Isaiah 52. In Isaiah 53. And this morning, we come to the final verse of Isaiah 53.

And as we come to this verse, we find something that is waiting for us that we have been waiting for, something that we have waited since the first sermon and the first verse in Isaiah 52:13. We finally enter into the other side of what Christ has accomplished. We enter the reward We enter the victory. We enter the exaltation. We get to behold before us today not our reward, but the reward that was on the other side for Jesus Christ, who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame. Well, what was the joy that was set before him? What was the reward that was waiting for him at the end of his suffering, at the end of his humiliation, at the end of his grief? What was on the other side? The other side is a reward, a reward promised to him by the Father that if he would endure the will of the Father in crushing him, there would be a reward waiting for him on the other side. We see this, if you look back to 52:13, Behold, my servant shall prosper. That's how this whole thing began. It began with the promise of victory, that the servant is going to prosper, and he will be high and lifted up, and he will be exaltet.

Church, Jesus wins. Amen. Chapter 52, verse 15. So he will sprinkle many nations, And Kings will shut their mouths because of him, for that which has not been told them, they will see, that which they have not heard, they will understand. Church, Jesus wins. Verse 10 of chapter 53. He will see his offspring. He will prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. Jesus will see the accomplishment of his suffering fulfilled. It is guaranteed. It is secured. What Jesus died for will be saved. There is no possibility of it not happening. He will see his seed. He will prosper in every way. He will prolong his day's church. Listen, Jesus wins. Look at verse 11. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied. Jesus is actually going to be satisfied with what's on the other side of his grief, on the other side of his piercing, on the other side of his crushing. Jesus is not going to get to the other side and go, And this is what I got? And I did it all for what? No, he will see it and he will be satisfied.

Church, Jesus wins. Jesus wins. And then we come to our verse, verse 12, Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the many, and he will divide the spoil with the strong. Jesus is victorious. Jesus wins. And here we are on the other side of the agony, the other side of the crushing, the shame, the despising, the rejection, the sorrow, the physical maarring, the affliction, the smiting, the piercing, the punishment, the oppression, the judgment, the grief, the silence, the solitude, the death, and Jesus wins. On the other side of all that is the exaltation and the victory and the reward of the Son, Jesus wins. This was what was waiting for him from the very beginning. This was what was before him always. This is what he was moving towards. This is what was pulling him through. The reward that would be waiting for him on the other side when he stepped out of the grave. What would be waiting for him was his reward. We ask ourselves, what is the reward? Was waiting for him? Well, it's in verse 12. Now, the Hebrew, as you have found out in this particular passage, is a little interesting.

Oftentimes, it's difficult to translate. But I'm going to be going with the translation that comes from a better use of the context in an agreement with the Hebrew scholar and one of the commentaries we were using by Alec Mottier. The first is this, the reward of Jesus according to Isaiah 53:12, is twofold. There's a twofold reward that is given to Jesus because of his willingness to suffer and to go through the grief. This is military language. This is conquest language. This is language of Jesus winning the war, Jesus winning the battle, and Jesus coming back with the spoils of war, and Jesus coming back with a reward because of what he has accomplished on the battlefield of Middle-earth. He has taken Middle-earth, and he has accomplished his redemption, and he has been given a reward by the Father. Notice the language here. Therefore, I, this is the Father speaking, Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the many. The translation that is better than divide him a portion with the many is this, I will allocate or a portion, or give, or reward him the many, you see. In other words, the reward of Jesus is not that he shares something with the many.

The reward of Jesus is that he gets the many. The many whom he has redeemed are his reward. Who is the reward that the Father gives to the Son? You. You, the church, the bride of Christ, you You are the many. I am the many. The one holy Catholic and apostolic church is the many. Why did Jesus go to the cross? He went to the cross so that he might receive on the other side of his suffering, his people, his bride, his temple, his church, the many that he accomplished the redemption for. You'll notice that this is a guarantee. It is not as though the Father says to the Son, Look, I send you to endure You're this grief and this suffering in the hopes that maybe you'll get the girl. I hope you do. No, the Father has already said to the Son, She's on the other side. If you go through this, what you are purchasing is her. You will have her. You will have the many because they are promised to you. Turn over John 6 with me. This is echoed in John 6 so powerfully that the reward of Jesus is the very people that he came for.

John 6, beginning in verse 37, look at the confidence of the suffering servant. The confidence of the suffering servant in John 6, beginning in verse Let's start in verse 37. All that the Father gives me, not might, not maybe, not I hope, all that the Father gives me will come to me. And whoever comes to me, I will never cast out, for I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of what he has given me, but raise it up on the last day, for this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. There is no possibility of Jesus losing. None. The Father has given to him a people, a temple, a bride, and Jesus has come to secure the redemption and the salvation in destruction destructibly of that bride. And he will have that bride, and he will have that many, and he will have that people because it is the Father's reward to him and whom Jesus came to get, he will lose none of them.

Church, listen. In the annals of eternity past, you are the reward that the Son is satisfied with. You are the reward that he despised the shame for. You are the reward that he went through the suffering for. Once the Father committed you to him, once the Father committed us to him, there is no way that Jesus would be without us. And because of what he accomplished for us, we are the reward that the Father has given to the Son. But that's not all. That's not all. It should be enough, right? It should be enough. We should be able for me to have preached the shortest sermon I've ever preached and just said, be done with it now. But poor Isaiah, he wrote more and I got to say more then. Go back to Isaiah 53. You see, there's more there. There's the second half of the verse, right? Jesus receives the spoils of war through the cross. And those spoils begin with you and me and the church. But Jesus is not a stingy brother. Jesus is not a stingy elder brother. He doesn't say, My reward is mine. It stays with me. No. Jesus is not only the receiver of the reward, Jesus also intends to share his reward with his bride, to share his reward with his siblings, with his brothers and sisters.

And that's what the second part of the reward for Jesus is, is that he gets to actually open up his reward and share it with us. Look at what the verse says. It says, Therefore, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong. That word strong should just be translated the many. It's translated the many everywhere else in this passage. It doesn't make anything contextually, except for going back to maybe the Kings before to change it. The whole passage so far has been about the many, the many, the many, the It's the same word. They're trying to do an interpretive move, the ESV is, but we don't have to do that because it's the many. If you look at before that, it's the many that come before that, and it's the many that come after that. Jesus is not deserving the dividing up of the spoil with just a few of the strong believers. Sorry, you weak-need people, ye out. Who qualifies to be among this only the strong. Well, here's what. We all qualify to be a part of the many. We all qualify to be a part of the many. And that's the better translation there.

It says, And he will divide the spoil with the many because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the rebels. Yet he bore the sin of many, and he makes intercession for the rebels. If you look back up to verse 10, it says, It was the will of the Lord to crush him when he makes his soul an offering for guilt. He shall see his offspring prolong his days. The will of the Lord will prosper in his hand, and out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see him be satisfied by his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, will make many. The whole context is the many that are there. And so what Jesus does, the suffering servant does, is not only does he receive the reward that is us, he also shares his reward with us, which means all that his death achieved, everything that his death achieved becomes ours. Everything that his death accomplished flows to us. It's not for him. He doesn't need the other end of his death. He doesn't need the salvation and the forgiveness and the sin bearing and the righteousness that we need.

He didn't do any of that for himself. That is not why Jesus suffered all of what we've been describing for the past six weeks. Because he just wanted to show us how much he loved us, so he just suffer with us and leave it there. The suffering of Christ accomplished for us a full and final resurrection, but not only that, a shared sharing with him in the very spoils of his victory. It's amazing. It's the salvation that we already know that we have that Christ accomplished for us. But I want to tell you it's a little bit more than that as well. It's a little bit more. It includes our salvation. But this language here that is military language of Christ actually coming before his people and handing out the spoils from his conquest. Here, John, here's some of my spoils. Here's some of my spoils. Kaylyn, here's some of my spoils. Teresa, here's some. And handing out the spoils of his victory to his people. Well, that's the language of Ephesians 4. Even though that's Psalm 68 is quoted there, turn to your Ephesians 4 with me. Jesus takes the captivity that he captured, which is us, and he shares the spoils with us as we are the spoils.

It's amazing. Ephesians 4. This is one of those great cryptic passages that I love to get in with my students at Beacon Hill. I'm just letting you know now I'm going to exercise an enormous amount of discipline here. Because if we started going, there'd be no coming back. Ephesians Chapter 4, beginning in verse 4. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, and one baptism The one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. But watch verse seven. Watch this. Here comes your spoils. Here comes the Lord Jesus giving you a part But grace was given to each one of us. There's a grace given to everyone in this room, a particular grace given to you, not given to anybody else. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. So Christ receives the gift, the reward, and he takes from that gift and reward, and he begins to grace, gift the spoils of that to all his people. Verse 8, Therefore it says, When he ascended on high...

You're going to see why we can't stay here. When he ascended on high, he led a host of captives. Watch this. He ascends, he leads captives, and then he gives gifts to men. He gives gifts to men. In saying he ascended, what does it mean that that he had also descended to the lower regions, the Earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things, and then he gave. Here is this little passage Right in the middle of Ephesians 4 that says that Jesus, who went and brought the spoil back, which were his people, turns around and out of the spoils of his people, grace gifts one of his people to be able to faithfully participate in his church and kingdom and world in a way that no one else can fill your shoes in doing that. You see. Think about it. You're the captured and you're the gifted. So he receives you as his reward. Then he gives some of his reward to you, and he graces you with a gift. He shares spoil with you. And then he says, Go use it.

Go steward it. It's amazing. It's incredible. That's how Jesus wins. Jesus wins not simply through the accomplishment of his redemption. He wins through the very lives of his people on the Earth, participating in the Kingdom come, the will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. That's how he does it, you see. That's how Jesus accomplishes his victory in history through the lives of his people who serve him faithfully with the grace that he's given to them. And so Jesus's victory, when we pray thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven, we are asking the Lord to put us in a place where we can participate in that with the gift that he's given to us from the spoils of his victory on the cross, you see. There's no one in this room. You We're like, Well, Mr. Deutz, I'm sure he left me out. No, he didn't. No, he didn't. Our problem is that we have a tendency to identify in our culture rewards with idolatry and rewards with celebrity. Rather than rewards with simple, unacknowledged, uncrowned faithfulness in everyday life that may not ever be recognized here, but will not be forgotten by the savior when he says to you on that day, 'well done, well done.

It doesn't have to be the big boom, people. Your name doesn't have to be across lights. Your bank accounts don't have to be full. But every cup of cold water that you give with your hands shaking in the name of Jesus is because of the spoil of the grace gift that he's given to you to be there in that moment, to offer that cup of cold water to that person. Jesus wins, but he wins in the upside down way. Well, we come to the recognition for why Jesus has the reward. Let's just look at these quickly. The word there in Hebrew, because, therefore I will divide my portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong. That word there because is, again, not powerful enough. Because. No, the Hebrew means in recognition of. So think of somebody getting a certain honor, a medal of honor. And so somebody getting a medal of honor and the person who's bestowing that medal says, in recognition of this service fulfilled, this reward. This is the Father saying to the Son, My Son, in recognition of these things you have done, I reward you with the people, and I reward you with the spoils that you will give to those people.

