Joel Brooks: If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Isaiah chapters 52, 53. It's also there in your worship guide. And as you're turning there, let me just go ahead and address the, the elephant in the room. We gotta talk about an engagement. So so so last week, you know, I mentioned the Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift podcast.
And I withheld from you my knowledge that they were going to get engaged. I had decoded it but I didn't I didn't tell you what's going to happen later in the week and I just wanted to go ahead and apologize to you for that. It was no surprise to me obviously. So now that that's out, we have much much more important things to discuss this morning. We're going to look at, what's been called the forbidden chapter of the bible.
Isaiah 53. I mean, it's it's actually not really forbidden, but one of the things that you'll find is that in synagogues, beginning in the second century, chapter 53 was removed from their weekly readings. So this was actually before Jesus. It's not the only chapter in the the Hebrew Bible that they removed, but they didn't move this one out because they just thought it was too confusing. It there wasn't any clarity and it was too hard to make sense and so they moved that out.
And then of course after Christ came and he was crucified and he rose from the dead, certainly they would never put it back then. Because you simply cannot make any sense of Isaiah 53 apart from the death and the resurrection of Jesus. And the entire chapter is about that. Substitutionary atonement is its theme. As you read through this, you you feel like you're reading the New Testament.
It's absolutely remarkable that this was written seven hundred years before Christ. So what we're gonna read is I'm first gonna read a couple of verses as an introduction in John chapter 12 and then we'll begin reading from the end of Isaiah 52. So John 12, this is Jesus speaking. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.
Isaiah fifty two thirteen. Behold my servant shall act wisely. He shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted. As many were astonished at you, his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance and his form beyond that of the children of mankind, so shall he sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths because of him for that which has not been told them, they see and that which they have not heard, they understand.
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. 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. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shears is silent, so he opened not 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, stricken for the transgression of my people, And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death. Although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth. 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. Therefore, I will divide him a portion with 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. This is the word of the lord. Pray with me. Father, thank you for preserving these words for us over the centuries that we might hear them now and we might hear your heart, your heart to love sinners and to redeem them. I I pray that now your spirit would use the words we have just read and that he would write them on our hearts.
I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. This week, I've thought a lot about the best way to introduce Isaiah 53 because likely it's a chapter of scripture that many of us are familiar with.
If you grew up in church, likely you heard this many times. And so we can we could grow a little deaf to it. So I decided I would introduce it this way. The story kept coming to my mind and it's actually the story of Abraham's call, the very beginning of Israel if you will. Back in Genesis 12, God called Abraham and said he is going to bless him in order to make him a blessing.
And then Abraham is sent off with this new calling and he fails miserably at it. I mean, through his sin, through his disobedience, he he lies. Instead of bringing blessings, he's actually spreading curses where he goes. But the first time he actually steps up to the plate and fulfills his role to be a blessing to the nations, the world is in Genesis 18 when he intercedes on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah. It's the first time he steps into this role.
And if you remember the story, the Lord is going to judge Sodom and Gomorrah, but he invites Abraham in to have a conversation with him to intercede on behalf of the wicked people. And Abraham says, far be it from you Lord, that you would slay the righteous with the wicked. What if there's some righteous there? Would you spare the wicked? Would you spare the city?
And the Lord says, yes. And Abraham goes, well, if what if there are 50 righteous people? Would you spare destroying the wicked city for 50? And the Lord says, yes. And Abraham goes, well, what if there's only 45 righteous people?
Would you spare the city? And he says, yes. Then Abraham goes, 40? And the Lord answers, yes. And then it's 30.
And the Lord answers, yes. And you begin to get this amazing insight and actually to the heart of God. And that yes, he will judge sin but I hope you see that he longs to forgive way more than he wants to judge. And it's just like he's looking for any reason at all to spare the wicked. Just give me any reason.
And so he's encouraging Abraham to to keep on going and so Abraham does. Abraham says, well what if there's only 20 righteous? He goes, won't kill this city if there's 20. Then Abraham says 10 and the Lord says, I won't kill them for 10. And then Abraham stops.
You know what? Why did you stop? He's likely just thinking, there's not even gonna be one. But there's this question from that point on that just kind of hangs over Israel for the next thirteen hundred years. And it's this question, would God spare the wicked if there could be just found one righteous person?
Is that all that's needed to spare them? One righteous. And here in Isaiah 53, we find the answer is yes. For one one righteous person will truly step forward, God will not just spare a wicked city. He will not just spare a wicked nation.
