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The fifty third chapter of the book of Isaiah, which of course is the chapter that tells us of Jehovah's suffering servant. We begin reading with verse one, though they say verses thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen of fifty two should really be a portion of fifty three. We'll refer back to those verses, or at least one of them, a little bit later. Now, Isaiah 53 and verse one: Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of a dry ground.
He has 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 sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid, as it were, our faces from him, and we es- he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, and we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, unafflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, and the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.
All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before a shearer is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked and, uh, with the rich in his death, because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. That's one of the most difficult statements in the Bible for me to understand. And yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He hath put him to grief. When thou shalt make him- make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed. Now listen, here is the victory side. He shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied. By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he hath poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors. And he bare the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. Shall we unite our hearts in prayer? Our blessed God and our Father, we want to give thee thanks and give thee praise for thy goodness to us, as our brother Ed has already thanked thee and praised thee, Lord, truly thou art good to us. As the Psalmist said, surely I will sing praises unto the Lord, for he hath dealt bountifully with me.
And Father, this poor man would thank thee for seventy five years of physical life upon this earth, relatively free of sickness, for the few ailments that I've had, Lord, and afflictions are nothing compared to what so many, many others have had. And I just give thee thanks and give thee praise, O God, that thou hast been so good to me and so good to many others, and I pray for those who have not been as blessed as some of the rest of us. Now, Lord, we just thank thee and praise thee for thyself. Our God, we praise thee for this chapter that we have read, which tells us of thy suffering servant. And Lord, this statement that it pleased thee to bruise him does do something to us when we read it.
Yet at the same time we realize that it was for us, and as we read on in the chapter, we see the results of thy bruising him and thy bruising him for us, when thou didst lay our iniquities upon him, when thou didst lay upon him the stripes that we ourselves should have received. Though our God, we just give thee praise and give thee thanks that thy son came, that he was crucified, that he was buried, that he rose again, that he went back to heaven, that he's ever living, making intercession for us, and he's coming back again. And we ask thee now that thou would just bless us in a very special way as we think again about how he suffered, and then, Lord, about the victory of his resurrection.
In Jesus' name, we ask for help. Amen. Amen. Now, this morning we were talking to you about the trauma of the crucifixion and the triumph of the resurrection. And certainly there is a tremendous trauma about the crucifixion. When we think of, of how our blessed Lord, the Son of God, the Lord from glory, our Savior, the one who became the Son of Man, suffered and bled and died for us. The extent of his suffering is what is gripping me in this meditation.
And I want you to notice the fourteenth verse of the fifty second chapter of Isaiah. I assume your Bible is still open. So look at the fourteenth verse of the fifty second chapter of Isaiah, and there we read, as many were astonished at thee. His visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men. And if you have a scope for your Bible, look down at the bottom of the page, and it says the literal rendering is terrible. So marred from the form of man was his aspect that his appearance was not that of a son of man, not even human. The effect of the brutalities that are described in Matthew twenty six and in Matthew twenty seven.
and we thought about some of those brutalities this morning in Matthew twenty seven particularly. But sometimes we see pictures that artists draw of the Lord Jesus Christ hanging on the cross, and we see the form of a man drawn there, and we see some red spots about his forehead and about his face to indicate that the blood has covered his face as a result of the thorns being, uh, uh, digging into his flesh, the thorns in the crown of thorns that was, that was pressed upon his head, and, uh, we see some red spots in his hands and on his feet, and a red spot in his, on his painted on his side to indicate, uh, the place where this Roman spear entered.
And that's the artist's conception of the Lord Jesus Christ hanging on the cross, dying for our sins. But friend, according to this passage of scripture, the Lord Jesus Christ didn't even resemble a person. He didn't even resemble a man. He didn't even resemble a human being. His visage was more marred than any man, and his form more than the sons of men. Therefore, the Lord Jesus Christ, after he had suffered the abuse that he did suffer at the hands of men, was nothing more than a pummeled mass of flesh as he hung on that cross, when, as we noted this morning, he became sin for us, thus bearing away in his own body our sins so that we might be freed from under the condemnation.
While your Bible is still open there, look at the sixty ninth Psalm, the sixty ninth Psalm, and we'll read there something about his suffering, because this certainly does refer to the suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ. Psalm sixty nine and verse one: Save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul. That is to say, they are come up to my neck. They threaten my life. I sink in deep mire where there is no standing. There's no foothold that I can, uh, that I can claim, that I can use. I am come into deep waters where the floods overflow me, where they literally overwhelm me.
