Jesus: Man of Sorrows
Isaiah 53:1-5
2 Corinthians 7:10-11
March 9, 2014 - Lent 1
If you weren’t aware of it, Fat Tuesday was this past Tuesday. Fat Tuesday is also called Mardi Gras. Traditionally, it’s a time of celebration. There are parades, parties, balls and if you’re in New Orleans lots of partying. It’s a celebration which comes before Lent. It’s kind of like saying, since I am going to fast or give something up for a period of time, I may as well gorge myself beforehand.
As of Wednesday, we’ve entered a period called Lent. Lent is kind of like Advent, which is the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Lent is the period which is leading us to Easter. It’s a time when people will fast, repent, give up something in remembrance of Christ giving up His life for us. People will give up sweets or pop, or coffee, or something in remembrance of Jesus. This year, I’ve decided to give up celery. Actually, I think I’ll make it a year long fast.
Well, with that in mind, over the next several weeks, as we move toward Easter, I’m going to be preaching about different events from the life of Jesus, but to begin we’re going to look at a passage which foretells some of the events in the life of Jesus and I want to ask a question with it. Then, over the next weeks, we will look at passages in which tears were involved, for Jesus and others.
If you have your Bibles, would you turn to the book of Isaiah 53. Isaiah is in the OT. A Little more than ½ back in the OT. We are going to look at Isaiah 53:1-5, then move to a passage from the New Testament.
1 Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For He grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him,
and no beauty that we should desire Him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men;
a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.
4 Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But He was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with His wounds we are healed.
Sometimes, maybe too often, people question and wonder about a question Philip Yancey asked in his book, The Jesus I Never Knew. In that book, Yancy asked the question, “Does God care about the misery down here, the grief of our lives?” Yancey speaks of human life as a drama in which God, the “unseen Stage Manager,” came out from behind the curtain and got acquainted with grief in person. He wrote, “In Jesus, God lay down on the dissection table, as it were, stretched out in cruciform posture for the scrutiny of all the skeptics who ever lived.”
The passage from Isaiah is so rich with words about the suffering which was going to happen to Jesus. So much so, that this section of Isaiah is called “The Suffering Servant,” and it refers to Jesus.
Jesus was literally despised and rejected by the very people He came for. Imagine in your life if the people you are supposed to be closest to, your family, rejected you? Imagine one day your friends look at you . . . and they begin to mock you, laugh at you, reject you, despise you. They see you coming and they go a different way so they don’t have to pass you . . . and if they do, they glare at you and say those nasty things that only you can hear.
In many respect that was a big part of Jesus’ life. He should have been exalted! People should have understood who this man was, but He didn’t fit into their nice and neat package of who the Messiah should be. I wonder if Jesus were walking the streets of Alexandria, would we be the same way as the Pharisees and reject Him as well. Would we join the naysayers, the mockers, the religious elite, because we think we know, when we really have no clue?
So, if this Jesus is really real. If He came as Isaiah tells us in verses 4-5, that this Man of Sorrows, this Man who was despised and rejected . . . came for you and I to bear our griefs and sorrows, then why would we reject Him? Why would we not jump in with all we have? Isaiah gives us such a clear picture, I mean how can we miss it ~
5 But He was pierced for our transgressions;
He was crushed for our iniquities;
upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with His wounds we are healed.
For most of us, we can readily say, Jesus came to forgive us for our sinfulness. He went to the cross for us, He was wounded, pierced, beaten . . . not for His own good. He didn’t need it. He was the sinless One, He came into the world for you and I so that we could finally stand before God, not on our own merits, but because of the work Jesus did for you and I.
As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:21, For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
Notice that Paul says it was for whose sake? Our sake, not His. Christ had no sin, so through Christ we could become righteous in the eyes of God. That does not mean we are righteous, but through what Jesus did for us, God now views us as righteous. That is why we can now stand before God without fear, because we fully embrace and accept what Jesus did for us.
YET . . . you always know there’s another side to the story. Woody Allen once said, “My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.” That makes me think of the other side of it all. The regret that we refuse to let go of.
