Well, thank you very much, Chris, and a special
thanks to R.C. for including me in this. Thank you, my friend. You are unfortunately out
of sight, being down there in Florida and me in California, but you're never out of
mind. Daily I am thankful for you and the impact you've had on me and so many, for the
clarity of the true faith. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for including me this week. It's wonderful to be here. And I've been assigned
two subjects that are really dear to my heart. I used to do the Larry King program a lot
-- not anymore, obviously; Larry's not on -- but people would say to me, "How do you
prepare for that? Do you know what the questions are going to be? Do you know what the subject
is going to be?" And I would say, "Not really, but I don't care. They don't send me any advance
questions. They don't do any advance interview. I just show up. I don't even know who else
is going to be there. It might be a rabbi, a priest, or a confused evangelical. I never
know who it's going to be." And so the question, the follow-up question, is, "Well, how do
you prepare for that?" And I say, "It's very easy. I want to say two things: I want to
say that the Bible is the only source of divine truth, and Jesus is the only Savior." I don't
care what the questions are, those are going to be the answers. So I'm just always looking
-- I said to Larry so many times, "Well, I don't know about that, but I do know Jesus
is the only Savior and the Bible is the only authority." It's an old formula. So here I
am at the Ligonier conference, and I've been asked to speak on the authority of the Bible
and the uniqueness of Jesus as Savior -- two very wonderful, wonderful subjects. Scripture
is the only divine authority. Jesus Christ is the only divine Savior. Off-camera, Larry
said to me on several occasions, "I wish I could believe what you believe." And I would
always say to him, "It's not private. It doesn't belong to me. But I thank God for His grace
that enabled me to believe these things." The issue of biblical authority is the bedrock
of truth, so we're going to talk about that a little bit, and I hope that the approach
I'm taking to this will be an encouragement to you. There are so many, many ways to speak
to the issue of biblical authority, but let me just kind of introduce it a little bit
and then I'm going to take you to a place you might not expect me to take you and we'll
really work a little bit on enriching our understanding of biblical authority from,
perhaps, an unexpected point of Scripture. I think you would agree with me that there
are no central truths on which all people agree (and, by that, I mean believers and
unbelievers); there's no body of truth that everybody agrees with. And the disagreement
between believers and unbelievers is fundamental. It is seminal. The separation is severe and
fixed between what we believe and what non-believers believe. And, at the bottom of that, is the
disagreement about authority. It's a disagreement about who's right. All people's beliefs and
all people's convictions and all their reasonings are controlled by one of two suppositions:
the authority of human wisdom or the authority of divine revelation. That's the dividing
point. It is severe. It is clear. Our authority is God and He has spoken in one book, the
Bible. One book. That is what we believe. That is what we affirm. That's where our convictions
come from. And we reason out of the convictions that are provided for us on the pages of Holy
Scripture. We believe in an inspired Bible. We believe that it was authored by the Holy
Spirit over a period of 1,500 plus years by 40 different authors, but it has perfect unity.
Analogea scriptura -- the Scripture is analogous to itself, it is its own best interpreter.
We believe in its inerrancy, that, in the original autographs, every word came from
God. We believe in its perspicuity, its clarity. It is a revelation, not an obfuscation. We
believe in its sufficiency, that it is sufficient to accomplish everything that God intended
it to accomplish; and, in fact, it will because it never returns to Him void but always accomplishes
the purpose to which He has sent it. So we believe this: revelation of the one true God
is absolutely true in all elements, and the divine author is none other than God Himself.
It is to be noted that even new Christians believe that. As a pastor, I live in a world
where people are coming to Christ. Our church is kind of a maternity ward where there's
the constant cry of newborn babes in Christ. And I really never have to defend the authority
of the Scripture to them. I've never had someone come and acknowledge that they want to confess
Jesus as Lord and be saved. And they're eager to do that, but they have all kinds of questions
about whether the Bible is true. There is, in the heart of a true believer,
a confidence in Scripture. They believe the Bible. They believe the Word of God is true.
I've had a most interesting experience: for 43 years I taught through the whole New Testament,
verse by verse. 43 years. I never defended the Scripture. I didn't do apologetics, reasons
to believe the Bible. In all those 43 years, I never did that on a Sunday morning in our
worship service. I just went right through the New Testament, and in a very strange kind
of providence, I ended up 43 years of teaching the New Testament with the last section of
Mark 16 that doesn't belong in the Bible. So was this about to undermine everything
I had taught for 43 years because it called into question the Bible, held in the hands
of these people for these many, many years? Quite the contrary. That passage I had a great
time turning on its head, to show how it validates what should be in the Bible. But never, through
those 43 years, have the people who sat and listened to the Word of God (whether they
were believers for a week or for half a century), never have they questioned the veracity of
Scripture. Before, or without any particular study of
apologetics, they have been like babies desiring milk. There has been a longing in their heart
for the Word of God. It is their 'life milk.' It is their bread. Why is that? Why is it
that they believe that? Well, they do and I'm going to answer why a little bit later.
