Last Sunday evening we announced that, as from
next Sunday evening, we are going to be
addressing ourselves to certain passages in the book
of the Prophet Isaiah.
These passages have generally been called by scholars
the servant songs of Isaiah.
The reason for that is that they all
deal with a subject who is introduced there
as the servant of the Lord.
You have the first of these in Isaiah
chapter 42 and you may remember that Isaiah
42 verse 1 begins, Behold my servant, and
that is really the title.
Behold my servant.
That's going to be our subject.
We took last Sunday evening, and I'm going
to take the time before us tonight, in
order to introduce this theme, because as I
indicated last Sunday evening, we as Christian people
come to the Old Testament from and with
the light of the New Testament.
We do not come to the Old Testament
as if Christ had not arrived in this
world.
We do not come to the Old Testament
as if the Holy Spirit did not come
to his people on the day of Pentecost.
We come now to a study of the
Old Testament as those that have the New
Testament in our hands.
And the New Testament means that Jesus Christ
has come, and the Holy Spirit has been
given, and we bathe, we bask, enlightened in
knowledge not given in any fullness at any
rate, to the Old Testament saints.
Now concerning these passages in Isaiah, many people
have asked the kind of question that was
asked by the Ethiopian Chancellor of the Exchequer
when Philip overheard him reading from Isaiah.
You remember on his way back from Jerusalem
to his native country, reading from Isaiah 53,
he asked Philip, poignantly I believe, who is
the Prophet talking about?
Is he talking about himself in chapter 53
of Isaiah, or is he talking about somebody
else?
And if you were to read the scholarly
books that have been brought out of the
press, that have been published on this subject,
you would find them to be multitudinous.
Many of them suggesting that the Prophet was
writing about perhaps the nation Israel, perhaps a
remnant within Israel, perhaps this Prophet, perhaps that
Prophet, perhaps this King, perhaps that.
Conservative Christian people have from the beginning, from
the very beginning of the church seen here,
that is in these passages in Isaiah, seen
a portrait given beforehand of the Messiah that
was going to come into the world.
And it's very important for us to be
sure of ourselves if we are going to
come to these passages in Isaiah with this
suggested key to an understanding of it.
It is necessary for us to be quite
sure that this is the case.
Is there any way whereby we may be
sure that those great passages in Isaiah really
refer to our Lord Jesus Christ?
Now that is the kind of thing that
I'm trying to deal with tonight, and tried
in part to deal with last Sunday evening,
in order that when we come to consider
these passages, we shall have left these issues
one side, and I trust we'll be able
to see that according to our Lord Jesus
himself, and according to the Apostles, some of
whose testimony we shall be considering tonight, we
shall be able to come with quite a
certainty in our soul that we have a
legitimate basis for seeing in those remarkable passages
a veritable prophecy of the Son of Man,
the Son of God, the Servant of God,
the Messiah.
And I covet your prayers as we come,
therefore, to consider those passages in due course.
But now for tonight we are asking this
question, of whom does the Prophet speak?
We were seeing last Sunday evening that our
Lord Jesus used a title of himself, his
favorite designation for himself, by the way, used
by him more than by anyone else, Son
of Man.
That title, that designation, is found in the
Old Testament, particularly in the books of Ezekiel
and of Daniel.
And we saw, I think, quite clearly that
that designation has two aspects to it.
Sometimes it was used simply to refer to
a person's manhood.
God calling the Prophet Ezekiel, for example, called
him Son of Man, and he simply meant
man, a human being.
It meant nothing more than that.
But in the book of the Prophet Daniel
it meant something very much more.
It referred to an august figure who would
be given a kingdom and rule, which kingdom
and rule would never, never, never pass away.
Jesus used the title Son of Man in
both those senses, in relating, in applying it
to himself.
Sometimes he took the stance of the humblest
of men and spoke of it concerning himself.
Even the Son of Man has not a
place to lay his head.
Foxes have holes and the birds of the
air have nests, but the Son of Man
doesn't have a place to lay his head
down.
He used it to speak of himself in
his manhood, and with the emphasis upon the
fact that he was a man amongst men.
But he also used it to speak of
the glorious, the majestic figure that we have
in Daniel chapter 7.
Now does our Lord at any point give
us clear indication that he was also the
fulfillment of these servant songs in Isaiah?
Of whom did the Prophet speak?
