It's Isaiah 53, and I may have to start apologizing
for the fact that we are prolonging this so much. But if you only knew how much there was for
me to say that I do not say because time constrains me. I have lived this chapter now for months,
leading up to the series and in the midst of the series. And there are so many trails that come out
of this; there are so many things that originate in Isaiah 53 that become trails and tracks
that one could follow almost endlessly. I have said to you that this is a bottomless
chapter, that I can't find the depth, I can't find the breadth, I can't find the height
of it. I was reading one book this week on Isaiah
53 in which the writer said, "Words collapse under the weight of this chapter." And I understand that, that there just aren't
words to hold it up; it's too vast, too massive to be carried by vocabulary. This is a chapter that, in a sense, you get
to the point where you feel the weight of it without being able to articulate it. And, of course, that's always the preacher's
problem and most particularly my problem since I am limited in my ability to express myself. And I find myself to some degree frustrated
and at the same time trying to relieve that frustration by going back over it and enriching
things that we've already talked about just so I don't leave anything unsaid that should
be said. This is a weighty portion of Scripture. There may be nothing like it, at least in
my mind, in all of Holy Scripture. So full, so dense and such a clear detailed
presentation of the Lord Jesus Christ in His life, in His death, in His burial, in His
resurrection, in His exaltation and in His intercession that it transcends any passage
in the Old Testament. The complexity of this chapter is stunning
and staggering. The text, starting in chapter 52, verse 13,
begins on a journey that has no parallel in Scripture. It begins with the Lord's eternal relationship
to the Messiah, to His Son, and then it points to the exalted glory at the end when the Son
has fully accomplished His redemptive work. And in between, it takes us down into the
humiliation of our Sin-bearer, through the events of His life, through the events of
Holy Week, the cross, the resurrection, out the empty tomb, up to the glories of heaven
and into His ongoing intercessory work. It is the full history of the Messiah that
is touched on here with a stunning, stunning amount of detail that is overwhelming when
you consider that it's all written by the pen of a prophet inspired by God 700 years
before Christ arrived. There is not only the work of Christ presented
here, as I said, from His life, the point of His incarnation to His intercession and
everything in between, but there is even the nature of the Messiah presented, the nature
of the Servant. And for that I want you to go back to the
very beginning of this text, chapter 52, verse 13, at chapter 42, verse 13. I'll be circling back as we go through this
because I can't give everything to you as we move along. But going back to where we started, God speaks
at the beginning and end of this marvelous section. God is the speaker in chapter 52, verses 13
to 15, and God is the speaker at the end in the second half of verse 11 and the final
verse, 12. So God introduces His Servant and concludes
this account of His Servant. And as God introduces Him, He identifies His
nature here in the opening verse, "Behold My Servant." That is the title that Messiah bears, and
there are many references to Him as the Servant of the Lord in this section of Isaiah. There are four Servant chapters about Him
as the ebed , Yahweh, the Slave of God, chapter 42, chapter 49, chapter 50, and now this section
here. They look at the Messiah as the Servant of
the Lord. In earlier portions of Isaiah, Israel is identified
as the servant of the Lord, being an unfaithful servant for certain and thus the pronunciation
of judgment upon them. But in the future, the Lord will have a Servant
who is faithful, none other than the Messiah. And in the opening verse, His nature, or His
person, is identified. He will be high and lifted up and greatly
exalted. Three verbs. Three verbs that speak of Him: high, lifted
up, and greatly exalted. That introduces us to His eternal relationship
with God the Father because those three verbs appear only one other place in the book of
Isaiah, and that is in the sixth chapter of Isaiah and those same three verbs appear there
to describe God high and lifted up who is holy, holy, holy, in the vision of Isaiah. So in chapter 6 those verbs are used to describe
God the Father. Here they are used to describe the Servant
of God, the Slave of God, the Messiah, and, therefore, they introduce us to the Messiah
as one who bears the same exaltation, the same lifting up, the same height as God Himself. And this is to say to us that that which is
said of God can also be said of the Servant of the Lord. A combination of verbs that describes the
Lord Yahweh Himself also describes the Servant of Yahweh. That is to say what Paul said, "That in Him
dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." That is to say with the writer of Hebrews
