[0:00] I'll give you just a few moments. Go with me to the book of Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 53. I know that it seems to be an odd place to preach a Easter message from the Old Testament, but in reality, we cannot fully grasp what is happening in the Gospels as we read the account of the empty tomb until we really get a grasp of what is leading up to the empty tomb.
[0:22] We know that the Gospel or the good news does not end at the cross because until we bring the message to the empty tomb and we see the risen Savior, we have not fully given the Gospel.
[0:34] The Gospel surely speaks of His suffering and of His death and of the price in which He paid, and He paid it for us. He paid it in our place. But the reality is, is not only did He pay our price, He has been raised to live our life.
[0:48] We are all offered the resurrection life just as Christ has gained that. The Bible tells us, John records for us in one of the sayings of Jesus, that Jesus says, He who has believed in me has already passed out of death and into life.
[1:05] So His life is already our life through faith in Him. And it is the life that was not limited to 30 plus years, probably 33 to 34 years of physical existence in this world, but it is the eternal life that He has promised us.
[1:21] But to really get a grasp of this being God's plan from the very beginning, we catch these truths in the Old Testament. And I think it is really behoving or becoming of us to go and look at those from time to time.
[1:36] So we will be in the book of Isaiah this morning, Isaiah chapter 53. If you know anything about the book of Isaiah, you will know that Isaiah speaks of the coming King. The prophets in the Old Testament all are prophesying with reference to something or someone or some characteristic trait of Christ.
[1:56] Isaiah prophesies to the coming King. He is the prophet of the King and the King who will reign. It is in the book of Isaiah that we see so many hopes of heaven. It is in the book of Isaiah that we read of the lion and the lamb laying down together.
[2:10] It is in the book of Isaiah that we read of the child messing with the serpent in heaven and not being bitten. Isaiah is speaking of the glories to come. Isaiah speaks of the prophetic coming of the King that we see fulfilled in the virgin birth.
[2:24] We see the promise of Emmanuel coming from Isaiah. But we also read of the suffering Savior in the book of Isaiah. Because we don't get to the King without His suffering.
[2:36] And we don't get to the promise of eternity without His suffering and His pain. So we will see that this morning in Isaiah chapter 53. If you are physically able and desire to do so, I'm going to ask if you'll join with me as we stand together out of reverence for God's Word and we read the entire chapter of Isaiah 53.
[2:52] It's only 12 verses. We'll read it together and then we will pray and we'll get into it. Isaiah writes for us in Isaiah chapter 53. Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
[3:06] For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot and like a root out of parched ground. He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.
[3:17] He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And like one from whom men hid their face, He was despised and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore and our sorrows He carried.
[3:31] Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions and was crushed for our iniquities. The chasing of our well-being fell upon Him and by His scourging we are healed.
[3:45] All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us have turned to His own way. But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted.
[3:56] Yet He did not open His mouth like a lamb that is led to slaughter and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers. So He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away. And as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due?
[4:14] His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet He was with a rich man in His death. Because He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth. But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief.
[4:26] If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He would see His offspring and He will prolong His days. And the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand. And as a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied.
[4:40] By His knowledge, the righteous one, my servant, will justify the meaning and He will bear their iniquities. Therefore, therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great.
[4:51] And 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.
[5:02] Let's pray. God, we thank You so much for this day which You have given us. And Lord, we are so thankful to have the opportunity to stand together and to read Your Word. Lord, we pray that Your Word would now speak to our hearts and minds.
[5:15] That the truth of it would captivate us and capture us. Lord, that it would lead us to a greater understanding of You and that by that greater understanding, we would have a life lived for Your glory and Yours alone. We ask that You would move by the power and presence of Your Spirit like You have never moved before.
[5:30] Lord, that it would not be my words or my opinions, but that it would be the very Word of God that would speak to each and every heart and each and every mind. And we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated.
[5:40] Isaiah chapter 53 here tells us not only of the suffering Savior, but I want you to see from this 53rd chapter in the book of Isaiah the accomplishment of Easter.
[5:51] The accomplishment of Easter. Easter, the empty tomb, signifies for us that Jesus has accomplished everything God had intended for Him to accomplish and everything that was appointed for Him before the foundations of the world were laid to accomplish.
[6:06] As I shared with the sunrise crowd this morning, it is not just that there was a Jewish individual named Jesus who hung on a Roman cross because a multitude of Jewish men up into the thousands of men were crucified on Roman crosses at that day.
[6:22] It is that a Jewish individual named Jesus Christ who is Emmanuel who claimed to be God Himself, dwelt in the flesh, crucified on the cross, laid dead in a borrowed tomb, and on the third day came out and was resurrected.
