Transcript

Well, what a great morning we've had already in God's Word!

It was a treat and a treasure earlier to listen to Johnny, and a rather unusual experience for me to be singing alongside RC and CJ, who are the only two friends I have in the world, neither of whom actually has a first name.

I hope as we continue on today, which is an arduous day for most of us, unlike those Ephesians who listened to Paul for five hours a day, every day of the week, apparently, we're not used to having five hours of Bible exposition.

But at the end, I really do trust that we will all be able to say that it did us much good and God's work was at work among us.

We're coming to our next theme in our series at this conference.

The title is The Substitutionary Atonement of Christ, and I'm going to ask you to turn back to the passage that Dr. MacArthur mentioned last evening, the prophecy of Isaiah, or as I shall say for the rest of this address, Isaiah.

It's the same prophet, and I want to ask you to turn to chapter 52 and verse 13, and keep your Bibles open there at this great and most glorious of Old Testament chapters.

Isaiah is speaking here as the mouthpiece of God, and clearly we recognize of whom the prophet speaks: Behold, my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted.

As many were astonished at you, his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind.

So shall he sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him, for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard they understand.

Who has believed what they heard from us?

And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground.

He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.

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 wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes 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 sin, 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.

Our Heavenly Father, you are in your holy temple, and our prayer is that all the earth will be silenced and silent before you.

We pray for ourselves that you will unstop our ears, that you will melt our hearts by renewing our minds by your truth.

That as we come to you like Greeks of old and say we would see Jesus, we pray that through his Word, he will manifest himself to those who love him and trust him, and to those who as yet do not know him, he will for them make a new appearing.

And this we pray for his great namesake.

Amen.

I attended a school where the one obligatory subject was religious education.

It was part of the law of the land.

The content of that religious education varied; in my case, it was largely memorization of Scripture, although I was very far from being a Christian little boy.

And so, part and parcel of school life for me all through my elementary school and high school days was the public reading of Scripture.

I have never forgotten the occasion in the role of students who were prescribed for the reading of the Scriptures when one of my closest friends at school, who was, I think, trying to be a Christian but certainly wasn't yet a Christian, was assigned this passage for reading in our school assembly.

I remember the cringing feeling I had sitting in the back of the assembly when my close friend announced that the reading this morning is taken from the Gospel according to Isaiah.

The Gospel according to Isaiah!

I'd been a Christian believer for a couple of years, and two thoughts almost instantaneously came into my mind.

One was, his name was Hugh.

I thought, Oh Hugh, how could you possibly do this in public?

And the other thought was, what you have just said is far truer than you ever realized, because this is, in a very profound way, the Gospel according to Isaiah.

If you are particularly familiar with the writings of the Apostle Paul, I think you more and more will have become conscious that this whole section of Isaiah, from Isaiah 40 onwards, made a powerful impression on the whole thinking of the Apostle Paul as to what the Gospel is, how the Gospel works, and how the Gospel is the saving righteousness of God.

But of course, this passage not only makes an impression on the Apostle Paul; this passage, next interestingly to the 110th Psalm, is the most cited passage in the whole of the New Testament Scriptures.

Far beyond Psalm 110, this is the passage in the Old Testament to which there are more allusions in the New Testament than any other passage.

One cannot read either the epistles or the gospels without appreciating that the apostles, having learned at the feet of the Lord Jesus, were drawn again and again to this passage.

Was he asking the teachers in the Jerusalem temple as a 12-year-old boy, Who is this of whom the prophet speaks?

So, I take it from his earliest years, the Lord, his Father, was impressing upon him ever more profoundly the shape and pattern of the ministry to which he was being called as our Lord and Savior.

And so, as he rises from the dead and walks on the Emmaus road, he chastises his dear followers by saying, Haven't you understood the Scriptures that have taught us that the Son of Man must suffer many things and then enter into his glory?

You will be familiar, I'm sure, with the context of the whole second half of the prophecy of Isaiah, from chapter 40 onwards.

Isaiah is looking forward into the future when the people of God will be exiled in Babylon, when the nation, as one commentator says, will have been disemboweled and their hopes desecrated.

The awful command of God that if his people returned from serving him, they would be sent into the far country—the very words that Jesus would later use in the parable of the two sons—is language that's drawn from God's Deuteronomic law: Disobey me, and you will go into the far country.

Now, as Isaiah looks forward in history to their fate and destiny in the far country, he sees that their greatest need is for God to bring about a new exodus, a second exodus.

