Isaiah (Part 5) - Sin-Offering — Ron Bailey

Israel’s Sin Reveals the Human Condition

I'd like to read some other parts of the book of Isaiah, but before we do, I want to turn to a reference in the letter of Paul to the Ephesians. I've been saying quite a lot, I have anyway, in the last few days about God's disappointment with the people of Israel and with his purposes that were never fulfilled in the way that he had longed that they should be fulfilled.

And I want to read a verse or two here from Ephesians just to make it absolutely plain that we're not singling out Israel as some particular rogue amongst the nations. In fact, although Israel had many more privileges than many others, essentially it was no difference in heart and that was really what was the matter with things.

In chapter 2 of Ephesians, he says this, quite often in Paul's letters in what are known as the prison epistles, he refers to we and when he says we, quite often he's really referring to people of the same Jewish background that he had and contrasts that with you, which is usually people from a Gentile background.

This is what he's saying here in this chapter. He's showing how God has brought everything together as one in Christ, but it's also showing that at the beginning there was no difference anyway. This is what he says, and you has he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all had our way of life in time past, in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath even as others.

The Bible says that in many different ways. It says it in the letter to the Romans, there is no difference, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So, anything that I might say tonight, although I may apply it to the nation of Israel, I'm not really thinking exclusively of Israel.

It's just that Israel is a picture book for us of what is true in all of our hearts. Let me turn to Ezekiel. Please turn with me. I mentioned this morning a verse from Ezekiel chapter 6. And for those who weren't here this morning, I was just commenting that God has never inured himself to the pain.

He has never become calloused and hard and used to the pain of rejection by those who turn their back upon him. He hasn't grown hard in order to defend himself. He has stayed open and vulnerable with all the love of his great heart and faith.

And consequently, has been hurt again and again and again. And what I said this morning was that if you love someone, you do put into that person's hand a terrible power to hurt you. If you love someone, they can hurt you very, very deeply.

And the measure of God's love for this human race is the hurt that God received at Calvary. That's the measure of it. That's the measure of his love. That's the measure of his hurt. And although he had often been disappointed with the people of Israel, he never became hard and used to that.

He never settled into any kind of cynicism or unbelief. He always reached out to them again and again. The prophecy of Ezekiel came when Ezekiel was one of those captives in the land of Babylon. And God was expressing to them the consequences of their sin and the things that had happened.

And it's here in chapter 6 that God is speaking about a remnant. And verse 8, he says this, Yet will I leave a remnant, that ye may have some that shall escape the sword among the nations, when ye shall be scattered through the countries.

And they that escape of you shall remember me among the nations, whither they shall be carried captives, because I am broken, with their whorish heart which hath departed from me, and with their eyes which go a-whoring after their idols.

And they shall loathe themselves for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations. And they shall know that I am the Lord, and that I have not said in vain that I would do this evil unto them.

But in the midst of this righteous anger of God, and in the midst of this chastisement that he must bring upon his people, you get this glimpse into the heart of God. When he says, I am broken, I am broken, you have broken me, he says, with your whorish heart, with this spirit of harlotry, with this constant flirtation with other things, with this thing in you that always goes out after other things, always wants some immediate satisfaction, some sensual gratification.

I'm not talking about the body, I'm talking about things in spirit, always wanting something, I'm broken with it, God says. This is my body which is broken, said the Lord Jesus. What happened on the cross was really the physical outworking of things that had been taking place in the heart of God from before the beginning of the ages.

That's why it can speak of the Lord Jesus as being the lamb slain from the foundation of the earth. This pain has been in his heart, this brokenness was in his heart before anything else was, before a star was in its place, or an angel in the courts of heaven, before Adam and Eve walked in the glory of Eden, before any of these things, this pain was in his heart.

From before the foundation of the world, he was the broken one, because he knew all the implications that would follow. Please turn with me to Jeremiah, who was another prophet of the exile. That's to say he was a also a man who was prophesying round about the same time.

Jeremiah didn't really go into Babylonian exile, he stayed in Jerusalem for a time and then was taken hostage down into Egypt. But if you come to Jeremiah chapter 17, you'll see that in different words, God brings this same accusation against his people.

And here, he expresses it in this way. Jeremiah chapter 17. Please remember, I'm not just talking about Israel, I'm not just talking about Judah, this is true of the whole human race. They are just the visual aid.

