Living Hope Fellowship

The Wonder of the Cross

Today I want to draw from one of the most powerful, most important as well as one of my personal favorite passages of Scripture. I will be preaching through a good portion of Isaiah 53. I remember preaching a message, a number of years ago, entitled, “He Did It All For Me”. I was a guest speaker at the church. The sermon focused on Isaiah 53:4-6. After the message a member of the congregation questioned a deacon as to why I would be preaching an Easter message at some time during the year other than Easter time? He was not happy with me or the topic. He wanted to make sure that the deacon would not allow such a thing to happen again. Baa humbug!

Well friends, here it is the Sunday following Thanksgiving. Easter is several months off. And once again I am going to talk about the cross. I want you to hear me, please. The message of the cross is always relevant, regardless of the day or the month. The Apostle Paul wrote, 1 Corinthians 1:22-23, “… but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles….”

Here is how I view Easter. Every Sunday is Resurrection Sunday. Today. Next Sunday. The Sunday six months from today -- every week, indeed, every day, we celebrate the fact that, “He is not dead. He is risen, just as He said!”

If you have your Bible with you, please turn to or click on Isaiah 53. While you are turning there, I want to give you a little background on the chapter.

The Prophet Isaiah lived over 700 years prior to the birth of Jesus Christ. Nonetheless, he gave an astonishingly actuate picture of the coming Messiah. In fact, his prophesy has been called by many “The Gospel of Isaiah” or “The Gospel of the Old Testament.”

This Prophet of Calvary noted that the coming Messiah – Jesus -- would be called:
· “Immanuel” (God With Us). “Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, and the Prince Of Peace.”
· According to Isaiah 9:7 (New Century Version), “He will rule as king on David's throne and over David's kingdom.”
· Other passages point out that “The Spirit Of The Lord was to be upon him...”
· “He was not to fail or be discouraged....”
· “He was to be upheld by God's hand.”
This is how the prophet spoke of the coming Messiah – Jesus – for much of the book.

But then the prophet moves to Isaiah 53. As he makes his way through this amazing chapter, it seems as if a dark cloud sweeps over Isaiah’s spirit. His mood changes. His words become sad and foreboding. If we didn’t know better, we might well think that the writer wrote this section of the book while standing at the foot of the cross.

Isaiah 53:2-5 declares, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.”

What a contrast! A moment ago Jesus was “Wonderful, Immanuel and Mighty God.” Now…
· He has no beauty.
· He is despised and rejected.
· He suffers.
· He is sorrowful.
· He is pierced as well as crushed.
· He is oppressed and afflicted.
· His earthly life could best be summed up in the brief phrase, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering” (Isaiah 53:3).

What made the difference? What brought about the sufferings of Jesus? Isaiah 53:6 answers, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him (JESUS) the iniquity of us all.”

Isaiah 53:8 adds: “...for the transgression of my people he was stricken.”

Are you acquainted with the word “vicarious”?
The prophet Isaiah stresses the vicarious nature of our Lord's suffering twelve times in nine verses in this chapter.

Let’s say that you see a homeless person out on the streets in the dead of winter. She is not wearing a hat. Her coat is threadbare and torn open in places. She is wearing a pair of gloves, but the fingers on the gloves are worn out. One glance at the lady tells you that she is cold; very, very cold. Now, suppose you take off your hat, your coat as well as your gloves and you give them to the woman. You know that in only a matter of moments, your lips and fingers are going to turn blue. Your body is going to start to shiver. You are going to feel the awful bite of the wind blowing against your skin. That is a picture of vicarious suffering.

Vicarious suffering is simply suffering so someone else will not have to suffer. It is taking the other person's place. It is taking his or her load, their pain, their grief, and/or their affliction. That is what Jesus did for us!

Gordon Jenson wrote:
“A crown of thorns, a spear deep in His side,
and the pain, it should have been mine.
The rusty nails were meant for me,
And yet Christ took them and let me go free.
I should have been crucified,
I should have suffered and died:
I should have hung on the cross in disgrace,
But Jesus God's Son took my place.”

Isaiah 53 gives usseven different ways Jesus suffered vicariously for us.