But, even given that fact -- that true believers have a confidence in the Word of God, in its
inspiration, in its veracity -- it's still important to strengthen our confidence, because
we can be assaulted, and we can be attacked. And, more importantly, we do need to give
a reason for why we believe the Bible to people who don't believe the Bible and aren't given
that confidence by the wonderful work of the Holy Spirit. So, there are categories in which
we can go, and we can look, and we can say, "Here are reasons to believe the Bible is
true." We say believers believe it subjectively, but there are some objective things that we
can learn to validate Scripture. If that were what I was going to do this morning, I would
kind of follow this flow. I would say we believe the Bible is absolutely
true and the sole authority because that's what it claims. That would be point number
1. That's what the Bible claims. It claims to be the Word of God. And it claims to be
accurate and it claims to be true; Psalm 19:7 -- "The law of the Lord is perfect." Psalm
119 says things like, "Your word is very pure. Your law is truth. All your commandments are
truth. The sum of your word is truth. Every one of your righteous ordinances endures forever.
For all your commandments are righteous"; or Psalm 111, verse 7 -- "All His precepts
are sure"; or the words of the apostle Paul that the word of God is "holy, righteous,
and good"; or perhaps it's Deuteronomy chapter 4; Revelation 22: "Don't add anything, don't
take anything away, or shall be added you," as Revelation says, "the plagues that are
written in it." The Bible is infallible. It is true. And it claims that for itself. It
claims even to be inerrant. It claims to be so purely the word of God that, as Proverbs
30 says, "Every word of God is pure." Or as Psalm 12:6 says: "The words of the Lord are
pure words, as silver tested in a furnace, refined seven times." Psalm 119:140: "Your
word is very pure." Very pure. And I could take you through all kinds of Scriptures.
If I were going to do it that way, I might say Isaiah 65:16 tells us that "God is the
God of truth"; or Jeremiah 10:10, the prophet says, "The Lord is the true God"; or John
3:33 -- "God is truthful"; or John 17:3 -- "The only true God"; or 1 John 5:20 -- "The true
God." I might remind you that, three times, the Bible says, "God cannot lie" -- in Numbers,
in Titus, and in Hebrews. The Old Testament gives us 2,000 claims to be speaking the very
words of God. Those wonderful, opening words in Isaiah: "Hear, O heavens. Listen, O earth,
for the Lord has spoken and, when God speaks, we must listen." "I tell you the truth" -- Matthew
5:17 -- "until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke
of a pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished."
We would look at those classic passages, like Hebrews 1: "God has spoken in the past in
many ways, and now has spoken in His Son"; or 1 Peter 1 -- that "no Scripture is by some
private origination, but holy men were moved by the Holy Spirit to write what they wrote";
or Paul's letter to Timothy, 2 Timothy 3 -- that "God breathed," theopneustos. So the Scripture
makes these claims unambiguously and un-defensively. All God's word is true. Writers in the Old Testament refer to their
writings as the 'words of God' over 3,800 times. New Testament writers quote the Old
Testament as the 'Word of God' 320 times and make reference to Old Testament passages about
a 1,000 times. So New Testament writers affirm the authority and divine inspiration and authorship
of the Old Testament. You come into the New Testament, and the testimony of the writers
of the New Testament about the New Testament is clear. Galatians 1:11: "I would have you
know, brethren" Paul writes, "that the gospel preached by me is not according to man. I
neither received it from man nor was I taught it. I received it through a revelation of
Jesus Christ." If I were going to follow this approach further, I would suggest to you that,
in 1 Timothy 5:18, Paul makes two references and calls them both 'Scripture.' One is from
Deuteronomy 25:4, and the other is from Luke 10:7. So Luke's writing is 'Scripture' just
as is the Old Testament. In 2 Peter 3:15 and 16, Peter calls Paul's writing 'Scripture.'
In Jude 17 and 18, Jude refers to the Scripture and then quotes Peter, from 2 Peter. John
writes the book of Revelation and repeatedly, in chapters 2 and 3, he says, "The Spirit
has said this to the churches." And so it goes. You can trace the reality that the Bible
writers knew that they were writing the Word of God. So there is very strong, internal
evidence. And so, if I were going to do that, I might even develop that more. A second line of testimony that would be very
critical in affirming (in a traditional, sort of classic way) the authority of Scripture,
would be to look at the testimony, not just of the Scripture itself, or of the writers
of Scripture, but, thirdly, of Jesus. What did Jesus think of the Scripture? I suppose
we could sum that up in John 10:35, where He says the Scripture cannot be -- what's
the word? -- "broken." To say it is a unit. It is a whole. That's why He said, "Not one
yod or tittle shall in any wise pass from this law" -- down to the very vowel pointings.
