The Substitute for Sinners

In Paul's pastoral letters to Timothy, he clearly defines for us the reality of Scripture.

That reality is that all of Scripture is profitable. That all of Scripture is there for the purpose of training and growing and developing believers, preparing us for the work that God has placed in front of us.

Literally, it teaches us that every jot and tittle in God's Word is important.

And to understand that, you need to know, if you don't know, that jot and tittle are part of the language.

They were the small marks that you see over the writing in the Hebrew language.

And so it teaches us that even the smallest detail can often be extremely important.

And as we read the Word of God, it becomes very clear to us that there are some passages that are relatively clear and easy to comprehend, and then there are other passages that are more difficult.

And we understand that we are to interpret Scripture with Scripture, that we should never interpret it outside of the entirety of the scope of the redemptive history of God and what he has given us and revealed to us in his

Word. But sometimes, even among those passages that seem to be very clear, there are passages that we interact with that call us to slow down and take a few more moments in time to unpack and to be very clear and to carefully listen and receive the

Word of God with all due reverence and all understanding.

As we approach the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, we find one of those passages.

The 53rd chapter of Isaiah is not a passage that is obscured.

It literally is one of the clearest, most glorious revelations of the gospel truth in all of the

Old Testament. And yet, sometimes it's very easy to read through that chapter and miss some of the fuller details that are necessary.

This passage, written roughly 700 years before the birth of Christ, describes the suffering servant.

It describes the suffering, the death, the saving work of the Messiah so precisely that it reads like inspired eyewitness testimony.

It reads as if Isaiah was standing when Christ was beaten and crucified.

And yet, we know that he was not. So as we begin moving toward Resurrection Sunday, as we move towards the time when we celebrate the triumph of Christ, we must seek to understand first the cross.

Because without the cross, we cannot rightly understand the resurrection.

However, if we are to truly understand the cross, then it becomes necessary that we see and we have an understanding of why

Christ died. Now if you ask the average Christian that, the answer you'll get is for my sins, which is not a bad answer.

But there's a fuller, richer, deeper answer. And there's more that's packed into Isaiah 53 than just a simple response of, he died for my sins.

We need to realize that he didn't die just as a martyr for truth or a victim of human cruelty, but that he died as the divinely appointed substitute for sinners.

This is what is placed before us in Isaiah 53 specifically.

We will look at this morning verses four through six. Isaiah is not simply telling us that the serpent will suffer.

He's telling us why. Why the serpent will suffer.

And he will suffer because of the sins of his people. Because those sins will be laid upon him.

He will bear what belongs to his people. He will endure what his people deserve.

He will stand where they should have stood. In other words, he will die in the place of his people.

Brothers and sisters, that's the heart of the gospel. That salvation comes through a substitute, but a substitute not just provided by God, but is

God himself in the flesh. He didn't save sinners by ignoring sin.

That's what the world wants to do. They want to save sinners by ignoring the sin and just saying everybody's okay, everybody's fine.

God doesn't set aside his justice in order to show mercy. He actually demonstrates his mercy through justice.

He places the guilt of sinners upon another, upon a substitute.

He punishes that. John MacArthur calls Isaiah 53 the holy of holies of the Old Testament.

It says that it contains enough truth in that one passage about the death and resurrection of Christ to lead a sinner to full salvation.

How interesting. How interesting that the entire left side of Scripture that many would unhitch from the right side contains the gospel in such clarity.

And so this morning as we come to this passage there is a central truth that must govern our thinking from beginning to end.

It is one of the doctrines that is necessary, that we comprehend.

And doctrine is important. In this particular doctrine, the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, penal substitutionary atonement, it's necessary for proper preparation because to rejoice at the resurrection we need to understand why the death had to occur.

So if you will turn with me in your copy of God's Word to Isaiah chapter 53 where we read verses 4 through 6.

And having found your place please join me in standing out of reverence for the reading of God's holy, inerrant, authoritative, sufficient, and complete

Word. Isaiah chapter 53 verses 4 through 6 we find these words.

Surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried.

Yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.

The chastening for our peace fell upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, but Yahweh has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him.