1. JESUS “TOOK UP OUR INFIRMITIES...”
Notice with me how some other translations put this:
He took our suffering on him and felt our pain for us.”
“But it was our pain he took, and our diseases were put on him.”
“It was certainly our sickness that he carried, and our sufferings that he bore.”
“But he lifted up our illnesses, he carried our pain….”

When you hear such words as infirmed, infirmary and infirmities; what comes to mind? Sickness. Right? The actual word that is used here in the Hebrew is best translated “sickness.”

Notice Deuteronomy 7:15, “The LORD will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible DISEASES you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all who hate you.” This is a promise that the Lord gave the Hebrews after they had left Egyptian bondage. The thing that I want you to notice is, the Hebrew word that is translated “diseases” here is translated “infirmities” in Isaiah 53:4. The point? On the cross Jesus bore in His body every kind of infirmity; every sickness, disease and pain just as He took care of every kind of sin.

You might be interested to know that the Jewish Talmud called the Messiah, “The Leprous One.” He certainly looked like “The Leprous One”.

Psalms 22:14-17 (New Living Translation) says, “My life is poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax, melting within me. My strength has dried up like sunbaked clay. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You have laid me in the dust and left me for dead. … They have pierced my hands and feet. I can count every bone in my body. My enemies stare at me and gloat.”

Isaiah 52:14 (Today's English Version) adds, “Many people were shocked when they saw him; he was so disfigured that he hardly looked human.”

I remember well visiting a lady in the hospital who was dying of cancer.
Sister Luden was quite elderly while I was somewhere in my mid to late twenties at the time. Nonetheless, I was her pastor. As I was trying to encourage her, she stopped me in mid-sentence and said, “What do you know about pain? You are young. You are healthy. You don't have cancer. You don't know what I feel.” Needless to say, I was somewhat taken back by her attitude. And you know what? She was right. She had me
nailed.
In a flash, though, the Lord gave me a word for her. I said, “Sister Luden, you are right. I don't know what you're going through. I am young. I never have had cancer. But I am not here to talk to you about me. I am here today representing the Lord Jesus Christ. There isn't a pain that you have ever felt that He hasn't felt first. He knows first-hand what you're going through. He identifies with your suffering.” Sister Luden got the message.

Dear ones…
· Jesus knew the raw pain of cancer.
· He knew the scourge of shingles.
· Jesus knew the pressing ache of a heart attack.
· Jesus knew what it was like to have crippling arthritis.
· Jesus knew what it was to have pain, horrible gut wrenching pain.

I love the book Where is God When It Hurts?, by Phil Yancey.
In the book the author tells of when Dr. Paul Brand (a Christian hand surgeon) spoke to some folks who had Hanson’s Disease -- leprosy.
In his talk, he focused on the hands of Jesus. The hands of the baby Jesus. The hands of Jesus the child. The rough and callused carpenter’s hands. Next he spoke of the hands of Christ the physician, the healer.
'Then,' continued Dr. Brand, 'there was His crucified hands. It hurts me to think of a nail being driven through the center of my hand, because I know what goes on there, the tremendous complex of tendons and nerves and blood vessels and muscles. It's impossible to drive a spike through its center without crippling it. The thought of those healing hands being crippled reminds me of what Christ was prepared to endure. In that act He identified Himself with all the deformed and crippled human beings in the world. Not only was He able to endure poverty with the poor, weariness with the tired, but--clawed hands with the crippled.'
The effect on the listening patients, all social outcasts, was electrifying. Jesus...a cripple, with a claw-like hand like theirs?
Yancey concludes the illustration with this point: “Yes, the pains of life hurt, but it helps me to know that the Great Physician Himself, the Wounded Physician, has felt every stab of pain and every sorrow. Of a truth, Jesus didn't ask man how it feels to hurt, to bleed, to die. Rather, He, in love in sacrifice, became the hurting, the bleeding, the dying.”

The truth is, Jesus carried…
· Our infirmities on the cross as if they were His infirmities,
· Our pains as if they were His pains, and
· Our sicknesses as if they were His sicknesses!

In a moment we will see that “by His stripes we are healed.” At that point, Jesus provides healing and victory over our sicknesses as well as our diseases. That is later on in the chapter. Here the Lord feels our pains. Here He identifies with them; He carries them.