says, that "He is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His person." That is to say what Jesus said, "If you've
seen Me, you have seen the Father. I and the Father are one." And thus the Servant is identified in the
opening verse by God Himself as one who is equal to Himself, also high, lifted up and
greatly exalted. We're talking then about God incarnate. The Servant of God is none other than the
incarnate Son of God. The Son of God is exalted there in that opening
verse. And then immediately, in verse 14, we see
that God introduces Him as one who will, though exalted and God in nature, will be humiliated,
verse 13 and 14. The transition is really amazing. Many were astonished at Israel, but they will
be even more astonished when they see the appearance of the God/Man marred more than
any man and His form more than the sons of men. This is the humiliation that we know from
the words of Paul in Philippians 2, that "He took upon Him the form of a slave, made in
the likeness of man, humbled Himself unto death, even the death on the cross." The horrors of His treatment leading up to
and including His crucifixion are the marring that the Father God reveals to Isaiah will
take place. When that is over, verse 15 says, then He
will startle many nations...and now we're looking at His Second Coming when He returns
after His death and resurrection...kings will shut their mouths on account of Him because
they will see when He returns things they've never seen and hear things they've never heard. So as God introduces His Servant, He introduces
Him as God, as being humiliated, and as being exalted. The one word in verse 13, "prosper," is God's
affirmation that He will succeed. When God closes this chapter, He speaks again
in the middle of verse 11, and He says this. "By His knowledge, the Righteous One, My Servant
- " Here is God again speaking about My Servant, His Son, the Messiah - "He will justify many,
bear their iniquities, therefore I will allot Him a portion with the great. He will divide the booty with the strong because
He poured out Himself to death and was numbered with the transgressors yet He Himself bore
the sin of many and interceded for the transgressors." God opens this section, in verses 13 to 15,
by predicting and promising the triumph of the Messiah, the Servant. God concludes it by proclaiming that He has
triumphed. He will and He has. So God brackets this with an introduction
and a conclusion. And in the middle you have verses 1 through
11a, and that is the delineation of the suffering of the Servant by which He is exalted. He will be exalted. He will be triumphant because He humbled Himself
even to death, even death on a cross. The middle then is the reason for the exaltation. Because He did what the Father determined
He would, the Father raised Him and seated Him at His right hand and gave Him a name
above every name, which is the name Lord, and will one day send Him back to establish
His Kingdom, the Kingdom which will shock and stun and startle the rulers of the world
and bring about the Kingdom with all its glories. And then He will divide the spoil. He will be the final and only conqueror and
monarch of the universe. So you have commentary of introduction and
affirmation of conclusion by God Himself. And in the middle, verses 1 to 11, is this
amazing look at the reason why the Servant was to be so exalted. And the reason is given by God in verse 12. Why? Because He poured out Himself to death because
He bore the sin of many. It is because of His work of humiliation and
vicarious, substitutionary sacrifice that God will exalt Him. And that's exactly what Paul says in Philippians
2, "He humbled Himself to death, therefore God highly exalted Him and given Him a name
which is above every name." Paul is riding on the back of Isaiah 53 in
that kenosis section of Philippians 2. Now it's very important and wonderful that
God gives us an introductory prophecy and a concluding proclamation...it will happen,
it has happened...because the middle is so tragic, so tragic. There would be little, perhaps little, hope
if there were not this divine affirmation of the final victory of Christ. What we have in the introduction and the conclusion
is the promise of His Second Coming. What we have in the middle is the work of
His first coming, see that? What we have in the introduction and the conclusion
is God's declaration of His Second Coming as the reigning monarch, the King of kings
and Lord of lords. What we have in the middle is His first coming
and His humiliation. He comes again to reign because He came once
to die. And that is the economy of God in the work
of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is exactly the middle section, His humiliation,
that is the reason God has highly exalted Him. He came, He gave Himself fully to the will
of God to save sinners from hell, and to do it in a most stunning and a most astonishing
way by dying Himself the shameful, painful death of the wicked, the very kind of death
that was reserved for the worst of criminals and slaves. But He came as the Righteous One, as He is
identified in verse 11, to take the punishment of God for the unrighteous, to make them righteous. That's the heart of the cross and the heart