Heavenly Father as we stand and hear the reading of your

Word we do so in awe and in reverence knowing that that what we have read is not the

Word of man but the Word of you and you alone

O God. That your Word is true, that it is sufficient, that it is powerful.

Lord we confess that apart from your grace we would read these words yet fail to rightly understand them.

So Lord we ask now that you would grant us clarity of mind and humility of heart that we would see what is truly written.

That Christ is not merely just a suffering servant but that he literally is to substitute for sinners.

Guard us from a superficial understanding, keep us from reading familiar words without feeling their weight.

Lord as we as we interact with this passage we pray that our our sins are revealed to us as they truly are.

Remind us that we were those who had gone astray, that left to our own we are those who turn to our own way.

Through that Father lead us not to despair regarding our past condition but to Christ the one who bore our grief carried our sorrows the one upon whom you laid the iniquity of each of us.

Give us ears to hear, minds to understand, hearts ready to receive and respond.

Father we ask all of these things in the name of Jesus Christ our

Lord our substitute our Savior. Amen.

You may be seated. As we come into the passage of Isaiah chapter 53 there is the possibility that we enter this particular passage and we walk out with a misunderstanding of exactly who the suffering servant is and what the suffering servant does, a false interpretation of the way that this should look.

He opens up with this first word here, surely, that carries a level of emphasis that we need to pay attention to.

We need to recognize that Isaiah is calling us not to miss, not to misunderstand, not to just simply hear and brush aside, but that we take this in as truth and that we not make it something that it's not but that we also don't in simplicity just think that it means that he was just another servant that suffered pointlessly.

If you go back up to the very beginning of chapter 53 and you look at verses 1 2 3 verse 3 actually ends in in such a way that without comprehension of the entire passage it's easy to go well this is the reason that the servant was suffering.

Notice what it says in verse 3. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows, a man acquainted with grief, and like one from whom men hid their face.

He was despised. We did not esteem him and so it's easy to say well he suffered because he was not liked, he was not well -received, he didn't have an appearance that we should desire him, he didn't have a form that we should want to look upon him, that there wasn't this stateliness about him and so it was easy to mistake who he was and therefore lead to his suffering.

No, Isaiah makes it clear to us that even though he was despised and rejected and afflicted and and that we could look at that in a natural human state and go this is the reason for the suffering,

Isaiah continues on and pushes in to make it very clear when he states these words the suffering of the servant is about our griefs that he himself bore and our sorrows that he carries.

Often in Scripture we are called and should be reminded that Scripture as its whole is not about us.

We are not the main characters in this work playing out a role that has been assigned to us and using these examples that we see.

However when we come to this passage in Isaiah we got to be very careful and remember that this is about us.

You see that word our is a personal pronoun.

It's intentionally personal.

It's deeply personal. You see what it does is it not just points to you as an individual but it also grants you ownership of what is the object of that pronoun.

Years ago I was in sales and one of the lessons that I was taught early in the particular job that I had was that I would come into the home and I would begin to make the presentation for this particular item and throughout the presentation it was imperative that I referred to the item as being owned by the resident.

So I would refer it to it as your item. Your item.

Repeatedly over and over throughout the sales pitch. By the end of the sales pitch the idea was to have created ownership of that item.

Why? Because I simply kept referring to it as theirs. You'll notice in this passage

Isaiah continually refers to these things as ours.

The griefs are ours. The sorrows are ours.

It was our transgressions. It was our iniquities. The chastening for our peace.

But what it says is they were our griefs that he bore.

They were our sorrows that he carried. It was our transgressions.

It was our iniquities that were upon him.

These words are interesting. Again we go back to Paul's statement in Timothy.

Not one jot and tittle is unintentional or without purpose. And so we see these words and we can't go oh well it's just repetition of the same theme without digging a little deeper.

You see these do carry the basic idea of sin but they actually go further.

They go beyond just this misery that sin has brought into the world and they really talk about the suffering, the affliction, the guilt, the shame, the painful consequences of the fall.

All of the things that we don't really want to talk about in our natural lives. Years ago a slogan came out that I'm okay, you're okay, we're okay.