That's why He was even down to the words, the words being inspired. He makes a case
about David calling, in the Psalms of David, the Lord speaking to my lord and, then the
question "how can he both be David's Lord and David's son?" Our Lord said, "Search the Scripture, for
there are they which speak of me." The Scripture is about Me, He said. It's the truth about
Me. He said, "Search the Scripture for these are they that bring eternal life." "Have you
not read?" "Have you not read?" His commitment to Scripture is crystal-clear. "Think not
that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets," He said (Matthew 5:17). "I came
to fulfill." And you know all of those things. He said, "the Son of Man goes as it has been
written of Him." We know Jesus believed in Genesis because He refers to it a number of
times, specifically. And that introduces that reality that Jesus' view of Scripture was
that it was the Word of God. Now, that was His view of Scripture clearly and, if we had
time, we could trace all of that. Then we would have to say that was either
true or it wasn't true. If Jesus said it's true, and Jesus is who He is, then it's true.
Then it's true. If Jesus told us something that's not true, then He's not who He said
He was and the whole of our faith disappears. So there are either errors in the Old Testament
Jesus knew about and covered up, or there are errors in the Old Testament that He didn't
know about. Or there are no errors in the Old Testament. And the Scripture cannot be
broken. So, when you look at the Scripture itself -- its claims, the claims of its writers,
and the view that Christ had of the Scripture -- you are compelled to understand the internal
authority of is made manifest. And if I were to follow this a little further,
I might even talk about external proof of Scripture's
authority. And, if I did that, I might even give you five things to think about. Getting
outside the Bible, how can we validate what's in the Bible? And I would say one area of
apologetic, one line of defense, might be experience. Experience. "If any man be in
Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, new things have come."
We've lived that reality. We have put our faith in Jesus Christ. We were promised new
birth, new life. We did it, we have new life. We have holy affections, divine longings,
righteous aspirations. All of a sudden we love the Word of God, we love the people of
God, we love the Christ of God, we desire to worship. That's the reality that the Scripture
claims, and we've lived it. That in itself, transformed lives, is a kind of defense (although
maybe the least powerful of all, because other people of other religious experiences can
claim experience as well). So maybe we get a little tighter when we go
to, say, archaeology. And we question whether the history recorded in Scripture is actually
true. And then we study archaeology, and we find that all archaeology unanimously affirms
(when it intersects with the Bible) the validity of the Scripture text. Powerful, powerful
historical validation of what the Bible says, and that's a marvelous study to follow. Then we might come to a third dimension, which
I love to talk about (and did it, a few years ago, at Ligonier): science. It's not -- the
Bible's not like a Hindu book that says that the earth is on the back of elephants who
produce earthquakes when they shake. The Bible says of itself that He hangs the earth on
nothing. That He turns the earth like the clay to the seal, rotating it on an axis.
The Bible gives us a scientific description of hydrology, of isostasy -- that the weight
of the world, the balance so that the earth doesn't go like that when it rotates. Prior
to the 17th century, they said there were a thousand stars. Genesis 22 said they were
at least equal to the grains of sand in the sea and on the shore. Job 26 says He hangs
the world on nothing. Herbert Spencer, 1903, died -- he was sort of a classification scientist,
and he came up with this great thing (for which he was awarded) that all that exists
can be reduced to five categories: time, force, action, space, and matter. And he was hailed
for that scientific discovery: time, force, action, space, and matter. Nice going Herbert.
How about Genesis 1:1 -- "In the beginning (that's time) God (that's force) created (that's
action) the heavens (that's space) and the earth (that's matter)." So, if I were going
to kind of approach it on a classical basis, we could do that. We could then talk about a fourth category:
miracles -- for which there were historic eye-witnesses -- which culminated, of course,
in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But the fifth, and I think perhaps the most
impactful category of sort of external support for the word of God is prophecy. Prophecy,
that is: 'predictions that come to pass.' The Bible says things are going to happen,
and they happen. And there are many prophecies in the Scripture that came to pass; many of
them that came to pass in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. I think this is
the most powerful evidence of divine authorship and, thus, the divine authority of Scripture.