of the gospel. Now we're looking at verses 1 through 11a
and we're looking at this Servant. In verses 1 to 3, He is the scorned Servant,
and we've looked at that. And then in verses 4 to 6, He is the substituted
Servant. And then in verses 7 to 9, where we are, He
is the silent and slaughtered Servant. Now just a little bit of a reminder, a recap
on something to be remembered, all right? The primary purpose of this passage is not
to look at the cross; that's a secondary purpose. The primary purpose of this passage is to
look at the final triumph of the Messiah, the Servant, the final triumph of the Messiah,
the Servant. The final triumph of the Messiah, the Servant,
will be the salvation of His people. And that is what it says in verse 8. "He was cut off out of the land of the living
for the transgression of My people, My people." Or verse 11, "He will justify the many." Or verse 12, "He bore the sin of many." The point of this chapter is God will save
His people. And, in particular, His people Israel. This is a prophecy of the future salvation
of Israel. That's what the whole section of Isaiah is
about, salvation for Israel in the future. Zechariah says it's the time when they look
on Him whom they've pierced and mourn for Him as an only Son. When they look back in history, which they
haven't done yet, but they one day will, and they look at the One they pierced and realize
that He was the Son of God, and they completely will understand what they have not as yet
understood except for a remnant of Jews who have come to faith in Christ. Israel will be saved. The promise of Ezekiel 36, the New Covenant
promise that God will save them, that God will forgive them, that God will write His
law in their hearts, that God will take out a stony heart and give them a heart of flesh
and plant His Spirit within them. Repeated in Jeremiah 31, repeated in Zechariah
12 and 13, the Spirit of grace and supplication comes on them. That will happen in the future, the salvation
of the nation Israel. Or Romans 11, "All Israel will be saved." When they are in the future, they will make
the confession of verses 1 through 11. This will be their confession. It is currently, it is now...and for all who
believe, Jew or Gentile...our confession, is it not? We understand that He was pierced for our
transgressions. We understand that He was crushed for our
iniquities, that the chastening or the punishment for our peace with God fell on Him, and the
scourging that came on Him healed us. We understand that we're sheep who have gone
astray, wicked by nature, and the Lord caused our iniquity to fall on Him. We understand that. That's an understanding of the gospel, that
He died in our place, under divine punishment for us and that He being punished in our place,
we will never be condemned. The punishment has been exacted on the substitute. We understand that. All believers understand that. You can't be saved without embracing that. But one day in the future, the nation Israel
will realize this and look back and confess the very words, the very confession of Isaiah,
chapter 53. Now from the beginning, it says in verse 1,
they didn't believe. "Who has believed the message given to us?"
is what the Hebrew indicates. "Who among us believed that Jesus was the
arm of the Lord revealed?" That's simply an expression to refer to the
presence of God in power. "Who believed that He was the real power of
God? Who believed that He was the Messiah, the
Savior?" Very, very, very few, very few. Five hundred in Galilee, 120 in the Upper
Room in Jerusalem after a three-year ministry across the nation of Israel, very few. Why? He didn't fit our model. The Jews have always had a theology of glory
but not a theology of suffering. They've always understood the glory of Messiah
but not the suffering of Messiah. In fact, as far as I can tell, no indication
is found anywhere in historic Jewish literature that they believed the Messiah would die for
their sins. You cannot find it. They had no theology of a suffering, dying
Messiah, only of a glorious Messiah. So when they looked at Jesus, they didn't
see a glorious Messiah. They saw a sucker branch; they saw a dirty
root on a parched ground. They saw nothing stately, nothing majestic,
nothing attractive about Him. He didn't fit their theology of glory. And besides, not only was He coming from nowhere
in His origin, not only was His appearance unimpressive, but at the end of His life,
He was despised, forsaken, sorrowful, grieving. He was the kind of person we would hide our
face from, He was that despicable. He was despised and we didn't esteem Him. He was a scorned Messiah. They said about Him, "We will not have this
man to reign over us, crucify Him, crucify Him, He is not our King," the scorned Messiah. Verses 4 to 6, He is the substituted Messiah. Some day in the future they're going to look
back and say, "Now we see it differently. It was our griefs He bore. It was our sorrows He carried. We thought He was stricken, smitten of God
and afflicted for His own sins, for His own blasphemies because He was a blasphemer, because
