"Our Substitute" Matthew 8:14-17 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Earlier this morning we sang the song with this chorus.

I need no other argument.

I need no other plea.

It is enough that Jesus died and that he died for me.

Let me tell you this: you're not going to encounter a more significant preposition in your entire life than that word for in that last chorus right there.

That Jesus died for me.

You have to be able to answer the question: what is that word for doing there?

Or as Bible scholars are prone to ask, what's the for there for?

What's it doing there?

The heart of Christianity is wrapped up in that little preposition right there, that Jesus died for me, that Jesus died for you.

That's what this passage is about right here in Matthew's gospel.

We've mentioned this a few times now, that Matthew chapter 8 takes place after the Sermon on the Mounts, where Jesus turns the Pharisees' world, the Jewish world, really the entire world upside down.

Matthew 8 · chapter mention

He set aside the old rabbinic teaching, he set aside the teaching of the scribes and the Pharisees.

He set aside all of the whole religious systems of the world that teach that the highest human calling is to do good and be good.

And Jesus just slashes them out at the knees and really ridicules it.

He says, if you try to be a wise person by leading a good life, you are a fool who builds your house on the sand and then is mystified enough to scratch his head when the waves come and wash it away.

And he reboots the whole system with a new teaching.

He gets rid of the old Jewish rules that said, you know, but you've heard it said, but you've heard it said, but you've heard it said, and Jesus replaces it with, but I say to you.

And he does this out on the hills of Galilee, out in the middle of nowhere.

He was one without pedigree.

He was one without authority.

He was one without training.

And he turns the world upside down, so much so, the last verse of the section describing the Sermon on the Mount, the last verse of chapter 7, the crowd is amazed, they marveled at him because he spoke as one who had authority, unlike the scribes and Pharisees.

And then Matthew 8 functions to show you why exactly Jesus has the authority to say those kind of things, because that would be the question.

I mean, what's the difference between Jesus being a crazy guy out in the woods, you know, rambling, and Jesus being the Savior who actually has more authority than the scribes and the Pharisees, the authority to fulfill the Old Testament law.

What's the difference there?

Well, the difference is simply one of authority.

And so you see these, Matthew 8 begins with these two really outrageous miracles.

The first of a leper who's healed, who cuts his leper who cuts his way through a crowd to get to Jesus.

And then Jesus touches the leper.

I mean, are you kidding?

If you were pitching this to a TV producer back then, here's the idea.

There's gonna be a leper, and he's gonna walk through a crowd, and then Jesus is gonna touch him.

He would say, That's ridiculous.

Out.

Come back with something less far-fetched.

Nobody will buy it.

But that's what happens.

The leper comes to Jesus, violating every norm in the world.

Jesus touches the leper, violating every Levitical standard of cleanliness there is, and heals the leper.

So, how do you know Jesus has the authority to fulfill the Old Testament law?

Because he can do that.

And that's followed by something even more outrageous than the leper scene, if you can imagine it.

A Roman centurion, a leader of the Romans, who builds a synagogue and is loved by the Jews and the Pharisees.

I mean, this is just absurd.

And then the Roman centurion's servant is sick, and so he sends the Pharisees to get Jesus.

The Pharisees are taking orders from a centurion, and they're asking Jesus for a favor.

I don't think you're going to find a more ridiculous setup than that.

And Jesus responds, and this time doesn't touch the sick servant.

He doesn't heal by touching.

He doesn't even go into the Gentile house.

He does a long distance healing, which really just rubs the Pharisee's face in the fact that he could have healed the leper without touching him.

But what you see here now is a third miracle that in many respects continues our snowball effect here.

In many respects, what we see here is even more outrageous than the two the one before it, but not for the reason you would expect.

I mean, we don't find something more extreme than leprosy.

We don't find somebody more unlikely than a Roman centurion servant.

This third miracle is so really outrageous because of what it teaches you about Jesus Christ.

And that's why Matthew places it here.

Mark and Luke let you know that some other major events transpired between the healing of the centurion's son and Peter's mother-in-law.

Namely, Jesus went to the synagogue.

This is the Sabbath.

Jesus heals the leper and then heals the centurion's servant and then goes into the synagogue in Capernaum.

