We read the Word of God, as we did also last week, in Isaiah 52, beginning at verse 13, and then reading through chapter 53. We focused last Sunday morning on Christ's suffering as satisfaction and payment for sin. And we would take that up again and carry it forward now as the Catechism also does following Jesus' death and burial and what is meant by His descent into hell as we would expound it. Isaiah 52, beginning at verse 13, Behold, My servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. As many were astonished at thee, and his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men. So shall he sprinkle many nations, and the kings shall shut their mouth at him. For that which had not been told them shall they see, and that which they had not heard shall they consider. Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? for he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, as a root out of dry ground. He hath no form nor comeliness, and when we shall see him there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised, rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. We hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised, and we esteemed him not. 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 testament of our peace was upon him, and with his strifes 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. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted. Yet he openeth not his mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before shearers is done, so he openeth not his mouth. He is taken from prison and from judgment. which I declare as generation. For he was cut off out of the land of the living. For the transgression of my people was he stricken. He made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death, because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He hath put him to grief thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin. He shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied. By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide a portion Divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he hath poured out his soul unto death. He was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. Thus far the reading of God's word. This and other passages of the Word of God is based on our instruction as we find it this morning. Lord's Day 16. Heidelberg Catechism. Lord's Day 16. The question and answer is 40-44. Why was it necessary for Christ to humble himself even unto death. Because with respect to the justice and truth of God, satisfaction for our sins could be made no otherwise by the death of the Son of God. Catechism, of course, has in view the fact that God said the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." And the Word of God emphasizes the wages of sin is death. And it is that justice and yet truth of God that's brought to the foreground. Why was he also buried? To prove that he was really dead. Since then Christ died for us, why must we also die? Our death is not a satisfaction for our sins, but only an abolishing of sin, a passage into eternal life. Further benefit do we receive from the sacrifice and death of Christ on the cross. By virtue thereof, our old man is crucified, dead, and buried with Him, that so the corrupt inclinations of the flesh may no more reign in us. that we may offer ourselves unto him a sacrifice of thanksgiving. Why, as there added, he descended into hell. That in my greatest temptations I may be assured and wholly comfort myself in this, that my Lord Jesus Christ, by his inexpressible anguish, pains, terrors, and hellish agonies, in which He was plunged during all His sufferings, but especially on the cross, that delivered me from the anguish and torments of hell." And I want also to read Lord's Day 17 this morning as well. What doth the resurrection of Christ profit us? First, by His resurrection, He has overcome death. that He might make us partakers of that righteousness which He had purchased for us by His death. Secondly, we are also by His power raised up to a new life. And lastly, the resurrection of Christ is a sure pledge of our blessed resurrection. Said a moment ago, we considered last time Christ's suffering It's a lifelong suffering, which is an atoning life that goes down unto the very depths of death to make atonement and payment or satisfaction for sin. To do so, as we saw, under the curse, which is why Christ is hanged on the tree. It's in that light that the Catechism now turns to the final end of that suffering, which is Jesus' death and burial, and looks at it also from its internal spiritual reality, as it takes up that expression of the Apostles' Creed, He descended into hell. Expression is one that the ancient church used. And if you study the church fathers, they struggled in various ways to define what they meant by it. And there were different meanings given to it. Different meanings, too, given to it to this day. The Westminster Confession, I believe, looks at it along the lines of descending into Hades, the realm of death. Our catechism and that is Blessing of the Catechism, points out something very significant in its treatment of that subject. Namely, we must look at the cross not only from an outward physical standpoint of physical pain and mockery of wicked men and the darkness even, and the fact that Jesus dies a bodily death, we must understand from the inside what that agony and torment of Christ is that is represented to us there. Jesus travails in agony and torment unto death. Death in the full sense of the word. And it's To that, we want to direct our attention this morning. We're going to pass over some elements of the catechism about our death and its benefits that our old man is crucified with Christ. That's taken up again in the article on the resurrection from the positive point of view that we're raised with him. We're going to come back to that. in a few weeks. But I want this morning to focus especially on Christ's suffering unto death, the travail and agony of it. That He suffered the agonies of hell. That He died and was buried to make satisfaction for sin. Picking then up also the factual element of the next Lord's Day. That He has thereby