Now I want to make two main statements
tonight, and the first is this.
First of all, I believe that the theology
of Isaiah 53 is the theology of the
New Testament, or if you want me to
put it the other way around, that the
theology of the New Testament is the theology
of Isaiah 53.
The second thing I want to say is
that we have specific statements of Scripture in
which Jesus identifies himself as the servant of
Isaiah 53, and in which the Apostles likewise
refer to him.
Sometimes there are little bits of Isaiah 53
woven into a statement that either Jesus says,
or the Apostles may say, and you may
miss it as you read the first time.
But when you consider it carefully, and when
you really ponder what is being said, you
can't evade the issue that our Lord was
culling some words or statements, likewise the Apostles,
so that in many, many places we have
references in the New Testament to Isaiah 53
and to Jesus being the servant.
That is, indicating that Isaiah 53 were the
other servant songs that we shall be considering,
that they were prophetically looking forward to someone
who was to come, and that someone was
none other than Jesus, Son of God, the
Messiah.
Now the first of these points is a
general one, but it establishes the fact that
you have the same kind of thinking about
the death of Jesus, represented first of all
in Isaiah 53, and then in the New
Testament.
You have the same underlying theology of the
death of the servant in the Old and
in the New Testaments.
Now let me read to you a passage
from Isaiah 53, the very passage that the
Chancellor of the Exchequer was reading as he
was going home from Jerusalem, from the feast,
whichever feast it was, with a parchment in
his hand.
Now we don't know whether he had a
whole parchment or just a part of it,
but evidently you see this man was seriously
seeking after God.
He was a eunuch.
He was a man whose body was disciplined
to the nth degree.
He was a man who'd come all the
way from home to Jerusalem for one reason
or another because he was in search of
the true God.
He'd gone through all the formalities and perhaps
the ritual of worship in Jerusalem at the
feast time, and now he's got hold of
a parchment of the prophet Isaiah, and he's
going back.
Now he wasn't riding in a limousine.
He wasn't riding in a Rolls-Royce or
a Cadillac through the desert.
He was going in an old cart, and
the road was more bumpy than any of
our Toronto roads.
But believe it or not, the man is
in such earnest that he's reading the Hebrew
characters, and he's concentrated entirely upon this one
thing, and he's reading aloud.
You see, the man's in dead earnest, and
particularly particularly is he confused when he comes
to these statements.
He was led like a sheep to the
slaughter, and as a lamb before the shearer
is silent, so he did not open his
mouth.
In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth.
Now if you look at verses 5 &
6, you will see that we have there
an enlarged picture of the theology of Isaiah
53, and in substance the theology of that
great chapter is this, salvation is procured for
the many by the suffering and the anguish
of one who died in the place of
others.
Now theologically we would designate that as the
principle of substitution.
One being substituted for another.
One person taking the place of another, or
taking the place of others.
And if you read verses 5 & 6
of Isaiah 53, this comes out most forcefully,
even more than in the passage that the
eunuch was reading when Philip came along.
Let me read verses 5 & 6.
I'm reading from the NIV, it's slightly different
perhaps from the version that you are most
accustomed to.
He was pierced
for our transgressions.
He was crushed for our iniquities.
The punishment that brought us peace was upon
him, and by his wounds we are healed.
We all like sheep have gone astray.
Each one of us has turned to his
own way, and the Lord has laid on
him the iniquity of us all.
Now let's get the principle of that.
What is the principle?
What is the basic theological principle underlying all
this?
It is this.
The servant of whom the prophet speaks is
a servant who is coming to suffer, to
suffer such ignominy as is virtually indescribable.
The professor of Semitics that I spent four
years with used to say that he only
knew of one picture in the whole gamut
of experience that came anywhere near approximating that
which we find in Isaiah 53.
And he said, he insisted, and he's put
this into many, a number of books and
articles, that the only picture that comes anywhere
near the pain and the anguish and the
torture and the physical consequences of the suffering
of Isaiah 53, the picture portrays a person
who is suffering from a deadly disease, something
like leprosy that has never had any medical
attention, a person suffering from leprosy that never
has known any alleviation, but the leprosy has
gone to such an extent that you simply
cannot look at the person concerned.
There is no beauty in him that we
should desire him.
We turn our eyes away from him.
We hide our faces from him.
