Isaiah 53: 1-12

         Many years ago there was a man who was troubled about his soul and he took a very long journey to try and find peace.  He went to what we would call the churches today, heard the professors of religion speaking, but he still could not find peace with God, and when he was there he found the Scriptures and he was reading this passage.  He was a very learned man.  He had a high position in society, but could not understand as he read this scripture who the prophet was speaking about.  He asked an evangelist called Philip, ’Who is the prophet speaking about in this chapter?’.  He could not understand it.  It just says, “He”, “He”, “He”.  It just repeats the word, “He”.  I want you to notice that, this passage repeatedly speaks about, “He”, and “we”.  “We” is us all, but He dominates the chapter, He stands out, and the man asked, ’Who is he speaking about?’.  Philip answered.  You look at these verses in the chapter, and the “He” is  “the man Christ Jesus”, 1 Tim 2: 5.  He came into this world, He grew up “as a tender sapling, and as a root out of dry ground”.  There is the Babe in the manger, “a tender sapling”.  What happened to that tender Sapling?  One of the most powerful men on earth at that time, I suppose, was Herod, and the way he reacted to the incoming of Jesus was that he killed all those children that were under two years of age.  There is the hatred of man to this glorious Person.  Did He do anything to deserve it?  He came into the world to save sinners, and that is how the sinners reacted.  My friend, He came into the world to save you.  How have you reacted?  Let me tell you how He came.  Paul speaking about Him writes that He took “a bondman’s form”, Phil 2: 7.  Here He is in the bondman’s form, “he shall grow up .... as a root out of dry ground”.  He was here, growing up in spite of all that.  What forces were against Him!  At times, you know, He looked for comforters but there was nobody there, Psalm 69: 20.  He was alone.  Scripture says, “despised and left alone of men”.  Was there any reason for it?  He says later on, near the end of His pathway, “for which work ... do ye stone me?”, John 10: 32.  ’What have I done that you are so bitter?’  It is inherent in the fallen race that man is set against Christ because He brings conviction to your conscience.  If you have not yet believed that you “have gone astray”, I speak about Jesus that you may be convicted that there is nothing in you that would appreciate Christ, but oh, He is to be admired!  You are young.  You may think that you have not done anything worse than perhaps your parents have ever done, or what you see the children doing at school, but the whole of humanity has gone astray.  Not only that it says, “we have turned every one to his own way”.  Now you do not have to be very old to be demonstrating that you have turned to your own way.  One word shows it all, ’No, I will not do that’.  There, you have turned to your own way.  Jesus never turned to His own way.  He had no outward show or ceremony.  He did not have those robes that would appeal to men to make Him something great, but it says, “He is despised and left alone of men”.  It is a very touching word that He was “left alone”.  “For your sakes he, being rich, became poor”, 2 Cor 8: 9.  I think it means He had no friends, He was alone.  There was nobody there to comfort Him.  He looked for it, you know.  You see Him there alone at Pilate’s judgment hall.  I often think of that scene.  Where were the five thousand He had fed?  Where were they?  Mr Darby puts it very well,

         A Judas only owns Thee,

         That Thou may’st captive be.

The rest would have nothing to do with Him.  Pilate would wash his hands of Him, “despised and left alone of men”, rejected by all that He came to call. 

         Priests, that should plead for weakness,

         Must Thine accusers be!

                  (The Man of Sorrows)

He was alone, left alone.  He “became poor”.  He had thousands of angels at His behest to be there, to support Him, but He was alone.  “He is despised and left alone of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”.  It goes on in the chapter to say what men did to Him.  “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, but he opened not his mouth”.  That is in Pilate’s hall, as I was speaking about it; He was oppressed.  That is what they did.  They searched their imagination to try and find faults about Jesus.  False witnesses came to accuse this Person who grew up as a tender Sapling.  It says that, “he was led as a lamb to the slaughter”.  Think of the feelings of Jesus there, but think of the awfulness of the human heart.  You say, ’That is what they did’, but it is what you and I have done, “All we like sheep have gone astray”.  “He ... was as a sheep dumb before her shearers, and he opened not his mouth”.  Oh, how delightful to heaven.  Those accusers, He could have answered them all, He could have justified Himself, but to effectuate redemption, to take on what it speaks about later in the chapter, our iniquities and our sins, it required that He should be there, “and he opened not his mouth”.  “He was taken from oppression and from judgment; ... for the transgression of my people was he stricken”.  He was there alone because He was on the way to bear the sins of those sheep who had gone astray.

