The doctrine of the sufferings of Christ is explored through Isaiah 53, highlighting how Jesus, God's servant, was exalted and highly esteemed despite his marred visage. The sermon details the brutal physical sufferings Jesus endured, particularly to his face, including the crown of thorns, spitting, buffeting, and being struck with reeds, emphasizing that these afflictions were for our transgressions and iniquities. It contrasts the rejection of Jesus by many, particularly the Jewish people, with the astonishment and belief of Gentile nations, urging listeners to consider the depth of Christ's sacrifice and its necessity for sin. The message concludes with an application for those who have not yet accepted Christ, encouraging them to come home to Him, especially during this homecoming week, and to avoid the wasted years of spiritual apathy The passage experienced.
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I will do that. And I'm glad you're having a meal this morning because at least I have one meal this week. I know that. One meal. Because I was invited. We all are invited. So, well, you know, it's homecoming for you, folks. And, you know, I won't realize this, but it's homecoming for me. Although I was with most of my life, you'll hear my New Jersey twang in my voice. But I'm really from North Carolina. My mother and father met... and gated and courted and all that kind of thing right here in North Carolina in the booming metropolis of Black Mountain, North Carolina.
Who knows where Black Mountain North, they got a few hands in the air. It's near Asheville, a little suburb of Asheville. My grandfather had a Christian bookstore there and he had a boarding house for girls, nurses primarily, but somehow my father There was one room available that the nurses did not take up. And my father was able to rent out that room, and it just happened that all the nurses were away for the summer or something. I forget how the whole story goes, but my father and my mother, they were there left with my grandfather and grandmother for a summer, and they fell in love, and there in Black Mountain, they got married.
And later on, my father... and mother they decided to go into full-time ministry and so they decided first to go to Wake Forest seminary that's in Wake Forest and it was a bit of a liberal school I don't know if it still is today and didn't just suit what he what he believed at that point and so he went off to Columbia Bible College and was studying to be a Baptist minister in fact he was not ordained but studying to be and I came along And my sister came before me, two years before me. But because he was going to Columbia and was going to be a Baptist minister, the Baptist Hospital there in Columbia, South Carolina said, we have a deal.
We'll allow him to come to the hospital and be born for not more than ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents. And so that's how I came into the world at the Baptist Hospital in Columbia, South Carolina. And ninety-nine does still have the receipt. My parents saved it. put it in my baby's book. So now when my kids came along, do you know what it costs? Twelve thousand dollars. And that was a few years ago. It's probably more than that today. I had three children and a wife there back in Atlanta, Lake Florida holding down the fort. We're involved in a church planting ministry there right now. It's a small group of about forty believers. And we hope one day to have a nice facility like this.
We just purchased two months ago. We put our name on the line to purchase five acres of property, and we just trust the Lord to continue to bless and to work and to read in that area. Well, this week of meetings, we want to think of forgotten doctrines. And we're going to look at one of those doctrines this morning and tonight, and that's the doctrine of the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ. I'm going to invite you to turn to Isaiah. This morning, this evening, we want to look at Isaiah fifty three. If you turn with me to Isaiah, the last few verses of Isaiah fifty-two, we want to look at verses thirteen, fourteen, fifteen this morning especially, but we want to also look at Isaiah fifty-three.
Verse thirteen begins like this. Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. He is to be exalted and extolled and very high, as many as were astonished as thee. His visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men. So shall he sprinkle many nations, and the king shall shut their mouths at him, for that which they had not been told, they shall see, and that which they had not heard, they shall consider. Who hath believed our reports?
And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him like a tender plant, like a root of a dry ground. And he hath no form nor comeliness. And when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrow, and acquainted with grief. We hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he had borne our grief and carried our sorrow. Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgression. He was bruised for our iniquities. And the chastisement for our peace was upon him. And with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. He's turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. You know, down through the years, this portion of God's word has been considered one of the great treasures of the Scripture. Martin Luther, the great reformer from Germany, he said about Isaiah fifty three, he said these words, he said, Isaiah fifty three ought to be written on parchment of gold and lettered with diamonds.
