"Lost Sheep" Isaiah 53:1-9
Pastor Jon MacKinney
______________________________________________________________________________________
We have been treated in the past several weeks to quite a show, haven’t we? On the TV we have watched with pride and with amazement as the brave men and women of our military and that of the United Kingdom have dismantled, town by town, city by city, the regime of Saddam Hussein. We have seen precision aerial bombardment, bunker busters, chasing Saddam from one hiding hole to another. We have seen amazing stuff; the awesome power to topple Saddam Hussein, as well as kindness for those who have suffered under his rule. As far as human solutions go to a difficult human problem, it’s been about as good as it gets, about as good as human beings can do.
But some problems are just too big for us to handle in spite of our pride. We really have a lot of it in the human race. The Humanist Manifesto says this, "We can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human species. While there is much we do not know, humans are responsible for what we are or will become. No deity will save us. We must save ourselves."
Last night I was privileged to hear a gentleman talk about creation. He read this quote from a man named Jeremy Ripkin, who is a Ph.D. in something. He writes this, "We no longer feel ourselves to be guests in someone else’s home and therefore obliged to make our behavior conform with some pre-existing set of cosmic rules. It is our creation now. We make the rules. We establish the parameters of reality. We create the world and because we do, we no longer feel beholden to outside forces. We no longer have to justify our behavior, for we are now the architects of the universe. We are responsible to nothing outside ourselves, so we are the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever."
Ugh. Hard to say, "Amen" to that one isn’t it? Pride. We think we’ve got the world by the tail. On this Palm Sunday we hear once again what God has said down through the centuries, over the thousands of years, the thing that Ethan sang about in his song. "You’re lost without My grace. You’re on a one way trip to nowhere."
We’ve seen this verse, Chris just read it for us a few minutes ago, verse 6 of Isaiah 53, "We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way." We read that verse and we say, "You know, that’s about the universality of sin." We’re ALL (we focus on that "all," and that’s true. We ALL like sheep have gone astray. This verse teaches more than just the universality of sin. It teaches the consequences of that sin, in terms of our relationship to God. We’re going to see in a little while there’s nothing worse in creation than a domesticated sheep who hasn’t got a shepherd. One commentator has said about this verse: "We walked through life solitary, forsaken, miserable, separated from God, and the Good Shepherd, and deprived of His pastoral care. We all, like sheep, have wandered away."
The Biblical image is used for a reason. As I said, domesticated sheep that have wandered away from their shepherd are the most pitiable of all creation. Philip Keller, in his book A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, has said this about sheep, "They are timid and easily panicked, without means to defend themselves except to run." He writes that he heard of one situation where in one night two dogs had gotten into a flock of sheep had killed 292 sheep in one night! Can you imagine that kind of slaughter?
Sheep will overgraze and ruin habitat. They are creatures of habit. If you leave sheep in one place, they’ll make ruts in their pathways. They will nibble the grass down to nothing and then just keep nibbling. They don’t move on. Only a shepherd is able to move them on to other pastures, leading them into pastures that are good. If left to themselves, they’ll just stay in the same place and ruin it and become under fed.
Sheep have a problem with their body structure. They experience something we call, being "cast." A cast sheep is a sheep that has fallen down and it can’t get up. It falls down and it falls onto its back and because of its leg structure compared to its body and the weight differential, and also the nature of their legs, they can’t get up. All they can do is flail in place wildly. They can’t roll over and get back up. Such a sheep, without a shepherd coming to find it, is in the vernacular, "toast." He may die, and if it’s a hot day, he may die in a couple of hours. If it’s cool and he’s in the shade, he may die in a couple of days. But he’s going to die because he’s cast. And sometimes, you put them back on their feet, and they will re-cast. And sometimes a sheep just gets so heavy with a coat matted and full of burrs and manure and dirt, that he’ll become so heavy that he’ll just fall over and become cast. A sheep without a shepherd is a very, very sad thing. Philip Keller, who raised sheep for years, says, "No other class of livestock requires more careful handling, more detailed direction, than sheep." So, when God says, in verse 6, of Isaiah 53, "We all, like SHEEP, have gone astray," that’s a powerful, powerful image and statement. And we can say all we want to about "No deity will save us. We must save ourselves." But, the fact is that the human race is flat on its back, legs flailing in the air, dying. We were separated from our Shepherd by our own sinful choice. Now, what did God do? What did God do in response?
