Introduction
Our text this morning’s is taken
from the last 3 verses in Isaiah 53. Turn with me in your Bibles beginning at
verse 10. Hear the Word of God.
10 Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and
though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering,
he will see his offspring and prolong his
days,
and the will of the LORD will prosper in
his hand.
11 After the suffering of
his soul,
he will see the light of life and be
satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will
justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him
a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the
strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of
many,
and made intercession for the
transgressors.
This is an amazing prophecy. In these 3 verses are encapsulated all of the
essential elements of holy week. We see:
·
Jesus’ suffering both physical and psychological in verses 10 and 11 (“crushed and cause
him to suffer” is the physical and “suffering of his soul” is the pain that
Jesus bore on the inside – when Jesus carried our sorrows – the suffering was
much more than physical)
·
His death
in verse 12 (“poured out his life unto death”)
·
The purpose of his death in verse 10 (“a guilt offering” – to take away our
sins – that’s what a guilt offering is – to die in our place and take away our
guilt – In the Old Testament guilt offerings didn’t get up off the altar)
·
The effects of his death in verse 11 (Justification – he not only takes away
our sins – but he justifies – makes us just-as-if-I had never sinned)
- His
resurrection in verses 10-12. Isaiah is describing a situation that is
very difficult to imagine how it can be fulfilled by one person. How can one prolong their days after being ”cut off from the land of the living.” How can we
have no offspring at the time of our death and see them later? As the son/sun rises on Easter morning - it all
makes perfect sense.
·
His death as no accident – in verse 10 – Jesus was the lamb slain before the
foundation of the world.[1] The cross was in the heart of God from the
very beginning of time.
Let’s look a little closer at this last point
in verse 10.
it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
I
want you to notice the phrase “Lord’s will” used twice in verse 10. The NIV is the only major translation that
translates the Hebrew in that way. In
fact, this is the only place that the NIV translates this Hebrew word as
“will.” 137 times this word is
translated “delight” or “pleasure” or “pleased” in the NIV – here it is
translated as “will.” So the literal
translation reads “It pleased the Lord to crush him …” or “The Lord was pleased
to crush him.”
Why did the
translators of NIV do this? Well it is
pretty obvious. I am uncomfortable
thinking about God the Father taking pleasure in crushing Jesus and causing Him
to suffer. Relegating it to “the will of
the Lord” softens it just a little.
But if we are to
truly get to know the God of Isaiah 53 we need to drink deeply of this phrase.
To begin to understand the cross and the resurrection, we need to understand
how it could please the Father to crush His Son? I don’t pretend to fully understand it – but I
believe that it is integrally tied to these four facts:
·
God loves us so (John
·
Because of our sin, we deserve the punishment of death
·
Jesus willingly accepted the punishment for us (John
·
Jesus’ suffering reconciled us with the Father.
Let me try to
illustrate this with an analogy. Imagine a doctor whose older son needs an
emergency lung transplant. The doctor’s younger son offers his lung. The father performs the operation on the
younger son. I can imagine that the
father would take pleasure in both seeing the willingness of his younger son
and in the prospect of healing for his older son. In a somewhat analogous fashion, the Father
took pleasure in seeing the Son’s willingness to suffer so that the world can
be healed and reconciled to the Father.
What is the significance of the
Resurrection?
I
don’t know if you have noticed, but the Word of God speaks about the cross and
the resurrection almost as if they are one event. Although both are anchored in separate space/time
realities, the Word of God seems to use the two events interchangeably.
For
example:
- In one place we are
justified because of His death[2] and in another we are
justified because of His resurrection.[3]
- Paul tells us that we
bear good fruit because of the work of the cross[4] and later tells us
that we bear good fruit because of the resurrection.[5]
- In one place we are
told that believing in the resurrection will save us[6] and cause us to be born again[7] but in another place
we are saved and born again by His blood.
And
then at other times one event appears to take pre-eminence over the other and
then vice versa. For example, in the book of Acts, Paul and the other apostles
hardly mention the cross and the atonement but rather preach Jesus and the
resurrection.[8] Paul says that if Christ has not been raised,
our faith is worthless and we are still in our sins.[9] But wait a minute Paul. Wasn’t it the blood of Christ that cleanses
us from our sins?
And
then other times, the effect of the resurrection is overshadowed by the work of
the cross. Paul tells the Corinthian
church that he wants to know nothing among them except Jesus Christ and him crucified.[10]
Hey Paul – you mean you aren’t going to tell them about the resurrection?
One
of the scriptures that helped me understand this was where
Paul says that Jesus:
was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness
was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead.[11]
Look
at it this way. The death of Christ was a
visible event that cataclysmically affected an invisible
reality. Christ was the Lamb of God who
“took away the sins of the world.” He “bore
the iniquity of us all.” These are
invisible realities. We cannot see sins
being forgiven. A stranger walking in
So
if it was invisible, how do we know that this happened on Good Friday? And here is the key. Because of the resurrection. The resurrection is the visible proof
that invisible work of the cross really happened. That’s what
Romans 1:4 says. The resurrection
declared with power that Jesus was who He said He was. And that is why – if there was no
resurrection, the cross did nothing more than kill an innocent man. Oh Jesus would have died and suffered like he
predicted – but he said that he would rise again. He said that his life was given as a ransom
for many. If he didn’t rise from the
dead which is a visible reality, then can we believe he accomplished the
invisible work? If he didn’t rise from
the dead, the invisible work of the cross didn’t happen - we are still in our
sins.
