OPEN: A few weeks from now we’re going to have the “Holy Hands For Christ” Sign Corp perform here at church. It’s a group dedicated to ministering to the deaf and the hearing impaired. They’ll put on their concerts, not so much to entertain as to raise money to buy hearing aides and other helpful items for those who have difficulty hearing. They don’t sing. Instead, they use American Sign Language to communicate the words of various styles of Christian music.
When I first saw them practice, I was intrigued by the sign they used when referring to Jesus. Does anybody know what hand gestures they use for the name of Jesus?
(They touch the palm of each hand… indicating the nail prints in His hands).
APPLY: That symbolism is used in American Sign language because that is how Jesus is identified: crucified for our sins.
ILLUS: The Washington Post has is a section of their files called the “biographical morgue”. In that “morgue” they keep “biographical” info on various famous people and they identify each person with a single vocational notice, such as "home run king" or "motion picture star” or “politician”. According to a former reporter, one of these files is marked, "Jesus Christ (martyr)."
Now, for a secular paper - that’s a fairly accurate depiction of who Jesus was.
He sacrificed Himself for what He believed in
He died a martyr.
He died for a cause
And what cause did Jesus die for???
He died to obtain forgiveness for our sins.
There are people who have a problem with that.
ILLUS: A popular musician that I personally like - Billy Joel – said this:
"I wasn’t raised Catholic, but I used to go to mass with my friends and I viewed the whole business as a lot of very enthralling hocus pocus. There’s a guy... nailed to a cross and dripping blood and everyone’s blaming themselves for that man’s torment.
But I said to myself, ’Forget it. I had no hand in that evil. I have no original sin. There’s no blood of any sacred martyr on my hands. I pass on all of this.’"
Why would he say that?
What was it about the message of Jesus that bothered him so?
Well, I believe he’s bothered because he misunderstood a couple of things.
First I believe he misunderstood who Jesus was.
He thought Jesus was simply a great moral teacher.
A man who died at some point in history because of what He taught.
Actually, that’s why a lot of people reject Jesus.
They think that Jesus was simply another religious leader who meant well - but whose teachings were all there was to Him.
I had an e-mail correspondence with an atheist a few years back and he asked me:
“Why should I believe that Jesus has any advantage over the founders of other world religions?”
Now, there’s a lot of reasons Jesus that I could have given to prove Jesus was superior to the founders of other religious, but one of the most significant was this: Jesus had been predicted.
Consider …
About 500 years before Jesus was born a man came along that we know of as Buddha. Buddha came up with what he thought was a “good idea” and drew followers to him who agreed that his teachings seemed like a “good idea.”
When he died, his followers created a religion around those ideas and it exists to this day. (Buddhism) But Buddha arose from relative obscurity and no one had predicted his coming. There had been no prophetic declaration that such a leader would be born to fulfill the expectations of his people.
And about 500 yrs after Christ was born, another man was came along that we know as Mohammed. Mohammed came up with what he thought was a “good idea” and drew followers to him who agreed that his teachings seemed like a “good idea.”
When he died, his followers created a religion around those ideas and it exists to this day. (Islam) But Mohammed arose from relative obscurity and no one had predicted his coming.
There had been no prophetic declaration that such a leader would be born to fulfill the expectations of his people.
By contrast, when Jesus was born, His coming had been preceded by 2000 years of prophecies. Prophecies that declared where He would be born, how He would live, and how He would die.
There are at least 300 of these kinds of prophecies.
And one of the most powerful of those prophecies is found in Isaiah 53.
Isaiah is often called the “messianic” prophet because so much of his book was dedicated to giving detailed information about what the coming Messiah would be like (written 700 years before Jesus was born).
For example: Isaiah declared that this Messiah would be “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." Isaiah 53:3
And Isaiah told us He would be tortured and beaten (vs. 5) “...the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed." Isaiah 53:5
That He would die “By oppression and judgment he was taken away… he was cut off from the land of the living… he poured out his life unto death ….” Isaiah 53:8 & 12
And that He was to be condemned to die with wicked men:
“He was assigned a grave with the wicked” Isaiah 53:9a
When He died, who was crucified along with Him? Two thieves.
And yet though He was condemned to die with the wicked, He was also “… assigned a grave with … the rich in his death… “ (vs. 9b)
When He died, Joseph of Arimathea – a very wealthy man – had His body buried in his own tomb.
And lastly… Isaiah seems to imply that the Messiah – after dying - wasn’t going to remain dead. Is 53:11 says that “After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied…”
That’s pretty powerful stuff.
And it was all written 700 years before Jesus was born.
Now Buddha may have had some good things to say.
And Mohammed may have had valuable insights.
But they didn’t come with any paperwork.
They hadn’t arrived with a stamp of authenticity from our God (or any other)
By contrast Jesus had many good things to say AND He taught some of the highest moral standards of any religious leader. But above all else - He came in fulfillment of prophecies like those found in Is. 53.
He came with the paperwork. He came with the stamp of authenticity.
Unlike what Billy Joel had thought - and what a lot of other skeptics and unbelievers think - Jesus was not just an ordinary teacher because it wasn’t His teachings that made Him great.
(Now, make no mistake - His teachings were great, and we need to know and understand what He taught us so that we can be acceptable to God).
But it wasn’t His teachings that made Him great.
It was His willingness to die on the cross - that made Him our savior and changed our destiny forever.
As Paul wrote Titus “Jesus Christ… GAVE HIMSELF for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” Titus 2:14
That is the theme of Isaiah 53.
The Messiah was to come as a sacrifice for His people.
His death would have the power to buy us out of wickedness and purify our lives.
It was by His wounds…
…by His sufferings…
…by His death – that we could actually have hope in this world.
