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.