Man of sorrows, wondrous name for the Son
of God who came, ruined sinners to reclaim,
hallelujah, what a Savior.
Lord Jesus, point us afresh to thy nail
prints and to the work that thou hast
accomplished for us at Calvary, and grant, O
Lord, that there may be a response to
thine own great love, which will glorify thy
name and make it possible for thee to
use each one of us in our lives.
Shut us in with thyself and give us
the grace of concentration upon thy word, and
make the book live, and send us from
this place with some burden lifted, and some
doubts removed, and with a new glimpse of
our victorious Lord.
We ask it for his name's sake.
Amen.
I would like you, dear friends, if you
will, to turn with me this morning for
our meditation in the word of God to
the prophecy of Isaiah and the 50th chapter,
which was read to us early in the
service by Pastor Durie.
Isaiah chapter 50.
Let me read to you verses 5 and
6.
The Lord God hath opened mine ear, and
I was not rebellious, neither turned away back.
I gave my back to the smiters and
my cheeks to them that plucked off the
hair.
I hid not my face from shame and
spitting.
This chapter in the word is the answer
of God to a people who suggested that
he had cut them off and ceased to
care for them.
True, they were in bondage, without an altar,
without a place of sacrifice, without apparent access
to their God.
But it was sin which had put them
there.
The first verse of this chapter says, Behold,
for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves.
How often he had warned and pleaded and
spoken with them, and yet there was none
to answer.
Wherefore, when I came, says the Lord, was
there no man?
When I called, was there none to answer?
His arm was not shortened, his power was
no less.
Only one thing had hid his face from
them, and it's the thing and the only
thing that hides the face of God from
any of us, and that was their sin.
How graphic is the language of the third
verse of this chapter, I clothe the heavens
with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering.
Oh, the tragedy in the heart of God,
the pang, the pain, the agony, the suffering
when his children sin.
That's what happens in heaven.
We may think lightly of it, we may
think it doesn't matter, we may excuse it,
we may even justify it, but it clothes
heaven with blackness and sackcloth.
Sin is the only thing that can do
that.
But God went even further than declaring his
power to save his people from this.
He revealed his willingness and the lengths to
which he was prepared to go, that a
people burdened with sin might understand that in
spite of it, God cares, and he loves,
and he has not forsaken.
For though God hates our sin, he loves
the sinner, and he is never prepared to
leave us to our fate, just though it
might be to do so, without first of
all giving us a clear revelation of his
longing for our salvation.
I want you, therefore, this morning, if I
speak to some who listen to my voice,
and who've made excuses, and because of it
have felt themselves forsaken of God, I want
you to catch the picture that heaven is
in mourning over some of you today.
The angels weep.
You may laugh it off, shrug it off,
imagine that this is something that can be
excused, or as I say, justified.
Ah, but the harps have ceased, as it
were, in the glory over your life, and
the rejoicing that was there over a sinner
that once repented and turned to God, has
become silent.
God has made sackcloth the covering in the
breaking of his heart, because of the behavior
of his children.
And in face of this, knowing full well
the true facts, yet we complain and suggest
that God doesn't care.
Here is God's answer to a complaining people.
Of course, in the mind and the vision
of the prophet, we are moving toward the
revelation of the one who was wounded for
our transgressions, and who was bruised for our
iniquities.
That's the supreme answer of God to all
our complaint and all our suffering.
We haven't got there yet, in our meditations,
but we're coming.
And the chapter breathes the whole atmosphere of
this fact, that because we've sinned, there's a
cross in the heart of God.
The thing that we've done, the thing which
we've covered up, the thing which we've excused,
has driven another nail into the hands of
Jesus.
Now, of course, we bear in mind, in
our meditation upon this prophecy, that Isaiah is
referring here to the servant of Jehovah, not
Israel collectively, but our Savior personally.
The one who, as the 49th chapter and
the 6th verse reminds us, is to bring
Jacob again to Him, and who is to
be a light to the Gentiles and salvation
to the ends of the earth.
And there are some things here, in this
chapter, concerning our Lord, that we need to
reflect upon very solemnly in His presence this
morning, and in the light of them to
consider our behavior.
Do we say that God doesn't care?
