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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/shawn-st-clair/gospel-isaiah-53-5/
I'd like to read with you, please, in Isaiah, in the Old Testament, in Chapter 1. Those that don't speak Spanish here tonight, you missed an announcement that was made this afternoon in Spanish, but I'm going to repeat it now in English.
The brethren and sisters that are involved, and all of us that benefited from this weekend want to thank you, especially because of the work that you put in behind the scenes and the sacrifices that you made in order that this conference could be held here this weekend.
And I realize that it is a sacrifice to come and sit for half an hour and not understand a word that's being said, and even more than that, all the work that went into the kitchen and the preparation of the food and expense.
And so on behalf of all of us that benefited this weekend, we want to thank you for your sacrifice and your labor of love. And so thank you, and thank you tonight for coming. Gracias a todos que han venido.
And I won't be saying too much in Spanish, maybe just mentioning where we're reading. Vamos a leer en Isaías, Capitulo 1, Versículo 6, para empezar. Isaiah, Chapter 1, Verse 6. I have two verses, very simply, on my mind.
The first one is in the first chapter here in Isaiah, Chapter 1, Verse 6, and this is what God's Word says, From the sole of the foot, even unto the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores.
They have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mullified with ointment. One of the hardest days of my life was December the 16th, 2006. I was in El Salvador with my family, and it started off as a day full of joy and anticipation as our third child was born, and all of the delight of seeing a new baby girl come into the world.
But, and I'm just sharing this to try to relate to you the sense of this verse, there was something different about the expression on the faces of the two doctors that were there at the birth, and we knew both of them well.
They had been there for the birth of our second child, and the pediatrician, we had seen him many times in his office, and I knew something was bothering him. And so we were on our way out. He called me to come, the way they do it there, they take the baby to weigh it in a separate area and called me to follow along, and then he told the nurse to go ahead and take the baby and to weigh her, and he said to me, Sean, just in Spanish, just come into the room here on the side for a minute.
So he called me in, and I could tell that something was really, really bothering him. And he said, I don't know how to say this, but I believe your child has Down syndrome, and your heart wells up with all kinds of emotion, and I don't really want to go into that side of it tonight, but I just, I relate that to you because when I look at the words of this verse, I want you to realize that the God of heaven, with just as much care and in fact so much more than that Dr. Calles, who was a friend, who was a good doctor, who was faithful and honest with me, who spoke in a loving and a truthful and honest way, just as much as he spoke words to me, and even more so, the God of heaven tonight is calling you to come into the side room, and he's saying to you tonight, with a loving but a faithful and honest diagnosis, he's saying you have a problem.
You have a problem that I'm going to describe to you. And the God of heaven is using these words, he's using a picture to try to show to you tonight, how he sees you as he looks down, how he looks at your life and your hearts and your minds and everything that you do, and he says this is how I see you.
And the words that he uses are stark, they're shocking words, they're perhaps even repulsive, but I want to go through these words and I want you to understand, even if you've heard this message hundreds of times, boys, girls, young people here, I want you just to step into the side room tonight with God, if I can say that reverently, and listen to him as he speaks to you and says, this is how I see you.
When we cut beyond all of what you think about yourself, and we get beyond your Sunday school attendance and we get beyond your good living before your friends at school, and we get beyond everything that you think that makes you somehow different and better than everyone else, I want you, God says, to see you as I see you.
Are you willing to listen to what he says tonight? You see, our problem is we see sin only for its effects. We see sin when it destroys a family. We see sin when a child is abandoned. We see sin when it disturbs us because it bothers us and we hope nobody finds out.
We see sin for the effects that it has upon us, the guilt, the hurt, the pain. But we don't see sin as God sees it. And that's exactly why he's given us this verse. He's trying to help us see it from his eyes.
And so it's as if we're lying in the hospital bed, maybe not now in the side room, but right there in the bed, and he's stepping in now, and he's leaning over us, and he's holding up the mirror, and he's saying, you have a look up into the mirror, and this is how I see you.
Young man tonight, have you ever taken a good look at yourself as God sees you? What does he say? We read, first of all, the start of the verse, verse 6, from the sole of the foot even unto the head. God says that sin has affected all of our being.
You listen to some of the words of Scripture. It's affected our feet, our walk. The Bible says we are all gone out of the way. We have all gone astray. Sin has affected our hearts. The Bible says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.
