Isaiah chapter 53.
Who hath believed our message, and to whom
hath the arm of Jehovah been revealed?
For he grew up before him as a
tender plant and as a root out of
a dry ground.
He hath no form nor comeliness, and when
we see him there is no beauty that
we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected of men, a
man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and
as one from whom men hide their face
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.
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 every one to his own way,
and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity
of us all.
He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted
he opened not his mouth.
As a lamb that is led to the
slaughter, and as a sheep that before its
shearers is dumb, so he opened not his
mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away,
and as for his generation, who among them
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?
And they made his grave with the wicked
and with the rich man in his death.
Although he had done no violence, neither was
there any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it pleased Jehovah 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
Jehovah shall prosper in his hand.
He shall see of the travel of his
soul, and shall be satisfied.
By the knowledge of himself shall my righteous
servant justify many, and 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 poured out his
soul unto death, and was numbered with the
transgressors.
Yet he bare the sin of many, and
made intercession for the transgressors.
May God bless this, the reading of his
own holy word.
Dr. Alan Redpath speaks to us.
I'm going to suggest we sing just three
verses of Hymn 219.
219, singing the first, three verses only.
Master speak, thy servant heareth.
Just a word of prayer before we turn
to the word.
Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.
Speak just now some message to meet my
need, which thou only dost know.
Speak now through thy holy word, and make
me see some wonderful truth thou hast to
show to me, for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
Would you open your Bibles this morning, please,
at the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, and
let me read to you the seventh verse.
Isaiah 53 and verse 7.
He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet
he opened not his mouth.
He is brought as a shearer's is dumb,
so openeth he not his mouth.
We are entering into a very important stage
of this convention.
We have only two more days of ministry,
and as we do so, the Lord has
laid upon my heart a word to speak
to you concerning the reaction of the Lord
Jesus Christ to suffering, which I trust may
be his word to your heart through me
today.
You notice that in this verse we read,
He was hard pressed and humbled himself, yet
he openeth not his mouth.
Those last few words are repeated again in
the verse, suggesting that the preeminent thing in
the attitude of Jesus to suffering was silence.
Never man spake like this man, they said
of him, but never man was silent like
this man.
Would you just remind yourself, through the Scripture,
of the reaction of our Lord, especially in
the last moments of his life, to all
the scorn and all the derision of his
enemies.
Turn with me to just one or two
passages that remind us of these things.
Matthew chapter 26, just a verse or two
from that chapter.
Verse 62, Matthew 26 and verse 62.
And the high priest arose and said unto
him, Answerest thou nothing?
What is it which these witness against thee?
But Jesus held his peace.
And the high priest answered and said unto
him, I adjure thee by the living God,
that thou tell us whether thou be the
Christ, the Son of God.
Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said.
Nevertheless I say unto you hereafter, Shall ye
see the Son of Man sitting on the
right hand of power, and coming in the
clouds of heaven.
Here is stands doth our Saviour before the
high priest, accused of blasphemy.
And he is silent, except when to remain
silent would have been to deny his claim
to deity.
Again in Matthew 27 and verse 11.
And Jesus stood before the governor.
And the governor asked him, saying, Art thou
the king of the Jews?
And Jesus said unto him, Thou seest.
And when he was accused of the chief
priests and elders, he answered nothing.
Then sent Pilate unto him, Hearest thou not
how many things they witness against thee?
And he answered him to never a word,
insomuch that the governor marveled greatly.
And here is our Saviour standing before the
Roman governor, accused of treason.
And he answers him nothing.
He remains silent, except to be silent would
deny his claim to be king.
And later in that chapter, as you remember,
before the whole band of soldiers who stripped
him and crowned him with thorns, blindfolded him
and spat on him, struck him in the
face and mocked him, not a word crossed
his lips.
Remember that one word from him in the
garden, one brief flashing glimpse of deity, they'd
all fallen to the ground.
But here he restrained his omnipotence.
Just a glance to heaven and a volcano
would have swallowed them all up.
But what a tremendous display of power was
the silence which restrained him.
In the face of the scorn of all
his foes.
Again, just glance at Luke chapter 23 in
verse 8.
And when Herod saw him, Jesus saw Jesus,
he was exceedingly glad.
For he was desirous to see him of
a long season, because he had heard many
things of him, and he hoped to have
seen some miracle done by him.
Then he questioned with him in many words,
but he answered him nothing.
That's an interview with Christ, which when I
read about it, I, in my heart always,
I have a sense of awe and trembling.
For here was a man who'd had his
opportunity, who had been confronted by the greatest
preacher born among women, as our Lord called
John the Baptist.
And he had dared, had John, to go
into Herod's house and tell him that he'd
no right to be living with the woman
he was living with.