Geo Moody was asked one time, what is your creed? What do you believe? And he said, my creed is Isaiah fifty three. You know, the great, I love this story about H.A. Ironside. Maybe some of you here have heard him preach. He's a great preacher, great expositor, writer of commentary. You know, he began to preach when he was fourteen years old. And he was called the boy preacher of Los Angeles. And the first time he began to preach, He preached in Isaiah, verse six. All we like sheep have gone astray. He's turning each one to his own way. And the Lord has laid upon him the iniquity of us all. It was a street meeting. They're out there in the city of Los Angeles. And it was getting late.
They had to get back to the church where they were having evening service. And there's a number of men who were preaching before him. And he was the youngest. So he was last. And so it was his turn. And one of the men said, it's your turn. You go start preaching. And he preached all but two minutes. And he began to. preach it was hard out on this verse and one of the men said finish it later he said finish it later we've got to get back to the church and so H.A. Ironside said you know all my life I've been trying to tell the rest of the story of Isaiah fifty three and it's never to be told never be fully exhausted fully told because this is one of the great great chapters of God's word and so this morning we want to look at it and think about it and study it and I hope As it does in my heart, I hope it sinks down and blesses your heart and speaks to your heart and stirs your heart and gives you a greater love for our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
You know what's striking about this portion? Isaiah fifty-three, fifty-two, verse thirteen to Isaiah fifty-three, verse twelve. What's so special about it is twice God the Father tells us some things about his lovely Son. He begins in verse thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and here the Father is telling us things he wants us to know about his Son. And then in verse ten, eleven, and twelve of fifty-three, again he concludes and tells us more things he wants us to know about his Son. And in between we have the voices of faithful people, prophets and other believers down through the centuries saying and questioning and wondering Why so many people do not believe?
The Father says, behold, my servant, he shall deal prudently. Here the Father gives the qualification of his Son to be the Savior of the world. He says, behold, my servant. You know, that word, behold, says stop, look, consider, drink in, think about, fix your gaze and fix your eyes upon this one he's going to be talking about. And so the Father says, behold, look at my servant. Think about my servant. Study him. Examine him. I want you to learn all that you can in this lecture hall in this school room of my son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he says he is especially qualified to be the Savior of the world because of a number of different things.
And it says in verse thirteen, he shall be exalted. It says, he shall be exalted, and he shall be very high. You know, I want to just say something about this. You know, it says in the NIV translation, he shall be exalted, he shall be raised, and he shall be made very high. You know, it speaks a lot. It makes us think of the death, the resurrection, and the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. He says, look at my servants. He is supremely qualified to be the Savior of the world.
And then down in fifteen, he says, so shall he sprinkle many nations. You know, it's a striking thing when he begins to speak in verse fifteen. We skip over fourteen. We'll come back to it in a second. But it says, he shall sprinkle back in the Old Testament when they want to cleanse something. They would sprinkle it with water. or sprinkled with blood in the sacrificial offerings of the Old Testament and now he says in verse fifteen he says after a group of people and these are not Jewish people but these are Gentile people these are not ordinary run-of-the-mill Jewish people who've heard teachings from the prophets and from the Levites all their lives about the Messiah and about the messianic passages in the Bible in the Old Testament these are not Jewish people who believe But these are Gentile people, Gentile kings, men of prestige, men of learning, men of understanding.
He says, so shall he sprinkle many nations. The kings shall shut their mouths at him. They'll be so shocked and surprised and gripped as they learn about this one, the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Israel, the Savior of the world, And it says, For that which they had not been told, they shall see. And that which they had not heard, they shall consider. And assumed in this verse is they shall consider and believe on the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who was not sent to the Gentiles, but to the Jewish people. And then Isaiah, echoing the thoughts of all those believings, remnant of believing Jews, small pockets here and there, down through the centuries who would believe on the Messiah.
