God With Us 4: With God: Us
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Transcript
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B: Isaiah 53:1-12
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Welcome
Welcome
Welcome. Merry Christmas. Thanks praise band and choir.
Announcements
Announcements
Wayne retirement party tonight at 5:30 in Miller Hall. Presentation to Wayne.
Christmas Eve Service Friday night at 6 pm. Finishing our series on God With Us that night.
I need help with next Sunday’s sermon. I need your testimonies of God’s faithfulness in your life and in the life of Eastern Hills that you have seen this last year. I’ll be doing a one-shot message next Sunday morning called “Looking Back, Looking Forward: A Year of God’s Faithfulness.” QR code for form. Window for form will close on Thursday night. You can email me as well.
LMCO ($30,840) GOAL ACHIEVED! But there’s no reason to quit giving to help fund our missionaries all around the world who are sharing the message of the hope of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Since the start of the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, Southern Baptists have given over $5 BILLION to international mission work through it. Here is a snapshot of what God did through last year’s offering: 422 new missionaries sent into the field; 18,380 new churches planted; 769,494 Gospel presentations, with 144,322 souls being saved, and 86,587 people baptized! The entire IMB goal for this year is $185 million. I’m not saying we cover the whole thing…
Opening
Opening
Now on to our message this morning… Remember that we’re seeing a concept called progressive revelation as we walk through these messianic prophecies in Isaiah, meaning we’re building a picture kind of like a puzzle: we’re adding pieces and as we add pieces, we begin to make out the image. There’s a LOT of messianic prophecy in Isaiah, and we’re only looking at 5 in this series. We’ve seen the announcement of Messiah, Immanuel, “God with us,” in Isaiah 7. Then we expanded our understanding when we considered the arrival of Immanuel from Isaiah 9, where we saw that His arrival on the scene of history would bring light and victory, because His arrival would mean that “With Us (is) God”. Last week, we got to open the door a little wider as we considered His work of reconciliation: the bringing of peace for His people, peace between enemies, and peace for the nations from Isaiah 11, making “Us with God” possible. This morning, we will see in Isaiah 53 the work of Messiah that makes it possible for us to declare that indeed, “with God (is) us.”
Let’s stand in honor of the Word of God as we read our focal passage together this morning.
1 Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 2 He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He didn’t have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at him, no appearance that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from; he was despised, and we didn’t value him. 4 Yet he himself bore our sicknesses, and he carried our pains; but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds. 6 We all went astray like sheep; we all have turned to our own way; and the Lord has punished him for the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb led to the slaughter and like a sheep silent before her shearers, he did not open his mouth. 8 He was taken away because of oppression and judgment, and who considered his fate? For he was cut off from the land of the living; he was struck because of my people’s rebellion. 9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked, but he was with a rich man at his death, because he had done no violence and had not spoken deceitfully. 10 Yet the Lord was pleased to crush him severely. When you make him a guilt offering, he will see his seed, he will prolong his days, and by his hand, the Lord’s pleasure will be accomplished. 11 After his anguish, he will see light and be satisfied. By his knowledge, my righteous servant will justify many, and he will carry their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will give him the many as a portion, and he will receive the mighty as spoil, because he willingly submitted to death, and was counted among the rebels; yet he bore the sin of many and interceded for the rebels.
PRAYER
When I preach, I am convicted that what the Bible says needs to take center stage and get our focus and attention, because in the Scriptures we have God’s revelation of Himself to mankind. And since I want the Bible to be the center of attention, I am also convicted that the central figure, the hero of the Scriptures if you will, is not us. God Almighty is the hero and central figure of Scripture, one eternal God in three eternal Persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, always existing from before time and on through to forever. He is the central and most important figure, and we in our weakness, faithlessness, and frailty are certainly not central and most important. In fact, sometimes we fall so short of being the protagonist of Scripture that we actually come across as the antagonists, standing firmly against God and His will. So I don’t want us to walk away from a message in this church with the idea that we are the central figures of Scripture. Can we agree on this?