Do we say that it doesn't matter to
Him?
Let me ask you to notice here what
I have called the Father's commission.
Notice the language of the 4th verse here
a moment.
May I put this in the revised version
for you?
Morning by morning, He wakeneth mine ear to
hear as those that are taught.
At the back of all our complaint that
God forgets, and God doesn't care, is this
thing that is described for us in this
verse, weariness.
Weariness.
That I should know, He says, how to
speak a word in season to them that
are weary.
I suppose all of us know something at
one stage or another of physical weariness, and
all of us know something about mental fatigue,
and all of us know something about being
heart sick, just heart sick.
But I think the greatest weariness of all
comes upon a man who just gets weary
in the battle of life.
The battle he has with himself, and his
sin.
Oh, how often you have longed, haven't you,
that somehow you might make one mighty attack
with the devil and be done with him
forever.
But instead of that, the conflict has been
incessant.
To defeat him today only invites a renewed
attack tomorrow, in some more subtle guise, perhaps.
And it goes on day after day, and
that ordeal is continuous, and beneath that ordeal,
heart and flesh have often failed.
Oh, God, is there no release for this,
you have cried.
Oh, there's nothing new in that.
Your weariness in the conflict against sin is
not exclusive.
My Bible reminds us in the 8th chapter
of Romans, in the 22nd verse, that the
whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain,
until now.
Oh, the awful weariness of sin.
And there's never been a day, perhaps, which
it's so obvious and evident as it is,
in this day in which we live, the
sheer fatigue, and the sheer heart sickness with
it all.
But to such a word, the Father sent
the Son.
And He sent Him to speak a word
in season to them that are weary in
the battle.
The thought, of course, in this 4th verse,
if you look at it, is that before
the Son could speak that word to us,
He must Himself be identified with our weariness.
So we see His preparation for this great
task.
Though He were a Son, says the book,
He learned obedience by the things that He
suffered.
And He passed through every stage and every
sphere of human exhaustion.
Let me remind you.
Think of it.
Let the Holy Spirit speak to us about
this concerning a God that we say has
forgotten.
Being wearied with His journey, He sat by
the well.
He looked up to heaven and sighed because
of their unbelief.
Oh, wicked and perverse generation, how long shall
I be with you?
How long shall I suffer you?
Heart sickness.
And the weariness in the battle with the
thing that has defeated us.
Weariness in this spiritual conflict that one day
in the end of it all made Him
stumble under the sheer load and fall as
He walked up carrying His cross, that green
hill.
And all through His life, He was constantly
learning.
Morning by morning, says the scripture, morning by
morning, He wakeneth.
He wakeneth mine ear to hear as those
who are taught, as the disciple.
Recall again.
A brief snatch of sleep, somewhere on a
mountainside, somewhere in a lonely valley, somewhere by
the lakeshore, for occasionally maybe in a home
at Bethany.
Just a break, a brief snatch of rest.
And then waken.
And then the voice, speaking from the glory,
morning by morning, speaking and bringing to Him
constantly the shadow of the cross from which
there was no escape.
Never man spake like this man, they said.
And every day, every morning, as He wakened,
the Father spoke again.
And what He heard in the ear, He
proclaimed upon the housetop as the Lord Jesus
prepared for this great task of our salvation.
The Father's commission.
Look at the Son's obedience in verse 5.
The Lord God opened mine ear, I was
not rebellious, neither turned away back.
Every day the Father poured into the ear
of the Son the picture of Calvary.
He must suffer, He must die.
He could never be God's answer to my
weariness and to my sinfulness, merely by His
enduring hardship.
He must go all the way, He must
bleed, He must be made sin.
He must be identified with the horror of
it and the filth of it and the
evil of it.
It all must pile into Him at the
cross.
He must take it all.
And from His birth to His death, Calvary,
Calvary, Calvary, constantly, constantly spoken into His heart.
And He anticipated all the suffering.
The shame, says the Scripture here, the spitting,
the scourging, the cross.
But He was not rebellious, neither did He
turn away back.
And He set His face steadfastly toward Jerusalem.
My friend, when you and I sin, we
sin against that.
We sin against that.
Ah, God forgive us.