Isaiah echoes their feelings as they learn about kings, Gentile kings, and multitudes of those who are non-Jews coming and believing on their Messiah. He says this. He says, who among us? Who has believed our report? Why are there so few Jews? Why are there so few that believe? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? And he speaks about how the majority of the Jewish people consider is despised. He's rejected. He's a man of sorrows. He's acquainted with grief.
He says, why is it so few? So few Jews believe. And the message came down through the ages, time and time again, from Moses and the prophets, down through the history of Israel, over and over again. The Jews heard the message, and they rejected it. It came again from the prophets. Reject it, reject it, reject it, reject it, despise. And the message comes to the Gentiles. And kings believe, and nations believe, they're cleansed and sprinkled and saved. And their mouths and their hearts are gripped and the mouths are shut.
And as they think of the wonderful Savior and what and how he suffers to accomplish the salvation that is now theirs. You know, I think the same thing happens today. The same thing happened in my life. I heard the gospel over and over and over and over again. I was like the children I'm looking at in this audience this morning. I went to a church like this, although it was much smaller. He began to meet in our home. My father, after he left Columbia Bible College, he moved north to New Jersey, where I was raised and decided he had to take a job with a prudential insurance company to support his family, and he did that.
But he started a small church in his home. And that's where I first heard over and over again the gospel message, my mother. took out correspondence courses from Moody Bible College, and she would teach us the scriptures, going through correspondence courses. We went to vacation Bible schools. We went to every available opportunity. Word of Life was just becoming popular in the North. We went to Word of Life rallies as often as possible. I think I heard Jack Wilson preach more than just a few times. Went to Word of Life camp twice in Screw Lake over and over again, memorized scriptures. I had Bibles in my room, I had devotional books, but I was never saved.
You know, I went in and out of a door like that or a door like that. I don't know how many times, hundreds of times. Heard the gospel, heard powerful messages, touching my heart. Remember one time Campus Crusade came through, I was about thirteen or fourteen, And they had a gospel film. I forget what the film was about. And they would show it. They had a sixteen millimeter film projector. And they would just go into homes and show it on the walls of living rooms. And there they came into this home, my parents' home. They showed this film. We had a barbecue afterwards in our backyard. And one of the men came up to me and said, are you saved?
And I started crying. I knew I wasn't saved. But for something was holding me back. Like these people, the Jewish people, something was blinding their eyes. Something was holding them back. Wasn't saved until I was twenty-three years old. But I hope you're not like me. I hope you don't wind up to be like me. Wasted years. I see my son be baptized a couple of months. The end of the summer, my daughter, she's ten, and my son is just turned nine. and they seem to have a living relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ by all counts and they want to be baptized and they want to break bread they want to be full-fledged members of a local church and nothing throws my heart more because I know in my life I wasted a lot of years a lot of years that I could have been living for the Lord a lot of years of blessing wasted thrown away because I turned my back on the Lord Jesus just like these Jewish people You know, sometimes we say to ourselves, well, why does it usually reject the Lord Jesus?
How can it be they had the prophets and they had the law and they had the ceremony and they had the tabernacle and they had the sacrifices? How could they not believe? How could they be so doubting? You know, we're just like that. I was just like that over and over again, rejecting. But, you know, after I was saved, Something very powerful took place in my life. I remember sitting at a Lord's Supper. Many of you, I think the majority of you come to a Lord's Supper here. I was there this morning. A good number were there. But, you know, I sat for twenty-three years in a Lord's Supper just going through the motions.
