Isaiah 53:7-10 - The Lamb of God

SERMON TEXT:

Let’s open our Bibles together this morning to Isaiah 53:7-10.

I invite you to follow along as I read:

[READ ISAIAH 53:7-10]

I plan to spend this week and next at these verses, focusing on 7-9 this week, and looking at verse 10 next week.

You might be correctly guessing that I didn’t decide to split it this way until after the bulletin was completed;

This week’s message I will entitle “The Lamb of God.”

Perhaps the title makes you think of the first chapter of the gospel of John, in the 29th verse.

It’s there that John the Baptist makes His declaration:

John 1:29 “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

Perhaps you have wondered how John would understand the mission of Jesus so completely.

If you have references in your copy of the Bible - those little footnotes that point to other passages -

I am sure if you look at the reference for John 1:29, you will find that those references point back first to our passage today - Isaiah 53:7.

In fact, people, we, are referred to as sheep often in Scripture:

In the Psalms, we see it frequently:

Psalm 23:1 “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

Psalm 78:52 “Then he led out his people like sheep and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.”

Psalm 95:7 “For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

Psalm 100:3 “Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.”

Ezekiel 34:31 “And you are my sheep, human sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, declares the Lord God.””

Isaiah 40:11 “He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.”

And then in this very chapter: Isaiah 53:6 “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way”

But here in verse 7, we the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the Messiah of God, described as a Lamb.

Isaiah 53:7 “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.”

This morning, I would like to look and see why this is not just some simile that Isaiah crafted;

It’s a beautiful and rich description of the person and work of Jesus Christ that He accomplished when He became flesh.

This morning, then, let’s look at this in three ways.

The Promised Lamb.

The Prepared Lamb.

And the Pre-eminent Lamb.

The Promised Lamb

In considering this, there are many places we could start:

The Passover lamb, which is definitely a shadow of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We also see in the Law the Guilt offering, offered not just for routine sins, but for iniquity and perversion when the person repents of their wickedness.

Isaiah uses this guilt offering in verse 10 of today’s passage to talk about what the Messiah accomplished.

But our time would fail if we went through all these in detail.

I mention them for your continued study.

But for the promise, I know of no better place to begin to look at the promise of the Lamb of God than in the book of Genesis.

In the 22nd chapter, we find in verse 2 possibly the most troubling command God gave to anyone in the Scriptures:

Genesis 22:2 “[God] said [to Abraham], “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.””

Nothing about that command was accidental or coincidental.

The location - Mt. Moriah. This is the very mountain we know today as Jerusalem.

Not Mt. Sinai, not Mt. Carmel, not Mt. Ebal - Mount Moriah.

It is the mountain where, when God sent a plague on the kingdom of David after his sinful census, the plague ended at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, who sold the site and supplies to David for a sacrifice.

It is the mountain where, under Solomon, son of David, the temple of God was built.

The mountain on which our Lord would be tried, condemned, and crucified.

Not only the location, but the intended object of sacrifice - the only son.

The son of promise, the one announced by angels to his parents.

The son who was born in an impossible way.

And on the way up that mountain, alone, just the father and the son, the son asks a most natural question:

Genesis 22:7 “And Isaac said to his father Abraham,...“Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?””

An innocent question that cuts right to our heart: What sacrifice can we possibly make?

That’s our true state: What sacrifice could we possibly make that isn’t hopelessly polluted by our sin and guilt?

Though we spill every drop of our own blood, it could never atone for our guilt, never reduce our debt we incurred in our rebellion by a single penny.

Every person, believer and unbeliever alike, has an unfathomable debt to God for our rebellion.

What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

And then from the mouth of Abraham, the friend of God, we hear the promise:

Genesis 22:8 “Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”

Very often, most often, the prophets of the Old Testament spoke what they didn’t fully understand.

What Abraham knew was that God had given him Isaac;

That God had promised that Isaac would be the one to carry God’s promise to Abraham’s seed.

The writer of Hebrews tells us Abraham expected God to resurrect Isaac, his only son.

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son; it was he to whom it was said, “IN ISAAC YOUR DESCENDANTS SHALL BE CALLED.” He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type. 1 - Hebrews 11:17–19 (NASB95)

God will provide a lamb for Himself.

There was a ram that day.

There is the Lamb of God who is eternal.

The Lamb of God who was slain to pay for Abraham’s sin, for Isaac’s sin, for my sin, and for the sin of everyone who believes.

John 3:16 ““For God so loved the world, that he gave [offered] his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

1 Peter 1:18–19 “you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.”

Perhaps you are looking at the type of sacrifice, the burnt offering, that Abraham was offering.

How does that come in? Jesus was crucified, not burned.