We say He doesn't care.
We say He's forgotten.
Heaven mourns and the angels weep and we
go on living like that.
And He turned not away.
He was not rebellious.
Because He loved.
Amazing that He loved.
The Father's commission, the Son's obedience, the servant's
suffering.
Look at the sixth verse of this chapter.
I gave my back to the smiters, my
cheeks to them that plucked off the hair.
I hid not my face from shame and
spitting.
Obedience involved for Jesus, suffering like that.
Insult, shame, cruelty, contempt and finally murder.
But He endured it and He endured it
voluntarily.
Look at the word, I gave, I gave
my back to the smiter.
And He looked down two thousand years in
His mind.
And He had you and me in His
heart.
And He saw the life we lived.
And He saw the sin we committed.
And He saw our failure and our breakdown.
And He saw our excuses of it and
our justification of it.
He saw us and listened to us saying
it doesn't matter.
God's forgotten.
He doesn't care.
I can get away with this.
I can live like that.
Nobody knows.
Nobody minds.
And He bore His back to the smiter.
For you and me.
I gave my back.
But one flash of His majesty and power
and authority.
Those who would have captured Him fell on
their faces to the ground in front of
Him.
They could have had no, they couldn't have
touched Him if He hadn't consented.
They blindfolded Him and buffeted Him and struck
Him and spat in His face.
And He saw through the bandage.
And said, Thou couldst have no power at
all against me.
Except it were given thee from my Father
in heaven.
And I see my precious Lord Jesus exposing
His dear lovely face.
That dear sweet face that wept with prayer
and tears for you and for me.
And for a sinning world.
A face the like of which humanity has
never gazed upon.
In its beauty and loveliness and strength and
power and meekness.
And I see His lovely face exposed to
the shame and the spitting of that crowd.
The face from which, says my Bible, when
He comes in glory and majesty and power.
The face, the face from which heaven and
earth will flee away.
The face which will make people cry out
for the rocks to hide them and to
fall on them.
The face of Jesus.
And as I think of Him and I
excuse myself.
I think of His suffering.
And somehow I know that it wasn't the
nails that bound Him to the tree.
But it was a passion for the glory
of God at any cost.
And an undying love for men who were
utterly revolting to Him.
Because He was holy.
Was it the nails, O Savior, that bound
thee to the tree?
Nay, it was thine everlasting love for me.
For me.
And you say God has forgotten?
And you justify your conduct?
Let me say to you with such terror
in my heart as I do.
Let me say to you.
If you don't look up into that lovely
face.
Quickly.
And say, Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner.
And I've been hiding it and cloaking it
up and covering it in the name of
religion.
In the name of Christian profession.
In the name of sympathy for other people.
I've allowed myself to be carried away into
the worst form of failure and sin.
If I don't look up Him, His face,
and tell Him the whole story.
And watch Him look back at me with
love and grace and forgiving mercy.
One day, one day, those eyes like a
flame of fire will look into the depths
of my soul.
And I'll run away in vain from them.
It'll be too late then.
Let me tell you that God is going
to have the last word about your sin.
Not you.
Lord, have mercy on us.
The son's obedience.
The father's commission.
The servant's suffering.
The Savior's victory.
Verse seven.
The Lord God will help me.
Therefore shall I not be confounded.
Therefore have I set my face like a
flint.
And I know that I shall not be
ashamed.
The Lord God will help me.
Therefore shall I not be confounded.
Therefore have I set my face like a
flint.
You notice that the tone is changing now
in this chapter.
His previous words were full of submission, surrender,
patient suffering.
We've been, as it were, into Gethsemane there.
And we've watched Him going up that green
hill.
We've seen it all.
Oh, but the eternal God lets us peer,
as it were, into the very heart of
the suffering Jesus.
Lets us listen to what was going on
in His soul as He went alone up
that cross, that lonely road.
As in His heart He is saying, the
Lord God will help me.
Therefore have I set my face like a
flint.
And I know that I shall not be
ashamed.
He is near that justifieth me.
Who will contend with me?
Let us stand together.
Who is mine adversary?
Let him come near to me.
Behold, the Lord God will help me.
Who is He that shall condemn me?