The idea was that we don't need anything else because we're okay. Brothers and sisters

I don't know how many people you talk to on a daily basis but it should become very clear to you very quickly that most people aren't okay.

They may be making it. They may be getting through in this life but as you begin to press into this truth you realize that they're not okay.

They're not okay because of these things, these sorrows, these griefs, these iniquities, these sufferings that exist.

Isaiah is not saying that Christ saw these things and had compassion on us in the human condition although he absolutely did.

Isaiah is going beyond that moment of compassion, that view of compassion and saying that that Christ himself took this burden that is connected to the sin of his people.

Matthew chapter 18 verse 17 applies this to the ministry of Christ and talks about his healing miracles fulfilling these words in some way.

But it goes beyond that. Those miracles were not ends up to themselves. They were signs.

They were pointing to the deeper reality that Christ came not to deal with the symptoms but with the root, with the cause.

You see it's real simple in our life to diagnose a problem. You go to the doctor and you tell him that you have a cough and congestion.

You know he's gonna run a series of tests and he's gonna come back to you and he's gonna say oh you got the flu or COVID or or strep throat or the common cold but none of those things are actually the root of the problem.

The root of the problem is the germ that caused that disorder. In our lives the suffering, the sorrows, the affliction, the things that we deal with, the root cause is not karma.

It's not a bad day. It's not society. It's humanity's nature, the fallenness of it.

Calvin comments on this passage. He says that he himself took upon us and bore the punishment that was due us.

He didn't come to cover the misery. He came to bear it in a redemptive way.

In such a way that he takes responsibility for what is not his by nature.

Taking responsibility for things is a difficult reality but it's also here that we need to be very careful because you see it's common to talk about Jesus simply in terms of one who understands our pain, who identifies with our suffering, who knows our weakness and those things are all very true.

He is the most compassionate, sympathetic high priest ever because he is the great high priest.

You will never find someone more compassionate, someone more sympathetic. But see to stop there, to just stop at the idea that Jesus knows what it is to be hungry, to be tired, to be rejected, to weep, to suffer.

We lose it because Christ didn't come to save by being sympathetic.

He came to save by substitution. He came to bear what belonged to us.

He came to carry the load that would have and can and does crush us if we do not have faith in Christ.

Scripture says that in the fullness of time Christ came at the right moment and he came into the world with a full and complete understanding not just of our need, not just to feel our need, but to deal with the root of our need by taking it upon himself because he realizes and he knows, he didn't realize because he already knew, to use a proper word, the very depth of our need, the root of our problem.

A .W. Pink wrote on the death of Christ and he says that the prophets foretold that the Messiah would die not only under a death of shame and violence but also under that death as one whose sufferings had saving significance for others.

Let me just, if you and I were to go into a gas station or a business and someone was to hold the place up at gunpoint and you took a bullet for me or I took a bullet for you, we would suffer in the place of the other.

Let me just go ahead and tell you that's not going to save you. I can suffer all day long in your place and all

I'm going to do is suffer and all you're going to do is keep suffering because there's nothing salvific about it.

Christ suffered. There's always a purpose of the sufferings in Christ.

They're of Christ in Scripture. They're never just bare. They're always purposeful. They're always connected to the saving work.

And so Isaiah begins by telling us that the suffering of the servant is representative and it is substitutionary.

That it is our grief, again, he bears. Our sorrows that he carries.

The weight is ours. The burden is ours but it was laid on him.

Immediately we should be humbled by this truth. Immediately we should react in a manner that we understand that our sin is no like mine.

The sin of one individual to an eternal, holy, righteous

God is something that none of us can bear.

We can't bear the burden. We can't carry the load. We can't handle the wrath of God being poured out upon us.

These griefs and these sorrows are not abstract things that are floating out in the world disconnected from us.

These are the bitter fruit of human rebellion against God.

Lest we believe that we are somehow immune to this bitter rebellion as people, notice that there is no limitation in Isaiah's statement.

He didn't say just the sheep are having these griefs and sorrows.

He didn't say just those who believe are smitten and afflicted because of their sin.

He didn't say that it was just the transgression of those who are the elect.