He was an interloper, because He was an intruder. Oh how wrong we were. Now we know, He was pierced for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities," and so forth. The Lord caused our iniquity to fall on Him. Then it gets us to verses 7 to 9. He is the scorned and He is the substituted
Servant. And here, He is the silent and slaughtered
Servant. And I started last week, two weeks ago now,
with the phrase "Like a lamb that is led to slaughter." That's the high point of this prophecy. He will come as a lamb to be slaughtered. When Jesus first appeared at the Jordan River
to begin His ministry and John the Baptist, His forerunner, saw Him face-to-face, John
1:29, John said, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." He understood it. The apostle Peter understood it. Writing in his first chapter of his first
epistle says, "We were redeemed not with perishable things like gold or silver, but with the precious
blood of Christ, a Lamb without blemish and without spot." They understood that the Messiah was coming
to be the sacrifice for sin, to which all other sacrifices pointed. There was no sacrifice of an animal, either
a sheep, or a goat, or a bull. There was no animal sacrifice that could take
away sin. Hebrews 10, "The blood of bulls and goats
cannot take away sin." But the same chapter says, "By one offering
that He gave Himself, He sanctified forever those that belong to Him." Peter understood it. Paul understood it. Paul, a Jew, in Philippians 3, thinks he's
on the right track until he sees Christ and then everything that he had hoped in becomes
despicable to him, rubbish, garbage, that he may win Christ and have a righteousness
not his own but that which is the righteousness of God granted him by faith in Christ. Paul understood it. Peter understood it. The disciples understood it. The early church understood it. Every believer through history has understood
that Jesus died as the one sacrifice for sin that satisfied God, the Lamb of God who actually
takes away sin. Hebrews 9 says that the animal sacrifices
can't take away sin. Hebrews 10 repeats it; they can't take away
sin. They simply point to the need for a substitute
to be able to do that. And Christ is that chosen Lamb. The day He came into Jerusalem was the day
that people selected their lambs for sacrifice on the weekend at the Passover. And the day He came into Jerusalem God selected
Him as His Lamb and offered Him up at the end of the week to take away sin. That's why Paul in 1 Corinthians says, "Jesus
Christ is our Passover." "Jesus Christ is our Passover." There's an interesting statement tucked in
to Psalm 49 where God says, "No man can by any means redeem his brother. No man can by any means redeem his brother
or give to God a ransom for him, for the redemption of his soul is costly and he should cease
trying forever." Great statement. You can't redeem someone else. No human can redeem another human. You can't redeem yourself, you can't redeem
anyone else. Only the God/Man Jesus Christ, our Passover
Lamb, can pay the costly price. The costly price, not perishable, not gold
or silver. There were times in Israel's history, such
as Exodus 30, when they numbered the men because they were going to trust in their might and
trust in their numbers and trust in their power rather than trusting God against their
enemies, and God punished them and God brought judgment on them for doing that. God also said to them there is a way that
you can be redeemed from that punishment through gold or silver, Exodus chapter 30, temporal
redemption. But, no amount of money could ever redeem
a soul because the cost is too high, too high. Isaiah got it. Isaiah 52:3; Isaiah said, "Thus says the Lord,
you were sold for nothing and you will be redeemed without money." There are no commodities in this world that
can be used to redeem you. Only as Peter said, "The precious blood of
a lamb unblemished and spotless who is none other than Christ. His death becomes the redeeming sacrifice." And Peter in that same passage, 1 Peter 1:20
and 21, says, "Through Him you are believers in God." You have entered into a relationship of faith
with God through Him. Well, this is the view of death with regard
to Jesus Christ that one must hold to be saved. The Jews today don't believe it. They reject Jesus Christ. They still believe that He was stricken, smitten
and afflicted by God for being a blasphemer. You and I know better. We believe the truth about Him and some day
they will as well. Now that brings us to verses 7 to 9. Verses 7 to 9, now last time, two weeks ago,
we looked at verse 7; I'm just going to give you a brief review. These three verses are specific looks at events
in the life of Christ. Verse 7 looks at His trial. Verse 8 looks at His death. And verse 9 looks at His burial. Again, amazing in their detail, and what we
see here is the silent, slaughtered Servant. The idea that He is voluntarily giving up
His life, that He is willingly, obediently submitting in silence to the purpose of God. And it is God's will and God's pleasure, as
verse 10 says, to crush Him, to put Him to grief, to render Him as a guilt offering,
that is the will of God. He knows that. "It's not My will, but Thine be done," and
He submits fully to it. In that submission there is a demonstration
