Christ Our Sin Bearer Series

Turn Your Bibles to Isaiah 53:1-6

Title: Christ Our Sin Bearer

Theme: What Good Friday is All About

Series: Easter Season Messages

Listen as I read Isaiah 53: 1-6, “Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered Him stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted. But 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 of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” Pray!

Introduction: We are about to enter into the time of the year that should fill the child of God with great joy and expectation. It has been said, “Easter is proof that God’s Messiah had come.” Christmas is a wonderful time to celebrate the birth of Christ, and the Easter season is the time we “Celebrate Jesus’ Life and His Triumph over Sin and Death.”

Proposition: I would propose to you that Christians should remember what “Good Friday” was all about. Because of the price Christ paid on the Cross, Christians should live a life that says “We want to stop falling prey to sin.

Interrogative Sentence: Just how do the children of God live a life that presents the hope of Christ to a lost world? What are the truths to living a life that says I am victorious in Christ, purchased by His blood?

Transitional Sentence: The key truth to cling to in celebrating Christ’s life and victory over sin and death is the concept of sin. When this is understood, the heart can be made ready to enjoy Salvation found in Christ and victory over that which destroys fellowship with God. Romans 3:23-25 says, “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in His blood…”

Everyone has “sinned” (hamartono) meaning to miss the mark on the way to what God had created you for. The Holy Spirit revealed to Paul that sin is a powerful source ruling within people (Romans 7:23) and this battle continues on and on trying to harden the spiritual heart. (Romans 7:21-24) Adam was constituted by God as the head of the generation of mankind and when he fell, that fallen nature was and is passed on to his descendants. Romans 5:12 says, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.” The New American Standard Bible says, “…so death spread to all men.”

The Greek Word for “came” (dierchomai) or “spread” means to extend to. Paul is saying, “Sin penetrated the entire human race. Like water permeates through sand, sin takes effect on the entire man, physically and spiritually.” Sin is often compared to cancer, a living disease, not like a rotten branch which may be easily blown off with a fair wind. Sin is like a living, crawling, poisonous crab in the soul and can only be overcome by Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit revealed to the Apostle Paul the blessedness of having the Spirit of Christ living in the child of God. He wrote in regard to life through the Spirit, “And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, who lives in you.”

Christians who understand the truths of sin fear the cost of sin. Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” “Death” (thanatos) in the New Testament is treated not as a natural process but always as a destroying power related to sin and all its consequences. There are four truths to grasp as we take time to celebrate all that Christ overcame for His children this Easter season. There are the truths of physical death, spiritual death, eternal death and victory over death.