With that being said, our focal passage this morning still clearly exhibits the Lord as both the central and heroic figure in the divine narrative, but in it we see an incredible reversal: The central Person of Scripture is taking steps to reveal Himself—God with Us—in such a way and because of His love is taking action so as to deliver those who would be the antagonists from their deserved fate. We see throughout this passage and throughout Scripture that the Messiah, God the Son, did what He did for those who didn’t deserve it, couldn’t deserve it, and wouldn’t deserve it, and in a way which boggles the mind. Isaiah even starts this passage with two questions to this end:
1 Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
Have you ever started a story with “You’re not going to believe this, but...” This first question: “Who has believed what we have heard?” is kind of along the same lines. Isaiah isn’t saying that the person hearing it would not believe it, but that they will be astonished at the reality of what is being said. Similarly, the second question is the identity of those who know: those to whom the arm of the Lord has been revealed.
These two questions both point well to a part of the Christmas narrative in Luke:
15 When the angels had left them and returned to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go straight to Bethlehem and see what has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” 16 They hurried off and found both Mary and Joseph, and the baby who was lying in the manger. 17 After seeing them, they reported the message they were told about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.
The angels revealed the work of God—the arm of the Lord—to the shepherds. After they had seen Him, they basically went around saying, “You’re not going to believe this, but...” And people were astounded by what they said.
But now, who has believed the message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? To US, those who have trusted in Christ. So we have a responsibility, a calling, an imperative to testify to what God has done—to be those ministers of reconciliation as we saw last week, and to share the message of the hope of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as we have opportunity. That message is that Messiah was born for us, that Messiah suffered for us, that Messiah died for us, and that Messiah redeems us from our brokenness, sin, and death. Those are our four points this morning:
1) Messiah was born for us.
1) Messiah was born for us.
I don’t think it would be right to go through the Christmas season this year without reading the narrative of the first Christmas from the Gospel of Luke together, because it is there that we find that this is statement is true. Messiah was born for us, just as the angel said to the shepherds on that silent night over 2000 years ago:
1 In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole empire should be registered. 2 This first registration took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. 3 So everyone went to be registered, each to his own town. 4 Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family line of David, 5 to be registered along with Mary, who was engaged to him and was pregnant. 6 While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 7 Then she gave birth to her firstborn son, and she wrapped him tightly in cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. 8 In the same region, shepherds were staying out in the fields and keeping watch at night over their flock. 9 Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Don’t be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people: 11 Today in the city of David a Savior was born for you, who is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be the sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped tightly in cloth and lying in a manger.” 13 Suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying: 14 Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people he favors!
"Today in the city of David a Savior was born for you...” Isaiah said something along the same lines in what we looked at two weeks ago in chapter 9:
Isaiah 9:6a (CSB)
6 For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us...
Do we grasp what it means that the baby Savior of Luke was born, as Isaiah agreed, “for us?” There would have been no reason for Jesus to come if we—broken, fallen humanity—hadn’t needed Him to. He was born FOR US. He was born as any other man would be born, and grew as any other man would grow. About 700 years before His arrival, Isaiah spoke the words in our focal passage from the Lord:
2 He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He didn’t have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at him, no appearance that we should desire him.
Leave this verse up
Many commentators see in the language here in verse 2 a point of connection to what we looked at last week in Isaiah chapter 11: that the young plant is the shoot from the stump of Jesse (11:1), the root is the root of Jesse (11:10). Just as the shoot and branch of Jesse in chapter 11 come from a place that seems completely lifeless (a stump), so this young plant and root would grow up out of lifeless, dry ground.
Jesus came when the “ground” of the hopes of Israel was “dry”: Israel was not even a kingdom any more, they were leaderless, and they were under Roman occupation. The nation didn’t have much going for it. So there weren’t many who were looking for life to spring up from the stump, from the dry ground. And the life that did grow up was even more unexpected from a human standpoint:
“He didn’t have an impressive form”
While many take this to mean that Jesus was unattractive, I don’t think that Isaiah was saying that twice (we’ll look at the other one in a moment). This Hebrew word for form can refer to something’s “kind or class.” So I take this to say that Jesus didn’t come from the upper crust of Hebrew society. People want to follow the wealthy. Look at Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates. People talk about them and listen to them because they have vast wealth. Even though as God He is the owner of the cattle on a thousand hills, Messiah didn’t come with a bunch of money. We see this in the narrative in Luke 2.