from His behavior. He is silent in His trial. He is obviously silent in His death and in
His burial. There are no protests leading up to that. He is silent in verses 7, 8 and 9. In fact, just to remind you, He's silent in
the entire chapter. The Messiah never speaks in this chapter,
never. He is the silent sufferer through this entire
chapter. And, in particular, in verses 7 to 9, because
this is where it really gets ugly. Verse 7 is about His trial, "He was oppressed,
He was oppressed." That term has to do with all of the forms
of injustice that came against Him. It is repeated again in verse 8 by oppression
and judgment. And there oppression is linked to judgment,
and judgment, of course, is a judicial term that speaks specifically of the trial events. So this is the oppression that came against
Him at His trial in particular. His arrest, a horrible experience, the following
abuse. Subsequent to that, false witnesses, liars,
and all of the other things that came with it; there was no crime committed; there was
no evidence presented. There were declarations repeatedly of His
innocence. He was physically abused, spit on, hit with
fists in the face, beaten in the head with sticks, crown of thorns crushed into His head. You know all of that. All of that that came His way was part of
the trial and the verdict that the trial reached. Just a word about the verb "afflicted." "He was afflicted." Literally it's a passive in the Hebrew; He
allowed Himself to be afflicted. He allowed Himself to be afflicted. He was under illegal, unconscionable, unrighteous
jurisdiction and He allowed Himself to be afflicted. This may well be where Paul draws, "He humbled
Himself," because this verb can actually go to that extent in its meaning. He allowed Himself to be afflicted, hunted
in the night, arrested in the garden, tried illegally at night, falsely accused, tormented,
tortured, harassed, abused. And then a verdict is rendered that He must
die and die by crucifixion. He doesn't say anything. He didn't open His mouth. He's like a lamb that is led to slaughter
and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He didn't open His mouth. He's like a silent sheep when it's being slaughtered
or sheared. He says nothing. That is, to say nothing in defense of Himself,
nothing whatsoever. There is no defense given by Him. He accepted the unrighteous judgment of man
in order to accept the righteous judgment of God to make unrighteous sinners the recipients
of that very same righteousness. So in verse 7, as we saw, you have a picture
of His trial. He is being led off to be slaughtered and
He is silent as He goes. Verse 8 then takes us to His death. "By oppression," that going back to verse
7 and the whole trial, "and judgment, He was taken away." Legal terms. The oppression is what came to Him in the
injustice. The judgment is the verdict and the expression
"and was taken away" is simply the fact that He is turned over to be executed, turned over
to the sentence. This is all talking about processes, legal
processes. Oppression, His arrest, confinement; judgment
is the judicial proceeding, and the final verdict taken away means exactly what it says,
from the court, from the trial to be executed. Pilate orders His execution and he orders
Him to be executed the way slaves were executed. He is the Slave of Yahweh. He is executed in a slavish fashion. And His death is described in these words:
"He was cut off out of the land of the living," verse 8. "He was cut off out of the land of the living." Being cut off out of the land of the living,
Jewish expression. It appears in a number of places in the Old
Testament. Daniel 9:26 talking about Messiah, says, "Messiah
will be cut off." Daniel also predicted His death. So He will be executed. That's what that expression means. He will be murdered; it's a dramatic way to
say it, cut off out of the land of the living, executed, like a lamb led to slaughter. Which the same expression, by the way, is
used in Jeremiah 11:19 to refer to himself. Jeremiah saw himself as a lamb being led to
slaughter. So, common expression, cut off out of the
land of the living. In spite of all that He was, in spite of all
that He did, all that He said, the most horrendous injustice in human history is done to Him
and He is executed. The telling statement in this verse is found
in the second line, "As for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of
the land of the living?" Who considered it? Who considered that He was violently executed? Who stepped up and protested? That's what it means. Who saw it for what it was? Where was the high priest in protest? Where were the Sadducees or Pharisees or somebody
who was a fastidious adherent to the Jewish order and tradition and Law? Where were the rabbis? Where were the scribes? Where was anybody? Here we find in the prophecy 700 years before
it ever happened, the pronouncement that no one will defend Him, no one will defend Him. Where were His disciples? Well, they were living out Zechariah 13:7
"strike the shepherd and the sheep will be - " What? - "scattered." They were long gone. They had fled. Matthew says that they fled and Mark says