[6:35] His resurrection validates everything He said. And I've said it before and it kind of takes us off guard, but we need to understand this. And I cannot really remember who to give due credit to for saying this.
[6:49] But if Jesus was not raised from the dead, then everything He claimed to be could not be true. But since Jesus has risen from the dead, everything He has said is true.
[7:01] And when confronted with the claims of Christ, we have to say He is either one of two things. He is either God or He is mad. He is either God or He is a lunatic.
[7:15] Because He Himself says, No man takes my life, but I lay it down and on the third day again, I will take it up again. Jesus Himself boldly said, I will come back. On the third day, I will raise it up.
[7:26] The resurrection validates everything He claimed and everything He has accomplished. And I want you to see in Isaiah 53, the accomplishments of Easter, exactly what the Savior was doing for us on that day.
[7:39] The accomplishments that the empty tomb testified to us that He has fulfilled. Those things have come about. Number one, we see, as we notice here, the separation of the Savior.
[7:50] The separation of the Savior. The question is posed to us from Isaiah. We read it again in the New Testament. Paul quotes it, and it is very fitting for us even to answer it too. Because the question is this.
[8:01] Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Because Isaiah is about to propound for us a great truth here. And the question is, who is believing this?
[8:11] Who is it that has accepted this message that is going to be proclaimed? And who is it that has received the hand of the Lord or the arm of the Lord that has been extended to them? All throughout Isaiah, we see the sins of God's people.
[8:24] But also we see the love and the grace and the compassion of the God of the people who is reaching out to them when they cannot come to Him. We see God in His mercy coming down to them, reaching out to them, extending a hand and restoring them.
[8:37] He says in Isaiah, I will strike you so that I may heal you. It is a gracious act of God to call His people. And the question that Isaiah is asking is, who has believed that?
[8:48] And who has received this from the hand of God reaching down? And he begins to speak here of this coming Savior. And he speaks of the Savior who will come in the flesh. Remember, in the book of Hebrews, if we've been walking through it, if you have been here on Sunday mornings, if not, you can go back and you can watch it or you can listen to it on our website.
[9:06] But what you can see in Hebrews is the focus on the humanity of Christ, that He was fully man and fully God. And the author to Hebrews is testifying to the fact that He is God in the flesh.
[9:19] We can handle Him and touch Him just like this. He grew up because He says, for He grew up before Him like a tender shoot. We are reminded of the fact that when God sought or God determined to stretch out His arm to mankind, He determined to stretch them out while among them.
[9:36] God did not reach out to us, but God came and reached out among us. And we stand astounded at that. That God came and decided to stretch out His arms while growing up among us.
[9:51] One of the things that amazes me in studying the life of Christ is the fact that He was born not only in the lowliest of places, but there's this line here recorded in the book of Luke that says, He grew up in wisdom and favor and stature with God and with men.
[10:05] And then we don't know what happens for 12 years. Actually, we don't know what happens for about 18 years. All we know is Jesus is growing up from age 12 to age 30, supposedly age 30, around about age 30.
[10:19] Jesus was growing up in wisdom and favor and stature with God and men. He grew up among us. Isn't that amazing? And the reason it's so amazing is because so many people want to know what was Jesus like as a kid?
[10:32] What was Jesus like growing up? What was He like before His public ministry began? Because we know the testimony of His public ministry, right? When He went to John the Baptist, and John the Baptist is baptizing in the Jordan River, and He goes and He's baptized, and then He's called out into the wilderness, and then 40 days of temptation.
[10:46] But what was Jesus like prior to that? It says that He grew up before Him. That is, before God, like a tender shoot. But understand this. It says, like a root out of parched ground, and He has no stately form or majesty.
[11:00] So it's not like He stood out. He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. I want you to understand this. The Savior we serve, when He dwelt among us, when He took upon our flesh, He did not draw men to Himself by physical appearance.
[11:20] There's nothing that would cause us to look upon Jesus and His humanity and say, Oh man, I want to know that guy. He is such a strapping young man. I would like to know that man. He looks so handsome.
[11:31] He is so kind. We see people like that in Scripture, and most of the time they fail us, right? One of the ones that should immediately come to your mind is Saul. Saul was a strapping young man who was about a head taller than everybody else.
[11:41] He was bigger than everybody else. He was mightier than everybody else. He was from the right family, right lineage. So they decided to make him king because he looked good. And since he looked good, they made him king, and then his looks failed him.
[11:52] Another one should all of a sudden come to your mind. Solomon was a man who evidently looked good. At least a lot of women thought so. And he had a lot of money, a lot of prestige, and a lot of power. And it ultimately failed him. David's brothers seemed to look pretty good and seemed to be appealing, at least to Samuel when he went to go anoint the next king since Saul had failed them.