When Joseph and Mary went to present Jesus at the Temple to redeem Him as the firstborn male according to the Law according to Exodus 13 , and for Mary to make her offering for purification according to Leviticus 12, we see that the offering that they make for Mary is the one prescribed in Leviticus for those who had limited means:
22 And when the days of their purification according to the law of Moses were finished, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (just as it is written in the law of the Lord, Every firstborn male will be dedicated to the Lord) 24 and to offer a sacrifice (according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons).
Put Isaiah 53:2 back up.
Also, Isaiah prophesied that as Messiah grew, He would have no… “majesty that we should look at Him.” Jesus came with no royal or political power. People want to follow those with political clout. How much time do we spend talking about politics and the people behind them, and how much of an impact do they have in our lives? Even though He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the descendant of David and the heir to His throne, Jesus was born into the family of an unknown carpenter from a place that was a byword in Israel, Nazareth:
46 “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael asked him. “Come and see,” Philip answered.
Put Isaiah 53:2 back up.
Jesus had “no appearance that we should desire Him.” This word for appearance specifically refers to sight. As Jesus grew up, He wasn’t particularly special to look at. This shouldn’t be taken to mean that He was ugly. He was just… ordinary to the eye. People want to follow those who look beautiful by society’s standards. Consider that in the top 20 most-followed accounts on Twitter, more than half of them are people known to some extent for their looks. Even though He was the bright morning star of Revelation 22, before His ascension, Jesus looked like a regular guy. Like one of us.
But without His miraculously normal birth for us, He couldn’t have suffered for us.
2) Messiah suffered for us.
2) Messiah suffered for us.
Yes, Jesus was fully human, like us. But thankfully, He was also NOT like us. He is the Lord incarnate, who though He had human flesh and thus human frailties, never sinned. We, however, have sinned. We have gone against God’s righteous and holy character in how we have lived, rebels against the King of the Universe, and because of that, each of us has amassed a debt that we can never hope to pay. But because Jesus was without sin Himself, He could suffer in our place, taking the debt for our sins and the wrath that we deserve on Himself:
3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from; he was despised, and we didn’t value him. 4 Yet he himself bore our sicknesses, and he carried our pains; but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds. 6 We all went astray like sheep; we all have turned to our own way; and the Lord has punished him for the iniquity of us all.
The ironic thing is that while Jesus was taking our sins on Himself, people saw Him as “despised, rejected, sick, someone of no value, stricken, afflicted, and struck down by God” just as Isaiah had predicted. We see it in the crucifixion narrative in Matthew:
39 Those who passed by were yelling insults at him, shaking their heads 40 and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!” 41 In the same way the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him and said, 42 “He saved others, but he cannot save himself! He is the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43 He trusts in God; let God rescue him now—if he takes pleasure in him! For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ” 44 In the same way even the criminals who were crucified with him taunted him.
He was taunted, insulted, and ridiculed, even as He suffered horrific pain in our place.
But our focal passage says that “He Himself bore our sicknesses, and he carried our pains.” There’s a great picture in the book of Leviticus from which we now get our concept of a “scapegoat.” The scapegoat is the innocent one who takes the fall for something wrong that someone else has done. On the annual Day of Atonement for the Hebrew people, two goats would be selected: one would be slaughtered as the sacrifice, and the other would be the scapegoat. The blood of the first would be used for the purification rites, but the second had a special task, according to Leviticus 16:
20 “When he has finished making atonement for the most holy place, the tent of meeting, and the altar, he is to present the live male goat. 21 Aaron will lay both his hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the Israelites’ iniquities and rebellious acts—all their sins. He is to put them on the goat’s head and send it away into the wilderness by the man appointed for the task. 22 The goat will carry all their iniquities into a desolate land, and the man will release it there.
Just as the scapegoat would carry the iniquities, the sins of the people, so Jesus carries ours. The word “bore” in verse 4 of our focal verse and “will carry” in Leviticus 16:22 are the same term. On the cross, all of our sinfulness, all of our brokenness, all of our shame, and all of our evil was placed on Christ. He literally bore the sin weight of the world in His suffering.