Just going through the motions. No real meaning to me. And after I was saved, I prayed a prayer. Remember, very hard self-pray. I worked in New York City, worked at Ground Zero, worked at Merrill Lynch Building right across from the World Trade Center. Worked there for a number of years and took a train an hour each morning. I would read the scriptures and read books and pray sometimes. Remember praying on that train. And I said, Lord, help me. Never to go through the motions again. Help me to prepare myself. Help me to do what I can. I rarely go out Saturday night to meetings or to dinners or whatever activities they try not or if I do I don't come in too late so you can spend a little bit of time go to bed at a decent hour get up at a decent hour so I can be prepared I can go to the Lord's Supper I can honorably worship my Lord and give to him from my heart I can be prepared and it can be a spiritual blessing a real spiritual exercise of remembering my Lord Jesus Christ and why I want to point your attention to verse fourteen.
Probably the turning point, the most important verse possibly in this whole chapter. And there are so many verses that are so important. It's probably verse fourteen. As many as were astonished at him, his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men. You know, in the nineteen eighties, the Shroud of Turin, if you've heard of the Shroud, the Shroud of Turin, which was found around the middle of the thirteenth century, fourteenth century, was believed to be the very Shroud wrapped, the body of the Lord Jesus was wrapped in.
There's an image somehow reflected onto the Shroud, and I believe it's the image of the Lord Jesus. And those who believe, are believers in the Shroud, they say at the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, some miraculous light shone out from the body of Christ. And that light imprinted the image of the Lord Jesus as a photographic image onto the shroud. They believe it's the very image of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's a lot of reasons why it's a forgery and it's not the actual grave clothes of the Lord Jesus. I'll give you a couple of them.
First of all, the person who was wrapped in the shroud The Bible says he was wrapped around his head, around this way. The shroud is a shroud wrapped around his whole body, from head to toe. But anyway, the shroud measures a man who was six foot ten inches tall. I don't think our Lord was six foot ten inches tall. Six foot nine to six foot ten inches. Another thing about the shroud, the head of the person in the shroud, right by the neck, is severed. The line going right across and there's a space. Their head is severed. Lord Jesus Christ never had his head severed from his body.
But another thing, the most important thing, why we would reject the shroud. You know, the face of the man who was in that shroud is unscared. It's unmarred. You can see his eyes. You can see his cheeks. You can see the outline of his nose and his mouth and the beard. not scarred, not marred more than any other man. Here it says in verse fourteen, as many as were astonished at thee, his visage was marred more than any other man. You know, every summer, or the last five summers, I go to a camp not far from here. It's in Virginia. It's a small Bible camp in woolwine, Virginia, outside of Roanoke, the Blue Ridge Mountain.
And every year, a young believer, Brother in his thirties, named Marvin, he comes and he counsels. Marvin, when he was around twenty years old, I don't know, all that had happened, there was an explosion, and there was gasoline, and his face was horribly marred, horribly burned. In fact, when he counsels, he wears a mask, covering over his head, the back of his head, and the front of his head. Very infrequently he takes the mask off. But, you know, I've seen him take it off. I've seen his face. He burns terribly.
Very embarrassed to go in public without a mask. But when I see him, and I think of verse fourteen, our Lord's face was marred more than his face. And why was that? It was marred for your sake, my sake. I want to take some time in the closing moments And think about something very important, I think. You know, there were so many sufferings the Lord Jesus received, and the majority of those sufferings were upon his face. And I want to review some of those with you. So if you'll turn with me to the Gospels, to John You know, there are eight sufferings or afflictions, we could say, our Lord Jesus Christ suffered.
The crown of thorns pulled the beard from his face. They nailed nails in his hands and his feet. They thrust a spear into his side. They spit in his face. They beat his face or buffeted him with fists. They slapped his face with open palms. They took reed and beat his face with tamed reed reed poles or bamboo like thick bamboo rods or poles. And then they scourged his back with a whip and made his back like a plowed field.