He sees, in a marvelous way in chapter 45, coming over the horizon of history, the great figure of Cyrus, described, pagan though he is, as especially anointed by God to break down the barriers to God's people returning to the promised land and returning to his promised blessings in Jerusalem.

Isaiah gives to the people this glorious hope of a return from exile in their bondage in Babylon.

Yet simultaneously, Isaiah recognizes that that exile in Babylon is neither the darkest exile nor is it the deepest bondage.

What God's people need is not simply a return from Babylon; what God's people need is salvation from their sin and guilt, from the dominion of darkness and bondage to Satan.

So, even as Cyrus is appearing over the horizon in Isaiah chapter 45, already there has begun in chapter 42 to appear over the horizon a shadowy figure described by God as my servant.

In a series of poems or songs, Isaiah is given an enriched revelation into the calling of this servant, into the preparation of this servant, into the character of this servant, until eventually, in this the fourth of the servant songs, beginning in chapter 52 and going right through chapter 53, he is given this illumination into the suffering of the servant of God.

And like so much that we find in the Scriptures, often when we read the Scriptures—either a narrative, a psalm, or a poem—unlike some of the things that we find in our Western literature and in our Western poetry, very often the place to look in the Hebrew Scriptures for the key to the whole is not just at the end but at the center.

If you're using almost any modern translation of the Old Testament Scriptures, you'll notice that this passage from the end of chapter 52 to the end of chapter 53 is broken up into five stanzas.

It is the third, the central of those stanzas, that takes us to the very heart of God's revelation to Isaiah and, as a matter of fact, to the very heart of the Gospel.

We will get there in a moment, but first of all, notice the shape of this poem, of this song.

Do you notice how it begins in chapter 52, verses 13 to 15, with the exaltation of the servant?

And then it ends in chapter 53, in verses 10 through 12, with again the exaltation of the servant.

The shape of this song is what they used to teach us, at least in schools and in the old mathematics: the shape of this song is in the shape of a graph, a parabola, which begins in exultation, goes down to the depths, and then brings us up again to a glorious exultation.

If you're at all familiar with Philippians chapter 2, you'll realize that this is the same parabolic shape.

He is in the form of God, counting equality with God not something that he grasps, but he makes himself of no reputation, and he comes down and down and down.

Once he has come to the place where he has emptied himself and become obedient even to the death of the cross, God highly exalts him and gives him the name that is above every name.

It's the very shape of what the Lord Jesus did in the upper room in John chapter 13. Knowing he had come from God and that he was going to God, he laid aside his garments, girded himself with the servant's towel, bowed down further, and washed his disciples' feet.

Then he took his place again at the head of the table and asked his disciples if they had any inkling whatsoever as to what it was he had just done.

He could as easily have said to them, Don't you yet understand the fourth of the servant songs that portrays the suffering and the glory of the Messiah who is to come?

And so, in this marvelous passage, we have a kind of tapestry of the suffering servant.

Like many tapestries, there is side action going on around in order to help us to understand what it is that is really going on in the center, at the very heart of the Gospel: the message of the suffering servant.

So, let's look together for a few minutes at this marvelous song about the suffering servant.

Stanza number one, in chapter 52, verses 13 to 15, explains to us in a very moving way that the servant's triumph is wholly unexpected.

The servant's triumph is wholly unexpected.

Look, says God, look at him!

Look at my servant as he acts wisely.

He shall be high and lifted up and exalted.

Yet this wisdom is not the wisdom of this world.

And this exaltation is going to come in the strangest and most unexpected of ways, because behold, his triumph is unexpected because of the nature of his appearance.

He is to be, notice the language, so marred beyond human semblance.

This is Isaiah's sense that the one who is to come in order to repair the disfigured image of God is going to become disfigured himself.

The marvelous commentator and Old Testament scholar Alec Motyer says what Isaiah encourages us to say is not the question, Is this he?

but as we gaze upon the suffering servant, to ask the question, Is this human?

This is what we mean when we say that he descended into hell, that he was, as it were, to repair our humanity in the process of virtually becoming unmaned, deserted by God.

And so it is completely astonishing for Isaiah that this one who is so marred should, at the same time, have such an extraordinary effect on the nations.

Look at what he says: he will sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him.

The language of sprinkle there, incidentally, is the language of the Levitical law code.

It's the language of the sprinkling of the blood of sacrifice that brings cleansing and forgiveness.

Here is this picture of the suffering servant, disfigured beyond all ordinary humanity, and yet the paradox—the as yet unresolved paradox of his ministry—is that one day this one will sprinkle not simply the Jews but will sprinkle the nations.