All of humanity is falling and so our guilt, our ruin, our need, and if they are ours yet Christ must bear them, then are they not more serious than we often imagine?

The smallest but at the same time for those who believe, should this truth not fill us with worship?

Christ didn't draw back. He didn't avoid the burden.

He bore it and he bore it willingly to Calvary's cross.

That was the reason he came. So what about the love of God?

Absolutely he came in love but he also came in obedience.

Obedience to the Father to take upon himself what belonged to his people.

Isaiah goes further in verse 5. In verse 5 he expands this.

He writes, but he was pierced through our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.

The chastening for our peace fell upon him. If verse 4 tells us that he bore our grief, our sorrows, verse 5 tells us how deeply that bearing goes.

Because see here's the thing. If we just stop at verse 4, he bears our sorrows, he bore our griefs.

Well man if you bore our griefs and our sorrows then I never have anything else to worry about and all things are good. And so I can keep living my life the way

I need to and want to and desire to knowing that Jesus has just borne all my worries away.

You see how easy it is to become fickle about the events of verse 4.

But then verse 5 gets to a level where we are again reminded of this violence, pain, this judgment that has to come.

See it's not just that he came and and bore our sorrows away and bore our griefs away.

He didn't just say okay I'm gonna take all your cares and your worries and I'm gonna take them over here and I'm gonna put them in a neat little pile they're never gonna bother you again.

What he did was take them to the cross and he did so under divine judgment.

I remember a question that I was asked one time years ago. I was still a kid and I don't even remember who asked me

I just remember the question and I remember not knowing the answer at the time. The question that was asked was who put

Christ on the cross? Was it the

Romans? Was it the Jews? Was it you and me?

The answer to that question is none of the above. You're like well wait a minute wait wait wait wait wait my my book my book says that the

Jews cried out for his crucifixion, that the Romans nailed in the nails, that it was for my sin that he bore.

But God is the one who put him on the cross. It's God's work.

This is divine judgment. You see we think we escape this.

We think we get away. This is why so many people are drawn oftentimes because we we preach and we deliver this message of avoidism.

What do I mean by that? Come to Jesus avoid hell. We put a fear in people that have nothing to do with the real truth.

Yes we want to avoid hell. Yes we don't want to spend the eternity under the eternal wrath of God. Yes we should preach hell.

Yes we should teach that sinners go to hell because as a sinner you are rebelling against God but we need to focus on Christ's work and the fact that he takes in this divine judgment.

Listen notice the language pierced, crushed. Pierced for what?

Our transgressions. Crushed for what? Our iniquities. Have you ever thought about what the words transgression and iniquities mean?

Listen before I get to that Calvin says on this verse that he was wounded not for himself but for us.

Not once in this passage do we see anything that says Christ went to the cross because of something he did.

We get in verses 1 through 3 this description of him, this physical description that he was not one that anybody is looking up to in the sense of royalty.

He's not one that anybody is thinking about. He has no stately form or majesty.

He has no appearance that we should desire him. He was despised. He was forsaken. He was a man of sorrows.

He was acquainted with grief. He was like one from whom men hid their face. Again he was despised and we did not esteem him.

But it doesn't say he did anything to deserve divine judgment until you get to verses 4 and 5 and it's still not his doing but ours.

It's our transgressions. Our iniquities.

This is the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. Listen, Christ did not offer or suffer as a private person.

He was an individual suffering as a representative of his people.

Now we get into a very clear distinction. You see there is no distinction when it comes to the iniquities.

There is no distinction when it comes to the sin. There is no distinction when it comes to the transgression.

However, there is a distinction on who he bears these for.

Isaiah uses a couple of words to describe our sin. First of all he uses the word transgression.

The reason it's important that we understand the difference between these two words is so that we don't get pulled aside into something that is not true.

Transgression reports to rebellion. Rebellion is a willing participation in revolt against something.

In this case, God and his law. This is one of those things that that we deal with in society, right?

Because oftentimes we point back to the Ten Commandments absolutely as we should and people are very quick to, oh

I haven't killed anyone, I haven't stolen anything. They'll even tell you they haven't lied, which is a lie.

