I want to ask you what I believe is the most important question that has ever been asked. My question is this, why did Jesus die? Why did Jesus die? And I'm going to suggest to you that thoughtful people have pondered this question for thousands of years. You see, when we read the message of the Gospels, the record looks something like this. That Jesus of Nazareth was a good man, a very good man indeed, who went about doing much good. Even his enemies testified to his integrity. He couldn't be bribed or pressured, threatened or intimidated. Everywhere he went, he healed the sick. He caused the blind to see, the lame to walk, and even the dead to come to life. He preached the good news of the gospel unto the poor, and the common people heard him gladly. So why did he end up dying upon a Roman cross? What crime did he commit that would allow such a seeming miscarriage of justice? This is not merely a theoretical question. As I've suggested, it's the most important question that the world has ever asked. The most important question. Why did Jesus Christ die? I suspect if we were asked around the What is the most important question of the 21st century? You might get a range of questions. Why is there so much suffering in this world? Will this world ever be at peace? Maybe some might even dare to ask, how can I know God? But if you dig a little bit deeper, you'll soon realize that all of these other great questions all stem from this ultimate question about God, about his purposes. You see, you'll never understand God and you'll never understand the world in which we live until you can finally answer the question, why did Jesus die? And there's no chapter that helps us better than Isaiah chapter 53. We're approaching the Mount Everest of the Old Testament. Charles Spurgeon called this chapter the Bible in miniature. the gospel in essence. It's almost as if the prophet Isaiah has been given a front row seat at the sufferings of our saviour at Golgotha and that he has personally witnessed the terrible sufferings that he endured because we have in this passage the very heart of the gospel message. And the very heart of the heart, if I can put it that way, comes in the verses four through to six. And this passage clearly expresses the reason why the Lord Jesus Christ died. And as we make our way through these verses, I need to point out to you the number of times that the prophet Isaiah uses the word our we and us. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. This passage doesn't make sense until you feel the weight of this great truth that what the Lord Jesus Christ did, he did for us. So when we ask the question, why did the Lord Jesus Christ die? The very simple answer is he died for us. He suffered for us. The pain and the brutality and the indignity of the cross was for us. From our own perspective, we might say that the Lord Jesus Christ was betrayed and tried and beaten and mocked and humiliated and crowned with thorns. He was convicted in a kangaroo court and falsely accused. beaten until his skin was shredded, forced to carry his own cross, and then publicly crucified in the most brutal form of execution in his day. And if all that we do is to focus on those events, we will come to the conclusion rather quickly that he ought not to have died, that it was all a mistake. that somehow the powers of darkness triumphed over the light of our Savior, and it was all a great big accident. Now the Bible never denies the culpability of those who put our Savior to death. In fact, in his sermon in Acts chapter two in the day of Pentecost, The apostle Peter said to the crowd that gathered before him, ye have taken, you have taken, and with wicked hands have crucified and slain the Lord of glory. You did it. You're responsible. The Bible never makes any excuses for those who took our savior and crucified him. And it's quite proper to say that he was murdered by his enemies. and his blood is on their hands, but really that's only such a small part of the story. You see, the Bible writers unite in their declaration that the Lord Jesus Christ laid down his own life, that no one took it from him. Bishop Jesse Ryle offers this wonderful comment, he said of our saviour, he did not die because he could not help it. He did not suffer because he could not escape. In fact, all of the soldiers of Pilate's army could not have taken him if he was not willing to be taken. They could not have hurt so much as a hair upon his head if he had not given them permission. So that brings us right to the heart of the message of our text this afternoon. And as we've read those verses, I trust that our heart has been stirred with the thought that what the Lord Jesus Christ did as he died upon Calvary, he died on purpose. not by accident, not because he couldn't escape it. He died purposefully so that sinners such as you and I might be delivered. We are the ones for whom this text is written. When we read we and our and us, include yourself in those words. The suffering that our Savior endured was not his fault, but ours. And so as we read this passage more personally, the death of Christ will mean more to us. So when we read in verse four, surely he hath borne our griefs, we might stop a moment and apply this verse to ourselves and say, he is borne my grief, and he has carried my sorrows. Yet I did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. Verse 4 tells us of how the Saviour came and took our pain It doesn't start with our sin and our guilt, that will come later. It says rather that he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. The idea here is that the Lord Jesus has come along to us and has lifted from us a terrible burden, a heavy load that we couldn't carry. He has borne our grief, this brings us right back to Leviticus 16. where we read of the provision of a scapegoat. Two goats were brought before the high priest. A scapegoat was one upon which he put his hands and he prayed over it and confessed the sins of the nation, of all of the people. The sins then were symbolically transferred from the people to the scapegoat. The scapegoat was then brought out into the wilderness, carrying the guilt of the people. He carried literally upon his body the sins of the nation. That's the idea here. Because what a goat cannot do, the Lamb of God most certainly can. The