obtained a complete victory which his resurrection affords the confirmation and assurance for us of that fact. To begin with, we may ask the question that the Catechism asks, why was it necessary for Christ to humble himself unto death? The wages of sin is death, and the answer to that question is therefore not difficult. God has said that the sinners shall die. It's plain that the Catechism perhaps says the physical death of our Savior on the foreground. When it asks that question, that is important from the viewpoint of our understanding the cross. There were in the early church, and you find that in some of the later epistles already, the false notion that what happened was that some kind of divine spirit that rested upon the man Jesus departed from Him and that it was a mere man that died on the cross. The Apostle John in 1 John addresses that when he makes it clear that if a man denies Jesus Christ, that is, the Son of God, come in the flesh, he is anti-Christ. He was contending with the corruption of the Gospel, which looks at Jesus' death from a mere human viewpoint. That it was only a man that died. That is not sufficient. Also in Isaiah 53, in verse 8, you have a question asked, who shall declare his generation? That is not the time and place of which generation did he live, but who shall really understand and declare what it is that took place here as to who is this that's suffering here? The answer is, it is the only begotten and eternal Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, who says, I, when He speaks as our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the eternal Son of God, yet not according to His divine nature, because the divine nature cannot suffer, but the eternal Son of God in our human nature, in the fullness of that nature, body and soul, who is dying on the cross. And that's necessary. It's necessary because the death that is required, according to the justice and truth of God, is not mere bodily death. It is that death which is eternal, which is the object of God's infinite, eternal, consuming wrath. Our Savior wrestles in Gethsemane with a cup that He's got to drink. It is the cup of the infinite fullness of God's wrath against your sin and mine. He must endure what hell is. The infinity of it. The eternal weight of it. And only one who is the only begotten and eternal Son of God could, in our human nature, sustain that wrath. Because we're finite. And we're limited. And a mere man, a mere creature could not do that. Now, we've seen that already in the catechism. And we need to call that to mind when we consider this subject this morning. The one who is taken from prison and from judgment and who is delivered unto death so that he is cut off out of the land of the living is the only begotten Son of God. Come in our human nature. And he has assumed that human nature in his suffering to make atonement for sin. And it's in the light of that, the prophet Isaiah repeatedly speaks of the fact that his soul shall be made an offering for sin. You find that in verse 10. That when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin. And again, in verse 11, "...he shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied." And it's because in verse 12, "...that he shall divide the spoil, because he hath poured out his soul unto death." That word, soul, is used in a number of different ways. And when it's used concerning the human nature in our creation, it references the fact that God formed man of the dust of the ground. He gave him a body. Breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, that internal activity of thinking and willing. And man became a living soul, a living organism. This is really the idea there. And Isaiah does in fact echo that idea. He does not use the word soul here in a limited sense of the way you and I would speak of it if we talk about soul and body. But having said that, he includes what you and I would ordinarily mean by his soul, his mind, his conscious experience, all that internal life of thought and activity that stands in the reality of a human being, in the life of his soul from within, through the body, in relationship to all the things of this world. And that life of the soul, and the Word of God likes to use the words human spirit there, the human spirit, as it stands in relationship to God. That whole living reality of a true human being, having one organic life from within, standing before the face of God, living in this world which is God's creation, and having fellowship and communion with God, which is the very essence of God's covenant. And when the Word of God says to us repeatedly, and that his soul was cut off, and that God made his soul an offering for sin, points us to the profound reality of Christ's suffering. One of the real problems of the Christian Church today is that Jesus' suffering and death on the cross is reduced to that mere act of bodily separation of body and soul in the event That took place when he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. And he died the physical death. Roman Catholicism is built on the idea that the Mass is a re-sacrifice of Christ and that you eat the body and blood of the Lord literally with your teeth. It's rooted in the idea that the offering that was accomplished on the cross was really only bodily death. The agony and torment that Christ endured there is not understood. Sadly, much of the Protestant, the evangelical community has the same shallow idea. That's why the catechism in its explanation of this is profound in its insight. Jesus was in his suffering, already in his sorrows all his life long, bearing the weight of what is the eternal wrath of God in hell. That wrath of God drives the sinner from God's presence, cuts him off from any fellowship and communion with God. The relationship of a sinner with God is one of enmity. Carnal mind stands that way at enmity with God. But God is against them that do evil to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. God hates the wicked who trample underfoot His glory with sin. And He drives them in His just wrath with sin from His presence. And because of that, death is separation. Separation from the light of God's goodness