We just can't look him in the eye,
nor look at the furrows in his brain.
But all this, and this is the theology,
all this is in order to procure salvation
for a multitude, or rather to use the
language of the of the chapter itself to
procure salvation for many.
Now we have a number of students in
our evening service, and I want to refer
you to two or three authors.
I wouldn't be doing this normally, so the
rest of you can just shut off for
a moment if you'd like, but I think
I ought to tell some of you that
there are some very good books on this
theme, and they're well documented, and you could
certainly profit from them.
First of all, there is a book by
a man, T.
H.
Hughes.
It is called The Atonement.
It was published in 1949 in London, and
it's quite a scholarly document, and he says
categorically, and I quote, he thinks that Jesus,
quote, interpreted the vocation and the task of
the Messiah in the light of the vicarious
sacrifice and death of this servant, of Isaiah
53.
The servant vicariously, that is instead of other
people, vicariously bears the sufferings caused by his
people's sin and gives himself to death as
a substitute for others.
In this way, a vicarious and substitutionary element
enters into the very fiber of our Lord,
of our Lord's self-consciousness.
Let me give you another one.
A certain H.
C.
Thompson, writing in the transactions of the Glasgow
University Oriental Society, has this to say, and
I quote, the servant is made an ashan,
that's a Hebrew word, for the guilty people.
It is the, he is the substitute, that's
what the word means, he is the substitute
who gives his life and so preserves theirs,
and by his sacrifice their guilt is expiated.
Well, let me give you another one, a
familiar, more familiar name perhaps, but no less
scholarly, Dr. J.
S.
Whale of some repute in Europe and in
England.
He emphasizes the penal aspect of the sufferings
described in Isaiah 53 in these words, the
song makes 12 distinct and explicit statements that
the servant suffers the penalty of other men's
sins.
Now that's the point.
Not only vicarious suffering, but penal substitution is
the plain meaning of its fourth, fifth, and
sixth verses that we read.
These may not be precise statements of Western
forensic ideas, but they are clearly concerned with
penalty inflicted through various forms of punishment, which
the servant endured on other men's behalf and
in their stead, because the Lord had so
ordained it.
Now let's all join, if some of you
went to sleep for a few moments.
We have come to the point where we
recognize that Isaiah, not just according to some
ordinary preachers like ourselves, but according to a
number of rather well-known and reputable scholars,
Isaiah's theology is that of substitution, penal substitution,
someone substituting for someone else or some other
people and bearing a penalty that was due
to them.
Now that same theology, that same understanding of
the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, we
again meet in the New Testament.
We meet it in Jesus, we meet it
in the Apostle Paul, we meet it with
Peter, we meet it with John, we meet
it in every solitary epistle, maybe one exception
in the New Testament.
Evidently I can't refer to them all tonight,
but I want to refer to Jesus and
to Paul and maybe one reference to Peter.
But you see what we're getting at?
What we're saying is that the theology of
the New Testament is basically the same, in
essence it is the same, as the underlying
principle that we discover in Isaiah 53.
Jesus spoke of himself as one of whom
the Scriptures had said that he must suffer
and die.
Now there is a world of difference between
saying that he must suffer and die and
saying something like this, I'm going to do
the work that God has given me to
do and in the process of doing the
work that God has given me to do
I will suffer and I will die.
Do I need to repeat that?
Every man of God, every woman of God
will have to suffer sooner or later.
We are living in a fallen world, we
have a mighty enemy, and evil seems to
be working its way towards a crescendo.
Throughout the ages, saints of God who have
done any battle for their Lord, who've been
even the least nuisance to the kingdom of
darkness, have had to suffer.
In every age the saints of God have
had to suffer.
If they've served their Lord rather than bury
their light somewhere, if they've served their Lord
they've had to suffer.
And this will be the case to the
end of the ages, much more so during
these days and days that may lie ahead
of us.
The saints of God, the servants of God
in general, will have to suffer.
So if you're being called to do a
work for God, make quite sure about it
that you take in this ingredient as something
that is in written into your Christian calling.
You will have to suffer.
I will have to suffer.
But now that's quite a different thing from
saying that I can only fulfill my ministry
in suffering and through suffering.
And the picture behind Isaiah 53 and the
picture which Jesus gave of himself was this.
Not that he would suffer because he was
doing the will of God, but that the
will of God was that he should suffer.