He will spare a wicked world. And Jesus is this righteous person. Jesus is the servant that we read about in Isaiah 53 who will save humanity from God's judgment, save them from their sin. But he's gonna save them in a way we would have never thought of. And Isaiah has been preparing us for this all along.
Over and over he keeps saying, the Lord's gonna do something new, you've never heard of it, you can never even think of it, it's gonna blow your mind, completely new. And finally we realize what it is. The Lord's gonna save through one righteous servant giving his life as an offering for the wicked. This passage that we have here is actually a song. It's a song that's composed of five different stanzas.
Each stanza has three verses to it. And what we're gonna do is we're just gonna kinda walk through we're gonna walk through this entire song together, not maybe verse by verse, but at least stanza by stanza. The first stanza here, it's really an introduction to the rest and it begins with, behold my servant shall act wisely. He shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted. The poem actually begins and it ends with this description of the servant's wisdom.
Which if you think of all the attributes, you know, that you could ascribe to the servant or to Jesus, wisdom just seems like an unusual choice. But what God is saying is this, here's my servant who knows exactly what he must do in order to save humanity. He is the one who knows. Everyone else has missed it. You know, you've had different leaders, you've had different kings, philosophers, professors, politicians who've all tried to save humanity if you will.
How many times have you heard you know people say, oh you know what's wrong with this world? This is what I would do to fix it. God says they're fools. Only my servant knows. He's the wise one.
He's the one who's listened to me. And he will do exactly what is required to save humanity. And because of this, we read that he's going to be high. He's going to be lifted up. He's going to be exalted, but not in the way that you would expect.
The servant is going to be high. He's going to be lifted up, but not on a throne, on a cross. That's how he's gonna save the world. This is the first of several reversals in this poem in which this poem just completely turns things upside upside down and and kinda shocks you here. But Jesus's crucifixion is going to be his exaltation.
That's how he's going to be lifted up. And because of this, people have a really hard time believing it. You read here that people were astonished. They were astonished at his appearance. It was so marred.
It was beyond human semblance and is formed beyond that of the children of mankind. In other words, when the people are looking at Jesus all bloodied on a cross, they're thinking, that doesn't look like how you save some that doesn't look like someone who's being lifted up high. He's so bruised and bloodied, he certainly doesn't look like a messiah. Not only that, he doesn't even look human. He was beaten so badly.
And then we enter the second stanza. It begins with who has believed what he has heard from us and to whom has the arm of the lord been revealed? Once again, they're having a hard time believing that Jesus on the cross could be the messiah. He that he could be the arm of the lord. Now, remember last week, we talked about the arm of the lord.
The lord said, hey, is do do you think I can't save you because my arm is not strong enough and long enough to reach you? Well, it certainly is And then we see that strong-arm is Jesus. It's how he's gonna save. But people look at it and they're like, on a cross? A cross certainly looks like weakness and defeat not strength and victory.
Paul would say this about the cross in first Corinthians one. Say that a crucified messiah is a stumbling block to the Jews and it is sheer madness to the Greeks. And that's what the world thinks. It's what we would think when we looked at the cross and see Jesus there. That's madness if you think that person's a Messiah, if that person's a savior of the world.
The only reason that we actually believe it to be Jesus is because the Lord himself has revealed it to us. And that's what we read there. He he has to reveal this to us. People also have a very hard time believing Jesus was the savior of the world, not just because of the way he was so beaten and marred on the cross, but also because before that he was just so ordinary. That's what we read next when we read that he had no form or majesty that we should look at him.
No beauty that we should desire him. In other words, Jesus didn't look the part that we typically think of when you think of a hero or a savior. He grew up just like an ordinary kid. He went through puberty. He had a squeaky voice.
Had acne. Yeah. Even when he grew up to be an adult. I mean, he wasn't much to look at. You would you would pass him along the street and you wouldn't give him a second glance.
If he was on a dating app, would have swiped left. I mean there were there's not nothing that like drew you to him. So people were thinking, him? Him? He's just kinda too vanilla.
He's too ordinary. He's too human to actually save the world. And because of this, he's despised and he's rejected by men. And now, you don't despise somebody for just kinda being ordinary. An ordinary person like like looking person like Jesus, well, he can teach on morality.
He he could be praised for his good works to the poor. Those things don't get you despised. But when a ordinary person like Jesus says he's the son of God and he's gonna save the world, that's when you despise him. You? Who do you think you are?
Jesus was just too human again. We read that we esteemed him not. That's the way of saying when we had to make our evaluation of him. He's not much. This leads us to the third stanza.