That's where he casts out the person with the demon.

The demon shrieks, knows who Jesus Christ is.

Jesus then leaves the synagogue and is accosted by the crowd, and the crowd lets him know that Peter's mother-in-law is home sick.

They're asking him about her.

Now, this is not a random woman.

This is not a random house.

This is the house where Jesus has set up his ministry for these, of his three years of ministry, he spent at least two in Galilee, cumulatively.

He went to Jerusalem a few times.

He goes up to Syria and Damascus and Lebanon once, but for at least two years.

He's doing ministry out of this house.

So this is not a stranger's house.

This is not a random woman.

But he didn't have her with him that day in the synagogue.

And the crowd wants to know about it.

And it is a little bit of an ironic twist, right?

He can heal the person with a leper, he can heal the left, he can heal the person with a demon, he can heal the leper, he'll heal, do a long distance healing of the centurion's son.

Did he forget about Peter's mother-in-law?

It's likely that she was the one who was caring for Jesus.

She's the one who this is a society where families would live together, extended families would live together, and Jesus seems to have been living at Peter's house.

And so the crowd asks.

Hey, just curious about Peter's mother-in-law.

Where's she?

And so Jesus makes his way there.

It's to take about it's not even five minutes to walk this.

I mean, the synagogue and Peter's mother-in-law's house have both been excavated.

You can you can do this walk today.

Less than it's probably take two minutes to do this walk.

Maybe longer if you've got a massive crowd of thousands of people following you.

Jesus goes there, goes into the house, takes her hand, it says, which would be very unusual in the Jewish world for a man to touch a woman by this, like this, but Jesus does it, and fever leaves her.

She rose and began to serve him, and it's a continuational verb in the Greek.

It's like she went back to serving him, is the idea.

In other words, she had been disposed to serving him, she stopped serving him because she got sick, the fever leaves, she goes back to serving Jesus.

Now, this does not sound like a very outrageous miracle, does it?

This isn't leprosy.

You're tempted to think like, oh, this is the equivalent of getting the you know the 24-hour flu, and you pray that God would heal you, and he does a day later.

It's amazing.

Is that what's going on here?

Why is this so significant?

Matthew goes on.

I mean, we could pause there, and a whole sermon could be preached on how the right response to any encounter with Jesus is serving him.

That's what Peter's mother-in-law teaches you.

You have an encounter with Jesus.

You shouldn't be a spectator.

You shouldn't say, Oh, thank you for my healing, Jesus.

You should respond to any encounter with Jesus by serving Jesus.

And there could be a great sermon preached in that, and just pretend you heard it, okay?

But verse 16.

Matthew doesn't pause with Peter's mother-in-law.

He keeps trucking, so let's go with him.

That evening, they brought to him many who were sick and who were oppressed by demons.

And he cast out the evil spirits.

Why the evening?

Well, remember, it's the Sabbath.

So it seems that many of the sick people had already been healed by Jesus.

Mark makes that point.

But those that couldn't travel were waiting until the Sabbath was over.

The Sabbath ends at sundown.

As soon as that sun goes below the horizon, there's still enough light to move, and Capernaum's not very big.

So now the floodgates are opened up.

Now that the sun is set, the Sabbath restrictions are over, a whole tidal wave of the sick and afflicted just pounds on Peter's mother-in-law's house.

Everybody is there now.

Mark lets you know this is just so extreme.

Jesus had to sneak out and he goes on the road.

This is when he gets out of town.

But not before healing all of these people, including the demon-possessed.

I mean, who has authority to heal a demon-possessed person?

That's the point that was made earlier that day in the synagogue.

Only the Lord could do that.

And that's what's happening.

But again, it's all nice.

It's not leprosy, but it's, you know, it's neat to read about Jesus healing people.

The main point of this, though, is what you find in verse 17.

And this is the part I mentioned, it just gets more and more outrageous.

This is the part where you see this.

It's not the leper, it's not the centurion who's getting help from the Pharisees who asked Jesus for a favor.

It's not even Peter's mother-in-law here.

The outrageous part, the extreme part, the part that just turns the world upside down here is what you see in verse 17.

This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah.

He took our illnesses and he bore our diseases.