Lo, they shall all wax old as a
garment.
The moth shall eat them up.
You tell me that God doesn't care?
My God, why hast thou forsaken me, was
the central cry upon the cross.
And here, here is the echo of it.
But in it all there's a ring of
determination.
Listen to Him as He treads the winepress
alone.
As He trudges that weary journey up to
the cross.
As He bears the agony of it all
and faces that last stage of the conflict.
That last stage of the battle.
As He takes the cup the Father has
given Him to drink it to the very
dregs.
That there might not be left one drop
for us to drink.
That we might be free from all judgment.
Thy will not mine be done.
He'd said.
He could have called twelve legions of angels
to deliver Him.
But He faced it alone.
And repeating in the face of all the
shame of it.
Just picture it in Pilate's hall there.
With Peter outside denying Him.
With the disciples running from Him.
And Judas has kissed Him and betrayed Him.
With all his profession of belief.
And there's Jesus standing there with all his
shame.
And in his heart this is going on.
The Lord God will help me.
I shan't be confounded.
I've set my face like a flint.
I know I shan't be ashamed.
Picture it.
He's near who justifies me.
He was sure in that uttermost of the
depths of the moment which meant our redemption.
He's gone right down there to prove to
you that He cares.
He's sure of victory.
Absolutely confident of it.
His confidence is based upon His Father's help.
And that faith in His Father's help was
based upon obedience to His Father's will.
Listen.
The whole life of Jesus at that moment
as He was down, down, down.
Facing sin and being made sin for us.
That whole life of Jesus constituted a claim
upon God that He could not deny.
There is absolute confidence of triumph here.
The possibility of failure at the last minute
never occurred to Him.
The Son of Man must suffer many things.
Must be killed.
Must be raised again.
For the joy that was set before Him.
He endured the cross despising the shame.
He sat down in the right hand of
God.
Yes, the cross was always before Him, but
so was the empty tomb.
Always sure of His ability to fulfill the
purpose of His coming.
To give His life a ransom for many.
The victory of the Lord Jesus.
Sure that God would vindicate Him.
He is near that justifieth me, He says.
And the word is, He is near that
vindicates.
Not justifies in the sense of making Him
righteous, but vindicates.
Vindicates His name.
He is near that does this.
Through all that suffering and all that bloody
trial.
And all the way up that road to
Calvary.
He stayed Himself.
By saying, He is near.
Who is He that condemns?
It is God that justifies.
The world had said of Him, He's a
friend of sinners.
God justified Him by saying, if He is
the friend of sinners, He's that in order
to make sinners saints.
The world had said He was mad.
God justified Him and has done so ever
since by making the teaching of Jesus Christ
to be the light of every soul.
That's trusted in.
The world said He got a devil.
God vindicated Him by giving Him the power
to cast out every devil.
The world said He blasphemed when He called
Himself the Son of God.
God justified Him, vindicated Him by raising Him
up from the dead.
So that He's going to come one day
soon in the clouds of heaven.
With great glory.
What is this to say to my heart
and yours this morning?
I don't know how to say it.
My heart is so deeply stirred as I
think about the cross today somehow.
So glad we're breaking bread in a few
moments.
That's probably the greatest appeal, far greater than
anything you could hear from me.
All I want to say to you, beloved
friend, if you can go on sinning in
the light of that, God have mercy on
you.
That's what it cost Jesus.
That's what He thought about sin.
That's what it meant to Him to face
it.
That's what He went through and you say
He's forgotten and He doesn't care and He'll
overlook it and excuse it.
What is the appeal to my life in
this?
Well, I think it's, I think it's twofold
really.
In the first place, I think it's an
appeal to identification with our Lord.
There are limits, of course, beyond which no
human being can go.
But I think the Lord is saying to
my heart and yours again this morning, this
was the way that the Master trod in
preparation for His commission.
The Lord hath given me the tongue of
those who are taught.
That I should know how to speak a
word in season to them that are weary.
He wakeneth me morning by morning.
He wakeneth mine ear to hear as those
who are taught.
If I have faced this question about which
I've been speaking to you in relation to
my own life, if you have, if you've
come to the cross for forgiveness and cleansing,
you must come to it also for identification.