Peter would speak about this in his first epistle, referencing this very passage:
24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree; so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were like sheep going astray, but you have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
Jesus, the perfectly obedient Son of God, was pierced because of our rebellion. The completely sinless One through Whom the universe came to be was crushed because of our iniquities. The Prince of Peace Himself received the punishment so that we could have peace with God, and in another amazing reversal, the wounding of the One who didn’t deserve the wounds brings healing to the ones who actually deserve them—healing of our brokenness beyond any other cure. We have wandered from God’s will and direction for our lives, like wayward sheep, but instead of our facing the suffering that we deserve, Jesus took the punishment. He suffered for us so that we could be forgiven, but also so that we could learn to be like Him:
21 For you were called to this, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
We are called to live lives of suffering with and for others, giving of ourselves for their blessing just as Jesus did, a living testimony to what He has done. And His suffering for us, taking our sin and shame on Himself, culminated in His dying for us, willingly being separated from God on our behalf.
3) Messiah died for us.
3) Messiah died for us.
Jesus’s death was more than just someone dying for a cause, more than someone becoming a martyr. It was perfection dying to give perfection to the imperfect. It was the truly righteous dying to make the unrighteous righteous. It was the only truly alive one giving up that life to bring the spiritually dead back to life. But what is so incredible is that this death was entered into willingly.
7 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb led to the slaughter and like a sheep silent before her shearers, he did not open his mouth. 8 He was taken away because of oppression and judgment, and who considered his fate? For he was cut off from the land of the living; he was struck because of my people’s rebellion. 9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked, but he was with a rich man at his death, because he had done no violence and had not spoken deceitfully.
I don’t know much about sheep, so I’m going to trust the Scripture. I would suppose that a sheep is led to its slaughter or shearing by the shepherd, who is familiar to the lamb or the sheep. And so the sheep believes that there is nothing to fear. The Scripture tells us that, though Messiah was oppressed and afflicted, He didn’t open His mouth… He was silent like a sheep before her shearers. This was certainly not because of ignorance, as in the case of the sheep.
Alec Motyer, in his commentary on Isaiah, paints a great picture of the difference between the illustration of the ignorant sheep and the willing Savior:
“Animals go as uncomprehending to slaughter as to shearing, but the Servant who knew all things beforehand went to His death with a calm silence that reflected not an uncomprehending but a submitted mind and tongue… Ultimately, only a Person can substitute for people. This is the importance of the stress in verse 7 on the Servant’s voluntariness expressed in the acceptance of humiliation and the deliberately maintained silence.”
— J. Alec Motyer, Isaiah, an Introduction and Commentary
Jesus CHOSE to die for us… to be “cut off from the land of the living.” He willingly went to the cross without objection, without a fight, without attempting to escape. In that same passage in 1 Peter 2, Peter referenced this as well:
22 He did not commit sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth; 23 when he was insulted, he did not insult in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten but entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.
But why did Jesus have to die? Why was it necessary for Him to lay down His life? Jesus needed to die the death of a rebel to save the rebels from the punishment due them for their rebellion. Jesus experienced the reality of our separation from God in our place as He finished the work that He had come to do. Again from Matthew’s Gospel:
46 About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Elí, Elí, lemá sabachtháni?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
The sins of the world credited to His account, the Father looks away from the Son, and Jesus is alone on the cross. He died not as a king, but as a criminal. He would have been “assigned a grave with the wicked” as Isaiah wrote, likely buried in an unmarked communal grave, as He was crucified as a criminal. But instead, in a beautiful fulfillment of this prophecy, He received a rich man’s burial because of Joseph of Arimathea, who took the body of Jesus and placed it in his own new tomb, according to every single Gospel witness.
Just as He suffered the taking of our sin on Himself, Jesus died the death the we deserve because of our sin. Without His sacrificial death, we would never be redeemed.
4) Messiah redeems us.
4) Messiah redeems us.
Everything ties back into this point. Jesus was born for us, He suffered for us, and He died for us, so that we could be redeemed. Not like when we redeem a coupon or redeem a gift certificate. Messiah redeeming us is a slavery term. We were enslaved to sin, enslaved to guilt, enslaved to death. But by His dying, Jesus purchased us out of slavery to those things, giving us freedom to live a life that brings glory to God, just as He did.
