THE PASSION OF CHRIST
Isaiah 52:13-53:9-12
Part 11
THE REVELATION OF GOD’S PLEASURE
Isaiah 53:10
Good News Christian Fellowship
March 12, 2006
Last’s week we have seen the Suffering of the Servant of God as Prophet Isaiah prophesy hundred years before it happens: His Mission; His Rejection; His Substitutionary Sacrifice; His Submission; His Death; His Burial.
“Jesus not only fulfills Old Testament expectations of a coming prophet and king. The Promise of the Old Testament sacrifices also fulfilled in Him… In His death He accomplishes what the repeated animals sacrifices of the Old Testament could only promise, an effective and final atonement. Sinners who look to Him and His cross can stand confidently before the Holy One.” (Thomas L. Trevethan)
We are all sinners. That’s the troubling thing. We all go in our own ways (Romans 3:23) we are short of the Glory of God. We exchange the glory of God in our affection for something else.
That’s what we are. And that is what all those people are like that God has chosen to save. And even after he makes them his own and bring disgrace upon his name by their inconsistency and half-hearted response to Jesus command to love God.
So the troubling thing is that God is so enthusiastic about being good to people whose sinfulness is blight on his name. He desired to save His people from bondage of sins. That’s the heart of God.
Now let’s read…
Isaiah 53:10 "Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shall 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.”
In this verse we read, “he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days…”
His seed is the generation (Ps. 22:30) that shall serve him, the whole body of God’s elect. He shall prolong his days, means that, once he has by his death fully satisfied the justice of God and put away the sins of his people, he will be raised from the dead to declare in the most public, undeniable manner possible that all for whom he died are forever justified.
However, the thing we have to focus on this afternoon is that it is the Father who is AT WORK, in His INITIATIVE, not us, for the bruising His Son and putting him to death. Jesus was not swept away by the wrath of uncontrolled men and women; He was BRUISED by His Father. This was not the case somehow we can impress God by our own gifts and sacrifices; somehow we can make Him beholden to us so that he will be favorable toward us.
“Redemptive history is like a symphony with two great themes: God’s passion to preserve and display his glory and God’s inscrutable love for sinners who have scorned His glory…
The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the resolution of the symphony of history. In the death of Jesus the two themes of God’s love for His glory and His love for sinners are resolved…
God’s pleasure in His name and His pleasure in doing well to sinners meet in His pleasure in bruising His son” (John Piper)
Our Savior died by the hand of God, according to the will of God, for the GLORY of God. Though our Lord Jesus Christ “knew no sin,” the Lord God was pleased to bruise him in the place of sinners for sin. We recognize that our Redeemer was crucified by the hands of wicked men; but he was delivered to their hands by the will of God (Acts 2:23)
The Lord Jesus Christ died according to the purpose, decree, and will of God.
I Peter 1:18-21
Acts 13:28-29
It is the father who is at work, not us. Notice: “the Lord- has laid on him the iniquities of us all.” God make atonement. He is characteristically the subject of the verb make atonement [propitiate] and almost never its object. God propitiates his own wrath against those who deserve death. So great is His love for His people.
Why? To resolve the tension between the fathers love for His glory and His love for sinners. Notice verse 6. The issue here is His initiative in bruising His son and iniquities of His people. The bruising of His son was because God-dishonoring Son could not be ignored. And why couldn’t be ignored? Because God love the honor of his name. He will not act as though sin-, which belittles His glory-, didn’t matter.
So God the father and His son agreed that they will demonstrate to the entire world the infinitely worth of the father’s glory. How? By taking the punishment and suffering that our sin deserved. Verse 5 makes the substitution every more explicit: “He was wounded for our transgressions”; “He was bruised for our iniquities.”