Verse one, chapter 17. The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond. It is graven upon the table of their heart, and upon the horns of your altars. That's a very graphic way of saying that the sin of Judah, and the sin of the whole human race, is not just skin deep.

It's not just something which lies on the outward appearance of things. It's not just that man has failed to keep up to some outward standards of God's laws. It's much, much deeper than that. The sin of Judah, the sin of the whole race, is engraved with a pen of iron.

A pen of iron is a stonemason's chisel. That's what it is. It's a pen of iron. What he's saying is this sin is engraved into this people. It's not just something which lies on the surface that can be painted over.

It's engraved. It doesn't matter what you do with it, it remains there. It's fixed. It's with the point of a diamond. It's graven upon the table of your heart, and upon the horns of your altars. Now, what is this sin, again, that God is referring to?

Well, here it is. While their children remember their altars and their groves by the green trees upon the high hills. It's this idolatry, going out after other things. This spirit of whoredom, or harlotry, going out after other things.

God isn't a romantic in his reminiscence, but there are times when God speaks of the first movings of Israel to himself in very, very tender terms. He refers right at the beginning here of the book of Jeremiah, in chapter 2.

Look how he expresses this. He is remembering, and he is reminding them of their first movements towards him. Jeremiah chapter 2. Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Go, and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the Lord, I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.

I emphasize it in that particular way to make a contrast. There was a point in their life when they made a choice to go after God. They went into the wilderness after him, and God refers to it as days of their espousal.

If you want a New Testament equivalent, days of first love. Days when they first began to respond to him. When they went out after him into a wilderness that was not sown. When they weren't just thinking about promises of lands that flowed with milk and honey, and all the good things, but when they just were content to go out after God into the wilderness.

It didn't last very long, but God remembered it, and he reminded them of it. But by the time you get to chapter 17, he is reminding them again that there is something written in my heart that has constantly taken them in other directions, after other gods.

The Incurable Deceitfulness of the Human Heart

If we go on a little bit farther into Jeremiah chapter 17, we come to a verse very well known by evangelicals, and in its right place, very important for us to understand. Remember where it is. It's here in the Old Testament.

Verse 9. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart. I try the rains, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.

The heart is deceitful. That really means it's crooked, it's thick, it's crooked, it's bent above all things, and he goes on to say it's desperately wicked, which really means it's incurable. There is an incurable condition that God has diagnosed in the people of Judah, and Israel, and England, and Ireland, and Scotland, and wherever you happen to have come from.

There is an incurable condition in the hearts of man that causes them to go away after other things, and it's written into them with a pen of iron, and the point of a diamond. The heart is crooked, and it is incurable.

Now, what is God going to do with this? Well, let's go now into Isaiah. Those of us who have been able to be together in the mornings have been looking at some parts of the second half of Isaiah, some parts that are sometimes called the Servant Songs, and these, this is one of them that we're going to turn to now.

In chapter 52 of Isaiah, verse 13, it begins in exactly the same way that Isaiah chapter 42 begins. Behold my servant. These are the Servant Songs. They are unique prophecies that speak of the Lord Jesus Christ as the faithful servant of Jehovah, the one who has come to do all his will and to finish it.

Let's just turn to Isaiah 42, just so that you can see where the first one was of these. Isaiah 42. Behold my servant whom I uphold, mine elect in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him.

I want us to just keep in our minds, if we can, this testimony of God concerning his Son, concerning his servant, that he was a delight to him. We mentioned this morning that in the book of Proverbs, it speaks of the Lord Jesus under the word of wisdom, and says that in that eternity before time was, he was with God and he was daily his delight.

This wonderful enjoyment that has existed from before time within the Godhead, perfect peace, perfect enjoyment. And now in Isaiah 42, speaking of the time when he comes to begin his mission to be the servant of God, to reveal the will of God for Israel, and he says, behold my servant, mine elect in whom my soul delights.

Isaiah 52–53: The Servant Who Bears Our Sorrows

Now let's go to Isaiah 52. I wanted to read that because I want us to have it as the back cloth against which we can read Isaiah 53, to understand who it is who is now described in Isaiah 53. The one who's going to be described in Isaiah 53 is the one who was daily his Father's delight, the one that he cherished and loved, the one who's referred to in Psalm 22, in our old English version here, as his darling.

