The Man of Sorrows

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Well, if you and I are ever sitting down one-on-one talking, and I start asking you, what do you mean by that? Don’t take that as I’m being inquisitorial, like the Inquisition. Don’t take it as I’m playing dumb, as some people like to do when they try to get out of conversation.

I’m actually asking. As a matter of fact, I ask that question so much that we have joked about how the family may put it on my tombstone one day. What do you mean by that?

It may be engraved there on the granite. But I discovered a long time ago it’s better to ask that question than to assume. I can’t tell you how many conversations would have been better if I had asked what do you mean by that.

I remember a couple years ago sitting across the table from a man who asked me what I thought was a deep theological question. And so I started at Genesis and explain straight through to the maps. And the whole time he’s looking at me getting more and more confused.

And when I finished, he looked at me and said, yeah, that’s good, but I was actually asking, and it was something I could have given as a yes or no answer. He was talking about something else. A few years back, my kids, I forget which one now, but one of the older two, asked me, where do babies come from?

And I immediately started fasting and praying. How am I going to address this in an age-appropriate way? And I’m running through all these scenarios in my mind and finally realized, what do you mean by that?

Let me turn the question back on you. What do you mean? What are you actually asking?

Only to discover that one of them thought like it was the law that all babies had to be born in the hospital. Oh, no, that’s easy. They can come from all kinds of places. They can come from the hospital. They can come from home.

I can answer that question. Thank goodness I thought to ask, what does this mean? What do you mean by this?

Because I was sweating trying to think, how am I going to deal with that? That was just sprung on me. That happens all the time though.

Even this week, Bob was sitting in the office. We’ve had an ongoing project and he said, are we ready for such and such step? And I said, tell me what you think ready means.

and we were good after that you know charla will show me the the kids school work she’ll say would you look at this and I’m looking at her face to am I supposed to be happy or sad I don’t know and finally I tell her I what does this mean I don’t know what I’m looking at what what’s is this a good thing or a bad thing we need to understand what things mean or we’re just going to be in a mess and we find ourselves in the same situation in our society where a lot of people, a lot of people in our world know that Jesus Christ died on the cross. I’ve even seen here recently, by recently I mean the last few years, where people will make some kind of remark about it in a sitcom. I mean, it’s still common cultural knowledge that Jesus Christ died on the cross, but most people have not a clue what it means.

What does it mean that He died on the cross? What was the purpose of it? What was the significance of it?

It wasn’t just an accident of history. I think a lot of people think it just happened. Or maybe it happened because He angered the wrong people.

Well, that contributed to it, but it was ultimately part of God’s plan. Actually, it was the center of God’s plan. This morning, with it being the week before Easter, I want to take a detour for a couple of weeks away from the study we’ve been doing on the book of Philippians.

And I want to talk this week about the meaning of the crucifixion. And next week I want to talk to you about the meaning of the resurrection. Last year I spent about four weeks going over evidence for the resurrection.

This year I want to talk about what it means. What does it mean to us? And as I was looking over passages of Scripture this week and last week to go over the crucifixion, We’ve got detailed accounts of it in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

We’ve got recountings of it in Acts and elsewhere in Paul’s letters. The book of Hebrews talks about it a great deal. But as far as what it means, one of my favorite things to look at comes from the book of Isaiah, which may be surprising because the book of Isaiah was written 700 years before the crucifixion. And yet in the book of Isaiah, there is a depiction of the crucifixion.

There’s a depiction of Jesus that is so clear that many people who have come to it honestly, not believing in Jesus Christ, who have read it, I know of one man in particular who is a Christian pastor now, who was raised Jewish, but read Isaiah 53 and said, wait, that has to be talking about Jesus Christ. And became a Christian as a result of reading Isaiah 53. We don’t have time this morning to go through the whole chapter, but I want to take you through a few verses this morning that talk about the importance, the meaning behind the crucifixion. So if you would, turn with me to Isaiah 53.

Isaiah chapter 53. If you’re using a device, there’s a link in our bulletin that’ll get you right there. If you don’t have your Bible, it’ll be on the screen.

Isaiah 53, and if you would, stand with me if you’re able to without too much trouble as we read from God’s Word. Isaiah 53, starting in verse 2. And we’re going to go through verse 5 this morning.

It says, For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness, and when we see him there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

And we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised, and we did not esteem him. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed.

You may be seated. So these four verses that we’ve looked at, that we’ve just read, are not the entirety of this prophecy as it deals with Jesus Christ, as it deals with the Messiah. It’s part of a longer passage of Scripture that really goes from about Isaiah 52.