John MacArthur said that this cross reference is the most magnificent cross-reference in the Bible.

I like just the category for magnificent cross-reference.

This one wins the contest.

Charles Spurgeon said that this verse right here is probably the most beautiful New Testament verse.

Charles Simeon wrote, quote, No person unless blinded by his own pride or intoxicated by his own prejudice could fail to see the majesty of this verse.

So let's take that challenge, shall we?

Let's try to see the majesty of this cross reference.

What exactly is Matthew arguing here that is so beautiful, that is so extreme, that it validates Jesus' authority from the Sermon on the Mount?

To do that, you really do need to flip back to Isaiah 53.

So do that.

You can leave Matthew behind.

We'll get back to him next week.

Just remember, in Matthew 8, he says all of these healings, not just the leper, by the way, not just the centurion, not just Peter's mother-in-law, not just the tidal wave of healings that he does that day, not just all the demon-possessed people, but all of that healing, everything he's been doing since the Sermon on the Mount, is done to fulfill Isaiah 53, verse 4.

Isaiah 53:4

So let's go back and look at it.

While you're on your way there, just to bring up the speed with Isaiah 53, the name Isaiah means Yahweh is salvation.

That's what his name means.

He is the most cited of the Old Testament prophets.

He's quoted 65 times in the New Testament.

65 times Isaiah is quoted.

22 times he's referenced by name in the New Testament.

It was Jerome who translated the Latin Vulgate that said, you shouldn't even call Isaiah a prophet.

He's not a prophet, he's an evangelist.

That Spurgeon quote I referenced earlier goes on to say Isaiah 53, verse 4 is a crystal clear prophecy about the ministry, death, resurrection, and coronation of the Messiah.

Isaiah 53:4

You know that this is the passage, by the way.

This occurs to me now.

This is the passage, by the way, that the Ethiopian eunuch quoted on the chariot when Philip was outside the chariot that we looked at last week.

This is that passage.

This is not an obscure verse in Habakkuk.

Apologize if that's your favorite verse.

There's a little Luther joke there.

It's not an obscure verse in Habakkuk we're making this connection from.

It's Isaiah 53.

The Mount Everest of Old Testament prophecies about Jesus Christ.

Look at verse 4 in particular.

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.

Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and by his stripes or by his wounds we are healed.

Now there is a close connection between verse 4 and verse 5.

He bore our griefs, and he was pierced for our transgressions.

Or he carried our sorrows, and then in verse 5, he was crushed for our iniquities.

We esteemed him stricken, and then in verse 5, upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.

He was smitten by God and afflicted in verse 4, and then verse 5, by his wounds we were healed.

Do you see how these two parallel each other?

Verse 4 and verse 5 are essentially saying the same things, but from the opposite side of the divide.

He bore our griefs and he was pierced for our transgressions.

He carried our sorrows on his back.

He was stricken and cursed by God.

That's the connection between these two.

Obviously, Matthew's aware of this connection.

And again, remind yourself that Matthew is saying, Matthew is arguing with you.

He's trying to tell you that all of these healings Jesus was doing, all of the saving of the demon-possessed people, the cleansing of the lepers, all of it was done to fulfill this connection here, to fulfill what's going on in Isaiah 53, verse 4.

Isaiah 53:4

Now, obviously, Matthew uses a narrower term.

He says Jesus carried our illnesses and he bore our diseases, speaking of physical infirmities because Jesus is healing physically there.

But you go back to Isaiah 53, and it's a broader term in its different languages Hebrew to Greek.

The Greek word there is narrow for sickness and illness, and the Hebrew word is wider.

It means sin and suffering and sorrow.

It also can mean physical wounds.

It can mean sickness.

Sickness is certainly part of the word connotations here.

Sickness is not an unfair way to translate this.

It just is a broader word than that.

It's a broader word.

It's certainly part of it.

My wife is out of town this week.

I have the kids.

The kids are going through hardships right now.

Now, what is one of the hardships?

One of the hardships, they had to do their own hair this morning.

It's a hardship for those three girls.

Now it's not the only hardship.

It's a subcategory.

Do you follow?

So it would be fine to say the girls experience hardship in doing their own hair.

That's fine.

Or you could go broader and include things like having to make their own cereal.