and fellowship. That's why hell is described as the outer darkness where there's weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. It is a separation from this world which is God's dwelling place. So that one by death is cut off when he goes to the grave from the land of the living. And he is cut off from the presence of God as to his soul. It sinks down under the wrath of God into hell. And the final judgment, pictured as the burning of God's wrath as a lake of fires, the casting of body and soul into hell. To save us from that eternal damnation. And to bring us to heavenly glory in life eternal. in the love of God and in communion with God so that we may know Him as our God and Father and be received into His favor and stand before that judgment seat of God which is holy. Where God who is a consuming fire over against sin meets with us to stand there and to find grace and mercy and pardon for sin and peace with God requires that one deliver his soul, his whole life and existence, that life of the soul within and his body and all that belongs to the activity of his mind and his conscious experience and the very joy and fellowship with God in his heart that he deliver himself up completely to make satisfaction for sin. The only one who is perfectly innocent, who has no sin, and who is righteous, And whereas the power of God can do that. And Isaiah, having described the sufferings of Christ, points us to the extremity of them. That His soul is put in travail. A term that you and I normally assume with a woman going through labor and delivery. That God makes His soul an offering for sin. And that He bears our sins in such a way that He endures what hell is on the cross. Jesus went to hell. Not locally, but hell during those three hours of darkness. And that's the point of that three hours of darkness. What hell is. The infinity, eternity, of the wrath of God and eternal separation from God came to the cross. And there, that agony is very really, as our catechism says, almost inexpressible in its anguish. The wicked sinner in hell hates God. He does not desire fellowship with God. He does not love God. But our Savior loved the Father perfectly and loved us as his sheep with a love that is beyond our comprehension. Because he loved his own even unto that death of offering himself up in such a way that he was taken from the presence of God that that communion of love and fellowship which is life itself, eternal life, was cut off. And our Savior's soul is so utterly desolate with agony and torment of one who loves God and yet endures that separation that hell is, under the wrath of God, that he cries out, my God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Not a question of crying out about injustice. But so deep is His suffering at that moment, and so deep the darkness, which that physical darkness represented at the cross, so dreadful that curse that is poured out upon Him, that verdict of guilty, that His soul is filled with amazement, and in the agony and torment of it He is overwhelmed. And he sinks into the very depths of death, eternal death, into the wrath of God and cries out as one who is utterly forsaken and cast from the presence of God. That is the point in Psalm 22. That is what Isaiah is talking about when it talks about the travail of his soul. That agony was in his body and the pain of the nails in his hands and feet. For he was likewise cut off at exactly the same time from fellowship and communion with men. He had nothing. He is delivered and poured out unto death. He speaks of that Also in Psalm 22, it's worth taking a look at a couple of the Psalms a moment to see some of this. Psalm 22, verses 14 and 15, perhaps bring that out in a very striking way. He describes it, he says, I am poured out like water. Not just physical suffering he's talking about. He's using the figures here of his physical suffering to speak of the agony of his soul as well. Both are there. I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. The heart is that out of which are the issues of life in which we stand in communion with God. It melts, he says. It's melted in the midst of my bowels. That's where your Emotions, as it were, kind of reside in your soul. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws. And thou, this is what God has done, not the Pharisees who would have you. They're the instrument. And thou hast brought me into the dust of death. Thus thou art, and to dust thou shalt return. Dreadful, and yet, as a payment for your sins and mine, is that agony of Christ's soul in the cross. It's a like manner that David in another psalm, in Psalm 42, where he is driven out in the days of Absalom because of his sin, sends the ark of the covenant back. The presence of God is taken from him by that act and he is in the desert. And in the night in the desert, he feels as one driven away from God, so that he speaks of it as a deer running in the chase, longing and thirsting for communion with God, the way a heart pants for water. So that psalm starts out in 42, as the heart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. When shall I come and peer before God? He is so far from God in his mind that he is cut off from the very fountain of life and of water. And God uses that suffering in David's life to set before us the reality of Jesus' suffering. suffering even unto death. And he speaks of that in verses 6 and 7. Oh my God, my soul is cast down within me. Therefore, I will remember Thee from the land of Jordan and from the Hermonites, from the hill of Mizar. He remembers God, though He is cast down. And then he says this, deep calleth unto deep. the noise of thy waterspouts, all thy waves and billows are gone over me." He's describing from within the wrath of God. David could experience that because he is in Christ and it was a chastening for a sin of adultery. But Christ endures those waves and billows so that His soul is, as it were, overwhelmed with agony and suffering on the cross. You have that in another form in Psalm 69 where again, the suffering of Christ is spoken of. He speaks of dreadful reproach of the wicked and of giving They gave me gall to drink. Vinegar to drink. In verse 21. The elements of that