Now let's go back to the 53rd chapter of Isaiah and we set it up, I hope, last night to the degree that you understand the context of this chapter from several angles. We talked about its place in the book of Isaiah, how it fits in the section on salvation, the middle section, the middle chapter, the middle verses being the ones that are most familiar to us. We talked about not only its place in the text of Isaiah, but its place in the history of Israel. We didn't say a lot about that, but Israel is on the brink of judgment. And the good news is that there is a Savior coming who will save them from their sins. And this was the message of the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and even Ezekiel. And we'll look at those in a more specific way a little bit later. So in the middle of all the judgment, chapters 1 through 39, there is hope placed in the heart based on the 27 chapters that end this wonderful book which promise deliverance from Babylon which is the immediate judgment and final deliverance from the cursed world in the glory of the Millennial Kingdom and the everlasting reign of the Messiah. And then this middle section on deliverance from sin. And as I said last night, this This presentation of the cross of Jesus Christ is the most extensive and the clearest explanation of the meaning of His death anywhere in Scripture. There are New Testament passages that play off of this, Galatians 3, 2 Corinthians 5, 1 Peter 2, but there is no New Testament passage that gives the depth and the repetition and the nuances explaining the vicarious substitutionary atonement of Christ like this chapter does. It's an amazing chapter. I also, and I just remind you of this, called it the first gospel. because it is a detailed presentation of the full life of Christ. It starts with Him in eternity high and lifted up in exalted language which is drawn out of Isaiah 6 to describe God in Isaiah's vision. So He is God who becomes man. So you have the the eternality of the Messiah as God. You have the incarnation of the Messiah as man. You have the humiliation in the introduction that God gives in chapter 52. And then you have a sweeping move in chapter 52 verse 15 to the final glory of Messiah. The details are then played out as we take a look at His humiliation as we get into chapter 53 and verse 1. And there we find the plaintive, sad, sorrowful, remorseful, regretful, repentant confession of the Jews, the confession that they will one day make in the future when, in the words of Zechariah, they look on Him whom they've pierced and they see Him completely differently and they mourn over what they have done. And the mourning, according to the twelfth chapter of Zechariah, is extensive mourning. The whole nation mourns. The highbrows and the lowbrow, everyone mourns, men, women, families, when they realize literally that thousands of years have gone on in this rejection of their own Messiah, the consequences of which have been eternal on generation after generation after generation of Jewish people. The tragedy, for example, of the Holocaust with Hitler and the equally devastating Holocaust under Stalin and the massacring of millions of Jews is not what happened to them physically, it is what happened to them spiritually. And they will get it. They will understand that. in that day in the future. And if you ask me what triggers that, the answer is the sovereign purpose of God. I will pour out, God says, I will pour out the Spirit of grace and supplication on them and then they will mourn. God will activate and initiate this. And this then becomes their plaintive cry. This is a very sad, sad confession. It is loaded with millennia of agonies, stretching all the way back from the original Holocaust in 70 A.D., sweeping through whatever other holocausts are yet to come and realizing The agonizing truth of millions upon millions of their people catapulted into eternal judgment because they miscalculated on who this man was. It's a heavy, heavy burden. They will recognize one day that He was bearing their sin, which you and I now recognize. and which is the only way that anyone in any time, no matter who he or she is, can ever be saved by a true understanding of the work of Christ on the cross and complete trust in Him. So that's just kind of a little bit of a review of what we talked about last night. It probably entered your mind that the Jews have to explain this chapter. I mean, if you're a rabbi and somebody comes in and says, ìWhat does this mean?î You need to have an explanation. You would be interested to know, and I'm not going to take the time, I did this in a ten-part series, you can listen to the full thing if you choose. But they started out seeing this chapter as messianic. And there's vast amounts of Jewish literature from ancient days going way, way back in which they viewed this as messianic. And the way they interpreted it was that the Messiah's pain and suffering would come because He was so sympathetic for their pain and suffering. They interpreted it not as...not as the suffering of a sacrifice, but as the suffering of a sympathizer. And you can read the rabbis saying that Messiah will be so compassionate, so tender-hearted, demonstrating such loving kindness toward Israel that He feels their pain to this depth. So in a sort of a secondary sense, they're seeing themselves here. And eventually after the Christian gospel began to be preached, it didn't take long for them to completely abandon that interpretation. And you can see that in the chronology of their literature. They