It really means his only one. It's exactly the same word that was used in Genesis chapter 22, when God said of Abraham, take now your son, your only one. All right, let's read. Verse 13 of chapter 52.

Behold my servant, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high. And then suddenly it says this, as many were astonished at thee, his face was mawed more than the face of a man, and his form more than the sons of men.

You know that in the book of the Song of Solomon, for example, there are wonderful poetic descriptions of the Lord Jesus Christ that speak of all his glory, of his form, of his head black and bushy, of everything in perfect comeliness.

The one in whom his Father delighted, the one in whom his bride would delight. And suddenly here, in Isaiah 52, you've got this. Verse 14, as many were astonished at thee, his face was mawed more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men.

So shall he sprinkle many nations. The kings shall shut their mouths at him, for that which hath not been told them shall they see, and that which they had not seen shall they consider. Who has believed our report?

And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground. He has no form nor comeliness. And when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

Then what has happened to him? What has happened to him? This one who was daily the Father's delight, this one who is the fairest of ten thousand, according to the Song of Solomon, this one who is perfect in all his ways, what has happened to him?

He hath no form nor comeliness, and there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from him.

That's a powerful picture too. There's a picture here of someone who is so undesirable that the instinct of people is to turn away from him. There's something which is so loathsome here that the instinct is not to want to get anywhere near it.

People turn their faces away from it. When Isaiah begins his prophecy in the first chapter, he begins by expressing the way that God regarded Israel. Let's go back. We're really dodging about, but I hope in some ways these studies that we've been doing may provide a kind of a skeleton for parts of the Old Testament upon which you, at your leisure, can hanger the parts and see the pattern of them.

This is the beginning of Isaiah. I'll read from verse one. The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken. I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib, but Israel doth not know.

My people doth not consider our sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers. They, children that are corruptors, they have forsaken the Lord. They have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger.

They are gone away backward. Why should ye be stricken any more? Ye will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot, even to the head, there's no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores.

They have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. There are some that think that perhaps Isaiah is describing a leper. There is no soundness in him. From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, it's all rottenness.

There's not just the whiteness of flesh, but there is the putrefaction. There is the stench of flesh rotting away. How would you respond to that? Well, the way that God responds is He says, come now, and let us reason together.

But it isn't the way that most others would respond. Most others would avert our eyes. We wouldn't want to see it. It would be revolting. It would be literally nauseating. You'd see the putrefaction. You'd smell the stench upon this thing, and you wouldn't want to get anywhere near it.

But God says, come now, and let us reason together. But by the time you come to Isaiah 53, it's God's servant who is unapproachable. It's God's servant who has no form or cumbleness, who has no beauty that they should desire him.

It's God's servant who, according to verse 3, we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised, and we esteemed him not. And then you begin to come to the explanation, to the answer to my question, what has happened to him?

This is what has happened. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him smitten of God and afflicted. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities.

The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his scars we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has gathered together unto him. That's what it says, really.

The Lord has gathered together unto him the iniquity of us all. Ah, that's what's happened. He has stepped into the shoes of the person we read of in Isaiah chapter 21. In chapter 1, there's no cumbleness in him.

There's nothing in his form. There's nothing that any man should see in him, anything which they would desire. He is the off-scouring. He's that that the world wants to cast out, to have nothing at all to do with.

He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken and smitten of God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned every one to his own way. That is the essential nature of sin. We have turned each one to our own way. Not God's way, another way. Each one turned to our own way.

Some in grosser forms have turned to gods and goddesses, idols and vile sacrifices, and others have just turned away to more sophisticated things. But it's exactly the same. It is rejection. They have turned every one to his own way.

And the Lord has gathered together unto him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted. In the margin of Thomas Newbery's Bible, it expresses that in a different way, if I can recall it.

It says something like, it was exacted and he was answerable. Something like that. It was exacted and he was answerable. What does this mean? The time came when God's full and righteous demands against all the sin of the whole world demanded payment.

The time came when God said, this is the hour that payment must be made. The Lord Jesus had spoken of it throughout his life. He kept on saying, my hour is coming. My hour is not yet. My hour is coming.