Then notice in verse three he says, I am weary of my crying. My throat is dried. Mine eyes fail while I wait for my God. Now let me stop right there and tell you that Job gives us a picture of what we have here when, as Job was suffering because of the torments that were put upon him, God allowing Satan to torment him, when Job cried out, as recorded in chapter thirteen and verse fifteen, keep your finger in Psalm fifty nine if you turn to it, and said, though he slay me, yet will I trust him.
Now, notice, beloved, that Job has been declaring, he is answering Zophar now, who accuses him of being a hypocrite, and he refuses to acknowledge that he is a hypocrite. And in verse 14 of chapter, uh, thirteen, Job says, wherefore do I take my flesh in my teeth and put my life in mine hand? That is, why do I incur the danger of wrath? And then he says, though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. In other words, in extreme pain, totally miserable, Job trusted in God.
Job must have known what the prophet Isaiah known. When Isaiah described in chapter forty and verse thirty one, and most of you know this verse, they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. Notice they that wait upon the Lord. The word there means those that trust upon the Lord. And the same word we have here in the fifteenth verse uh, verse of the thirteenth chapter of the book of Job, Job sa- Job says, though he le- he slay me, yet will I trust in him, yet I'm going to wait on him.
And he says, I'm going to maintain my own ways before him. Zophar, I am not a hypocrite, and you cannot get by with calling me a hypocrite. I stand before God. You know, Paul reached the place in his career when he said, I stand before Caesar's judgment. So here Job is telling Zophar that he's not concerned about his judgment, but that he is standing before God, and he will maintain his own ways before God, and he declared that God knew all about him in another place in this book of Job, and therefore he knew that he was not a hypocrite, and he knew that God also knew that he was not a hypocrite.
So, trusting the Lord is waiting upon God, and vice versa, waiting upon God is trusting in the Lord. I will wait on the Lord, and in him only will I trust. We read in Psalm sixty two and verse five. Now we'll go back to the sixty ninth Psalm, and we'll notice the fourth verse. They that hate me, now this is the Lord Jesus Christ speaking prophetically. They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head. They that would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully, and uh, mighty, and we could add, and many, according to those that tell us what the scriptures really mean here.
Then I restored that which I took not away. In other words, he said, uh, that which I did not steal, I restored it. They accused me of taking it from them, of stealing it. I didn't do any such thing, but nevertheless, I restored it. I restored that which I took that away, or that which I did not steal. And that reminds us that the Lord Jesus Christ also declared in, uh, Jo- John chapter fifteen and verse twenty five that they hated me without a cause. And surely they did hate the Lord Jesus Christ without a cause. They had no cause whatsoever to hate him.
He came to save them. The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost. The angel told Mary, thou shalt call your baby's name Jesus. And the angel told Joseph, thou shalt call the baby that Mary will bear, thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. Here is a man who came to save the people, who came to deliver the people, for that's the meaning of the word saved. To be de- to be saved is to be delivered. To be saved is to be delivered out from under condemnation.
He that believeth on me is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. John chapter three and verse eighteen. And he that believeth on the Son of God hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the Son of God hath not life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. So he came to deliver us out from condemnation. He came to deliver us from wasting our time here on earth, our three score and ten years or thereabout that God sees fit to give us on the average, and also he came to deliver us from the prospect of going to an awful place called hell and suffering the torment of the flames forever and forever.
This man, the son of man, the son of God, came down from heaven and came to this earth by way of the virgin's womb and presented himself to the people as their savior, as the Messiah, to Israel as Israel's king, and let it be known that he had come to help them. He'd come to do something for them that they needed done. And yet, my friends, how did they show their appreciation? They hated him. They hated him without a cause. And you know, of course, that when he was on trial before Pontius Pilate, they cried, crucify him, crucify him.
And, uh, they said, let his blood be upon us and upon our children, because we want this man crucified. They wanted him crucified, though he had done absolutely nothing wrong to them, and he had cheated them in no wise. Instead, he had come to help them. You know, I'd like for us to think about more detail of the trauma of the crucifixion. Not going over the same ground that we went over this morning, but a little bit more. You remember we cut off meditating in Matthew twenty seven when we got to the verse where, and sitting down, they watched him there.
