The Silence Of The Lamb Series

We live in a fallen world, following a Saviour who was led, willingly, like a lamb to the slaughter. Can you learn the same quietness of spirit that enabled Jesus to endure, without a word?

That’s when your life truly becomes worthy of the cross.

Jesus was a willing sacrifice, and he calls you and me to be a willing sacrifice as well.

Secondly he was

o A substitutionary sacrifice (8)

o That’s what (v.8) is all about. ‘By oppression and judgement he was taken away.’ This is the moment Jesus was led out of Pilate’s courtyard to be crucified. He was ‘taken away’, led out to die.

? (v.8) goes on, ‘and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?’ The people who saw the broken Jesus being led out to die, could not have guessed that he was dying for others.

o He was stricken ‘for the transgressions of my people.’ Jesus’ crucifixion would have looked like every other crucifixion. The prisoner was an enemy of the state, and he had to carry his cross beam in shame through the streets of Jerusalem.

o No one who witnessed the crucifixion, even Jesus’ closest friends and supporters, had any idea that he was dying for others.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians that if the executioners had realized what they were doing, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. But no one knew. Not the Jewish leaders, or Pilate.

Even the disciples didn’t understand. The cross was a trauma for the disciples. They wanted to run for their lives. And Isaiah predicts the ignorance surrounding the cross. ‘who considered, who would ever have thought, that he was being cut off from life, for the transgression of my people?’

But what no one knew was happening, is also the heart of the Gospel. It’s what theologians call substitutionary atonement. Jesus was a substitutionary sacrifice. He was willingly paying for sins he had not committed. He was becoming the sinner’s substitute, representing every transgressor for the whole of human history.

Everyone from gossippers and liars, to child molestors and murders . He was representing all that is evil and hateful to God, during 3 hours of Calvary darkness. As Paul said in 2 Cor 5 ‘he became sin for us.’

God poured out his righteous wrath at a whole history of human sin, from Sodom and Gomorrah to genocide in Rwanda, to the cruelty of the slave trade, to the man who cheats on his wife under cover of night, and every other sin large or small.

God poured out all his anger at human rebellion on the soul of the Son he loved. Jesus became our substitute, and no one in the world knew what was happening.

But we do know today. You and I know this morning. You could forgive the crucifier who was just following orders. You could forgive the disciples who were left bewildered. You could even forgive Pilate for washing his hands of it all. None of them knew what was really going on. But you and I do. We are accountable today.

We don’t just have the Gospel stories describing for us how Jesus died for our sin, we don’t just have Paul’s compelling explanations of the cross in Romans and Corinthians, inspired texts that have been preserved for us to read and think about. We also have this supernatural prediction from Isaiah, telling us in advance what it would be all about.