suffering come out, for example, in verse 14 and 15. Where He cries, deliver me out of the mire and let me not sink. Let me be delivered from them that hate me and out of the deep waters. Let not the water flood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up. And let not the pit Shut her mouth upon me. Hear me, O my Lord, for Thy lovingkindness is good. He loves God in the midst of that suffering. That's the point. Turn unto me. God has turned away. Not just the wicked and what they're doing to Him. Turn unto me according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies. And hide not Thy face from me, from Thy servant, for I am in trouble. Hear me speedily. Christ suffered, beloved, and we could multiply examples, in the travail of his soul, the agony and torment of hell itself. He did that, that you might know, as the catechism puts it very simply, whatever you suffer, whatever trial, whatever torment, whatever agony of mind or heart or soul, fear of death, judgment, whatever it is, you do not as a child of God suffer those things as the object of God's wrath that leads to damnation. He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows as a man despised and acquainted with grief in such a way that that grief and that sorrow of one who is utterly forsaken and cut off out of the land of the living for sin and iniquity and unrighteousness. There may never be your lot. And that that communion with God, which is the free gift of salvation in Christ through faith, though sometimes our experience of it may be very dim, we may think it's taken away when we are in trouble. That true bond may never be broken. Sometimes God withdraws for a season the experience of it because sin or struggles in our life to bring us nearer to Him. But He never takes the light of His grace from our souls. Jesus endured on the cross what hell is. We don't see that on the cross. We haven't understood it. It's when that agony is accomplished that then the light returns and Jesus says, while He can yet speak with physical voice, it is finished. And commending His Spirit into the hands of His Father, He finishes it all by that act of His own will and dies the physical death, separating body and soul and rending what God has made one, that he might fully and completely make satisfaction for sin. If he had only endured the agony of hell and not died physically, then of course he might have saved the soul but not the body. He must save us as a living organism in the fullest degree. That's why the whole idea of a repeated sacrifice or of adding anything to the cross of Christ is utter foolishness. Jesus died. And He died in such a way that we are left without doubt that He was truly dead. He was cut off utterly. Also, even as to bodily death. To confirm that, He not only was buried, but they pierced His side and probably to the very heart. And there came out blood and water as a token of the covering which He has accomplished to cleanse us from all our sins. We have a Savior whose love for His sheep, because He knew us, We were given Him of the Father. He speaks of it that way. He lays down His life for the sheep. He knows who they are. You and me. His love was such that He willingly laid Himself upon the altar and offered up Himself unto God through the eternal Spirit. Rending body and soul. to take away all our sins. And the Father, in His love for us as His children by the adoption of grace, to secure our redemption justly from His own wrath, gave His own only begotten and beloved Son unto that death that He should die in our place instead that we should never perish, but have everlasting life. It's not possible, but they lacked, to go to hell. And it's not possible that you and I should stand before God as the objects of His holy wrath against iniquity. Christ bore our sins. He bare the sin of many. He died among malefactors, bearing our iniquity, died among men who were wicked, because He is numbered with them to die the death that you and I should have died." Yet, He does that in perfect righteousness. That is the wonder of that death. He was not buried as a malefactor. He is not cast out into the trash heap to be simply thrown into an unmarked grave and the dirt cover him like the other thieves on the cross. That probably was the intention of the scribes and Pharisees. But that was short-circuited because they did not expect his death so suddenly. They did not understand his death as a voluntary act of his own will and sacrifice to God. And so as he lies there hanging in all the shame and humiliation of death on the cross, Joseph of Arimathea goes and begs the body of Pilate. Pilate is amazed that he's already dead. He gives him permission to take it. No one else has asked for it. And he makes sure that he's dead because they pierce his side. And being dead, they do not break his bones so that that sign of the Passover is accomplished also. And he is buried, not in humiliation, but in a way in which the Word of God speaks of the fact that the one who died and endured all this agony is perfectly righteous and innocent. And Isaiah points that out. that he made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death. The idea of that is that he was buried this way in that wicked grave. The grave of the wicked is the grave of rich men who are powerful and mighty in the earth. That's the point. With the rich in his death. And the reason is because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. He is the righteous Savior. And therefore the tomb that they use and the place where the Lord was laid had to be an honorable tomb as viewed from among men. It speaks of the fact that it was indeed true what he said when he died. It is finished. And it is true what he said to the thief. Today thou shalt be with me in paradise. And it was true that he should rise from the dead. He dies and enters the grave. Because he has a work there to accomplish. The grave is the place of death, not only, but of corruption in which the body returns to the dust. In which the final act of decay and corruption The final expression, if you will, of the depravity of sin as to the body comes to its visible form and expression in the corruption and decay and returning