A Wounded Healer

the wounded healer that's who Jesus is there seems to be a re-emergence of excitement of the writings of Nostradamus a 16th century French astrologer who said on one occasion that he was looking inside of a brass bold and that he was given a revelation and out of it he made some four thousand predictions and those predictions that Nostradamus made range those who interpret his 1,000 50 lines of poetry say that he predicted the coming of the submarine at its periscope hit Lin is coming it was just one alphabet off of Hitler they say others say that he predicted the world wars the only thing is when you read carefully the predictions of Nostradamus they were so general that all you had to do is use a piece of imagination and apply it to every human situation some of us remember Jean Dickerson she predicted some 100 thousand events that was supposed to take place she meat meant national prominence when she predicted the death of the Kennedys but then like Nostradamus if you took all of her writings and just threw it against the wall it all would just be so general that it could apply to just anybody when we come to Isaiah chapter 53 this is one of the four prophecies of this literary prophet and there is nothing skimped skinny ass off amore about his writings in fact when he writes for us this morning he writes so clear this is just one of the four prophecies that he writes we meet him don't we in the year that Uzziah died he sees the Lord high and lifted up and the glory of the Lord feels the temple that's as IO 6 and then we meet him in chapters 42 and then 49 50 and we see that there is as much of a concern there is a revealing by the time we get the chapter 53 even a New Testament writers do not write as clear as the prophet Isaiah writes at this particular time we come now to look at these words that have meant so much to so many people what do they mean and why do we listen to them while they're so significant to all of us this wounded healer tells us something that we ought to know it gives a picture first of just the wounds itself the Prophet begins with the life of the Lord Jesus Christ he raises this question who is believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed the question here's the answer not many who has believed our message you would think that the Prophet was assuming that after he had explained so much about God that so many people would have just leaned in and believed him but he's actually astonished at the people that responded to the message he thought after he would reveal so much more of the coming somebody that the more he revealed the more people would have believed the report and yet the more he revealed it seemed that less people really believed who would believe the message you know we live in a culture of disbelief don't we certainly we do I read that highly sophisticated news a paper called a USA Today it has a lot of colors and pictures on it and from its inception it has had on the first page at the corner a national poll that's taken on any subject that's imaginable and according to these polls these pollsters say that if the majority agreed to it it must be right and that's the culture that we actually live in we're belief in numbers the size of the poll says that is right and yet you can be wrong even when the polls say that it's all right and sometimes you might have to stand alone by yourself in the middle of in the middle of belief when everybody else in the polls to say you're wrong who will believe the message Isaiah was shocked he thought that in his culture that there would be those who would lean forward and they would believe the message but they didn't just reject the message in that same verse they rejected the very arm of the Lord that is a poetic weight that as I are used to say the strength of God they had seen in the past the strength of God God had revealed himself incalculable ways that he was strong all of the little demigods they were weak but God was strong he was so strong that out of the blast of his nostrils he could open up the red cheese and he could spit out rivers and mount and then level mountains and yet they didn't believe that the arm of the Lord was strong and all of us need to be reminded of the strength of the Lord if I didn't mention the opening of the Red Sea's if I said nothing of God's divine intervening in the life of those three boys Shadrach Meshach and Abednego if I said nothing about our God shut the mouths of lions you ought to have enough in your personal life with God that you can look in the rearview mirror and say I have seen the arm of the Lord and I pray that I'll never have to convince you that the Lord's arm has been strong in your life which way do you want to look you want to look backwards or sideways that when you should bend into your break the laws arm has been strong in your life when your children got in trouble and even if the law didn't reach down and bring him out he gave him the grease to make a change in the condition that they are in the arm of the Lord is strong who will believe our report he said no one this was the exclamation point of a science prophecy but in the very next line in verse 2 he moves from the exclamation of astonishment in verse 1 to the explanation the explanation in verse number 2 here he raises this he says he they get how he says this now he that's the Lord Jesus Christ grew up before him that's God like a tender shoot give me just a moment to unpack that because this is one of the most repeated read chapters in the Christian Church he Jesus Christ Brooke do you see what Isaiah is doing seven hundred years before the coming of the Lord Jesus he is giving a clear prediction of what's going to take place he says he's gonna grow up and notice now he gives us two things in this he gives us a vision of the unlikely origin of the one who's gonna grow up and then something about his unlikely appearance in the origin he begins by giving us a hint of the time and place to locale in which it would take place in little Nazareth it's not even mentioned in the Old Testament you can't find it on the Bible Atlas and yet he is describing a little place an unlikely origin where God's great gift of salvation is going to immerse I've stood there in the streets of that little town on the West Bank of Palestine there's nothing attractive about it you would ask like Nathan also can anything good come out of Nazareth sewage running down the middle of the street you would wonder can God do anything that God had found a better place than this the Savior the world certainly should have come to the front door of the Roman Empire to have political clout on his side or possibly could have come to the apogee of the