Because only God writes history. Only God knows and determines the future. So let me
just work on this one a little bit with you, okay? The Bible is the only religious book
in the world made up of two distinct volumes. Two distinct volumes. One predicts what will
happen, and the second records that it happened. There is no religious literature that does
that in the world. And here is, then, God giving us this unmistakable evidence of divine
authorship by saying, "Here's what will happen. It happened." This is a demonstration of the
divine character in the most powerful way that I know. And the most powerful prophecy
that I know that does this, in a monumental way, is found in Isaiah 53. So open your Bible
to Isaiah 53. This is one heavy chapter. Frankly, words
cannot bear the weight of this chapter. Language can't carry this chapter. It is awesome, in
the true sense of the word. It is bottomless. It is infinite, while being specific, and
detailed, and precise. Isaiah 53 is the most detailed, complex prophecy that has full,
historical verification 700 years after it was written. Isaiah 53 is so consistent with
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that it has been called the 'Fifth Gospel.' But I don't
think that's the right title. I think it should be called the 'First Gospel.' 700 years before
Christ. At the same time that this is a prophecy fulfilled
in detail 700 years later (which only God could know), this chapter also answers -- listen
carefully -- it answers the question that religion must answer, the question most needing
an answer. This chapter answers the question: how can a sinner escape hell? How can a sinner
be reconciled to a holy God? How can a sinner be forgiven and received into heaven? That
is the ultimate question. And, by the way, that is the question the entire Bible was
written to answer. That is the question of all questions in human life! How do I escape
eternal judgement for my sin and enter into the glories of heaven forgiven? Any religious
book that doesn't answer that question is no help. It's no help. This chapter answers that question. This chapter
is to the Old Testament what Romans is to the New Testament. This chapter answers the
question that no false religion can answer. And the answer is so full and so complete
that it rivals the New Testament, and not just the Gospels, but the epistles. And let
me tell you something: this has to be from God, because what you have in Isaiah 53 -- listen
to me -- is vicarious, substitutionary, sacrificial atonement. That's what you have: the great
doctrine of justification; the great truth of imputation -- the imputing of our sins
to God's chosen sacrifice. In Isaiah 53, you have the truths that dominate the New Testament:
salvation, forgiveness, reconciliation, eternal life, provided by the vicarious, substitutionary,
sacrificial death of the divinely chosen and acceptable Lamb, who bears all the sins of
all His people by taking on Himself, willingly, the full, divine punishment for all. That
sounds like Romans, but that's Isaiah. Listen, the Jews didn't invent this. Because
they didn't believe it. They don't have a theology of a suffering Messiah in Isaiah's
day, or in Old Testament days. They had a theology of glory. They didn't have a theology
of death. It's not found. You can't find literature, ancient Jewish literature, with a theology
that says 'the Messiah will suffer and die in our place.' You won't find it. But here
it is, written by Isaiah. He wasn't writing down the collective wisdom of his day. They
didn't need a substitute to die for them. They didn't need a saving sacrifice. They
needed a Messiah who was a sympathizer, on the one hand, who sympathized for all their
troubles, and a sovereign on the other hand, who could conquer all their enemies. And that
is their view all through their history even until this very day. There's nothing in Jewish
literature that says they needed to have a savior to deliver them from the wrath of God.
When Jesus shows up in the city of Nazareth, His home town -- he's done some miracles in
Capernaum, the word has gotten back, the prior year when He was in Jerusalem -- and 'home
town boy' comes back and preaches for the first time in the synagogue where He was raised.
Everybody knew him: family, extended family, friends, neighbors -- it's a small place,
Nazareth. And He stands up to preach and He says to
them, "Messianic prophecy is fulfilled today. I'm here. And I've come to preach the gospel
to the poor, prisoners, blind, and oppressed." And what He was saying to them is, "Unless
you see yourself as spiritually poor, spiritually blind, spiritually in bondage, and spiritually
oppressed, this message will not mean anything to you." They were the poor, prisoners, blind,
and oppressed and, when He told them, "You have to identify yourselves that way," they
tried to throw Him off a cliff and crush Him with stones. One sermon in his own home town
with his own people. That's how offended they were at the notion that they were not, in
themselves, righteous. They didn't need a sacrifice. They didn't need a substitute.
They didn't need to be saved from the wrath of God. So here, when Isaiah reveals that
their Messiah will suffer and die for their sins, this is something completely supernatural.