Who can know it? Sin has affected our words. With their tongues they have used deceit. The poison of ass is under their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Sin has affected our eyes.
There's no fear of God before their eyes. There's none that seeketh after God. Sin has affected our minds. There's none that understandeth. Their thoughts, imaginations, only evil continually. And so God says from the sole of the foot to the head.
There's nothing about your being that has not been affected by sin. You can't do anything with your hands. You can't go anywhere with your feet. You can't think anything with your mind. You can't want anything with your heart without being affected by your sin.
That's what God says. And then as if to just make it absolutely clear, he says, no soundness in it. And that was my problem when I was young, before I was saved. I thought there were little parts of me that somehow were all right.
Some parts of me that somehow were pleasing to God. And yet if I were to have listened to what God says about me, he says, no soundness. No little piece here or there that I can say, well, the sickness has affected this part of the body.
But if we go down here, there seems to be a little bit all right. Do you believe that? Do you believe that there is absolutely nothing about you that is pleasing to God the way you are in your sin? Nothing you've done, nothing you've said, nothing you plan to do, nothing about you that is right before God because of your sin.
You say, that's hard to believe. That's what God says. That's what God says. No soundness in it. And then he says, well, sin, it's like wounds. It's like bruises. It's like putrefying sores. Let's just think about those.
First of all, the wounds, those are outwards. You know what God says about our sin? It's outward rebellion against him. It's visible. It's clear to him. You say, well, the little sins that I do, I don't think they hurt anybody.
Really, nobody is involved. They're just little secret things that I do. And really, nobody is affected. And so really, it's not such. God says it's wounds, outwards, visible, rebellion against God. All of those secret things that you think nobody knows and will affect nobody.
God says, I see them as wounds, as rebellion against me. And then he says, bruises. I think the boys and girls know bruises are under the skin. They're on the inside. And the Bible makes it clear our sin is like a bruise.
Outward rebellion, wounds, bruises, inwards, nature, character, twisted, contorted, sin on the inside. You see, sin doesn't always show itself visibly on the outside. Sin sometimes are those thoughts.
Sin is often those desires, those things that go against what God has said in his words. And though it may never be expressed in action and never spoken in words, young woman, young man, friend in the meeting, here tonight, God says, wounds, bruises, visible, outward rebellion, sins in your heart, your very nature, sinful.
But then he says, putrefying sores. What's a putrefying sore? Well, if you had a sore that was oozing, and you'll pardon the graphic language, but if there was pus coming out, and it was seeping out all around, and it wasn't healing up, it was just turning green.
And you would hopefully be quick to get to the doctor. You realize, this thing isn't getting any better. It's getting worse. You'd be quick to get to the doctor. But what about when God says your sin is like a putrefying sore to him?
It's not getting any better. It's only getting worse. You think about the things that you did when you were young and the things that you never thought you would do. And now you look at the things that you're doing now, and you'll realize that sin is only getting worse.
It's taking you further and further and further away in rebellion. That's sin. That's what God sees. And then he says about it, there's three things that's not happening. He says, they've not been closed.
Nothing has been applied to stop it. Nothing we can do will stop this problem. And maybe you've tried it. Maybe you've tried to resolve that you're not going to keep doing that. You're not going to go down that road anymore.
You're not going... And you realize, I can't stop it. That's what God says. Not been closed. And then he says, neither bound up. It's not been covered. Oh, sure. We can hide things from our spouses. We can hide things from our parents.
We can hide things from our teachers. We can hide things from the government. We can hide things from the police. We can hide things from our neighbors. But God says, not covered up. All things are naked and open to the eyes of the God with whom we have to do.
I think we just don't have an understanding of how terrible and how repugnant and how open and visible all of our sin is to God. So he said, it's not closed up. It's not covered up. And then he says, it's not mollified with ointment.
Nothing has been done to deal with the root problem. Have you never dealt with the root problem? God says, this is how I see the sinner. It's terrible. It's ugly. But he says it in a loving and a kind way.
You see, because this book of Isaiah, it starts off telling us, showing us exactly how God sees us. And it's a terrible picture. But then it takes us over, and we're going to go now to chapter 53, because it shows us that he has an answer.
Let's go to chapter 53. Isaiah 53 and verse 5. Isaiah 53, verse 5. Isaiah 53, verse 5. I know you know this verse. I think just about everyone, if not everyone, that is listening to me in English. But I want you to read it and to think about what it says tonight.