But, earnest believer, He WAS.

Not by the frail fires of this world, but by the scorching, withering furnace of God’s wrath, an eternity’s worth of wrath poured out on this single sacrifice.

How could even our most powerful fires today compare with the unfiltered and undiminished wrath of God?

Our God is a consuming fire.

He didn’t sweat drops of blood in the garden for concern over nails and wood and scourging and thorns and spear.

Many men have endured those things with courage.

But none other could face one drop of the wrath of God, and He took the full measure for His people.

He was burned, consumed to the very core, and our sins, which were placed upon Him, were likewise consumed and paid for completely.

2 Corinthians 5:21 “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

But we need to move on.

The Prepared Lamb

Looking again at verse 7 in Isaiah 53, we see “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.”

That’s the very part of this chapter the Ethiopian Eunuch was reading when the Holy Spirit brought Philip the evangelist alongside his chariot.

Acts 8:32–35 “Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus.”

We need to be careful, though, if we think Jesus was being led along, carried by the currents of the Father’s will and the hatred of His enemies.

This is not like Jeremiah in Jeremiah 11:19 “But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter. I did not know it was against me they devised schemes, saying, “Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name be remembered no more.””

I didn’t know?

Of course Jesus knew.

He spent time after time telling his disciples - “I am going to Jerusalem, and I am going to die there.”

There was nothing ignorant about His embrace of God’s plan.

He knew every thorn, every lash, and every hammer strike that would happen.

That’s the point of Philip’s witness to the eunuch:

“beginning with THIS Scripture, he told him the good news about Jesus.”

And knowing everything that would happen, Jesus still proceeded without complaint.

No griping, no moaning, no defense.

No deceit, no reviling.

We have trouble with that, don’t we.

Often, I might not mind suffering so much if I’m able to complain to other people about it enough.

If I can get their sympathy.

Philippians 2:5 “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,” ..., Philippians 2:8 “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

That word “afflicted” in verse 7 in our passage today - the word means both humiliation by someone and it means humbling yourself.

Even His words from the cross that sounded like complaint “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” and “I thirst”

Even those words are words prepared a thousand years before by the Holy Spirit in the heart of David:

From Psalm 22:1 “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?”

Psalm 22:15 “my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.”

This psalm is a psalm of the crucifixion:

The taunts of the crowd: Psalm 22:8 ““He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!””

Concern for His mother: Psalm 22:9 “Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.”

Psalm 22:16 “a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet—”

Psalm 22:17 “I can count all my bones— they stare and gloat over me;” - none of His bones were broken.

Psalm 22:18 “they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.”

His cries from the cross were not a complaint nor were they regret:

They were a flashlight, a searchlight, pointing us to this psalm so that we could know that nothing about what occurred was unknown or unpredicted.

And it is a psalm ultimately of the hope the Lord will provide for His people, entirely realized in the Lamb of God.

Psalm 22:30–31 “Posterity shall serve him; it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation; they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it.”

Without the cross, without the shedding of the blood of God’s Lamb, nothing He taught would mean anything.

He didn’t come to be a philosopher; He came to be the Savior of His people.

He didn’t come to win your heart or your loyalty - He came to make you alive in Himself.

And His moral teaching, without the propitiation He made through His blood, all that great moral teaching will only CONDEMN you if you have not been forgiven through His blood.

I don’t care at all that you think highly of Jesus.

He doesn’t ask you to think well of Him.

He commands you to come follow Him.

He commands you to take up your cross and come after Him.

He commands you to come and die to yourself and to your old life, to your sin and temptation and lust and rebellion.

Repent of them all, even the good things.

Leave them all behind and come to Him, trust in Him alone to save you.

How could He do all these things.

His abiding faith in God, and His love for His glory.

This is not a poor bleating lamb, cruelly brought to a fate He didn’t understand;

It is THE Lamb of God taking the wrath He didn’t deserve to give you forgiveness YOU don’t deserve.

And that is why, in the final book of Scripture, we see that He alone is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll of God’s good and righteous work of redemption.

Because Jesus Christ is the Preeminent Lamb.

The Preeminent Lamb

READ - Revelation 5:3–13 “And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.” And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you…”

36 times in the book of Revelation alone, our Lord Jesus Christ is called “the Lamb”.

The Lamb rules.

The Lamb if worthy.

The Lamb reigns.

The Lam conquers.

Men cower from the wrath of the Lamb.

The saints and elders of heaven bow before the Lamb.

And the Lamb marries His bride, the church - what God has joined together, no man can break apart.

Isaiah touches on it at the end of verse 10 and following:

Isaiah 53:10–12 “...when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.”