This isn't the collective wisdom of the Jewish community. And more: the details of this revelation
of Messiah's suffering and death, are so complex that only God could disclose them 700 years
before they happened. Now you know Isaiah 53, right? You know who's being revealed here,
don't you? You know that it's about the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you ever stop to think what
a wonder that is and what a testimony that is to the divine nature of Scripture? We love
this chapter, but on the other hand, it's been called the 'torture chamber of rabbis,'
because they can't escape the reality that this points to the One they reject. This,
to me, is the chapter that I want to talk about. And I don't know exactly what I'm going
to say, but if you can read this chapter and hear what it says and not be literally overwhelmed
at the divine nature of Scripture, then you're not listening. Okay, so let's look at it. You got your Bible
ready? Alright. An enigma starts it off. It's an enigma in chapter 52, verse 13: "My servant
… " Now, we're in the servant section of Isaiah. Isaiah is divided like the Bible:
39 and 27 -- the first 39 chapters have to do with judgement, and the last 27 have to
do with salvation. If you took the last 27 chapters in Isaiah and focused on the middle,
chapter 53 would be the middle of the middle section (there are three sections; there's
a middle section). In the middle of the middle section, is Isaiah 53, and in the middle of
Isaiah 53, is verse 5 and 6: "He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities,
punished for our well-being, scourged for our healing." Everything just focuses down
on this. This is the fourth Messianic Servant Song. This is the ebed Yahweh, the 'slave
of God.' It's the word 'slave.' It is the word 'slave.' Walt Kaiser did some great work
on the Old Testament word ebed. Jesus is the slave of God (that's something that I point
out in the book 'Slave'). So "My servant … " God is the speaker in 13 to 15. God is introducing
His Servant. This is the fourth Servant Song. 42, 49, 50 are the three previous chapters
that introduce to us the coming Messiah who is the ebed of God. Once, Israel was the ebed
of God; disobedient, rebellious, unwilling. They are no longer the servant. They are no
longer useful to God. There will be one who will be His Servant, and he moves to talk
about the Messiah. He's introduced to us this way: He will be high, He will prosper, He
will succeed -- "He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted." That's quite interesting,
those three verbs. Those three verbs, right there, are used one other time in the book
of Isaiah -- and it's in chapter 6 -- to refer to God, in the opening three verses. So the
first thing we find out here is that whoever this Servant is, this ebed Yahweh, the One
who gives perfect obedience to God, He Himself is God. Because that which is said of God,
in 6, is said of Him here. And if you jump down to verse 15: "He will
startle" is a better translation; "He will shock, and startle, and stun many nations.
Kings will shut their mouths on account of him because they will see things they will
have never seen and hear things they've never heard or understood." In other words, He's
going to come, and He's going to be successful, and He's going to be exalted. And He's going
to be above every king, and every ruler, and every leader. And the rulers, the elite, the
pre-eminent, and the highest powers of the world are going to be shocked at Him. This
all fits the Messianic theology of glory. It tells us the one additional thing that
the Jews maybe didn't understand: the fact that the Messiah would be God. But in the middle is verse 14, and this is
where their theology had never gone: "Just as many were astonished at you, my people,
so his appearance was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men."
He will be a man. He will be God. He will be a man, He will be successful. He will startle
the world and yet He will be disfigured more than any man. That is an enigmatic introduction
to a new view of the ebed Yahweh. They don't have that view. Who is this? This is the enigma.
Who is this? Marred more than any man. Disfigured more than any man. And His form more than
any man. And you have visions of that, don't you? And the excruciating agonies that He
went through up to and including His death. How are we to understand this? This is new
to them. They wouldn't come up with this. One who is God, man, triumphant, successful
and, at the same time, humiliated and disfigured more than any man. Here are the two comings
of the Messiah presented to them really for the first time in one place in the Old Testament,
though elements of both have been given in other places. They don't have this theology. That takes us to 53. And this is so important:
all of a sudden, all the verbs are in the past tense and all the pronouns are plural.
God's not talking anymore. The pronouns are plural. There's a group talking. And everything
they say is in the past. Now listen: this is very important. "Who has believed" (literally,
in the Hebrew) "who has believed the message given to us? And to whom has the arm of the
Lord been revealed?" Who's talking here? I'll tell you what the answer is. This is Israel.
This is Israel. This is not Israel in Isaiah's day. This is not Israel now. This is a future
generation of Israel. This is Israel in the future. You say, "What do you mean 'Israel
in the future'?" Jeremiah 31 promises a new covenant: salvation to Israel, as a nation.
Ezekiel 36 promises a new covenant: salvation to Israel, as a nation. Romans 11:25-27: "So
all Israel will be saved." But a critical passage is Zechariah 12. And in Zechariah
12, we read this: that, in the future, at the end of history, before the coming of the
Lord, Israel, the Jews -- listen to this -- (Zechariah 12:10) "will look on him whom they have" -- what?
-- "pierced." Wow! "And mourn for him as an only son." The Spirit of grace and supplication
will come on them, regenerate them. They will look on the One they pierced. They will mourn
for Him as an only son. And Zechariah's prophecy says the fountain of cleansing will be opened
up and they will be saved. Two thirds of the rebels purged out, the remaining nation (which,
if it happened today, would be 5 million Jews or so) will be saved. They'll be saved in
a moment in time. That's one of the greatest evidences of sovereign salvation in the Bible.
