Victory Lost? (April 19th, 2019) - Mike Armstrong

If you would uh grab uh a copy of God's word right now, if you have one, and you would turn it uh to Isaiah uh 53, uh and uh that's where we're gonna spend uh the bulk of our time here uh this morning.

Now, as you're getting yourself uh turned over to that, it's in the Old Testament, by the way.

Uh but do you ever find it kind of amazing?

I know I do, that how uh you and I, we will, you know, we'll watch a movie or or we'll watch uh a TV show or or read a good uh novel, and uh I mean we always pretty much always know uh exactly how it's gonna end.

Right?

We know this.

I mean, maybe not every detail and all of that, but we I mean we know, we know that you know there's gonna be a happy ending, right?

That there's gonna be vindication for you know for the protagonist, right?

We know that there's gonna be uh you know a hopefully a satisfying uh plot resolution, all of that.

Um but we also know that in any good narrative, in any good story, there's always a moment that happens along the way, oftentimes at the very beginning, that involves some kind of a crisis, right?

Some kind of some kind of tragedy, some kind of difficulty, uh a problematic plot twist, uh, if you will, which which which threatens the characters, which which threatens the very outcome uh of the story uh itself.

You know, and I and I find this so amazing and so interesting uh that we always know that it's gonna end well, right?

We we know this.

Literally, you know, basically every single time uh there's some kind of satisfying ending to all of this, yet, yet the moment that the the crisis happens, that that that setback happens, we totally get sucked back in once again.

But have you noticed that?

We we we get roped back into it.

We get we we we we kind of think like, oh my goodness, like how is this gonna iron itself out?

Right?

Like, how is this gonna get gonna get fixed?

You know, and and even in those moments, you know, you might sense that your your your your heart starts to race a little bit, right?

And the questions are just going on and over and over in your mind about what's happening, how is this exactly gonna get figured out?

And you find yourself like emotionally invested in the story, what's taking place.

Well, just last Sunday we started our Easter series here where we looked back at Genesis chapter 3, all right, and how immediately following Adam and Eve's rebellion, their sin against God, what does God do?

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

He graciously, right, lovingly assures them of impending victory, of ultimate victory.

Someday uh uh a Messiah, a savior would come.

That's what he tells us.

Satan would be vanquished.

It would all end well.

But for those of us who know the story, we know that the scriptures and the historical account, there was a major plot twist still to come.

A crisis that seemed to threaten and destroy God's plan and God's promise to us.

And while it's so important and so crucial that you and I would view the painful events of Christ's death and and what we're gathered to focus in on here today on Good Friday, it's it's so important to view all of that in light of the promised victory foretold to us in Genesis 3, and eventually realized on what we will celebrate in three days' time on Easter Sunday and the resurrection.

Listen, as good as all that is, and as important as all that is, it is it is actually good and right for us to allow ourselves to get sucked back into the drama that's unfolding here, the narrative of the cross.

Right?

Because how even though we know that that victory is is ultimately won, and again, we're all looking at it in the rear view mirror, right?

We know uh exactly what happened.

So that being said, there was a moment there where it appeared to be lost.

And so listen, church, we should never, ever breeze over the crucifixion, right?

We should never think that because it was so so gruesome and so so horrible and painful and awful to think about as we imagine all that, we should never, we should never gloss over it, but rather we should allow ourselves to be provoked by it.

Allow ourselves to be to be stirred up and and to really drink in exactly what took place for us on that day.

And so this morning, we're gonna look at that iconic passage of scripture again, which which forecasts to us precisely what Jesus Christ would endure for you and I.

Now, Jonathan just read the entire passage.

I want to read again just a portion of it, verses uh three to six of Isaiah chapter 53, and then I'll pray.

Isaiah 53 · chapter mention

It says this.

It says, He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

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

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

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

All we, like sheep, have gone astray.

We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Father God, we bring ourselves to gather this morning to remember and reflect on the events of the cross.

And Lord, as I do this, I pray that once again you would provoke us to being shaken and moved and impacted by uh what you did to pay the price for our sin, what you did to to unite us with yourself once more.

Lord, we know that all of that was was blown to bits in the garden.

And ever since that moment, mankind has lived in rebellion and in sin against you.

And so, Lord, we thank you that because we could not fix that problem, there was nothing we could do to make that right, Lord.

We thank you that that even though our sin was against you and it was mutiny, Lord, you decided to make a way, and that was by by coming to earth in the form of man and and taking the punishment we deserve on yourself.

And so, Father, as we think about your broken body and your shed blood here this morning, God, I pray, I pray, Lord, that we would think about these things.