[12:09] And Samuel looked upon David's brothers and said, Oh, this one. Surely it's this one. Surely it's this one. And God says, Do not look at the outward appearance, for I am the one who looks at the hearts. David was a small and a ruddy man with bright cheeks who hung out with sheep, which I can testify to you probably did not make him smell that good.
[12:25] And God says, That's my man. I want him. Why? Because this shows us over and over and over again, Jesus was stately and grew up before them in all meekness. And he had no form.
[12:36] He had no fashion. There was no appearance that would draw us to him. There was no charisma. There was nothing that would say, Oh, look at this man. We would like to know this man. He was separated from all because he was growing up to be the suffering savior for all.
[12:48] There was no appearance that we should be attracted to him. He was despised and forsaken of men. As a matter of fact, many of the men which God has used throughout history have followed this example. Those whom God seems to use the greatest are despised by the most.
[13:03] Because Jesus says, Be wary when all men speak well of you. Because they have rejected me and they hate me and they speak against me and they will do the same to you. See, this Jesus who is the savior of them was separated from us while he was among us because he was despised and he was forsaken of men.
[13:21] He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And like one from whom men hid their face and he was despised and we did not esteem him. He said, Oh, if I was alive during the time of Christ, I would surely be his friend.
[13:32] I would hang out with him with the scripture testifies to the other wise. As a matter of fact, his closest friends, his disciples. Jesus said, All of you will forsake me this night. Peter, I won't forsake you, Lord. I will even die for you. Jesus said, Peter, you'll deny me three times before the rooster crows.
[13:46] We are captivated by that truth in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus is praying and people are sleeping and Judas is betraying and everything is going on. And when the people are there, it says that they all fled like sheep.
[13:57] They were gone astray. They forsook him. And there's this one man. We really don't know who it is. It's recorded for us in the Gospel of Mark. Some think that it was probably John Mark because Mark is the only one who recorded it. But there was this one man who fled from him and had his cloak ripped from him.
[14:11] So he fled naked from Jesus in his shame. And Jesus was left alone, forsaken of men, despised and forsaken because he was separated from one.
[14:22] Listen, there's one Savior. There is but one Savior. And that Savior was separated from us while dwelling among us. We see the separation of the Savior.
[14:33] Secondly, we see the suffering of the Savior. Because we have to get to this. This is something that makes us scratch our head because we want a Savior who is victorious. We don't want a Savior who is suffering, right? We want one who wins the battle.
[14:45] As a matter of fact, the Jewish people throughout history were looking for a Savior that would come in on a horse and win the victory, not bring the pain and misery and suffering. They wanted someone to set them free from oppression.
[14:55] They wanted someone who would set them free from captivity. They did not want one who would give himself to captivity. This is the problem that the Jewish people dealt with historically. This is why the author of the book of Hebrews is writing the book of Hebrews.
[15:07] And this is something that we look for today. Many of us want a Savior who will relieve us of our pain, not a Savior who may lead us into more pain. And this is something that we must acknowledge. Following Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior does not mean we will be free from pain today.
[15:22] As a matter of fact, it may mean that we will experience more pain today. But what it means is that when we get laid in a borrowed tomb, we too will walk out of it someday. That is the good news of the gospel.
[15:34] Not that your life can be better today. It's that when you lay down this sorrowful life today or tomorrow or the next day, then you will step out of that tomb and live eternally with him.
[15:45] Because we see the suffering of the Savior. Surely our griefs. Look at this. I love how Isaiah puts this. And I love how he writes it in first-hand form, right? This is us. This is us speaking.
[15:55] You say, all this has to do with the Jewish people. No, my friend. This has to do with all of us. Surely our griefs he himself bore. And our sorrows he carried. Yet we ourselves esteemed, him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
[16:07] It's amazing, this wonder of the cross. While Jesus is suffering for man, man is sitting at the bottom of his cross, denying him, denouncing him, and ridiculing him. And the very sin that is being laid upon Jesus, the very pain and the sorrows and the suffering that is being laid upon Jesus, is not his, but rather it is theirs.
[16:24] This is why he says, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. Their very sin was the very pain that he was pulling in our sin as well. But he was pierced through for our transgressions. I want to just stop right here.
[16:34] If you're into the fulfillment of Bible prophecy, which you need to be, and if you're into reading all of Scripture and understanding that the Bible just says one thing over and over again, which is an astounding thing, here we see so many prophetic utterances of Isaiah, written hundreds of years before the coming of Christ, and fulfilled completely with the person of Jesus Christ.