realized that this was just too explicit and too clearly connected to Jesus, so they needed to do anything and everything to get the Messiah altogether out of this passage, even as a sympathizer. Years immediately after the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, they change the interpretation of this chapter. And they say it is Israel who is the sufferer. And this is the modern interpretation. Israel is the righteous sufferer who will be rewarded by being exalted. It is Israel who is intended to be lifted up. It is Israel who by its enemies has been humiliated. It is Israel who will be exalted in the end. It is Israel who is the servant of Jehovah. And by the way, earlier in the book of Isaiah, Israel is referred to as a servant people of Jehovah, the same word. But an unfaithful one, thus the need for a faithful servant. What they see here is this, the Jews didn't die in vain. Jews did not die in vain. They did not suffer in vain because in the end Israel will be exalted. That's the Jewish interpretation of Isaiah 53. Israel is the servant. They have suffered unjustly through history, but it will not be in vain. They will in the end be exalted. And, of course, the truth is just the opposite. This is not a revelation that honors Israel. This is not a revelation that exalts Israel. It is rather a lament, a song of sorrow, a brokenhearted confession by Israel. who mourn what they've done in rejecting the One who gave His life for them. That can only come, I'm convinced, by the sovereign work of God. There's an interesting book called Why Jews Are Liberal, written by Norman Poderetz, who is a journalist and a Jew, and he's trying to call on Jewish people to support the Republican Party because They have been so benefited by free market capitalism in America. America has been the best place for Jews in their history. And why is it that they vote Democratic election after election after election to the level of over 90 percent in every election? Why do they vote against free market enterprise? And he gives the history. And the answer to the question is because they have been so mistreated by people who call themselves Christians. and you can go way back. to the very roots of supersessionism, or the very roots of replacement theology coming out of anti-Semitism back in the fourth and fifth century. You can go back to the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic animosity toward the Jews, the Reformers, many of them had animosity toward the Jews. You can go to Luther's church in Wittenberg and you'll see a representation of the Jews, pigs in stone on the side of the church in which Luther preached. They have been mistreated by so-called Christians in Europe. What Hitler did to the Jews was not some kind of new thing. He just took incipient, rampant anti-Semitism to its worst end. So they have not been helped historically. Are these true Christians? No, but these are people who take the name Christian and conduct themselves in that way. But the day will come when grace is extended to them. I want you to just be reminded of the promise. So look at Ezekiel 36 verse 24, I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into Your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart, put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. You will live in the land that I gave to your brothers, your forefathers, so you will be My people and I will be your God." Do you notice the strength of one verb that keeps repeating itself? What is it? Let me read it again. I will take you from the nations. I will sprinkle clean water on you. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness. I will give you a new heart. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you, cause you to walk in My statutes. This is the mighty saving work of God in the end when New Covenant salvation comes to Israel. In Jeremiah, and we need to read that passage even though you may be familiar with it, Jeremiah 31, 31, again a similar promise, ìThe whole days are coming,î declares the Lord. Here come those verbs, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put My law within them and on their heart. I will write it and I will be their God and they shall be My people. They will not teach again each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ìKnow the Lord, for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,î declares the Lord, ìfor I will forgive their iniquities and their sin. I will remember no more.î How many ìI willsî are there? I mean, this is one of the greatest testimonies to the sovereign work of God in salvation on the pages of Holy Scripture. God will save the nation Israel. If you believe that, then you must believe that God is sovereign in salvation. This prophecy of Isaiah, and you can go back to Isaiah. presents the great eschatological event of the national repentance of Israel, the salvation of the Jewish nation when a New Covenant salvation is given to them by the sovereign work of God. It will happen, it will come. God has declared it. This then becomes their future confession, as we saw last night. Let me just read you a few verses of chapter 53 to set it in your mind. I can't read this enough. When I went through this ten Sundays in a row, I read it almost every time, the whole Scripture because it's so wonderful. Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot and like a root out of parched ground. He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised and we did not esteem Him." Surely our griefs He Himself bore and our sorrows He carried, yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities, the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth like a lamb that is led to slaughter, like a sheep that is silent before its shearer, so He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of My people to whom the stroke was due? His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet He was with the rich men in His death because He had done no violence. nor was there any deceit in His mouth." Five times in what I just read you, the word many appears...many. It refers to the beneficiaries of the servant's astonishing atonement. And by the way, many is a wonderful New Testament word. It appears a number of times that He poured out His blood for many, that He offered His life a ransom For many, as Paul says in Romans 5.15, that grace abounds to many. Hebrews 9.28, He was the offering to bear the sins of many. The many are the guilty, the one is righteous. And this again is so familiar to us because we know the New Testament. But let me remind you. This is the Jews in the future looking back at the cross, plural pronouns, we, our, us. And I want you to look at one thing as we look today at verses 4 through 9, at least we'll try. They admit that they are the problem. And this juxtaposes something that people who look at Reformed theology and the sovereignty of God always have a problem with. If salvation is the sovereign work of God, then how can the sinner be responsible? The whole confession here is a confession by the Jews, as it would be for anyone who is saved, of culpability, complete guilt, full responsibility. Yes, the Holy Spirit has to give life sovereignly. Yes, the Lord hardens the hearts of unbelievers sovereignly. But the same Lord wept over them. and said, ìWhy will you die?î He said, ìYou will not come to Me that you might have life.î Romans 10, ìYou are a rebellious people. All day long have I stretched out My arms to you.î They donít blame God. They donít say, ìIn that future day, It's your fault, you're sovereign. They don't blame the Holy Spirit who convicts the world of sin and righteousness as a judgment. They take full responsibility as every penitent sinner must. And that's the incredible transcendent reality that you must hold to in any view of the sovereignty of God in salvation. All the glory goes to Him for the work of salvation. All the responsibility goes to the sinner for failing to believe. In their confession, there's no blame. It's we...our...us. Now we come to the heart of this. We've looked at the startling servant, chapter 52 verses 13 to 15, the scorned servant, chapter 53, 1 to 3. They scorned Him because of His beginnings, His appearance and His end. And now we come to the substituted servant...the substituted servant. This section really, verses 4 to 6, is an exclamation, surely is the NAS, verily, truly This is a sudden recognition of something that grabs them. It's a moment that is unexpected, dramatic change from the previous perception. We now see it. It was our griefs He bore. It was our sorrows He carried. It was our transgressions for which He was pierced. It was our iniquities that crushed Him. It was our well-being for which He was chastened. And it was our spiritual healing for which He was scourged. They recognize the vicarious, penal, substitutionary sacrifice of Christ on their behalf. He took our place. He died in our stead. He gave His life for us. These three verses, verses 4, 5 and 6 are like concentric circles and they keep going around and around the same issue. I don't want to get carried away in delineating distinctions. The language is expansive. It is intended to continue to enrich and enrich and further enrich your understanding of the work of Christ. As verse 1 says, we didn't believe the message. We didn't understand that this man was the revelation of the very arm of the Lord, the very power of the eternal God in His Son. We scorned Him. But surely now we know our griefs He Himself bore. Griefs, what is that? Well, it's just a general word. It can mean sickness, disease, infirmities, calamities. And it is viewing sin from the perspective of its effect. You understand that? Because sin produces griefs. Sin produces agonies. Sin produces calamities, infirmities, diseases, sicknesses. That's why in Matthew 8, 17, Jesus quotes this very passage after healing a man. I should say Matthew quotes this very passage after healing a man, that He provided our healing. He doesn't mean that there's healing in the Atonement in the Charismatic sense. but that all the sicknesses and calamities and agonies that are part of life as the product of sin are dealt with by Christ in His death. Sins are viewed then from the perspective of their effects. Our griefs He Himself bore, literally picked up, placed on Himself. The same language in a different phrase, our sorrows, again the word actually is pains, again it's the effects of sin, the agonies that sin produces, He carried. He picked up all our sin and took it away. That is what we would call the doctrine of expiation. It's a legal removal. In the language of Leviticus 16, He's the scapegoat. And all sin is placed on Him and taken away. Many places in the book of Leviticus, the people are warned that if they sin and violate God's Law, they will, here's a quote from Leviticus, bear their own iniquity. You will carry the weight of your own iniquity and you will be punished, but here the servant Messiah takes the burden off of us on Himself and carries it away. Who is a pardoning God like you? Micah 