to the dust of the body. Jesus enters that place. He does not enter that place defeated, though he enters it in humiliation, but he enters it as the one who, having made atonement for sin, has gained the legal right through righteousness, because there was no violence in his mouth or deceit before the judgment seat of God, enters that place to destroy its power. Not simply to prove he was really dead, but by entering the place of death, to destroy the grave, to destroy the power of corruption, to deliver us from eternal death, also as to the body, that He might, in His perfect, finished sacrifice, raise us from death, body as well as soul, unto life eternal. It's the only way you and I will ever enter heaven. It's the only way it can be done. That's why he dies that kind of death. And archaicism looks at it and says, in light of that, you and I, in effect, died with him. Died to sin. Died to its power. His death is really the death of sin in us. And his resurrection and his life is the power by which you have spiritual life in your soul. The life of the resurrection when you rise from the dead as to your body. And in fact, eternal life in heavenly glory. His death, the full extremity of it, becomes for us the fountain of eternal life and salvation. God was satisfied. His justice was satisfied in the cross. That's why, having described the fact that his soul is poured out unto death, the extremity of it, we find this, that Isaiah already intimates death has no power over him. Though he enters it, though he is cut off out of the line of the living, he lives. Though he pours out his soul unto death, he is the victor here. In His righteousness, He justifies His people. The resurrection, as the fruit of His death, is intimated because He is the one who receives the blessings. God is going to divide a portion. God will give to Him that which belongs to the great And he shall divide the spoil with the strong. How can that be if he is dead? He lives. He lives to obtain the inheritance. He is one who is cut off and pours out his soul unto death and his soul is made an offering for sin. But what's the fruit of it? He shall see his seed. He shall prolong his days. Death will not hold him. The pleasure of the Lord, not only in atonement, but in salvation applied, shall prosper in his hand. And we shall be born by the very power of his death and resurrection, that we should die and be raised up in him unto life eternal. That's why the psalmist in Psalm 16, when he speaks of the death of Christ, and gives his own death in relationship to it, says of God's Holy One, Christ, that he should not see corruption. He goes to the grave, but corruption, that decay, that returning to the dust, has no power over his body. He's truly dead. Body and soul have been rent apart. He has entered what death is. But he has done it by perfect righteousness in such a way that the guilt of sin being taken away, the prison cannot hold us any longer. He rises from the dead and he must rise from the dead in victory. He has endured the agony and torment of hell itself died the death in the fullest degree. And He rises from death to life. The resurrection is an inherent necessity. And of course, it's chronicled for us in the form in which you and I also may know that it's a concrete reality. The very confusion of the disciples, their inability to understand what God was doing. The very fact that the women go to the grave to finish the burial testifies that the last thing they were looking for was a resurrection. The only ones who heard Jesus' explanation of that with some understanding were the chief priests who tried to seal the tomb and put a guard on it to keep him in the grave. But he rises from the dead victorious. He has died and buried and has endured the agony of hell and has conquered in righteousness and the power of sin and death is destroyed. He rises from the dead. So that the catechism in the Lord's Day 17 says, by His resurrection, that's the first point, He has overcome death. Death in all its forms. Therefore, He is for us the Living Savior, who gives to us eternal life, quickening us from spiritual death unto life by the power of His cross, the working of His Spirit, and imparting His own life unto us that it should become ours. Therein we are His seed. And it is the pleasure of the Lord to gather and save and redeem His people by the wonder of that cross. And to lead us to the glory of that inheritance, which is really Christ's. The spoil which He has accomplished by His battle, and which is His spoil in that battle, His victory. Standing before it, you and I stand before the awesome wonder of our salvation. is beyond our comprehension. You and I grow in it, in our understanding. There's never going to come a point where you say, no, I have understood it all. God intends it that way, beloved, that you and I should never become bored with the doctrine of the cross and the Gospel of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That's all we ever preach. That's all we have to preach. But it's not a thumbnail that's learned once. And now I understand it all. It is one that grows in its riches in our hearts. We contemplate Him who loved us and gave Himself for us. And now lives to make intercession for us and to bring us unto God. Great is the glory of Christ Jesus our Lord. The God of our salvation. that's revealed to us in Him. Amen. Let's pray. O Lord, our God and Father in Heaven, we stand before the wonder of the suffering of Christ our Savior. The work of our redemption and the atonement that is in Christ. Father, we look to the beauty of Thy work the blessedness of Thy grace and mercy that hath brought us near unto Thee in life eternal. O Lord, our words, our witness and our works are insufficient to confess the greatness of that work and that glory. We would humbly draw nigh by faith to lay hold upon Jesus Christ and Him crucified from day unto day to live out of Him and for Him. For He has bought us with His own blood and made us His possession. And therein we are Thy children. Father, we thank Thee for the riches of Thy grace which Thou hast shown unto us in the cross of Christ our Savior. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.