The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity
of us all.
It is written that the Son of Man
must suffer.
The must lay behind the suffering.
This is the only way whereby he can
fulfill the mission that was given him and
that he himself has undertaken.
When at last he had breathed out his
spirit to the Father, only then could he
say, it is finished.
Tetelestai.
It's over.
I've finished it.
I've come to the end.
I've done what I was required to do.
I've suffered.
I've drunk the cup to the full, to
the bread.
Now you'll remember you come across this theme
in our Lord over and over again.
Suffering was necessary.
He began to teach them that the Son
of Man must suffer many things and be
rejected of the elders, chief priests, and teachers
of the law, and that he must be
killed and after three days rise again.
That is in Mark.
Again in Mark chapter 8 verses 31 to
33.
When Jesus turned and looked at his disciples,
he rebuked Peter.
Out of my sight, Satan, he says.
You do not have in mind the things
of God, but the things of men.
What warranted, what warranted those strong words?
Only a moment ago Jesus has called Simon
Peter, blessed.
What now warrants this strong word of condemnation?
Away, Satan.
The answer is this.
Peter now tries to dissuade his Lord from
going to the cross, and Jesus tells him,
look Peter, you're on the wrong wavelength altogether.
Now you become satanically inspired.
You say they're not the things that be
of God, but the things that be of
men.
You're not in touch with God, God's mind,
God's purpose, God's, the prophecy that God has
given concerning me, his will for my life
here upon earth.
You're not in touch with it.
Get behind me.
In other words, you see, the dying of
our Lord Jesus, the suffering of the Lord
Jesus was essential to the fulfillment of his
ministry, but now we've got to go one
step further.
The suffering which Jesus declared to be necessary
for him to undergo was often and positively
connected in his mind with that which is
described in Isaiah chapter 53.
Can I refer again, those of you who
are students here, to a book published by
W.
Zimmerle and J.
Jeremias called The Servant of God.
It was published in London in 1957.
I'm not sure when it was published, this
side of the, this side of the Atlantic.
And another one published by C.
J.
Cadoux called The Historic Mission of Jesus.
Both of which enumerate the passages in the
New Testament where Jesus lays hold of word
images and metaphors and quotes from Isaiah chapter
53 and applies them concerning himself, to himself
and to his mission and to his death.
Now that's, by the way, let's come to
this.
The suffering which Jesus declared to be necessary
for him in order to perform his life's
mission was often connected in his mind with
the task of the servant in Isaiah 53.
Let me give you, let me ask you
to read with me or to listen to
me reading from Luke chapter 22 verses 35
to 37.
You might like to have your New Testaments
open here.
Luke 22 verse 35 going through to verse
37.
Then Jesus asked them, when I sent you
without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack
anything?
Nothing, they answered.
He said to them, but now if you
have a purse, take it, and also a
bag.
And if you don't have a sword, sell
your cloak and buy one.
It is written.
And he was numbered with the transgressors.
And I tell you that this must be
fulfilled in me.
Yes, what is written about me is reaching
its fulfillment.
Now the implication of that passage is something
like this.
I sent you out on one occasion, says
Jesus, and you didn't have anything.
I sent you out without a purse, without
a bag, without without sandals.
You just went out, you went out just
as you were, and I told you simply
to trust and to go.
And everything was well.
Now he says, I'm giving you a different
policy.
I'm telling you to follow a different principle.
I'm telling you now to do something quite
different from that.
Now if you have a purse, you take
it with you.
If you've got a bag to carry an
extra suit of clothes, take it with you.
If you don't have a sword, sell your
cloak in order to buy a sword.
Why?
To look after yourselves because you're going into
enemy territory.
And he proves that by saying this.
It is written, he was numbered with the
transgressors.
What does he mean?
What he means is this.
The society into which you are going is
a society that is going to condemn me
and nail me to the cross as a
transgressor.
And that society is unsafe for you.
Make preparations.
There will come a time, says Jesus, when
you will have even to look after yourselves.
And you may be physically in danger.
That's what he said.
It's an element in the teaching of our
Lord Jesus that many people don't seem to
take notice of from time to time.
You know we can leave out things that
don't fit into our our theories or make
our our views a little bit untamable.
We can't fit things in and we leave
them out.
Well it doesn't do do us any good.
If our Lord Jesus says something that doesn't,
we can't straighten out.