Can you imagine?

I don't know how they'll make it.

That's a silly little way to demonstrate what's happening in Isaiah 53.

He bury he carries our sin and our sorrows, sicknesses, wounds, the whole thing.

A little bit narrower in Matthew, just the diseases.

But it's the same file, the same category.

So what does Matthew mean when he says that Jesus is fulfilling what's said here?

That's the question.

Well, certainly this is curse language here.

If you look at verse 4, he was smitten by God.

That's the key phrase here.

He was smitten by God.

What does it mean to be smitten by God?

This is what I mean by curse language.

The Savior here, the suffering servant in Isaiah 53, is smitten, struck, cursed by God.

Well, how do you fulfill a curse?

How do you fulfill a curse?

And as any child will, who's familiar just at the elementary level with any princess story, can tell you.

You fulfill a curse by undoing the curse.

That's how you fulfill it.

You don't just receive the curse.

I mean, everybody receives curses by God.

But what Jesus is doing here is he's fulfilling these curses.

So what curses?

What does it mean when you say that Jesus is fulfilling a curse by God?

Well, there's two curses that should come immediately to mind.

The first curse is the first curse in the Bible.

Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

God tells Adam and Eve, don't eat the fruit, the tree of life, sorry, knowledge of good and evil.

In that day you eat it, you will what?

Die.

And they eat it, and that day they die.

Now they don't die physically that day, but they die spiritually.

Romans 5 makes the connection.

They will die physically on account of their spiritual death.

Because of sin, sickness, and illness enter the world.

And God makes that point very clear, by the way.

He God arrives, calls Adam.

You know, Adam dodges him, God tracks him down.

Don't hide from God.

Lesson one.

And where are you going to go?

In a whale?

Come on, Jonah.

So God calls Adam and then he begins the curses.

He curses the serpent.

He says, Cursed are you, serpent.

Cursed are you, devil.

On your belly you will go.

You will be in the dust.

Now, part of this curse is that the devil has authority over the world.

Now he's the prince of the power of this world and he leads demons in the world and he leads a full-scale frontal assault on God's people in this world.

It's part of the curse.

And you think, how's that a curse?

Well, because he's going to be crushed by the seed that's going to come.

God says, You're cursed, but I'm going to send a seed, I'm going to send a savior who will crush you, devil.

Eve is cursed.

The woman is cursed and childbearing.

She will suffer in childbirth.

It will be painful.

It will harm her.

It will kill some of them.

But this is how life will come into the world.

And this lets you know that women have a unique calling to be with their family, to be with their kids.

And this is where the curse is primarily seen in that world.

And then you see the curse of Adam.

That he will be, the ground will be cursed because of him.

And he'll have to sweat, and he'll have to work, and he'll have to labor, and it will be hard to get food.

It'll be hard to fill your belly.

It'll be hard to feed your family.

And that'll let you know on the positive side, the specific calling of a husband is to work and to provide for his family.

But on the negative side, that it will be hard to do.

And the ground is cursed.

How hard is the ground cursed?

What's it going to do to Adam?

He's going to work the ground and he's going to work the ground until he dies and goes back to the ground, God says.

Because you were made from dust, because of this curse, you're going back to dust.

That's the curse.

This is a door in the world that Adam and Eve opened.

And through the door into the world moved sin.

But not just sin.

Also sickness, illness, disease, death, physical death moves into the world because they left the door open.

And now it lives here.

And it's an interloper here.

My next door neighbors.

It's a house that was abandoned, foreclosed, evicted.

Squatters have moved in.

And they've been living there for about two years now.

And it's a mess, that house.

Drugs are being dealt.

It's a rodeo there.

And there's nothing anybody can do about it.

Nothing.

Because they've lived there so long, they have rights as occupiers.

And I explain to my kids, you know, that's that's just life.

They've moved in, and now you can't get them out.

And you know what?

Maybe they'll get saved.

That's the goal.

They'll get saved.

I don't mean to sound too spiritual or saying that.

I was like, but what else?

Are you gonna do?

And I tell my kids, this is what sin has done to the worlds.

When we see those people, it reminds us this is what sin has done.

Sin moved in.

Sin did not have a legal right to be here.

Sin was not existent here.