7, the true scapegoat. Meaning is not merely that the servant Messiah participates in the pain of His people. Meaning is not merely that He provides some sympathetic suffering, feeling their pain, but that He literally takes the suffering and the pain of the sin itself and carries it away. The suffering we should have bore, all the way to judgment, the sickness we should have bear all the weight of judgment, He took as our substitute and carried it all away. There's only one who can do this, 1 Peter 2.24, He bear in His own body our sins. And by His propitious death, expiated our sins. By satisfying God as a sacrifice, He carried our sins away. So Israel is here seen weeping and wailing in repentance, having seen the truth about the Messiah, here testifying to the massive error of their rejection of Him. And here they declare how wrong they were, what Jesus suffered was for them, for their sin, not His sin...not His sin. We ourselves, this is a great statement, esteemed Him, stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. Yet we didn't see it. This is part of the confession. We ourselves, now please note that, that's full responsibility. We ourselves considered Him, reckoned Him and all the verbs connect to Elohim, all of We considered him stricken, smitten, afflicted by God. Our view of him was that God was punishing him for his blasphemy. Isn't that what they said at his trial? This man is a blasphemer. They thought he was being punished by God for blasphemy. They thought he was getting the wrath of God for his own sins. They even pile up the verbs in their sorrow, stricken, smitten, afflicted, strong, painful verbs. Stricken in Hebrew is used in Exodus 11 to refer to the plagues. It means to strike with violence. Smitten is to beat someone even to death. and is used in Deuteronomy 28 to speak of what God will do to people who are cursed by Him for their disobedience. The word afflicted basically means to be degraded, debased. We looked at Him and we saw Him as being stricken violently, beaten even to death, degraded by God. And our judgment was He got exactly what He deserved as a blasphemer. The Jewish assessment was that all that came from God to punish Jesus for His own blasphemies. To this day they see Jesus as a blasphemer. He said, I and the Father are...what?...are one. But one day they will see what you have seen and what I have seen, and they will be horrified over their misjudgment. And they will say this, verse 5, ìBut He was pierced through for our transgressions, not His. He was crushed for our iniquities, not His.î The chastening for our well-being fell on Him, and by His scourging we are healed. See this expansive language? Pierced, crushed, punished, scourged by God for our transgressions, our iniquities, our well-being, our healing. It is no small note. That the verb pierced appears here, is it? Psalm 22, 16, I read to you last night, they pierced My hands and feet. Zechariah 12, 10, they will look on Him whom they pierced. Seven hundred years before the Lord even arrives, it is indicated by the prophet that He will be pierced through. He will be crushed. You can refer to anything from being bruised, to being trampled, to in Lamentations 3.34, it's translated to be crushed underfoot, destroyed. This is a way to describe the agonizing death of the servant of Jehovah. He was bruised. slapped, punched, hit with sticks, according to Matthew 27 and John 19. And it was for us. The first part of verse 5 looks at the negative, pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. The last two statements look at the positive. His chastening brought our well-being. His scourging brought our healing. So you go from transgressions and iniquities to well-being and healing. You go from the negative, the work of Christ bearing our sin, to what it produces, the positive. The chastisement for our well-being, chastisement is the only Hebrew word...interesting...the only Hebrew word that specifically expresses punishment...punishment. And it's used in Jeremiah 30 verse 14, He was punished. That's what that word means. The only word in Hebrew specifically meaning punishment associated with a judicial act in response to a crime. He was punished by God for crimes that we committed. He was punished to produce our well-being. The punishment that we deserved fell on Him. That is to say that His death was the result not only of a human indictment and a human trial and a human verdict, but that His punishment was the result of a divine trial and a divine verdict. It is to say that it was a formal punishment. When Messiah comes, Isaiah says, ìHe will be legally punished.î And he uses that very narrow word. And it would be true in a human sense because his death was an execution following a trial and a verdict. But it was also, in the divine sense, an execution following a judgment rendered by God. And then by his scourging, you know what that word means in Hebrew? It means to be lashed with a whip. How did Isaiah know that? This, as I said last night, is a massive problem for people who deny the veracity and authority and accuracy of Holy Scripture. All these details. lashes with whips, slashing His body into ribbons of bleeding flesh. Right there in Mark 15, 15, that's what happened. Also very specific. The Jews know all of this. They know the story of this man, Yeshua. They know He was pierced. They know He was bruised and battered, which is what the word crushed means. They know He was punished legally at the end of a trial, and they know He was scourged. And they've always known