Sermon by Rev. Dr. M. Marshall Woodard III
A Blood Donor Saved My Life!
Isaiah 53:1-12
Published: 03.26.2004 Arizona Star
Dear Abby: Blood donors save lives
BY JEANNE PHILLIPS UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
̊ DEAR ABBY: For a grandmother fighting leukemia, a child battling sickle cell anemia, or a parent awaiting a liver transplant, a safe and available blood supply is more than a wish - it’s a necessity. Our goal is to ensure that blood is available to patients when they need it. We encourage our nation’s citizens to donate blood. Our call to action comes at a time when blood supplies are perilously low.
Blood has a shelf life of only 42 days. The supply must be constantly replenished. Donors can safely give blood up to six times a year. To avert shortages, please ask your readers to donate. Blood donation is safe and takes only one hour. To be eligible to donate, you must be at least 17 years of age, weigh at least 110 pounds and be in good health. The single unit of blood you donate could help to save the lives of up to three people.
To learn more about donating blood and to locate a blood collection facility, contact: American Association of Blood Banks: American Red Cross: America’s Blood Centers: Karen Shoos Lipton, CEO, American Association of Blood Banks
Why don’t more people give to this noble cause? Could it be that we think more of the pain and suffering of the needle in our arms than the we think of the lives we could save. What if Christ had looked the cross in the same manner?
Peter tells us that the two things constantly spoken of by the Holy Spirit in the writings of the Old Testament prophets were "The sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow" (I Pet. 1:11). Our Lord Jesus himself, when he expounded Moses and the prophets to his disciples, showed them that the message of the inspired writers of Old Testament Scripture was the fact that Christ must suffer and then enter into his glory (Lk. 24:26-27).
These two things are certainly spoken of in Isaiah 53, and spoken of here more fully and clearly than in any other single chapter of the Old Testament. This chapter is quoted repeatedly in the New Testament and constantly applied to the Lord Jesus Christ. Matthew Henry wrote, "This chapter is so replenished with the unsearchable riches of Christ that it may be called the gospel of the evangelist Isaiah rather than the prophecy of the prophet Isaiah."
First, Isaiah’s words clearly establish the doctrine of: Man’s total Depravity and Inability. It is astonishing that the Jews, who were well acquainted with Isaiah’s prophecy, could have failed to recognize Christ as the Messiah! As I showed you last Sunday morning, Jesus of Nazareth clearly and obviously fulfilled all the prophecies of the Old Testament relating to the Messiah. Yet, when our Savior came unto his own, his own received him not! Why? How can that be explained? Only one thing can explain it – the fact that all people by nature are totally depraved and spiritually impotent, unable to understand or receive the things of the Spirit of God (I Cor. 2:11-14). The plainest instruction, delivered in the most simple terms, and applied with the most forcible illustrations, can never cause unregenerate minds to grasp spiritual truth. Blind eyes cannot see! Deaf ears cannot hear! Dead hearts cannot believe!
During his last illness, just before he died, someone asked Mr. Spurgeon to declare his faith briefly, simply, and clearly. This is what he said, "Jesus died for me." Four, simple words, but four more comforting, soul-cheering words could never be spoken by a sinner. "Jesus died for me." It is from those four simple words that I derved at the title of my message this morning – "A Blood Donor Saved My Life." Because Christ died that I might might live, He died not only that I might have life, have but life aboundently
Should you ask me what I believe, this is my answer – "Jesus died for me!" Should you inquire about the basis of my hope, this is it – "Jesus died for me!" Should you ask what assurance I have of eternal happiness, the answer would be the same, "Jesus died for me." in other words, A Blood Donor Saved My Life!
Turn to Isaiah 53:4-5. Read these two verses carefully. Notice the personal, possessive pronouns that the prophet of God uses when he talks about the death of Christ upon the cross and the consequences of it. When he talks about the suffering, the sorrow, and the satisfaction for sin, it is "he," "him," "he," "he," "he," all "he," because he did everything! When he talks about the benefits of redemption it is "We" "our," "we," "we," all "we," because we get all the benefit by God’s free grace. A Blood Donor Saved My Life!
Our Savior suffered nothing by accident, or as the helpless victim of circumstances beyond his control. All that he endured, he endure deliberately, on purpose, for us. He suffered with an end, a goal in view. It was the accomplishment of that goal, the certain confidence that his purpose in suffering would be accomplished, that sustained him in the midst of his sorrows – ( Heb. 12:1-2).
There are many things spoken of in this chapter and elsewhere in the Scriptures that were objects and aims of Christ in his sufferings. But in this 4th and 5th verse of Isaiah 53 the Spirit of God shows us three reasons, three causes for our Lord’s ignominious agony and torment as Our Substitute.
A. Number 1 – The Lord Jesus Christ bore all the torments of the wrath of the Holy Lord God as Our Substitute, that he might put away all our sins by the satisfaction of divine justice (4). "Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows!" Matthew translates these words, "He took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses" (Matt. 8:17). In other words....A Blood Donor Saved My Life
Now look at verse 5. When the Lord Jesus bore our grief and carried our sorrows, when he bore our sins in his own body on the tree (I Pet. 2:24; II Cor. 5:21), "He was wounded (tormented!) for our transgressions. He was bruised (crushed!) for our iniquities." Our sins were made to be his sins! – Imputation!. He suffered the just penalty of our sins. – Death! He did it because there was no other way for him, no other way for God to put away sin. "A just God and a Savior!"
