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.