It moved in, has set up shop, and lives here now.

And you can't get rid of it.

No judge is gonna throw it out, no SWAT team is gonna evict it.

Sin dwells in this world.

Here it is.

Deal with it.

That's the curse.

That's a very general curse, isn't it?

Every human being who is born is born cursed by God because of sin.

And you will suffer and you will die.

You'll work hard, you'll have pain in childbirth, and then you will die.

Back to the dirt you go.

But that's not the only curse.

There's a second curse, Genesis 12, where God calls Abram out of the land of the Chaldeans and says, I'm going to make a new nation from you, Abram.

The promise that there's going to be a seed that will come to the world and crush the devil, it's going to come through your line and your family and your nation and your people.

And there's no way to be blessed by God in the whole world.

There is no right relationship with God.

There's no blessing from God.

There's nothing good from God in the whole world unless it comes through this offspring, unless it comes through Israel, through the descendant of Abraham.

You want to be blessed by God, you got to find Abraham's seed, namely the Savior who will bless the world.

That's the blessing.

The curse is the flip side.

If you reject Abraham, if you oppose Abraham, if you go against Abraham and his seed and his offspring, then you will be cursed by God.

Genesis 12, 3.

I'll bless those who bless you, Abraham, and him who dishonors you, I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

That's the curse.

In you, if anybody dishonors you, speaking of you and your offspring, the seed, the Savior, Jesus, anyone who rejects him, they will be cursed by God.

It's part of the Abrahamic covenant.

The Savior will come from Israel.

That curse is repeated by the way, by Isaac to Jacob.

Jacob feels like he's cursed.

And so he disguises himself with the furry arms and all that.

And Rebekah, she says that she'll take the curse from Jacob.

Genesis 27, 29.

Cursed be everyone who curses you, she says.

And speaking of Isaac to Jacob, and the curse transfers from Jacob to Rebekah, who gives it to Esau, and Esau becomes the cursed one.

In other words, anybody who's opposed to the Savior coming through the patriarchs, coming through the person Jesus Christ, is cursed by God.

So those are the two curses you've got.

How do you undo those curses?

How can you fulfill those curses?

Well, one way is what Jesus does in his coming, is he comes to use the language of Romans 5 as a second Adam or 2 Corinthians 5.

He comes like an Adam and he resists the devil.

He does not, he's not persuaded by the devil.

The devil deceived Eve.

The devil did not deceive Jesus.

Adam followed his wife into transgression.

Jesus does not follow Adam into transgression.

So Adam opens the door and lets sin and death and suffering into the world.

Jesus comes into the world and he can close that door because he's the second Adam and does it the right way.

He doesn't sin.

So that's one way he can fulfill the curse is by closing the door, so to speak, by doing what Adam failed to do.

And you can't do that because you come into this world sinful and rejecting God and rebelling against God with a sinful nature.

Whereas Jesus does not.

He leads a sinful life.

He does not have a sinful heart.

And so he can close the door and thereby fulfilling that part of the curse.

The second way he fulfills the curse in Genesis 12 is because he is the seed.

I mean, if the blessing and the curse is that blessed is everybody who honors the seed, and cursed is everyone who opposes the seed, well, Jesus is the seed.

That's why he's not subject to the blessings or the curses of it, because he is it.

Does that make sense?

Blessed is everyone who receives the seed of Abraham.

Cursed is everyone who opposes the seed of Abraham.

Well, here is the seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ.

But still, there's still a little mystery to it.

What does it mean that Jesus can fulfill those curses?

Well, part of it is that he can undo the physical suffering in this world.

Right?

If the door of sin got left open and sorrows and diseases and illnesses move into the world, by Jesus being the second Adam, the rightful heir to the world, the true king of the world, if that's true, and he does fulfill that curse, if he does crush the head of the devil, if he does undo the effects of the curse, you would expect him to also undo the effects of physical illness.

And that's what he does.

If you think, don't flip back there, stay in Isaiah 53, but if you think in your mind, back to Matthew 8, that's the significance of this.

He's curing leprosy.

He's curing the paralyzed boy.

He's driving out the fever.

He's casting out demons, which are part of the curse.