The Son of God endured the painful, shameful, ignominious death of the cross for us that he might obtain peace for us. He was treated as the enemy of God so that we might be received as the sons of God. "The chastisement of our peace was upon him." Peace with God cannot be obtained except upon the grounds of justice satisfied. Christ bore the chastisement of our peace that we might have peace – A Blood Nonor Saved My Life!
The Son of God, our Savior, endured all the wrath of God in the room and stead of God’s elect, so that he might heal all the disorders of sin in our souls and in our bodies and thus restore fallen men to the perfection of manhood as God intended manhood to be. The blood of Christ is the healing balm for sin-sick souls, by which the dead are healed! Read this last line, "And with his stripes we are healed!" (Tit. 2:14; I Pet. 2:24). The merit and power of Christ’s shed blood secures for every redeemed sinner, Regenerating Grace! And Resurrection Glory!
Now this last line of verse 5 reveals The Just and Absolutely Certain Consequence of Christ’s Sufferings – "And with his stripes we are healed!" It is not possible for God in heaven to condemn or fail to save a single sinner for whom the Lord Jesus Christ suffered and died. All for whom the Son of God was stricken in death, all for whom his blood was spilt by the sword of justice shall be healed by the merit of his sufferings unto death. Justice Demands It! (Love – Grace) Immutability, Demands It!. Divine Faithfulness Demands It!. The Glory of the Triune God Demands It!
Without bloodshed, there is no remission of sin, and the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life thru Jesus Christ our Lord...He donated His blood that I might live, I tell you A Blood Nonor Saved My Life! As I find a place to park, let me leave you with these eight questions.
1. Do you know why Jesus had to die? One of the most important of the many reasons given in the Bible why Jesus had to die was to receive the wrath of God in the place of others. "For all have sinned," God says in Romans 3:23. And because God is just and holy, He must punish those who have sinned. But because He also is loving, He was willing to send His Son – Jesus – to take the hammer blow of His wrath so that others might receive His mercy. As Galatians 3:13 puts it, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us – for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.’"
2. Do you know who really killed Jesus? There is no single, earthly source to blame for killing Jesus. The Jewish religious leaders hated Jesus, so they arrested Him and delivered Him to the Roman official, Pontius Pilate, for execution. Pilate could have released Jesus, but he, too, shares responsibility because he succumbed to the influence of yet a third party who contributed to the death of Jesus, the crowd in Jerusalem who kept shouting, "Crucify Him!" (Matthew 27:23). In the end, however, it was sinners like me and you who killed Jesus. "While we were yet sinners," the Apostle Paul tells us, "Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). No one can point a finger at any other person or group for the death of Jesus. Our sins were the reason Jesus had to be crucified.
3. Do you understand the role that God the Father played in the death of Jesus? Ultimately, it was God the Father who killed His Son, Jesus. The Bible clearly says that Jesus was "delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God" (Acts 2:23).
4. Do you realize why Jesus’ death was different from the death of everyone else in history? The death of Jesus was unique because His life was unique. Since Jesus never sinned, He never had to die; He chose to die. And because Jesus never broke the law of God, He could die as a substitute for lawbreakers. As 2 Corinthians 5:21 explains, God the Father "made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).
5. Do you know why Jesus cried from the cross, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46)? When God in His justice laid the crushing guilt of sinners upon Jesus, God in His holiness then had to reject His own Son as a sinner. As Jesus was suspended between earth and heaven, the prophecy of Isaiah 53:10 was fulfilled: "But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief if He would render Himself as a guilt offering."
6. Do you know why Jesus’ last words were, "It is finished" (John 19:30)? Because of His love, God sent Jesus to be the propitiation–the wrath-taker–for the sins of people who did not yet love Him. "In this is love," 1 John 4:10 says, "not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."
7. Do you see the relationship between Jesus’ death and His resurrection? The resurrection of Jesus vindicates all His claims. Anyone could claim, as Jesus did, to be the only way to God (John 14:6). But Jesus substantiated this and all His other claims by doing something no one else has ever done – rising from the dead, never to die again. Moreover, by not leaving Jesus in the grave, God showed that He accepted His Son’s death as a substitute for the death of others. The Bible is plain that the cross of Jesus, without the resurrection, would have meant, "your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins" (1 Corinthians 15:17). "But now Christ has been raised from the dead" (1 Corinthians 15:20), as proof that Jesus’ death in the place of sinners satisfied the requirements of God’s justice.
8. Do you realize what the death of Jesus can do for you that you cannot do for yourself? First, the death of Jesus can make you righteous in the sight of God. ...The Bible speaks of those who have experienced the benefit of the cross as those who have "been justified by His blood," and declares that they "shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him" (Romans 5:9).
A BLOOD DONOR SAVED MY LIFE! WHAT ABOUT YOURS?