it. They have had to know it in order to be able to deny it, and to defend them not believing it. But then they will say, did all this to Him, not for any sins that He committed, but for our sins. He was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. And they will confess it was for our transgressions. That means our violations of God's holy law. It was for our iniquities. That word means our perversions. You have transgressions and perversions. In fact, the word for iniquities in Hebrew, the root...many Hebrew words are not like Greek, they're not sort of philosophical and esoteric. The word for iniquities is to bend double and it's the word for a perversion, to go in a direction that is abnormal. He was stricken by God, smitten by God, afflicted by God. for our violations and our perversions. And He was chastened, punished for our blessedness. You know what our well-being is in Hebrew? Shalom, for our peace, for our well-being, for our benefit, for our peace with God. And by His scourging we're healed. The death of the physician made us well. We were sinful and thus sick, grieving, sorrowful, guilty, loaded down with transgressions and perversions, separated from God. Without shalom, and headed toward spiritual and eternal death. But the slave of Yahweh took our place under the judgment of God, and on Him God poured out full judgment. This is the gospel, isn't it? And this is what any sinner must believe if he or she is to be saved. Now we talked about transgressions and perversions. But there's something else that the Jews are going to recognize, and they don't recognize it now. I would suggest that probably only Christians recognize it. And it is this, that our iniquities and our transgressions, our perversions are simply the product of a much deeper reality. We do what we do because of who we are. In that future time, when the Jews confess this terrible lament, they will recognize that the problem is not just their behavior, the problem is their nature. It's their nature. Where is that? That's verse 6. This is more profound than many recognize. It struck me one day, just like it jumped off the page. Here's our problem. All of us, like sheep, have gone astray. You know anything about sheep? They wander naturally, innately. This is the element in the confession that looks not at the manifestation of sin, but at the cause of sin. They will recognize that the problem is not their behavior, it's their nature. As the nature of a sheep causes the sheep to wander away, so the nature of a sinner causes the sinner to transgress. sheep are stupid, defenseless, helpless wanderers who don't stay together. They could learn a lesson from geese. They could learn a lesson from cows who clump. They naturally wander. They naturally lose their way. They leave the safety of the flock. Didn't Jesus use them as an illustration? If a man has a hundred sheep and one what? Goes astray. That's what they do. It's their nature. They have no defense mechanism at all. They're the dirtiest animal because their wool is full of lanolin which means everything attaches and stays. They're helpless. Their nature keeps them in constant danger. And like sheep, sinners wander helplessly through life, ignorant, unprotected, solitary, forsaken, separated from God, without a shepherd's care. Isn't that what Jesus also said? He saw them as sheep...what?...without a shepherd, Matthew 9.36. Boy, there's some sound theology in this confession. They not only understand sinful behavior, they understand depravity. All of us have this nature in us. And the Lord caused the iniquity of all of us, that's our sinful nature, to fall on Him. It's an amazing thing. The Lord Himself chose a lamb to die for the wandering sheep. God caused Him to pick up all our guilt for all our behavior and all our internal wretchedness and bear the punishment for it all. Let me help you with that. Maybe your transgressions don't tell the whole story about you as a sinner. They don't. And your perversions don't tell the whole story about you as a sinner because there are times when your lusts which war inside of you and which lead you astray, as James says, aren't always realized. Jesus died for that, for that wretchedness in your nature. the punishment for your unborn sins. I mean, this is a very, very Reformed confession. And I hope any of you wandering Arminians are agonizing. It was not the sin that killed Jesus, it was God who killed Jesus for our sins. And the mass of sin that He bore encompasses those sins which are realized and unrealized. Jesus did not die as a moral influence, showing us the power of love. He did not die as an example of sacrifice for a noble cause. He did not die as nothing more than Christus Victor, a bad idea that was concocted by a guy in 1931 and keeps getting resurrected. And it's very popular with people who don't want to confront personal sin, that he sort of died in a collective way. He died to gain victory over the hostile powers to liberate humanity and the cosmos from social injustice. He didn't die because we are victims trapped in unjust circumstances and need to be collectively rescued. He did die under the fury of God. paying the full penalty for all the sins of all the people who would ever believe through all of human history. And by the way, that is repeated five times in verses 5 and 6, in one way or another. And that is the testimony of the New Testament, 2 Corinthians 5.21, God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us in order that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Galatians 