This morning we resume our brief series of
studies in the Bible Doctrine of the Lamb.
And I'm almost too nervous to begin when
I think of this glorious, mysterious, uncreated, wonderful,
divine human Savior, how He has loved us
and bled on that cross to redeem us,
and has risen again, and now occupies the
throne of the universe.
Who am I that I should preach Him?
What words can I find to exalt Him?
Brothers and sisters, what a dear, dear, wonderful
Jesus is ours, isn't He?
Well now, this morning, the particular aspect of
our theme is the centrality of the Lamb.
I shall complete it tomorrow morning, all being
well.
The centrality of the Lamb.
Our Lord Jesus is both the center and
the circumference of divine revelation, as the sun
is the center of our solar system, and
the power also which holds it all together.
So Christ is the magnetic center of Scripture,
and the unifying theme which makes all the
threescore and sixbook of our Bible one self
-consistent whole.
As Christ is the central figure of biblical
revelation, so the cross is the central factor.
Whatever else our Bible may or may not
be, it is distinctively and preeminently the book
of salvation from sin.
And its many-sided doctrine of salvation both
centers in and irradiates from the Christ of
the cross.
The precious blood of Calvary, so to speak,
sprinkles every page.
The doctrine of redemption by the Lamb runs
through holy writ like a crimson cord, holding
all the various parts of the sacred canon
together in one.
Mr. Chairman and friends, let me make this
preliminary remark.
In these days and amid the present world
of new ideas, let this be more fixedly
in our thinking than ever hitherto.
The Lamb is the vital center of that
message which you and I are divinely intended
to put over to the people of our
generation.
Now, in our study yesterday morning, we reviewed
the progressive unfolding of biblical disclosure concerning the
Lamb in ten notable passages from Genesis to
Revelation.
From those ten, I now pick out three,
and we may truly call them three classic
passages exhibiting the centrality of the Lamb.
Those three passages are 1.
Isaiah 53, 2.
Revelation chapter 5, and 3.
Revelation chapter 21 and 22.
And those three passages display the centrality of
the Lamb in the following way.
First, in Isaiah 53, we see the Lamb
amid the throes of His agony.
Second, in Revelation 5, we see the Lamb
amid the throne of His glory.
And third, in Revelation 21 and 22, we
see the Lamb amid the throng of His
glorified people.
In Isaiah 53, we see the Lamb transfixed
to the cross here on earth.
In Revelation 5, we see the Lamb triumphant
on the throne in heaven.
In Revelation 21 and 22, we see the
Lamb transcendent forever in the new heaven and
the new earth.
Or, in other words, in the first of
those three passages, we look back to a
humiliation which is now past.
In the second of those three passages, we
look up to an exaltation which is now
present.
And in the third, we look on to
a consummation which is yet to be.
So then, if you have brought your Bible
with you, will you kindly turn this morning
to that most famous chapter of all the
Isaiahn prophecies, Isaiah chapter 53.
In which, as already remarked, we see the
centrality of the Lamb in the bearing of
our sin.
Unfortunately, in our authorized versions, and in the
English revised and in the American standard version,
Isaiah 53 reads as prose.
Whereas in the original Hebrew, it is superb
poetry.
As more recent translations bring out for us.
Not poetry, however, in the European and American
styles of rhyme and rhythm.
But the flexible Hebrew poetry of thought parallelism.
Let me just leave my notes for a
minute.
And maybe I'd better just say this, I'm
using notes out of humanitarian compassion for you.
For on a theme like this, if I
dared to speak without notes, we'd never get
through.
But just a little aside, you know of
all kinds of literature, poetry is the most
difficult to translate into another language.
It's so difficult to reproduce the rhyme and
or the rhythm.
For instance, our monosyllabic word God.
I don't know any other language where the
name for God is a monosyllabic.
Instead of one syllable, you have two or
three.
And in so many, many, many other instances,
to translate by rhyme and rhythm from one
tongue to another is an exquisitely exasperating task.
But when God wrote poetry, he wrote it
in this wonderful, flexible form of Hebrew thought
parallelism.