10 Yet the Lord was pleased to crush him severely. When you make him a guilt offering, he will see his seed, he will prolong his days, and by his hand, the Lord’s pleasure will be accomplished. 11 After his anguish, he will see light and be satisfied. By his knowledge, my righteous servant will justify many, and he will carry their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will give him the many as a portion, and he will receive the mighty as spoil, because he willingly submitted to death, and was counted among the rebels; yet he bore the sin of many and interceded for the rebels.
The Lord was “pleased” to crush Him severely, to make Him a guilt offering. Why would the Lord be pleased to crush the Servant, His Son? Because it accomplished His will for the redemption of mankind, which reveals His glory, because we could never ever earn that forgiveness and redemption ourselves. This theological concept is called penal substitutionary atonement. Jesus took the punishment that we deserve (the crushing), in our place (as a guilt offering for us), so that we could be made right with God again. We just finished looking at Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John 17 at Prayer Meeting a couple of weeks ago. In the first part of the prayer, we see that Jesus (as Motyer mentioned in the quote I read) knew exactly what was coming, and its purpose. He knew that the hour had come for His trial, which would lead to His crucifixion, and Jesus prayed:
1 Jesus spoke these things, looked up to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you gave him authority over all people, so that he may give eternal life to everyone you have given him. 3 This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent—Jesus Christ. 4 I have glorified you on the earth by completing the work you gave me to do. 5 Now, Father, glorify me in your presence with that glory I had with you before the world existed.
And what was His purpose, to glorify the Father by making the way for eternal life: that people might truly know God and His Son by faith. Jesus purchased our salvation through His suffering in our place on the cross and His dying in our stead. 1 Peter again:
18 For you know that you were redeemed from your empty way of life inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb.
But Isaiah gives us one more piece to the puzzle: the fact that Jesus would overcome death, prolonging His days, accomplish the pleasure of God by His hand, and see the light of life again. He will receive the many as His portion, His inheritance. Jesus did defeat death, and because of this, He offers eternal life to those who belong to Him, those He has redeemed.
Closing
Closing
Being in a right relationship with God is only possible because of Jesus’ work to purchase humanity back from death. And we are only brought into that right relationship with God through faith in what Jesus has done, as we stop going our own way, writing our own definitions of what righteousness means, deciding for ourselves how we should live and how we are saved. None of us get this right, because we’ve all sinned. But because of God’s great love for us, He offers us salvation through Christ freely as a gift.
22 The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, since there is no distinction. 23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24 they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
This Christmas gift costs both nothing and everything at the same time. It costs us nothing because it is freely offered. We only trust the work of Christ as our Savior, and the gift is ours. But it also costs everything, because we don’t really trust in Christ if He is not also our Lord. So if Christ is our Savior, we turn to Him for how we should live because He is also our Lord. We turn from our sinful ways and submit to the working of His Holy Spirit in our lives to make us into all He wants for us to be.
The connection between the manger and the cross is shown in this promise of the suffering Servant in Isaiah 53, With God: Us. Because of what God has done in His incredible love for us, we can confidently state that if we are in Christ through faith, then we have passed from lost to found, from death to life, from rebel to friend of God.
Have you trusted Christ with your forever? This Christmas, God is offering you His greatest gift. Will you surrender to Him, give up your life for His purposes and His glory? You can surrender to Him right now where you are. The Bible says that if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Confessing is to agree with God that you’ve gone the wrong way and that you need Him, and that since He is Lord, you surrender yourself into His hands. Believing is that you trust that Jesus was born, lived, suffered, died, and rose again so that you could have eternal life with Him, because He truly is the Son of God. Confess and believe.
If this morning you have taken this step of giving up, surrendering to God through faith in what Jesus has done, we as the church body of Eastern Hills want to celebrate that with you! Joe, Kerry, and Trevor will be here. You can email me at bill@ehbc.org if you’re online.
Church membership.
Giving.
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Kids on Mission Apple fund raiser for LMCO
Pastor’s Bible study starting 1/9 @ 5:30 pm
Men’s Breakfast on 1/15 @ 8 am
Bible reading plan: 1 Sam 21
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the mighty working of his strength.