Eight different sufferings. There may be others that have missed, but those are the primary sufferings our Lord Jesus Christ endured. And you know, of those eight, There are five that endured in his face. Chapter nineteen says, Pilate therefore took Jesus and scourged him. The soldiers platted a crown of thorns. They put it on his head. They put on him a purple robe. Not far from where we live is a place called Cyprus Gardens. In Florida, it's one of the tourist attractions. One of the many, many there. They have the people who started Cyprus Gardens were born again believers and still family owned, still in the family.
And they have a section, not much visited, not the highest and most attracted part, but they have a section called the Holy Land Gardens. You can go in there and find herbs and plants and trees that grow primarily in Israel. And they have a bush, a thorn bush there. And the thorn bush is called the Jerusalem thorn bush. And it's believed that this is the kind of bush that was used to make the crown of thorns. When I saw that bush, it jarred me. You know, the thorns on that bush are two inches to three inches long. Not a little rose bush.
And they wove that crown. and took those thorns and pressed them down hard upon our Savior's head. It platted the crown of thorns and put it on his head. It pulled a beard from his face. One reason I think that he was unrecognizable and his visage marred more than any man was because it pulled the beard from his face. They didn't pull a few hairs of his beard, but they pulled the beard from his face. I want to ask you to turn with me over to Mark's Gospel for a moment.
Chapter fourteen. Chapter fourteen and verse sixty-five. They put a crown upon his head. They pulled the beard from his face. They spit into his face. For the Jewish people to spit into a man's face. Back in the Old Testament, the book of Ruth, when the closest kinsman redeemer to Ruth would not redeem her.
They brought him to the judges outside the gate of the city, and they spit at his feet. but here because they despise the Lord Jesus so much they spit in his face not once but two different occasions they spit in his face here in verse sixty five and some began to spit on him and to cover his face and to buffet him and to say unto him prophesy and the guards did strike him with the palms of their hands this is the occasion where the Lord Jesus is under the trial secret trial with the high priest Caiaphas and and Annas and at the end the guards of the high priest they beat him it may be here under this occasion they pulled the beard from his face and they spit in his face and they buffeted him and they struck him with palms of their hands then over in chapter fifteen and verse nineteen And they smote him on the head with a reed, with a rod.
And they spit upon him again, the soldiers of the foot of the cross, as he was making his way to be crucified. And bowing their knees, they worshipped him. They put a crown upon his head, pulled a beard from his face, spit upon his face. So turn with me, if you would, to Matthew chapter twenty-six. In verse sixty-seven. You recount the same passage and it says they spat in his face and they buffeted him and others smote him with the palms of their hands saying prophesy unto us thou Christ who smote thee.
You know, in that verse, the word buffet, whenever you see the word buffet in Scripture in King James, it means to strike someone with clenched fists. Not just to strike, but it means with a fist. It says the Apostle Paul was buffeted. Sometimes it's used figuratively, but literally the word, the Greek word means a clenched fist. To strike with a clenched fist. And so here in this verse, they spit in his face. They struck him. They punched him in the face with clenched fists. Then with the palms of their hands, they struck him again. And then another occasion says they covered his face and blindfolded him and then struck him again with a reed and said, prophesy, who smote they?
Turn with me to one more chapter, chapter thirty. I'm sorry, chapter twenty-seven of Matthew in verse thirty. Here it says, again, they spit on the Lord Jesus. And they took out this reed, a W.E. Vine, a Greek scholar. It says a reed is a caned, a jointed hollow caned hole or rod. Used by shepherds sometimes. Used by guards. And this caned hole, maybe two inches in diameter, they took it like a baseball bat.
and they struck the face of the Lord Jesus. W. E. Vines said something very gripping, I think. He says the Greek tense in verse thirty is in the imperfect, which means continual action, that they repeatedly, continually for a period of time, struck the face of the Lord Jesus. Let's turn back for a moment to Isaiah fifty. You know, I asked myself, and maybe you this morning are asking yourself, why? Why did a Lord suffer so brutally in his face?