         Now, the devil would encourage you to compare yourself with others and say you are not really too bad.  We have all sinned, yes; we have all sinned and “come short” of this Man of Isaiah 53.  So do not measure yourself with your friends to see how bad or good they may be and you are.  It says that we all come short, Rom 3: 23.  Here is God’s standard.  Many years ago the Scots Guards came to a village to try to recruit persons for the army, and at that time to be in the Scots Guards you had to be six feet three inches, or something like that; so the boys in the village, comparing themselves with themselves, said, ’Well I am the biggest man in the village, I will get in’, and, ’I am bigger than you, I will get in.  You might not get in, but I will get in’.  The recruitment officer came along and he had the standard.  Six feet three inches was the standard, and every one of them fell short.  Comparing themselves with themselves they were quite good, and they were better than others, but “all have sinned”.  “All we like sheep have gone astray”.  We are short of the Man Christ Jesus.  That is God’s Ideal, and God would have been righteous if He had closed the books at that and said, ’You have had the law, you have had Christ presented to you, the perfect Standard’. The grace of God shining in His face, touching the leper, raising the dead, giving sight to the blind there He was the perfect administration of divine grace, and man refused it.  God could have closed the books, but what did He do?  He “laid upon him the iniquity of us all”.  Blessed be His name, Jesus was able to bear it.  Had God laid upon men at that time their iniquity, they would have been eternally lost and God would have been robbed of man, but God laid it upon Him, the One who “opened not his mouth”, the One who was ”as a sheep dumb before her shearers”, and there He glorified God.  So it says that God “hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all”.  Wonderful grace, that there may be the gospel of blessing and of forgiveness preached to you tonight.  But I just say this word of warning, that the judgment has been suspended.  It will yet be executed.  God will not allow in anybody’s heart the despisal of Jesus.  The judgment will be executed on those who have despised the appeal of divine grace.  But let me go on, the judgment has been suspended because God “laid upon him the iniquity of us all”.  Where did He do that?  He did that at the cross.  After men had done all that they could to Jesus, they could do no more. 

         Every mark of dark dishonour

         Heaped upon the thorn-crowned brow ...

                        (Hymn 302)

What a Saviour! 

         This is what God has done about those sheep that have gone astray.  This is what God has done about your sins and mine.  Are you convicted about them?  Are you convicted that you have fallen short of this Man of Isaiah 53?  Do you admit that you have fallen short?  Well, God has a message for you.  That same Person that men despised, God “hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all”.  Was that the end of the matter?  No, while He felt that men despised and left Him alone, how much more it pressed on His spirit that God “laid upon him the iniquity of us all”?  What does He say?  He says, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”, Matt 27: 46, Mark 15: 34.

         Was there any reason for it?  Only your sins and mine, only that God’s heart might come out in blessing to the sinner.  Jesus died for our sins, and He was buried, but it does not stop there: He was raised.  Glorious dawn!  What a day it must have been for heaven in the resurrection of Jesus, when all that had come into the race from Adam right down was cleared in God’s sight in the offering and the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus.  Glorious morn, and the brilliance of that morn has shone from that day to this in the preaching of the glad tidings.  Do you want a witness of it?  Well, the first time it was preached there were three thousand souls converted.  There is the delight of heaven in finding a Man who has borne the iniquity of us all.  Three thousand souls coming to trust in a risen, glorious Saviour, their sins forever gone, forever removed from God’s sight and removed from their conscience.  Oh, my friend, that is something you have, a conscience.  You feel it in your life very early.  In your disobedience, something works in you.  You cannot define it but you know you have a conscience, and you know that you are wrong, and you know that you are a sinner.  Well, God would meet that tonight that you may no longer have a conscience that you are guilty of that debt because you have put your faith and trust in the Man whom God is presenting who has borne the iniquity, borne the iniquity of us all.