Unlike the church I grew up in, we're going to read the third stanza. And we're gonna read, read each line of this because it's really the very heart of the gospel. Martin Luther, he actually called these words, he said they are words of gold. And if you don't believe them, you're not a Christian. That was Martin Luther, not me.
But just so you know, I agree with him. 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. There's a lot of things happening in this stanza that just honestly blow my mind. I mean, really. First notice that everything switches to a first person plural here.
You have all these we, us, our here. The first stanza and the last stanza, God is speaking. But this entire middle section's first person plural. The we, the the our, the us. It's like Isaiah wants us to be there witnessing this.
And these events, the other thing that's mind blowing are described in the past. There there It's a future A prophecy about the future and is being recorded like we are there just at the cross looking at it. It's it's absolutely mind boggling that this was written seven hundred years before Jesus was crucified. Now at first the the we, which I think Isaiah is including us here, we who are watching this crucifixion and we see this man going through such horrific suffering, our conclusion is this. God has to be punishing this man.
I mean, is God punishing him. He must have done something horribly wrong for God to do this to him. In other words, we esteemed him stricken and smitten by God Himself. And this is correct. God was punishing him.
But it's not because of any wrongs the servant had done. He's being punished for the wrongs we have done. That's why we read here, he bore our griefs, our sorrows, was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. His chastisement brought us peace and with his wounds, we are healed. Notice, all of the crimes that are mentioned here are ours.
And yet, all the sufferings for them are his. So we committed the crimes, he's the one who suffers for them. He's getting the punishment that we deserve and he is And we are getting the reward that he deserves. So instead of us being punished for own sins, what we essentially have is Jesus is just stepping on and he's saying, don't punish them, I'll act as a substitute. Do it all to me.
Substitutionary atonement. Right here in the Old Testament. If the Jews had actually been reading their bibles, they they they should have known what Jesus was doing. This should have been clear to them because the whole old testament, what we see is sacrificial atonement that god allows a sacrifice to act as a substitute for you paying for your sins. But the Jewish people also would have known that the blood of bulls and goats can never actually remove sins.
What they need is a perfect human substitute. Jesus was pierced for our transgressions. Remember, a couple weeks ago, we talked about how, Jesus said our names that that that they were engraved on his hands. This is how they were engraved. The nails Those nails had our names on them.
They were meant for us. But the nails that had our names on them were driven through His hands. That's why He will never forget us. Next, we read that he was crushed for our iniquities. Have you ever noticed how quick you are to pass the blame on to other people for your sins?
Well, I shouldn't just, you know, say it's you. I'm quick to blame others for my sins. I'll even throw my girls under the bus all the time. You know, like, well, I mean, I only did that because of you were acting this way. But we're so quick at least to shed some of the guilt upon other people.
I mean we, that, you saw that early on third page of scripture. I mean once Adam sins and he takes of the fruit that he wasn't supposed to, God confronts him and God's or Abraham Adam says, Well, it wasn't me, it was the woman. Can't you see her? She's there hiding in the bushes. You go talk to her.
God goes talks to Eve and Eve's like, Well, it wasn't me, it was the serpent. He's over there like, you know, crawling around. We're always so quick to to pass the buck, to to shed off the blame and cast it on somebody else. Maybe you noticed that there's been times maybe you have said the most unkind things to people, you were cruel. And you said, oh, I'm sorry.
You know my my I grew up in a household where we said things like that all the time growing up. And you try to blame your parents. Or perhaps you struggle with envy and you say, it's not really my fault. I mean, social media, how can you not be envious? You struggle with porn.
You're like, well, I mean, how how can you not? It's the internet's fault because you can't even get on the internet without having these images thrown your way. We we so quickly wanna blame someone else. You know why we do that? Because the guilt would crush us.
If we actually had to bear the weight of our own sin, it would absolutely crush us. We can't bear it. That's why the book of common prayer, in its confession of sins, it says this, the remembrance of our sins is grievous to us, the burden of them intolerable. Jesus took on that intolerable burden, not just of your sins, not just of my sins, but of the sins of the whole world. And he was crushed underneath its weight.
Next, we read, upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his wounds we're healed. Ever since Adam ate of that fruit, mankind has been at war with God. Every act of disobedience, every sin we've ever committed is an act of rebellion against our creator. Jesus put an end to that war by being punished for our rebellion. So what Paul talks about in Romans five when he says, we have peace with God now through our Lord Jesus Christ.