[16:54] It says that he was pierced through for our transgressions. Remember when his side was pierced? He was pierced. They will look upon him whom they have pierced. That's a very odd way, by the way, of dying on a Roman cross, because normally they never pierced anyone on the Roman cross.
[17:09] You know how you died on a Roman cross? You were nailed to the cross, sure, but the nails didn't kill you. What killed you was suffocation, because, see, the manner in which they killed you was your feet were kind of put, and your legs were in kind of a bent position like this, and your arms were like this, and sometimes, just because the Romans were really masters at this, they would put a little bit of a seat right here behind you, and it would kind of be on a slope, and it would be just enough seat where you could push up on that nail that was going between your ankle bones.
[17:35] You could push up on that and sit on that seat, because, see, the pull of your arms here causes your lungs to cave in, and you begin to suffocate, and the Romans would put that seat there so they would prolong it, so that you could sit there until your arms got so tired, you could no longer hold yourself up, and you would just slide off, and eventually, out of hanging in that position, you would suffocate to death.
[17:56] It would take, at times, days to die on a cross. They didn't pierce you because they didn't want to pierce you, and the reason they didn't want to pierce you is because the reason you were hanging on that cross was to be a sign and a testimony to everybody looking upon you.
[18:07] They wanted people to see your suffering. So for Isaiah to say that they would pierce him, and then Jesus to say he would be raised up above the earth, which was signifying the crucifixion, seems to be paradoxical.
[18:21] It seems not to fit, right? This doesn't apply. But yet, when we're talking about Jesus, all things apply, because we know because of his suffering and his pain, he died fairly quickly on the cross because he gave up his spirit.
[18:37] Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. They didn't kill him. He gave it up. And to prove that he was dead, they pierced his side, puncturing the heart and the sac that goes around the heart, and we have the testimony that both water and blood, which is a sure sign of cardiac heart failure coming out of his sign.
[18:55] And Isaiah says he was pierced for us. That piercing was for us. That suffering was for us. You see this. He says he was pierced by his scourging.
[19:08] Verse 5 says, But he was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chasing of our well-being fell upon him. And by his scourging, we are healed.
[19:19] I love verse 6, especially the end of verse 6. So look at this, because we're still looking at his suffering. All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us have turned to his own way. But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all.
[19:31] What iniquity has fallen upon him? The iniquity of us all to fall on him. The reason I love this is because that word fall literally means to encounter. So let's think about it this way.
[19:43] Let's read it in its literal form. The Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to encounter him. And anything that encounters Christ is immediately defeated.
[19:55] My sins, my iniquities, my failures, your sins, your iniquities, your failures, have encountered the risen Savior. And he says, okay, I'll die for that.
[20:06] We see this suffering. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth like a lamb that is led to slaughter, like a sheep that is silent before his shears. So he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment, he was taken away.
[20:18] And as for his generation, who considered that he was cut out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due? Who even thought about it? As for his generation, who even considered the fact that the death that he's dying is for me?
[20:32] Though God had moved the high priest that year, Ananias, to make a prophetic word, it is fitting for one man to die for the whole nation so that the whole nation not perish.
[20:44] He did not make that of his own accord. Go read the gospel. It said that he made that because he was high priest that year. Which means God was a respecter of his office, not a respecter of his person. And therefore, God spoke through him.
[20:55] The same God who can speak through a donkey and a rooster can also speak through a sinful man. And his prophetic word was that one would die for all so that all would not have to die. And here we see this fulfillment. Jesus suffers and dies for all.
[21:08] So we see the separation of the Savior. We see the suffering of the Savior. Number three, we see the sufficiency of the Savior. Is it enough? Is it enough? Because the question is, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
[21:20] Is it enough? Verse 8 says, By oppression and judgment he was taken away and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due?
[21:30] Verse 9, again, another seems to be oxymoron statement which makes so much sense in light of our season. His grave was assigned with a wicked man. Why is that? Because he was crucified between two thieves.
[21:42] Remember that? And yet he was with a rich man in his death. Why? Because Joseph of Arimathea was a pretty wealthy man. We know Joseph of Arimathea was a pretty wealthy man because he had a garden tomb.
[21:53] He also had the financial means to go out and buy 100 pounds of spices at the last moment. And Nicodemus, so he was crucified with the wicked and he was with the rich in his death because he had done no violence nor was there any deceit in his mouth.
[22:07] But the Lord was pleased. This is the verse that has captivated me for years. But the Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief. But the Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief, if he would render himself as a guilt offering.
[22:20] To stop right there, we're looking at the sufficiency of the Savior. Essentially what it's saying is that God was pleased with the sacrifice. God was pleased with the sacrifice.