But if you really begin to break down the truth behind each one of those things and you understand what each one of the

Ten Commandments represents and you really begin to dig, it's very easy to realize that that we all have revolted against God.

The flip side of that is the conversation that goes something like this, well if Adam fell that doesn't necessarily mean that I am going to fall.

But you understand that in Adam all men fell. Sin entered the world. It became part of our nature and as it became part of our nature it absolutely corrupted us to the point where we are incapable.

Incapable, that means you are without the ability. You are not capable of doing something, of obeying the

Word of God, the law of God in its fullness. We willingly rebel.

We cross God's law. We consciously violate his holy command.

Thou shalt not lie. Let's just take that one for a minute because it's one of the easiest, right?

Have you ever lied? No, you just did. Have you ever told a white lie? Well yeah, but that was just to hurt, not hurt somebody's feelings.

But was it the truth or was it a lie? It was a lie. Then you're a liar. Have you ever had another

God before God? No man, God's always been my one true

God, really. Let's look at your checkbook or your bank statement.

Some people don't have checkbooks anymore. Some people don't even know what checkbooks are. What does it say that your heart belongs?

Let me see your phone for a minute. Let me look at your stream time. What does it tell me? You average 13 hours a day on your phone and of that 13 hours, 12 .5

of them was on social media. Who are you worshipping? See, it can get real tough real fast, right?

We willfully transgress the Word of God. There's this conscious violation.

Iniquity, on the other hand, points to corruption, to moral crookedness, to the twistedness of our heart.

So what we see in this passage by Isaiah is both open rebellion and inward depravity defined.

This is a total picture. Well, what happens to those sins?

Sin against God is not excused. Sin against God is not swept away without satisfaction.

Sin against God is only dealt with through judgment and for his people, it is through judgment of the servant.

It is through him being placed on the cross.

He was pierced. We like to point at that and go, well, yeah, he was pierced.

They put holes in his hands and his feet. They stuck something in his side. He was absolutely pierced. I'm thinking it goes beyond the physical.

After all, he was not crushed in the sense of something being dropped on him. Has your heart ever been pierced?

Has your person ever been crushed?

How was he crushed by the weight of the sin, by the weight of the judgment of God that was poured out upon him?

A little bit later in verse 10, if you look now, it says, but Yahweh was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief.

This is not Yahweh delighting in the sense of enjoying pain as pain.

The point here is that Yahweh willed that the saving purpose accomplished would be accomplished through the suffering of the

Son. Divine justice satisfied.

Holy wrath poured out, not on the ones who deserved it, but on the suffering servant.

This is where we get to, we move from just simple substitutionary atonement to penal substitutionary atonement.

Penal because there was a penalty being bore. Substitution because the one who bore that penalty was not the one who committed the infraction.

Spurgeon, as he preached through Isaiah chapter 53, verse 6, described the sin of God's people as brought together into terrible concentration upon Christ and said that all of the sin of his people was made to meet upon the devoted head of the

Redeemer. That's strong language.

Brothers and sisters, that means that not just you and I sitting in this room today, but all believers of all time, in all places, everywhere, that all of those sins were born.

The sin that belonged to the sheep was laid upon the shepherd.

Now, I kind of alluded to this some earlier, but it is something that we need to take care, we need to understand that there is not this vague notion of Jesus suffering in a part of just general redemptive love.

Again, the transgressions, the guilt, all of those things are universal to all people.

The suffering is not for all. We look at the 1689, it speaks of Christ by his perfect obedience and sacrifice of himself, fully satisfying the justice of God, purchasing reconciliation, everlasting inheritance for all those whom the

Father gave him. We get into the

New Testament, of course, we see in John repeatedly Jesus reminding us that no one can come to him but by the

Father, and that all of those that the Father gives to him, he will raise up on the last day.

And so if the punishment, if the substitution was general for all people, then all people would have to be saved.

Otherwise, Christ died in vain. Otherwise, there was no purpose.

Christ doesn't make men salvable in an undefined sense.

Let me elaborate a little bit on that. One of the teachings that we see often in churches is this idea of something called prevenient grace.