We must come to terms with it and
find a place for it in our scheme
of things if we are going to have
a clear conscience and peace.
Now those words that Jesus referred to there
are of course but an echo of Isaiah
53.
Listen to what 53 12 says.
He poured out his life unto death and
he was numbered with the transgressors.
Jesus says it is written.
He was numbered with the transgressors.
And I tell you that this must be
fulfilled in me.
It was written there to be fulfilled in
one person, the servant of the Lord.
Now says Jesus in other words, I am
that servant of the Lord and that's going
to be fulfilled in me and therefore you
are going to be in a very dangerous
world.
Come again.
Take this other word of Jesus at the
institution of the Lord's Supper.
I'm only taking a few examples now.
Matthew 26 28 refers to the institution of
the Lord's Supper in these words that Jesus
said this is the blood of the covenant
which is poured out for many for the
forgiveness of sins.
Now you remember that Jesus is referring to
himself now.
When it comes to the sacrament he says
this is my body which is broken for
you.
This is my blood which is shed for
you.
Jesus is speaking about himself as the Savior
and how he wants to be remembered.
Now he says this is my blood of
the covenant which is poured out for many
for the forgiveness of sins.
Those words are again an echo of other
words in Isaiah 53 and verse 12 which
say he bore the sins of many and
he made intercession for the transgressors.
We conclude then that in the words of
Professor H.H. Rowley there is no real
reason to deny that Jesus believed that his
death would be unique in its effect with
a uniqueness that could only be expressed in
terms of the suffering servant and that in
objective historical fact his belief has been justified.
So much about Jesus' use and there are
many many more illustrations but that's all we
have time for.
His use of the language and the theology
and the thoughts and clear references to Isaiah
53.
Paul does the same thing.
Paul often stresses the substitutionary aspect of our
Lord's death.
Sometimes he does so in the language that
we were considering last Lord's Day evening from
Mark 10 45 where Jesus said that the
Son of Man has come to give away
his life for ransom for many.
There are echoes there of Isaiah 53 too.
Sometimes Paul picks up that concept and brings
in this concept of a ransom when he
speaks about the the death of our Lord
Jesus but at other times he uses other
language.
Let me just give you one or two
illustrations.
In Romans 8 3 for example.
For what the law was powerless to do
in that it was weakened by the sinful
nature.
God did by sending his own Son in
the likeness of sinful man to be a
sin offering.
A sin offering.
Reflecting, echoing again something from Isaiah 43 but
God is making him to be an offering
for the sins of others.
Or again take Paul in 2 Corinthians 5
21.
God made him who had no sin to
be sin for us so that in him
we might become the righteousness of God.
And indeed that there are a number of
others.
I think that these are so obvious that
I don't need to dwell with them.
But let me give you another one from
Peter which is a very significant one.
And as one commentator says this must surely
have been written at the foot of the
cross with Isaiah 53 in the background.
He himself says Peter in 1 Peter 2
24 bore our sins in his own body
to the tree so that we might die
to sins and live for righteousness.
By his wounds you have been healed.
I'm not going to take the I'm not
going to take the time to try and
say how many references there are to there
to Isaiah 53.
You ponder it and I think you will
find that that one verse verse 24 in
1 Peter 2 is so full of Isaiah
53 that it's almost unbelievable.
This must suffice then to prove that the
theology of Isaiah 53 is unquestionably that of
the New Testament at large.
Particularly that of Jesus and Paul and this
reference shows that Peter is one with them.
So are others of course.
Now that brings me to the second main
thing I want to do.
Even though it is a little prosaic I
deem that it is right to do it.
I want now to refer to some passages
of Scripture where again we have very very
clear references in the New Testament I mean.
References to Isaiah 53 as a portrait of
the servant that was to be fulfilled and
has been fulfilled in the person of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
Now we have a very interesting one right
at the beginning of the Gospels.
Let me quote from Mark I might well
have quoted from Matthew or Luke.
I quote from Mark chapter 1 and verse
11.
Jesus is being baptized of John the Baptist
in the Jordan and we read as Jesus
is coming out of the water this is
what we read.
And a voice came from heaven you are
my son whom I love with whom I
am well pleased.
You are my son whom I love my
beloved son with you I am well pleased.
Now it is not always realized that that
statement attributed to God the Father by the
side of Jordan is a combination of two
Old Testament passages.