2. HE CARRIED OUR SORROWS.
Isn’t sorrows a sad word? A bad word? I felt sorrow when my dad died of a sudden heart attack on Christmas Eve, 1994. I felt sorrow when my mother passed away four years ago after suffering several paralyzing strokes. I felt sorrow when my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010.

However, I know of no other person who understood sorrow as did Jesus. One of His names is, “man of sorrows.”

The word that is translated sorrows here In Isaiah 53 can be found 16 times in the Old Testament. While the word means sorrow, in most cases it also refers to our mental and emotional hurts.

Notice Matthew 26:37 (The Amplified Bible), “...And taking with Him Peter and the two sons of Jebedee, He began to show grief and distress of mind and was deeply depressed.”

The Complete Jewish Bible notes that as He took Peter, James and John with Him, “Grief and anguish came over him, and he said to them, ‘My heart is so filled with sadness that I could die!’” (Matthew 26:37-38)

Let me make this personal:
· Have you ever battled depression?
· Have you ever suffered through a broken heart?
· Have you ever felt the sting of rejection?
· Have you ever felt that everyone had forsaken you – even your father?
· Have you ever been betrayed by some of your closest friends?
· Have you ever been falsely accused?
This is just a short list of the things that Jesus suffered as He bore our mental and emotional hurts.

When you get depressed, distressed, or despondent never be so foolish as to question whether or not Jesus knows what you're going through. Yes, He knows! He has felt every stab of pain that you may feel. Remember, He has “carried our sorrows.”

Before I move to my next point, I want to make this observation. Those who know me best know that I am modest to the max. That is just who and what I am. Given that, I find it shocking that when Rome crucified someone, they stripped the person naked. Remember, the soldiers cast lots for the Lord’s garments? The nakedness was meant to be a part of the punishment and humiliation. This is one of the reasons the women would have kept their distance at the cross. Then, this was also one of the reasons that people shielded their faces from looking at Jesus.

My friends, in every way possible, the cross was meant to humiliate and shame the one being crucified.

The song writer wrote:
“But none of the ransomed ever knew
How deep were the waters crossed,
Nor how dark was the night the Lord passed through
Err He found the sheep that was lost.”
Yes, the night was indeed dark! For, you see, Jesus carried our sorrows!

3. HE “WAS PIERCED FOR OUR TRANSGRESSIONS.”
Have you ever noticed how easy it is to sin? We have to be taught how to go to the bathroom, feed ourselves, to comb our hair, as well as how to read and write. However, no one has to teach us how to sin. Sin comes as standard equipment. If you don’t believe me, you have never worked in a church nursery. It can be a jungle in there.

Here is the bottom line. We are not sinners because we sin; rather, we sin because we are sinners. No matter how moral or religious we are, we still sin. I have had saints protest to me that they have gotten to the place where they no longer sin. In my opinion, those same people haven’t quite overcome lying yet. We must not forget that there has been one and only one perfect man – and His name is Jesus.

When it comes to the rest of us, the Bible declares, Romans 3:10, “There is no one righteous, not even one.”

Again, the Bible says that He “was pierced for our transgressions” – our sins.
· He was pierced by the thorns that were shoved deep into His brow,
· He was pierced by the 5 ½ inch tapered iron spikes which were driven into His hands and His feet, and
· He was pierced by the spear that was thrust deep into His side.

Friends, whenever you are tempted to think of a lie as something “little” and “white.”
· Whenever you are tempted to think of a particular sin as being “no big deal.”
· Whenever you are tempted to justify a sin and say, “everybody’s doing it”, stop and consider the fact that God does not take sin lightly. Sin cost Him a great deal.
Grace and forgiveness will never be found on the clearance rack at Goodwill. No, “He was pierced for our transgressions.

4. “HE WAS CRUSHED FOR OUR INIQUITIES....”
There was no stronger expression in the Hebrew language to denote severity of suffering than the word translated “crushed” here. The word literally means to “beat into pieces”, to destroy, as well as crush. It was a picture of one's life being crushed/forced out of them by a terrible weight or burden. (Crush can under feet.) This meant suffering up to but not including death!

While here, please let me note that although the Romans did not invent crucifixion, they perfected it as a form of torture and capital punishment. It was quite literally designed to produce a slow death with maximum pain and suffering. Josephus, the Jewish historian, described crucifixion as "the most wretched of deaths."