But the next verse says they set up over his head his accusations written, this is Jesus, the king of the Jews. And then we read, and they that, then were the two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand and the other on the left. And they that passed by reviled him, saying, save thyself, thou that destroyest the temple and buildest it in three days, save thyself. The chief priests, likewise, mocking him with the scribes and Pharisees, said, he saves others, himself he cannot save. Oh, how wrong they were.
It's true he saves others, but it's also true that he could have saved himself if he'd seen fit to do so. But if he'd saved himself, he could not have saved any others. He would have already saved all the others that he could have saved if he'd saved himself then and there. As a matter of fact, he could not have saved any others before that time because those that he saved before then was based on what he was doing at that very moment when he was dying on the cross, the Lamb of God being offered up for the sins of the world. Then they said, uh, if he be the king of Israel, let him come down from the cross, and we will believe him.
He trusted in God. Let him deliver him now, if he will have him, for he said, I am the Son of God. The chief priests, uh, the thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the stain into his teeth. Of course, we know, and we're thankful for it, that Luke tells us that one of those thieves repented and trusted in the Lord. But at one time, both of them, though they were in the same condemnation and in the same blight, in the same plight, they, they railed upon this man, just as those that were on the s- on the ground were railing upon him.
Thus, the Lord Jesus Christ was not only mistreated bodily, not only was he slapped in the face, not only was the beard plucked from his cheek, not only was the crown of thorns pressed upon his head and the sharp spurs sinking into his flesh. Not only, beloved, was he covered with the Roman lash. Not only were the spikes driven through his hands and his face, and later the Roman spear driven into his thigh, but he had to take the insults of men as they railed upon him and said, now let's see you do something.
You're pretty smart, aren't you? Oh yeah, you claim to be the Messiah. You claim to be the Son of God. You made yourself the same as God. You said, I'm the Father of one. You said God was your father. Okay, prove it now. You said you could tear down this temple and build it again in three days. Ha ha. Some trick. Pretty good trick. If you could do it, come on down and do it. Let's see you do it. Of course, you know and I know that he didn't refer to that temple at Jerusalem at all. When he made the remark that they were referring to, he was talking about the temple of his body. And he was saying, you destroy this temple, you destroy this body.
You abuse it until it is nothing but a pummeled mass of human flesh. But after you have done all you can do to it, let me tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to raise it up again the third day, and I'm going to raise it up whole as it was before you started to work on it, except that I'll still have the prints of the nails in my hand. Hallelujah. Praise God that he has the prints of the nails in his hands. Now, after that, you remember that, uh, Pilate got news that Herod was in town, and, uh, when he couldn't let the people, he couldn't persuade the people that he should let the, the Lord Jesus go.
Why he decided he would send Jesus to Herod. Well, Herod was tickled pink because he'd want to s- he'd wanted to see Jesus for a long time. He'd heard a lot about him. He'd heard a lot about these miracles that he performed, and he wanted to see him perform some of those miracles. I'm sure that Herod put it like this, I want to see him do some of his tricks. But when he stood before Herod, notice this carefully, and Herod asked him questions, he opened not his mouth. Now, there were times when the Lord Jesus was before Pilate that he wouldn't answer Pilate.
There were times when he wouldn't answer those of the Sanhedrin. There were, there was this occasion, of course, when he did not open his mouth to Helen. It seems that the only times that the Lord Jesus Christ opened his mouth during his trial was when there was some question about his identity as the Christ of God or as the King of Israel. Search the scriptures and see if I'm not right. But here before Herod, he didn't say the first word. He didn't open his mouth one time.
Why? Let me remind you of something. John the Baptist, you know, preached to Herod, you've got Philip's wife, and you've got no business having Philip's wife. You and Philip's wife are living in adultery. You're in sin. And Herod didn't like that, but he was afraid to do anything about it because at that time, Jesus seemed to be quite popular. But you remember the story of how the young lady danced before him, and her mother persuaded him, persuaded her to ask for the head of John the Baptist.
You remember how Herodias did that? Then you, to make a long story short, you remember how the head of John the Baptist was brought on a charger? Listen carefully. When Herod cut off the head of John the Baptist, Herod cut off the voice of God. Because John the Baptist was declared to be the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord. He was sent as a voice. He was sent as the voice of God.