Let’s look here at this passage in Isaiah. Because it’s full of not only our need, but as well the provision of God. The first thing we need to understand here is this: Because of the depth of our need, God needed character more than image. Because of the depth of our need, God needed character more than image. The terror of the human condition is the human condition. We have become used to our own helplessness and have forged ways to deal with lives that have been separated from God. As cast sheep, as stray sheep, far from our Shepherd, we have learned to survive, at least for a time, without Him. We have developed our own system of values and substituted them for God. We have created our own system that focuses on health, on physical prowess, on beauty, on money, on things. We hide our desperate need behind a veneer of image. So we lose the fat, bulk up the muscle, whiten our teeth with bright smile, get our eyes lasiked, dye our hair to get rid of the gray, and if enough of it has fallen off in the back we paint it with that spray paint that I can’t remember who sells. We get a bigger house, vote for the tallest candidate, idolize the handsomest and the most beautiful. We have produced our own sets of values.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with white teeth. There’s nothing wrong with losing the fat, bulking up. There’s nothing wrong with having hair, as long as it’s on the top of your head. But, we have taken God’s values and flushed them because we’re separated from Him and we’ve come up with our own. And now, if you’re all these things, then you’re good. But, you know what, we all know it, don’t we as believers. We know that behind the image, the lostness persists. The helplessness continues. And in fact, the focus on these substitute values are really a symptom of our lostness.
When God sent Jesus, notice the the lack of image orientation. Verse 1 in chapter 53, "Who has believed our message? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" Who understands that this person, Jesus Christ, as lowly as He appeared, as normal as He appeared, who can believe that in this person is the plan, the power of God for our salvation? "He grew up before him," it says in verse 2, "like a tender shoot." Now isn’t that a pretty image? You get the image of this nice little tree that’s starting to grow. Well, you know what the word means? It literally means, "one who sucks." And what it’s in reference to is that sucker growth that you find on the bottom of the tree, the stuff you’re always trying to cut off. And on your way out to the parking lot after service this morning, look at those trees out there that are busily shedding their flowers all over the patio. Look at the bottom of the closest one as you go out. It’s full of sucker growth. Sucker growth is bad. Nobody likes it. It’s not good for the image of the tree. That’s what Jesus was like. He grew up before God as sucker growth. "He was like a root out of dry ground." You know when you see a root sticking out of dry ground and what do you think? "Oh, this must be left over from a tree that’s been cut down a while ago and all that’s left is this scraggly little root and it’s going nowhere fast. There’s no moisture. It’s just this gnarly old root down there." And that’s how He grew up before God.
"He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him." Don’t you think that if God was going to send someone to save the world, He’d send someone who looks like Hercules? You know, seven feet tall and 350 pounds of solid muscle and a chiseled face and long flowing blonde hair and looking like Fabio. Shouldn’t Jesus look like Fabio, but bigger? But He was just a normal, Jewish man, born of parents so poor that when they came to redeem Him on the eighth day like they were supposed to, they only could bring the bird because that’s all they could afford; the poor man’s substitute offering, when he couldn’t afford a lamb. You know what? The last thing we needed was more image. The last thing we needed was someone who bought into our shallow, meaningless, hopeless, dead value system. That doesn’t mean that Jesus limped into life or had a wizened face. He was just a normal guy. Nothing about Him, nothing different from anybody else except His character.
"He was despised and rejected by men." He was despised and rejected by the purveyors of that false value system. They took one look at Jesus, they listened to what He said, they watched Him live and they said, "Let’s kill Him! He’s not buying into our system. He doesn’t share our values. All He talks about is this truth thing." Now, there’s no doubt that there are some things that Jesus did that attracted people to Him. When He healed people, they liked that. When He fed people, they liked that. They thought, "This guy’s got the power to buy right into our value system and become our king and with this kind of power He could probably fry the Roman soldiers right where they are. Man!" And what did Jesus do when they tried to enlist Him into their value system? He turned and walked away. Even when His disciples, after His first great healing experience recorded for us in Mark, even when His disciples came up to find Him and He was praying up on a mountain and He had had this wonderful healing service and they were starting to line up for the morning rounds. And they said, "Jesus, they’re down there waiting for you. What are you doing up here? Let’s get down there and do some healing." And He said, "Let’s go somewhere else because I’ve come to preach." Preaching is what got Him in trouble, because He said some things like, "Unless you eat My flesh and drink My blood, you have no part of Me." That’s the way to empty the church! The last thing we needed was more shallowness, more lies dressed up with glitz.
