We'll read this evening God's holy word, Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53. 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, and as a root out of a dry ground, he hath no form or comeliness, and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, and we hid as it were our faces from him. He was despised, and we esteem 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 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. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment. And who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the living. For the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich, and 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. When 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 him, a portion with the great. and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he hath poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. This evening I call your attention to verses three and four, as we continue our consideration of Isaiah 53. He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and 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. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, the prophet Isaiah, being sent to preach the gospel, found himself preaching a word that didn't find a ready entrance into the hearts of men. What a wonderful gospel he was called to preach. the deliverance of Zion from the terrible oppression under which they had been grieving, God would bring deliverance to his people. Salvation is at hand. Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem, for the Lord hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem. but not all would receive that gospel. In fact, Isaiah found that most would not receive that gospel because the gospel is God's gospel and the great salvation will come in God's way and by God's appointed servant. And when Isaiah proclaimed the identity of that servant of Jehovah, who that arm of the Lord would be, Isaiah found an astounding rejection of his preaching. Who hath believed our report? To whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? That was Isaiah's astonishing cry. But the fact was the Messiah that Isaiah proclaimed and the Messiah that we proclaim is not a savior of any man's imagination. The Savior whom we know from Scripture as the Christ, Jesus Christ the Lord, will inspire no expectation by his coming because he comes as a root out of a dry ground, as a tender plant, And he doesn't come with a great appearance of glory. He's downright undesirable to the carnal mind. He doesn't come to save everybody, but only a chosen race, a race indeed made up of every nation, tribe, and tongue, but a race chosen by God from eternity. He comes to save sinners. not those who claim that they are well. He comes not to establish a kingdom among men, but to establish an everlasting kingdom of obedient prophets, priests, and kings, partakers of God's covenant light. So the prophet is astounded at the unbelief which he observes, but he also understands The savior that he proclaims is so far from the desires of men that no one would believe except the Lord in mercy revealed him. And then and only then do you lay hold and I lay hold of that Christ by faith. In verse three, the prophet continues to describe the suffering of God's servant. He's despised and rejected of men. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised and we esteemed him not. And then he continues in verse four, seeing the reason for it all. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. Isaiah, though in the Old Testament, stands before the cross. And there he sees his Savior, Jesus, despised and rejected. The text sets before us a universal rejection, a deep affliction, and a profound reason. Despised and rejected, a universal rejection, a deep affliction, and a profound reason. Isaiah witnesses a universal rejection of Jehovah's servant. He's despised and rejected of men. When you examine the life of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, you find that in the course of his earthly sojourn, there was an overall deterioration in his relationships among men. If we look at the last part of verse three, we find Isaiah prophesied, and that in very personal language, we esteemed him not. Now, of course, there are many who are not esteemed by others. In the world, you and I are not esteemed. We're not rich. We don't hold high positions of influence. We're of no use to the children of this world. For you understand, people who esteem someone do so because they see some benefit in that person. By nature everyone is self-centered. They hold in esteem those who in some way can serve to benefit them. That's the general nature of the human being. And so Because I don't stand in a position to help someone from an earthly point of view. I don't hold a position of influence. I'm not held in esteem. Jesus Christ was not held in esteem. Now when men esteem me not, I'm not usually bothered by that because I recognize from an earthly point of view I'm of no benefit to a person. But when a man who ought to be honored and esteemed is in fact dishonored by the slight shown him from among men, that's a shame. You may recall that when that little devil of a man named Shimei not only refused to hold King David in esteem, but cursed David. David's