And when John the Baptist cut off his head, he silenced that voice. He silenced the voice of God, and never again would the voice of God speak to her. And that, in my confirmed opinion, is the reason he opened not his mouth in the presence of Herod, no matter what Herod said to him, no matter what Herod asked him, because God would not again speak to Herod, and God incarnate was standing there before Herod at that time. Now, Herod's men had a lot of fun at his expense. They put a scarlet robe on him, and they mocked him, just as the other soldiers had done.
When they had all the fun they wanted to have, and they saw that he wasn't going to say anything, he wasn't going to do any of his tricks for them, Herod sent him back to Pilate, still in that scarlet robe that they put on. And then Pilate tried again to get the people to permit him to let this man Jesus go. He says, I find no fault in him. At least three times he said, I don't find any fault with him. There's no cause for death in it. Yeah, I'll uh, scourge him and let him go, but nothing doing. Crucify. We'll not settle for anything but crucifixion for this man.
Give us Barabbas. We'd rather rather have that thief and murderer than to have that man that claims to be the Messiah, that claims to be the Son of God, that claims to be equal with God, crucified. Then, you know, they mentioned that this man speaketh against, or this man maketh himself a king, and whoso maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar. Oh boy, that was what did it. That was all that Pilate needed because he didn't want to offend Caesar.
Politics. And when he heard Caesar's name mentioned, and when he heard the accusation that this man had made himself a king and had spoken against Caesar, that did it. He delivered him over to be crucified. But here's one thing I want to call your attention to, and really this gets me. It says, beloved, and after he had scourged him, he delivered him to be crucified. Now I want to ask you, what was the need of scourging a man? You know what the meaning of the word is? To whip him, to make bare his back, and to whip him with the Roman lash, to furrow his back with that lash.
Now he was going to deliver him to be crucified. He was going to be put to death, but before he was to be nailed to the cross, Herod decided to let his soldiers give him another licking. And after he had scourged him, he delivered him or turned him over to be crucified. And you can read that in Mark fifteen and fifteen. and it just burns me up as I read it because I think about why cruci- why scourge him? Why whip him? Hadn't he been punished enough when they were going to put him to death anyhow?
Why didn't they just go ahead and crucify him? Now, let's give just a few more details of the crucifixion, since we're thinking about the trauma of the crucifixion. I've told you folks before that the cross was laid on the ground in a horizontal position, and the Lord Jesus Christ was made to sit upon the cross with his knees, his feet up, his knees up. You've sat that way, I suppose, at times on the ground. And as he sat in that position, his feet flat on the cross, as the cross lay upon the ground, the spikes were nailed through his feet, or just above his feet is some claim.
Then, after his feet were firmly nailed to the tree as it lay upon the ground, the cross as it lay upon the ground, one burly show- soldier got a hold of this arm, another burly soldier got a hold of this arm, and pulled him back into a horizontal position until he was lying straight upon the cross, horizontal upon the cross. Get the picture. Here he is like this. When they pull him back, they pull his bones out of joint. Beloved, did we read this morning in the twenty second Psalm that all my bones are out of joint?
Not a bone of him was broken because the prophetic scriptures declared that a bone would not be broken, but his bones were pulled out of joint. And can you imagine the excruciating pain as his foot had to remain flat and his body was pulled backwards until his bones were pulled out of joint, and then the spikes were put in his hands. He was firmly attached to the cross. Then they got under that cross and lifted him up, and when it, of course, got into a vertical position, it's the base of it sank into the hole that had already been dug to receive it. When I think of that moment that comes to my mind, the thought that the pain must have been excruciating indeed, as the weight of his body, in spite of the fact that we believe there was a bit of support attached to the cross, right about his butt, but still the weight of that body, for the most part, when that cross settled at the bottom of that hole.
Think of the excruciating pain when the jerk came. Truly, he suffered. Truly, he suffered excruciating pain. Truly, he suffered as no other has ever suffered. And beloved, we ought to appreciate the fact that he suffered for you, Anthony. And when they got through raising him between heaven and earth, as he hung upon that cross, he looked down upon that angry, bloodthirsty mob, and the first thing he said as he lifted his eyes, I'm sure heaven would.
Father, forgive me. Remember I told you that he, when he cried out in anguish, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? That was the only time he addressed the Father as God. But now he has taken the punishment. Now he has theoretically virtually died the death. Now he has borne the punishment that you and I would bear throughout eternity during those three eternal hours that he suffered on the cross under the cover of darkness.