And he gives four points of recognition as to why the Son should be rewarded the way that he's rewarded. Look at them real quick. Number one, because he poured out his soul to death. This is something that Jesus did voluntarily. The accent here is notice on who does the pouring out. Look at the passage. Because he poured out his soul to death. Because he poured out his soul to death. There's nothing outside of Jesus that could have demanded what he did. It's his own free pouring out his soul all the way to death for you. That as far as the Father is concerned, is worthy of the reward on the other side of the death, which is you, which means he's not going to stay dead. Secondly, the second reason is, the Bible says, not only because he poured out his soul to death in recognition of pouring out your soul to death, but in recognition of the fact that he was numbered with the transgressors. He was numbered with the transgressors. The Hebrew says, He let himself be numbered with the transgressors. He let himself be numbered with the transgressors. Think about that for a moment.

Jesus is at home among the rebels. Jesus is at home among those who need to be called back to him. He lets himself be named with and numbered with the transgressors. And so according to Luke 22, Jesus says, I'm going to the cross around the corner here, and what you're going to see is I'm going to be numbered with the transgressors. That's in Luke 22. Jesus quotes this verse. It says, I'm about to be numbered with the transgressors. And then we get to Luke 23 and 24. What do we see? Jesus is actually numbered with the transgressors. He goes up on the Calvary, and he's in the middle cross. Jesus is in the cross in the middle, and he's numbered with the transgressors. And he has a rebel on one side and he has a rebel on the other side. Jesus is there. As people walk by him, they see no difference in their estimation between the rebels and Jesus. He's simply identifying with their total position as being the rebels that they are. Jesus is comfortable in that place. But in that very place from that middle cross where Jesus has on the one side of him a rebel and the other side of him a rebel.

Geographically from the cross, which is outside the city, on the one side of Calvary flanks Zion, Mount Zion, and on the other side, flanks Gehena. God. And so Jesus stretching out his arm to two sides, one side pointing towards Zion, the city of communion with God. And what will happen is that one of the criminals will himself that day become a part of Zion on the one side. The other side of Jesus's arm points towards Gehena, and the other criminal that day will take his place in the fires that quench. The whole thing is this drama unfolding for us as Jesus himself is numbered with the transgressors, and one of them is saved so that no may despair, and the other one is not saved so that none may presume. And what we have is this unfolding drama as Jesus is numbered with the transgressors. And what we find is that Jesus, even on the cross, brings a trophy home, snatched a trophy at the last minute, snatched a captive at the last minute. Jesus himself is actually enacting the salvation of grabbing a part of his reward while he's on the cross as he's dying today, you will be with me in paradise.

And so Jesus, this is what he's doing. Even while he's being numbered with the transgressors, he's receiving his reward on the cross. And not only that, he bore the sins of many. He made the exchange and the substitute for us. And lastly, he makes intercession for the transgressors. I think oftentimes with intercession, we try to move intercession towards something that Jesus did after he ascended. Like that's the ministry that he takes on in the ascension only. The language here is bigger than that. It won't allow for the intercession for the rebels to begin there after the ascension. It's a word that means a little bit more than just praying for. It means really to stand for the total, stand in for it. And what it means, it certainly includes the intercessory prayers of Jesus for his saints. But it works its way all the way back to the baptism of Jesus. When he stepped into the water and John said, Why are we baptizing in you. And Jesus says, Because I must fulfill all righteousness. And in the water, Jesus began to offer the total intercession of his entire life for us in a particular way.

It in which he gets into the water and takes our name to himself. You see, when we get baptized, we take his name. When he got baptized, he took ours. And in our name, he began to represent us in an official way that extends all the way to his present intercession right now, which means the whole of Christ's life is offered as an intercession on our behalf. So you don't have to worry about the glitches in your day and the glitches in your obedience. You don't have to worry about the ups and downs of your performance and the ups and downs of your faithfulness and the ups and downs of whether you had one of those days where you can exalt in your own righteousness, which you should never do. Had this one for you, Jesus. Not sure. Were you really dealing with your motives that day? Don't try. Don't try so hard to wear yourself out with a perfectionism you can't attain. The whole intercession on your behalf has been offered. And it's Jesus, and it's yours. And so as we bring Isaiah 53 to a close today, You are the reward. And Jesus shares his spoils with you in recognition of the self-offering of the Son on our behalf.

But there's more. And it's this, the spoils that Jesus offers to share with us, they remain with us every week because the spoils of victory are at this table. And so when you come to this table today and you look each other in the face and you pass the peace, you are looking into the eyes of the prize of Jesus in the face of others. And you are receiving the spoils of his victory from the cross in the bread and the wine, because we always need to be renewed that Jesus wins. Amen. Our God in heaven seal the word to us today, I pray in Jesus name. Amen..

Isaiah 53:10-11 - Pastor Jon Meenk

Good morning Soli. Would you remain standing as I read our passage for this morning? We are in Isaiah 53, if you remember.

And this morning we're going to be covering verses ten and eleven. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief. When his soul makes an offering for guilt. He shall see his offspring.

He shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul. He shall see and be satisfied by his knowledge. Shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.

This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Our father in heaven, thank you for your word, Lord Jesus, for gathering your church here today.

Holy Spirit, we are in need of you this morning, me as the speaker and all of us as the hearers of your word. As we hear this word this morning, would our hearts be lifted in the good news of what Christ has done for us? Would this seed take root in our hearts and in our lives and then pour out into the world around us of the good news of what you have done for us, Lord Jesus.

Lord, this morning, would this simple truth impact our lives in a real way? All for your glory. In Jesus name, amen. You may have a seat.

This is my first time behind this new pulpit, and it's so roomy. It's nice. Before I jump into it, can we just have a moment of camaraderie together? There's just some weeks where it is just an uphill battle the whole week. And I know all of you know what I'm talking about.

And so I counted even a victory right now that I made it to this moment. Right now, two weeks of not having my family here weighs on me. But the good news is, thank the Lord that we all made it here. Right? We're all here.

So now I invite you to loosen up, get comfortable in your seat, and let's just hear the good news of what the Lord has to offer us in his word. Amen. I'd like to take a moment to review and remind us of where we've been and where we are today. As we've been going through Isaiah 53, we've already had, as Pastor Jeremy was saying, I hope you've been blessed by it as we've been working our way towards the cross. But we've already had very thorough and beautiful preaching on these passages.

But if I could give a very broad summary of these passages just to get us a running start into what we're going to be studying today. And for my own organizational purposes and for my own mind. All of these start with the letter p. So if that helps you, then you and me together. Verses two through three describe the person of the Messiah.

That he wasn't born in royalty, that he wasn't the most handsome, that he wasn't the most popular. But it describes him having no form or majesty, no beauty, despised, rejected man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, and we esteemed him not. This was the person of the Messiah. And then four through six goes on to describe what you could say, the problem or the price to be paid. It says that he bore our grief, he carried our sorrows, was smitten by God, pierced for our transgressions, crust for our iniquities.

And it said, the Lord laid on him the iniquities of us all. So, having been shown the person and then seeing the problem or the price that is to be paid, we then learned last week of the posture, then of the messiah, of his mission. He was not a servant who would go kicking and screaming. He wasn't a servant who would be cursing the one who rained this punishment down on him. He didn't spit venomous insults at the crowd who falsely accused him, or the broken justice system that cowardly convicted him, or his father in heaven who sovereignly orchestrated the unfolding of all these events.

To the contrary of all of these, it says that he opened not his mouth. He was like a lamb to the slaughter. He was silent like a sheep before cheers. And again, saying that he did not open his mouth a second time and that there was no deceit in his mouth. So now we find ourselves in verse ten and eleven this morning, and this will spill over into verse twelve that gets covered next week.

But these passages today are a well in which all these other passages, like rivers, flow into. You're going to see these themes repeated again of the person of Christ and the price that needed to be paid, what the Messiah did for us. And so today, my goal is to unpack three main themes throughout this verse, and they're this. One, the cause of Christ's death. Two, the reason for Christ's death.

And three, the effects of.

You know, as we look at Christ's death, we may see a corrupt, hypocritical religious system whose elites, for their own gain, conspired to have Jesus killed. And we would be right in a sense. And then if we looked further, we could say that it was the cowardly Pilate who, seeking to please the crowd, was the one who sent Jesus to his death. And we'd be right partly. Or we could look bigger picture and think of Herod as the ruling authority that the buck stocks with him, and so that Herod is responsible for the death of the Messiah.

And we would be right partly. So. The truth is that in some capacity all these things are true, but they're severely incomplete. Verse ten, our opening verse, which is why I wanted to get a running start into it, because it's so shocking to read on its own. Verse ten gives us the answer of who is responsible for the death of Christ.

It's God the Father himself, who crushes the messiah, you know, in eternity's past, in perfect unity between God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and perfect love and perfect holiness and perfect justice, God sovereignly ordained the crushing of Christ to accomplish his will, so we can trace Christ's death to God the Father. Spurgeon says it beautifully like this. He says, he who looks through the eyes of faith traces Christ's death not back to roman cruelty or jewish malice. He sees the sovereign will of God fulfilled by men who are the guilty but ignorant instruments of its accomplishment. He who looks through eyes of faith traces Christ's death not back to roman cruelty or jewish malice.

He sees the sovereign will of God fulfilled by men who are the guilty but ignorant instruments of its accomplishment. So it's God who crushed the Messiah. But in hearing this, I want to warn us and keep us from a false thinking that I think is rather prevalent. And that is that Jesus is a loving and patient God who is doing everything he can to keep at bay God the father, who is angry and short tempered and full of cruelty. And so let me remind you that Christ did not die to make God loving.

Christ died because God is loving.

And I'm going to repeat that too, because I want you to hold on to it when your mind starts to think this flawed thinking. Christ did not die to make God loving. Christ died because God is loving towards you, towards me, because of that love that God had for you. He gave his only son, knowing that he would be pouring out his wrath on his innocent and blameless son because of our sin, because of our debt that we owed. Romans five eight reminds us of this fact when it says, but God showed his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Jesus was not on a mission to get God to love us, but in eternity's past. God loved you, and at great cost to himself, gave so that you could be redeemed. The beginning of this whole rescue mission is God in perfect unity with himself, loving you. You were on his mind. It's a pretty cool thought to think.

And this leads me to my second point, that there was a reason for Christ's death. I've just made the case for you. And scripture declares this to be true, that God is loving. But we must also remember that God is just. And though his heart is turned towards his people, his justice will not allow him to simply overlook your sins and overlook my sins because in doing so, he would be an unjust God.

In addition to this, his holiness cannot be violated by sin. So it's also flawed thinking for us to think that we can have a loving God who is not just and who is not holy. Because it's in his justice and in his holiness that we find his love. A God who is loving must be just. A God who is loving must be holy.

And so we find ourselves here then, with this dilemma, right? We've sinned against a perfect and holy God. And because he is just, his wrath needs to be poured out on us.

The good news that this is the reason for Christ's death. The passage says that his soul makes an offering for guilt. The guilt that you and I carry because of our sin came with the punishment of death.

