In Human Form - Born To Die

Week 1: Born to Die

1) Jesus was pierced for our sins (v.4-6)

2) Jesus was our Blameless Substitute (v.7-9)

3) Jesus was Crushed, but Victorious (v.10-12)

Bottom Line: Trust in the Healing death of Jesus

Scripture Passage(s): Isaiah 53:4-12

Focus of the Message:

We go over the famous Isaiah 53 passage, where we see the prophecy of Jesus were simply put, He is to be born to die for our sins! We see Isaiah lay out the applications of Jesus’s death and how his death is victory for the believer and himself.

INTRODUCTION

Hey friends, welcome to another student ministry night. I am excited to have another night to bring the word to you all!

And now that we are past Thanksgiving, I am finally starting to get excited about Christmas. I know you guys are excited too, can I hear about some of the things that you are exited about? [Wait for responses, assuming most do not say Jesus] Those are all great things to be excited about, and our culture today could probably list off a billion other things to get excited about. But, I think the majority of us know that isn’t really what Christmas is about. Can I hear what Christmas is really about? [wait for students]

Thats right! Christmas is about celebrating the birth of our lord, it's all about Jesus! Its not about us, the presents we get, or even where we go and with who. All of which can really make a fun holiday season, but the birth of our lord coming down from heaven in human form is so much greater! I mean if we just think about it for a second, the creator of the universe, deciding to put humble himself and gave up his heavenly position as Lord over everything and To become like us!

TENSION

And I don’t want you to think that if you get distracted from this that you are a bad Christian. I guarantee that we all have occasionally got caught up in the distractions that come with the season. Its easy to going year after year, enjoying the benefits that Christmas brings, but missing the point of it all. We go through the motions, and another year goes by, getting more ‘things’ while missing the main point of Christmas. The point that Jesus came down to join us, amidst our filth, our brokenness, our sin, and instead of furthering himself away, he came closer.

TRUTH

But when we keep the real meaning of Christmas in our minds and hearts its hard to not be changed by it! The truth of Jesus’ life, grace, and love is impactful. And even more so when we taking into account what his birth really means.

Understanding his births is to realize that the point of Jesus' birth was for him to cover our sins, or in another phrase, he came to die. When we view Christmas through that perspective we see that it was the beginning of a hope that we could be saved from our sin. By the willing self-sacrifice of the One who lived the perfectly holy life that we could never do. So, as we go through this short, but ever so important series on Christmas, we first need to see the perspective of all this through the death of Jesus! And through that lens, we can see that we are called to

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Trust in the Healing death of Jesus

That sounds weird, but the foundational truth to our faith is that Jesus came to die, and through his death we have salvation from sin, and are able to live with God today, and bring hope to this life. That is what healing is about!

Its strange to think about death bringing healing out of context. But it is a core truth of our faith that Jesus died the death that was meant for us in order to save us from our sin and give us eternal life. Which gives us a hope when we face the hard things in this life. That is what healing is about!

We are going to go through one of the most famous passages in the OT, Isiah 53. Isaiah is a book in the Bible that is lumped into other books labeled as ‘the Prophets’, and during this time of history, God is using prophets to speak to Israel and most of the time warn them of there ways, and urge them back to come back to God in worship, because as a nation/group of people, Israel was slowly living and worshipping sin and sinful idols.

Isaiah speaks about a lot of things but the main points fall into judgment, hope, and redemption. And all these are linked to the coming messiah that Isaiah talks about throughout the book, Jesus! /But remember that this was written 700ish years before Jesus was born, so as we read these things, I want you to think about how incredible to have written this so long before His arrival!

So with all this said, we come to a prophetic chapter speaking on Jesus and what he is going to fully experience during his crucifixion and what that all implies as well. So the first thing we see in the text regarding his death is

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Point 1) Jesus was pierced for our sins

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We pick up in this chapter of the prophetic ‘vision’ of the future of the Messiah (savior) who would die for us! These verses go into visceral detail about the pains and what Jesus would experience for us.

It speaks on how He carried/lifted our sickness and carried our pain. Not just physical pain, but the pain that ALL sin has had on us, think about that. All of the time, all the sin of humanity is being placed on him during that moment. And any sin at all, even sins we don’t think are as bad as others, equals death. As we know from what Paul writes in  Romans 6:23

For the wages of sin is death

Isaiah speaks of how the crowds knew Jesus was afflicted by God himself, and goes on to make clear that He was pierced for OUR transgressions, He was perfectly sinless (key point), but it was on OUR behalf. Through all that, he was able to heal and clean us of the sin that entered into the world through us. Paid through His perfect life and the willing sacrificial death of Jesus once and for all.  And why? WE have gone astray like sheep, and the judgment of OUR sin was laid on HIM.

[ When I was young, I played hockey and was a goalie. If you know anything about hockey, like other sports, there are rules, and if you break those rules, you end up getting a penalty. In hockey, there are different versions of penalties depending on how severe the breaking of the rules was. Most of them had you spending time in the penalty box, and your team would be down a man on the ice for 2 minutes (normal play is 5v5, not counting the goalies). Sometimes it could be 4 minutes, sometimes 5, and if it was a really bad one, they would throw you out of the game. As a goalie, though, there were special rules. See, goalies typically didn't get penalties cause they were not involved with the other team as much as the players. But every once in a while, a goalie could still get a penalty. But the problem is, he couldn't go sit in the penalty box; someone would have to go sit for him, take his place, and the goalie was left to play the game. He got to play the game like normal, and have someone else pay the consequences of sitting out ( and his team suffering shorthanded, of course).  ] change example

You can think of it like this. Imagine a courtroom and a criminal is on trial for breaking the law. And the fines are becoming so large that they could never will never be able to pay them off about to go to jail for the rest of your life. As you brace yourself for the judge to slam the gavel down. You hear a voice shout out, and a person stands up and says they are willing to take your place and carry out your sentence.