servant Abishai said, why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Let me go take off his head. And David didn't permit it. But the shame of the incident was evident. Now Jesus, you understand, is the king of kings. The whole world owes him esteem and honor, worship and service. You owe him your love, your obedience, your worship, always, every moment of every day. And yet we read, we esteem him not. We Isaiah speaks of the church. He speaks of nominal Israel. When they should have been watching with longing for the coming of their Messiah, fervently praying for his coming, they ignored him. They were too busy seeking earthly things, earthly pleasure. And when finally he was born into this world, There were only a handful awaiting him. The wise men who saw his star in the east and came to seek him came to Jerusalem, you remember, and they were astounded to find no one worshiping the newborn king. They asked, where is he that was born king of the Jews? No one knew what they were talking about. When Herod heard about their inquiry, He was troubled enough to call in the chief priests and scribes who then pointed out that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem according to the prophecy of Micah. But they weren't even interested enough themselves to follow up on the announcement of the wise men who had seen the star. They esteemed him not. Isaiah sees here that of which John would write in John 1 verse 11. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. Those for whom he should mean the most, those over whom he had special care, those to whom he sent his gospel, received him not. And the same is true of the church today. Nothing has changed. And should we examine ourselves, we find the same thing. By nature, we give many others honor before Christ. We want to appear in a favorable light to our friends and acquaintances. So we go along with them. Sometimes even in their evil ways, don't follow Christ. We want to experience a certain pleasure in which others participate. So we put the Lord's precepts out of mind. We esteem him not. We find all kinds of excuses to neglect Christ and his word. We close our ears to him, turn our backs on him, walk our own ways. How often isn't that the case? We esteem him not. The same was true during Jesus' earthly sojourn. What good to us is a carpenter's son, they would say? What good thing can come from Nazareth? From the very beginning, they had no esteem for the Lord of glory. Because after all, his glory, for the most part, was hidden. He humbled himself. But what began as little esteem developed to hatred. From an unnoticed object of dishonor Jesus became the object of scorn and contempt. And the more men became acquainted with him, and the more especially they heard his bold preaching, the more he was despised and rejected. They thought it was a disgrace to enter into conversation with him. Not only was that so of the leaders of the Jews, Nicodemus came to Jesus, you remember, in the darkness of the night because he was ashamed to be seen in Jesus' company. But we find the example even of the blind man's parents in John chapter 9 who received the great benefit of Jesus healing their son. And they would lie rather than own up to knowing Jesus. And so We read in John chapter 9, verse 22, these words spake his parents because they feared the Jew. For the Jews had agreed already that if any man did confess that he was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue. Well, that was a common thing and still is that People count the opinions of others greater value than the Word of God and the Son of God. And consequently, despising Christ, they reject him. He's despised and rejected of men. That word rejection speaks of being abandoned. That's a terrible word. Think of those thoughts that go through your mind when you hear a news report of a child being abandoned by its mother, tossed in a dumpster, thrown in the gutter as so much litter. turns our stomachs. An abandoned child. And Isaiah speaks of the servant of Jehovah being given that treatment. Like garbage, men cast him off. And that rejection was universal. Whether you speak about the world or the church as an institute, that rejection of Christ, of the suffering servant of Jehovah was universal. That was the history of the servant of Jehovah even in the Old Testament. You remember the servant of Jehovah in the Old Testament was in the bosom of the church. yet to be born. Christ would arise out of Israel and more particularly out of a certain line of Israel, out of the line of Judah and the line of David. We mustn't forget that in our study of Old Testament history, Christ was there in the womb of the church. And that history is set before us by the picture language of the visions of Revelation, and particularly Revelation chapter 12. And there we are shown that all through the Old Testament, the great dragon, Satan, tried to prevent the birth of that seed of the woman, saw its abortion, And if that child should be born, Satan stood ready to devour him immediately. And so it was, in the days before the flood, when the wicked tried to crowd out the church and almost succeeded, humanly speaking. God exercised judgment, destroying the world with the flood to save his church and, more particularly, the seed that she carried. Later we see