But because of God's love for you, Christ came as an offering for the guilt that you and I carry. And he took your punishment. And he took my punishment upon himself. Do you get that? It's things we know, but it's things that we need to hear, Christian.

We must realize that if God had not crushed the messiah, if God had not brought him to grief, it would have been you and I that he crushed. It would have been you and I that he brought to grief.

There's a great hope that we have knowing that Jesus took that for us. Hell consists of God hiding his face from sinners. And if God had not hidden his face from Christ, Christian, he would have had to hid his face from you and I. But because Christ was crushed, he does not hide his face from you and I. This is the great exchange.

This is how God is both just and the justifier of sinners. The sinless son became sin, just as you heard Pastor Jeremy say this morning, every sin of your past, every sin of your today, and every sin of all of your tomorrows, and every sin of my past, and every sin of my today, and every sin of all my tomorrows, and every sin of all the saints who have gone before us, before us of their past, their todays, and their tomorrows, all the sins of those who had placed their faith in Christ were laid upon our savior. And God saw this mountain, this unimaginable mountain of atrocities, of sins against him.

And he took his cup of wrath, and he filled that cup with sorrow, with grief, with anguish of the punishment of sin against a holy God. And he filled that cup of unimaginable wrath to the brim. And he hands this cup to Christ. And our savior doesn't simply wet his lips with this cup. He doesn't simply simply take a sip or drink lightly, but our savior drinks this cup dry.

Every punishment that was owed to you and to me, every one of them, I can't say that enough. Every one of them Christ took upon himself. And he drank that cup, that bitter cup, for you and for me. This is the reason for Christ's death. He died, Christian.

He died so that you and I could live. And this then leads me to my third point. The effects then of Christ's death.

To the reader reading this or hearing this, this can be lost in us as we read through this and we know the end of the story. As the readers reading through this, they have just seen the Messiah crushed. So it's no small statement then to say right after that, he shall see his offspring, because a dead man does not see anything. So the fact that he sees is declaring something to us, that there's life. But it says even more, something even more profound.

The language here is really specific. It doesn't say that he will see his disciples, though that's true. It doesn't say that he will see his followers, though that's true. It doesn't say that he will see those who love him, though that's true. It says something very specific here.

It says that he will see his offspring, or maybe the version you have says that he will see his seed. The death of Christ has produced life, and this is the sorrow and the joy that we find at the cross, right? The sorrow, because we come face to face with the reality of what Christ had to go through on our behalf.

He didn't suffer because of what he did, but he took my wretchedness.

And so I see that. And it fills me with sorrow that he had to take that. But then it fills me with joy, and it fills us with joy, right? Because out of that, death springs new life, a world that was trapped under the weight of sin, under the weight of condemnation. Now, through the death of Christ is springing up with new life as the Holy Spirit opens the eyes and softens the hearts of all those who would believe in Christ, all those who the father promised to the Son.

We were once children of Adam, and now, through the death of Christ, we enter into new life. And now we're children born of Christ, the new and better Adam. Or, as one commentator says, we stray as sheep. We return as children.

The passage goes on to say that he shall prolong his days. And we can see this unfolding in two ways. One, the language in here doesn't speak of resurrection, but as I just walked through, we're seeing the crushing of the messiah, and then we're seeing life, and so he shall prolong his days. We see that Christ is to live and never die again. But then we also see this unfolding in a second way, in that Christ now lives through the body, the church.

Though the church may be pressed upon, though the church may be persecuted, though the church may find itself in all kinds of trials and tribulations and hard times, the Bible proclaims and history testifies that the church will endure. And that's great news. There's a story that Spurgeon says that I just find it really beautiful, so I'm going to read it to you. That depicts this enduring of the church. Spurgeon says, standing in the coliseum at Rome, I could not, as I looked around on the ruins of the vast house of sin, but praise God that the church of God existed.

Though the colosseum is in ruins, anyone standing there, when the thousands upon thousands gloated their eyes with the sufferings of Christians, would have said, christianity will die out. But the coliseum, so firmly built, will stand to the end of time. But lo, the coliseum is a ruin, and the church of God, more firm, more strong, more glorious than ever.

Then, as we continue through this last line of verse ten and into verse eleven, we see the prospering of God's will through this suffering servant, the messiah, Jesus Christ. And this is the gospel according to God. The plan that was set in eternity's past will be accomplished by the servant of God, who is Jesus Christ our Lord.

He will bear their anguish, it says. He will bear their iniquities, and in doing so, he will make many to be accounted as righteous. We go through this every Sunday morning, rehearse this every Sunday morning together as we confess our sins. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, not because he's an unjust God who then decides, I'm going to overlook it. But he points us to Christ, who went before us and who drank of that cup, who took that wrath who was crushed by God the Father on our account.

The will of the Father will be accomplished through his servant. And so we have confidence as we see the life of Christ, as we place our faith in Christ, that all that the Father wills will be accomplished. It's not a chance that we sit back and hope and cross our fingers that it's going to play out the way he says. But we can be assured of this more than anything, we can be assured of in our lives. That the will of the Father will be accomplished is because the way that he is accomplishing that is through God the Son.

Friends, this morning, as I say all these things, my own mind struggles with the fact that these are all things that I know you all have heard many, many times. And so my own flawed thinking as I was studying and prepping for this message, was I wanted to find a nice treasure that you had never discovered before in this passage. I wanted to find a nugget that was really cool. I wanted to find a hook that maybe would stick with you throughout the week, some poetic twist or whatever it may be. And those are all great things.

But I'm thankful this morning that the bar of success at this pulpit is not those things.

And I'm thankful that it's a simple gospel and a simple truth that is proclaimed to us. And the reality is we just need to hear it over and over and over again, because we need to realize how feeble we are and how forgetful we are.

It's these simple truths that I can easily overlook, and as I prep a message, think aren't enough somehow.

But I thank God, as I just said, that it's these simple truths that he gives us. And so I relish in the fact that as my sermon comes to a close, that it's not any trick of communication that I have that would be impactful in your lives, but it's that the word of God was open and read to you today, and that from the word of God, life is being poured into you, and our minds are being re narrated into thinking correctly and how the world really works and who God is.

And then I joyfully lean very heavily on the fact that here at Soli, the climax of our service is not the sermon, and it never has been the sermon. And so I gladly say and point to the climax and the high point of our sermon, which is the table.

And then I think, likewise, so grateful that the Lord knows how feeble we are, and he uses very, very simple things to communicate what he has done for us in bread and in wine. And so today, Christian, I point you today to the table that you are now welcome to. Not because you had the week that earned you this place. None of us did. None of us did.

But I now appoint you this table that you're welcome to because of what Christ has done for us. And that bitter cup of wrath that he drank now allows you and I to drink of this cup of blessing. And so let this simple truth of the gospel that I pray I was faithful to this morning. And let these simple bread and simple wine declare to you the profound truth of what God has done for us. Amen.

Let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you for reminding me of my feebleness, my short sightedness, Lord, because it's in my weakness, taking my eyes off myself. But, Lord, we just see how great you are, and we see your magnitude, Lord Jesus, as we continue to make our way towards the cross, may you be continually working in our hearts, reminding us again of the truth that we rehearse every year at this time of a savior that went before us, who stood in our place, who drank of this cup of wrath so that we could stand as righteous before a holy God, that we could be welcome to the table of our king. Lord, seal this upon our hearts. We pray for your glory, Jesus name.

Amen.

Isaiah 53:4-6 - Pastor David Deutsch

As you remain standing solely, please open your bibles to Isaiah, chapter 53. As this is the passage that we are preaching through during the Paschal season this year. Isaiah, chapter 53. And this morning we will be in verses four through six. Isaiah, chapter 53.

Beginning in verse four. Hear the word of God. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds we are healed. All we, like. Sheep, have gone astray.

We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. That is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.

Our God in heaven. As we come to these verses today. We pray that you would bring them out of scripture and into the souls of your people. That your people would open their hearts and their ears. That your spirit would be at work among us today to bring to us this very prophecy of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That you, as our God, would reveal the arm of the Lord to us. And that we would not see with veiled or with blind eyes, but that we would see with new eyes who it is here and what it is that he is doing and who it is that he is doing it for. And that we would be lost in wonder, love and awe. And come to trust this one with everything who bore everything for us. And so today we pray that you would exalt Christ and that you would lead us to the foot of the cross.

And that you would not allow us to be ashamed to follow a suffering servant. In Jesus name we pray, and amen. We were looking for the arm of the Lord. We're looking for the arm of the Lord that is going to give us chapter 52 and verse 13. Behold, my servant shall prosper.

And he will be high and lifted up and will be exalted. That is the arm that we are looking for. The successful arm, the prosperous arm, the high arm, the lifted up arm, the exalted arm, the arm that will come and crush our enemies and will raise us up with him. That is the arm that we were looking for. But what we found was a suffering servant.

We found a suffering servant. And with our own faulty human judgment, with our own misled logic, and with our own veiled, blind eyes, we could not see the arm of the Lord in this one. What we saw was that he has no former majesty, that we should look at him. No beauty that we should desire him. What we found when our eyes were darkened is that he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief as one from whom men hid their faces.

And he was despised, and we did not esteem him. We looked at him and we saw nothing. We appraised nothing in him at all. Certainly this cannot be the arm of the Lord. But then the veil was lifted.

The veil was lifted, and we were given new eyes to see. And with these new eyes that came with a divine revelation, we came to see that the arm of the Lord is actually this one, this suffering servant here, the one who is put before us here in Isaiah 53 and the end of Isaiah 52. This is Yahweh himself. This is the arm of the Lord. He is the suffering servant.

And that the victory of chapter 52, verse 13, will be accomplished by this one. It will be, but it will be accomplished in a way that we could not see with our old eyes, and will be accomplished only in a way that we can see with our new eyes. And that is through a seeming defeat. Through what appears to be a defeat, an actual victory is accomplished. And so, as we move into verses four, five and six, we move into these verses, and these are what new eyes see.

Last week we saw what old eyes see. And this week we now see what new eyes see. Look with me at verse four. The old eyes saw verse four b, the end. Yet we esteemed him, stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.

That's what we saw. We saw this suffering servant who was suffering for his own sake. We saw this suffering servant who was undergoing the smiting he was undergoing because there was something wrong with him. God had something against him. Yahweh had something against him.

He was being punished for his own something. But now with new eyes, we see that something completely different is happening. With new eyes we see the beginning of verse four, and we recognize this. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. You see, with new eyes, we see this servant not as suffering, because there's something in him that deserves suffering, but rather an exchange has taken place.

An exchange has taken place, and it's unexpected. That word surely there, the first word in the Hebrew surely means whoa, whoa. This is not what we're expecting. This is not what we were looking for. This is a surprise to us.

Coming out of the appraisal of this suffering servant that we saw last week. This completely catches us off guard. This is unexpectedly amazing news that this one is not being smitten by God because of something in him that's deserved, but rather an exchange has taken place. And look at this exchange. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

You see, the exchange. It's him for us. It's him for us. And so out of love, this one comes, and he comes voluntarily. There's no compulsion on him outside of himself.