I was many years a Christian before I
saw that and there may be some here
tonight who have not yet recognized it well
have a good look at it when you
go home.
There are two statements there and they're wedded
together by God the Father and announced concerning
God the Son.
One statement is taken from Psalm 2 and
verse 7 and the other from Isaiah 42
and verse 1.
The one from Psalm 2 7 is this
thou art my beloved son and the other
from Isaiah 42 from the Greek version not
the Hebrew in you I am well pleased.
Now these two passages show that in the
mind of God Jesus had come to fulfill
what is prophesied in Psalm 2 and what
is prophesied in Isaiah 42.
Psalm 2 is a messianic psalm and it
goes on to speak of Jesus as the
King.
We have these words just following the passage
from which I quoted ask of me says
God the Father to his son ask of
me and I will make the nations your
inheritance and the ends of the earth your
possession you will rule over them with a
rod of iron.
Psalm 2 is a messianic psalm which portrays
the coming kingship of Messiah.
God takes these few words from one of
those verses and links them up with the
other words from Isaiah 42 1 about my
servant in whom my soul delights.
My soul delights.
The significance of this divine commendation of Jesus
action then in being baptized and their confessing
sin as you had to confess for John's
baptism not his own of course but the
sins that he had taken upon himself every
Pharisee every Jew that went to Jordan to
confess sin confessed his own and if you
and I had gone to Jordan to be
baptized of John we would have had to
confess our own sins but Jesus had no
sins to confess yes he had sins to
confess they were not his own and later
John the Baptist tells us behold he says
a staggering thing pointing to Jesus of Nazareth
behold the Lamb of God another concept from
Isaiah 53 behold the Lamb of God who
has come to bear away the sin of
the world John where did you get that
notion from now the Bible doesn't tell you
this but I believe in principle it does
John overheard Jesus confessing his sins and the
sins were not his own but they were
those he had made his own there was
no sin in him but there was sin
on him and it was the burden of
his the sins of men that took him
to Jordan that all righteousness might be fulfilled
and the same sins took him ultimately to
the cross where he instead of sinner significance
of this divine communication and commendation of Jesus
action in being baptized for our sins and
of the further reference to him in terms
of the messianic king of sound to and
the servant of Isaiah 42 is considerable we
however can only now refer to the fact
that God acknowledged him as his well-beloved
son in these terms which is another way
again of linking him you see with the
prophecy of the Old Testament I have to
move quickly from one to another or the
evening will be over come now to Matthew
chapter 8 and verse 17 let me read
now the background by the way is the
healing of Peter's mother-in-law our Roman
Catholic friends don't believe that Peter was married
I'm at a loss to know how he
got a mother-in-law if he wasn't
married well he had a mother-in-law
and I guess he must have been married
now look that's the background he came into
the house and his mother-in-law was
sick of the palsy and then later on
that same day there are many demon-possessed
people who come and Jesus heals them now
let me read Matthew 8 17 this was
to fulfill what was spoken through the Prophet
Isaiah he healed his mother-in-law and
he healed those that were possessed of devils
or demons in order to fulfill what was
written by the Prophet Isaiah what was written
by the Prophet Isaiah he took our infirmities
and he carried our diseases now this is
unquestionably from Isaiah chapter 53 verse 4 now
let's get the thought again how was Jesus
able to heal because he was going to
die the death that would atone for sin
and procure a full salvation for men and
women a salvation that applies to the body
as well as to the soul now says
somebody to me you believe now we've got
you in the corner do you believe as
someone asked me this week do you believe
that healing was in the atonement of course
I do where else does healing of the
body come from we are in a we
are belong to a fallen Adamic race we
are under the curse and our bodies suffer
because of sin and Jesus has procured for
us not only forgiveness of sins and the
cleansing of unrighteousness of which the New Testament
speak but he has procured for us a
new body which we shall receive one day
a body which we will be incapable of
pain in which we shall know no sorrow
there will be no tears where did Jesus
procure that for us how did he procure
it for us I'll tell you when he
died upon the cross he procured a full
salvation a total salvation for the body as
well as for the soul I think of
these two dear sisters that we've been announcing
their funerals for tomorrow they're in the presence
of the Lord but one day they will
rejoice even more than they rejoice now when
they're glorified spirits will inhabit a glorified inhabits
a glorified body in the glory of his
presence because our Lord by his death has
procured for us a full salvation don't abandon
your body to the devil don't think that