And with the greatest felicity, it can be
translated into any language.
Now, in Hebrew poetry, there are three kinds
of parallels.
One, completive.
Two, contrastive.
And three, constructive.
And this 53rd chapter of Isaiah consists of
24 completive parallels.
Now, completive parallels are those in which the
second member of a pair extends or completes
the thought in the first member.
For instance, look at the beginning of the
chapter.
In the first of the couplet.
Who has believed our report?
And to whom is Jehovah's arm revealed?
In line one, the report is not received.
Therefore, in line two, the Lord's arm is
not revealed.
Line one gives a human aspect.
Line two gives a divine aspect.
Line two grows out of line one in
the sense that it expresses something on the
Godward side which grows out of unbelief first
on the manward side in line one.
Now, in all such completive parallels, that is
the feature.
The second member carries forward or intensifies or
amplifies or completes the content of the first
member.
And by the way, friends, this is not
only intellectually interesting, it is exegetically important.
Very often, one member of a strophe can
be exegetically explained correctly by taking careful note
of the companion member.
The completive second line of the couplet.
I would love to go right through this
chapter, dwelling on each of these completive parallels,
but time will not allow that.
The one thing to which I here call
attention as being particularly noteworthy is this.
That both the logical and poetical exact center
of these twenty-four completive parallels is this.
He is led as a lamb to the
slaughter, as a sheep dumb before its shearer.
Now, I know that some will say that
the chapter ought to begin three verses earlier,
but as a matter of strict grammar and
exegesis, those three verses are a prelude to
what is told to us about the servant
of Jehovah in Isaiah 53.
And let me reiterate, these two lines which
I have just quoted are both the logical
and the poetical center of this wonderful lamb
chapter.
He is led as a lamb to the
slaughter, as a sheep dumb before its shearer.
Of course, if we are to be truly
modern, then of course our immediate reaction is
to regard this as purely accidental.
We are too enlightened nowadays, supposedly, to allow
that divine inspiration would descend to mere grammatical
contrivances.
Though as a matter of fact it does
use alphabetic mnemonics in that beautiful dirge that
we call lamentations and inserting of the psalm.
But if that reference to the lamb at
the exact center point of Isaiah 53 is
merely coincidence, then what are we to say
about this?
That in the first half of the chapter,
that is in the verses, the couplets preceding
this central one, there are just seven expressions
of vicarious atonement viewed from the human standpoint.
And in the second half of the chapter,
there are again exactly seven expressions of vicarious
atonement viewed from God's standpoint.
Now, we do not want to use one
word that is not clearly understood by even
the youngest and the newest convert here.
And by that word vicarious, forgive me if
I'm being superfluous in explaining it, but by
that word vicarious we mean something done by
one in the behalf and in the stead
of another.
And our Lord's Calvary sufferings, of course, were
substitutionary and vicarious.
They were not for himself, they were in
himself for us.
And let me reiterate, in the first half
of this chapter there are seven expressions of
vicarious atonement from our point of view, completed
in the second part by seven expressions of
vicarious atonement from the divine standpoint.
Now, will you let me point them out?
Are you ready?
1.
In verse 4, He hath borne our grief.
2.
Again in verse 4, He carried our sorrows.
3.
In verse 5, He was wounded for our
transgression.
4.
Verse 5, He was threshed, that's the Hebrew,
He was bruised for our iniquities.
5.
The chastising of our peace fell on Him.
6.
Again in verse 5, And with His stripes,
indeed the Hebrew, I notice, is in the
singular, 7.
With His stripes, His back was so ploughed
by the smiters, that all the furrows gradually
merged into one great bleeding unity of suffering.
8.
With His stripes, we are healed.
9.
And 7, in verse 6, Jehovah made to
meet on Him the iniquity of all others.
Notice, dear friends, it is our grief and
our sorrows and our transgressions and our iniquities.
All seven are from our side, the human
side of the cross.
Each of those seven statements expresses one distinct
aspect of our Lord's representative and substitutionary identification
with us.