He comes freely. He comes willingly. He comes voluntarily. And he steps into the very wasteland that our sin has made, the wasteland of grief, the wasteland of sorrow, the wasteland of illness, the wasteland of pain. And this one, this suffering servant, steps into this very wasteland and he identifies himself with the dehumanizing effects and consequences of the howling waste that he steps into.

You see, he has taken that which was ours and he has owned it. He has taken that which was rightfully belonged to us and should have stayed upon us. He has taken that which we should have carried. He has taken that which we should have shouldered. He has taken that which should have worn us to the ground.

He has taken that which should have ground us to dust. And the Bible says he has borne it and he has carried it. Those hebrew words are the words of taking something and lifting it up and throwing it on your shoulders and burying it. He has entered into the wasteland and he has taken the grief and the sorrow that belongs to us and he has lifted it off of us, and he has lifted it on to himself. And he is now the one who is shouldering.

I want you to notice where this starts. This is very, very interesting. I have this conversation with students a lot. Like, why do you think daily bread comes before the confession of sin in your bibles?

Right? Why does the material come before the spiritual in the Lord's prayer? It's hard to confess sin when you're hungry. It's hard to do spiritual business when your physical needs are really struggling. There's an interesting order there.

This is the same order here. He's not starting with sin and iniquity yet. He's starting with the consequences of it. He's starting with the place where it messes with our lives. You see?

You see what kind of savior you have, right? What kind of savior you have? How many times have you heard and you've told your children this? Well, I forgive you, but the consequences will ripple for years, right? And we're going to remind you annually of the consequences, even though we've truly forgiven you of the sin, right?

We're going to press that on you. And I'm not saying there's not consequences for that. But what we see in the passage before us is that Jesus, the messiah, who's going to come, the first thing we're told that he enters into is the consequences and the conditions and the wasteland that our sin has caused. He meets those things first in his life, and then he will meet the sin and iniquity later on Good Friday. You see, we oftentimes think that he only deals with the sin, and that's all he deals with.

But he wouldn't be able to be, he would not be able to be the high priest who can sympathize with your weaknesses if he hadn't also borne your griefs and your sorrows and the conditions of sinfulness in the world that he met and the consequences of sin in the world that he met. And so we have to recognize, that's why Jesus was born a baby, and that's why he was on the run from the beginning of his life. And that's why he underwent what we heard David read this morning from the scriptures, the beating and the mocking and all of that. Why? Because he came not only to save us from sin.

He came to be our suffering servant and enter into the very wasteland and everything that sin causes, even in the world, even the stuff that self inflictedly works back on us that we deserve, he didn't keep it at arm's length. You see, no one can read the story of Jesus in the gospels and think that his suffering began on good Friday. And think that his grief began in Gethsemane. And think that his sorrows began on Thursday night when he was washing the disciples'feet. He is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, the totality of his life.

And so he stoops and he loads onto his shoulders the consequences and the conditions of the wasteland that we caused. And he enters fully into our lostness. And he experiences it without sin. So he experiences it in a way that we don't, you see, because eventually the griefs and sorrows that we experience because of sin in the world eventually meet with the sinfulness in us. And there's this wicked harmony.

But in Jesus there's no wicked harmony, because the griefs and sorrows and the conditions of sin, when they come to be met on him and on his shoulders, and when they come against him, they find one who shouldn't be burying those because he's without sin. And so it presses on him even more, because he sees and feels the conditions of our grief and our sorrows from a place that we never have, you see? But he takes them anyways because of his love for us. It's amazing to consider he carried everything that could, should and needed to be carried. He left nothing behind.

He left nothing on the ground. And ours is self inflicted carrying because we deserve it. His is freely chosen carrying because he loves you, you see? And so when you are grieving, he is carrying that grief with you. When you are sorrowing, he is carrying that sorrow with you.

When you are in pain and illness, he is carrying these things with you. He is not aloof from you in it. It's amazing to consider the love that this one has for us, that he would not keep himself at arm's length from the things that we actually deserve. And that means when we are going through them, when we are going through the sorrows and the griefs and the brokenness that is our fault, he doesn't say, I'm just going to be waiting at the other end for you. I'll be waiting in the light and at the end of the line.

No, what he says is, I'll not only carry your griefs, I'll only carry your sorrows. I will carry you. I will carry you through those times. It's amazing. But he doesn't stop there because these are the conditions, right?

These are the conditions that have entered into the world because of sin. But we need more than the conditions dealt with. We need more than the conditions handled. We need the problem itself handled. We need the problem itself dealt with.

We need what caused the conditions. Okay. And so what is it that caused these things? Well, look at verse five with me. Not only is he the suffering servant whose shoulders.

These are all S's. Today, a rare moment for me. He is also the suffering servant who is our substitute. The suffering servant who is our substitute. Look at verse five.

But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds, we are healed. You see, Jesus doesn't just stop at the conditions.

He goes deeper. He deals with our actual transgressions, our actual iniquities, our actual punishment and our actual wounds. He deals with them all. It's amazing to consider.

We don't like to use the sin terminology in our day, right? We like to use more psychological terminology in our day. We don't like to talk about sin and transgression and iniquity, the biblical language. We like to talk about brokenness and weakness. There's a place for those terms.

But if those terms become a replacement for the biblical language of sin, I need to be saved more from just being a broken dude. I'm a sinner all the way down, and I got to be saved totally and completely from all of my sinfulness and all of my actual sins. Right? Yeah. Thank you.

But here's the deal. We also live in a day where we don't own our sins, where we don't confess our sins. We're still repeating the garden. The woman you gave to me, she made me do it. Well, didn't you make that serpent God?

I mean, we've been doing this from the. You'd think after thousands and thousands of years we'd wake up and realize that shifting the blame never has worked. And it won't work. You can't be forgiven of a sin that's not yours.

Well, lord, I think I did wrong. He doesn't forgive, thinks you did wrongs. He forgives the actual wrongs that you actually did do. So just deal with it, right, and call it what it is. He was pierced for our transgressions.

You are a transgressor. What does that mean? It means you look at the line and you walk over it. That's what transgression is. All right?

You know where the line is? This is not like a sin of weakness. This is a sin of. I saw the line and I walked over the line, and I'm doing it because I want to right now. Transgression is willful disobedience.

I wanted to do it and I did it, and I crossed the line. Iniquity is perversion. It's twistedness. It is both the fount from which the ugly comes, and it is the ugly when it comes, okay? It's twisted and bent acts.

It's taking the beauty of the marriage bed and turning it into fornication and homosexuality and calling that love. It's twisting and perverting good things into shapes and sizes they were never meant to be in. And we rate these things and we think that certain people can't be saved of certain transgressions. We think that certain people can't be saved of certain iniquities. But this is not what the Bible says.

It says, jesus came, the messiah is going to come, the suffering servant's going to come, and he's actually going to deal with the transgressions and the iniquities because he's actually going to take the punishment for it. He's going to take the chastisement for it, and he's going to bear the wounds from it again. We're back into that wasteland again. He's actually going to substitute himself for the punishment that your transgressions and iniquities deserved. And he's going to bear the wounds that came against your sins and came against your transgressions as you made your way through a world of thorns.

That's why they're on his head.

The thorns that scratched your arm were put on his head. The thorn that was promised to Adam in the garden because of your rebellion. Thorns. The last Adam made that his crown because he's not ashamed to redeem all of you and everything about you and everything that you're unwilling to acknowledge and everything that you're unwilling to own. He was willing to go all the way.

You see? And there's this substitution. Look at the way the verse breaks down. Verse five. He for R.

He was for r upon him, us, his. We are over and over and over and over again. In that verse, the suffering servant is substituted for us. He stepped in for us, he for us. He for us, upon him, for us.

Everything that should have come our way, everything that was coming our way, was redirected onto him. You see, John Milton in a poem that he wrote called, shall grace not find means? Just think about that for a second. I thought of you, Nate, this morning when I read this. Shall grace not have means?

Shall grace just be closed up somewhere and left to go nowhere, have no way to get to us? Shall Grace have no means? Can you imagine that? Yeah, God's got all grace, but it's stuffed in that closet over there. There's no getting it out.

No. So what Milton does is he takes us back into a fictitious conversation between the persons of the Trinity, and he says this. This is the son asking the father this, Father, thy word is past. Man shall find grace and shall Grace not find means. You have the grace for these people, but how are we going to get it to them?

Here's what the son says. Behold me, then, father. Behold me. Me for them. Life for life I offer on me.

Let thine anger fall on account of man. Me I will leave here for his sake. How does grace get to us? Through him. Through him, you see?

Through the exchange, through the substitute. And there's something beautiful that happens here. There's a play on words that happens here that's so powerful if you look at that word. But he was pierced for our transgressions. This arm of the Lord was pierced for our transgressions.

Turn your Bible page back, one or scroll or whatever it is you're doing to chapter 51.

I want you to see how beautiful this is. In chapter 51, the arm of the Lord also does some piercing. This is so good. I just love the way the Bible has these plays on words, these little poetic moves that it does. So in chapter 51, verse nine, we meet the arm of the Lord.

And it's doing some piercing, but look at what it does. 51 nine. Awake. Awake. Put on strength, o arm of the Lord.

Awake as in the days of old, generations of long ago. Now watch this. Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces? Who pierced the dragon? Here's the arm of the Lord in all of its strength, piercing the dragon in his strength.

And now here is the arm of the Lord being pierced for you, the dragon. For the dragon that you became, for the dragon that you are in yourself. It's incredible. It's amazing to consider this. And the reason for this, of course, verse five is what drove him there.

He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. When we sing that song, it was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished. That's all truth. That's all coming right out of this right here.

He went there not because they were his transgressions and not because they were his sins, but he went there because of ours. He went there on behalf of our transgressions, which means he dealt with our sin in all of its totality. You see, there's no debt left unpaid here. There's no fault left uncovered here. The totality of the liability that is yours because of transgressions and sin was transferred to him.

Okay, let me say that again. The totality of the liability that exists because of your transgressions and sin was transferred to him. Turn back to the book of Leviticus for a moment. There's this incredible scene in the book of Leviticus. Leviticus, chapter 16.

In Leviticus, chapter 16, we see this transfer take place, this exchange take place, this substitute take place. And as I was in the midst of studying this, I had a chance to share this with some of my students at Beacon Hill this week. The idea of why it is that Christ had to be crucified outside the city. Outside the city. Because he's the scapegoat.

But I want you to watch this transference. And instead of your imagination, listen, instead of your imagination seeing a priest transferring the sins to a goat, I want you to see the fulfillment of this. And see the father transferring your sins to the son, because that's what's happening. Okay? Look at verse.

Leviticus, chapter 16, beginning in verse 20. And when he has made an offer, and when he has made an end of atoning for the holy place and the tent of meeting in the altar, he shall present the live goat, and Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat. So both his hands go the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel. Notice this. The language is iniquity and transgression, same as our passage.

He lays his, puts his hand on the head of the goat, and he confesses over it all the iniquities, the twisted and bent acts of Israel and all of their transgressions, their willful walkovers, all their sins, and he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. Why, the goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall go off into the wilderness. You see, that's what is happening here. Your sins are going on this substitute so it can go out, away from you into an exilic condition. It's amazing, the substitution that's taking place.