the same thing that the Shepherd was struck and the sheep were scattered. Who was there to speak in His behalf? A custom prevailed, by the way. This is most fascinating. Among the Jews in the case of a trial that
could lead to execution, it was required that there be a period of time once the verdict
was given for people to step up and speak to the innocence of the one who had been set
for execution. There was basically a 40-day period. That's what we find in their literature. Forty days were to pass between the declaration
of death and the execution itself, a period of time in which someone could speak in favor
of the accused and plead His innocence, which makes an awful lot of sense. They didn't do that. They got the trial over with in the middle
of the night so there was nobody there to interrupt them. Then that very day as the dawn broke, they
sent Him in the process that brought Him to death by that very afternoon. Where were the 40 days? Where were the 40 days? Early in Christian history that began to be
asked. Why did the Jews violate that? There appears in answer to that a statement
by the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin put together a statement. It is now in the Jewish Talmud, folio 43 in
the Jewish Talmud, from the Sanhedrin. It says this, "There is a tradition - " this
is the Sanhedrin's words - "there is a tradition on the eve of the Sabbath and the Passover
they hung Jesus. And the herald went forth before Him for 40
days crying, 'Jesus goes to be executed because He has practiced sorcery and seduced Israel
and estranged them from God. Let anyone who can bring forth any justifying
plea for Him come and give information concerning it' but no justifying plea was found for Him
and so He was hung on the eve of the Sabbath and the Passover." That's in the Talmud of the Jews, a lie that
they sentenced Jesus and waited 40 days before they executed Him for somebody to show up,
and nobody showed up. That's in the Jewish Talmud authored by the
Sanhedrin to cover their tracks. One rabbi, in commenting on it, said...name
is Ulla, U-L-L-A..."But do you think that He belongs to those for whom a justifying
plea is to be sought?" In other words, He doesn't even belong to
the category of people that you would want to seek a justifying plea for. He was a very seducer, and the all-merciful
God has said, "Thou shalt not spare Him or conceal Him," end quote. The rabbi said He isn't even worthy of a plea
for innocence. So when Isaiah 53 begins, "Who believed our
message, and who responded to the revelation of the arm of the Lord?" We didn't. And how extreme was their rejection? That extreme that even after they had done
all that, and even after He had risen from the dead, and even after the church had been
born and begun to grow, they concocted a lie to put in the Talmud to say that they gave
40 days and nobody showed up. But then again, why would anybody show up? He didn't belong to the category of people
who were worthy for someone to make a plea. They despised everything about Jesus, and
it runs very deep. And let me tell you something, folks. It has not been helped through human history
by the way the Jews have been treated by so-called Christians, false Christians. Namely way early, early in the Roman Empire,
early in the Holy Roman Empire, if you will, the Roman Catholic system. Way, way, way back in the early centuries
there was virulent anti-Semitism, and it developed and developed through the centuries under
the Orthodox, under the Roman Catholics. It continued to develop even with the Reformers,
this animosity toward the Jews. It came through history. It came through history to a point of the
Enlightenment when they had rejected their religion and embraced the Enlightenment. It resurfaces again with the Hitlerian atrocities,
and this is attached to Christianity, false forms of Christianity. It doesn't help to perpetuate this even today. Our attitude toward Jewish people has to be
one of unrestrained love and compassion and evangelistic zeal. They despised everything about Him. The Sanhedrin declares this about itself. They sit to justify and not to condemn, to
save life and not to destroy it. That's their own sort of code. Consequently, this kind of treatment of Jesus
violated everything about them. That's how much they hated Him. And what they're saying in that Talmudic passage
that I read was how dare anyone step up and try to defend this vile seducer. No one cared. And that's exactly what Isaiah says will happen. As for His generation, the people alive at
His time, who considered it, who thought about it? Who reckoned with what was happening that
He was being executed? And who knew that He was being cut off for
the transgression of My people, the Jews. That's...My people is a technical term for
the Jews, used in chapter 40, used in chapter 51, used in chapter 52, used here again by
Isaiah to refer to Israel. Who even had an idea that He was receiving
a stroke of judgment from God, not for His own transgression but for the transgression
of My people. No one even thought of it, and they still
don't. They still don't. There's even Caiaphas, you remember, in John
chapter 11 who was so worried of what the Romans were going to do to take away his power,