intellectual center of that day Athens Greece where he could have gone and sat down with the contemporaries those before and after like a Plato and Socrates on Aristotle you he could have sat with them but he bypassed that God came by the way of the back door and that's what God typically does in this unlikely origin he comes the way where he avoids and assaults to arrogance of power and in your life God has come to you in unlikely ways also and unlike the origin is there but he doesn't stop there doesn't he he moves on and said there's something unlikely about his appearance you see it he grew up like a tender shoot like a root out of dry ground those phrases they interested in us Texans we would talk about that little tender shoot as a sucker something that would eat the very life out of a champion of a tree people who know challah culture they would just go and cut it off that's that's how vulnerable and negligible the life of Jesus from the vision of Isaiah was he said that those who would see him will see him like a little plant that's worthless and lifeless and just cut it off he would come from a place they'll say nothing to him and then he would say would have no beauty and magistrate or attracted you had Christians all the time talking about if I had been there in that day and I would have saw the Lord I would have followed him know you would this prophecy is there for a reason there was nothing attractive outwardly or inwardly of his persona in fact he would have passed by you and you would not have paid him in attention you will not have stopped the green him he would have been mentally in the mix of a crowd of people and nobody would pay attention to him in fact you would just walk past him there would be nothing to him in fact it's a way of saying that God would come to us in court dito that God would come in our very midst and people would miss him didn't even know it when you come to verse 4 surely you took our ferret of infirmities and carried our sorrows stricken by God this god of ours in Jesus Christ the reaction is this is how people looked at him to look at the one whom Isaiah said this is the coming somebody who's going to deliver Israel and forgive you of their sins they said can't be God would never stoop so low and that's what they didn't understand that God can stoop so low and I'm glad that God stoop that low he he got so low that he got under me and that day when they looked at him they despised they rejected they repulsed but the reality this morning is God came to stoop the spook that's what he did stoop to scoop I like that stoop the spook he comes in your human situation and God in His love and grace is so wonderful that he'll stoop down as low as it take to get underneath you to lift your load oh yes he will we remember in the eighties when the story was in reemerged came back to life the story called it the Elephant Man the story of Joseph Mary this boy who lived to be 29 years old who was genetically deformed and caught it off from one carnival to the next and one circus to the next and people may sport of him and sir Trevor came and saw him and looked at him and when when Trevor saw dr. Trevor Fredrik ever looked at him he took him in to himself treated him gave him his cart two years would pass after he was no longer to attraction and sickened one day they would discard him again and people were taught and bruised and and make fun of him and he would reach in his pocket and pull out that card or Sir Frederick Trevor they would get him to the hospital in Victorian England and there he would be treated and troubled figured the one thing that I need to do is to say this deformed boy with this one beautiful arm needs somebody that can touch him without shrinking back and you know who stuffed in the Prince of Wales came to visit him and sat down and they recited lines of poetry from the writings of Shakespeare and she found him to be witty and delightful and it was that human touch that brought dignity to their life that had been deformed come here today ain't talking about the Elephant Man all of us are deformed all of us have been misshapen by sin but the beauty of the Lord Jesus has come into our room oh yes it has and brought dignity to our deformity that was the reaction to it people repulse from it but there was a reason for this wounded Hitler as a reason the reason for the wounded healer is that he comes to us as our substitute that I need everything that Ralph West's been talking about but I can't get it on my own that's the theme of Isaiah 53 the suffering servant substitute that is in order for me to get in the presence of God to access him I can't negotiate my way there I need someone who can stand in between as a mediator between God and man I can't reach that high he can reach that low but I can't reach that high so I need somebody in between so when Isaiah is talking about a substitute he's talking about one that can get between Wes and guard you and God and he's gonna do it on the cross study is he's gonna take God's hand and take your hand and bring y'all together in reconciliation and in grace but now you need a real substitute you know no you don't need no cheap substitute because there are some counterfeit substitutes I was reading the history of the civil war and don't you know that in the silver war you had six hundred dollars you could buy your substitute yeah you could buy a substitute to train an army get on the line fight and even die if you got six hundred dollars we always think we can buy everything that we need but i'ma tell you you can't get across the counter a redemptive substitute you only purchased that substitute by a confession of faith of believing that God is who he says he is and Jesus has come to do what he can do and the spirit had sealed the deal here it is right here the reaction and the reason standing right before us listen to the words that he uses surely took our infirmities in the Hebrew as well in the English translation notice it's plural not our infirmity our infirmities hmm and he's carried our sorrows that is God gets in the middle of not just one thing not just the spiritual but the physical not just a physical but the emotional he deals with the totality of your infirmaries infirmities he gets in the middle of it he's your wounded healer he became now into calling that phrase in a pastor or a book called wounded healer and he tells the story that Joseph Levite reports of the wounded he'll he says the wounded healer sits at the edge of the city and as people bring their wounds to him he does not open up his bandages and expose all his wounds at one time what he does is as he listens to one wound and listens to another wound he begins to unfasten or unwrap