In verse six, we read 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 phrase laid on him. You'll find those exact words in Leviticus 16, where the Lord instructs Aaron, the high priest, how he is supposed to remove the people's sins. Says that he's supposed to find a goat and he is to lay his hands on the goat and says that when he does that, he will lay on him the iniquities of all the people.
The iniquities of all the people are now transferred on that goat and then the goat is sent off into the wilderness. That's where we get the term the scapegoat from. And the goat is sent out there. And here we read in the song that all of those sins, they were actually laid on Jesus. He's the goat.
He's the sacrifice. These images of sheep and sacrifices, they continue on now through the fourth stanza. Here we read that he was oppressed and afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb led to the slaughter. It'd been so easy for Jesus to defend himself. I mean, remember like when we're going through his trial in Mark?
I mean, they can't even get two witnesses to agree on something when they're accusing Him. It's been so easy for Jesus to to step up and defend Himself, but He doesn't. He's just completely silent. He says, let fire away your accusations. He takes it.
He never gives a word of defense. And as a result of that, we read that he was cut off from the land of the living. He was killed. He was placed in a grave. And now we enter into the final stanza.
My mom, as many of you know, I've shared this before, she was a church organist for over forty years. When I think of my childhood, I think of my mom playing the organ. And there will be certain songs when it came to the last stanza. She'd pull out all the stops. I remember this.
Like, it was very special occasions. Normally, it's we didn't celebrate communion that much. When we did, afterwards, we would sing the Lord's prayer together. And I remember singing the Lord's prayer when it came to that final, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory. I I can remember my mom would pull out all the stops and the entire sanctuary would vibrate.
Hair on my arm would go up. And that's what I that's what I hear when I'm reading this last stanza. This is this glorious, glorious moment. And the reason it is so glorious is you cannot make sense of this stanza apart from the resurrection of Jesus. You you absolutely cannot make sense of it.
Look at verse 10. 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 will pros shall prosper in his hand. Stop right there and you're like, what? How do we get there? I mean, the servant was just cut off from the land of the living. He was just put in a grave.
He's clearly, clearly dead at this moment. But now he's clearly, clearly alive. Even as offspring. That's you and me, by the way. We're the offspring.
Through the death and the resurrection of Jesus, we have now actually become part of the family of God. We've now been adopted in as sons and daughters. I I absolutely love this next verse. I should say I love them all. You know, I you do I you hear me say all the time, man, I really love this verse.
Just so you know, whatever verse you are currently reading, you should be loving most at that moment. Alright? I love this one most. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied. Just stop right there.
To the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied. As Jesus hung in agony on the cross, we read that he saw something and whatever he saw brought satisfaction deep within his soul. That's what Hebrews talks about for the joy that was before him, he endured the cross. There's there's there's something he is looking at and seeing that satisfies him. I know that there were Jesus said a lot of things on the cross.
You know, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I I thirst. You know, he yelled a number of things but one of the things was certainly, ah. As he sees something, he's really satisfied. So the question is, what is it that Jesus actually saw here?
In just a second, we're gonna see that what he saw was he saw many people being accounted as righteous. But before we get to that, I want you to look at a little footnote that your bibles have. That's why I love for you to bring your bibles because you actually there you'll see the footnotes there. Look at the footnote. There's a little number there at the word see.
And that footnote, it tells you that in the oldest manuscripts like the Dead Sea Scrolls, what you actually read is he shall see light. Shall see light. Do you all see that there? In other words, as Jesus is approaching his death, he doesn't see darkness. Remember, when Jesus is hanging on a cross, darkness covers the entire land at broad daylight.
It is pitch black there. But as Jesus is approaching his death death, he does not see darkness, he sees light. In other words, he's actually seeing a new dawn rising. The sun is rising on a new humanity and he is looking into that day and he is satisfied. It's worth it.
Look what he is accomplishing. This death of his is not the end, it's the beginning. It's the beginning because of what we read next. By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous. And he shall bear their iniquities.
So when Jesus is looking into the the light there, what he sees is this. He sees what his death is going to accomplish. It was going to make us righteous. It was gonna have his righteousness accounted. See that word account?
His righteousness was gonna be accounted to us or credited to us because of what he's doing. Because he was our substitute, his righteous righteousness is now being put into our account and then our sins are being withdrawn and they're being put in his account. So we have this exchange happening there. Do you see that? It's clear as day.