APPLY

There are consequences for our sins. We see them play out in our day-to-day, but the ultimate consequence is that sin separates us from God, and with that comes death. But Jesus, in grace and mercy, takes the consequence of the sin away, taking the death we rightly deserved! 

We'll talk more about what we really mean by death in the next points, but for this first point, know that the God of the universe decided to die for you and me! That kind of mercy and grace should encourage us to be bold and walk in God’s ways with him, not ourselves or anything else. Why? Because Jesus himself says

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Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13)

God calls the disciples his friends, and that is the same logic for us today. So, if you feel God is distant or has been told God doesn't want you, that is a lie straight from the Satan. If God didn’t want you, Jesus would never have gone to he cross willingly for you or call you a friend if that were true. 

Again, Jesus was pierced for our sins, but for his sacrifice to be valid, or able to even do something about our sin problem, he had to be perfect in his conduct, or in other words, ‘blameless’!

Which is our next point

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Point 2) Jesus was our blameless substitute

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Isaiah compares what Jesus experienced to that of a lamb that is led to the slaughter and a sheep silent before its shearers. What does this mean? This means that His death was not because he was weak, but he allowed and wanted it to happen. 

He didn’t fight it. He stood up in humble service for the sick and wicked, without question or objections. And received what came happened to him, without any protest whatsoever.

Isaiah prophecies of the great injustice of Jesus’ death as he would be oppressed, afflicted, cut off, and stricken. The servant was killed, not as a hero but a criminal’s execution. The death of Jesus was a corruption of human justice, but it was also the clear-headed will of Lord. Willingly laying down his life in our place. 

In the gospel of Matthew, we are told about a rich man who gave his tomb up for Jesus (Matthew 27:57). And as we read Isaiah’s writing’s revealed this too, even though the worst of violence and slander was done to him, he still was blameless because he chose to not respond in sin but submitted himself to the plan of the Father.

The purpose OT sacrifice system was that a clean animal was used to to replace us. Essentially, what's being said is, “Lord, our sin kills us, but it is by your mercy we are still alive, so we sacrifice this innocent animal in our place, to appease your wrath, and for the moment appease the justice and consequences that our sin has brought.”

APPLY

How would you live your life differently if your friend saved you from a life-threatening circumstance, but died in the process? That's how it is with Jesus here, yet very often we don’t view it like that at all. We just go year in year out, going through the motions, and maybe even get emotional, but we don't change. We forget what it cost Jesus, what it cost God to save us. Our choice to sin cost us everything with him, and yet he chose to come down, not as a King or conqueror, but as a servant and out of His love chose to die for you and me. And, its this that should make us consider our response. Are we going to just continue going through the motions, or are you, out of gratitude and thankfulness and try to live this out.

But if you're still missing the picture, still not fully seeing it, well, we have one more point that will tie the knot

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Point 3) Jesus was Crushed, but Victorious (v.10-12)

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If the story of Jesus had ended at the grave, His heroism would be admirable but futile. He would have been a great man who taught us a lot about how to live righteously, but He wouldn’t have been able to take away the sins of the world. But, thanks be to God, the grave was not the end of the story! Isaiah does not use the word resurrection, but these verses show the servant, Jesus, alive after his death.   

He writes that it was the will of the Lord to crush him and to put him to grief. Addressing the question of how this could happen to this undeserving servant? Was this an accident? Was he in the wrong place at the wrong time? NO! God wanted it to happen. It wasn’t an accident. It was the will of the Lord to crush him… to crush Jesus. 

But why? To make an offering for guilt. Ours, the world’s. It could be called the ‘satisfaction-offering’. It is used here not so much to affirm that the Servant bore and discharged the guiltiness of our sin, but that what he did is exactly what needed to be done. Jesus was crushed for us.

We get the illustration of a victory parade, with the servant marching as a conqueror, bringing home the spoils of conquest. The verse is a summary of what has come before, describing the conclusion first and the reasoning second. It was a voluntary self-sacrifice of the servant whereby he became identified with us, the transgressors, dying our death so that we could live. 

Have you ever heard of a bait-and–switch? It's a tactic that has been used throughout wars and sports. Where one person or group of people is the ‘bait’, and get the opposing side to focus on them and put all their forces into stopping the ‘bait’, which in turn lets your the rest of the team take advantage of their distraction and gain the upper hand. The thing is, though, the bait often takes blows from the enemy, and in all measures, often labeled as a tactical sacrifice.

APPLY

The bait here was that Jesus, and when He died it looked like the enemy had won, but the switch is that this was Jesus’s plan all along! He willingly went to the cross, and through the death and cross, Jesus has victory! Because he didn't stay dead, He is alive, rising after 3 days! 

This is the good news for us today: our God lives and paid the price we were meant to pay, so we live only because of him, and that deserves all our praise.

I don't just mean just singing at worship type of praise, but praise that pours out in every part of our lives, in everything we do, everything we are, we are adopted sons and daughters of God, where our character reflects Jesus, where evil will flee, or succumb and be transformed in his healing light!

DESCENT

So with all this information, what are you going to do about it this season? Is it going to be another season where we get a nice break from school, and to sleep in, or are you going to change, change to be more like Christ? 

This Christmas, we can actually be changed for the better, find our identity in Christ alone, and live the life we are meant to live.

LANDING

My prayer is that we can see that Christmas is more than what commercials say, or just a break. But Christmas is about Hope, and we can see the full story of hope and look to the bringer of hope in this chaotic, dark world. But it starts with you trusting in the saving grace of Jesus, repenting of your own sin, and living the transformed life by his healing death on the cross! 

Lets pray