You don't really think that 5 million Jews are all of a sudden going to have an epiphanous
moment when they all decide to embrace Christ together by their own will. That is a mighty
work of God. Now listen: when that moment happens -- in
the future, when they look on the One they've pierced -- this is what they will say. What
you have in Isaiah 53 is not a prophecy of the cross. You have here a prophecy of the
salvation of Israel in the future when they look back to the cross and see it for what
it is. It's a stunning thing. They're going to say, "Who believed the message given? We
didn't believe it! We didn't believe what he said! "To whom has the arm of the Lord
been revealed?" The arm of the Lord is the power of God. He, Jesus, displayed the power
of God, He exhibited the power of God. Here are His words and His works! And remember
He said, "Believe me for my words or believe me for my works." And we didn't believe either!
We were not impressed." And here's their, here's their sort of historic evaluation. First of all, there's five stanzas here. We're,
we're kind of down into the second one. The opening one we read earlier, in chapter 52.
They say, well, "He grew up before him like a tender shoot, like a root out of parched
ground." Look at His origin. He's like a sucker branch. He's -- he's like a - he's like a
dirty root. He -- he's -- he's nothing! You cut off a sucker branch. You remove a root
so you don't trip on it. He's nothing. He's ugly. He's inconsequential. He's insignificant.
That's how we viewed His origin. "Can anything good come out of" -- what? -- "Nazareth?"
He's a nobody from a nobody family and a nowhere place. And then we go from His origin to His, His
life. "And He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, and no appearance
that we should be attracted to Him." He looked like everybody else. There was nothing special
about Him. There wasn't a halo on His head. There wasn't anything royal about Him, anything
triumphant about Him. There was nothing in His origin to attract them. There was nothing
in His, in His life. Once they decided to reject His words and not believe the message,
and then reject His works and not believe that He was (that Hebraism) the 'arm of the
Lord revealed,' they just looked at Him and they weren't impressed. And then His end? Huh! He was despised, forsaken
of men. "He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." He was the kind of person you
hide your face from. He was despised and we did not esteem Him. That means we didn't think
He was anybody. He was nobody to us. He didn't fit the Messianic theology of glory. He didn't
fit the triumphant conqueror. But, in that future day, they're going to
get it. They're going to look on the One they pierced, and this is what they're going to
say, and they start saying it in verse 4. And their view of the cross is in verses 4
through 8. Listen to this. You think you're reading the apostle Paul: "Surely our griefs
he himself bore. Our sorrows he carried." Here -- here is the substitutionary, vicarious
work of Christ. Yes, we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.
But we thought He was being afflicted, and stricken, and smitten for His own blaspheming,
right!? Didn't they say He's a blasphemer? Because He makes Himself equal with God? We
thought He was being punished by God for His own blasphemy, and now we see it," they say. Verse 5: "He was pierced through for our transgressions.
He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment for our well-being fell on him, and by his
scourging we are healed." Pierced? Scourged? 700 years before He ever showed up? How does
the prophet know? How does he know? 'Chastened' is the word for 'punished'? A legal term?
That He would be punished? But please notice they, in the future, will recognize their
sins: " -- our transgressions -- our iniquities." 'Transgressions' means 'violations.' 'Iniquities'
means 'perversions.' Their future peace and spiritual healing would be provided by His
being pierced, His being crushed, His being chastened, His being scourged for their sins. And they not only recognize their sins as
behavior, but they recognize their nature, in verse 6: "All of us, like sheep, have gone
astray. Each of us has turned to his own way" -- drawing on the analogy of a sheep who goes
astray, wanders off independently, on its own because that's its nature. They recognize
that sin is not only evident in their behavior, it's embedded in their nature. This is a pretty
full theology of depravity. And then that great statement at the end of verse 6: "The
Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to" -- what? -- "fall on him." There's the substitutionary,
vicarious atonement of Jesus Christ who is pierced, crushed, punished, then scourged
for our sins. That just didn't exist in Jewish theology. He puts our sins, does God, the
Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. This is God's Lamb, God's sacrifice.
This happened by the "predetermined council and foreknowledge of God" (Acts 2). The next verse, verse 7: "He was oppressed."
That's a word to speak of legal proceedings. And He allowed Himself to be abused. During
His trial, He allowed Himself to be abused to the degree that He didn't open His mouth.