[22:34] If he would offer himself as a guilt offering. Those of you that have been with us on Sunday nights know that we are making our way through the Old Testament on Sunday nights. We are currently going through the book of Numbers, though we won't be there tonight.
[22:46] And the book of Numbers follows the book of Leviticus. And the book of Leviticus speaks of the five great sacrifices that they were to give. Right? Remember that. We're like, oh, this stuff, it makes us scratch our heads. What does this mean? What does it matter?
[22:57] Why is it so important? Well, I'll show you why it's so important right now. One of those sacrifices that the people were to offer were the guilt offerings. And the guilt offering was so much different than something else. The guilt offerings was if you had done something wrong, if you had offended someone, you would pay them back.
[23:13] And you would pay them back what you had taken plus one-fifth. Which means, I'm not a math genius, you would give them 120% back what was due because you messed up.
[23:27] Jesus has offered himself as our guilt offering because we offended God. And what he did is he paid God back 120% of our offenses. He is the guilt offering.
[23:38] So is his offering sufficient? Yes. It is one-fifth more than what you owe. He went above and beyond your offense. And God was pleased with that.
[23:51] God said that will do. He was pleased with the guilt offering. That's my guilt offering. That's your guilt. I don't know what guilt offering you have put before God, but I do know that as much as any one of us have ever offended God, we could never pay God back 100%, let alone 120%.
[24:09] But Jesus did. He is the 120% repayment for my guilt and yours as well.
[24:19] And God is pleased with that. Is his death sufficient? And the answer to that is yes. But the Lord was pleased. He was pleased.
[24:30] He was satisfied. Which leads us here to the fourth and final thing before we take the Lord's Supper together. And this is why I think we wanted to look at this on Easter.
[24:44] We have seen the separation of the Savior. We have seen the suffering of the Savior. We've seen the sufficiency of it. Now look at the satisfaction of the Savior. Look at the satisfaction.
[24:56] If it ended with the guilt offering, there would be no satisfaction with the Savior. Because we would miss everything else from this point down. That is verse 10, about halfway through verse 10 and down.
[25:11] It says, If he would render himself as a guilt offering. Okay, now the guilt offering was completely consumed. That is, it was, the blood was drained, the blood was sprinkled around the altar, and it was completely consumed by fire, as if by fire.
[25:24] Nothing was left over of the guilt offering because it all belonged to God. So he gave himself fully to God. Look at what it says. Because this makes us scratch our head. If the Savior would give himself over to God and die our sacrificial death, if he would die, then he would do this.
[25:42] He will see his offspring. He will prolong his days. And the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hand. Now a dead man doesn't see his offspring.
[25:53] A dead man doesn't prolong his days. A dead man doesn't have the good things of the Lord prospering in his hand. But a living man who has once been dead but is now alive does. And here is his satisfaction.
[26:07] The Bible tells us in the book of Hebrews, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising its shame. Jesus saw the cross. And who for the joy on the other side of the cross, he endured the cross, even despising the shame of the cross, because he knew on the other side of the cross he would see his offspring.
[26:26] He knew on the other side of the cross he would prolong his days. He knew on the other side of the cross the good pleasures of the Lord would prosper in his hand. And as a result of the anguish of his soul, he will see it and be satisfied.
[26:40] And not only will he be satisfied, but by the knowledge of the righteous one that is knowing what he has done, my servant will justify the many and he will bear their sins. Therefore, because he has been satisfied through the resurrection, because he will lead many sons and daughters to an assurance of salvation, because he can redeem us, renew us and refine us, because of that, I will allot to him a portion with the greats.
[27:06] I will make him great. He will divide the booty with the strong. Listen, a dead man doesn't divide booty. Right? A dead man has no portion of the dispose of victory, but a living man does.
[27:17] He will divide the booty with the strong, because he poured himself out to death and was numbered with transgressors, yet he himself bore the sins of many and interceded for transgression. You know the accomplishment of Easter is that the price has been paid, the tomb is now empty, and Jesus is on the other side.
[27:35] And while he's on the other side, he's calling us to join him there as well, only for those who will accept it by faith. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you so much for this day. God, I thank you for the opportunity to look at your word.
[27:49] Lord, we pray that your word would grip us now, that it would draw us closer to you than we have ever been. Lord, that we would understand all that you have accomplished through the empty tomb. And Lord, that we would take that accomplishment and we would make it ours by faith.
[28:02] Lord, we ask that you would speak to our hearts and minds and we give you the freedom and the opportunity to do it just now. And we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.
[29:01] Amen. Amen.
[29:31] Amen. Thank you.