your body is outside of divine redemption it
isn't but that does not mean of course
as some people make it me that if
there is healing and a new body a
perfect body for us in the atonement that
you can go to God at any old
time and ask him to absolve you from
suffering that doesn't follow but it does mean
that insofar as it is the will of
God at any given time he can on
the basis of the finished work of God
in Christ give us gratis healing of body
as well as healing of soul but if
he doesn't give us such things in the
here and now he keeps them for us
until the there and then and one day
whether you die from cancer or whether you
die just in your sleep because all your
strength is gone one day you will enter
into the inheritance of what he purchased on
the cross a full salvation oh I'd like
to shout this I wouldn't be any the
wiser but it's a full salvation it was
all in the atonement heaven and glory was
in the atonement glory for the soul glory
for the mind glory for the spirit glory
for the body glory all around let me
rush to refer to one or two again
let's turn to mark 1465 this I think
is very significant to mark 14 and 65
Jesus is standing before the Sanhedrin now think
of this august body will you it's the
highest court jury all the high ups the
intelligentsia that the learned the politicians the nobilities
were all here they had a way of
choosing people for this high office who were
representative of the very best but now look
what happens then some began to spit at
him they blindfolded him I struck him with
their fists and they said prophesy and the
guards took him and beat him now you
have only to turn back to Isaiah chapter
50 and verse 6 and you read these
words this is of the servant it's not
from Isaiah 53 but it's the same context
one of the servant passages that we shall
be coming to listen to these words I
offered my back to those who beat me
my cheeks to those who pulled out the
beard I did not hide my face from
mocking and spitting you know it might very
well have been a report of what went
on in that most unexpected place before the
Sanhedrin you take it from me the Jewish
people the Jewish Sanhedrin did not purposely fulfill
make themselves the folk responsible for fulfilling that
prophecy of Isaiah 50 knowledge of scripture for
they had they did not deliberately want to
fulfill that kind of prophecy especially in relation
to Jesus who made himself out to be
the Messiah here are the champions of scripture
those who knew the scriptures unwittingly went on
with their hasty business and their evil business
became unwittingly the agents whereby this terrible terrible
scripture is now you have the same concept
of the servant in many many places in
the book of the Acts of the Apostles
I can only refer now to one I
refer to Acts chapter 3 in verse 13
the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob the
God of our fathers has glorified his servant
Jesus his servant Jesus you handed him over
to be killed and you disowned him before
Pilate though he had decided to let him
go in chapter 3 verse 26 chapter 4
verse 27 and again in verse 30 at
least you have the same kind of concept
here again you see taking the words from
the Greek version of the Old Testament Peter
and the preachers in the early chapters of
the Acts of the Apostles see our Lord
Jesus Christ as the servant of Jehovah where
did they get that title from where did
they get the notion from in these remarkable
passages in Isaiah 42 49 50 52 and
53 or hurry on to a passage that
is most familiar to us still and one
of the great imponderables Philippians chapter 2 verses
5 to 8 I read it in a
version which is perhaps not as familiar to
many of you and perhaps all the better
for that your attitude says Paul should be
the same as that of Christ Jesus who
being in the very nature of God did
not consider equality with God something to be
grasped but made himself nothing made himself nothing
taking the very nature of a servant being
made in human likeness and as if that
were not enough being found in appearance as
a man he humbled himself and became obedient
to death even death on a cross here
again you have the servant concept coming out
from the pen and the thoughts and the
mind of the Apostle Paul and giving its
own distinctive flavor to the ministry of our
Lord is it an accident as to how
far it is dependent upon the Isaiah passages
we cannot say that it reflects it in
some measure is evident that brings me to
the last that I can speak about by
no means the least coming to the very
book of Revelation the apocalypse of St. John
I read in verse 6 of chapter 5
these words then I saw a lamb looking
as if it had been slain standing in
the center of the throne encircled by the
four living creatures and the elders he had
seven horns and one and seven eyes which
are the same spirits of God sent out
into all the earth here is the portrait
of a lamb in the midst of the
throne in the previous verse the apostle has
spoken of him as the lion of the
tribe of Judah but here the lion is
the lamb standing in the midst of the
throne as if he had been slain newly
slain the wounds in his hands as it
were are evident as recently slain this reference
to the slain lamb as well as the
reference to John the Baptist's assertion that we