Until the final comprehensive statement is reached, Jehovah
hath made to meet on Him the iniquity
of us all, which, never forget, makes our
Lord's death on our behalf an act of
God, not just a deed of men, not
just a crucifixion, but an atonement.
And now glance through the second half of
the chapter, where we find, similarly, seven expressions
of vicarious atonement viewed from the divine side.
Some of them are so worded that we
hear God speaking through the pronoun my.
Or else, instead of the pronoun our, we
have their, t-h-e-i-r, as
though God is viewing the cross objectively.
Let me point the further seven out.
Are you ready?
1.
In verse 8.
For the transgression of my people, God speaking,
he was stricken.
2.
In verse 10.
Thou, Jehovah, thou shalt make his soul an
offering for sin.
3.
In verse 11.
By his knowledge shall my righteous servant make
many righteous.
4.
Again in verse 11.
For he shall bear their iniquities.
5.
In verse 12.
He was numbered with the transgressors.
6.
Again in verse 12.
And he bore the sin of many.
7.
Still in verse 12.
He made intercession for the transgressors.
Well, beloved fellow Bible students.
There it is.
Seven aspects of vicarious atonement from our point
of view.
Followed by seven aspects of it from God's
side.
And between those two sevens.
He is led as a lamb to the
slaughter.
As a sheep dumb before its shearers.
Are we still quite sure that its center
position happened accidentally?
At any rate and quite obviously.
That is where it belongs.
And again that is where the prophet poet
put it.
Speaking in the Holy Spirit.
Which is only another way of saying.
That is where God has put the lamb.
Absolutely central in our salvation.
Years ago I knew a fine Christian man
in Canada.
He was born and bred among the poor.
At an early age he had to leave
school and go out to work.
While still young he came to know the
Lord Jesus as his precious savior.
Soon afterwards he started a small business.
And covenanted to give one tenth of all
his earnings to God.
His business grew and grew and grew and
grew.
Until it became one of the largest two
of its kind in the whole of Canada.
Faithfully he gave his tithes to the Lord.
Then he made it a fifth.
Then a quarter.
Then a half.
Then three quarters.
Then nine tenths.
Until eventually by the time my dear Ethel
and I came to know him.
He was running the whole business practically to
make money.
For supporting the Lord's work in various ways.
And thousands of people not only in Canada
and USA.
But over here in Britain and on the
mission field.
Thousands have received liberal financial help without ever
knowing from where it came.
One day I asked him what brought about
his conversion to Christ.
And he replied.
It was the example of my godly father.
Then he told me he was one of
four boys who grew up in the old
home.
From their youngest days their father used to
gather them round his knee.
While he read to them from the Bible
and prayed for them and prayed with them.
And my friend said to me.
On Sunday evening my dad would always read
Isaiah 53.
With a glow on his face he would
start to read it.
Then on reaching verse four.
Surely he hath borne our grief.
Or verse five.
He was wounded for our transgressions.
He was bruised for our iniquities.
His voice would begin to falter.
His throat would become husky.
And the tears would begin to drip down
his cheek.
And he would have to say in broken
syllables.
I'm sorry lads.
I cannot go on.
It's too upsetting lads.
To think that such a dear divine saviour
as that.
Should suffer for us hell deserving sinners like
that.
And my friend added.
Sometimes my dad would struggle on a bit.
But I never once knew him to get
right through Isaiah 53.
Even if he managed to get beyond verses
five and six.
He never got beyond verse seven.
He is led as a lamb to the
slaughter.
It broke him down said my friend.
It broke him down every time.
To think that the son of God should
suffer for us.
Like that.
And dear fellow Christians.
In the deepest sense of the word.
Can you and I ever get beyond that
seventh verse.
He the creator of stars and systems.
And eons.
The uncreated first born.
And heir of all the universe.
Of the whole creation.
In whom all things cohere.
The delight of the father's boundless bosom.
He is led as a lamb to the
slaughter.
And dies in naked shame on that cross.
Can any Christian heart ever get over that.