And Herod heard John the Baptist and did
many things, and heard him gladly.
That's how the common people heard Jesus.
And Herod heard John just like that.
Oh, he did many things, reformed his life,
and cleaned it up a tremendous lot.
But there was one thing he refused to
do, and that was give up the woman
who ruined his life.
And when he met the Lord Jesus for
the first and only time, Jesus answered him
nothing.
Tremendous, tremendous danger to come to Kettick and
hear the Word of God and sit under
the ministry of the Word, and to fail
to repent of our sin.
Just to go away from here doing many
things.
Determined to read our Bible a bit more,
and determined to pray a bit more, and
determined to live a keener Christian life.
But failing, basically, in the demand, God's demand
of repentance, which has been rung out with
no certain sound in this last day or
two.
Jesus was silent before Herod.
How desperate to think that one day we
could silence the Lord by our stubbornness.
Look once more at Matthew chapter twenty-seven,
verse forty-five.
Here is our Lord upon the cross.
Now from the sixth hour there was darkness
until the ninth hour.
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with
a loud voice, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?
That is to say, My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me?
Darkness and silence, and hell during its worst,
and letting loose all its fury upon the
Son of God, broken only at the ninth
hour by that strange cry, My God, why
hast thou forsaken me?
Yes, I think, unquestionably, the preeminent thing about
the sufferings of Christ was His silence in
His reaction to them.
Before all His accusers and tormentors He never
spoke a word in defense of Himself, or
in complaint, except a word of testimony.
Never to plead His innocence, only to claim
His authority.
He was hard pressed, and He humbled Himself,
and He opened not His mouth.
He is brought as a lamb to the
slaughter, and a sheep before her shearers is
dumb, so He openedeth not His mouth.
Why was Jesus silent?
Of course, the unbelieving world has its answer
to that question and gives it in Isaiah
53 and the fourth verse.
We esteem Him smitten of God and afflicted.
He must be guilty of all that He
was charged with, otherwise a loving God would
never allow it to happen.
But we don't accept that explanation because Scripture
entirely contradicts it.
What does it mean?
I want to answer that question this morning,
not simply to understand His silence, but to
recognize its message for our own hearts today.
You see, the cross has a twofold implication.
It spells out for us forgiveness, cleansing, victory,
deliverance, all of that.
But it also spells out identification with the
one who suffered on it, in order that
I might display in my life the whole
principle of Christianity.
Christian living to others.
I have been crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ
liveth in me.
And the only evidence, or perhaps I should
say the greatest evidence, of my identification with
Jesus at Calvary is my reaction when I
suffer.
In some aspects, of course, the suffering of
Christ was unique.
But I think I can learn from His
silence when silence is golden in my life.
Let me say to you just three things
very quickly about this, and suggest just basically
three great principles why our Lord was silent,
and why I should be silent, and you
should be silent too.
In the first place, I want to say
that the silence of Christ was a silence
of decisiveness in commitment to the will of
God.
You remember what Peter said about Him in
Acts chapter 2 and 23?
He was delivered by the determinate counsel and
foreknowledge of God.
Jesus Himself said in John chapter 4 and
verse 34, My meat is to do the
will of Him that sent me and to
finish His work.
Don't you think that His silence declares His
refusal to utter one word to prevent His
slaughter?
For He was committed in the will of
God to be a sacrifice for us.
And so decisively was He surrendered that He
would not interfere in His own behalf, even
in the slightest degree, but He would rather
be bound and slain without struggle and without
complaint.
There was no reserve.
Body, soul, and spirit were wholly given up
to the will of God.
Not one faculty which our Lord possessed asked
to be excused from Calvary.
Every limb of His body, every thought of
His mind, every desire of His spirit were
in total submission to the will of God.
It was a whole Christ giving up His
whole being to God that He might offer
Himself without spot for our redemption.
Oh, that my commitment to Him and yours
were as decisive as that.
To resign ourselves completely, to deliver up our
whole life in self-conquest to the Lord,
to find ourselves absorbed in one desire for
the will of God, to see that sacrifice
accepted as was Elijah's on Mount Carmel, and
to have the answering fire from heaven burn
up the dross of base desire and make
the mountains low.
Oh, that He would do that for us
today, and settle forever our arguments and disputes
concerning our rights to ourselves.
What right have we in the light of
the fact that Jesus refused His own?
It was my immense privilege early this year
to visit a very remarkable and amazing country,
the Somali Republic.
There was just a handful of brave missionaries
met together for a missionary conference in an
atmosphere of tremendous political tension, and among them
were a couple, just a young married couple,
lovely couple, from Stephen Alford's church in New
York.
And I met with them and talked with
them one day.
They worked in a station miles away from
Mogadishu, where I was speaking.