referred to a little long ago behold the
Lamb of God that taketh away the sin
of the world can hardly be envisaged other
than in relation to Isaiah 53 and of
course the concept of the Paschal Lamb in
the New Testament now what's the conclusion of
all this the passages we have referred to
and there are many many others but they
will suffice these that we've looked at to
establish that the New Testament not only propounds
a theology underlying Isaiah's portrait of the servant
of the servant a theology of salvation by
substitution but in many other places the link
between Jesus as the servant of God fulfilling
the concept of servanthood in these Isaiah passages
is unquestionably established the Apostles believed it our
Lord Jesus believed it and when Philip took
that passage that the the Chancellor of the
Exchequer was reading beginning with the same scripture
he preached unto him who Jesus Jesus now
in concluding I want to say two things
I would like to bring every Christian to
a place of worship why all this why
talk about it why make such fuss about
it Oh brothers doesn't it make you excited
men and women of God the fact of
such fulfillment speaks of both the sovereignty of
God and the sufficiency of his grace in
the first place God can afford hundreds of
years before the event to tell men what's
going to happen I can't do that you
can't do that the United Nations can't do
that all the councils of the church can
never do that there is no one else
that can do that God can afford to
do that and he did that you try
it it's a risky thing to try if
you're not sure of yourself but you see
God could run the risk because God is
God and there is no risk with him
and all this is faith kindling to those
who only had a promise that is the
people of the Old Testament we discover that
on the basis of such promises as these
you see there were those that looked for
salvation in Israel they were on tiptoe they
were waiting there were the faithful souls who
had read the portrait the pictures there are
so many of them in the in the
Old Testament portraits of the coming one this
is one and they had their faith upon
these words of the Almighty God and they
were waiting they were faith kindling promises that's
what they were meant to do now to
us they should be faith confirming as you
and I see that our God can do
this kind of thing and did this kind
of thing and when Jesus came he saw
that as he had been foretold as he
had been pre-intimate it had been pre
-intimated in these Old Testament scriptures so now
he fashions his life according to it he
came to fulfill he didn't need to make
a groove for himself and cast away these
Old Testament notions he came to fulfill them
they were there already God had made his
mind known he came to fulfill if this
doesn't make a Christian man and woman worship
God I don't know what does but let
me say the other thing this phenomenon speaks
eloquently of the unity of the Old and
New Testaments Dr. F.F. Bruce has written
a very beautiful little book very erudite really
in its way of presenting the various Old
Testament designations of the coming one the one
that we have before us tonight is one
of them it's called the time is fulfilled
and he shows how in the New Testament
you have so many of these themes spoken
in the Old Testament and then they're fulfilled
in the New and if I had my
own way I'd like to give a copy
to everybody here tonight I haven't got that
number of copies that don't come to me
tonight but if you can find it you
get it it's great reading it's a little
bit heavy here and there but it's great
reading and for one thing it gives you
such a view of God such a confidence
in his word he knows what he's about
he knows what we need so that faith
can be created in us and when faith
has come to birth in us that faith
can be confirmed in us how firm a
foundation ye saints of the Lord is found
for your faith in his excellent word let
us trust him as we approach these servant
passages in Isaiah then we can now dispense
with any sort of apologetic and trying to
prove that Jesus did think of himself in
these terms we shall come without any equivocation
we shall come without any apology and we
shall see there a portrait of Jesus before
he came history written before it happened it's
only God can do that may his name
be praised may our lives be enriched as
we walk in the ways of his word
let us pray Oh God our father we
bow in your presence humbly to acknowledge the
wonders of your deeds the amazing wisdom and
power and sovereignty that you exhibit in such
a phenomenon as the inspiration of the prophets
not only concerning this passage of these passages
in Isaiah but of the whole of the
Old Testament and of the new likewise but
we thank you especially now for these passages
free intimating announcing beforehand the one who was
to come we ask our father but should
there be among us in this auditorium this
evening in this sanctuary should there be among
us anyone who has no face that the
understanding of this may somehow be the means
in your hand that the spirit will use
to quicken confidence in a God who not
only can do this but has done it
we pray for all of us at the
knowledge of these things may make us more
believing more trustful and therefore more obedient in
Jesus name