Made Whole

Introduction

As we slowly inch out of this pandemic, all of us are faced with the challenge of having to rebuild our lives in one form or another. Whether it be physically, spiritually, emotionally, and even relationally most of us took a big hit for the worse in the past couple of years. I remember at the beginning of the lockdowns, people were posting all the great new foods that they were learning how to cook. People were baking bread, making their own pasta, creating new desserts, and then we all started to gain weight and some of us just let ourselves go. I don’t know about you but I didn’t really care what kind of shape I was in because I could tell myself that round is a shape. And I certainly don’t want to be that guy but we would all probably feel better if we took better care of our bodies. I know that I need to get back into the gym and that one of the reasons why I feel less than whole is I’m not doing well physically. In the same way, some of us have let ourselves go spiritually. We haven’t prayed in a while or served anyone or had meaningful times in the Scriptures. Emotionally some of us have allowed every worry, every fear, and all of our anger and frustrations to have full sway over over hearts and it’s been an up and down roller coaster. But perhaps the greatest damage has been relationally. Human beings need to live in a full community to flourish. We all need a of variety of relationships from the closeness of family and friends to the more casual interactions of co-workers, neighbors, and even those people who cut your hair. It’s been so nice to see my old barber regularly and to talk about how our kids are doing in high school. Turns out my daughter and his son are in the same school. And whether you recognize it or not, we all need a spectrum of relationships in order to be whole relationally but the pandemic has made the restriction of relationships the new norm. To be honest, it’s been hard for me to regain my social muscles and I find myself extremely tired after being around people but I know that this cannot be a part of the new normal. Human beings were never meant to live in isolation otherwise solitary confinement would not be considered one of the worst ways to torture a prisoner. Many of the aberrant behaviors that we are seeing in our society is directly caused by the extreme isolations that people are struggling with. And whether it’s one, two, or all of these areas, there is not a person that has not been impacted negatively by the past two years and we all need to be a made a little more whole. If you are new to our church this morning, we are going to start a series of messages after our Baptism Sunday and we’ll look more deeply into some of the topics that I’ll introduce today. With that in mind, would you turn with me to our passage for today.

Isaiah 53:3–10 ESV

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 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. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; 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.

Body

The passage that we just read is one of the clearest prophecies regarding the death and the resurrection of Christ in the Old Testament. If you are not familiar with the chronological order of the bible, the book of Isaiah was written around 700 BC and this is what sets Christianity apart from all the other religions that are out there and why it can make an exclusive claim to truth. The sheer number, the clarity, and the quality of prophesies that are ultimately fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ are facts that you cannot simply ignore. In term of number, scholars point to about 450 prophesies about Jesus in the Old Testament, of which at least 300 are fulfilled in his earthly ministry. The clarity of these fulfilled prophesies are beyond dispute. When we read that Jesus’ grave was with the wicked and that he was with a rich man in his death both of those are clearly seen in the New Testament accounts again written hundreds of years after the book of Isaiah.

Matthew 27:38 ESV

Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left.

Matthew 27:57–58 ESV

When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him.

But it isn’t just these coincidental prophecies that reveal the full significance of Christ’s life. I believe what we read in this passage is one of the most important prophecies regarding Christ in the Old Testament, if not the most important because it reveals that this long awaited Messiah would not only be put to death but afterwards He would live again. What you read in verse 10 is simply astounding if you just sit and consider what Isaiah the prophet saw in his vision. After God has crushed this man of sorrows, put him to grief, and cast him out of the land of the living, He would live again to see his spiritual offspring, prolonging his days, and the will of the Lord would flourish in his hands. This is not just some amazing miracle, it is the one event that has changed the course of human history forever and more importantly, changed the eternal destiny of billions of people who have come to believe and put their faith in Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:3–6 ESV

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.

As you read these New Testament accounts, you quickly come to the conclusion that this story is not written like any mythology of the time. It cannot be attributed to the wishful hallucinations of brain-washed followers. After all, the apostle Paul prior to his encounter with the resurrected Christ was no fan of Christianity, in fact he was the exact opposite, a persecutor and hater of Christians yet he could not deny what he saw.

1 Corinthians 15:8–9 ESV

Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

But I’m not here this morning just to prove the validity of the resurrection as a historic fact that is too little of a thing because for those of us who have come to believe in the resurrection of Christ, we have come to believe in something far greater. Through the power of the resurrection, the sick are healed and the broken are made whole again. Let me quickly go through the four ways that a genuine relationship with Christ puts us on this path to wholeness:

1. Christ is able to carry our grief and sorrows

2. His punishment brings us peace

3. His wounds brings us healing

4. His path brings us to the right path

The world that we live in is a deeply broken place and if we sit and think about it long enough, it should bring us great sorrow, in fact it should be unbearable sorrow. If you consider how many children die yearly from preventable causes, how many women get trafficked, how much violence goes unreported, and the horrors of war and oppression, and this list goes on. Our hearts should be overcome by grief but they are usually not for a couple of reasons:

We would not be able to survive mentally or emotionally if this were the case

The sins of mankind is the cause of much of this sorrow but our own sin hardens our hearts and makes us unsympathetic to the plight of this world

The great English preacher, Charles Spurgeon, gives this perfect anology. A person who knows that he is guilty of crime gets used to his imprisonment. But a person who is innocent never gets used to his unjust prison term. Jesus came into this world in human form but the difference was He had no sin and because of that fact, his sensitivity towards sin was never dulled. He remained ever aware of the painful consequence of sin and instead of responding in anger or rage, He became a man of sorrows. But he wasn’t just aquainted with his own grief, as we might be prone to, he also came to carry our sorrows, both the ones that we are aware of and even the ones that we have buried deep with ourselves. He has shed enough tears for all of us. And one of the lessons we can learn from the life of Christ is that sorrow channeled in the right way is a powerful tool for reconcilation and healing but many of us, our emotions are dulled and we just stuff them down as far as we can.

In contrast, Jesus took His sorrows and rather than being paralyzed by grief, it became an unquenchable passion that would take HIm to the cross. Through his tear-filled eyes, He saw our pain and the suffering caused by sin and He made it his burden to carry. And though we might not feel the weight of unrelenting sorrow, there are other evidences of the acute damage that sin has caused, namely the lack of peace. Peace, as understood in Jewish terms, is very different than our idea of peace. The Hebrew word for peace is shalom, and it literally means wholeness, being made complete, having a sense of well-being and harmony. It not only encompasses internal peace or peace within yourself but also peace with others relationally and most importanly peace with God. Sin is what disrupts this shalom that we were meant to live in and it is the root cause of all this brokenness within ourselves, conflict with others, and separation from God. All the therapy in the world cannot help you unless you dig down to this root level and this is where Jesus comes in. Only Christ can redeem the sin that is at the root of all our problems. Again, we underestimate the power of sin, the destructive nature of it, and the drastic measures that it takes to deal with it. By taking on himself all the consequences of sin, including the judgment that each of us were deserving of, Jesus took the penaly of sin so that we might experience the shalom of God, the peace that surpasses all human understanding.

The concept of sin found in the Bible is the idea of missing the mark or veering off course so far that you have no hope of hitting the inteneded target. The Greek word for sin, which is hamartia was used to describe the tragic flaw of the protagonist that would bring him down a path where good fortunes would be turned into bad. When this passage describes the sheep that have gone astray, each of us turning to our own way, well it’s describing the tragic flaw that is inherent in each of us. The life that Jesus led is the only guide for life thaat you will ever need. ’t have too much time to go deeper into this today and so you’ll have to come back to hear the follow up messages but I beleive that God is releases an anointing for healing when His people begin to deal with their sin. Not all sickness is caused by sin at least directly, but there is a sure remedy for those that are.

Exodus 15:26 ESV

saying, “If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, your healer.”

This brings us to the final benefit: the life of Christ brings us to the right path. The concept of sin found in the Bible is the idea of missing the mark or veering off course so far that you have no hope of hitting the intended target. The Greek word for sin, which is hamartia was used to describe the tragic flaw of the protagonist that would bring him down a path where good fortunes would be turned into bad. When this passage describes the sheep that have gone astray, each of us turning to our own way, well it’s describing the tragic flaw that is inherent in each of us. The life that Jesus led is the only trustworthy guide for life that you will ever need.

Matthew 7:13–14 ESV

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

Conclusion

The entire process of being made whole is completely dependent on the singular fact that Christ, as the representative of a new humanity, has been resurrected from the dead. That in his body: sin, sorrow, pain, and death have been forever buried and He has been raised to the newness of eternal life. If all that you are looking for is wholeness in this life, you are asking for too little. This journey to wholeness certainly begins in this life and we’ll look at how that can happen for us but it goes so much further than that. So many people today talk about becoming what they were created to be but their thoughts are just limited to this life not realizing that what you were created to become will never be a reality unless you look forward to your resurrection with Christ and on that day, you and I will finally understand what we were meant to be and it will blow our minds. We were meant to be the very image of God, perfect in goodness, perfect in love, perfect in beauty, without spot or blemish. And only God knows how far we have fallen from this original design, our lives now corrupted by sin, our hearts broken by its own desires, our souls overcome by the darkness of this world. In looking forward to the resurrection from the dead, CS Lewis the great modern Christian apologist wrote:

Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

The only things that are worth resurrecting in me are those things that have been redeemed by the love of Christ. I have no intention of taking my brokenness, sin, and sorrow into the next life, that sounds more like hell than heaven, doesn’t it? But if you look for Christ as Lewis advocates, well then you will find Him within yourself along with all the benefits of knowing Him. And what you will find is that Jesus doesn’t just give us hope for some distant future after death, but He provides that hope for the here and now.