Nothing escapes the will, purpose, decree, and power of God. Everything that comes to pass in time was ORDAINED by God in ETERNITY. You may be sure that God Almighty, who feeds the sparrows, clothes the lilies, and numbers the hairs of our heads, left nothing to chance or circumstance regarding the life and death of his dear Son
The death of Christ was no accident, or after thought! The death of Christ was in the mind and heart of God from everlasting (Rev. 13:8).
Christ was not a forced surety but a willing one, a willing Servant, a willing Savior, a willing Substitute, and a willing Sacrifice.
Psalm 40:6-7
Proverbs 8:23-31
Isaiah 50:5-7
John 10:17
Hebrews 12:2
And so to save sinners and at the same time magnify the worth of His glory God lays our sins on Jesus and abandon Him to the shame and slaughter of the cross.
Read Psalm 22.
We read of the terrible agonies he endured as he hung upon the cross, suffering the wrath of God.
Typically when we discuss the passages, “for so God love the world…” “For all have sinned…” “God made him who had no sin…” we focus on what was accomplished for us. We failed to realized what God accomplished in the cross is for the pleasure of His GLORY. The turning aside of the wrath and curse due to sin are wonderful beyond our best and noblest thought. Indeed, the cross accomplishes what it accomplishes just because the character of God that it reveals.
In the cross God supremely reveals the majesty and wonder of His grace, his overflowing undeserved kindness to those who deserve only his severity. Noticed God is the subject of the verbs in the New Testaments wonderful declaration about the cross: God made him to be sin for us; God presented him as one who would turn aside his wrath; He did this to demonstrate his justice; God sent his son. He is the great author of pardon and redemption through propitiation.
The costliness of this redemption magnifies the marvel of grace. Release from the penalty of our sins comes with terrible price tag. Jesus poured out his life in our place. It was paid when he drank the cup of the wrath of God as he hung on the cross.
Cross is God’s self-propitiation. It is all too easy for our thinking to go awry as we ponder Jesus’ achievement for us. Unless we are careful, we slip into thinking of a gracious Jesus who intervenes on our behalf with a justly angry father. But such thinking fails to observe the Fathers’ initiative of love and unity of father and son in the cross. It is God initiative to send his son. And the son obeyed the father. Turning aside of the wrath of God on the cross was brought about by God himself.
The cross is a full propitiation. The biblical affirmations we are pondering make plain that the Holy One fully and effectively accomplished his gracious purpose in the death of his Son. The cross was not an isolated event but the central act in God’s plan to save.
What could be the Father delight in bruising his son? One part of the answer must be what is stressed at the end of verse 10, namely, that God’s pleasure is not so much in the suffering of the son, but in the great success of what the son could accomplish in his dying.
In the cross God reveals both the reality of his wrath against sin and the reality of his love for sinners. It is supremely in the mighty sacrifice of Jesus on the cross that we see God’s love and justice “kiss each other.” One is the certainty and the seriousness of the Holy One’s personal reaction against sin. The other is the greatness and faithfulness of the Holy One’s personal love, which provided the sacrifice that would avert his wrath from men and women. Don’t think that the cross reveals only the love of God. It reveals both the wrath of God against sin and his love for the sinners.
The just demands of God’s holiness must be met when sinners are liberated from their penalty of sin. They are meet in Christ’s death He became sin for us by bearing in his person the entire penalty due to us. On the basis of his substitutionary death he extends acquittal and imparts righteousness to sinful men and women. The mighty sacrifice of Jesus Christ reveals the seriousness, intensity and justice of God’s reaction to sin.
Let us ponder and meditate to this message and truth God reveals to us. Let us savor the glory and greatness of God.
Jesus said in John 10:15,17, “ I lay down my life for the sheep… for this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again.”
REFLECTION
1.What images or ideas conveyed here by Isaiah moved you the most?
2. Do you believe that the answer to your deepest need is a Person- a Person who died on the
cross for us and for His glory?
3. Spend some time in prayer, thanking God for sending His Son to die on the cross for us.
Thank Jesus Christ for the sacrifices He made to be obedient unto death and to relate to all
of us through His suffering.