We’ve been treated to preposterous lies these last couple of weeks, haven’t we? The Iraqi Minister of Information?, wow – disinformation, getting up and saying, "There are no Americans in Baghdad." Except the ones I can watch on the news. Now, I don’t believe everything I see on TV, but I do believe that there were American soldiers in Baghdad. We like to believe the lies unless they’re so obvious. The world looks for image. Jesus came with impeccable character and so, with His impeccable character and integrity, was the person that could please God and in the process was rejected by most of mankind.
We shouldn’t be surprised, brothers and sisters, that the God who uses character to save us seeks then to reproduce that same character in us. And that character, as it’s seen in us, may cause us to be rejected by the world, despised. "One from whom men hide their faces." Now that doesn’t mean that we should all dress in rags and never wash our face and leave our hair so that it looks just like when we just got off the pillow and then say, "Hi there, will you reject me?" And they’ll say, "You bet we will!" The Gospel in and of itself is offensive. But we don’t need to be offending in the way we present ourselves. The fact of the matter is that as God works and develops character in us, character will become primary and image secondary. The world may well respond to that just like they did to Jesus. But that’s the cost of telling the truth.
Because we were all, secondly, lost in sin, God needed someone unaffected by the world’s sinful system. Because we were all lost, not just some of us, not just most of us, ALL of us were lost. He had to use someone, needed someone uninfected by the world’s sinful system. Every human being, as verse 6 states, is infected by this sinful virus. "All we, like sheep, have gone astray." We’ve all turned to his own way. And then that verse says, "The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." This passage just reeks with substitution. Look at it. It’s all through here, verse 4, "Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted." Isn’t it funny that this passage is written in the past tense? This passage was written four hundred years before Christ even was here and yet it’s being written in the past tense. This is what the Old Testament Hebrews called the prophetic perfect. Because when God says something, it’s better than done. When God states something is going to happen, that is the reality. And that is how this passage is pointed out. When Jesus would come, He would be the substitute. It was God’s plan and therefore it can even be presented as if it’s already taken place because in God’s mind, it has.
"He was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him. By his wounds we are healed." Substitution is putting someone else in to do a job that the current player is unable to do. Now, you know that I’m a Diamondbacks fan, and I’ll tell you, these last couple of weeks have been tough. They’re tough. How many would like to replace the third base coach? Mr. "Waves them to their demise at home plate". And all of us yell, "Get him out of there!" Someone else – I could be a better third base coach if they taught me the signs. Baseball is full of substitution. Somebody is out there not doing so good, even like Randy Johnson. Hello! And at some point, you just sit there in your La-Z-Boy and just say, "Get him out of there! He’s not doing the job. He hasn’t got the zip on the ball. He can’t …." For whatever reason, just jerk him out of there and put in someone else. Well, in this game we all stink. And there is One who has to come in from another Team and replace us. God sent Someone so unique, so different, so uninfected by sin that we could not stand Him. The people of His time – some of them liked Him, those whose eyes were open – but the worldly system rejected Him. And when He died on public display those watching Him thought He was getting what He deserved.
"We considered him," verse 4, "We considered him stricken by God. Smitten by him and afflicted." The Pharisees said, there at the foot of the cross, "You’re getting what You deserve! You claimed to be God. You claimed to be the Son of God. You’re dying based on Your own sin!" But these verses tell a different story that He was getting what we deserved. In our lostness, in our separation from the Shepherd because of our sin, that sin needed to be atoned for so that we could be reconnected with our Shepherd. All on our backs, surrounded by wolves, dying of thirst. Helpless sheep and our Shepherd came to find us and to take our sin upon Himself.
Look at that verse 6 again. "The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." Now that word ’laid on’ sounds pretty gentle, doesn’t it? Laid on Him, like, "Here you go, now let’s put this on." The word actually means ’to strike violently’ or ’to hit." When the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all, it’s like the old English phrase for scourging someone or for whipping somebody, "lay them on" with the whip. The cat-o-nine tails that was used for flogging in the navy, "lay them on." And this is what Jesus experienced. Not just the gentle laying on of some sin, but in His body to bear not only the guilt of the sins of the world (and we can’t imagine what kind of weight that would be) but as well, the wrath of God against that sin. And He bore it all. You see why we needed character instead of image? You see why we needed Someone who was uninfected by sin? Otherwise, He would have just been absorbing for His own sin, God’s wrath against Him. But He wasn’t. He was absorbing God’s wrath for our sin.
"I was so lost, I should have died. But You have brought me to Your side to be led by Your staff and rod and to be called a lamb of God."* No longer lying on our backs, flailing helplessly, but restored, shorn of our coat of sin, walking in joy and peace with the Shepherd of our souls. It wasn’t easy. But it was powerful. We needed a substitute. We could never do it ourselves.