Lord Jesus has come to lift the heavy burden of our guilt and our sorrow and our infirmities and griefs. And by his death, he's going to carry away the sin of the world. You're perhaps familiar with the old gospel hymn, what a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear. We have many griefs to bear. We live in a fallen world and we have many sorrows because we ourselves are fallen people and we need someone who can bear away that grief because the burden of it is too heavy for us. So our Saviour came and took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows. All of that includes the division in our family, the loss of a job, The death of a loved one, the pain of our past carries all of those griefs and all of those sorrows. You see, in the Lord Jesus Christ, we're not talking about a God who is far off and distant from us. We find a God rather who drew near to us, who came to be amongst us, who entered into our world and became one with us, that he might carry away our griefs and our sorrows. Our pain will not have the last word. Our sorrows will not endure forever. The Lord Jesus has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Os Guinness tells a lovely story in his little book, No God But God. It's a story that's told in the time of, the start of communism in the Soviet Union. The Communist Party had sent some of its KGB agents into the nation's churches on a Sunday morning to infiltrate. One agent in particular was struck by the deep devotion of an elderly woman who he spotted kissing the feet of a life-sized carving of Christ on the cross. And he came to her and he said, Babushka, grandmother, are you also prepared to kiss the feet of our beloved General Secretary of the Communist Party? And she looked at him and said, why, of course, but only if you crucify him. No other god has wounds that he bears because he carries our griefs and our sorrows. Where else can you find a saviour like this who came to the world to be burdened with our grief? He took our pain. More than that, he took our punishment. He was wounded for our transgressions, verse 5 says. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. You see, our sin carries with it a judgment from God. Every sin, no matter how small it may appear to us and how quickly we want to excuse it, every sin is a transgression of God's law. We have broken God's law. Every breaking of God's law carries with it a judgment. We have sinned against an infinitely holy God, therefore our punishment must be infinitely unholy. It's too great for us to bear. And so we're told that our savior came to be wounded for our transgressions. You might think of the crown of thorns that was pulled down upon his brow. He was bruised for our iniquities. You might think of the beatings that he endured, smoked on the face and punched, ground into pieces, pulverized. The chastisement of our peace was upon him. He was beaten and scourged and by his stripes, his body literally cut and bruised and fled with the scourge of the Roman whip. No other God has such wounds. No other God has such wounds. By the time our Savior died at 3 p.m., he'd already endured 14 hours of torture. arrested, beaten, dragged from one courtroom to another, beaten again, another trial, more beatings, mocked and scourged and spat upon and crowned with thorns. Hairs from his beard plucked from his face, beaten again, forced to carry his own cross and have nails driven through his hands and feet and crucified. And the world asked the question, was he a failure? And they'd make a good argument for the answer, yes, just look at his life. He was born into an unimportant family in an unimportant village. He was ignored for most of his life, taken for granted, laughed at, a prophet without honor even in his own country. And when he speaks, The powers and authorities of the land want nothing to do with him. He faces ridicule and opposition and misunderstanding all the days of his life. And in the end, he's crucified like a common criminal. And the sufferings of those last few hours are unspeakably torturous. And when he dies, he appears to be just another forgotten footnote on the pages of history. And if you think along those facts on that level, you could make the case that his life was a failure. But his death is not the end of the story. And he did not feel in what it was that he set out to accomplish. because he came to fulfill the Father's will, and he came to bear away the punishment of our sin that was too great for us to bear, because if our sin is left for us to carry and to face the awful judgment of God, we will be in hell for all eternity, for we have sinned against an infinitely holy God. that what the Lord Jesus Christ has accomplished for us is to give us peace with God. He has given us peace with God. And what better news is there for a world that's filled with broken people and broken promises that through the Lord Jesus Christ that we can have a peace with God that passes all human understanding, that our guilt and our iniquity that weighs so heavy upon us can be removed, that the judgment of God that we dare not face in our own strength has been placed upon another, that all of the hatred, all of the doubt, all of the shame can be taken away, and that through the Lord Jesus Christ, those broken people, fallen in sin, can be put back together again, restored unto the glorious image of the God who created them, and saved for all eternity. Was Jesus a failure? No! He took our sin, and He bore our pain, and He took the punishment, and through His death upon the cross, He carried away the great debt of judgment that we owe to God so that we might be delivered. And so He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed. He takes away our pain and he takes away our punishment and he accomplishes this because he took our place. All we like sheep have turned astray. We have turned everyone his own way. and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. Someone has said that Isaiah 53 in verse six is the John 3 16 of the Old Testament. This is a verse that makes the way of salvation so clear that we can't possibly miss it. I point out to your attention the first and the last word of the verse. All we like sheep have gone astray, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. You see, the first all reminds us that