that he said, "We better kill Jesus or the Romans are going to kill us. And it's better that He should die than the
nation." And he made a prophecy that He would die for
the nation. And He did die for the nation, for the Jews,
and for all from all nations who would put their trust in Him. In chapter 55 and verse 5 of Isaiah, "You
will call a nation you do not know and a nation which knows you not will run to you because
the Lord your God, even the Holy One of Israel, for He has glorified You." This is the promise of Gentile salvation. And then the promise is extended to everyone,
"Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call on Him while He's near. Let the wicked forsake his way, the unrighteous
man his thoughts," and so it goes. There's an invitation to come from any nation
of people who know not God, a no-nation. Like Jesus said, "Sheep of another fold." The Jews know the man Jesus was struck dead. They know He was struck dead. They believe He was struck dead by God, but
for His own blasphemies. Such a blasphemer that He wasn't worthy for
anyone to step up to His defense. The truth is, He was struck by God for the
transgressions of His people, including Jews and Gentiles and one day the nation of Israel. That brings us to verse 9 in the burial, "His
grave was assigned with wicked men." Stop right there for a moment. This is an astonishing set of details here. "His grave was assigned with wicked men." Why was His grave assigned with wicked men? Well because He died with criminals, right? Had one on each side of Him. And if you died an ignominious death because
of a wretched life, according to Jeremiah 25:33, you would be treated in a degraded
way and not have a proper burial. That was very much part of their culture. The ultimate disdain was to leave a body to
disintegrate or be road kill, or to throw it into a fire without a proper burial. According to Jeremiah 25:33 you have an illustration
of it. Jesus was crucified between two criminals,
Luke 23:33; Matthew 27:38. And here would be the normal disposition. They would die on the cross of asphyxiation,
and they would leave Him there. Leave Him there dead and rotting, leave Him
there for the birds to pluck out their faces. And they would leave them there like road
kill for animals that could climb up the cross to chew their flesh. They would leave them there for the purpose
of warning everybody who was watching of what happens to people who violate the Roman power
and the Roman law. That's what was planned for Him. Eventually they would have taken the rotted
corpses down and thrown them in a dump. The Jerusalem city dump was in the Valley
of Hinnom; you can go there today. It's not the dump anymore but the Valley of
Hinnom on the southeast side of Jerusalem was the city dump, and it was a fire that
never went out, a constant fire there. It is a very interesting place, historically. It was the place where apostate Jews and followers
of Baal and other Canaanite gods burned their children to the god Molech. You find that back in 2 Chronicles 28:33. Jeremiah talks about it, Jeremiah 7. But this was the place where they offered
babies to Molech. It was there that King Ahaz sacrificed his
sons, 2 Chronicles 28. It is the place that Isaiah identifies at
the end of his prophecy as the place where the worm never dies. And Jesus said it's a depiction of hell, in
Mark, where the worm never dies...Mark 9. And he says that three times. Horrible place where they threw what was left
of the corpses. The rabbis describe it as a perpetual fire
to consume the filth and the cadavers that are thrown there. So He was executed with criminals. He would end up like criminals. But God wasn't going to let that happen. Psalm 16 says that He would not allow His
Holy One to see corruption. God would never let that happen. So verse 9 says there's an amazing turn. "His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet
He was with a rich man in His death." How did that happen? He was with a rich man in His death because
all along there was a man by the name of Joseph from a place called Arimathea. This man Joseph had become a disciple of Jesus
Christ quietly, and he was very rich. Matthew 27:57, "In the evening there came
a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who himself had also become a disciple of Jesus. This man went to Pilate, asked for the body
of Jesus. Pilate ordered it to be given to him. Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean
linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb which he had hewn out in the rock and he rolled
a large stone against the entrance to the tomb and went away." He should have been road kill; He should have
been in the dump and He ends up in a brand new tomb owned by a rich man. Just exactly what the Holy Spirit reveals
to Isaiah was going to happen. Why? Why? Why was that important? It tells us at the end of verse 9; this is
most interesting. "Because He had done no violence, nor was
there any deceit in His mouth." That's just a way of saying He was holy on
the inside and the outside. Because out of the abundance of the heart,
the mouth speaks. There was nothing in His mouth of a sinful