As long as eternity lasts.
Those nail torn hands and feet.
Are more marvelous to us than twice ten
billion stars.
Those Calvary scars of Jesus.
Shine with a lovelier luster.
Than all the flashing gems of the new
Jerusalem.
Was I shouting a bit then.
Friends.
I don't think I am.
Particularly sentimental.
Am I.
I.
Maybe I hope I am.
There's a big difference between sentiment.
And mere sentimentalism.
From the latter may all of us.
Be continually saved.
I'm not just roving in the realm of
sentimentalism.
But I'm uttering godly sentiment.
When I wear my heart on my sleeve
for a moment.
And say this.
I don't know what the bliss of heaven.
Or the flashing glories of the new Jerusalem
will be.
But brothers and sisters.
I think the thing I look forward to
most.
Is to seeing those nail marks.
In his dear hands and feet.
I would love to kiss them.
Don't you feel the same.
Say yes.
As we bring the eye of a telescope.
Or the lens of a camera.
Into clear focus upon some object.
So the 53rd chapter of Isaiah.
Sets the lamb in clear focus.
As the center point.
There it is between those two seven.
Expressing vicarious atonement.
First from the human and then from the
divine side.
Let me repeat.
That is only another way of saying.
That the Holy Spirit has put the lamb
there.
There is no soul saving message for sinners.
Apart from the lamb.
And no man is truly preaching the Christian
gospel.
Who leaves out the lamb.
Or makes him anything other than the vital
center.
In these days much so called Christian scholarship.
And preaching sneers.
With fancied intellectual superiority.
At the idea of salvation through quote.
The blood.
Much that goes under the name of Christianity.
Among our protestant denominations nowadays.
Is a new version of the cane religion.
Which wants to worship God with bouquets of
flowers and fruit.
But refuses the sacrificial lamb of propitiation and
atonement.
I agree there is a kind of humanistic
elegance about it.
But it has no confession that the members
of Adam's fallen race.
Are judgment deserving sinners needing redemption and regeneration.
God rejects it.
And what is more.
It leaves sinful man fundamentally unchanged.
Cain would not lure himself to shed the
blood of a poor little lamb.
It was too cruel.
But the man who was too compassionate to
slay the lamb.
Murdered his own brother.
And if you want to know what religion
without the lamb does.
Look around at the pitiful wreck of morals
and decencies in Christendom today.
My reading of church history has shown me
conclusively.
That whenever the church has ceased to preach
the blood and has just preached morals.
Morality has tragically declined.
But wherever the church has preached the lamb
and the precious blood.
The vilest of the vile have been lifted
from the gutter of iniquity.
And transformed into sanctified saints.
Let there be no apology for our preaching
of the lamb.
Instead of secretly wondering whether we are preaching
something outmoded or no longer relevant.
Let the desperate moral breakdown today be a
new call to us to uplift the lamb
more than ever.
As the vital center of the only gospel
which truly saves.
I get rather tired Mr. Chairman and friends.
Of hearing today that we are witnessing the
failure of Christianity.
And are now passing into a post-Christian
era.
Nothing of the kind.
What we are seeing today is the pathetic
failure of an apostate form of Christianity.
Which has preached another gospel.
A mere imitation all over Protestant Christendom.
A glib and glossy looking gospel with a
Bible denuded of its infallible authority.
And Jesus who is a lofty humanitarian rather
than God incarnate.
And the cross which was a human blunder
rather than a divine atonement.
And the gospel of social ethics rather than
eternal salvation and moral transfiguration.
For the individual human being.
Brethren.
The one deep dire stark reason.
Why the incarnate son of God hung on
that cross as the lamb is this.
That there is a Gehenna on the other
side of the grave.
A Gehenna where human souls are lost.
Lost.
If Gehenna is a fiction.
Then the cross of Calvary is a superfluity.
You can't explain that cross.
Apart from that fearful Gehenna.
Does somebody say ha ha.
But educated people don't believe today that sin
is sin.
Nor do they believe in a life beyond
the grave.
Don't they.