13 to the end of Isaiah 53. When it was first written, when Isaiah spoke these words, when Isaiah wrote these words down, many in Israel interpreted this as being about the nation of Israel as a whole. Now there are some problems with the idea that this is about the nation of Israel, because there’s the idea that this servant, this man of sorrows, if it’s Israel, How can he die for the transgressions of Israel and not be guilty of any transgressions of his own?

Does that make sense? Because it says that he’s not guilty. They thought he looked guilty, but he was really suffering for them.

But if Israel is the one suffering, how are they suffering for themselves? And so many people in that time and in Jesus’ time also thought it was a prophecy about the Messiah. That this suffering servant, this man of sorrows, was the Messiah.

And we see that nearly every writer in the New Testament said that this was about Jesus Christ. In some place in their writings, Matthew said it, John Mark said it, Luke said it, the Apostle John said it, Paul said it in his letters. It’s all throughout the New Testament that Isaiah 53 and this idea of the suffering servant, the man of sorrows, is about Jesus. Now the problem for so many people has been that this gives a different picture of the Messiah than what they anticipated.

Because when you go back and you read the Gospels and when you read the history around that period of time, they were looking for a political Messiah. They were looking for somebody who was going to deal with their Roman problem. Because Israel was controlled by the Roman Empire.

And the Roman Empire made rules that sometimes the Israelites found difficult to deal with. And so their hope was that somebody was going to come along going to lead a military uprising of some sort, or he was going to be a great diplomat. Either way, he was going to get the Romans out of their country, that he was going to restore independence to Israel and usher in this golden age like in the time of King David.

That’s what they were looking for. And so somebody comes along and this picture of somebody who’s mistreated, this picture of somebody who is, we might say, victimized. I don’t think Jesus saw himself as a victim, But this person who was treated so brutally and so rejected did not fit with that idea of a conquering king that so many people were looking for.

And this passage gives us a brief view, an overview of what we see through the Gospels and their story of the crucifixion of what Jesus endured. And we see right from the beginning of what we read this morning that Jesus endured humble circumstances. When it says in verse 2, He shall grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground.

This idea of being a tender plant, he was humble. To the world, he looked weak. He did not at all look like this impressive, kingly figure that they expected.

It also speaks to him coming from some place that is unexpected, to come as a root out of dry ground. As someone who has tried for years to garden, I can tell you that water is good for plants. Aren’t you glad that you came this morning to learn that shocking news?

It’s good for plants. In years that we don’t have a lot of rain, things don’t grow as well. Last year we had so much rain in late May that we left town for a few weeks for JoJo’s surgery, and I came back on Saturdays to check the garden and everything else.

I came back and in a week I’d gone from having plants that were like this to some of them were almost hip high on me. And the difference was the rain. It was wet ground.

They had all the water they needed. For him to come as a root out of dry ground meant that he was coming in an unexpected way. And that description fits Jesus perfectly.

As a matter of fact, when Jesus showed up and began to teach, one of his first disciples that he called said, can anything good come out of Nazareth? They did not expect their Messiah to be the humble son of a carpenter from some backwater like Nazareth, who came without an army of followers, who came without riches, who came without royal lineage, and just showed up and began to teach about the kingdom of God. That is not what they were expecting.

And yet the Messiah came and was born to a virgin in the most humble circumstances. We tend to gloss over this a little bit at Christmas time. but he was born in a stable of some sort.

Now was it a wooden enclosure? Was it a cave that they used to keep animals in? We don’t know.

But we know he wasn’t born in the palace, right? He was born in some kind of animal enclosure. He was dressed in rags because that’s all his mother had.

And his bed was an animal’s feeding trough. That’s not what any of us would expect to be the makings of a future king. And it says in verse 2, he has no form or comeliness.

And those words describe a kind of dignity and majesty. He just didn’t look like their expectations of what a king ought to be. Sometimes we have these ideas of what a leader is supposed to look like.

I have a friend who a few years ago, we were talking, and she said, I’m voting for this guy for president. And I said, why? And she said, because he looks so good.

I was like, your vote counts as much as mine does. Oh, he’s good looking, really? I mean, I kind of had to admit it, he was, but that’s not a good basis for electing somebody.

In ancient Israel, when they first got their king, we’ve just studied through that on Wednesday nights, they were excited to have Saul because he looked like a king. There was nothing about Jesus that when you walked into the room, you looked at him and by appearance thought, that guy ought to be king. That guy ought to be leading us.