How often do we think like Woody Allen . . . Lord, let me just be more like so and so. Lord, just take me away from this place so I don’t have to deal with my pain. Lord, I can’t let go of my past. Lord, do it for me. I want to change, but not too much, after all, Lord, I revel in my sick hatred of myself. I know that’s pretty harsh, but if you cut through it all, we often get that way. We want to change, yet we really don’t want to change. It means we’d have to let go of the sin nature that we’re addicted to. So, we’d rather accept that life of less than.
Yet, part of the purpose of Jesus coming and forgiving our sinfulness was to erase our regrets, dry our tears and finally give us peace.
Paul tells us a little later in 2 Corinthians 7:10 ~ For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.
Paul is telling us that Jesus, the One who was pierced and wounded for you and I – so we could have forgiveness of sins, the One who died and rose again – so we could have eternal life . . .
well, hold on a second . . . I need to ask a question before I move on — — DO YOU BELIEVE THAT?! (Guessing I’ll barely hear a pip)
OK, now I’m convinced most of you believe that, because I know not all of you responded. But you would cheer at a concert or sporting event, wouldn’t you?
And this leads to what I want to lead us toward a conclusion this morning ~
and it’s a question ~ If Jesus did that, why do we still have tears of regret? Why can’t we feel the joy of forgiveness purchased by the Man of Sorrows?
You know what I mean? Why is it we can admit what Jesus did for us, but we still can’t get over our sinfulness and we can’t get past the fact that God really does forgive us. Look again at what Paul said in verse 10 ~ For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.
You see, when we really repent, when we do it because we’ve been convicted by God of our sinfulness, when we do it because we believe in our heart, spirit, mind and whole being who Jesus is, then we will turn to God and repent, which means to change and turn from our sinfulness, from our old ways which were against God. It means we make that 180° turn, leaving the old ways and following the new ways in Christ.
It doesn’t mean we will now be perfect. We’re far from it, but we will have experienced the power of God’s grace in our lives. We will know what it’s like to be forgiven and released from our bondage.
Have you ever been stopped by a cop. You know you rolled through that stop, or you were going a little fast, but they extended you a little grace and said, “go and sin no more.” That’s a small example of what God does for us. Just like Jesus did to the woman caught in adultery, and to the woman who had multiple men in her life in John 4, Jesus didn’t condemn them. The people condemned them, and they condemned themselves. Jesus didn’t! That’s the key folks. Jesus released them and said, “Go and sin no more!”
That’s the great news that the Man of Sorrows gives to us on this first Sunday of Lent.
You see, we often have regrets, but regrets are not the same as repentance. I have lots of regrets, some weren’t sinful. Some were. Notice that Paul tells us worldly grief will lead to death. In other words, we can grieve and be sorrowful about what we have not attained according to the worlds standards, but that’s not going to get us far with God. We can be grieved we didn’t make that business deal, or buy that stock, or fire that employee, or we can error on the side of some of the legal but unethical business practices, or we can seek to harm others and protest against one another — which is not pleasing to God. That is a worldly grief and sorrow. That’s not repentance.
We can even contrast that with the tears of Judas who regretted turning Jesus over to the Roman authorities. Judas had more of a worldly grief. He made a mistake about Jesus and regretted what he did and was so overcome that he hung himself.
Compare that to Peter who said he would forever stand with Jesus, then when the heat was turned up, Peter denied any association with Jesus on 3 occasions. Then when he heard the rooster crow, Peter remembered what Jesus said, and he bitterly wept, as a sign of his repentance. And we see Peter being an important leader of the early church.
So, when we do repent, when we call on God, our tears of sorrow will be turned into tears of repentance as we turn towards Christ. Friends, if you don’t know Jesus, if there is a sin issue in your life . . . if you’ve confessed to Christ, but you are still in bondage, take a moment and ask Jesus not only to forgive you, but that you would forgive you as well. The King of kings and Lord of lords forgives you, now it’s time for you to forgive you.