         But now it speaks about another group of persons in the chapter.  It speaks about the “many”.  While Christ has borne the judgment that was due to men, not all have believed it; and that is why the judgment is only suspended.  But for the moment God is waiting upon persons to come to acknowledge Jesus, as that man did when he heard the glad tidings that Jesus was such a glorious Person and had done such a work.  It says that the man “went on his way rejoicing” (Acts 8: 39), no longer with a guilty conscience.  I would like to have seen him when he went back to his country.  He went out seeking peace.  He came back with peace in his soul, his conscience met.  Not only that, but he was rejoicing.  Are you among the many spoken about in this chapter?  It says, “He shall see of the fruit of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant instruct many in righteousness”, “many”.  That is not “All we” exactly.  It may even divide persons in this room.  The “many” are persons that have put their faith and their trust in Jesus.  I ask you tonight, whatever age you are, where do you stand?  Are you among the “many” or are you still among those who have gone astray?  You know what sheep are like, they get lost through going away on their own with their own ideas.  But here it says, “shall ... instruct many in righteousness”; that is, those who have acknowledged their guilt, confessed their sins before a righteous God with their eye on Christ.  Oh my friend, God speaks to men from the mercy-seat.  The mercy-seat in the type was a meeting place.  It was where God would meet with man while looking on Christ.  That is how He speaks to you tonight, with His eye on Christ saying, ’Here it is, all that guilt on your conscience, all the debt that you owe, it has all been cleared to my satisfaction in the death of Jesus’.  So He gives you a new standard of living.  It says, “... shall my righteous servant instruct many in righteousness, and he shall bear their iniquities”.  You know, that is something else that comes up in your life.  It is not saying you will not sin again, but you have peace, you are settled as to your sins before God.  Past circumstances will come in and disturb you, but it says that He “shall ... instruct many”: the many persons who confess Christ as their Saviour.  The same blessed Saviour is ready to instruct you in righteousness, “Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2: 1), who is Leader of our salvation.  “Therefore will I assign him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong” - what a company those “many” are.  They are instructed in a new way to go.  God looks upon the many referred to in the chapter as quite different from the sheep who have gone astray.  You are ready to be obedient, instructed in righteousness, because your heart has been won by the Man who bore your sins and your guilt.  You are ready to hear His voice, and that is the sheep in John’s gospel; they hear the Shepherd’s voice.  It has often been said that the sheep in John do not go astray - because their guilt has been met, and they have been attracted to this Man of Isaiah 53, and they are keeping close to the Shepherd, and He is instructing the many in righteousness.  He will guide you in your path, He will guide you in these exercises that come up.  He will take you into His confidence and instruct you in the way you are to go.  It says, “he shall see a seed”.  He is looking for “the fruit of the travail of His soul”.  Will He find it in you tonight?  It just means this, the Lord Jesus is looking for somebody to appreciate the work that He has done and to listen to His voice; “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth”, Isaiah 45: 22.  He is crying that out tonight, and He is looking for somebody to be “the fruit of the travail of His soul”.  A coming day will display it, and that will be the day of the great divide.  On the one hand there will be persons who have acknowledged Christ as their Saviour and who will go into eternal blessing.  On the other hand there will be persons who have rejected Christ, and that is when the judgment will come; they will go into eternal judgment.  That is why I say, and I repeat it, the judgment is only suspended.  The wrath and judgment of God will fall upon every Christ-rejecter.  There was a man whom I knew, and he was asked, ’We know where heaven is, but where is hell?’.  He said, ’At the end of every Christ-rejecter’s life’.  There is the answer; that is where it is.  At the end of every Christ-rejecter’s life is hell, eternal judgment and banishment from the presence of God.  But that is not what we are preaching, it is only a warning against despising the grace of God in Jesus, who has come to meet your every need, to God’s eternal glory.

         Now, I want to speak for a moment about what God has done with Jesus.  He has not only set Him forth as a Saviour.  The chapter is full of what men did, and I have spoken already about what God did to Him on the cross.  There are some very fine ’becauses’ in the chapter.  I say again, we should read it, pondering it, the “He” and the “we” and the ’becauses’ in the chapter are most interesting.  It says, “And men appointed his grave with the wicked, but he was with the rich in his death, because he had done no violence”.  God had a man in reserve who would see that He was with the rich in His death, “because he had done no violence”.  God does not leave Christ to the imagination of man’s awful designs.  He raised Him, and that is the basis of the gospel we preach: what God has done with Him.  And He is setting Him forth today as a Saviour to meet you in all your need.  I say again, the next view the world may have of Him will be as a Judge, but tonight He is a Saviour, who is gathering in, calling loud and clear in His voice, “Come to me, all ye who labour and are burdened”, calling to those who may have a guilty conscience, “Come to me ... and I will give you rest” (Matt 11: 28), that you may find your part in this wonderful company, instructed in righteousness with persons who have come into the gain and blessedness of His present service.  He has not only met our sins, but it says, “he bore the sin of many, and made intercession”.  That is going on now.  If you are exercised about your soul, if you feel guilty about your sins, He is interceding tonight.  If you have confessed Him as your Saviour but you are troubled about your past, and the exercises and the sorrows, He is an Intercessor.  What power He has to speak about you to God as one who has put your faith and trust in Him.  As one has said about Him already, He is an all-the-way-home Saviour.  He has not only cleared our debt, met our guilt, but He has joined His help to our weakness.  He is interceding for us tonight in our weakness to sustain us in the joy and the blessing of our sins forgiven that we may be like that man I began to speak of, going on our way rejoicing, awaiting the time of His soon return to draw us to Himself in His own surroundings, worthy to be there, because we have put our faith and our trust in His finished work.

         May we be like that man, every one of us tonight, going on our way rejoicing.  For Christ’s Name’s sake.

Glasgow

26th April 2009