Certainly, no one who knew his Bible as well as Isaiah knew his Bible would miss the connection between that statement and the great essence of the Abrahamic covenant promise: In your seed will all the nations of the earth be blessed, and the promise of the second Psalm when the Father says to his Son, Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance.

But you see, it's the tension of the situation.

We miss the tension of the situation, and we probably miss the wonder of the grace of God in the Gospel if we don't feel that there is so much in the Gospel that ought not to be for sinners.

Then we scarcely begin to taste the wonder of God's grace to us in Jesus Christ.

Here is one who gains worldwide triumph by being marred beyond human semblance.

So the servant will triumph, but his triumph will be totally unexpected.

And so Isaiah now, in the next stanza, the next few verses of his poem, picks up that notion that the servant is going to suffer so grievously.

He begins to focus attention now not so much on the way the servant's triumph is unexpected, but on the way in which the servant's humiliation is described.

A younger generation has taught me the word prequel.

I think it is a relatively new word, at least in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Maybe also in Webster's—what is the prequel?

Well, we're used to the sequel.

The prequel is something that you're given afterwards that helps to explain something that you were given earlier.

And that's what these following verses are; they're really the prequel to help us understand and tease out, to pull a strand out of this tapestry and see where it gets its connections.

And so he describes the servant's humiliation so beautifully; he describes him so poignantly.

He was growing up before the Lord like a young plant, and then these words: like a root out of a dry ground.

That must have meant something very special to Isaiah.

Do you remember at the end of his call?

This is a Ligonier conference; everyone here remembers the end of his call in Isaiah chapter 6 when everything is being demolished under the judgment of God, and yet God says there will be a stump that will remain.

Then in Isaiah 11, he looks forward to the one who will be anointed with the power of the Holy Spirit, and he says about him, There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots that shall bear fruit.

And now the Lord is showing to him that this one who would bring hope, this one who would be full of the Spirit, the man of the Holy Spirit who would exercise justice and righteousness, who would be marked by perfect holiness—there was no beauty in him by nature that we should recognize him or be drawn to him.

He was the Son of David, but look at David's house: a carpenter and a young maiden and a baby born in a cave, an outhouse in Bethlehem.

This is where the royal line of David has ended; this is dry ground.

This baby is a tiny shoot, and you and I would pass his crying as we walked past the cave.

We would pass him by in the street and think there was nothing unusual, attractive, or extraordinary about him.

And then, as he grew from those inauspicious origins, he would experience an ongoing rejection.

He would be despised.

I wonder if you've ever been despised.

I wonder if you've ever had the humiliation of losing your reputation unjustly.

I remember one occasion coming home to my wife and saying to her about a situation, You know, the only thing I can lose here is my reputation.

It's the only thing I can lose, so let's go forward.

I was a grown man, and I had no idea whatsoever how appallingly painful it is to lose your reputation.

And he made himself of no reputation, and the disposition of men and women towards him was that he was despised and rejected by men.

How could he be Messiah when he shared our grief and was a man of sorrows?

We hid our faces from him and esteemed him not.

Isn't this the reason why our Lord Jesus prays in John 17:24, Father, these have been with me, and they have seen me in my humiliation.

My deepest longing for them is that they may see me in my glory?

He was despised, and men esteemed him not.

And of course, all this is really setting us up.

This is the revelation of God that's coming to Isaiah to make him say, Lord, tell me more.

Bring me to the center of the tapestry so that I can begin to work out.

Because Isaiah, you remember how Peter says this about all the prophets: they wrote these things down, and then they studied them themselves, scratching their heads and saying, Who was I speaking about when I said this?

What did God mean here?

And so he comes, you notice, in verses 4 through 6, to the servant's suffering being explained.

The servant's exaltation is unexpected; the servant's humiliation is described; the servant's suffering is explained.

And he brings us now to the great paradox: But surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows away, and yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.

You see, he's in the position, as Isaiah, as he gets this word from God.

He's looking forward, actually, to the confession of believers in the New Testament day—the first Christians looking back on this and saying, We never puzzled it out; he made it so clear to us, but we never puzzled it out.

We can't understand how he could be one who would bear our griefs and carry our sorrows, who went about doing good, but then was treated as a derelict, was beaten, and chastised, and smitten, and afflicted.

Well, of course, their eyes were blind until the Lord Jesus opened their eyes to just put things together—that faith should have been able to see that what was happening to him was that he was becoming a curse for us, that the blessing promised to Abraham might flow through his cross and reach the nations.