And finally it came and he said, my hour is come. This is it. This is the time that in Luke's gospel he calls your hour and the hour of darkness. What happens on the cross is an amazing synchronization of God in all his love, in a manifestation of all he is and man in all his wickedness.

I don't know about the Battle of Britain, but this was mankind's worst hour. This was the hour in which everything that was latent in man, this seed that would bruise the heel of the seed of the woman, this thing rose up.

It was its hour. God had restrained it, but this was its hour in which he gave its full expression and it rose up and it manifested itself in all its awful reality. However it had expressed itself in time past, now it expressed itself as what it was.

It was the Christ murderer. That's what it was. It was the God murderer. We will not have this man to reign over us. And when you're talking about a man like the Lord Jesus, or when you're talking about God, there's no alternative.

You can't leave someone like that just on one side. The only way you can be sure that someone like that does not have the ultimate reign is to destroy him. There's no alternative. There cannot be some kind of mutual coexistence.

You can't say, well I'll sit here on this throne and you can sit here on that throne. That's what Satan pretended. I'll put my throne alongside the throne of God. You can't do it. You can't put anything alongside God's throne.

In the end, you either say, this man will reign over me, or you say crucify him. There are no other alternatives. There's no middle ground. I know that in most of our lives, and in most of the things you may say, well this is terrible.

This kind of wickedness is not in me. This isn't... I've never done anything like this. Maybe you haven't had the opportunity. On a couple of occasions, three occasions in all, two occasions I've been to Auschwitz, and once to Majdanek.

I feel drawn to those places, not because of their sadness, but because I think I ought to be a witness. I ought to be a witness of man's inhumanity to man. But I'll tell you this, and it might surprise you, but I know that Hitler did nothing that I was not capable of doing.

Now, I'm not exaggerating. I know my family. I know what I came from. I know what was in me. I know the sadism that was in me. I know the cruelty that was in me. He did nothing that I was not capable of.

And if there are any here tonight who have any lingering thoughts about how man came to be what he is, some ideas that maybe man is some progression from the animals, and really he's still on the way up, and he hasn't yet reached his perfection, and the development or the evolution is still going on, I'll say this one simple thing.

Whatever your theory is, you have got to have an explanation for this almost unbelievable wickedness in the hearts of men. Animals don't behave like this. Animals don't behave like this. There's something else in man.

Sin’s Entrance and the Need for a New Life

When Paul expresses these things in Romans, chapter 5, he expressed it like this. He says, let me read it so that I read it exactly. Romans, chapter 5, and verse 12. It's only the first half of the verse I need to make the point.

Wherefore, as by one man, sin entered into the world. There was a point at time in which sin entered into the world. Sin did not come into existence at that point. Sin was a lot older than that. Sin is a lot older than the human race.

But there was a time when sin entered the human race, and a spirit passed into humanity that is a God-killer, that in the end says, I will have my way, I will do my own thing, I will go in my own direction, no matter what it costs.

And if it costs the death of a loving God upon the cross, so be it. I will have my own way. I will do my own thing. It's not natural. And it's because it's not natural that there are no natural solutions to it.

Education can't cure it, and religion can't cure it, and self-discipline can't cure it. And there's nothing that can cure it, because the heart is crooked above all things and incurable. It is beyond cure.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted. It is exacted, and he is answerable. This is like a debtor, a creditor coming to the person who owes him some money and saying, all right, the time has come. Now I insist that the debt is paid.

That's what exacting something is. It's when you come to a certain point in time and you say, there's no more time, now the bill has to be paid. And what happened on the cross was that time came, and the one who picked up the tab, the one who was answerable, was the one upon whom God had gathered together all sin, the servant who had no comeliness, the one who had stepped into our place.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted. Who will pay this price? I remember hearing a story many years ago. I don't know whether it's a myth. I sometimes suspect that lots of these stories are. But this was a story that was supposed to take place in Russia during the time of one of the named Nicholas.

And this was a story concerning a young man who came from a good family and had a commission in the Russian army, but squandered his money on gambling and got himself into such terrible debt that there was no possible way out of it.

And one day on a piece of paper, he sat in the barracks and he added up all the debts to all the different people that he owned, and it was an impossible debt. There was no possible way that he could ever discharge the debt.