Well not so long since I read an
article in an American magazine.
About a conference of psychologists and psychiatrists in
America.
At that conference statistics were revealed.
Which said if I get the figure correctly.
That with over 80% of the people
who go for psychiatric treatment.
The two most poignant problems are.
A guilt complex because of sin.
And a fear of what lies on the
other side the grave.
Brethren.
Despite all the fluffy flimsy talk about modern
man.
Not believing in sin or in and hereafter.
The two monster problems which plague the human
mind and conscience.
Are a condemning sense of sin and a
dark fear of death.
The non-Christian religions have no answer.
There is only one religion in the world
that says.
The blood of Jesus Christ God's son.
Cleanseth from all sin.
Modern philosophy says God is dead.
Human conscience says he was never more alive.
Secular psychology says sin is no more sin.
Human conscience says sin is as sinful as
ever.
And the deepest cry of the human heart
is not for a sociologist.
But for a savior.
Deep deep down.
Sinful men and women know they need the
lamb.
And one thing which may well encourage us
today brethren.
Is that all over America and in other
countries too.
And I seem to find suggestions of it
in our beloved little Britain.
There is a new interest in the Bible.
Men are getting finally disillusioned.
With new and their false gospels.
They are groping round to find the truth
that really saves.
And the one place where they'll find it.
Is in the lamb.
Now let me look at my watch.
I think I've about come to the end
of my note.
Or have I?
Let me see.
I think I'd like to leave you with
this final thought.
With the rise of the Bellhausen and Tübingen.
And other German originated schools.
Of the rationalistic type of higher criticism.
The book of Isaiah.
Became turned into a patchwork.
From a multiplicity of authors.
Some years ago when I was making a
rather.
Intensive study of Isaiah.
And looked up to see what the men
of scholarship were saying.
I found that some of those German brethren.
Had discovered no less than 77 Isaiahs.
And one extraordinarily educated scholar.
Who wanted to excel all his brothers in
this.
Quasi-science of biblical vivisection.
Discovered that there were no less than 123.
What an achievement of biblical exegesis.
In more recent times.
We have come back to somewhat more sobriety.
And in any case the spade of the
archaeologist.
Has knocked the bottom out of the German
originated rationalistic theories.
Into which however we will not go now.
But the popular idea today.
Is that the book of Isaiah is in
two main parts.
And the first part is allowedly.
By the authentic Isaiah.
The most brilliant penman in Hezekiah's guild of
literary experts.
But the second part of Isaiah chapters 40
to 66.
Is supposedly from a so-called.
Deutero-Isaiah.
Now just as it was with all these
other supposed.
Authors of different parts of Isaiah.
They were all a lot of nameless anonymities.
Never heard of in history.
Until the fertile imaginations of the critics invented
them.
So it is with Deutero-Isaiah.
Nobody's ever found out who he was or
where he lived.
Anyway they've christened him.
Deutero-Isaiah.
Now Mr. Chairman and friends I would like
to submit.
That if we had been more careful in
our study of the literary structure.
Of this prophecy of Isaiah.
We would never for a minute have doubted
the unity of its authorship.
To be strict about it.
The book is not in two parts it's
in three.
Part one consists of chapters 1 to 35.
And is one long catena of connected prophecies.
Chapters 1 to 35.
But chapters 36, 37, 38 and 39.
Are neither prophecy nor poetry.
They are prose and history.
And the first two of those four chapters.
Refer to Assyria.
The now declining world power.
And the remaining two concern Babylon.
The newly rising world power.
And then beginning at chapter 40.
You have prophecy and poetry again.
One long unbroken messianic poem.
27 chapters from chapters 40 to 66.
27 of course because 40 is included.
Now.
Hmm.
Or how can I put it very very
synoptically.
Run through the first part the first 35
chapters.
The first six chapters are all limited to
Judah.
Then Isaiah.
Has a wonderful vision of the throne of
thrones.
The sovereign glorious Jehovah.
King of all history.
And decider of all destiny.
And after those first six chapters on Judah.