Commentator Robert Gundry teaches theology at Westmonton, California, writes this the healings anticipate the cross of Jesus because they begin to roll back the effects of the sin for which Jesus came to die.

So if Jesus really is going to be the Savior of the world, you would expect him to be able to undo cancer.

Psalm 103, verse 3.

Psalms 103:3

Who forgives all your iniquity?

Who heals all your diseases?

Obviously the answer is Yahweh.

He can forgive your sin and he can heal your diseases.

That's the twofold punch here.

So the idea that Jesus can heal illnesses, it's an argument from a lesser to the greater.

Cancer is less severe than sin.

The most malignant form of cancer is less serious than the most minor sin.

And I hope you appreciate that.

You don't have a right grid on the effects of Adam's sin into the world until you can say that statement with a straight face.

The worst physical disease is less severe than the most minor sin.

Because you understand that the sin, the spiritual sin, is what's opening the door for sorrow to run around the world.

Not that every sickness is a direct result of your own sin, but the existence of sickness in the world is here because the door of sin has been left open.

And Jesus can come and to show you that he can eradicate Adam's sin, he certainly has to be able to heal.

But I also hope you understand.

I hope you don't buy the lie of the charismatic preachers, the health-wealth gospel, that if you put your faith in Jesus, that you won't you'll have healing.

If you put your faith in Jesus, there will be no sin or there will be no cancer in your life or be no brain cancer or whatever, because if you have cancer, just claim you're healing, and if you have enough faith, you'll be healed.

I mean, that's ridiculous because that's not what's happening in Jesus' ministry.

When the king is there, he's eradicating sin, but the king goes away.

He goes back up to heaven.

And there is still sickness in the world.

To demonstrate that, just flip the coin over to sin.

That Jesus leads a sinless life and he can atone for your sin.

And when you put your faith in him, your sins are forgiven.

The permanent power of sin is broken over your life when your faith is put in Jesus Christ.

You will not be judged for your sin anymore.

He's forgiven you of your sin.

But do you still sin in this life?

Yes.

Right?

And if you find somebody who says, I don't sin anymore, just stomp on their foot and see what they do.

Even though your sins are forgiven, you do still sin.

Do you see the connection of physical disease?

Even though Jesus has conquered the final enemy, even though he will swallow up death at his second coming, even though when he returns to earth there will be no more physical death for you.

Where O grave is thy victory, whereow death is thy sting.

It is swallowed up in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Nevertheless, now you still get the flu.

You still get a fever.

You still get cancer.

Now.

Because the ultimate breaking of that is in the future.

Just like it is with sin.

That's what Isaac Watts means when he writes, no more let sin and sorrow grow, nor thorns infest the ground.

He comes to make his blessings flow as far as the curse is found.

This is what he's writing about.

Where you find the curse at the second coming of Jesus Christ, he will eradicate it.

But not yet.

It's just amazing how fast the time goes in my own head here.

Amazing.

The interesting thing for me here is how he does this.

And that's the that's the most incredible part of this.

He does this, it says in Isaiah 53, verse 4, by bearing our griefs.

Isaiah 53:4

He doesn't just do this by being the second Adam.

He doesn't just do this by having sympathy to you, and he doesn't just do this by also getting sick like you get sick.

He does this by actually bearing your sins on himself.

He lifts up, he carries, is how it's translated in the ESV here, carries our sorrows.

That word carries, it's the Hebrew word Nasab.

It means to lift up and wave like a banner.

It's the third commandment.

It says, don't lift up the Lord's name in vain.

It's the this idea that you can't write Yahweh's name in a banner and wave it over your life if you're not following him into war.

That's the third commandment.

Well, here, what Jesus does is he takes your sins and he puts them on a banner and he waves that over his head.

He leads the charge into the war, only his banner says sin on it, and it's yours.

That's how he fulfills this curse.

He leads his sinless life.

He is the better Adam.

He is the seed of Abram, but that's not all he is.

He then bears your sin.

He takes it on himself.

This is the doctrine of substitution.

That he takes your place.

He takes the banner from you.

And he places it.

In this word, he carries it.

It's laden on him.

Now one would think that if somebody took your sins from you, you would say, I don't know, thank you.

If you see somebody carrying a big box and you say, Can it help?

and they say yes, and you take the box from, they would say, thanks.