But what do we get from this? What does a substitute in the exchange get us for this? We'll look at verse five. There are two things that come to us through this. As he is pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, takes our chastisement and punishment, bears our wounds.

The two things that we must have are dealt with. Three things. Our desperate, sinful state, our alienation from God and our broken personhood are all answered in those words, peace and healing. You see, what God's purpose is here is not just to wound the sun. It's not just to punish sin in the sun.

It's to bring back Shalom to a people who vandalize their own shalom. You ever think about that? Like, honey, come here. Somebody spray painted graffiti all over our house. Well, who did it?

I did.

We vandalized our own shalom. The reason why we don't have Shalom is because we vandalized it, not because somebody else did. I can't point to somebody else. Well, that gang over there did. No, I did it.

I vandalized my own shalom. You vandalized your own shalom? Daddy. Adam vandalized it all for us. You see, but this one has come to bring it back to us.

You see? And Shalom is not simply a ceasefire. And this is important, and I'm running out of time when I'm going to do my best to get through this. Shalom is not only a ceasefire, but it's also things working the way they should, everything lining up the way that it should. And so the restoration of Shalom begins now with the advance of the new creation that comes.

And it will be there waiting for us fully and finally at the resurrection, when all things are shalom once again. The healing of our personhood begins now by being a new creation in Christ. But that healing will take place fully and finally at the day of resurrection as well. What we gave up, Jesus went and got them back for us. And when he got them back for us, he not only went to go those things back for us, he went to get us back.

And that brings us to verse six, the straying sheep. He not only got healing and shalom for us, he went and got the sheep that needed that. Verse six, all, we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Notice how that's bookended the first two words of verse six, all we.

Last two words of verse six, us all. There is something here that's true of all, but there's also something here that's true of each one. Look at the middle of the verse. We have turned everyone, each one to his own way. So what's being said of verse six about straying sheep is true of all and is true of each one.

And in the Hebrew, there's a play on words here, the play on words between gone astray and turned. In the Hebrew, you're meant to feel this going away. Tainu paninu. Tainu paninu. Tainu paninu.

It's meant to feel the poetry as we walk away from God and as we turn to our own way. Listen, church, it's not just that we walked away from God, it's that we actually, in walking away from God, each found our own way to be stupid.

Each one turned away and we all walked away. So guess what? If you want to see a variety of sinful dumbness, just go watch, people. That's all you got to do. Watch the church, watch me.

I bring my own to the table. You see, long before the youth were saying, you do you, Isaiah was saying, you do you, because that's what the each one is who turns to what his own way, right? Everyone goes his own way. You are doing you, and I am doing me. And we are doing we.

And all we're doing is iniquity according to the passage. And I didn't mean that that to rhyme, but it did. So let that poetic moment remain in history forever. But that's what it says. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

You doing you is iniquity. Us doing us is iniquity. Me doing me is iniquity. When we walk away from God and we turn to our own way. But while we were doing that, listen.

While we were walking away doing our own way, the Lord was doing something. The Lord was actually taking that iniquity. And he was laying it on his son.

And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. You see, verse four b is not true. We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. We thought God did it to him because of him. That's a half truth.

God did do it to him, but not because of him, but because of our iniquity. That's why the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all. Which means, listen. Every sin of every sinner was shot like an arrow into the heart of Jesus.

God gathered every sin from north, south, east and west. God gathered every sin from past, present and future. And God guided. Listen. God guided.

The Father guided all the sins of all of his people, the totality of them. He guided them to a meeting place. And all the sins of all the people who would belong to the suffering servant. All of those sins were guided. And they met on him.

And when they met on Jesus, the sun went out.

And the sun went out because the sun could not, creation could not bear to look at what its creator was facing. And your sin and your transgression and your iniquity went into the dark on Good Friday.

And it stayed there. It never came out into the light again. It stayed and was swallowed up in that darkness by this servant. And what came out was a resurrected Jesus on the Lord's day, having divested and answered and absorbed all the sins of all of his people in the loving plan of the Father. So because your sin was left in that darkness, it can never be left on you or on me again.

Amen. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for your word. Thank you for this passage. Thank you for being our suffering servant. In Jesus name we pray.

Amen.

Isaiah 53:1-3 - Pastor David Deutsch

Good morning. Soli open your bibles to Isaiah, chapter 53. We are in the middle of our Linton Pascal series. In Isaiah, chapter 53, Pastor John looked at the last three verses of chapter 52, last Lord's day. And we will this morning take up the first three verses of Isaiah, chapter 53, and hear the word of God who has believed what he has heard from us. And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not. That's the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Our God in heaven, we come to you on this Lord's day, and we ask that you will show us the arm of the Lord, that you will give us eyes to see what those who are looking here cannot see.

The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The arm of the Lord and the suffering, humiliated servant. And I pray, as you open our eyes and as we behold the glory of the Lord and the suffering servant, that we would together be changed from one degree of glory to another, even as from the Lord the spirit, and that we would be willing to embrace the humiliation of the suffering servant and live lives unashamed of the scandal. In Jesus name we pray and amen. We want the arm of the Lord. We all want the strong arm of the Lord. And as we look back at the previous chapters before Isaiah 53, we see that we've been building towards the arm of the Lord. Our expectations are rising with respect to God showing his strong arm. Look at back at chapter 52 and verses nine and ten. Chapter 52, verse nine says, break forth into singing, you waste places of Jerusalem. For the Lord has comforted his people. He has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all nations. And all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

We're on tiptoe for God to show his arm and to bring salvation, and that all the nations of the earth would look and would come to this salvation. If we back up to chapter 51 and look at verses nine through eleven. Awake. Awake. Put on strength, o arm of the Lord. Awake. As in the days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces and who pierced the dragon? Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made the depths of the sea away for the redeemed to pass over. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy upon their heads, they shall obtain gladness, and joy and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. The arm of the Lord is going to come, and it's going to deal with his enemies with his strength. And the ransomed of the Lord will flee into Zion, and sorrow will go, and joy will come. The arm of the Lord. Well, what might that arm look like if it was a man? Well, we get an idea of what we might think that arm would look like if it was a man.

In one Samuel, chapter 16, verse 18. Doesn't the first David look like the arm of the Lord? One Samuel 1618, one of the young men answered, behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence. And the Lord is with him. If David walked in a room, you'd all look more than once. You'd all look twice. He was a handsome man of good presence, and he commanded the moment around him. Is that what the arm of the Lord looks like? Is that what the arm of the Lord looks like? See, we want the arm of the Lord to look like David. We want the arm of the Lord to look like what we've seen in the previous chapters here. We want the arm of the Lord to look like our technology and our techniques and our image and our AI and our scientism and our wealth and our efficiency. This is our expectation. We want the exaltation. We want it immediate. We want the victory decisive, and we want it now. But the question is, do we actually have space for the arm of the Lord in the Lord's way?

Because the Lord's way is not our way. The Lord's way is not the way of the first David, that strapping man. The Lord's way is the way of humiliation. The Lord's way is the way of weakness. The Lord's way is a way that is almost indescribable. We ransack the language that God gives us to come up with words to describe the way that we judge and see the arm of the Lord according to our human standards and the depth of the humiliation that the arm of the Lord went into in order to take our humiliation upon himself. What do we actually get when we say that we want the arm of the Lord. Well, before God, it is one thing, verse two, for he grew up before him like a young plant. Before God, he is full of promise. Before God, he is full of the future. Because Jesus, the entire life of the suffering servant is circumscribed quorum dale before the face of God. He grows up before him in a certain way. Because God can see what the humiliation means, and he can see the strength and weakness, and he can see the pathway to exaltation goes through a certain valley in order to get there.

So God can see with his own eyes what human eyes and human judgment cannot see. He is growing up before him like a tender shoot. But when we look at it, when we look at the suffering servant, when we look at him, we do not see what God himself sees. We are looking at the outside like we always do. We are making judgments in the immediate, like we always do. We are assessing things according to our standards, human standards and human judgment, like we always do. And we do not see things the way the father does. We do not see, in the humiliation of the servant, the way to victory and success and exaltation and salvation. We think that the servant is humiliated because there's something wrong with him, you see, rather than seeing that he's entered into our situation as deep as anyone can in order to reverse it and redeem it from the inside out, what do we see? Well, we see not a good beginning. Like a root out of dry ground. As far as we're concerned, this root has no future. This root has no shot. What God sees as a tender plant, we see as parched soil.

We see a root that's not going to be able to ultimately bear fruit, a root that's not ultimately going to be able to be successful because the soil is dry, the ground is parched. It is without water. This one is not being groomed by royalty. This one comes in the unpromising, impressive beginning of a lowly condition. You see good for nothing. Nazareth, we hear unseen, ordinary, nomadic. The evaluation of the suffering servant in Matthew 13 is just this. Is this not the carpenter's son? What's so special about him? He comes not from the throne, not from the priesthood, not from the prophetic. He comes from Nazareth. His father is a carpenter. This is our judgment. His beginning is the anticipation of his end. You see, it's just dirt without water. That's all it is. Is this not the carpenter's son? Is this the arm of the Lord? Is this the arm of the Lord? Certainly not here. Well, not only does he not have a very good beginning. It doesn't really bode well for him as he grows up either. Verse two says he had no form or majesty, that we should look at him.

Judging by human standards, the way that we judge things by the outside, Jesus does not catch our attention. The servant has nothing compelling about him. There's no halo about his head, some glory raining off his face, that if you went by, you would have went woo. I felt a little divine for a moment. No, he has no form, no majesty that we would look at him. Nothing attractive, nothing wooing, nothing special, nothing to admire, nothing to imitate. As a matter of fact, you wouldn't even look at him. You certainly wouldn't give him a second look. But he's kind of like you don't even give him a first look. Because as you judge according to the outside, as you judge according to human standards, what you see is simply unimpressive. It's not even worthy of looking at, let alone twice, right? Sometimes you look at something, you go, whoa. But not here. Not according to the way we judge things. The arm of the Lord here, well, he has no man. There's nothing majestic about him. There's no form that we should look at him. I guess if we're looking for the arm of the Lord, it is not here.

The end of verse two. Not only does he have nothing by which we would look at him according to our earthly standards, but just to make sure that we don't mistake it. He has no beauty that we should desire him, no special appearance that we should want to follow him. Nothing irresistible about him, nothing to attract us or awakening in us a longing or to satisfy a longing. He makes no impression. He's undesired. There's nothing that would draw us to him. There's no beauty that we should desire him. The arm of the Lord. Here in this one, we must be missing something. But then the humiliation begins to spiral. It doesn't turn a corner. It actually intensifies. Because our human judgment of him moves us to our human actions towards him. Because of these things, we treat him a certain way. Because we look at him a certain way, we treat him a certain way, right? That's what happens all the time in the world, right? You use human, faulty, sinful, fleshy standards of judgment in the world, and what happens? You judge the outside, and then you act accordingly. Then you move towards that person and treat that person accordingly, okay?