I have been crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ
liveth in me.
The life that I now live, I live
by faith in the Son of God who
loved me and gave Himself for me.
And this means I must tread the Calvary
road too.
He wants to give you and me the
tongue of those who are taught.
He wants to give me and you, both
of us, all of us, the ability to
speak a word in season to the man
who's weary in the battle.
And to do this, He wakens you morning
by morning to speak the word of the
cross into your ear.
And He expects you to share with Him
as you take the scoffing and reviling and
persecution of other people and you make yourself
a doormat for Jesus' sake.
I think it's an appeal to identification.
But I think it's also appeal today to
those who say that God has forgotten to
put their trust in this Lord.
For do you notice the language of the
tenth verse here?
Who is among you that feareth the Lord,
that obeyeth the voice of His servant, that
walketh in darkness and hath no light?
Let him trust in the name of the
Lord and stay upon his guard.
I wonder if you're in the dark this
morning.
And you're in the dark spiritually just because
of the attitudes about which I've been speaking.
Well, the scripture says, Behold, all ye that
kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with
sparks, walk in the light of your fire
and the sparks that you've kindled.
This shall you have of mine hand, you
shall lie down in sorrow.
Yes, you can try and get out of
that by escaping and evading the real issue
and make your own spark and your own
light.
But there's another way.
There's another way.
He that walketh in darkness and hath no
light, let him trust in the Lord.
For the Lord God will help you, and
therefore you will not be confounded.
And therefore you, like Jesus, may set your
face like a flint.
And you too, like Him, will know that
you shall never be ashamed.
Listen, if I'm prepared honestly, do I see
this principle to accept as Jesus did, this
whole life of utter submission and preparation that
He might be made sin for us.
If I submit as He submitted in obedience
to the will of God, then just as
His life made a claim upon the power
and intervention and ability of heaven, so will
mine.
So will mine.
If I walk that Calvary road today, if
I recognize that I've simply been excusing myself,
justifying myself, and I stop this, and I
repent, and I turn to God, and I
trust Him, and I submit to Him, and
I work with Him, then, beloved, I tell
you, that constitutes a demand upon the throne
in heaven.
It's the man who's repented and broken with
the whole business that is guaranteed the outpouring
of the Holy Ghost upon his life constantly.
No one else.
If ever, if ever there came, comes to
you from this pulpit, any other pulpit, a
measure, in some measure, of a word that
has behind it more than human words and
eloquence, but has behind it the conviction, burning
of the Spirit of God, this is because
the man who preaches to you has had
to face this principal person.
And I would beg of you, dear Christian
friends, I would beg of you, for Jesus'
sake, in the light this morning of the
picture of all that He has suffered in
your place, I beg of you to reflect
upon the life you live, and to ask
Him, by His grace, to take you the
path of submission, the path of obedience, that
He might, might enable you to speak a
word in season to the weary, that He
may make you walk the Calvary road with
Him in obedience to Him, and that your
life in submission to the will of God
might constitute a claim upon all the power
of the risen Lord, which He died and
rose to make possible and available to you,
in order that through you there may come
the authority of Jesus.
I cannot tell, says the hymn, how silently
He suffered, as with His peace He graced
this place of tears, or how His heart
upon the cross was broken, the crown of
pain, to three-and-thirty years.
But this I know, He heals the broken
-hearted, and stays our sin, and calms our
lurking fears, and lifts the burden from the
heavy-laden, for yet the Saviour, Saviour of
the world, is here.
Shall we bow together in prayer, a moment
of quietness, before we sing our concluding hymn,
O, that I might reflect and you might
reflect upon how we live, in the light
of this picture of what it meant to
Him to bear away our sin.
Let him that walketh in darkness trust in
the Lord, for in Him there is everlasting
strength.
O God, for Jesus' sake, may Thy Spirit
so move in our hearts that there will
be an uttermost repentance to the uttermost of
Thy love, that therefore in our life there
might be acclaim upon heaven's resources.
Poor and needy and helpless we would be
before Thy feet, Lord Jesus, for that's the
place where Thou canst pour out Thy blessing
and power.
Grant it, Lord, for Jesus' sake.
Amen.