Jesus takes your sin from you and it becomes his.

So you would think that you would say, Praise God.

But instead, look at what verse 4 says.

Yet we esteemed him stricken and smitten or cursed by God and afflicted.

Even though he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities.

We despised him for it.

We rejected him.

And that's exactly what you see in Matthew's gospel.

The people wanted their illnesses healed, but they did not esteem him as the Savior because they can't get their mind around how these two things could be true.

I mean, you read Isaiah 53 in light of the New Testament, and you think, how come every Jew isn't a Christian?

How can you miss this?

But understand the inherent contradiction in the Jewish mind here.

The Savior is supposed to be glorious.

He's supposed to be God on earth.

He's supposed to be the king leading the charge.

He's supposed to be victorious and beautiful.

And instead, he's waving a banner of sin, and he's laden with your sins and all the evil things you've done and your greed and your lust and your lying, and it becomes his.

How's that the savior?

How?

Filled with sin, waving it above him like a banner, so much so that he's cursed by God.

Is that a savior?

That he's cursed by God.

Bearing your iniquities, the weight of them on his shoulders.

Your leprosy, spiritually speaking, becomes his, your sin-sick motives becomes his.

Your murder and your adultery and your pride becomes his.

And the flip side of it, of course, is that his righteousness becomes yours.

This is the glorious exchange.

Your rags for his glorious robes.

That's substitution.

He's the scapegoat that takes your sin.

He's the lamb of God that takes your sin.

And that's what the Jewish mind couldn't get.

How could the lamb of God who takes a sin be the lion of Judah to use language of revelation?

How could the suffering servant be the savior?

How could the slave, who Jesus is, he became a slaver of God, how could he be the king?

Or to use Jesus' language, how could the savior be David's descendant and David's Lord?

It doesn't make any sense.

How can the slain one be the resurrected one?

Well, that's where they meet.

Substitution.

He's the king and he's slain.

So that he can rise from the dead, bearing your sins.

See how foolish it would be to say, I think I'm going to heaven when I die because I'm a good person.

It has nothing to do with it.

Jesus here bears your sins.

And if you think you have little sins, you have a very tiny savior.

But the more extreme you see your sins, the more you marvel that he was struck by God for them, that he lifted them up, and that his chastisement brings us peace, verse 5 says.

This is what Matthew is after.

This is why Matthew uses diseases and illnesses, by the way, to let you know he's driving away the diseases and the illnesses, because what's easier to do?

Say your sins are forgiven, or pick up your mat and walk.

So but so that you know that he can do both, he heals illnesses.

This is the radical removal of the curse.

One of my favorite hymns is about this.

Stricken, smitten, and afflicted.

Do you see him dying on that tree?

It's the Christ by man rejected.

Oh my soul, it is he, it is he.

Many hands were raised to wound him, yet none interposed to save.

But the deepest stroke that pierced him was the stroke that justice gave.

Mark the sacrifice appointed.

See who bears the awful load.

It is the word, the Lord's anointed, Son of Man and Son of God.

It's the radical removal of the curse.

That Jesus becomes the curse.

He doesn't just fulfill it, he becomes it.

Galatians 3 13, he becomes a curse for us.

As that hymn finishes, the Lamb of God for sinners wounded.

He is the sacrifice to cancel guilt.

None shall ever be confounded who on him their hope have built.

How do you respond to this?

You understand that Jesus healed people to demonstrate that he alone can forgive sins, and he can forgive sins by becoming sin in your place.

God made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Lord, we're thankful that you have become sin for us.

And I pray that if there's anyone here whose eyes have never been opened to this truth of substitution, that they would see it today.

Today they would put their faith in you and believe you and be rescued by you from their sin.

Melt our excuses away.

As our eyes come to focus on the glorious Savior Jesus Christ.

It's in his name we pray.

Go in the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

I hope to see you back this evening.

You have been listening to Emmanuel with Pastor Jesse Johnson.

You can find more resources like this at IBCBA.com.

Here is a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBCBA.com.

If you're not a member of the local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here in Manhattan.

We're located in Northern Virginia.

And for more information about when and where we worship, check out our church website.

I hope that first point meets you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you.