No shops, no possibility of a day off,
nobody to have friendship with, except with themselves
and a few nationals.
No other missionaries around.
And I watched them, and there was something
about those two people, and I shall never
forget the look on their faces of absolute
exhilaration in being in the will of God.
They had a perfect right, if they wanted
to, to stay at home.
A perfect right to take each other out
to a nice restaurant and have a good
meal once a week.
A perfect right to a day off.
A perfect right to normal remuneration and normal
recreation.
A perfect right to normal family life.
But they turned their back on all that
because of decisive commitment to the will of
God.
I pray for those two every day.
There was something about their spirit, about the
tenderness of their heart toward the Lord, that
got inside my skin and made me feel
such a worm alongside them.
You know, in Old Testament times, the priest
used to use a flesh hook in order
that he might keep the sacrifice under the
flame, to be sure that it would be
burned up to dust and ashes.
And the Lord needs to take to you
and me over and over again the flesh
hook to keep the sacrifice under the flame,
that we might be reduced just to a
heap of ashes, and Jesus might be all
in his will, the sheer delight of my
life.
Decisiveness in abandonment to the will of God,
I trust you've reached that place in your
spiritual experience.
Secondly, the silence of Jesus was silence of
disdainfulness in contempt for the enemies of God.
He didn't accuse them of injustice.
He didn't reply to slander.
He didn't answer false witness.
To argue with those who were bent on
his murder would have been completely futile.
Peter says of him who, when he was
reviled, reviled not again, but committed himself to
him that judges righteously.
The best reply to false accusation is always
silence.
But how quick we are to rise up
in self-defense.
How sensitive we are to criticism.
How eager to prove ourselves right.
How we dislike being found out in the
wrong.
How we long to prove that the other
man is wrong and we are right.
There's nothing the flesh hates more than to
be shown up in a bad light before
our colleagues and friends in Christian work and
Christian service.
You recall David's attitude when he was harassed
by Saul, his lifelong enemy?
On at least two occasions he had a
wonderful opportunity to deal with him and get
rid of him, but it refused to do
so.
Even when his right-hand man, Abishai, offered
to do it for him, he refused to
permit it, replying in the first book of
Samuel in the 26th chapter verse 10, as
the Lord liveth the Lord shall smite him,
or his day shall come to die, or
he shall descend into battle and perish, but
the Lord forbid that I should stretch forth
mine hand against him.
David wouldn't defend himself, nor would he allow
anyone else to do it for him.
I have often told, forgive me for telling
again, if some of you heard me tell
it, but it gripped my heart, the story
that you will find if you care to
read sometime, and possibly you have read, Amy
Carmichael's book, Gold by Moonlight.
She tells in that book of a minister
who, after a year or two in his
ministry, was going through a tremendous time of
persecution in his church.
False accusation among his congregation had broken out,
and it seemed it would crush him.
Accusations against his character, slander, gossip, talk, all
kinds of things going round the church about
him.
It would have been easy for him to
run and get another ministry, but brave man,
he didn't do it.
He chose to ride the storm.
A year or two later, the storm was
still going on.
A Sunday school teacher in whose class was
the minister's daughter, said to this teenage daughter
of the pastor, tell me, do you mind
telling me, what effect all of this criticism
and scandal has had upon your father?
And that child said, well, it's made it
absolutely impossible for my daddy ever to say
an unkind word about anybody.
That's victory.
Silence of disdainfulness and contempt of the enemies
of God.
Dear friend, has the Lord taught you that
lesson?
Has he taught me?
It's a costly one, and the flesh is
always crying out for vindication and recognition.
What a tremendous release it is when we
commit ourselves to him that judges righteously and
allow the Lord to deal with the situation.
That doesn't mean, mind you, that in this
life, necessarily, you'll be proved right.
But it does mean the ascent of the
flesh to the principle of death.
And therefore, as a result, the anointing of
the life with the power of the Holy
Spirit.
And that's all that matters.
How many of us, how many of us,
have lost the anointing of the Holy Ghost
in our testimony, simply because we tried to
defend ourselves from the accusation of someone else?
Oh Lord, teach us when silence is golden.
The silence of decisiveness and commitment to the
will of God.
The silence of defenselessness, of disdainfulness, and contempt
of the enemies of God.
But there's something else here.
The silence of defenselessness in consent to the
judgment of God.
There is a meaning of our Lord's silence
more deep than anything we've thought about so
far.
Nothing can be said, you see, to excuse
human guilt.
And therefore he bore its full weight when
he stood speechless before the judge.
He was led as a sheep to the
slaughter.
Do you see how completely the Lord is
identified with all of us?
Look at Isaiah 53 verse 6.
You'll remember it.
All we like sheep have gone astray.