Egypt despise and reject the Messiah, the Son of God. Egypt intended to drown him in the Nile River. And again, God spared his church and the Christ, who was yet to be born. And when Egypt later would pursue the seed with all the bitterness of those fixed on vengeance for God's judgment in the deaths of their firstborn, God led his people through the midst of the Red Sea upon dry ground. and drown Pharaoh and his hosts to save the woman and her seed. But always that universal despising of Christ is revealed by the world. When the church was in the terrible wilderness, the enemy, both within and around her, tried to annihilate him. Moab and Edom, Philistia and Assyria, all the nations of the world wanted to wipe him out. At the time that Ahasuerus reigned and took that Jewish woman Esther as his adulteress, Haman made plans to extinguish the Messiah from off the face of the earth. He would do away with the people of God, And so it was throughout the Old Testament, until after the days of Malachi, the Old Testament picture of Antichrist arose, Antiochus Epiphanes by name, and beat the Israelites almost to death. Only a root in a dry ground was left. And the complaint of Israel was essentially the complaint that the psalmist sings in Psalm 129. Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth, may Israel now say. Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth, yet they have not prevailed against me. The plowers plowed upon my back. They made long their furrows. But the same hatred and rejection of Christ was seen even in those who claimed to be the children of God. How the reproach and bitter enmity was felt most keenly from those who claimed to be brethren David would sing, as the type of Christ, in Psalm 69 verse 8, I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children. They hid, as it were, their faces from him. And especially was that true initially among those who were leaders in the church. If you ask the scribes and chief priests, the Pharisees and leaders of the people about Jesus, they would respond in all the bitterness of their souls. A deceiver of the people he is, they would say. They would try to discredit his every word. They would do everything to undermine his preaching, to get the people to cast him off as a lousy example of authority. His word means nothing, they would say. They accused him for his walk. They said he was an ally of Beelzebub, that he performed his signs and miracles by the power of the Prince of Darkness. They accused him falsely of being a glutton and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. They accused him of blasphemy, making himself the son of God, being a rebel, rejecting the law of Moses and of the Roman government. And such slander and reproach unchecked by Christian discipline because there was no such thing in that apostate situation, took its toll and had its effect among the people. Because when the mouths of the enemies are not stopped, The weak are led astray, the same is true today as we are warned in Titus 1 verse 11. So that although an enthusiastic crowd followed Jesus for a time and stood in awe of his preaching and shouted their hosannas to him, they too finally forsook him and left him alone. And they would demand, finally, that he be crucified, even allowing the release of a murderer, rather than him who was perfect and spotless in holiness. His own disciples would run away and leave him alone. Except for Peter, who would deny him publicly in the face of the enemy. Christ became the reproach of all. What about us? What is our attitude toward the suffering servant of Jehovah? Do you receive his word? Do you believe in him? Do you humble yourself before him? Do you walk in the godly sorrow of repentance? Do you love Him? Serve Him? If you do, that's not of yourself. No man, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, will ever embrace this suffering servant of Jehovah. We hid, as it were, our faces from Him, says Isaiah. That's how you and I stand before Him by nature. Shall we embrace Him? Put our trust in Him? Share in His suffering? Don't be too hasty in shouting your hosannas. This man is not one who readily adapts himself to the various philosophies of the world. He's not out to win a popularity contest. He's not the Jesus of man's imagination, who loves everybody, wants to save everybody. He doesn't look at everyone alike. as objects of his love while one lives in this abomination and follows this religion and that another religion as if all are acceptable to the king of kings. No, that's not the way it is. I set before you the Christ of God the suffering servant of Jehovah. As he comes to you with his word, do you hear him? Very few do at any time that his word goes forth. The servant of Jehovah was always despised and rejected of men. He still is. But the depth of his affliction is seen in the phrase which identifies him as a man of sorrows. A man of sorrows. That not only denotes the multitude of his afflictions, but the greatness of them as well. He was a man under the assault of all kinds of sorrows and grievously afflicted, a man of sorrows, that is, a man of misery. And the miseries that he suffered left their imprint upon him too. Not only were there the physical afflictions of body and soul, the hunger and the thirst and the weariness but the reproach