Do you like stories? Let me tell you a little-known story drawn from the life of Julius Caesar.
Back when Julius was a 25-year old Roman nobleman, he was kidnapped by a band of pirates. He was on a ship on the Aegean Sea on his way to Rhodes at the time of the abduction. The pirates initially asked for a ransom which would amount to $600,000 today. Caesar laughed at the pirates and demanded that they double the ransom demand. He argued that $600,000 was much too small a payment for someone of his importance.
Caesar spent almost 40 days with his captors. He jokingly told the pirates that when he was freed, he would someday return and capture each one of them. And when he had them all in hand, he would personally see to it that each and every one of them was crucified.
The kidnappers were greatly amused, but when the ransom was paid and Caesar was freed, the first thing he did was put together a small fleet of ships. He then set out in pursuit of the pirates. History records that they were indeed captured and crucified ... to a man!

Such was the Romans' attitude toward crucifixion. It was to be reserved for the worst of the worst.

This is why the Apostle Paul wrote, Philippians 2:8 (Common English Bible), “He (Jesus) humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” The emphasis in the verse is on the word “even”. The idea is, Jesus humbled Himself to such an extent that He died eventhe death of a Cross -- the lowest, most humiliating, debasing, shameful, painful method of death in the ancient world!

“He was crushed for our iniquities....”

5. “THE PUNISHMENT THAT BROUGHT US PEACE WAS UPON HIM.”
On the cross Jesus paid the necessary price to restore fallen man to His Sinless Savior!

The story says that while Jesus was hanging on the tree He looked down and saw evil and sinful humanity. Mankind that had fouled His creation; people that had killed, raped and spoiled all that was good. Then with a
mighty tug, He tore one hand away from the cross and grabbed hold of sinful man.
Then the Lord looked up toward heaven and there He saw the face of an offended God. A God that was good and forever righteous. A God who loved holiness and peace. Then with another mighty tug, Jesus freed His other hand and with it He reached up and took hold of a sinless God. Then, in a stroke of awesome love, at the cross He brought God down to man, and lifted man up to God and reconciled God and man back together once again!

Colossians 1:20 (God’s Word translation) declares: “God was also pleased to bring everything on earth and in heaven back to himself through Christ. He did this by making peace through Christ's blood sacrificed on the cross.”

I was standing at the door of the church, a number of years ago, greeting people as they left the morning worship service. A young mother stopped to speak to me on her way out. She thanked me for my sermon. She then proceeded to say, it had dawned on her that morning that the war between her and God was finally over; that God was, as she put it, not mad at her anymore. For the very first time, she had experienced the peace that passes all understanding; a peace that Jesus purchased for her while He was hanging on a cross at Calvary!

6. “BY HIS WOUNDS WE ARE HEALED.”
Matthew 27:26 (New Living Translation), “So Pilate … ordered Jesus flogged with a lead-tipped whip….”

Did you happen to see the Mel Gibson movie, “The Passion of Jesus the Christ”? If so, you no doubt remember the scourging, or the flogging, of Jesus. He is beaten for eleven minutes of movie time! It hurt just to watch those scenes.

The actual beating of Jesus was accomplished by tying Him to a post, stripping Him naked, and striking Him with a lead or bone tipped leather whip.

It is generally held that Jesus received 39 lashes when he was beaten. That number has been taken from the Jewish law which permitted the court to administer no more than 39 lashes. The idea being one more lash – 40 – would prove fatal. Notice this account from the life of the Apostle Paul, 2 Corinthians 11:24 (Common English Bible), “I received the ‘forty lashes minus one’ from the Jews five times.” Again, he was treated according to Jewish law thus the beatings were limited to 39 lashes.

The Romans, on the other hand, had no limit to the number of lashes they could give a victim. Let me remind you, the scourging Jesus experienced was at the hands of Romans, not Jews, therefore, it is entirely possible that Jesus may well have had more than forty lashes laid across His body.

According to Rick Renner’s excellent book, Sparkling Gems from the Greek, “Historical records describe a victim's back as being so mutilated after a Roman scourging that his spine would actually be exposed.
Others recorded how the bowels of a victim would actually spill out through the open wounds created by the whip. The Early Church historian Eusebius wrote: ‘The veins were laid bare, and the very muscles, sinews, and bowels of the victim were open to exposure.’”