Not only are we compared with a sheep,
but so is Jesus.
I can understand that we should be likened
to sheep and he to a shepherd, but
that he too should be likened to a
sheep.
There's no one but God dare make a
comparison like that.
But it's the whole theme of Scripture.
Behold the Lamb of God who buried away
the sin of the world.
He became what we were, that we might
become what he is.
He was made sin for us, that we
who knew no sin might be made the
righteousness of God in him.
Now here's the deepest meaning of our Lord's
silence.
You see, the law had spoken.
Romans chapter 3 verse 19.
Whatsoever things the law said, it said to
them who are under the law, that every
mouth may be stopped and all the world
may be guilty before God.
A silent world, condemned, no argument to plead,
no excuse to make, silently awaits the sentence
of judgment.
Oh, but praise God, in place of a
silent world stands a silent Jesus.
He was led as a sheep to the
slaughter.
There he stands in my place, defenseless, as
he consents to bear the judgment due to
me.
The silence of Christ.
Oh, that's a lonely road upon which none
of us can travel.
He trod the winepress alone.
But there's something I can do, indeed I
must do, if I'm to enter into the
significance of this word to my heart today.
Listen.
Have you ever stood in the presence of
the Lord Jesus with bowed head and heart,
silent, with no excuses, no arguments, no complaints,
defenseless, and said to him, Lord, I'm wrong.
You're right.
I consent to judgment.
Only then is the Holy Spirit released in
your life.
Beloved fellow Christian, he will never anoint the
flesh with power, but when I assent to
the judgment of God upon sin, then he
gives me Jesus, and in him there's all
power.
Am I still arguing, still defending myself?
Or have I come to him and said
to him, Lord, no more arguments, no more
discussion, no more plea.
I'm without excuse.
I look to Jesus.
And Lord, whatever other people may have said
about me, I'm wrong to have resented it.
After all, if they knew the whole truth
about me, that would be a hundred times
worse.
But they've said something about me, and they've
been unkind, and I, with my silly little
ugly pride, have resented what they've said.
Oh, what a hypocrisy that is, because the
Lord knows my heart.
And because I've resented that, I have forfeited
the anointing and the authority and the power
of the Spirit of God in my witness.
How much Jesus has lost in you and
me because of that.
I stand ashamed in the presence of the
one who bore so much hatred on my
behalf and bore it silently.
Lord, are you prepared to say to him
today, I am sorry for my hesitating, half
-hearted commitment to your will?
I lay down my sword.
When silence is golden, the silence of decisiveness
in commitment to the will of God, the
silence of disdainfulness in contempt for all the
enemies of God, the silence of defenselessness in
consent to the judgment of God.
The most wonderful of all the graces of
Christian character, I think, is the grace of
humility.
It can be imitated, but the genuine article
can never be mistaken.
A false humility is a dreadful thing.
But a genuinely humble man and woman, a
Christian who has truly been broken at the
cross, is a wonderful testimony to the Lord.
And someone has defined humility as the silence
of the soul to God.
And as the Lord looks down into your
heart this morning, has he brought you to
that place of silence?
No more argument, no more complaint, no more
questioning, but silence to all his will.
Shall we pray?
Our Heavenly Father, we praise thee this morning
for a silent Jesus, that he was led
as a sheep to the slaughter.
And the sheep before her shearers is dumb,
so openeth he not his mouth.
Lord, forgive us for our half-hearted commitment
to thy will.
Make us wholehearted today without any question.
Bring us to that place this day when
we acknowledge thee as Lord and Sovereign, King
and Master.
And no longer do we question thy way,
because is it not lawful for thee to
do what thou wilt with thine own?
Forgive us, dear Savior, for the many times
when we've resented and sought to vindicate ourselves.
Lord, teach us humility.
Cleanse us from this sin.
Forgive us that when it's happened we've forfeited
our anointing and our authority, and somehow we
know we've grieved thy Spirit.
Lord, make us absolutely defenseless as we stand
before thee, and help us today to look
to the Savior afresh as King of Kings
and Lord of Lords.
And may he find in each one of
us today a vessel unto honor sanctified and
meet for the Master's use.
Lord, bring us, Lord, we pray thee, back
again to Calvary.
Break our hearts, Lord, we pray.
For we thank thee that thou canst do
such miracles with a broken heart when we
give thee all the pieces.
Lord, have thine own way with us.
Thou art the potter, I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after thy will
while I am waiting, yielded and still.
And may the grace of the Lord Jesus
and the love of God and the fellowship
of the Holy Spirit be with us now
and until the morning shall dawn and the
day shall break, and we shall see our
lovely Lord face to face, and he will
say to us, well done, good and faithful
servant, enter into the joy of the Lord.
Amen.