That's why you can do nothing in our culture except take pictures of yourself and be a millionaire. Why? Because we value the outside more than anything else at all, that's what sells, that's what matters in our culture, right? We choose the form, the majesty, the beauty, that's what we do. And our entire world of social media and media and all that comes to us by way of our stories and our films and everything is about prompting up and lifting up only one thing, and that is the beautiful. That's it, the beautiful on the outside. But now we intensify, now we have to move, we have to deal directly with him and look at what verse three says. So here's the intensification of our human judgment upon this particular suffering servant. Verse three. Because of our human judgment, this is how we treat him. He was despised. Just so that we know this, the right Isaiah, who loves to double and triple things in his writings. We remember that from Isaiah six, holy, holy, holy, right. The Hebrew emphasis on doubling things in this verse. Isaiah wants us to know that that coming suffering servant, the humiliated one, is despised.

And he's not just despised, he's double despised. Look at the verse. He was despised and rejected by men. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief as one from whom men hid their faces. He was despised. Just in case you don't get it. We despise him. We despise this suffering servant. We despise this humiliated faux arm of the Lord. We will not have him as our king. We have no place for him. We despise everything about him. We scorn him, we mocked him. Mock him. We have contempt for him. We shame him, we shun him, we dismiss him. We despise this man. And if you don't think we do, just listen to these words. What is your judgment? They answered, he deserves death. Then they spit in his face and they struck him and some slapped him. You need more. Then the soldiers of the governor took jesus into the governor's headquarters and they gathered the whole battalion before him and they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, hail, king of the Jews.

Then they spit on him. And then they took a reed and they struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of his robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him. We despise this man. We will not have this man. He was despised. And verse three says, and rejected by men. A man of sorrows. Now you have to get this because Isaiah does something here in the Hebrew that the English doesn't bring out. Isaiah is trying to connect the word men and man together. Okay. He does this because he wants us to see the raw, rejected humanity of what it is that Jesus is undergoing here that he has here. But more than that, the way this works out in the Hebrews. I want you to hear this. It should be translated. He was despised and alone among men, man of sorrows. Alone among men. Man of sorrows, you say? But didn't he have followers for a while? Didn't he have friends up to a point? These are the words of the aloneness and the isolation of this humiliated man. And Jesus could not entrust himself to men.

Jesus could not entrust himself to men. You will all fall away because of me tonight. You will all fall away because of me tonight. Could you not stay awake? You just read it. Could you not stay awake with me for just an hour? Could you not? And Mark 14 says, and they all fled. They all fled. A man alone. Psalm 88 is the darkest psalm in all of the Bible. And psalm 88 is a messianic psalm. It's a psalm about the coming Jesus. It's about the experience of Jesus. What the psalmist experiences in himself is proleptic of what Jesus is going to experience. It's an advance on what Jesus, the suffering servant, is going to experience. If you turn with me to psalm 88 for just a moment, the last verse of psalm 88 corroborates Isaiah's alone man. Psalm 88 and verse 18. You have caused my beloved and my friend. Friends, don't do this. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me. My companions have become darkness. Final word. A man alone. But he's not just alone. He does have some companions, and they're called sorrows. He's a man alone, but he's a man of sorrow.

So the companions that he has with him are sorrows. Psalm 53 says, he was despised and a man alone. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, knowing grief. This is a man who has entered into and taken upon himself the sorrows of the conditions around him. This is a man who has entered into and taken on the griefs and the pain of those around him. He stepped into a story that would require his humiliation. He would have no internal reason for sorrow in himself. He would have no internal reason for grief in himself. But what he would do is he would not put the sorrows and the pains and the griefs of those he came into the story. For at a distance he would take them and absorb them in himself. And because he's absorbing in himself not the sorrow of just what's in front of him. But the sorrows of his people. Sorrow upon sorrow. Grief upon grief. Pain upon pain. We could simply call him. There's the man of sorrows. That's what he is. The man of sorrows and human judgment. Looks at that. And sees this man of sorrows. And sees this man acquainted with grief.

And the way that our human judgment looks at it from the outside is in verse four. Look at the end of verse four. This is what the problem is. The problem is, not only do we loathe this servant. Not only do we despise this servant. God doesn't like him either. He's forsaken of God. That's why he's this way. Look at the end of verse four. We esteemed him stricken. Smitten by God and afflicted. The reason why he's carrying these sorrows. The reason why he's carrying this grief. The reason why he's carrying this trouble. Is because God is judging him like we're judging him together. The divine and the human are conspiring together. To say that this man is in the humiliation that he's in. Because he deserves it from God. And nothing could be further from the truth. He's taking yours. He's taking mine. And rather than keeping our junk, our mess, at an arm's length distance. He's becoming our sorrow and our pain and our grief. And now we won't even look at him anymore. Now comes the humiliation of the cross. Now we're done. If he's forsaken by God as well as us.

If we're done with him and God's done with him, then just crucify him. Just finish him. Put him up on that tree and let's be done with him. Let him die. Like a thousand other brigands have died in Rome. Like a thousand other of the margins have died in Rome. Just put them up there and leave them there for shame and mockery. And the grotesqueness of a naked body hanging to be shamed on the tree that is the cross. The grotesqueness such. In such a way that we will not even look. He is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. As one from whom men hid their faces. Not only is he not worthy of a look. Not only is he not worthy of a look. He's not even worthy of a look. We look away. We hide our faces from him. Can this be the arm of the Lord? Can this be the arm of the Lord, this disfigured man hanging on a roman cross. Let's add it all up. Let's do the math. Anybody who knows me knows me as a genius at math. Let's add it all up. Right, let's tally it up.

Let's take all of our human judgment, all of our human standards, looking at this man from the outside, seeing his humiliation, seeing the mockery, seeing the forsakenness, seeing that the political powers are against him, the religious powers are against him, our hearts are against him. Everything is conspiring. Let's add it all up. And what do we get? The end of verse three. And we esteemed him not. What's the worth of this man, this servant. What's the value of this man and the servant? Zero. Simply nothing. He is not worth the esteem. And that's what you get if you view this man. And that's what you get if you view this servant according to human judgment, according to our standards of assessing things. But what. But what if you were given new eyes? What if you were given new eyes? What would you see here if you were given new eyes? You see, Paul talks about this in two Corinthians chapter five. Turn there with me for a moment. Two Corinthians chapter five. Paul talks about this. He lays it out for us. Two Corinthians chapter five, verses 16 and 17. Look at what Paul says in two Corinthians 516.

Because this new creation has come. From now on, Paul says, verse 16, from now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh, even though we want. Listen to this. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we did. What was a time when we all looked at Christ and we assessed him in the same way that the eyes of unbelief have assessed him. As we've seen in Isaiah three, according to human standards, there was a time in which we regarded Christ according to the flesh. We regard him thus no longer. We do not see him the way we saw him. We do not see him the way that we saw him. Because, you see, something has happened inside of us. God has done something. And I want you to turn back to two Corinthians chapter four. I want you to see what God has done. So now we not only look and look again, and look again. We not only do not turn our eyes from him, we actually turn our eyes to him. And we don't look once. We look from now on, and we never leave the vision, you see, because the light has gone on, and we see through the standards.

Look at what Paul says. Two Corinthians four, verse three. And if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. There are some who are going to continue to always see Jesus the way we heard this morning. In this case, in their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers. They cannot see him because they're blind. To keep them from seeing the light of the gospel, of the glory of Christ. Who is the image of God you see with the right eyes? We see in this suffering servant the glory of God on display. Our salvation is what he's in the business of doing in this humiliation and suffering. Verse five. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. Now watch this for God, who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And so now we look with new eyes, with divinely enlightened eyes, and we look into the face of Jesus. And it is not grotesque, and it is not mocked, and it is not scorned, and it is not despised.

It is the very glory of God that we see. And we cannot take our eyes off of it. We cannot look away from it, you see, because why? Well, look at back to chapter 53. This is what we know. Verse four. He was. Surely he has borne our griefs. That's what he's doing. That's what he's doing. New eyes see the change. It's our griefs carried our sorrows. You see, he has entered into this story to reveal the glory of God through his own humiliation, because he has come to draw near to us and save us from the things that we cannot save ourselves from. And when we take a look, we are riveted for life. Because the glory of God is in the face of this suffering servant. Amen. Aren't you glad the light is on? Aren't you glad that God turned the grotesqueness of his son to glory? For you, it is all of grace, none of ourselves. And this morning, God will take through the sacrament of the table as he does every week. And he will put the emblems of his humiliation in your hands. And you want to know what you will find there?

Life. You will find life. And you want to know where he's rescribed his image so that you can see it this morning is on the faces of those whom you will come to the table with and who you pass the peace with where do we find the arm of the Lord? It is in the humiliation of the suffering servant. Amen. Our God in heaven, fill our souls with Jesus, we pray. Let us look to him and everything in light of him. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

I have probably been complaining for a long time about not having a pulpit, knowing me, and said, if you could have the pulpit of your dreams, meaning mobile pulpit, not one built into a cathedral, what would it look like? Well, if you know me, I'm no artist, but I gave him an idea of what it would look like, and I just thought that was it. And then I showed up one Sunday, and this was there. I preached over 750 sermons from behind this pulpit for a very long time, for over 15 years, a lot of spit on this pulpit.

And then the Lord saw fit to.

Have that church servant's purpose and brought to a close, and this pulpit was returned to the man that had made it and has been in his garage ever since, his name being John Erickson. And this past week, John Erickson went home to be with the Lord. He had suffered from Parkinson's for a very long time, his family showing faithfulness to him in the days of his Parkinson's. The way that John showed faithfulness as a servant in the church. And I had the privilege to spend some time with them this week in John's waning days. And on Wednesday night, John would die. On Friday night, 24 hours later, on Wednesday night, when I was walking to the door, Diane, John's wife, who was also my secretary back then, that church, into the Lord's supper. This is a family that did everything. They were the consummate deacon and deaconesses that you've ever met in your life. And Chris, John's son, also faithful, served in the church for many years. His wife Hillary, and the daughter Lisa, followed me to the door before I left and said to me, we would like you to have your pulpit back after all these years.

And of course I wept, never thinking that I would not never see this thing again, let alone preach by. So yesterday, Michael saw was gracious enough to pick this up and return it here. And this would be the first sermon that I have preached in this pulpit since Father's day of 2013, and it means the world to me. Ericsson. The Ericsson are with us this morning. If you'll just raise your hands real quick. Raise your hands. Come on, everybody. All right, please greet them. This is a dear family to my family and love them greatly, and they are just a wonderful family in every way. And I also want you guys to know that the Soli de emporia that's on the front of this has always been on the front of it was not put on for us. But I think God had a plan. God had a rye. Prophets we didn't understand, we didn't see. So maybe if you felt a little bit more for me today in the pulpit, I know what this. You have to understand what this moment meant to me, what it meant to me, more than I'll ever be able to put in the words, to be able to preach behind this box again.

John also made this that's been at Soli from the beginning. John was. He sold insurance by day, he was not Batman by night, but he was a carpenter by night. And everywhere I look around my house, there's still something that John Erickson built, still something that's there, whether it be the island in my kitchen, the spinner, bookshelf in my study, everywhere I turn in my house, there's little things and big things that John may see. Because John was like his savior. He used his hands to craft things. And now those hands are at rest for a season until the resurrection.