that area of woundedness because somebody here this morning need one healing where the other person needs another healing and because he's the wounded healer and he sits with our infirmities he knows how to deal with each of our wounds on individual basis might be physical but somebody else's might be emotional somebody else's might be spiritual and somebody else may be psychological somebody else may be sociological but somebody else's might be financial he knows how to say let me show you that I've been where you trying to go I said where you said I've said where you're sitting right now and I can lift you out of your mess because I identify with your infirmity I'm a man of sorrows I have wet more than at the grave of Lazarus I weep when you hurt and I'm pulling in your direction it's the reason for the cross when they nailed his hands then your aunt's ought to be for me when when they to open his side yeah yeah if you said it'll help you they put crowns on his head he blind on the cross he suffered on the cross he died on the cross you oughta get happy about that sometime for me he died and you know what happened every time they pierced him every time that hammer strike that nail that spike it is risk for me that's why you get peace peace peace I got peace this morning because he took the pain for me he took the pain and I got the peace I got a sit down now here's why he did I did all of that to get to this one verse I could let y'all go a long time ago but I'm serious here it is in the last verse verse 6 we are like sheep have gone astray that's for y'all who think that seeing us for y'all and not for all because in the church you always got a group of people that believe that sin is fun y'all and not fall let me read it one more time we are like sheep have gone astray each turned to his own way all of the images that Isaiah could have used to describe you why did he use sheep I'm glad you asked Han Robinson said that he was talking to a sheep herder and he said what is the one distinguishing characteristic that separates sheep from every other animal and had Robinson says without hesitation that Shepherd said stupidity why else would a sheep go looking in another field when the Shepherd is guiding and protecting him in his own field sheep always looking for something else sheep always think that the grass is greener on the other side sheep never pay attention to the running waters and the flowing streams and the adders that are called in the grass they never pay attention to the dangers around them that's why sheep need a shepherd it's because God gives to Shepherd the rod and staff to lead and direct and sometime to protect and to fear he is laid in equity on us all you get that how does God do it have you noticed that the two days that we celebrate the most are the days that take God from way up there and bring him all the way down here that's Christmas and Easter Christmas Incarnation Easter resurrection and in that we see what God has done for us he comes to identify and I'm finished now to identify with us that is my God is different I'm not a Christian this morning because my mama was a Christian my mama's gone upstairs to be with the Lord now and and she had to make a confession of Christ herself and she said that to me boy God ain't hereditary just because I've know him don't mean you know I can hear right now and then she was saying you got to know him for yourself and I remember having to call on the name of the Lord and I remember getting saved and from that day that this I wish I could tell you that I've always seen and felt him but I've always known he was there even when I don't see him and when I don't feel him faith tells me if I call him he'll answer me and he knows how to fit me right where I am that word on closing his our iniquity on us is the word for twisted with means that the Lord looks at our twisted condition and says I can get in your twisted situation i'ma sit down now but Richard Skelton is a surgeon and a writer and he writes in his journal this story he said that she was a beautiful girl they had just been married and then the formation of a tumor in her jaw to the corner of her mouth and at that some of you heard me tell this story and at that moment Skelton said that as he wrote he traced religiously the vigor of that line from a jaw to the corner of a lip that lip now and mouth corner that had been irrevocably changed I had to move a tumor from her mouth now that little nerve that holds the mouth and muscle together has been severed and now a mouth has shifted to one side she asks me as a husband said across the room will I always be like this I looked at him and answered her yes you'll always be like this he got up from the seat he said and leaned over and said are they so bad that's kind of cute the way your mouth is twisted like that I like it it's real cute and that would tears welling up in her eyes he reached down but in order to kiss her he had to twist his mouth to reach her mouth and he twisted his mouth to reach up man to let her know we still can embrace one another we've been twisted oh yes we have but thank God he loves us so much that he's able to get down on our level and turn his life in a direction to remind us that you are not off-limits jesus paid it all all to him I owe sin had left a crimson stain but he was why does she know Church is born Christians are judgmental and hypocritical I am just too busy I don't think I'd be welcome any more I've done some bad stuff these are just a few reasons why people say Church isn't for me what if I told you about a church that isn't perfect but a church that would welcome you love you and definitely not bore you the church without walls family would like to invite you to national back to church Sunday on September 15th at one of our three locations we hope to see you there when was the last time you connected with a church that made a dramatic difference in your life every week Pastor Ralph Douglas West is making that kind of difference in the lives of people around the world so call us or visit us on the web at church without walls org to find out more about our books DVDs and other fantastic resources we also invite you to partner with us as we continue to take this ministry to a global audience your prayers and financial support are critical in allowing us to expand this remarkable message so called the number on your screen to discover how you can become a partner with us today and when you're in the Houston area we invite you to visit us for a life-changing experience at the church without walls you

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Length: 28min 30sec (1710 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 09 2013