Do you notice how Isaiah almost says, Now come, now camp on this for a little while.

Steel yourself to look into the heart of the cross, where he was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities, and chastised to bring us peace, and beaten in order that we might be healed?

I don't know if they say it any longer, but they used to say that every kind of wound known to medical science could be found on the body of the dying Lord Jesus Christ.

He was wounded, but not only wounded—that was external, really; he was crushed.

He was crushed.

It's not quite the same language here, but I do still think there's an echo of what the Lord had promised in Genesis 3:15 here, don't you?

That as the Lord Jesus would crush the head of the serpent, his own heel would be crushed, and he was being inwardly crushed.

And then he's portrayed as one who is actually suffering for our peace—a chastisement.

Now that's interesting because, basically, chastisement is family language; punishment is legal language.

Chastisement is family language, and yet at the same time, he is one with his stripes; we are healed.

Who is judiciously beaten?

Do you notice how perfect this statement is?

Because as it speaks about the sufferings of Christ, it moves from the relatively external to the internal: Jesus is wounded, Jesus is crushed, Jesus is chastised within the context of his family, Jesus is beaten; he is legally punished.

And just as there seems to be a kind of increasing intensity in the description of the sufferings of Christ, there's an increasing intensity in the description of why it is that he suffers.

He's wounded for transgressions, for breaking the law of God, but then what he is bruised for is iniquity.

He is inwardly crushed for the inner perversion of my heart, and because of my dispeace, there is no peace, saith my God, for the wicked.

He undergoes chastisement in the family to bring me peace into the family, so that as he is beaten with rods in a legal judgment, my whole being, my sickness, may be relieved, and I may be set free.

And in this, Isaiah says, the Lord Yahweh, Jehovah, was present.

We like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way, but the Lord has laid upon him the iniquity of us all.

Let me pause here just to underline a series of things you and I need to grasp that Isaiah is teaching us about the nature of Christ's atonement.

Number one: this atonement involves the imputation of our sins to the Lord Jesus and the imputation of the Lord Jesus' righteousness to us.

The Lord lays upon the Lord Jesus; he is wounded for our transgressions; he is bruised for our iniquities.

He takes what is ours, and it's counted to him.

When he goes to the cross as one who knew no sin, he goes to the cross as one who is there going to be made sin.

He is going to bear our sins on his own body to the tree, as Simon Peter says.

And yet, marvelously, when he makes his soul an offering for sin, by his knowledge—verse 11—the Righteous One, my servant, will make many not just to be accounted innocent.

You understand there is a difference between the Gospel and what happens in an ordinary law court, unless that law court happens to be in Scotland, where there are three verdicts that can be given.

You are either going to receive a guilty verdict or a not guilty verdict.

Don't transfer that to the Gospel as though that's all the Gospel gives you.

Now, what the Gospel gives you is this: that your sins are imputed to the Lord Jesus Christ.

He's wounded for transgressions that are ours, and iniquities that are ours, and a dispeace that is ours, and a sickness that is ours, and it becomes his.

He takes it; he takes all the judgment against my sin, takes all the judgment of his holy Father against the sin of all of his people.

But when you come to faith in Jesus Christ, you're not just pronounced not guilty.

As though to say, You're free; now start again, try again.

No! By his righteous knowledge, perhaps by the knowledge of his righteousness, he will account many to be righteous.

By his righteousness—his life of obedience, his obedience to the death of the cross—it's so important for us to understand that what Jesus is doing throughout the whole course of his life is obeying his Father in our place.

Not just that he may then be qualified to be the perfect sacrifice who is able to bear the judgment of his Father against our sin, but in order that when we come to faith in Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, not only do we understand that our sins have been imputed to him, but we understand that his perfect righteousness is counted as ours as we trust in him.

I love to say, and I love to think, and I love to say it again that you and I can stand before the judgment seat of an infinitely holy God as righteous as the Lord Jesus Christ, because the only righteousness you have to stand before that throne is his righteousness.

Isn't that glorious?

And this is what he's saying: he's saying, Look closely to see the glory of this Gospel.

There is imputation here.

Second, there is substitution here.

In my place condemned he stood, wounded for my transgressions, bruised for my iniquities.

In my place condemned he stood and sealed my pardon with his blood.

Hallelujah!

What a Savior!

Yes, now note he is our representative.

Jesus is our representative.

This may not mean much to some of you, but it's a very important thing to see.

He is our representative; he represents us before the Father.