And realizing the shame that would come upon his family, he took out a loaded revolver and pulled back the hammer, intending to end his life. And having added up this great sum, he wrote at the bottom of it, and who can pay?

And then, as sometimes happens in the extremity of his emotion, he fell asleep. And as he slept, Tsar Nicholas came into the barracks and saw the young man with the loaded pistol on the desk, and the piece of paper with all the great list of debts upon it, and the impossibility of it all, and under it the question, who can pay?

And he stooped and he wrote something and walked out. When the young man woke up, it said, I, Nicholas, I will pay. Your debt was far greater than his. A debt that there was no possibility of ever paying.

And if you ask the question, who will be answerable for this? When God comes to exact the price, when he comes to demand that the debt will be paid, who will go? I, says our Lord Jesus, I will go. I will pay.

The Suffering Servant Bears the Judgment

He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is done, so he opened not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation?

For he was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death, because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. This one of whom the father said as he stood by the river Jordan, this is my son in whom I am well pleased. It pleased the father to bruise him. He has put him to grief.

Will you turn with me to one of the Psalms, Psalm 22. In many ways, the veil over what happened upon the cross is lifted more in the Old Testament than in the New Testament. That's an interesting thing.

In the New Testament, we hear a lot about the results of his death and the effect and the power of it, but several times in the Old Testament, you just get like the corner of a curtain lifted, and you see something of the depth of things that were taking place.

And here in Psalm 22, you get one of such occasions. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not.

And in the night season, and am not silent. But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in thee. They trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee, and were delivered.

They trusted in thee, and were not confounded. But I am a worm, and no man. What has happened to him? What has happened? This, this is the only man that has ever lived. This is the only true man who has ever lived.

If you take God's definition of man from Genesis chapter 1, let us make man in our likeness and in our image, this is the only man who ever lived. This is the only one who has perfectly expressed the nature and the character of God.

And yet here, there's this point in time, and outside, it's like a point of time and eternity, where he becomes a worm, and no man. A reproach of men, and despised of the people. There's an interesting occasion in the New Testament, in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, when the Apostle Paul speaks of the Lord Jesus, and refers to him as the second man.

He refers to Adam as the first man, and then says that the second man is the Lord from heaven. It's the Bible's way of telling us that have only ever been two men who fulfilled God's definition of man.

What's your definition of man? What is man? That's the Bible question. Psalm 8. What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honour.

Adam was crowned with glory and honour. Adam had clothing. He was made in the image of likeness of God, and God clothes himself with light as a garment. That's what the scripture says, or he clothes himself.

I forget how it expresses it, but it's something like that. And Adam was glory crowned, and glory clothed. But he sinned, and all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And man is no longer what God intended him to be.

There's a story, I think I may have mentioned this here before, it's a story that's in my mind. C .S. Lewis wrote amongst his, as well as his Narnia stories, he wrote three books of science fiction books.

The first one was called Out of the Silent Planet, and the second one was called Voyage to Venus, and the third was called That Hideous Strength. And what he does in these three science fiction, if you could ever get an opportunity to read them, read them.

They're not Bible, they're not revelation, but there are points in those story where he does what poets can always do. Poets can always get to the heart of a thing. It doesn't matter whether their words are accurate, they get to the feeling of a thing so often.

And in the second of those things, the voyage to Venus, he is inventing a story of a time when Venus was enjoying its Eden, its very beginnings. A time when God was making a new creation, and on Venus you have a new Adam, and a new Eve.

And you also have a threat, as you had on the old earth, and the threat is Satan himself. And God's means of delivering Venus from a similar destiny to the earth is that a man from the earth, named Ransom, goes from the earth to Venus, and is part of God's answer in delivering this new creation from the consequences which would have befallen it.

Please do read the book, don't just listen to this kind of 10-second resume. At the end of the story, Ransom, who has been part of God's answer to all this thing, is in a scene where the new Adam, the new Eve, or the King and the Queen, or as it's called, I think, the Lord and the Lady of this new creation, are gathered with all the animals who gather around them.

And there's a time of great celebration and joy. I think he calls it a celestial dance, or something like that. And Ransom, the man from earth, is there, and he's lying on his face. And the Lord of this new creation speaks to him and wants him to join in the celebrations, wants him to come up to where the throne is, because he has been part of the answer of all this.