And I want you to read it remembering exactly what God has said about you and your sin in chapter 1. He says, God says about the Lord Jesus, but he was wounded. We saw our wounds. Now he's wounded for our transgressions.
He was bruised. We saw our bruises. Now he's bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace. We saw that we hadn't dealt with sin. And now we see that sin's being dealt with. The chastisement of our peace was upon him.
And with his stripes, we are healed. Before I say anything about this verse, let me just say that the verse says it all. And if you tonight have been able to see and could be honest with yourself and honest before God with what we've read in Isaiah chapter 1, then you could read this verse tonight.
And by God's help and illumination, you could trust the words of this verse because it contains everything that you need to deal with the problem of your sin. It says healed, dealt with, forgiven, cleansed, right with God.
This is the answer to the sinner of chapter 1. But let's look at the verse very specifically. It says he was wounded. Remember, we had wounds, but he was wounded. Remember, we had bruises, but he was bruised.
Do you see the difference? Our problem, it comes from the inside out. It's part of who we are. And yet, when we come to him, we find that it's coming from the outside in. It's not part of who he is. He's God's eternal son.
He's God's perfect one. We were hearing it in Spanish already. He's the one that has always pleased the father, in whom the father finds all of his delights. And so these are characteristics that are his, but rather he steps into a place.
He comes to Calvary, and there he receives this. Wounds, bruises. What marked us because of our sin and our nature, it now falls on him. But notice them with me. He was wounded for our transgressions.
We could talk about the wounds. Medicine has five different types of wounds, and all of those five, we find that Christ suffered on the cross. But rather than thinking specifically, and maybe that would be a good thing to do, for you just in your mind to go through all of the things that he suffered when men did their absolute worst and their hatred against God's son.
I don't want to focus so much on the physical side of it, but I want you to notice just now, maybe as you go through those in your mind, why? Why was he wounded? Why did he suffer? He was wounded for our transgressions.
What are transgressions? I want you to get this. Transgressions are rebellion against God. Those are the wounds in chapter one. Rebellion outwards against God. And now we see that this perfect son of God steps into our place, and he receives wounds for our wounds.
Every single act of rebellion of this sinful heart of mine, every single sin that I have ever committed in my life, every single one of them, he was wounded for. Every single one. What about your sin?
Wounded for our transgressions? And then it says bruised for our iniquities. Iniquities. That word there, the root meaning of the word is twisted. It reminds me again of that inward nature. The bruise on the inside in chapter one.
You say, did Christ really even suffer for my nature? Bruised for our iniquities. He suffered for who I am as a sinner, for my sinful nature, for every single sinful thought that I have ever had, every sinful desire, every wrong aspect of my being.
Bruised, bruised. Bruised for our iniquities. That word bruised is the strongest word for suffering in the original language of this verse. It has the idea of being crushed. As if you were to take a pill and put it there into the crucible and crush it down until it's just powder.
Certainly the Lord Jesus was bruised on the cross because of all of the things that men did to him. But I come down to this same chapter 53, and it says it pleased the Lord to bruise him. You see, what happened there went far beyond anything that men could do.
The bruising was something far deeper, far more profound. That's why in the Psalms we read about water rushing into his soul and fire coming into his bones and his heart melted like wax. This is one who is being crushed under the terrible crucible of God's wrath as he deals with sin to its very nature, to who I am and everything about me that is absolutely against God.
God takes his son and his son goes under that pressure as he's crushed, bruised. Was it for me? Was it for you? Bruised for our iniquities. Then it says the chastisement of our peace was upon him. Remember in chapter 1, no closing it up, no bandage, no ointment.
Nothing done to deal with it. And in fact, nothing we could do to deal with it. What does God say? He says, I've dealt with it. The chastisement, what needed to be dealt with. You see, sin has to be punished.
God is absolutely holy. As we were hearing in Spanish, he cannot allow sin in his presence. He loves sinners, absolutely. He would love to have you in his presence for all eternity. That's why he sent his son.
Because he can't have your sin there. He wants you there, but he can't have your sin there. And so sin had to be dealt with. And the only way to deal with it was chastisement, judgment. And so the chastisement, what needed to be done so that sin could be dealt with, so that we could be at peace with God.
The chastisement so that we could have peace with God. That chastisement, it fell upon him. Isn't that wonderful? I can't deal with it. I can't do it. I can't solve my sin problem. And yet God says, I have.