This takes us back to Isaiah 52:14 (Today's English Version), “Many people were shocked when they saw him; he was so disfigured that he hardly looked human.”

Why was He beaten so? God was setting the price for our healing. In 1st Peter 2:24, the Apostle Peter quoted Isaiah 53:5. He told his readers in part:
“His wounds became your healing.”
“By His wounds yours have been healed.”
“By his cuts and bruises you are healed.”
“--by whose stripes you were healed.”

The word “wounds” or “stripes” as used in this verse describes afull-body bruise. A terrible beating from head to toe.

I want to again draw from the book Sparkling Gems from the Greek: “Jesus' broken body was the payment God demanded to guarantee our physical healing! Just as Jesus willfully took our sins and died on the Cross in our place, He also willfully took our sicknesses and pains on Himself when they tied Him to the scourging post and laid those lashes across His body. That horrific scourging paid for our healing!”
A moment ago, I told you that He carried our sicknesses and diseases; here He provides healing and deliverance over them.

Friends, by His stripes we are what? We are healed!

7. ISAIAH 53:8, “FOR THE TRANSGRESSION OF MY PEOPLE WAS HE STRICKEN.”
In verse five He was wounded due to our transgressions. Here in verse 8 He is stricken because of them.
· Verse 5 speaks of pain and suffering.
· Verse 8 speaks of death.

Once more I want to capture a portion of Isaiah 53:8 from a number of different translations:
· But he was struck down for the rebellion of my people.
He was put to death; he was punished for the sins of my people.
He was killed because of my people's rebellion.
He was eliminated from the land of the living, struck dead because of my people's rebellion.
Jesus wasn’t just beaten due to our sins. He died because of them.

Perhaps you have heard of Listverse. Listverse is a website dedicated to lists of trivia from a variety of categories. According to the website, the second most thing that people fear is death. Our fear of death is greater than our fear of everything but failure.

Dear ones, Jesus died a horrible death so that we no longer have to fear death. The Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:54 that “… Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

And so, Jesus endured each and every pain that was ours to suffer, in each and every area that we suffer:
· Physical.
· Mental.
· Spiritual.
· And even the agony of death itself.
Jesus missed nothing – nothing at all -- so as to provide victory for us totally and completely.

The death of Jesus was unlike any other death that has ever been. It was not an incident nor some accident in the course of His being. No, it was more, much more. His death was His very reason for living. It was the purpose of His coming to Earth in the first place. Dying on the cross was His chosen career!

John 10:17-18 declares, “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.”

Christ did not die a victim, but as a Savior; not forced by brute power, but by the eternal love of God. He didn't go kicking and screaming, no, he freely gave his life for us!

Understand this, please:
· Jesus could have called ten thousand angels to deliver Him, but He didn't.
· He could have called down giant hailstones to crush his adversaries, but again He said no to any such temptation.
· He could have made fire fall and consume all those that were there that day, but instead He prayed for them that they might be forgiven!
Nothing would deter Him from the cross. He simply choose to die that we might live!

Max Lucado writes:
“The cross was no accident. No, it was part of a plan. It was a calculated choice. ‘It was the Lord’s will to crush Him.’ The cross was drawn into the original blueprint. It was written into the script. The moment the forbidden fruit touched the lips of Eve, the shadow of the cross appeared on the horizon. And between that moment and the moment the man with the
mallet placed the spike against the wrist of God, a master plan was fulfilled.
What does it mean? It means Jesus planned His own sacrifice.
· It means Jesus intentionally planted the tree from which the cross would be craved.
· It means He willingly placed the iron ore in the heart of the earth from which the nails would be cast.
· It means He voluntarily placed His Judas in the womb of a woman.
· It means Christ was the one who set in motion the political machinery that would send Pilate to Jerusalem.
· And it also means He didn’t have to do it---but He did.

Some time back a Christmas card came out with this brief phrase written on it:
· “If our greatest need had been information, God would have sent an educator.
· If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent us a scientist.
· If our greatest need had been money, God could have sent us an economist.
· But since our greatest need was forgiveness, God sent us a Savior.”

Oh the wonder of it ALL. Oh the wonder of the cross!