Jesus
illustrated this in the passage Jason used last week.[12] Remember when Jesus told the paralytic that
his sins were forgiven? The Jewish
leaders got all upset. “Only God can
forgive sins.” Jesus asked which is
easier to say “Your sins are forgiven” or “Take up your bed and walk.” Clearly the former. Anybody can say that – because forgiveness of
our sins is an invisible thing. But
Jesus said – so that you will know that the Son of Man has power to forgive
sins, I say to you “Take up your bed and walk.”
An outward and visible expression to authenticate
Jesus’ power to perform an invisible work – to forgive.
In
the same way – the resurrection is God the Father’s visible proof
that Jesus’ invisible work on the cross (i.e. bearing our sins /
taking them away) really happened. So
this is why the New Testament uses them interchangeably – they really are one
event.
With
this understanding of the cross and the resurrection, I would like to give us
three practical applications of the resurrection that we can put to immediate
use in our lives.
Because of the Resurrection:
- We
speak of the departed as alive
I
want to give you a little quiz. What’s
wrong with this statement?
“Abraham
was the father of all the Jews.”
In
Matthew 22:31-32 Jesus plays a little game with grammar while in a dialog with
the Jewish leaders about the resurrection.
He says:
31 But about the resurrection of the dead—have
you not read what God said to you, 32 'I am
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God
of the dead but of the living."
Jesus
is saying that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob are not dead!! And we are not to speak
about those who are departed in Christ as if they are dead. Jesus is saying that we are to speak of the
departed as if they are still living – BECAUSE THEY ARE! “Abraham is the father of all
the Jews.”
When
we speak to our kids or grandkids about their believing grandparents who have
gone on before them, don’t talk about them as being dead - talk about them as
being alive. Because of Easter – we have
the assurance that what Jesus said is true.
And he told us to speak of the departed not as dead but as living. “Some
day,” D.L. Moody used to say, “you will read in the
papers that D.L. Moody of
Because of the Resurrection:
- We
need not fear death
You want to shut down a
conversation some time – bring up the topic of death. Most of us suffer from
various degrees of fear of death. We are
uncomfortable with the topic – we avoid talking about it at almost any
cost. We are uncomfortable when we talk
about preparing for it – yet nothing is more certain in life. You have heard it said, that nothing is
certain in this life but death and taxes – well not even on the day before your federal taxes
are due are taxes more certain than death.
Believe it or not, there are places in this world where people pay no
taxes. But we are all going to die.
But because of the
resurrection – Jesus wants to tell us a different story. Death is not a period – but merely a comma. Our destiny is not a box six feet under but a
doorway to the very presence of God. And
it is only as we are set free from the fear of death that we are free to live a
life of holy abandonment to God. We’ll
never really live until that happens.
Listen to what the writer of
the book of Hebrews says about Jesus:
Heb 2:14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he
too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who
holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and
free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
Because of the
resurrection, we can know that we are set free from that which has held us in
bondage our whole lives. Death no longer
has power over us. Its power has been
destroyed.
Now I want to
qualify this. Just because you are
Christian doesn’t mean that you don’t experience this fear of death – it just
means that you now have been set free. The prison door was swung open when the
stone was rolled away – and we can now walk free.
Remember when
Paul said in Philippians 3:10 that his greatest desire was
… to know Christ and the power of his
resurrection
Imagine Paul walking into
most evangelical churches and being asked what he wanted most in life. He would answer “to know Christ.” Guaranteed there
would be 6 or 8 people gathered around him - praying for him to receive
Christ. Being born again doesn’t give us
full knowledge of Christ nor knowledge of the full
power of the resurrection. But it opens
the door. In the same way, just because
there are areas in your life where you still fear death, it just means that you
haven’t known the full power of the resurrection. But today you can appropriate that power.
For a long time, my wife has
had a mild fear of flying. And that is basically a manifestation of this fear
of death. But one summer during a
sermon, God delivered her from this fear.
I remember taking her to the airport after that for the first time. She was totally free. God, wanting to strengthen her, allowed her to
board a westbound American Airlines flight at
Look,
I am not saying that death isn’t hideous – or that it isn’t awful. What I am saying is that we don’t need to
fear it. Because of the resurrection,
because of Easter – it’s lost its power – its lost its
sting - we know that we need not fear.
Let’s
just take a minute or two and let the Holy Spirit minister to any of us who
need to be set free from your fear of death.
Because of the Resurrection:
- We can
become the “
One last point. Last summer I preached a sermon
here on Jesus’ vision for us becoming a death defying church based on Matthew
16:18:
Matt
Because
we have been set free from the fear of death, we are also free to go right to
the door step of death to advance the kingdom.
And that includes all kinds of fears.
Once we are set free from the fear of physical death, it is an easy step
to be set free from the fear of humiliation and from the fear failure or the
fear of rejection –all of which are deaths of sort.
Some
of you met my friend David from
So
then when they get to the prison – she introduced David and then tells David’s
fears to these prisoners. And they all
laughed. He wanted to crawl into a hole.
Then when they prayed, some of the guys started muttering – “Let’s get
him.” “Yah – get a chair.” They were
just joking.
It’s
funny now. But what happened was
amazing. In prison you are stripped of everything you have. In prison, everyone
else is over you. The sharing of Dave’s
fears gave the men power over him – and he let it happen. By David coming in weakness – it made these
men who are always powerless, strong.
And that broke open the opportunity to minister the real Jesus – the
Jesus of Isaiah 53 in the power of the resurrection. Because David was willing
to go right to the door step of his death –be willing to die to himself – and to
not be afraid of it – the kingdom was advanced in ways previously impossible in
these men’s lives. And guess what? Because of Easter, we can too.
So
how are we to leave this place changed?
Because
of Easter – we will speak of the departed as still living
Because
of Easter – we will not fear death.
Because
of Easter – we will go to deaths door in the Name of Christ.
Let’s
close and just allow the Holy Spirit to speak to us. How is He speaking to you this morning.