But he's not just a representative.

You're a representative in Congress if you're privileged to have taxation and representation, which some of us aren't. I'm not complaining about it, but it's true.

He represents you there; he doesn't substitute for you.

He doesn't come along when you're in trouble and take your place.

He may serve for you, but he doesn't stand in your place as a substitute.

This suffering servant stands in our place as a substitute so that a great exchange takes place.

In order that I might stand where he now stands, he comes and stands where I ought to stand and takes my place.

You know, it's just possible that Barabbas, the bandit, had the first name Jesus.

Some of you know that from the textual traditions of the New Testament—that what the people were being offered was Jesus, the Son of God, or Jesus Barabbas, Jesus, the Son of the Father, or Jesus, the Son of the Father, the bandit.

My dear friends, Barabbas would never in the rest of his life have said, You know, but Jesus came and represented me.

He would have said, He came and he took my place.

I had, until recently, apart from our joint glorious faith, one thing in common with Johnny Erickson Tada, and she let me down—she watched the Titanic movie.

I've never seen the Titanic movie, but I have a friend, a dear friend, who was minister of a church in Glasgow called the Harper Memorial Baptist Church.

The reason the church has that name is because the memorial to John Harper was a memorial to their minister who sailed on the Titanic.

If I remember rightly, he gave someone who was not a Christian his place on the lifeboat.

That's not merely representation; that's substitution.

That's why in the Garden of Gethsemane, he agonizes as he does.

Thirdly, it's imputation; it's substitution; thirdly, it's penalty.

Notice the language that's used here.

Is this the Jewish people looking back who have come to faith, beginning to understand what Christ has done?

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

John Brown, the great old Scottish writer, thought that the picture here was of the sheep going astray, and as they went astray, they were in danger of an awful death at the hands of marauders.

And of course, the shepherd would come, and he would put himself before the sheep.

The reason you know the shepherd is a good shepherd is because he'll lay down his life for the sheep.

You remember how that seems to be the significance of the fulfillment of Zechariah's prophecy when the fountain is opened for sin and uncleanness.

How will that take place?

Zechariah asks, and the answer the Lord gives him is, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.

The shepherd comes, and he dies on the cross—a violent death, a death that is a penalty for sin.

Do you know Vernon Hyam's great hymn?

Great is the Gospel of our glorious God, where mercy met the anger of God's rod.

A penalty was paid and pardon bought, that sinners lost at last might be brought to him.

Oh, let the praises of my heart be thine, for Christ has died that I may call him mine, that I may sing with those who dwell above, proclaiming Jesus, King of love.

But there is a fourth thing here.

Yes, indeed, marvelously, through our Lord Jesus Christ, there is imputation and substitution and penalty, but there is something else in this central picture in the tapestry, and it is the hand of deity.

It's the hand of deity.

Notice verse 6b: The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

This is the heart of the cross, my friends—that he was there because it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he has put him to grief.

You understand that this is why our Lord Jesus wrestled as he did in the Garden of Gethsemane—not simply because of the physical suffering, which must have been awful for him to contemplate, but because what he was being called to do there was something that not an ounce of his holy humanity could ever desire.

He was being called so to give himself to the judgment of God that he would, for the very first time in that 33-year-old humanity as the God-man, cry out, I am forsaken.

Why?

You see, he could never want that.

That was really the last temptation of Christ, wasn't it?

What devilish fiends appeared in the Garden of Gethsemane to taunt him that this is what his heavenly Father wanted him to do?

Now, isn't that divine child abuse?

Not when you read the prophecy of Isaiah and see how already in these suffering servant songs, Jesus has been portrayed as one who delights to listen to the voice of his Father and who goes willingly to the cross and to the suffering, knowing that his Father will sustain him even when he is unconscious of his Father's presence.

And not when we remember that if David cried over his son, O Absalom, my son, my son Absalom, my son, that in the very being of God there would be a cry that would go out that would silence all heaven: O Jesus, my son, my son Jesus, my son.

Now hold that thought if you can.

If you can bear to hold that thought, hold this Bible truth beside it: Jesus says, The reason my Father loves me is because I lay down my life for the sheep.

Isn't that something?

Isn't that something?

That his Father's heart burst with the awfulness of what his Son was willing to go through, at the same time the heavenly Father, as it were, had his heart bursting with that almost contradictory divine emotion that said, Oh my son, my son, that you should obey me like this!

It almost undoes me that you should be so obedient to me.

As we get frail echoes of it when we see our own children doing something marvelous because they love us, our hearts swell with pride.