I have dealt with it. Everything that needed to happen, it happened there on the cross. The chastisement, all of the judgment, so that you could be at peace with me. He says, it was done. The chastisement of our peace was upon him.
But then we come to the end of the verse. And I just pray that someone tonight who's seen themself in chapter 1 will take these words home tonight. They're the words that my father saw one day lying as a boy in his grandparents' farmhouse, and it was up on the wall.
And I don't know how many here tonight have already been saved through these precious words. But could you take them tonight for yourself? Because that's how God intends them for you. It says, with his stripes we are healed.
And really that word stripes is a singular word. Allow me to read it this way. With his stripe we are healed. Do you know what that's saying? It's saying that the judgment, the wrath, everything that should have fallen on us and would have fallen on us throughout an eternity, banished forever from God in a place called the lake of fire, everything that we should and rightfully deserve to suffer, in one single stripe, it fell on him.
Have you ever thought about the terribleness of Calvary? The terribleness of the stripe of the wrath of God? The wrath of God, the anger of God against your sin. The righteous wrath of God against my sin.
Holy wrath. And it comes down in one single stroke on the Son of God. With his stripe. You know, that word can be translated another way. Scar mark. With his scar mark. You know, I love that word. You know why?
When I think of a scar, it tells me two things. When I see a scar, it tells me the suffering's past. When I look at Calvary and I read this verse and I think of what Christ has gone through, that stripe, I realize that with his scar mark, with the suffering that has passed, when the suffering is now complete, I look at this and say, with his scar mark, I am healed.
You see, Christ, it was one single stroke, but it was a stroke that dealt with it once and forever, and a scar mark shows me that the suffering is over. Nothing for me to suffer, nothing more to be added, nothing more for him to do.
He cries at the end, finished! And there's a scar mark that shows me the work is done once and for all. God's not asking you to do a work. God's asking you to be satisfied with a work that's done. His scar mark, his stripe, that's what heals.
You know the other thing a scar mark tells me? It tells me there's a mark there forever. Someday, I don't know when, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, but someday I'm going to look at my Savior. It'll be the only body in heaven with scar marks, evidence of his suffering, so that I could be there.
Are you going to look at him one day that way? Will you see him face to face, the one that you trusted as your Savior, the one that you realized in life, because of that suffering I've saved, and then you'll be there in heaven, and you'll see those marks on his body, and you'll bow down at his feet.
What will we think as we look at those marks, his hands? What will we think? What will we say? Have you appreciated those marks? Do you understand why he suffered? With his scar mark, with his stripe, we are healed.
Could it be any more for sure? Could it be any more clear? Could God have made it any more plain? He says, the work is done, the suffering is over, wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, dealt with chastisement so that we could have peace, it falls on him that, and now with his stripe, we are healed.
Oh friend tonight, may you go away from this meeting saying, I am healed. The work is done. He suffered for me. There's nothing I can do. I am the sinner in chapter one, but he's the savior in chapter 53, and he died for me.
May God help you to trust him, and to be satisfied with the work that he did to save your precious soul. Let's pray. Our father, we give thanks for a tremendous savior. We give thanks for the work he did at Calvary.
It pleased thee. But father, this evening, many of us now say it pleases us. It pleases us to think that in heaven, there's one who loved us and gave himself for us. And tonight we pray for those that are here who have listened as we listened many years, not knowing him, knowing so much about him, but never having accepted his work and his person for ourselves.
Father, we pray for young people. We pray for teenagers. We pray for adults. Those that are here, those that have listened in Spanish, and those that have understood in English, we look to thee to speak to every heart that's not saved in a particular way, and do a work of salvation for the glory and honor of the one who gave himself.
We give thanks for him in his precious name, the Lord Jesus. Amen. We're going to sing in closing number 99. These are words that those of us who have trusted him sing, and we'll sing them with joy and worship.
But as we sing each one of these verses, I want you to ask yourself, can I sing this truthfully? Do these words really mean something to me too? Man of sorrows, what a name for the son of God who came.
Ruined sinners to reclaim. Hallelujah, what a Savior. Verse 5, soon he'll come with shout on high. Raise his saints no more to die. Change will meet him in the sky. Hallelujah, what a Savior. Oh, that God would help you to say the same truthfully.
Hallelujah, what a Savior. We'll sing the whole hymn. Thank you for coming. Number 99, and the meeting is over. Amen.