He was silent. He was like a lamb led to slaughter. There is that magnificent picture of the sacrificial
lamb led to slaughter -- "and as a lamb is silent so He was silent before His executioners"
(and he kind of broadens the analogy) or "like a sheep before its shearers, he doesn't open
his mouth." An agrarian society, they knew the silence of sheep when they're sheared
and when they're slaughtered. You know what the New Testament says about that. He was
taken to trial. He was abused, brutally abused. He was afflicted. He was hit in the face,
punched in the face. Hit around the head with sticks, a crown of thorns crushed into His
head. You know He was spit upon, scorned, harassed, mistreated, all of that, leading
to the disfigurement back in chapter 52. And He was silent before His judges, wasn't He?
He was silent. He was silent before Pilate. He was silent before Herod. And that's an
evidence of His willingness. Verse 8 talks of His trial, oppression. The
judgement (the word 'judgement' is the word 'verdict') was given -- He went to trial,
a judgement was given. The third verb, He 'was taken away' speaks of being sentenced
-- He was tried, He was found guilty, and He was sentenced. All in one line. And as
for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living,
the idea is who protested? Who protested that an innocent man was being killed? If you go
to the Talmud today -- find a copy of the Talmud, go into the readings of the Sanhedrin,
you will find that there's an article there in which the Sanhedrin puts in the Talmud
the record that they tried Jesus, and for 40 days, they waited to execute Him -- a period
of 40 days between the trial and the execution to give anyone a chance to speak in His defense.
And no one came forward, they said, in those 40 days. That, of course, is a complete lie,
but it is in the Talmud to defend themselves against the tortuous reality of what they
did to a man against their own code of law -- having a trial in the middle of the night,
bringing it to a conclusion in the morning, and having Him executed the same day. No-one
spoke against Him. No-one spoke for Him. No-one came to His defense. People knew He was innocent.
Pilate repeats it three times. Where were the disciples? "Smite the shepherd and" -- what?
-- "the sheep are scattered." The complete details of Jesus' life: out of a nowhere town,
and a non-descript visibly living His life like any other man, not impressive, no pomp
and circumstance. And the end of His life a tragedy of sorrows, and griefs, and death.
And He's cut off, executed. And when He goes to His trial, He doesn't say anything. He
willingly accepts this because He's God's Lamb. Then I love at the end of verse 8: "He
was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people to whom
the stroke was due." Again, substitutionary, vicarious atonement. This is amazing! Verse 9, His grave. "He was assigned with
wicked men." Sure, He died between two -- what? Two criminals. You know what the Romans did,
according to all the literature that I can find? They let them hang long after death.
They let them hang till the vultures ate their eyes, picked at their skin. Animals chewed
on them. They were roadkill. And, for the Romans, that was sending a message: you don't
want to buck the Roman power. Eventually, they took the bodies down, took them to the
Valley of Hinnom (Gehinnom, Gehenna) -- the burning dump, without a proper burial (as
the Old Testament prescribes that someone of this ilk wouldn't have a proper burial).
They threw them in the dump where their bodies were burned. His grave would be "assigned
with the wicked men." How would Isaiah know that? That He would die a criminal death between
criminals, and be assigned to a criminal's end? Strange, isn't it? Psalm 16 says, "He
will not allow His holy one to see" -- what? -- "corruption." Once He died, He started
up. And so His grave was "with a rich man in his death." Who was that rich man? Joseph.
Came and asked for the body of Jesus, put him in a brand new tomb (Matthew 27). Why
did God stop the indignities when Jesus said, "It is finished"? Why did He stop that? Because
He had done no violence, there was no deceit in His mouth. The Holy One will not see corruption.
And that's the first step up. "We get it," the Jews are going to say in the future. "We
get it. We get every detail of it. We understand it all." And then this incredible statement in verse
10: "The Lord was pleased to crush him." The Lord, who has no pleasure in the death of
the wicked, has complete pleasure in the death of the Holy One. "The Lord was pleased to
crush him." Putting Him into agony. It was a horrible death Jesus died. He didn't die
the death of a martyr, can I tell you that? He didn't die the death of a martyr. No martyr
dies a death like this. No Christian martyr dies a death like Jesus. Because Christians
die a death under grace. So they enjoy (at least from all that I can tell, never having
been one) -- from all that I can tell about Christian martyrs, they enjoy the sweet comforts
of the presence of Christ. I mean, I've read through Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs' like you
have, and lots of other things. I've read the testimony of so many. They sing hymns!
Their hearts are bursting with hope! They pray for their executioners. And they are
knowing the level of the comfort of the Holy Spirit, the likes of which we'll never know
unless we experience that. That's what it is to die under grace. Jesus didn't die under
grace; He died under law. "My God, my God, why have You" -- what? -- "forsaken me?" "Why
have You forsaken me?" There were no sweet comforts. There was no grace. There was unmitigated,
furious, divine wrath in a virtually infinite amount with no relief. No Christian dies the
way Jesus died, but every non-believer dies the way He died. You say, "Isn't this divine
child abuse?" No, because the pleasure of God was not in His pain, but in His purpose.
