Passage: Isaiah 53:1-9
Intro: We have had front-row seats for quite a show these last 3 weeks.
1. watched with pride and amazement as the brave men and women of our military have dismantled the regime of Saddam Hussein
2. precision aerial bombardment, bunker busters chasing Saddam from one hidey-hole to another.
stuff, the awesome power to topple Saddam as well as kindness towards those who have suffered under his rule.
4. as far as a human solution to a human problem, it’s been about as good as it gets.
5. but some problems are just too big for us to handle, in spite of our pride
Il) Humanist Manifesto says “We can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human species. While there is much that we do not know, humans are responsible for what we are or will become. No deity will save us; we must save ourselves”
6. on this Palm Sunday we hear once again what God has been saying to us for thousands of years. “You are lost without Me!”
7. v6 well-known, speaks to the universal nature of sin. “We all…have gone astray”
8. but there’s more here…the consequences of that sin in terms of our relationship to our Creator.
Il) Hengstenberg..”We walked through life solitary, forsaken, miserable, separated from God and the Good Shepherd, and deprived of His pastoral care”
9. the Biblical image is used for a reason: domesticated sheep that have wandered away from their shepherd, needy, helpless, easy prey.
Il) Phillip Keller, “A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23”, sheep are: timid and easily panicked, w/out means to defend selves except to run, 292 killed in one night by 2 dogs, will overgraze and ruin habitat, “cast”=fallen and can’t get up, will die. “No other class of livestock requires more careful handling, more detailed direction, than sheep”
10. God’s flock was widely scattered, dying from starvation, thirst, wolves, being “cast”
11. separated from our shepherd by our own sinful choice. What could God do?
I. Because of the Depth of Our Need, God Needed Character More Than Image.
1. the terror of the human condition is the human condition.
2. we have become used to our helplessness, and have forged ways to deal with lives separated from God
3. we have developed our own system of values and substituted them for God’s.
4. health, physical prowess and beauty, money, things. We hide our desperate need behind a veneer of image.
Il) lose the fat and bulk up the muscle, whiten our teeth, get our eyes lasiked, dye our hair to get rid of the gray, get a bigger house, vote for the tallest candidate, idolize the handsomest, most beautiful. Not bad to have white teeth, nice hair, etc. But is that our hope?
5. because behind the image, the lostness persists, the helplessness continues
6. when God sent His Son, notice the lack of image-orientation.
7. in fact, so counter to the image expectations of the culture that most refused to give His message any credence. V1
8. “tender shoot”=sucker growth on a tree. We cut it off
9. “root out of dry ground”=a plant without a chance to survive.
10. despised and rejected…why? He told the truth to a people who preferred the lie of worshipping false gods.
11. but the last thing we needed was more shallow image, more lies dressed up with glitz,
il) we’ve been treated to preposterous lies of Iraqi minister of information lately.
12. the world looks for image, and Jesus came with impeccable character, and so was a person who pleased God and was rejected by most of mankind.
13. to deal with the terror of universal lostness, God needed someone with depth of character, not just the flash of image.
14. we shouldn’t be surprised that God continues to develop the same character in those who are called to continue telling the truth to a lost world.
II. Because We Were All Lost in Sin, God Needed Someone Uninfected By the World’s Sinful Value System.
1. God couldn’t accomplish His goal of rescue by using one of us.
2. every human being was infected by the sin virus, as v6 states.
3. but this passage fairly reeks with substitution, putting someone else in the game to replace someone who can’t do the job.
Il) watching baseball, pitcher struggling, we start to cry out from our lazy=boys, “get him out of there!”
4. because of the universal infection of sin, no one on the bench or in the bullpen qualified. Had to come from another team!
5. God then sent someone so different, so unique, so uninfected by sin that we couldn’t stand him.
6. and when he died on public display, those watching thought he was getting what he deserved.
7. but vv4-5 tell a different story: that he was getting what we deserved.
8. in our lostness, our separation from the Shepherd, the sin that caused that separation needed to be paid for.
Il) we were all on our backs, or surrounded by wolves, or dying of thirst. Helpless!!
9. and so v5 tells us that His death was for us, on our behalf, brought us healing
10. and don’t think this was easy!
11. v6, “laid on Him”=to hit or strike violently.
12. God needed someone who could take the dual hit of bearing not only the guilt of the sins of the world, but God’s terrible wrath against that sin.
13. and that person had to be without sins of His own, so that he could bear the guilt of ours.
14. this someone was called the Lamb of God, the sinless sacrifice, God who became a man so that He could rescue us from our separation from God before it became permanent and eternal
15. our need is great. Jesus is greater!
III. Because We Are Driven by Fear, God Needed Someone Who Trusted Him Perfectly
1. if you read the OT, common sin of Israel was fear
il) out of Egypt, Kadesh, afraid to go into the land. Typical.
2. common ailment, we don’t believe God, go “our own way”
3. our greatest desire is to protect ourselves, our standing, our lives, our property, our pride.
4. as lost sheep, separated from our shepherd, our whole life is one of fear
5. and fear causes us to trust only in ourselves, in our ability and relative strength.
6. the way back to God is through faith, through trust in His plan.
7. and Jesus stood in that gap of fear and placed His faith completely in God
8. through terrible oppression and torment, through rejection and abuse, mistreatment and injustice, Jesus never complained, never questioned God.
PP I Peter 2: 23-24
9. He entrusted himself, put His life, reputation, well-being in the hands of His Father, under the most awful of circumstances.
10. and the faith of Jesus Christ was the instrument that God was able to use to rescue His lost sheep.
11. Jesus entrusted His entire self to His Father, trusting that God would use His terrible suffering to rescue His sheep.
Conc. Now brothers and sisters, this cuts two ways.
1. if you are a follower of Jesus Christ this morning, the character that we see in Jesus Christ is what God is producing in us
2. depth of godly character,
3. freedom from the worlds value system, corrupt and powerless
4. and possessing such a deep faith in God that we will even except unjust suffering if He calls us to.
5. we are no longer lost, separated, but are looking more and more like our shepherd.
6. and perhaps you are lost this morning, sensing the hopelessness of your condition, maybe even feel like a cast sheep with the vultures circling overhead.
7. the price of your restoration to the care of your shepherd has been paid.