There's other terms for it, but that's the most common. The idea being that there is something in each person, this one little speck or one little area that they have of grace that they have been given through the work of Christ that makes them able to accept or reject.

Brothers and sisters, that is not taught anywhere in Scripture. What is repeatedly taught is that those whom the

Father gives will come, that no one comes to Christ but by the

Father. But apart from this, there is no way to see the kingdom of heaven.

But what about John 3 .16? I agree 1 ,000 % with John 3 .16.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son so that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Not a single day have we ever heard or preached anything different than anyone who has faith in Christ is not saved.

Anyone who has faith in Christ is saved to the uttermost. But not anyone who has not been called by the

Father will have faith. The sheep are the only ones for whom

Christ died. That makes the cross not a possibility, it makes it an accomplishment.

This is important. We've already talked about the nature of people.

Our nature is a sinful nature.

Left to our own devices, we rebel every day for all of eternity.

We will never bow to the

King of Kings and Lord of Lords until we are made to bow because we're those under the earth.

We will not do it on our own. And so if the cross merely made it a possibility and none of us will come, then that makes

Christ a failure and God not sovereign.

And you and I, you and I may as well just pack up and go home. But that's not what it teaches.

Peter, in 1 Peter 2 verse 24, he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.

He bore our sins, he bore them on the tree, he bore them in crucifixion, he carried the guilt of his people.

If he was pierced for our transgressions, sin is not small. Listen, we cannot measure seriousness of sin by how acceptable it is in society today.

That should be very obvious to all of us. It's not go home, open a web browser, read a news, you don't even have to get a reputable news thing.

Get a paper if any exist anymore. Sin is measured by the cross.

If Christ had to be pierced and crushed, then sin is dreadful beyond our ability to describe.

But hear me, if Christ was crushed for our iniquities, then all those who by faith believe in what the

Word of God teaches us about Christ, our salvation is sure.

And we have people who say, how can you know? How I can know is because the judgment has already fallen. My sin has been paid for.

What about the sin I'll commit today and tomorrow and the next day and the day after? It's already been paid for.

That doesn't excuse me from the responsibility of living an obedient life. That doesn't excuse me from the responsibility of repenting from my sin.

That doesn't excuse me from the responsibility that I have to live according to this Word.

But what it does is assures me that even when I fall flat on my face, frequently when

I fall flat on my face, I still stand forgiven because the penalty has been bore.

This is why Paul can write in Romans 8 verse 1, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.

Condemnation doesn't remain because condemnation was exalted at the cross. Then we get to verse 5 or in the continuing in verse 5, the chastening for our peace fell upon him.

By his wounds we are healed. This is the result of the judgment.

Judgment was in the first two. He was pierced, he was crushed, that was done for our transgressions.

That chastening fell upon him. And because that chastening fell upon him, because he was wounded, because he was crushed, because he was pierced, because he was punished, we receive peace.

We receive healing. This peace is not a subjective peace.

This is not a calm of the heart. This is not a how you feel in the moment. This is an important thing, a distinction that you need to understand, that we all as believers should understand.

This peace that Scripture talks about over and over and over, this is not a peace based on how we feel today or tomorrow or next week or what's going on in our life around us.

This is a peace with God. This is objective reconciliation of the people of God with God.

The truth lies not with us, the truth lies with God. You see, left to ourselves again, this would not be this way.

We would fall apart. How many of you have had a bad day this past week? No? How about the past month?

We have bad days, right? Maybe it's not the entire day, maybe it's five minutes. Maybe it all boils and simmers and then all of a sudden you get to the end of the day and it's been one thing after another, after another, after another, after another, and boom, you explode.

Nobody's ever experienced that. Okay, I'm gonna trade places with you, because we all do.

We need to realize that's not the peace that Scripture is talking about. The peace that Scripture is talking about is peace with God.

It is peace in the deepest and most necessary sense. It is the end of hostility between a perfect, holy, righteous

God and a sinful, fallen person.

What that means is that there is no neutrality. There is no neutrality.

We aren't born neutral. That's the teaching of the day, that we're born neutral. They don't word it that way.