3, He was made a curse for us. God has not dealt with us according to our iniquities, nor has He overlooked our sins. Rather, He has punished His Son for them so He can be just. and the justifier of sinners. Grace reigns through righteousness. What time am I supposed to...do I have a few more minutes? Okay. Okay, thank you both of you. I appreciate the outpouring. Well, let's take a look at verses 7 to 9 and see how far we go. This is like link sausage. We can whack it off anywhere and get the whole thing. And let's come to verses 7 to 9, this is the next stanza, this will be the fourth stanza, the submissive servant. I'm in agony right now because I'm leaving out so many things that I want to tell you and I wish we could go to Romans 10, but that's another experience. Anyway, the submissive servant, one of the problems that the Jews have when they try to make Isaiah 53 fit them. is that they don't really do well with verses 7 through 9. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He didn't open His mouth. It doesn't really work if you apply it to the Jews. In fact, it's repeated twice in verse 7, He didn't open His mouth. No one in his right mind could declare that Israel was a silent sufferer. Israel is no silent sufferer. But the Messiah was going to be a silent sufferer. And His silence was demonstrated all through the whole ordeal of His death. And again, the details here are really amazing. Let's look first of all at His trial. He was oppressed. That is a word that has to do with enslavement, including physical brutality. You remember they took Him and they brutally treated Him. He was oppressed, he was afflicted. You remember that, those afflictions that were laid upon Him. Actually it's a passive Hebrew verb, He allowed Himself to be afflicted. It can even be translated, He humbled Himself as it is in Exodus 10 and verse 3. And Paul may have had this very passage in mind in Philippians 2 when he gave the great kenosis message about Christ humbling Himself because that would be consistent with the verb that is used here, He allowed Himself to be humiliated. The Jews in the future will look back and they will look back at the arrest of Jesus in the Garden and the subsequent abuse of Him. They will look back through His trials, see the physical abuse, the outrageous injustice, mock trials, arrested in the Garden, taken to the high priest's house for a ridiculous indictment, false witnesses, then shuffled off to Herod, then shuffled off to Pilate, no crime validated, no guilt proven. Herod, Luke 23, admits his innocence repeatedly. Pilate admits his innocence in Luke 23, three times, three separate times. Still the Jewish leaders With the consent of the people, pushed Pilate to follow his triple declaration of Jesus' innocence by pronouncing judgment on Him and executing Him. That's all bound up and he was oppressed and he was afflicted, mistreated, abused. And then this, yet he didn't open his mouth. Normally an oppressed, tortured person Who is suffering, all of that unjustly cries out, wouldn't you say? Regarding His innocence and regarding the injustice perpetrated on Him, but not the Servant of Jehovah. He does speak as the Servant in chapter 42, another Servant song. He does speak in chapter 49, another Servant song. He does speak in chapter 50, another Servant song, but He never speaks in this chapter. He never speaks. He dominates the chapter but never speaks. And it's fit that even though He's in an unjust trial, being brutalized, yet He didn't open His mouth. Silence under such horrific treatment is rare. You go back to the Old Testament and find the sufferers. Find the sufferers in the Old Testament and you will find they are not silent. Psalm 32, Psalm 51 is David. He's suffering under true guilt and he cries out to God. Psalm 32, Psalm 51. Go back to Job. He's suffering innocently and he cries out to God. Sufferers cry out to God. Some cry in guilt, longing for forgiveness. Some cry in innocence, longing for an explanation. But the Messiah will be hunted, arrested, ill-treated, tortured, tormented, harassed, abused, led to execution, no resistance, no complaint. Before the high priest, He doesn't say anything. Before the chief priests and elders, Matthew 27 doesn't say anything. Before Pilate, he offers no defense. Before Herod, he says nothing. Again before Pilate, nothing. And so Isaiah says he's like a lamb led to slaughter. You know, it's interesting, I studied sheep one time, there was a guy named Bowen down in New Zealand. New Zealand at the time I was there had three million people and seventy million sheep, so they really know sheep. And I spent a lot of time with shepherds and they told me how quietly sheep go to slaughter, how silently they go to slaughter, and I'll tell you why. Because the happiest day for a sheep is to be sheared. And they shear them periodically through the year around their little rump. because they can die, the lanolin clogs them up so bad. So every shepherd periodically, every several months, has to put them through a process where he cleans their tail end so they can live. They want that. They trust themselves, in a sense, to the shepherd. And the thing that they delight in most is to be sheared to get rid of the weight of the wool. And so, when they go to death, they assume that this is like those things. Sheep go silently to death. They would know that. Isaiah would know that. People would know that. In fact, this is such a familiar expression that it is repeated by Jeremiah in Jeremiah 11, 19 and Jeremiah 12, 3, like a