The Servant Saves By Suffering in Our Place

 Isaiah 53:4-10

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, And like a
sheep that is silent before its shearers, 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 a rich man in His death, Because He
had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth. But the LORD was pleased To
crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His
offspring, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.

Sermon for Good Friday 04/18/14

The Servant of Isaiah
The Servant Saves By Suffering in Our Place

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Today we come to the heart of it. Today we celebrate the suffering and death of our Savior, the
Suffering Servant of Isaiah. And yes, we celebrate it! We don't celebrate pain or death, as such,
nor the need for such a sacrifice. Sin is our shame. We celebrate that God's Servant, His Son
Jesus Christ, did it on our behalf. We celebrate the love it took love for His Father and love for
us. We celebrate His obedience. We celebrate the result, that we have been redeemed! Our
theme tonight is "The Servant Saves by Suffering in Our Place."

The whole story of Good Friday is told by Isaiah eight hundred years before it happened. By
oppression and judgment, He was taken away. Jesus was arrested although innocent. Today we
would cry out about our rights, but He had none. A kangaroo court convicted Him and
sentenced Him to die. They could not come up with one legitimate charge against Him, so they
asked Him who is the Truth itself if He were the Son of God, and when He told them, they called
Him a liar and a blasphemer and sentenced Him to die.

They had no legitimate charge, but God did. 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
utterly innocent, personally, but He took our place and bore our sin. Isaiah even notes that He
was innocent, He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth. But the LORD
was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering.
The guilt He suffered for was ours. Note, too, that we are not the only ones celebrating. The
Lord was pleased to crush Him. He was not pleased to cause Him pain, but pleased to crush Him
on our behalf, in our place, and for our salvation. That was the will of God for us!

Because of our sin, the Servant had to suffer or we did, and our Heavenly Father chose to pour
out His wrath upon His Son instead. 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.

Listen to those words: He bore our grief and carried our sorrows. The pains of Hell were His, but
He felt them even before the cross. In the garden, in the midst of His prayers, Jesus told the
disciples, "My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death." Many translations use the word
"sorrowful" whereas ours uses the word "grieved". The horror of what He faced for us, all by
itself, was nearly enough to kill Him.

But then they mocked Jesus, just as the devil had during the temptations following His Baptism.
The devil said, "if you are the Son of God . . .", and the crowd around His cross would cry out,
"HE TRUSTS IN GOD; LET HIM DELIVER Him now, IF HE TAKES PLEASURE IN HIM; for He said, 'I
am the Son of God.'" People today, oftentimes from within the church as we see it in our world
today, reject the notion that Jesus was truly God or His Son. They deny His resurrection. They
accuse Jesus of being a failed teacher or a ruined revolutionary put to death for His politically
incorrect ideas. They say He was a good man, perhaps, but they do not see Him as their God.
Isaiah's words fit, we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted.

In the midst of this, the Servant never cried out or called for justice, or His rights, as so many do
nowadays. He was convicted by an illegal court, for the Sanhedrin could not legally meet, as
they did that night, by their own rules! They could not legitimately convict without three
witnesses who agreed, or at least two who agreed clearly. But they did! When they dragged
Him before Pilate, the Governor sent from Rome had to confess that he found no guilt in Jesus,
nothing that deserved this uproar, much less death. The Bible tells us in Matthew 27:18 and
Mark 15:10 that Pilate knew that the Priests had sent Jesus before him because of envy, and
yet Pilate condemned Him, an innocent man, to death on the cross. Yet, in all of this, Jesus
remained remarkably silent. Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter,
And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth.

The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. Although
innocent, Pilate had Jesus scourged to try to appease the priests. Pilate said he would teach
Him a lesson. What lesson was Jesus supposed to learn from being scourged as an innocent
man? That was our scourging! Those were our stripes He bore. He did it for us because we had
it all coming. We are healed from the disease of sin and the just wrath of God due to sin
because there is no more wrath to pour out. Jesus bore it all, for us.

He was pierced through. The prophecy speaks those words without telling us if they are to refer
to the nails that pierced His hands and feet, or to the spear which pierced His side. I suspect
that they refer to both. The nails, which Jesus felt, and the spear which He did not feel, because
He was already dead. The blood and water that John speaks of coming out of the spear wound
are evidence that He was already dead. The plasma and the red blood cells had already
separated, as they do when the heart stops, a fact even the ancients knew about.

And it happened, as Isaiah prophesied, among the wicked. His grave was assigned with wicked
men. He was crucified with true criminals, one on either side of Him. They were convicted, too,
but guilty as the one malefactor said. I like that word, malefactor. It means "evil doer". He
confessed the truth of the situation, "We are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this
man has done nothing wrong." They were truly criminals robbers, according to Matthew.

All of this is on account of sin, our sin. The next time you are tempted to ignore what you know
is the will of God and do or say something just because it suits you or gives you an advantage,
or profits you in some small way, think about this. Jesus endured all of this because sin is the
deadly serious thing it is. The crucifixion, and the hours of torment leading up to it, illustrate
the true nature of sin. It is not simply the deeds that we do against our better knowledge, but
the state of being in rebellion against God. The acts, the words, and even the thoughts done,
spoken, or conceived in sin merit death by themselves, but it is us and our very nature that
Jesus died to atone for. He died this grisly death because we are corrupt, twisted, weak, and
enemies of God by nature. The Servant saves by Suffering.

Even His burial was part of the prophecy, Yet He was with a rich man in His death. And Joseph
of Arimathea, a wealthy man, whose wealth was evident in the carving of a new tomb in the
nearby garden, came and took the dead body and placed it in his new tomb. Every part of the
passion and death of our Lord is clearly prophesied by Isaiah. The Suffering Servant who was to
come and save us by His suffering was Jesus.

If that were the whole story, it would be a sad story. It would be the noble tale of a good man
who died on behalf of others. Stirring and exemplary, but hardly worth all of this fuss two
thousand years later. But, as you know, this is not the whole story. Isaiah even knew that truth.
He ended this section of his prophecy like this, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His
days, And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.

Of course, Jesus had no children in the ordinary way. We are His offspring. In Baptism we have
each been adopted into the household of God! His days are prolonged, as Isaiah described it,
because He rose from the dead and lives eternally! And the good pleasure of the Lord? That
phrase means, "the will of God". And what is the will of God? Our Salvation! That is the will of
God, that the one who knows and believes and trusts in God to do all that He has promised in
connection with Jesus Christ and the crucifixion and the resurrection, shall be saved! There
have been thousands of thousands throughout the centuries, and there exists that Church of
those that believe today. The good pleasure of the Lord has prospered and shall continue to
prosper in the hands of this Servant of the Lord until it shall please the Lord to bring it to an end
and bring us all to live in His glory. Isaiah's Prophecies of the Servant have shown it to us, and to
all that believe since before the time of Jesus Himself. "The Servant Saves by Suffering in Our
Place."

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)