We word it that way because we make it more palatable for ourselves, right? We want to believe that people are born neutral so that if we occur loss, then we can be very easy to say, well, they were innocent.

But you see, that creates a problem. The problem that it creates is that then we have a viewpoint of when does the innocence end?

When does it stop? And if that's the case, then what do we do with what

Scripture teaches us about Jacob and Esau? How do we reconcile that with our understanding?

No, it means that there's no neutrality. We are by nature children of wrath, that apart from Christ, we are enemies of God.

We literally stand at enmity with Him. Colossians says we were alienated.

We were hostile in our mind. Isaiah says the chastening of the people of God, the chastening for our peace fell upon Him.

Punishment was secured. Peace was placed on Christ.

MacArthur comments on the work of Christ, emphasizing that this chapter explains the death and resurrection of Christ with saving clarity.

Paul says it in Romans 5 verse 1, therefore having been justified by faith we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ. Notice the order. Justification leads to peace.

Where does the justification come from? The work of Christ. How are we justified? By faith alone in Christ alone.

And then once that guilt, once that justification is dealt with, peace is established.

Once righteousness is counted to us because of Christ, that hostility is removed.

Spurgeon says that this verse is where the sorrow reached its climax, that a weary soul finds sweetest rest.

The Savior bruised is the healing of bruised hearts.

Notice what it says. The place where judgment fell is a place where peace is found.

By His wounds we are healed. Now I will tell you that this is one of those lines in Scripture that is grossly misinterpreted in many in the church today.

It's grossly misinterpreted because it is used to proclaim this physical healing now belongs because we believe.

And if you are a believer and you haven't experienced feeling perfect healing, physical healing, then obviously that means you don't have enough faith.

You don't believe enough. You aren't doing enough. You aren't working hard enough. You haven't sought it.

This is not about physical healing. Look at the immediate context. Our griefs, our sorrows, our transgressions, our iniquities, all of these things are the things that have led to this brokenness.

This healing that is in view is spiritual in nature. True healing.

It's the healing of our souls. It is the forgiveness, the cleansing, the resurrection, the reconciliation.

On this line Calvin says that in Christ alone is life and salvation.

That He alone has the path, has pacified the Father. He alone reconciled us to God.

The wounds of Christ are not just the wounds of a martyr. It's not just a defeated person who is slain because of his beliefs.

It is the wounds by which sinners are restored. This is why we don't preach the gospel is just a moral, physical, get your life better thing.

The gospel is about so much more. The gospel is not about your best life now.

The gospel is about your best life for all eternity in the presence of Almighty God because you have been reconciled through the work of Christ on the cross and by faith that has been applied to you.

And when we begin to understand that, when we begin to get beyond this physical and day -to -day making me better thing, we get to a point where it is such comfort because we get to the point where we recognize that it doesn't rely on our strength, on our feelings, on our day -to -day.

That whatever happens today is momentary. Paul referred to that as a momentary affliction.

How can it outweigh the eternal surpassing glory of Almighty God?

At the same time that doesn't minimize this experiential side of peace. We can't walk away and separate this truth and say, oh well we never experienced anything.

We still feel peace, an internal peace. Again it's not about how you feel in a day -to -day thing.

It's a it's a peace of mind, a peace of heart knowing that you have placed your hands, you have placed your life in the hands of the

Savior. By faith you are saved. It is sealed. It is settled. It is done. And that peace then becomes a peace that you live out.

And things that crop up and ruin your day, inconveniences that happen don't affect you as deeply.

And then we get to verse six where we are brought ultimately to this interesting climax.

But a climax that begins in a place that none of us may expect the climax to begin.

And that is the very bottom of the bottom. Isaiah begins with the fact that all of us, like sheep, have gone astray.

Each of us has turned to his own way. If you've never had any dealings with sheep, let me just tell you the imagery around sheep is fitting.

They wonder, they drift, they leave the state, they have no concept of anything except for there's more grass over there.

They'll eat themselves right off of a cliff. This is the same as us in our fallen state.

We have all turned away. We have all not just broke the rules but live in defiance of God.