The resurrection.

God's going to give John back those hands that put this together, they made these other things and let John loose on a creation, a new creation, a new heaven, and new earth, in which everything is going to be cooperating. So I just wanted to share that with you. The origin of this pulpit and why this is here this morning and how much it means to me and the Ericsson's, how much you mean to me and how much John meant to me. Thank you for allowing this moment to come back into my life, and thank you for allowing to come into Soli's life as well. Because if I'm anything at all to this group of people here, it's because I learned it with you guys together in the church. We had to get the reporter, and I'm humbled, and I'm grateful in every way. So I wanted to share that with you all this morning and do it without blubbering my way completely through it all. So with that, let's stand and let's receive gratitude.

Isaiah 52:13-15 - Pastor Jon Noyes

This morning we're going to be stepping out of our series in Luke and starting our Paschal or Lenten series. Can you believe Easter is coming? This is unbelievable. It's actually the best time of year. I think it's better than Christmas.

It's better than all of it, I think. So over the next few weeks, we're going to be going through Isaiah, and we're going to pick up this morning in Isaiah 52, starting in verse 13, and then over the next, I don't know how many weeks, what is it, five or six weeks? We're going to go all the way through the end of chapter 53. And what I'd like to do this morning is kind of my goal is to lay the foundation for the series, because really, the first three verses are kind of a summary of what we're going to be going through in Isaiah. So I'd like to read the whole passage.

So it's fairly lengthy. I should have looked and seen that we already read 26 or 29 verses of scripture. But can we ever have enough scripture? I mean, some of you are like, yes, we can. But keep in the back of your minds as we read this and as we share the sermon series with you guys, that this is a song, a poem that Isaiah has written.

And there are four servant songs, and this is one of them. This is the last one. This is actually the longest one. And all of them celebrate the sacrificial life of a righteous servant of God. And they explain how God is going to bring redemption to the people of God.

Digging in, let me pick up in chapter 52, verse 13, behold, my servant will prosper. He'll be high and lifted up and greatly exalted. Just as many were astonished at you, my people, so his appearance was marred more than any man in his form, more than the sons of man. Thus he will sprinkle many nations. Kings will shut their mouths on account of him.

For what had not been told to them, they will see, and what they had heard, they will understand. Who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a tender chute, and like a root out of parched ground. He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to him. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.

And like one from whom men hid their face, he was despised, and we did not esteem him. Surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried. Yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But he was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed.

For our iniquities. The chastening of our well being fell upon him. And by his scourging were healed. All of us, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way.

But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. He was oppressed and was afflicted. Yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb that was led to the slaughter. And like the sheep that's silent before its shears, so he did not open his mouth.

By oppression and judgment, he was taken away. And as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living. For the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due. His grief was assigned with wicked men. Yet he was with a rich man in his death.

Because he had done no violence. Nor was there any deceit in his mouth. But the lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief. If he would render himself as a guilt offering. He'll see his offspring.

He'll prolong his days. And the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hand. As a result of the anguish of his soul. He'll see it to be satisfied by his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, will justify the many as he'll bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will lot him a portion with the great. And he'll divide the booty among the strong. Because he poured out himself to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he himself bore the sin of many and interceded for the transgressors. Father, we come before you this morning, already lifted up.

Because we've all met you in this room, presumably. And we all know what it is to be saved, and we all know what it is to fall under the banner of Christ. And we are grateful for this, Lord. But as the Easter season is upon us, God, would you develop in us a heart for those who don't yet know you? Would we take this time as the Easter season is upon us to affect the lost?

And it starts here and now with the reading of your word and the proclamation of it, Lord. And would you go before me and use me as an instrument? Would these be your words, not mine? And as we leave here, Lord, would we be affected? Would we be changed even just a little bit?

Just changed more into the image of Christ your son? Lord, we love you help us love you more and each other better in Christ's name. So I'd like to offer just a little bit of context for us this morning here. I think it's important to understand. See, Isaiah wasn't written to us.

It's written for us. And it points to something. But this is a song, a poem that was written to real people in a real place at a real time. Just like Luke was written with an audience in mind by a real person. So too, was Isaiah.

And Isaiah, he lived and preached in the 8th century before Christ. So he was 700 years before Jesus. Isaiah and his jewish brothers and sisters. They had just witnessed the fall. Of the northern kingdom of Israel.

What's really interesting to me is the northern kingdom, when it fell, it never returned. It was gone forever. And then the southern kingdom, it lasted a little bit. While in its capital, Jerusalem, would survive another 150 more years. Upon which time Jerusalem and the temple.

Are ultimately laid in ruins by Nebuchadnezzar. And then the people of God were either ushered off into exile. Or they remained in a ravished and war torn land. And whenever I'm preparing a message, I always try to just put myself in the feet of the original audience, the people that would be hearing this. Because I think, well, for me, it helps understand what's being said.

So imagine the scene with me. If you can put yourself in the shoes of the Judeans. These are God's chosen people. But conquered again. It seems to me like every time they walk in faith and they experience victory, it doesn't last all that long.

They get conquered again and again and again. Having just experienced a time of relative peace. They have their promised land, and they have their capital city, and they have their temple. God's promises fulfilled before them. And finally, hope is spreading.

And then it's all gone. It's in this context that Isaiah is writing. He's speaking to people who are weary, who are battered, who are tired, who are wounded by their losses, both economic and material losses, but also spiritual losses. These people, at this time, they need assurance that their God would still be faithful to them. And they needed hope, hope of a rescue.

And in this way, and this is why I think the context is important. This way. I don't think it's too dissimilar from us today. Some of us are battered and tired. Certainly in the culture.

Some of us are sitting in need hope. So today we get the opportunity to look through the window of the past. The most important thing for us is to take away that God chose to reveal himself in Jesus Christ in real spacetime history, not just 2000 years ago, but even 2700 years ago. And just like with Luke, this is a true historical account about real events. And what's more is here in this poem, in this song, written by a man living in a small country in Iron Age Palestine, we have testimony to Christ.

God has become present in humanity, within human history. And this is nothing short of unbelievable. I feel like this gets lost on us every Sunday morning when we read from this book and when we preach from this book. What we're talking about is God entering time and space and history and actually affecting the world for his glory. And even so, even 700 years before we started, if you remember, in Luke, we started with a story of Simeon and Anna, and they held this baby Jesus and they recognized baby Jesus for who he was, the promised Messiah.

But even 700 years before that, Isaiah here is telling us of his coming. So our passage this morning is an exaltation sandwich, so to speak. We might have noticed it if you look at our verses, just the first three, it's an exaltation sandwich, and it serves as a kind of summary to the rest of the poem in chapter 53. And we're introduced to some of the overarching themes. The first of the theme to keep in mind over the next couple of weeks, it comes in the form of a question.

Who is this servant that Isaiah is talking about? Isaiah doesn't explicitly say Jesus, right? The answer is not fully given to us, but it's clear there's a certain few things about him that are true. For example, he's human. We know that he's a man.

We learned that he's a suffering man. But we also learned that he's a conquering man. And the second major theme that we should be thinking about, I think, is one that flows out of the first. And it's found in a mystery, a paradox, between the servant's exaltation and then his humiliation, his victory and his suffering. This is a thing that even caused the disciples to stumble.

If we remember, in Jesus, they didn't quite understand. What does it look like for a suffering servant to offer us a salvation that we so desperately need? They didn't get it. We read about that a little bit this morning. They didn't understand what that looks like.

But this isn't all, I think, unfamiliar to us. If we actually think about it. We see this very thing, a suffering servant in everything from Harry Potter to iron Man. A suffering servant. The hero first has to suffer before the hero can rescue but this here before us, it's not marvel.

It's real life. This is a true story. You see, all those movies, all those things that we sit down and we enjoy, that we love, are just imitations of a real life hero, Jesus, a hero who provided restoration to jewish exiles, but also to so many more. And here it all starts in our verses with, behold, I love this. Isaiah says, behold, stop.

Every time I say this, I want to bust out in a rap like, stop what you're doing, because I'm about to ruin the image and the style that you used to, but I won't. Oh, I guess I just did. But this is Isaiah. He's saying, stop what you're doing and watch the work of salvation being accomplished through this exalted servant. Stop what you're doing and pay attention.

Pay attention to what's being done to you and for you. And this opening scene here, it belongs to the Lord with his declaration that the servant will prosper and be exalted. This isn't just any servant, though. This is what Isaiah says, my servant. This is God's servant.

This is the servant who's going to be able to do things Israel hasn't been able to do for itself.

This servant's going to be able to bring about total and complete restoration through liberation, a restoration not just for Israel, though, a liberation from more than just foreign rulers, a restoration of all people, a liberation from a marred identity, and ultimately a liberation from a sentence of death. But this is more than just. Behold. Isaiah says, behold. He goes on to say, my servant will prosper.

This is guaranteed. Notice, he says, my servant will prosper. He will succeed in his mission. There's no doubt of this. This is a promise from God.

And God always fulfills his promises. But even more than succeed the servant, he will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted. Notice the three verbs. There's a triune trifecta of verbs going on here. High and lifted up are what Isaiah said about the throne of the Lord.

In Isaiah 61, in the year of King Uziah, death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of his robe filling the temple. And you guys, if you can picture this, right? The train of God is filling the temple. And this is the famous words, where the angels in the seraphim, and they're there, and they say, cry out, holy, holy, holy. Is the Lord God almighty recognizing the holiness of God?

And then what does Isaiah say? I am a man of unclean lips. I'm a man of unclean lips, realizing who he is and his desperation before a holy and a just God.

And that train would have been maybe attributed also to this servant, right? They would have pictured these things combining together to form a royal servant. They would have said, is this a ill servant before us? But there's more. The apostle John tells us Isaiah saw this servant himself.

In John twelve, we read these words, these things, Isaiah. About this passage, Isaiah said, because he saw his glory and he spoke to him. Isaiah saw the glory of God, not just as God's train filled his robe, filled the temple space, but he also interacted, presumably with Jesus. This suffering servant, Isaiah talked to him. So this trilogy of verbs, high, lifted up and exalted, point us to the ultimate victory and glory of the suffering servant.

More than that, Isaiah brings this poem to the end of offering hope to a people who are completely dejected. They're downtrodden, rejected. By pointing them to the end of the servant's work, ultimately to the thing the apostles pointed people to a few hundred years later, Jesus. Right. That's what he's pointing us to.

All of this here in Isaiah is foreshadowing the anticipated exaltation of Jesus, the suffering servant, the one in front of whom every knee will bow and every tongue will confess as lord. Then they'll do every single knee. Everybody who ever lived will bend their knee in front of Jesus. And the scripture tells us in Philippians that they're going to do so unto the glory of God the father. Now Isaiah takes his audience from exaltation to humiliation.

And as high as the exaltation might be, the humiliation will be deep.

Just as many were astonished at you, my people. So his appearance was marred more than any man in his form, more than the sons of man. Saints of God. Notice the prophet here is declaring the ultimate outcome. The ultimate victory is going to be accomplished on a path that's going to surprise us.