lamb led to slaughter. It's simply an axiom for being silent facing death. Sheep and lambs, they knew about them. They not only knew about taking care of them, they knew about killing them. They killed them all the time, didn't they? Didn't they? morning sacrifice, evening sacrifice, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of them on those times when they went to Jerusalem and to the temple. They went to their death gently, they went to their death trustingly, they went to their death silently, they committed themselves into the care of the shepherd. And so did Jesus, Father your hands I commend my spirit. We were redeemed not with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, the Lamb without blemish and without spot, who went silently to die. So like a sheep Silent before its shearers, and that's the parallel. He didn't open His mouth. They're silent when they're sheared because they delight in it, and they don't know they're going to be killed. This is the Messiah before His judges, before His condemners, before His accusers, before His executioners. He doesn't open His mouth. History records that that's exactly what happened, right? It's amazing. He not only accepted their unrighteous judgment, but He accepted the righteous judgment of God, silent under the unrighteous judgment of men so that He could fulfill the righteous judgment of God. silent under the unrighteous judgment of men so that he could accept the righteous judgment of God on behalf of the unrighteous sinners. No sacrifice was ever so pure, so perfect. so acceptable. I think it is here in this section of Scripture that Old Testament soteriology, if not biblical soteriology, reaches its apex. The suffering, silent, slaughtered servant takes on himself the punishment of God for the enormous moral debt of all elect sinners, paying the ransom with his life, and he goes willingly. You go from His trial in verse 8 to His death by oppression and judgment. Oppression means arrest. That's what it means. In Hebrew it means to be confined in prison. He will go from being arrested to being judged. That's a word that has to do with judicial proceeding, means the due process of law. Now we're looking at the verdict that's rendered on Him. He will be arrested. He will be mistreated. He will be tried in court. And then it says, so specifically, He was taken away from the court, from the trial to fulfill the legal sentence. Pilate orders His execution by crucifixion. And so, He is cut off, verse 8, out of the land of the living, executed, murdered. Here you have the description of His trial. It parallels the gospel writer's descriptions. He's not just pierced. He's not just crushed. He's not just punished. He's not just scourged, oppressed, afflicted. He's killed. Daniel 9.26, Messiah will be cut off, killed. And then this is so interesting. Verse 8, and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living? He was violent, that's what cut off means, violently executed. Who cared? Who had any sensible thought about it? Who grasped what was happening? Who saw it for what it was? Who tried to stop it? Who protested? Who complained? Who was outraged? What's the answer? Nobody. A custom prevailed among the Jews in the case of trials for capital punishment, and this is written in their law. that when a person is brought up before a court for a crime that could result in death, there has to be consideration of time to pass before you execute the man to make sure a further evidence comes. Let me read you a passage from Talmud Sanhedrin, folio number 43, quoting, there is a tradition On the eve of the Sabbath and the Passover, they hung Jesus. I'm reading the Talmud. These are the notes from the Sanhedrin. They hung Jesus. And a herald went forth before Him for forty days, crying, ìJesus goes to be executed because He has practiced sorcery and seduced Israel and estranged them from God.î Let anyone who can bring forward any justifying plea for Him come and give information concerning it. But no justifying plea was found for Him, and so He was hung on the eve of the Sabbath and the Passover." Talk about revisionist history. What? In the Talmud it declares for all Jews to read. The council gave 40 days between the verdict and the execution of Jesus for anyone to come forward. Rabbi Ullah said, ìBut do you think that He belongs to those for whom a justifying plea is to be sought? He was a seducer and the All-Merciful has said, ìYou shall not spare Him.î He's saying that's why no one came forward, because the Almighty said, ìYou shall not spare that seducer.î Verse 1, who believed the message? Who got the revelation of the arm of the Lord? Here, who protested? Nobody. They sat to justify and not to condemn, says the Talmud, to save life and not destroy it. Really? That's what they wrote about Jesus in their Sanhedrin notes. We sat to justify, not to destroy. We gave 40 days. No one came to defend Him. The truth of the matter is, they had a tradition of 40 days, but they followed a mock trial by an execution the same day...the same day. No one cared. So where were the 12? Strike the shepherd, Zechariah 13.7, sheep scattered. Jesus said, ìYouíre all going to fall away.î But one day Israelís going to know what verse 8 says at the end. ìIt was for the transgression of My people to whom the stroke was due.