So now the fellowship is renewed, and he doesn't say God, he says Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. His second word was, today shalt thou be with me in paradise. And then his third was, son, behold thy mother. Woman, behold thy son. Now some have those two in reverse order. I'm not going to argue. I don't know who who's right and who's wrong, it doesn't matter. And then you see the first three cries concerned others, and the middle cry concerned himself. It was that cry of anguish, my God, my God.
And then he said, I thirst. And then he said the greatest words. He said the words that should mean the most to you and to me, that should mean more to you and to me than any other words, any other being could possibly say. It is finished. Meaning the sun. suffering that had to be was finished. The work that had to be done to accomplish our redemption was complete. And so he could say in the seventeenth chapter of John, in his high priestly prayer, Father, I finish the work which thou gavest me to do.
And then, beloved, that seventh and last cry from the cross, which only Luke gives us. He said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. They took that body down. They put it in a, in a tomb, as I told you this morning. I told you also this morning that no rock was large enough, and Pilate didn't have enough soldiers, Herod didn't have enough soldiers, and Caesar didn't have enough soldiers to keep him in that, uh, tomb, because he was to come forth, and come forth he did before ever the rock was rolled away.
He came out of that tomb just as he walked through the door in the room where the disciples were. Can you s- switch to John chapter twenty, quick light? Because it'll have to be quick light. Quick light. John chapter twenty. And in this chapter, I want to call your attention to the fact that he came into the room where the disciples were, and he didn't even bother to open the door. Notice the nineteenth verse. Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst and said to them, peace be unto you.
It wasn't necessary for the door to be open for him to enter into the room where they were. Neither was it necessary for the rock to be rolled away from the door of the tomb in order for him to come out. Beloved, he had come out long before that rock was rolled away. And you remember when the angel came and sat upon the rock, those keepers, those soldiers that were in God, they trembled. Beloved, they had something to tremble about. You know why the jailer was going to slay himself when he thought Paul and Silas had escaped from the jail after the earthquake took place?
Because he knew that Herod would kill him. And so he's about to thrust the sword through his own heart. And Paul cried out and said, do thyself no harm, for we are all here. And those gods, they were frightened at the sight of the angel, and they were frightened because they knew that they're permitting the prisoner in the tomb to escape. If indeed he had escaped, as they would have said, would mean their death. They would be put to death because of that. Now it seems that Mary, the sister of Martha and of Lazarus, is the only one who really understood the resurrection.
Still in the twentieth chapter of John's gospel, we read in verse nine, for as yet they knew not the scripture that he must rise again from the dead. Now, beloved, that chapter tells us about the coming of Mary Magdalene early while it was yet dark and saw the stone rolled away. We believe that she left, and she saw James and John. She told them that the angel had told her that the Lord had arisen. James and John run to the tomb, you remember the story. Of course, his body wasn't there. And then we read as they leave, then the disciples went away again into their own home, the tenth verse says the following, but the ninth says, for as yet they knew not the scriptures that he must arise from the dead.
It seems that Mary, not Magdalene, but Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, is the only one who understood about the resurrection. She anointed his body for burial. She is the one who seemed to understand his declaration to Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. The others did not yet believe his words to them that the Son of Man must needs go into Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised again the third day.
It seemed that they were ready and willing to believe everything except that business about being raised again. The trauma of the crucifixion, the triumph of the resurrection. Well, let's just turn to Revelation chapter one because the time is gone. My, how we'd like to go back into First Corinthians fifteen, the resurrection chapter, but in Revelation chapter one in verse eight, the Lord Jesus says, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty.
Look down at verse eleven, saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. Then he tells John to write in the book what he sees. And then read the eighteenth verse with me. I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold, I'm alive forevermore. Amen. And have the keys of hell or Hades and of death. So here is this one who suffered the trauma of the crucifixion, who hung upon that cross a mass of pummeled flesh. We see him standing on the aisles of Patmos, and John sees him robed in white, and his eyes as a flame of fire, golden, tights about his taps.
And he tells John, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning, and I'm the Almighty. The one who had suffered death on the cross, the one who had suffered all of the abuse that was heaped upon him before he died, that one who came out of the tomb before the stone was rolled away, that one who was seen of above five hundred brethren at one time, he's seen now for the last time on the Isle of Patmos by his beloved disciple John, and he assures John that he's the Almighty God.