Why did he suffer in that way? Why did he suffer in the place of the greatest human sensitivity? You know, when I was a boy and I was going to fall, riding a bike or running and I was going to fall and I knew I was going to fall on pavements, And I knew my face was going to come down and hit the pavement. I wouldn't cover my elbows. I wouldn't cover my knees. I'd cover my face. I want to protect our face. The Lord Jesus is the most vulnerable place. The place where you protect. When you reserve and you try to. You try not to be harmed. That part of the body of the Lord Jesus was.
wounded and beaten and brutalized the worst. Isaiah fifty in verse six says this. I gave my back to the smiters. I gave my cheeks to them that pulled off the hair. Then it says this, I hid not my faith from the shame and the spitting. I gave my cheeks. He didn't pull it back. There was no self-preservation. He gave himself. Why did he do that? Why did he give himself like that? What was he trying to show? I'd like to think he was trying to show the brutality and the horribleness of our sin.
Sins are not just mistakes we make. Sins are not just infractions that we incur. Sin is what separates us from God. Sin is so horrible and so deep in such a separation that it took this kind of brutality, this kind of suffering, this kind of bearing our sins so graphically, so brutally. So in our eyes, in our mind's eye as we read the scriptures, we see what was necessary for our sins to be dealt with fully and sufficiently. I think he did it too. after we would come to a realization a living realization of our Savior and by faith believe in the Lord Jesus Christ that we would have a greater love for him says greater love has no man than this then he laid down his life for my friends and you were my friends I wonder this morning the young ones here children that were like I was a number of years ago Or maybe there's someone else in this room.
Maybe you're not yet twenty-three like I was. Maybe you're over twenty-three. You know, I once mentioned that another assembly and a woman came up to me and she said, you know, I wasn't twenty-three, but I was fifty-eight years old. Attending a church, attending an assembly for fifty-eight years and not saved until she was fifty-eight. I thought I waited a long time. I wonder if there's somebody here this morning. It's homecoming week, homecoming Sunday. It'd be a wonderful time if you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ to come home, not just to a church that you call your home, but come back to the Lord Jesus, place your faith.
For the first time in your life to really come to a living knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. At twenty-three years old, my life was radically and completely changed. Because I said yes to the Lord Jesus Christ. For the first time in my life, it was in a college campus. It was in a morning. I've been reading the scriptures for six months. Under conviction. And I was under conviction for this reason. What if the Lord would come back? I knew I wasn't saved. I wasn't saved. What if the Lord would come back today? Would you know, without the shadow of a doubt, that you go with him.
He's coming for you. I didn't know that. I knew when he came back, he wasn't coming for me because I wasn't saved. Oh, I went through the motions. I went to church and I had Bibles. And you know, he had gone back in time to that little church, that little assembly of twenty-twenty-five people and asked a lot of the adults there, is David dumb enough a Christian? You know what they would say? Yes. Because I fooled them. I might even fool my parents sometimes. I didn't fool myself and I didn't fool the Lord. In the closing prayer, I'm just going to ask you to, I want to talk to me afterwards or talk to one of the people here.
Maybe talk with someone that came with you. Just say to them, you know, I'm not saved. I know it. I want to get right today. I want to make, I want to say yes to the Lord today. I trust you do that. I'll trust you won't be like myself and put it off. and put it off, but maybe today, when it might be that day of salvation for you. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for our time this morning. We thank you for a Savior that suffered brutally, but lovingly because he loved us and gave himself for us. We think of a Savior of whom it says, no man can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for him.
The ransom of a life is costly. No payment is ever enough. And, Father, your son made that sufficient payment price for my sins, for the sins of everyone in this room. And I trust, Father, if there's someone in this room this morning who doesn't know Christ yet, not just a churchgoer, but a real Christian, not someone who maybe is full of a few people, but a real Christian. I trust, Father, this might be the day. They're not that. They would trust Christ and have that transaction and transformation in their life. And I pray this and ask this in Jesus' name.