You see, the jewish people were crying out for a victorious warrior, and they're going to get a suffering savior.

And it's interesting because Israel, they would have been able to relate to these words and to the person that Isaiah is pointing to. Israel knew what humiliation was. Isaiah is writing to a humiliated people, a kingdom split in two, half of which has been completely eradicated, the other under subjugation, foreign rule, and in ruin. Even so, the humiliation of the servants, so much more than that of those he's come to serve. You see, the prophet Isaiah is offering his people a preview of a humiliation our imaginations can hardly grasp.

Every year around this time, multiple times, I watch that Mel Gibson movie. I forget the passion of the Christ because I think it comes close. That's probably the movie that comes closest to actually depicting the humiliation that this servant will suffer.

It's a humiliation that's defined by violence. So much so that those who see his suffering servant, they'll wonder if he's even a human being unrecognizably disfigured. And this is something I think we often lose sight of. Even during the Easter season. I think often our minds conjure up images of Jesus and jeans that hang on the walls of youth departments at church.

I'm not saying these things are necessarily bad. I'm not attacking anybody for these things. But I think they might maybe give us a false depiction of who, you know, a Jesus who looks far too similar to ourselves. A pretty Jesus with beautiful blue eyes and well conditioned hair.

But we have to be fair. We have to allow the Bible to inform us on who this servant is. Jesus. Friends, Jesus was not the high school quarterback or the prom king. Isaiah here tells us when people looked at him, at the culmination, at the very most important thing that this servant is going to do, when people looked at him, they were appalled at what they saw.

We're going to see this next week. Jesus was one from whom men hid their faces. They didn't esteem him, they didn't honor him. They didn't give him his due glory. And friends, notice something else.

Isaiah is saying that his disfigurement was so great that he didn't even look like a man. You see, the people didn't look at him as he bowed under the weight of his cross. The people didn't look at him coming out of the violence that he had just experienced at the hands of the temple guards and say to one another, hey, do you think this is the messiah?

Hey, do you think this is the savior?

I mean, even the closest to him didn't get it.

They didn't look at one another and say, is this the servant of God from Isaiah's song? No. They looked at one another and said, is that a human being? Is that a person?

They looked at him and said, what is that bloody mess?

What is that tortured figure? You see, friends, the exaltation that he was to know in all of its height, the highest place that heaven affords by his sovereign right, is an exaltation that came by way of the deepest degradation. Jesus was despised. He was refused esteem.

To that point, keep in mind, don't be fooled either. Had you or I been there, we would have joined with the crowds in this. Behold the man upon that cross, my sin upon his shoulders. Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers is how the hymnist puts it. The unbelief that Isaiah here depicts is the same unbelief found in the world today.

Why is that? Well, because Jesus doesn't fit the current power narrative that's ruling our culture right now. A culture that's hoping that just one celebrity would rep. Just. I just saw it this last weekend with the Super bowl.

We're just wanting that one Super bowl man, Mahone, whatever his name is. What's his name? Mahomes. He said, glory to God. Somehow that solves our problems, man.

If that Taylor Swift just came out as christian, so many people would. Guys, we already have the most famous person who ever walked the earth as captain of our team, and his name is Jesus. Yet we're constantly looking to that famous person. Do you remember the whole Kanye mess? He's Christian.

He's Christian. Listen to some of his new album.

This man is not Christian. But he was going to solve our problems, right? Well, no, Jesus has already solved our problems. The suffering servant has already solved our problems. Remember, Isaiah says kings will shut their mouths on account of him.

Not Kanye West, Taylor swift or Mahomes.

No, it comes by way of a suffering servant. It comes by way of Jesus. It's in revelation that John says they will wage war against the lamb, but the lamb will triumph over them because he is the Lord of lords and the king of kings, and with him will be his called, chosen and faithful followers. That's me and you, by the way. John will go on to say, on his robe and on his thigh is the name written, king of kings and Lord of lords.

This is our Lord.

He is enough. And that same power that Isaiah is alluding us to, the same power of a salvation, of a fallen and dawn trodden people in Israel, is the same power that raised people from the dead today. And that same power that's at work in raising people from the dead, is at work in me and you. Currently, right now. We just prayed for revival.

Friends, the answer to our prayers are sitting in the seats this morning right here in front of me.

You, through Christ, are the hope that this world so desperately needs. We don't need a football player or whatever to rep Christ. We are his representatives. You are ambassadors of Christ. Begging on behalf of Christ.

Be reconciled to God, is what Paul says.

Even so, it seems to be these modern celebrity christians might say pleasant and complimentary things about the Lord of glory. And like mahomes, like these guys, they'll praise his ethics, his teachings and his morality. They'll declare that he was a good man and a great prophet and the only one who has answers to the societal problems. Maybe they'll go that far. That confront the world today.

Maybe they'll go that far. But where they stop short is they won't acknowledge that they too are sinners, deserving of everlasting punishment, and that the death of Christ was a vicious sacrifice designed to satisfy the judgment of God and to reconcile and offending God to the sinners. Men will not receive what God is saying concerning his son today. Also, the servant is despised and rejected of men, and men do not esteem him. That's what the Bible says.

This is what's wrong with the whole he gets us movement, by the way. He gets us, but do we get him? That's a whole other sermon.

So while Isaiah says, many were appalled at him, verse 15 says, he will sprinkle many nations. Kings will shut their mouths on account of him. For what had not been told them, they will see and what they had not heard, they will understand. Verse 15. Friends, this is like, in my estimation, after studying the last maybe three weeks for this message, I think that this is possibly the most important verse in this whole poem.

The picture Isaiah is painting would have been understood by his audience as a ritualistic cleansing outlined in the law coming out of Leviticus, like 18 and 14. Each of these cleansings that these people knew so much about, and they're in exile, and certain cleansings can't happen, and they can't go to the temple and do what they need to do on behalf of God, and they're struggling with this. And then each of these cleansings, even so, are temporary in this context, these people need a cleansing. They need to be cleaned. But at best, these cleansings, they're band aids.

But the sprinkling done here that Isaiah is pointing to, the sprinkling done here by the servant, is a real and lasting one, a once and for all remedy, a cure, and the result of the servant's humiliation, it's an everlasting purification. And this is fulfilled when believers in nations all over the world, as Peter says, who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God of the father by the sanctifying work of the spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood, to be washed clean through the blood of.

And this here, friends, is at the heart of the scandal of the gospel. It's here that we find what it means to be a Christian and affirm that God justifies the ungodly, that God justifies sinners, that it was while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Again, friends, this flies in the face of the notion that somehow God rewards good people and punishes bad people. Jesus turned that all on its face. Jesus was the best person who ever lived, and he suffered more than anybody else who ever lived.

That's not how the economy of God works. You see, church people look upon the servant, mistakenly, due to his condition, as if he was there on account of his own sins. But nothing could be further from the truth. We see this in Isaiah 53 six. I think this is going to be two weeks from now.

All of us, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way. But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. And what's most amazing about any of this is that without compromising his righteousness or his holiness, God justifies sinners through the redemption provided through his servant son. And on account of his willingness to do this, it's Christ, and Christ alone, who can sprinkle the nations with the news of his forgiving love.

With this triumphant story that Isaiah is alluding to, that he's pointing his fellow brothers and sisters in exile to with this triumphant story that although he was there in all of the darkness and abject humiliation, while he was there suffering on that hill on a cross at Galgotha, that God raised him to life again after he died a humiliating death, and then he ascended into heaven. And at that ascension, as he ascends, the kings call out to him for rulership. And screaming from that grave isn't just a resurrected Jesus. And in that ascension, screaming down from heaven is the understanding that, friends, you don't have to try to fix yourself, because you never know. I just did a podcast interview.

I just did a podcast interview last week, and it was fantastic because I got interviewed by this woman. And on the screen, so it was like a video thing. On the screen was a young girl, 17 year old girl from Denmark. And she didn't want to talk, but I was addressing some questions that she had. And as I'm speaking to her, I'm giving her an argument for the historicity of the Bible.

It's like super apologetics. Geek stuff, right? I shared with the gospel with her on the podcast, and then the podcast ended and we start talking and what was really interesting is what this girl understood. She says to me, she says, john, I thank you for your time in doing this, because I really like the way that you say things. I can actually understand what you're saying.

It's not like the super academic stuff, which is what we do at standard reason. We try to break things down in an understandable format for people to grasp low hanging fruit, so to speak. And then she said, I came to realize. This is what she said to me. She says, during, when you were talking, I've come to realize that Jesus is who he says he is.

But the reason why I don't want to believe it is because I have to give up so much.

And then I said to her, I said, wait a, like, let's talk about this for a moment.

So Jesus is who he says he is. He's the king of kings and the lord of lords. But because of the sin in your life, because of the messed upness in your life, you don't want to run to him. Do you know? This is what I said to her?

I said, do you know that Jesus isn't waiting for you to be perfect? Because if he was waiting for you to be perfect, you'd never come to him. I said to her, jesus wants you just as you are, broken, battered and weary, full of sin. Jesus came to save the sinners, not the righteous. Jesus came for you, and he came for me.

And that's the point here, friends. We don't have to. This is what Isaiah is saying to Israel. They don't have to fix themselves. They can't fix themselves.

They never could do that. You don't have to try and justify yourselves by blaming others. Israel was stuck offering scapegoats. I don't have time to get into it, but offering scapegoats, but it's only temporary. Jesus is the everlasting scapegoat of which every single sin, past, present and future, was affixed to, because he's the only one who could handle it.

We don't have to do away with our shame. Jesus does away with our shame. You don't have to do away with your guilt on your own. Jesus has handled your guilt. He does it every day.

When sinners repent and they call out to him and ask him for the rescue that he's offering, they receive the forgiveness in Christ. This is what Isaiah is talking about. It is finished, friends. This is the gospel that he comes to us and says, all of your guilt will be mine, and all of my righteousness will be yours. And that's why we're focusing on this passage this Easter season.

This Easter season. This is what we, your elders here at Soli, we want to give to you every weekend. Every weekend. We want to give you a degraded, exalted, glorified, everlasting servant. Savior.

And he's true and he's real. And this isn't a fairy tale. And these things aren't empty platitudes that we share with you just to hope that you feel good. We don't get paid enough just to focus on how you feel. We want to tell you what's true.

And friends, this is what's on display for us at this table every weekend. A suffering but victorious servant that's been once and all delivered in the scriptures. And here at this table, there's a reminder of a work that's been once and for all accomplished on your behalf. And between this table and the word of God that's proclaimed here every week, God speaks to us. And he speaks to us about his finished work and the word of truth who brings salvation to all men.

It's here at this table where we get to be reintroduced to Christ every single weekend. Where we get to dine. We get to dine with this suffering servant every single weekend. And it's here at this table that our hearts are knit together in the joyous news of which we've just heard, preached and sung about in our songs and prayed about in our prayers and heard from the proclamation of the words. It's here at this table where we get to experience the full life of christian being.

This is why this table is so special, so cool. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the opportunity to preach your word, worship you. We love you in Christ's name amen.