You have another six chapters on Judah and
Israel.
Then you expand.
And you have another group of ten chapters.
On the ten greatest nations of antiquity.
And then you come to the next group
of chapters.
And they are on the whole of history.
Right to the end of the present age.
Have you noticed that?
And then you come to a group of
four chapters.
All on Jerusalem.
Which is ever the center point of God's
controversy with Adamic humanity.
And then you have after that.
Two chapters.
Reaching right to the end of the present
age.
And you are in the great tribulation.
And then you come to the last chapter.
Chapter 35.
And at last you are in the millennium.
The ransomed of the Lord.
Return and come to Zion.
With songs and everlasting joy upon their heads.
And sorrow and sighing flee away.
Do you tell me all that by accident?
First six chapters Judah.
Then Judah and Israel.
Then the ten great nations of antiquity.
Then on all the nations of the world.
Then on all the centuries of the present
age.
Then the great tribulation.
And then out into the millennium.
I'm not going to believe all that by
accident.
And then when you come to the part
three.
That is chapters 40 to 66.
Those 27 chapters are quite obviously divided into
three groups of nine each.
In the first nine you have the supremacy
of Jehovah.
And in the next group you have the
servant of Jehovah.
And in the final group you have the
salvation of Jehovah.
Now at the end of the first nine.
That is at the end of chapter 48.
You will find this divisive refrain.
There is no peace, saith Jehovah, to the
wicked.
When you come to the end of the
next nine.
Chapter 57.
There it is again.
There is no rest, saith my God, for
the wicked.
And when you come to the end of
the third nine.
The end of the whole prophecy.
You have that again in amplified form.
The fire is not quenched and the worms
never die.
So the middle chapter of the middle nine.
Is Isaiah 53.
And at the middle of the middle chapter.
Of the middle nine.
You've got this.
He is led as a lamb to the
slaughter.
Now in the first catena of prophecies 1
to 35.
The key chapter is chapter 6.
And in that long messianic poem.
Chapter 40 to chapter 66.
The key chapter is Isaiah 53.
All right.
Here is the wonderful thing.
If you turn to the twelfth chapter of
John.
You will find that in verse 41.
It says this.
These things take Isaiah.
When he saw his glory.
His glory.
He was seeing on that throne.
That glorious being.
Who having become incarnated in human flesh and
blood.
We now know as Jesus.
He saw the pre-incarnate Christ.
On that flashing throne of holiness and sovereignty.
And in Isaiah 53.
Isaiah was stunned and shocked.
It broke him.
He saw that same wonderful being.
Whom he had seen on that throne.
He saw him hanging on that cross.
Are you getting it?
Say yes.
Oh that was the thing that startled and
shook the prophet.
That the one who sat on that throne
of sovereignty and holiness.
Was the one who hung in tears and
blood.
On that never to be forgotten cross.
Oh hallelujah.
What a savior.
Yes.
Oh and I'll have to say amen.
Dear dying lamb.
Thy precious blood.
Shall never lose its power.
Till all the ransomed church of God.
Be saved to sin no more.
E'er since thy faith.
I saw the stream.
Those flowing winds of life.
Redeeming love has been my theme.
And shall be till I die.
Then in a nobler sweeter song.
I'll send thy power to save.
With sinless heart.
And raptured tongue.
In triumph.
For the grave.
Aren't you just thrilled with the word.
And aren't you just more thrilled.
With the lamb.
I don't know about you but I just
want to go away somewhere.
And worship that lamb.
Shall we pray.
Our savior God our hearts.
Have been stirred this morning.
As we have had.
The lamb ministered unto us.
And we ask now that.
In our lives and in our hearts.
In our will.
In our devotion.
The lamb.
May be the central figure.
That he may be there upon our personal.
That we may bow to him.
Or can you take.
The likes of us.
And turn us into.
His glorious image.
Who grant by thine infilling spirit.
We may know this experience.
As your word is written in our hearts.
And across our lives.
Now may.
The grace of the Lord Jesus.
As the lamb.
Be with us all.
Amen.