It's not just heaven's love and heaven's justice that meet on the cross; it's heaven's pride in the Son.

The angels, as it were, peering over the balconies of heaven in amazement at what the Son is doing, casting, as it were, a side glance, if they dare, to the Father to say, What is he going through as he watches his Son so perfectly obedient even to the death of the cross?

Don't you think the heavenly Father on that occasion was able to sing, My Jesus, I love thee; if ever I loved thee, my Jesus, 'tis now.

Thou art mine?

Well, verses 7 through 9 say the servant's triumph is unexpected, the servant's humiliation is described, the servant's suffering is explained, and the servant's obedience is underlined.

You notice that?

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.

Don't say anything; his Father had said, Take it all.

And like a lamb that's led to the slaughter, like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

Isn't it one of the marvelous things that we find, I think particularly in Luke's Gospel?

In Luke 23, there are seven occasions when those individuals most intimately involved in the crucifixion of our dear Lord Jesus declare seven times that he is absolutely innocent of any of these crimes with which he is being charged.

And you know what these crimes were?

The crime of blasphemy—that he made himself equal to God; the crime of treason—that he proclaimed himself to be a king.

The very crimes of which you and I are most guilty before the judgment seat of God: blasphemy, that we've made ourselves in a thousand ways the center of the world; and treason, that we have said we will not have you to rule over us.

And in silence, he takes our place.

In obedience, he bears our judgment.

He became obedient to death, even death on a cross.

I notice you're very good at this.

What's the next word?

Therefore!

Therefore!

Therefore!

There has got to be a therefore, and that's in verses 10 through 12, isn't it?

The servant's rightful humiliation leads to his glorious exaltation.

He is rightfully humiliated because he takes our place; he is wrongly executed because he is innocent of any of these crimes.

And therefore, God has highly exalted him and given him the name that's above every name.

And we see it all: oh, it was the will of the Lord to crush him and put him to grief, but he brings justification.

He divides his portion with the many, divides the spoil with the strong, because he pours out his soul to death; he bears the sin of many, and he makes intercession for the transgressors.

It's this marvelous picture of Jesus being highly exalted—highly exalted, glorious, reigning, pouring out his Holy Spirit as he is exalted at the right hand of the Father.

He goes to his Father; he goes to his Father who has said to him, My Son, if you'll do this, then you may ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance.

There they are: Chad, France, Lebanon, Thailand, Belize, Ecuador, Bolivia, Sudan, Los Honduras—all the way along the nations for Christ's inheritance.

And as he comes in glory, and that great angel train, as he has come near to the throne of God, the angels have cried out, Who is this King of glory?

And those angels accompanying him have responded to them, It is the Lord, the King of glory!

Open the gates and let him in!

And as he goes to the throne of his heavenly Father, his Father says, What is your wish?

And the Son says, Dear Father, you said you promised, 'Ask of me, and you would give me the nations for my inheritance,' and they need us to send the Holy Spirit in order to accomplish that.

May I now send the Holy Spirit?

And there is Pentecost, and there is the preaching of Peter, and there is the martyrdom of Stephen, there is the conversion of Saul, and eventually, there is you.

The reason most of us are in this room this morning is because these words have come gloriously true.

Two things to say: number one, there was a man from Africa one day.

He was traveling home; he was actually reading this very passage.

A Christian found him in the middle of the desert.

He was reading out loud.

It was in antiquity; he was reading this passage out loud.

And the man who was a Christian said to him, Do you understand what you're reading?

And he said, How can I possibly understand this unless somebody explains it to me?

And you know the story: the man was Philip, and the man who had Isaiah 53 was a treasurer, a high official from Ethiopia, perhaps from Sudan.

And Philip told him the good news about Jesus, and the man came to faith.

That's all this has been this morning.

This is the good news about Jesus.

Are you trusting him for the forgiveness of your sins, the cleansing of your conscience, bowing before him to be the Lord of your life?

What a great thing it would be if at this conference you did that.

And I have another question for those of you who are already believers.

I can put it like this, in the words of Hudson Taylor, the founder of the great China Inland Mission: If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, is there anything too great for me to do for him?

Our Heavenly Father, we bow in reverence before our great Savior and King.

Thank you that you have given us this promise in the Gospel, that we who have seen him in his humiliation, even in our own day, will one day see him in his exalted glory.

And we pray that until that day dawns, we may trust him, love him, and serve him with all our being.

We ask this with the forgiveness of all of our sins and the assurance of our salvation in his great name.

Amen.