The pleasure of God was not in His agony, but in His accomplishment. It pleased the
Lord to crush Him so that He would render Himself as a -- what? -- a guilt offering:
the final of the five Levitical offerings. The one that embraces propitiation, divine
satisfaction, and reconciliation. It was the effect of His suffering that pleased God,
not His suffering. And then the Jews will confess, one day in
the future -- back to verse 10: "He'll see his offspring." Whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
How could He see His offspring? He's dead. I think about that once in a while. I'd like
to see my great-grandchildren. I'd like to see what the next couple of generations look
like, see if they walk with the Lord; because I love them. I'd like to see my grandkids
get married and see their little ones. I won't see it. I don't see my offspring. Jesus sees
His offspring. What does that tell you? He's not dead. He's alive. Here's the resurrection:
"He will see his offspring." How? By prolonging his days. "And the good pleasure of the Lord
will prosper in his hand." He will personally see every one of His spiritual children gathered
into His presence forever. And as a result of that, through His anguish, He will see
it and be fully satisfied. This is -- this -- do you understand now why I call this the
First Gospel? It's all here. In a microcosm, you have more evidence in one chapter of the
divine authorship of the Old Testament than any other chapter I know. And then God speaks in conclusion, as He spoke
in introduction: "By the knowledge of him, the righteous one, my servant will justify
the many." Here's the doctrine of justification: because "he will bear their iniquities." Now
God speaks, and now it's a future tense. All the past tense was the Jews, in the future,
looking back. This isn't 'back to the future,' this is 'forward to the past.' But now God
speaks: "By the knowledge of him, the righteous one, my servant will justify the many, as
he will bear their iniquities and therefore I will allot him a portion with the great
and he'll divide the booty with the strong because he poured out himself to death, He
was numbered with the transgressors." That doesn't mean He died with thieves. That means
He became a man. Oh, by the way, if this sounds like Philippians 2:4 through 11, "He held
himself to the point of death, even death on the cross, but God highly exalted Him,
gave Him a name above every name." Verses 11b, 12 -- divine affirmation. Divine affirmation. What's going to happen to Israel in the future?
They're going to be saved. God's preserved them for that. Have you ever met a Hittite?
Anybody know an Amorite, Jebusite, Hivite? I don't know any. I know a lot of Israelites.
Why are they hanging around? God's not through with them. You say, "Wait a minute. Isn't
this a novel dispensational, pre-millenial idea? At a Reformed conference! Do you know
where you are?!" Yes, I know where I am! And I am ready! Let me quote John Calvin. Here
it comes: "The Jews shall return from their defection to the obedience of faith, and thus
shall be completed the salvation of the whole Israel of God." End quote. More importantly,
R.C. Sproul: "The nation of Israel, as a nation, will be restored to God." End quote. Yes,
sir. He is a closet pre-millenialist. I just -- Alright, John Owen: "Days of prayer and
humiliation were kept in Scotland that the promised conversion of His ancient people,
the Jews, may be hastened." Jonathan Edwards: "Nothing is more certain, certainly if we're
told, than the national conversion of the Jews" (Romans 11). Why don't the Jews believe it now? Mitch Glaser,
Chosen People Ministries, said, "10 percent of the Jews are orthodox, the other 90 percent
don't know anything about the Bible. They don't believe in an inspired Bible. They don't
believe in prophecy. They don't know who Isaiah is. They've never read Isaiah 53. They don't
believe in blood sacrifice. They don't believe in atonement. They don't believe in sin. They
don't believe in depravity." But we do believe all that. And what the Jews will someday believe,
to their salvation, is what we now believe, by the grace of God, right? You have been
led by the Spirit of God. The Spirit of grace and supplication has come on you, and awakened
your sleeping soul, and given life to your dead heart, and opened your blind eyes to
believe this truth. Isaiah 53 belongs to you, doesn't it? Who could ever argue that God
is not the author of this. Every detail so complex. Father, Your word is alive and powerful. We
embrace that with great joy. What confidence we have in its testimony. We believe it because
we belong to You. That's really the bottom line. The bottom line is You have awakened
us. That's why we believe. That's why new believers embrace the Scripture -- because
You awaken their hearts. As our Lord said, "Because I speak the truth, you do not believe
me. He who is of God hears the words of God." Oh, we thank you Lord that we hear, because
You've given us life. Give us an increasing love for Your truth, in Christ's Name. Amen.