He takes our sins and he gives us his righteousness. And so now when the father looks at us, all he sees is the righteousness of his son. And that satisfied Jesus. The song ends here with God saying that because of all of this, because of the obedience of his son, because of the sacrifice of his son, he's gonna give his son an inheritance that he is gonna share with us. And that's how the song ends.
So what's the application for us? You know, when you come to a passage of scripture like this, is the application here about how we should, you know, how we should be a better husband or wife? Is the application about how we need to give more, be more generous? It's hard to have like a little topical application when you read something like this. Although those things are certainly true.
We we do need to be a better husband and wife and we do need to bore be more generous and and this text certainly does help us be those things. But really, the the application is more foundational than any of those things. Here's the first thing I would say to you how you apply to the this text to you. I hope you see God's heart and that He loves guilty people. Those of you who have sinned and you've sang guilty before me, He loves you.
He loves guilty people. And he will do whatever it takes. He did whatever it took to save you. So that's the first. I hope you just see the father's love for guilty people.
And the second is this. You have to believe that what Jesus did on the cross was for you in order to receive any of the benefits that were laid out in this text. You actually have to believe it. We get a hint of this, I think in the way Isaiah words verse 10. In verse 10, once again, we we read this.
Yet it was the will of the lord to crush him. He has put him to grief. Listen carefully to this one. When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring. He shall prolong his days.
So when his soul makes an offering for guilt. Right there, you have to look at another footnote. I hate pointing out footnotes like this. This is two in one sermon. I promise you this one's worth it people.
Look at the little footnote that's after makes. The footnote says that the text literally reads this. It's not when his soul makes but it's when you make his soul an offering. See the difference there? And that's how it actually reads.
It's when you make his soul but the translators are like, boy this is weird. All of sudden the second person comes in here, you, it's very confusing. They try to clean this up and that's why they have it translated the way they make it. And I think they really missed out. Yeah.
It cleared things up but it missed out on the invitation that's being offered to us. When you make his soul an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring or you become part of the family. The invitation is this. You've just heard everything that Jesus has done on the cross. You've just heard of his sacrifice.
And now the question is this, will you make His offering yours? Will it be yours? Do you believe He did these things for you? If so, you become part of the family of God. So you must believe that Jesus did all of this in order for you to be saved.
Do you believe? When you read this, you're like, this just sounds so easy. That's all you have to do. You believe it sounds so easy. You know why it's easy?
Because Jesus did all of this for you. He's the one who did it for you. You just have to trust him that he did it on your behalf. Pray with me. Jesus, thank you that you were crushed for us.
All of us, the burdens of our sins were just heaved on you and you were crushed. And you willingly, lovingly, you did that on our behalf. You paid the penalty for our sin. And after it was paid in full, you rose from the dead. And you now offer life to all of those who embrace you, who believe in this good news.
And I pray for anyone here who has not heard that or has not truly believed that right now with the mighty arm of the Lord be revealed to them. Would you work, Jesus? And we pray this in your name. Amen. And that brings us here to this table in which we remember the events that we just looked at in Isaiah 53.
We remember the suffering of Jesus. On a night that Jesus was betrayed, the night before he would be crucified, Jesus took bread, he broke it, said this is my body given to you. In the same way he took the cup and he said, this cup is my blood poured out for the forgiveness of many. The apostle Paul would later say as often as you eat of this bread and you drink of this cup, you proclaim the lord's death until he comes. If you're new to Redeemer, let me, let me explain to you how we take communion here as a church.
You'll come down these two center aisles. There'll be four stations up here. And if you would just break off a piece of bread, and when you do so, you'll hear the words, this is the body of Christ given to you. Then if you would dip it in the wine and take it and you'll hear the words, this is his blood shed for you. After you partake in that, you're welcome to to stay up here if you wanna kneel down and pray or you can return to your seat using the outer aisle.
And we are going to start with the balcony first and then we work our way down. And if you're wondering, is this for me or not? Do I take or not? Let me set this table for you. This table is for all those who know they're guilty.
For those who know they're guilty and that their only hope is in Jesus. That Jesus has paid the price of their sins. If you believe that and you've been baptized believing that, this is for you. So you're welcome to come forward. If you don't believe that but you still wanna come forward, then you're welcome to.
And just as you get up here, would say you could just offer your hand up like this and and those serving will just pray a brief blessing over you and you can return to your seats. But let me pray for us and then I'll invite you all to come forward. Father, in this moment, would you bless this time through your spirit? May we indeed, as we take this bread, we take this wine, may we commune with you, Jesus. And we pray this in your sweet name.
Amen.