But this is where we get to the beautiful peace that even though we have all turned away, even though we have all wandered in our own directions, even though we have all walked our own path, even though we have all purposefully, intentionally rebelled against the

Holy God, he caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him.

There are people who argue the imputation of the sins of the believers on Christ. There are people who think that we still owe penance for our sins.

There are people who think that we still owe a sin debt. There are people who still think that we should struggle daily to make better.

And it's because they have a lack of understanding of this line. He caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him.

Every believer, everywhere, throughout all of history, all of God's people, their guilt is laid upon Christ.

All of God's people, their debt is charged to Christ. All of God's people, their sin is made to meet on Christ's head.

Spurgeon, later in that same sermon I mentioned earlier, points to a marginal rendering of Jehovah hath made to meet on him the iniquity of us all.

But then he brings into this the image of many rays brought into one burning focus upon Christ.

Capturing this reality that what was scattered among all of the sheep is gathered into one shepherd.

You may recall all the way back at Christmas we talked about how scripture brings us through this understanding of the church and the bride of Christ and we spent several weeks elaborating on this and how this is all accomplished through the work of Christ.

This is it. This is that covenantal representation and the real imputation of the sins of his people on the

Savior. We read it a little earlier.

2nd Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21, and he made him who knew no sin to become sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

Our sin given to him, his righteous given to us. And notice again

Yahweh says, and you caused that to happen because you were such a good person.

No, he says Yahweh has caused. God has caused.

This is not symbolism. This is reality.

This is truth. Salvation is the work of God from beginning to end. It's his plan, his work, his substitute.

He ordained it. He accomplishes it. It is not a means of persuading man, persuading

God to be merciful. It is God acting in his love and mercy and grace to condescend to man.

Making a way for reconciliation. Again, this reminds us that Christ's atonement is definite.

It's effectual. It's not done in a undefined way. The sheep, the sheep who confess their wandering, who have faith are those for whom the shepherd died.

Those who believe. And if your assurance is found here, if your salvation is dependent on Christ, then you will have lasting peace because he is fully born it.

You are fully standing with God. You are fully resting in the finished work.

However, if it's not, if you're still striving, if you're still trying to accomplish it on your own, you will never do so.

And you will never know peace. This passage humbles us because it shows us what our sin, our grief, our sorrow, our transgression, our iniquity, our wandering, our self -will deserves.

It deserves that we would be the ones who bear the griefs, carry the sorrows, who are afflicted, who are smitten, who are stricken, who are crushed, who are pierced, and yet it was

Christ. He bore our grief. He carried our sorrow.

He was pierced for our transgressions. And so the question is this.

In an abstract way, each of us would probably proclaim that we believe this doctrine, this teaching.

Certainly all of us sitting here hopefully would believe in the bodily death and resurrection of Christ.

But belief for belief's sake is not enough. It's not enough to mentally affirm that Christ died.

It's not enough to mentally say, I understand the teaching. He paid the penalty for our sin. You see, the real question is, do you recognize your sin deeply enough that you have fled to him, that you have ceased from trusting in yourself and placed all of your faith in the one who is bearing that burden, the one who is satisfied the justice of God?

If you reject the substitute God has provided, you bear your own judgment.

But if you by faith believe in Christ, then you will know the certainty that your sin has been laid upon him, your peace has been secured by him, and in him is true and everlasting healing to be found.

This is the gospel, and Christ is the substitute for sin.

Let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for the truth of your word.

We thank you for the clarity with which you have revealed the work of Christ. We thank you that you have not left us in our own sin, but that you have provided a substitute, one who has borne our grief, one who has suffered our judgment, and secured our peace.

Lord, we confess that we are those who have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, and yet in your mercy, in your love, in your grace, you have caused our iniquity to fall upon Christ.

Help us to live, strengthen us to live in light of that truth. Father, guard us from taking lightly what costs

Christ so much. Fix our eyes upon him.

Stir our hearts with gratitude, with humility, with worship. Father, if there be any here who have not yet trusted in Christ, we ask that you would draw them to yourself.

Lord, we ask all of these things in the name of our precious Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, our substitute and our redeemer.