and the pain and the persecution was more than you and I will ever bear. It isn't necessary in this connection to number them all. Scripture everywhere testifies of the various sufferings of Christ, our Savior, but all his sorrow was weighed the heavier Because of his perfect sensitivity to sin, he's holy. His sufferings were measured by their contrast to God's holiness and perfect righteousness. When we are offended or become angry, most often it's because of our high regard of self. God is not in all our thoughts. But when Jesus suffered at the hands of his persecutors and at the sight of sin, he bore that affliction because he was conscious of the great offense to God. He lived in the consciousness that such great offense demanded the execution of God's judgment and he knew that he himself would come under eternal wrath for the sins of his people. Such a sin consciousness, such a God consciousness weighed upon him with a sorrow that you and I cannot comprehend. Truly, he was acquainted with grief. That was a usual thing with him. That he was acquainted with grief means he was accustomed to it, never freed from it. As soon as he began to live, he began his suffering. Trace him through all the scenes of his life, from the cradle to the cross, from the stable in Bethlehem to the place just outside Jerusalem called Golgotha. And you see that grief was his constant companion. And when you let scripture shine its light upon the grief of Jesus, you find a dreadful commentary. When you read Psalm 22, especially the first half of that psalm, and you read Psalm 69 where Jesus speaks through David and gives an overview prophetically of his life, you find a life of suffering and sorrow. He was like a deer hunted by dogs. the bloodhounds in pursuit. You listen to Hebrews chapter 5 verses 7 and 8, who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared, Though he were a son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered. In fact, so great were his sorrows, so heavy was his grief, we esteemed him stricken of God and afflicted. When it comes to comparing him to the things of this world, we esteem him not. Counted him as worthless to us. But when forced to look upon him and to weigh him, we considered him of negative value. He was so bad, God had to smite and strike him. To be stricken of God was counted as the greatest expression of God's anger. stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. Expressions just heaped one upon another to show the greatness of Christ's suffering. We hid, as it were, our faces from Him. Who, after all, would want to be associated with such an abominable sight? He was like a leper among men. You hide your face from someone when that person is so miserable and disgusting, you're afraid he's somehow going to affect you. And you're afraid that somehow others might associate the two of you. So you hide your face from him. And so we regarded the Christ. That holy thing of God. of which the angel sang to Mary. The loveliest thing God has ever shown to man. We hid our faces from Him. That's a fact. A terrible fact. Because by nature we hate Him. We're ashamed of Him. That's what Isaiah tells us. But besides the terrible description of the suffering man of sorrows, Isaiah is also given to see the profound reason for it. What an amazing revelation. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Surely. What an amazement is seen here. The reality of the situation is absolutely astounding. Because what He did for us is something amazingly wonderful, absolutely unexpected and undeserved. And don't overlook that personal pronoun, our. That's a confession made only by the children of God. our afflictions, our sorrows, Christ has taken them upon himself. What are those griefs and sorrows? The first word signifies sicknesses. The second word signifies wounds. And what they refer to is first, sin, and secondly, the punishment of sin. So what are those griefs and sorrows? But the cursings of God's law overwhelming us on account of our disobedience and our rejection of his word. Listen as I read only a small portion of Deuteronomy 28. But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day, that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee. The Lord shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do, until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly because of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me. Going on later in that chapter, if thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear the Lord, the fearful name, the Lord thy God, then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful. and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues, and a long continuance, and sore sicknesses, and of a long continuance. Moreover, he will bring upon thee all the diseases of Egypt, which thou wast afraid of, and they will cleave unto thee, and so on and so forth. all our afflictions, all our griefs, all our sorrows. That's what he took upon himself. And if you say, well, those curses belong to the law and the Old Testament, not to us. Well, I remind you of two things. In the first place, scriptures are one. to make separation between the Old and New Testaments is ultimately to lose the Savior. Because the one of whom Isaiah prophesies is emphatically the Christ of God who came as recorded in the New Testament Scriptures and who emphatically continues both to do and to teach as we read in Acts 1 verse 1 through the power of His Holy Spirit. In the second place, to deny the power of the law and its cursing is in fact directly contrary to New Testament teaching. James writes in the second chapter of his epistle that you who commit sin are convicted by the law as transgressors for whosoever shall keep the law and the whole law and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all, James 2 verse 10. The Apostle Paul set forth the same truth in Galatians 3 verse 10 when he wrote, for as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse, for it is written, cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them. And then Paul goes on to confirm that which Isaiah saw. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. The point I make here is this. Apart from Christ, the law carries the same weight, the same power, the same curse now as it did in the Old Testament. Christ himself confirms the same in his preaching. The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, verse 18, for verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. It's true that in the book of Deuteronomy, The curses of the law are in terms of a language that is a picture. But don't ever imagine that the reality is any more mild than its pictorial representation. By nature, you and I are dreadfully sick indeed. And our sicknesses are not merely physical, they're spiritual. Spiritually, we are consumed. Our fever is that natural hatred toward God and His Word that burns like a fire within our old nature. And our inflammation is that of our hearts which boil in rebellion against God's will. Figuratively speaking, all the plagues of Egypt cleave to us. We're covered with sores blind and deaf, mad and vain, and foolish, dead in trespasses and sin. And all our sorrows are sorrows of men consumed by God's wrath. That's the plight of human nature. Sin is like a deadly cancer that consumes and destroys and brings death. That Jesus bore our griefs. and carried our sorrows is an absolutely amazing thing, beloved. Hear the gospel, will you? The good news of our salvation. Here is the perfectly holy Son of God becoming our servant And as the servant of Jehovah, he becomes our servant and bears our curse. What terrible suffering he bore. You know, we see sometimes brothers and sisters in Christ go through terrible suffering. There's not a suffering that even begins to compare to the sufferings of Christ. You see, His sorrows were multiplied millions upon millions of times over our sorrow. Because of His perfect love for God and His perfect holiness, the very thought of sin The fact of sin, the rioting of sin and unbelief all around him and against him filled his soul with horror. It agonized him. Made him sick at heart. How his pure soul must have writhed in anguish at the thought that our Heavenly Father laid all our iniquities upon Him, that it was the burden of God's wrath against our sins that He had to bear. But for our sakes, He bore it, willingly, obediently, in love for God. Even more, he took us, his people, into his own bosom and gave himself to the hands of wicked men that he might be crucified on the cross for our sin in our place And while hanging on that cross, for us and in our place, he experienced sorrow of such depth that his consciousness lost sight of Father's love. He experienced forsakenness, abandonment of His heavenly Father. We can't even imagine. The griefs and the sorrows that He bore. were those of your sorrows and mine and of all his people combined and multiplied. Do you hear this gospel, beloved? He has fully satisfied for all our sin, so that in Christ, We are as righteous before God as if we had never committed any sin, as if we had fulfilled all righteousness. You believe in Him? If by God's mercy you do, this Gospel is for you? What a Gospel! What a Savior! Yes, we still lie in the midst of death. We're saved in hope. Even as those elect believers who received Isaiah's gospel preaching. Saved in hope. But surely in hope. We're no longer consumed by the wrath of God. We live because we are hid with Christ in God. And we read in Colossians 4, verse 3, verse 4, when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. So that through all our tears in this present time, And in the midst of all our sufferings, we have cause for great rejoicing. Because in the light of this gospel, we behold ourselves not sick, not in pain, not sorrowful, but with Christ in heaven, justified, sanctified, glorified. Is that your spiritual perspective? Do you praise the exalted Lord of glory? Or do you hold Him in contempt and esteem Him not? He is worthy of all praise. And He receives our praise. as those redeemed by Christ. Amen. Heavenly Father, once again we give thanks to Thee for the privilege of gathering in Thy house today and hearing anew the gospel of our salvation. We reflect upon these things with a great desire to live in gratitude to Thee. Abide with us, we pray. Keep us from sin and evil. Lead us in the pathway of repentance and true conversion daily. Bless us in the week that lies before us. also in all the various aspects of the life of the congregation, including a funeral later this week sometime. And hear our prayers for Jesus' sake. Amen.