The Passion Of Christ (Part 2) Series

THE PASSION OF CHRIST

Isaiah 52:13-53:9-12

Part 11

THE REVELATION OF GOD’S PLEASURE

Isaiah 53:10

Good News Christian Fellowship

March 12, 2006

Last’s week we have seen the Suffering of the Servant of God as Prophet Isaiah prophesy hundred years before it happens: His Mission; His Rejection; His Substitutionary Sacrifice; His Submission; His Death; His Burial.

“Jesus not only fulfills Old Testament expectations of a coming prophet and king. The Promise of the Old Testament sacrifices also fulfilled in Him… In His death He accomplishes what the repeated animals sacrifices of the Old Testament could only promise, an effective and final atonement. Sinners who look to Him and His cross can stand confidently before the Holy One.” (Thomas L. Trevethan)

We are all sinners. That’s the troubling thing. We all go in our own ways (Romans 3:23) we are short of the Glory of God. We exchange the glory of God in our affection for something else.

That’s what we are. And that is what all those people are like that God has chosen to save. And even after he makes them his own and bring disgrace upon his name by their inconsistency and half-hearted response to Jesus command to love God.

So the troubling thing is that God is so enthusiastic about being good to people whose sinfulness is blight on his name. He desired to save His people from bondage of sins. That’s the heart of God.

Now let’s read…

Isaiah 53:10 "Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shall make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.”

In this verse we read, “he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days…”

His seed is the generation (Ps. 22:30) that shall serve him, the whole body of God’s elect. He shall prolong his days, means that, once he has by his death fully satisfied the justice of God and put away the sins of his people, he will be raised from the dead to declare in the most public, undeniable manner possible that all for whom he died are forever justified.

However, the thing we have to focus on this afternoon is that it is the Father who is AT WORK, in His INITIATIVE, not us, for the bruising His Son and putting him to death. Jesus was not swept away by the wrath of uncontrolled men and women; He was BRUISED by His Father. This was not the case somehow we can impress God by our own gifts and sacrifices; somehow we can make Him beholden to us so that he will be favorable toward us.

“Redemptive history is like a symphony with two great themes: God’s passion to preserve and display his glory and God’s inscrutable love for sinners who have scorned His glory…

The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the resolution of the symphony of history. In the death of Jesus the two themes of God’s love for His glory and His love for sinners are resolved…

God’s pleasure in His name and His pleasure in doing well to sinners meet in His pleasure in bruising His son” (John Piper)

Our Savior died by the hand of God, according to the will of God, for the GLORY of God. Though our Lord Jesus Christ “knew no sin,” the Lord God was pleased to bruise him in the place of sinners for sin. We recognize that our Redeemer was crucified by the hands of wicked men; but he was delivered to their hands by the will of God (Acts 2:23)

The Lord Jesus Christ died according to the purpose, decree, and will of God.

I Peter 1:18-21

Acts 13:28-29

It is the father who is at work, not us. Notice: “the Lord- has laid on him the iniquities of us all.” God make atonement. He is characteristically the subject of the verb make atonement [propitiate] and almost never its object. God propitiates his own wrath against those who deserve death. So great is His love for His people.

Why? To resolve the tension between the fathers love for His glory and His love for sinners. Notice verse 6. The issue here is His initiative in bruising His son and iniquities of His people. The bruising of His son was because God-dishonoring Son could not be ignored. And why couldn’t be ignored? Because God love the honor of his name. He will not act as though sin-, which belittles His glory-, didn’t matter.

So God the father and His son agreed that they will demonstrate to the entire world the infinitely worth of the father’s glory. How? By taking the punishment and suffering that our sin deserved. Verse 5 makes the substitution every more explicit: “He was wounded for our transgressions”; “He was bruised for our iniquities.”