all have sinned, all have gone astray, all have missed the mark, all have turned their own way, all have rebelled against God and find themselves under judgment. We are all in the same boat and the boat is sinking. And if God doesn't do something, we're all going to drown in judgment. And at this point, the glorious news of the gospel is sounded forth. God has done something for us. He has sent his only begotten son into this world to save, not to condemn, but to save the lost. God could very easily have looked down upon the mess of fallen sinful humanity and said, they deserve it. They've sinned, they've rebelled, they've messed up, now let them face the consequences of their actions. And if God had said that, he would be 100% justified in doing so. He was under no obligation to rescue us when we wandered from him. In fact, our cry from the garden of Eden was, we don't want God to rule over us, leave us alone. And God says, I can't do that. I can't do that. Come to deliver you. I've come to save you. I've sent my son to be the great redeemer of the souls of men, and the Lord has laid upon him the iniquity of us all. You see, the fact is that if the Lord Jesus Christ does not pay the price and penalty of our sins, then we'll pay it for ourselves and we'll pay it for all eternity. If you're going to be saved, then your sin needs to be laid upon Christ. That's what he's come to do. He's here on a divine rescue mission. Our sins were laid upon Christ. We have here the great doctrine of substitution that's at the very heart of the gospel. He took my place and died for me. Isn't that what we sang? God laid my sins on him and the judgment of sin was laid upon Christ and he took it away and there's no judgment now for me. Imagine for a moment that all of your sins were written and recorded in one massive book and the book is heavy because it records every rotten thing you've ever thought, said or done, every unkind word you've ever spoken, every mean thought that passed through your mind, every lustful fantasy, every evil imagination, your bad attitudes from the day you were born to the day that you die. And then picture yourself trying to carry that book. And here comes the Lord Jesus Christ, holy and pure and perfect and good. And he has no book in his hands because he never sinned. And you're being crushed under the weight of your guilt. And the Savior comes and says, I'll carry it for you. I'll take it. I'll bear away the iniquity, the sin, and the judgment. And there upon the cross, as he hangs between heaven and earth, the Lord laid upon him the iniquity of us all. And he bears that crushing weight, and there he dies. Death couldn't hold him. And he rose again the third day for our justification. You know why it's important that Jesus rose? Because it tells us that that awful burden of sin could not keep him buried. That he overcame it. The judgment of God that would have destroyed us for all eternity. That the fire of wrath was put out on Christ. And he's risen again victorious. That judgment that we deserve, that was so great and too great for us to bear, the Lord Jesus has carried. He paid the price. He was willing. He took that record of our sins and carried it away. Isaiah 53 contains all of the good news that you ever need to hear. He was bruised for us, wounded for us, beaten and betrayed and mocked and scourged and cried with thorns for us, crucified for us. Our sins drove the Savior to the cross, but he did not go unwillingly. Our sins may have drove him there, but it was his love that kept him there. You want to go to heaven? Look at verse six. first all tells us that we are all sinners and the last all tells us that Christ has paid the price of all our sins. One preacher said we go in at the first all and we come out at the second and in between we have discovered the way of salvation. Does that mean that an old sinner like me can go to heaven? Yes. Is it good news for old sinners and young sinners and big sinners and little sinners and everyone in between? If you acknowledge your guilt before God and confess your sin to him and recognize that like sheep we have all gone astray, then the Lord will lay upon him your iniquity and he will carry it all away. It doesn't matter what you have done or who you have been or how bad the record might be. The Lord Jesus Christ was wounded for your transgressions, bruised for your iniquities. The chastisement of your peace was laid upon him, and by his stripes you can be healed. It's no wonder the hymn writer taking up this theme cries out in praise, hallelujah, what a savior. Man of sorrows, what a name. For the Son of God who came ruined sinners to reclaim, hallelujah, what a savior. In my place condemned He stood, Bearing shame and scoffing root, Sealed my pardon with His blood. Hallelujah, what a Saviour! Guilty, vile, and helpless we, Spotless Lamb of God was He, Full atonement can it be! Hallelujah, what a Saviour! Lifted up was he to die. It is finished was his cry. Now in heaven, exalted high. Hallelujah. What a Savior. When he comes, our glorious King, all his ransomed home to bring, then on you this song we'll sing. Hallelujah. What a Savior. Do not delay. Do not postpone. Do not say that there's a coming day that will be more convenient for me to come to Christ. That's the language of hell and of unbelief. Let me offer to you the most simplest of advice that I can. Four little words, run to the cross. Run to the cross. If you would be saved today, run to the cross. Do not delay. Do not postpone. Do not wait for a more convenient season. Remember that the Lord hath led on him the iniquity of us all. Run believing. If God, by His Spirit, has stirred up your heart to a sense of your need of a Savior, a desire to be saved by grace, a desire to be at peace with God, run to the cross. Run to the cross. And as you run to the cross, do you know what you will find? A Savior that is ready and willing and able to save you. For he has never cast out one yet who has called upon him for salvation. Run to the cross. And then you will be able to say, with all of the redeemed throughout history, in answer to the great question, why was the Lord Jesus Christ put to death? You can say, he was wounded for me. for my salvation. Will the Lord take these few words and bless them to our hearts for his own namesake. Amen.