thing, sinful nature. There was no behavior of a sinful nature. And because of His holiness, because as Hebrews
says He was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, because He was the sinless,
spotless Lamb without blemish, the Father never allowed Him to end up in the dump. So why that? It is a small testimony to His...listen...sinless
perfection by His Father and the first small step of His exaltation, the first small step. Even before His resurrection the Father is
saying, "I will not allow any further humiliation." There can be no more humiliation. It's as low as He can go, to give Himself
to death, even the death of the cross, and that's where the humiliation ends. And this is the first small step up. God honors Jesus in His burial because there
was no sin inside, no sin outside. And in a few hours on the third day, He comes
out of the grave, and, eventually, in His ascension all the way up. A sweet testimony of the fact that the humiliation
was over. You know, Paul was one of these unbelieving
Jews. Paul had such hatred for Jesus Christ that
he killed Christians, right? Breathing threatenings and slaughter against
the church, it tells us in Acts 8, He went everywhere he could with letters from the
authorities who wanted all the Christians they could find thrown in jail or executed. And Paul was the executioner; he was the man. He went everywhere doing that until he ended
up on the Damascus Road with orders to persecute Christians there. And you remember what happened. The Lord stopped him, made him blind, and
introduced himself, and that was the transformation of the apostle Paul. And Paul makes a testimony that is really
a sort of microcosm. It's a preview of the kind of testimony that
the Jews are going to make in the future, and it's also your testimony and mine. Paul says this to the Corinthians. Second Corinthians 5:16, "We have known Christ
according to the flesh." "We have known Christ according to the flesh." I knew about Jesus. I knew Him as a man. I had the typical, standard, rabid, zealous,
passionate, anti-Jesus Christ attitude of the Jews. That's what he's referring to. "I knew Him according to the flesh. Yet now we know Him in this way no longer." He didn't see Christ the way he had always
seen Him. From the Damascus Road on, his view was totally
altered, wasn't it? And so was yours and mine and anyone who comes
to Christ. He saw Jesus on the Damascus Road and never
saw Jesus the same way again. And you and I may not have been on the road
to Damascus or anywhere near Damascus, but you've had a Damascus experience if you're
a believer, because you now see Jesus completely differently than you saw Him before you knew
Him. And so will the Jews. For Paul, I think Romans 1 was written with
Isaiah 53 in mind. This is how he begins Romans. "Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called as
an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which He promised beforehand through His prophets
in the Holy Scripture." Paul knew Isaiah 53 because it comes out in
his writings. The gospel He preached was the gospel embedded
in this chapter. So there is the silent, slaughtered Lamb,
cut off out of the land of the living for the transgressions of My people to whom the
stroke was due. We're not Israel, but the church is incorporated
in the new covenant, and we're part of His people, are we not? Lord, we thank You again for the clarity and
power of this amazing portion of Scripture. No wonder it's been called the fifth gospel
because it contains all those things that are so familiar to us in Matthew, Mark, Luke
and John. We are in awe of what we hold in our hands
in Scripture, ancient documents with details about the future, and every one of them precise
and perfectly accurate, every single one. This is Your book and You have authored it,
and it is the truth and is the truth that saves. We know that saving faith comes by hearing
the truth concerning Christ, the word concerning Christ, the message concerning Christ, and
we've heard it. We've heard it. We're eager for the next section to get to
His resurrection, for salvation comes to those who believe in Him, in His death and His resurrection,
confessing Jesus as Lord, confessing that You raised Him from the dead, we can be saved. Would You bring that salvation to those who
are here today who are still outside Your Kingdom, still headed for eternal hell with
no hope. May they see the glory of Christ, and may
You by Your power change the view. May they never see Christ again the same after
today, but always in the glory of the truth of who He is. Father, now we ask that You would seal these
things to our hearts and put them together in our minds in such a way that we can pass
them on and proclaim this wonderful gospel. Bring us back together tonight to study the
amazing account of Miriam. Make this day a rich and blessed day. We thank You for the sacrifice that has been
made by many in the service of our country. We're deeply grateful but we're even more
grateful for the sacrifice that was made by You, our blessed Savior, taking the divine
stroke for our transgressions. We embrace that with full faith and gratitude
and give You all the glory. Amen.