We had another need. Because we are driven by fear, God needed Someone who trusted Him completely, because we are driven by fear. What sheep who has been separated from his shepherd isn’t full of fear, panicking, timid, afraid of his shadow? Because we are driven by fear, as lost sheep, God needed Someone who trusted Him completely. If you read the Old Testament, you’ll see that the most common sin that God criticizes in the people of Israel is fear. When they’re standing at the border of the promised land, after coming out of Egypt, standing at Kadesh Barnea and they send in twelve spies to see what the land was like, they come back and they all said, "It’s a great land." And ten of them said, "But we’re afraid to go in." And two of them said, "We can do it with God." They listened to the ten, the fear. All night, it says, they were whining and complaining and crying out of fear of going into that land and so they spent the next forty years paying for their decision. It’s a common ailment. We don’t believe God. In fact, we go our own way. And our greatest desire, then, becomes what? Our greatest desire becomes to protect ourselves, to protect our life, to protect our health, to protect our possessions, to protect the things that are ours. And so we are a group of people, in our lostness, who walk around with our stuff trying to keep our stuff away from everybody else. Today is April thirteenth, that means that in a couple of days Uncle Sam’s going to want some of our stuff. And you and I have spent the past couple of weeks trying to keep his hands off as much of our stuff as we can. It’s an annual ritual for the American people, to protect themselves against the tentacles of the octopus that’s called Uncle Sam. Our whole life is one of fear.
Look at Jesus. Verse 7, "He was oppressed and afflicted." They were after His stuff. They were after His comfort. They were after His very life. They were after His position. They were after His reputation. And in response to that He did not open His mouth. "He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. As a sheep before her shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth." In complaint. In self-defense. In, "You can’t do this to me! I’m God! I created you! You can’t treat me like this!" "By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Who can speak of his descendents?" He had no children. At least not physically. "He was cut off from the land of the living. For the transgression of my people he was stricken. He was assigned a grave with the wicked but with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence nor was any deceit found in his mouth." Remember when Jesus was before the Sanhedrin, the seventy Jewish leaders who were in charge? And they were trying so hard to get Him with a punishable offense, a capital offense for which He could be executed. And they couldn’t pull it off, until the High Priest said, "Tell us the truth. Are You the Messiah? Are You the Christ, the Son of the Living One?" And He said, "I Am." Ego, eimi. The words used by God. And, "You will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven." He could have pled the Fifth. He could have said nothing. But He said, "You need some evidence to crucify Me? I’ll give it to you, I’m God." And they said, "What have we need for more witnesses? We’ve heard it from His own mouth." He not only didn’t defend Himself, He gave Himself up. Why? Why didn’t He defend Himself? Why didn’t He said, "There are forty-eight laws of the Jewish people being broken right now during this trial. This is a terrible miscarriage of justice." Which it was. Why didn’t He say that? Because God had called Him to die.
"When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate. When he suffered, he made no threats." Why? "Instead, he entrusted himself to him to judges justly." He Himself, because He did that, because He lived by faith instead of fear, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed." Sound familiar? "For you were like sheep going astray. But now you have returned." What a wonderful word. "You have returned to the shepherd and the overseer of your souls." You’re off your back. You’re on your feet. You’re healthy. You’re well-fed. And you’re now under the care of the Good Shepherd. Why? Why? One man’s faith. The faith of Jesus Christ who said, "Yes" to God.
This cuts two ways this morning, my friends. It cuts two ways. If you’re a follower of Jesus Christ this morning, I know that most if not all of you are, the character that we see in Jesus Christ, the character of faith, character of separation from the worldly value system is the character which God is producing in us. Freedom from the corrupted, powerless value system of the world, depth of godly character, and possessing such deep faith in God that we will even accept unjust suffering if He calls us to. That’s not stuff that the world is impressed with, my friends. The world calls people who accept unjust suffering "doormats." We are no longer lost. We are no longer cast. We are no longer separated from our Shepherd. But, in fact, we’re becoming more and more every day to look like our Shepherd. That’s what God is doing in us.
And there may be somebody here, and I don’t know who that might be, who may be sensing the hopelessness of your own condition. You may feel like you’re on your back with your legs pawing the air. Maybe you feel like you’re in the world’s system, but it’s not working for you. That’s good news. It can’t. It can’t. It can only work on the surface level, just image, fluff. The price of your restoration to the care of your Shepherd has been paid. You are returned by faith in Christ to the Shepherd and overseer of your soul.
*"Lamb of God" Words and Music by Twila Paris.