I pray that we would humble ourselves greatly, I pray that we would look to you, and Lord, I pray that you would be honored, and I pray that you would be uh glorified through everything that we say and that we do and that we think today.

And as we go on from here, Lord, we pray all of these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, Isaiah is uh an amazing, amazing book.

It was uh written actually in 740 uh BC.

So our right around that that time there.

And it was written by uh Isaiah, right?

Makes sense.

It was written by him.

He was uh he was God's prophet uh to uh God's people, Israel.

Now, Israel at the time, they were a divided nation.

And so you had Israel was like the northern, the the northern uh part of their group, and and Judah, where Jerusalem was, they were the the southern uh part of that uh group, uh part of those people.

And so uh they were living in a time where they were not exactly uh following the Lord.

Right?

They had rebelled against him, they were experiencing the consequences of that, they were being threatened constantly by Assyrian uh oppression, and and things were not great.

And so uh woven all through the book of Isaiah are a number of things.

First of all, there are oracles of judgment where the Lord speaks through Isaiah and warns the people of the sinful choices and the decisions that they are making and how these will bring consequences.

Right?

This will come.

But at the same time, also woven into that narrative are oracles of uh of rescue and and redemption and and and restoration.

Right?

Throughout it, the the Lord lets us in on the plan and lets his people in on the plan that a savior would come and he calls him my servants.

And that servant is Jesus Christ.

And we know that because it is all fulfilled.

Everything that is said in Isaiah is fulfilled in the person and and in the work of Jesus Christ as we see it in the Gospels in the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

And so, with all of that, we're just gonna jump right in here.

We're gonna have uh this outline on the screen for you.

We're gonna have the text on the screen as well if you don't have a Bible with you.

But here we go, it says this.

For a moment, victory appeared to be lost.

After all, our promised Messiah met an unthinkable end.

And so, why don't you take a look at verse 3 with us of Isaiah chapter 53?

Isaiah 53 · chapter mention

And I'm gonna kind of work our way through this here this morning.

Of God's servant, it says this, again, pointing ahead to the to the life and death of Jesus, it says that he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

As dark and and as foreboding as those words are here, we know that this is exactly what Christ Himself would come to experience throughout his life, and and certainly in the specific surrounding moments uh of Good Friday.

God sent him to save his people from their sins.

Yet they completely, as the verse says here, despised and rejected him.

They despised him, Israel's religious leaders, particularly, right, and and they represented the Israelites, and they should have, they should have recognized better than anybody.

They they knew the Old Testament like the back of their hand.

They had most of it memorized and and they considered themselves experts in these things.

They should have known that he was the fulfillment of all the Old Testament messianic prophecies.

Instead, they themselves actually kind of fall into the unenviable and enviable position of actually fulfilling some of this prophecy themselves.

They were the one who hid their faces, the verse says.

They hated how he went after their pride.

He hated how, you know, when they tried to trick him by asking him questions about the law, how he answered them masterfully.

He despised how he was how he was kind to sinners and those who were who were broken.

They were the ones who hid their faces.

They were repulsed by him, such as they they esteemed him not, right?

They did not value him according to his true worth as the son of God.

It was utter denial and and and hatred and rejection of what they needed most but deserved least.

A Savior.

God Himself.

So what did they do?

Well, we know those of us who are familiar with this, and some of us have heard this story countless times, we know that they they murdered him.

Right?

Verse 5, it gets to that and it prophesies exactly what's gonna happen.

It says that he was he was pierced.

You see that?

I mean, we know that in the gospels we see that Jesus was was pierced with nails through his hands and through his feet, as he was hoisted up on a cross, which was a just a brutal and awful form of execution.

It was it was it was misery and it was suffering, it was it was torture.

He he went through that, he was pierced.

It says here that he was he was crushed, referring to just the the oppressive and in the in the crushing agony of his death by by crucifixion.

Upon him, it says, was was the chastisement, right?

Meaning that that he was punished, he was chastised, punished uh for our sin through this act.

It also mentions there his his wounds.

You see that word?

Remember, he was he was flogged before he was he was led away to be you know crucified on the cross, he was he was whipped with an awful beating.

He had that crown of thorns jammed down into his skull, he was mocked, he was he was abused.

But of course, the the nail and the spear punctured in his body, they were they were wounds as well.

I mean, no wonder it says here in Isaiah 53 that he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

I don't know about you, but this just appears to be you know such a far cry from the victory that we just looked about last week that was promised to us in in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Right?

Such a jarring turn of events, even from you know how the Jews had had just hailed him as as the Messiah and as as the long-awaited king on Palm Sunday, just uh you know, a week previous.