î The smiter was Jehovah, smitten by God. for the punishment that we deserved." What an amazing, amazing prophecy, is it not? Maybe just one more word, verse 9, His grave was assigned with wicked men. Now you notice again all these past tense verbs? Because this is not predicting these events, it's predicting the Jewish reinterpretation accurately of these events. His grave was assigned with wicked men. That was the whole point. He was crucified between two thieves. He was numbered with the transgressors. And he was to be disposed of like all degraded people. Jeremiah has in chapter 25 a statement about that. crucified between two criminals, so He was with wicked men even in His death. What happened to people who were crucified? What happened to their bodies? A little bit of study of history essentially says they were left as roadkill. They were left hanging there, the longer the better, for vultures, birds, animals to climb up and chew on the bodies. That was the typical way you'd dispose of them because that sent the message that Rome wanted to send. That's what was planned for him. His grave was assigned to be with wicked men. Grave, the place where dead criminals were thrown. Eventually the bodies were taken down. Do you know where they were thrown? Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom. The Jerusalem dump, the ancient site of idolatry of apostate Jews, followers of Baal and Canaanite gods where they burned their children to Molech. You can read that in 2 Chronicles 28...33. It was there that King Ahaz sacrificed his sons. It is the place that Isaiah identifies in 66 with these words, it's the place where the worm never dies. And Jesus picked up on that in Mark 9 and said, It's a constant burning place where the worm never dies. The rabbis wrote of it as the fire which perpetually consumes the filth and cadavers thrown into it, the most cursed place. That's where they threw the crucified criminals eventually. One Jewish source says, whoever blasphemes God, let him be stoned, hanged and buried in the most ignominious manner. So that's what they did. And so they assigned Jesus to go where the thieves went. But God had another plan. Yet He was with a rich man in his death. They're going to look back and say, Joseph of Arimathea showed up, he had a new tomb. John 19 tells that marvelous story of Joseph. Matthew 27, Luke 23, he was with a rich man in his death. A little interesting nuance, the word death is plural in his deaths. Why would that be plural? Well, that's not the only time that's used in that way in a plural sense. It's also in Ezekiel 28. It doesn't mean He died more than one death. It is a Hebrew superlative, a Hebrew superlative. It is the way to emphasize the violence, the massive proportions of His death. When they wanted to take a death and magnify it beyond any other death, they would put a plural on it, put it in a plural form. He died a death way beyond the death of anyone else. He was with a rich man in his death. Joseph, you remember, came, got permission to take his body, buried him. Why? I love this. This is the first beautiful thing in this section, because he had done no violence. There was no deceit in his mouth. That is a small testimony to his sinless perfection. God would not allow that body to see corruption. That body would never end up in the Valley of Hinnom. That would never be thrown into the city dump. This is the first small step on the way to exaltation. I'm not letting that happen, God said. You're not going to end up on the dump. There was no violence, meaning nothing in His behavior was wrong. There was no deceit, meaning nothing in His heart was wrong. Because it's out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. God honored Jesus in His burial because there was no sin in Him on the outside, there was no sin in Him on the inside. He was the Lamb, unblemished and spotless. And God starts Him up. from this terrible humiliation. My personal hero is the Apostle Paul. Paul made this confession that the Jews will one day make. Do you think he understood Isaiah 53? Steve talked to you about Romans 1. I think when Paul talks in Romans 1, 2 about the prophets speaking of Christ, he must well have had Isaiah 53 in his mind. He probably had it memorized. because he then refers to it several times in the book of Romans. Paul made this confession in Philippians 2. He understood that. He had spent his whole life trying to establish a righteousness of his own according to the Law. And in Philippians 3, everything changes. He says, Since I've come to Christ, I've been found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith." And once he understood the righteousness of God that comes through the work of Christ, he never saw Jesus the same again. He says that in 2 Corinthians 5...15 to 17. I don't know Christ after the flesh, he says, any longer. In fact, I don't know anybody after the flesh. I don't see anybody for just the human case. I certainly don't see Christ that way. The Jews one day will see Jesus the way Paul saw Him, the way you and I see Him. More to come tonight. Thank you, Father, for your truth. Thank You that Your Word is powerful, penetrating, comforting, encouraging, enlightening, convicting. It is a treasure beyond our grasp. Every savory taste of it is a delight. It is more precious than gold, much fine gold, and sweeter than honey from the honeycomb. Thank You for it. And for the work that You have done for us, blessed Holy Spirit, we thank You for giving us life. We thank You, Father, for planning and choosing. We thank You, Holy Spirit, for giving us life. We thank You, blessed Savior. for bearing our sins. And may that thanks show up in how we live and proclaim the gospel. Enable us to do that, we pray, in Christ's name. Amen.