That was the 1st thing that Billy Joel misunderstood.
He thought Jesus was “just an ordinary teacher”… but He wasn’t
The 2nd thing he misunderstood was this: Billy Joel thought of Jesus’ death on the cross was a kind of “selfish thing”.
One of his remarks was this: “everyone’s blaming themselves for that man’s torment”
Why would he say that?
He said that because he‘d been taught to believe that God thought he of him as worthless.
He’d been told God saw him as a guilty creature of little value.
It was his fault Jesus was crucified.
It was your fault, it was my fault that Jesus was there on the cross.
Our sins put Him there.
Now that is true…
But sometimes it isn’t what you say, but how you say it, that makes the difference.
Granted, Isaiah tells us that “… he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows…” Isaiah 53:4
And that “…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.” Isaiah 53:5
But the Messiah Isaiah tells us about wasn’t “forced” to do take His suffering.
We didn’t force Him. He chose it.
He did what He did on Calvary - for us.
To repeat that verse from Titus “Jesus Christ… gave himself FOR US to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself A PEOPLE THAT ARE HIS VERY OWN, eager to do what is good. Titus 2:14
Jesus went to the cross because we mattered to Him.
It was your sins (and mine) that shut us off from the presence of God from the blessings that God wanted to give. And God so much desired to rescue us that He was willing to pay the ultimate price.
“For God so loved the world that gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” John 3:16
ILLUS: Dr. Walter L. Wilson tells of the Revival he held where a woman approached him after the crowds had gone. She explained that she wanted to become a Christian but she just couldn’t understand how God could forgive her and accept her.
At that point, he felt prompted to ask her if she knew any scripture.
And she responded “Oh yes,
"For God so loved the world that he gave His only FORGOTTEN son..."
He was a little taken back by her mangling of John 3:16, but then it occurred to him:
"Do you know why God forgot His son?"
"No," she replied.
"He forgot His son (pause) because He wanted to remember you."
That’s the message of Isaiah.
ILLUS: One very insightful preacher pointed out (Maurice Woodard III Sermoncentral.com) that in Isaiah 53:4-5 there’s an interesting pattern. He said
· When (Isaiah) talks about the suffering, the sorrow, and the satisfaction for sin, it is all "he," and "him,". "He" did this "he" did that. It’s all "he," because he did everything!
· But when he talks about the benefits of this redemption it is "We" and "our". "We" this and "we" that – it’s all "we," because we get the benefits of God’s free grace.
ILLUS: Someone once noted that God’s grace to us can best be understood in this way:
God’s
Riches
At
Christ’s
Expense
Or as a man named Michael Green observed:
Grace is “the love of God - with arms extended on a cross – that bars the way to hell.”
Jesus didn’t ENDURE the suffering of the crucifixion because we forced Him into it.
He embraced the cross because He loved us too much to allow us to be held captive by our sin.
CLOSE: To understand the full impact of the message out of Isaiah, let me tell you this story
There was once a mountain school that had a hard time keeping a teacher. Partly that was because of where they were and partly it was because there was a group of big, rough boys who took pride in running the teachers off.
The biggest and roughest of them was a boy named Tom.
Now a new young teacher won over the boys. He let them write their own rules for the school.
It turned out that the boys expected the rules to be very strictly enforced with a rod. For example, cheating would be punished with five strokes of the rod, and stealing with ten strokes. All punishment had to be given with the offender’s coat off.
Everything went well until one day Tom’s lunch was stolen.
A frail little boy in hand-me-down clothes that were too big for him admitted his guilt.
The students demanded that this boy needed to be whipped.
When the teacher called the little boy up front, he came whimpering and begging to leave his coat on. The other students insisted that he obey the rules and take off his coat. When he did, a deathly silence settled over the room. This frail little boy had no shirt on and his emaciated body looked like skin stretched over bones. The teacher gasped and dropped the rod. He knew he could never whip that little boy.
Suddenly, big tough Tom strode up and stood between the teacher and the boy.
"I’ll take it for him, Teacher, after all it was my lunch he stole."
And then Tom pulled off his coat. Reluctantly the Teacher started. After the third blow the switch broke. The teacher threw it in the corner and said, "That’s all. School dismissed."
The frail little boy laid his hand on big Tom’s arm and through his tears said, "Thank you, Tom, it would have killed me." (as told by R.G. Lee)
700 years before Jesus was born… Isaiah told us what was going to happen.
Because we needed to realize that the Messiah was going to be MORE than an ordinary teacher
We needed to realize that the Messiah was being sent to suffer and die for our sins
We needed to understand that the punishment for our sins would literally kill us.
And we needed to realize that the Messiah would do what He did because God couldn’t bear for us to take that punishment and be separated from His presence
And God declared this in advance so that we’d realize that Jesus’ death was not an accident.
Instead it was something God had decided long before it happened… and it called for a decision on our part.
In Acts 8, we’re told the story of a Queen’s treasurer that was riding home in his chariot.
An angel instructed a Christian named Philip to go talk with this man.
Philip began to run long side the chariot and he overheard the man reading out of Isaiah. And where do you think this treasurer was reading from? (Isaiah 53). The treasurer asked Philip to come up into the chariot with him and they had a little Bible study. They read:
"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."
And the treasure asked Philip, "Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?" Starting with that Scripture, Philip began to tell the man about Jesus.
The treasurer was so overwhelmed by what he heard that Acts 8:36 tells us that “As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the treasurer said, ‘Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?’”
The message about Jesus was so powerful, this man couldn’t wait to take Him as his savior.
He didn’t want to wait until he made it to Egypt.
He didn’t want to turn around and make his way back to Jerusalem.
He had to be baptized right then and there.
He made a decision to belong to Christ.
What about you?
Will you make that decision today?