Right?

Jesus died.

He was he was killed by the very people that he came to save.

He was in the grave for for three days.

I mean, where's the victory in any of this, right?

It's an unconscionable, unthinkable end to the good news of salvation that God had promised all along.

All was lost.

At least that appeared to be the case.

Until you realize that all of these events and and all of these details and all of the pain and the anguish that we even think about as we read these things and we think about these things, all of that was actually exactly uh how it had to go.

This was the precise path that God the Father had chosen uh for his son.

For a moment, victory appeared to be lost, but it was the necessary sacrifice that righted our wrongs.

That's the second thing here this morning.

Yes, Jesus died.

Yes, it was complete misery.

I mean, just take a look at here in the verse, what exactly this accomplished, though.

It's amazing.

Verse 4.

It says, Surely he has borne our griefs, right?

He took those on and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him or thought of him as stricken, as smitten by God and afflicted.

Now you might be thinking, well, well, he was smitten, he was stricken.

What do you mean that we thought of him as this?

Well, well, it's because the Jews kind of misinterpreted Christ's Christ's miserable end here as God's way of saying, this isn't the Messiah.

Right?

Look at this guy, he's dead, it's pathetic.

He's an imposter.

I reject him.

Whereas in reality, he was smitten and and he was he was stricken by God for an entirely different reason.

For our sake.

He was punished in our place.

So you and I, so that so that we could have our sins forgiven.

Right?

So our sin, our record of sin could be expunged.

It could be washed away.

He was the necessary sacrifice to pay the debt that that you and I owed to a holy creator, God, that you and I have sinned deeply against.

Verse five sheds a light on on what was really happening here in the moment that our victory appeared to be lost.

Look what it says, verse five.

It says, but he was pierced for our transgressions, for our for our offenses against God.

He was he was crushed for our iniquities, for our for our wickedness.

Upon him was the chastisement.

Again, the word means punishment that brought us peace with God.

Right?

That the war that existed between mankind, humanity, and and our creator is ended.

And it says here, and and with his wounds, we are healed.

Right?

We're healed from the from the damaging effects of our sin.

Listen, what this tells us very carefully, very clearly in this verse is that Jesus' death was a substitutionary one.

Penal substitutionary atonement is the is the doctrine that we're seeing at work here.

He was punished instead of us, right, to atone for or to make to make amends for the evil that you and I had committed against God.

How amazing is that?

Now people think that that God punishing sinners is unfair.

That's on that's that's unfair.

To think of a uh of a wrathful God, to think of a God who who judges, that that can't be right.

Oh, yes, it is.

It is right, and and it is fair.

It would be unfair of him not to.

Right?

Anytime you and I, we you know, we read the news and and we see a story come up of some atrocity that's been committed, right?

Some crime against humanity.

What begins to well up in us real quickly?

Right?

Like a sense of judgment needed, right?

This this has to happen.

This crime must be punished, right?

This wrong must be righted.

Well, when human beings sin against God, those wrongs must be righted.

It would actually be unjust of God to just kind of turn a blind eye and sweep it under the rug and pretend none of it ever happens.

Now, maybe you're kind of here this morning, you're thinking, well, you know, only really bad people, you know, need that kind of judgment and deserve that kind of judgment.

Well, um, sorry to burst your bubble here, but look at verse six because it includes each of us in that category of being really bad.

It says, All we like sheep have gone astray.

We have turned everyone to his own way.

What's his own way?

His own way is his is his pride, right, and and and our selfishness and our evil and and the self-center-centeredness and the you know, look at me, me, me, me.

That's that's that's coming out of us constantly, that's in our hearts.

We're all guilty.

The world would have you believe that we are all good people deep down who sometimes do evil.

The Bible reverses that, it hits us with it straight up.

It's very consistent and very clear all throughout.

We are evil.

There's no one who is righteous, no, not one.

We've all gone astray.

So it says there, we've turned everyone to his own way.

Keep going.

It says, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Through the act of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, God the Father lays our guilt and our shame and and our sin and our evil, our iniquities on him.

And he takes the punishment uh on himself.

Again, so that you and I could be healed, so that we could be forgiven, so that we could go free.

And so as the Verse says here so that peace between us and God could be restored, as it once was in the Garden of Eden.

And so here, and understand, church, the victory that appeared to be lost on Good Friday, this vicious plot twist in the story, as the promised Messiah was put to death and he was hung on a tree by sinners like you and I.

It was actually being one in that very moment.

Because through this unthinkable and brutal and awful act, our redemption was purchased.

And of course, it was through nothing short, nothing less, than the blood of Jesus Christ.