He just didn’t have that air of dignity and majesty that reflected who He really is. I mean, He’s the God of heaven. He’s God the Son, the second person of the Trinity.

He has infinite dignity and majesty. But in His human form, you couldn’t see it. There was nothing there that by His physical appearance fit the expectations of the Messiah.

And it says there in verse 2, Also, when we see Him, there’s no beauty that we should desire Him. There’s just nothing outwardly that drew people to Him. Now some people were drawn to him, but that was because of his spirit.

That was because of his teachings. On the surface, where the world looks, there was just nothing that drew people to Jesus. And in a few weeks when we get back to our discussion of Philippians, the very next thing we’re going to look at is in Philippians 2, 5 through 11, that talks about how God the Son, he deserved all the glory of heaven.

Jesus Christ deserved all the glory and honor that could ever be heaped on him. And yet he willingly stepped out of that, said, I’m going to put this aside for a moment, and I’m going to come down here and do this. And folks, we know this world is not always a great place.

There’s ugliness in this world. Sometimes this world, there are wonderful things about our world, but sometimes our world is just terrible, right? And sometimes we as a species are just terrible, right?

Now we are created in the image of God, but we have fallen far short of that. And so sometimes we’re just terrible. Sometimes we murder.

Sometimes we lie. I mean, there are things about humanity. And Jesus stepped out of the splendors of heaven to come and be among us and not be the highest of the high among us, but to be that lowly carpenter from Nazareth who preached to the poor.

He walked away from all of that to come here for us. And so Jesus endured humble circumstances. He also endured rejection.

We see in verse 3, it says, is despised and rejected by men. This happened all throughout his ministry. If you’ve been here on Sunday nights as we’ve been going through the book of Mark, I mean that happened, that’s a weekly feature it seems like of these stories in the Gospels.

That Jesus does something incredible and people reject him anyway. There’s always somebody there, sometimes it’s the big crowd, sometimes it’s the religious leaders, but there’s always somebody there saying, all throughout his ministry people rejected him. And it says he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

It wasn’t just an occasional thing that his time here on earth, that his time in his public ministry were difficult. It wasn’t just an occasional thing that he was rejected. That was the overall way things went for him.

That’s what characterized his ministry, being rejected. And not just being rejected, but being rejected by his own people. Think about that for a moment.

Jesus wasn’t just rejected by pagans and Gentiles. Jesus was rejected by Israel. He was rejected by the very people that he sprang from.

He was rejected by the very people he had come to in the first place. His own people rejected him. We studied that just recently on Sunday night in the book of Mark.

He came to the synagogue in his hometown. And Luke records where he had come earlier, and when he preached, they wanted to kill him. Then Matthew and Mark record that he came back a few years later and they didn’t want anything to do, at least they didn’t want to kill him that time, but they didn’t want anything to do with him.

They were so hardened against him. His own people from his own hometown were so hardened against him that Mark said there was nothing, there was no miracle he could perform that would change their minds. And so Jesus just kind of moved on and went and ministered to people who would listen.

But folks, his own people rejected him. It’s one thing when people out there that we don’t know don’t like us, but the rejection of people closest to us, when people closest to us turn on us, that hurts. And Jesus endured that time and time again.

Isaiah says, and we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised, and we did not esteem him. So mankind as a whole, they rejected him from the outset without showing him enough respect to at least even give him a fair hearing.

There were so many people that just rejected Him from the beginning. And think about this for just a moment. Jesus endured rejection throughout His entire earthly ministry.

In this relationship between the world and God, who is it that deserves to be rejected by whom? We deserve to be rejected by God. I deserve to be rejected by God because of my sin.

Because of every time that I’ve made that decision to say, do, think, anything that was in opposition to God. How many times have we done things that we knew dishonored God? And we did them anyway.

Folks, I deserve to be rejected by God. And yet God showed up and was rejected by us. So what Jesus endured was something He didn’t even deserve.

But Jesus reached out to us knowing that we would reject Him and knowing that that was an important part of the plan. because God’s plan was for Jesus to go to the cross. I’ve known people who’ve said, well, it wasn’t really God’s plan, but Jesus got crucified and God said, well, kind of, I’ll make lemonade out of these lemons.

No. Peter said in Acts 2 that that crucifixion was done by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. That was God’s plan all along.

Elsewhere in Scripture, it says He was slain before the foundation of the world. It was God’s plan before He even created us. He knew we were going to mess up and He was going to have to step in and clean it up.

And yet He went through all of that. Jesus came to deal with us and all of our nonsense knowing we were going to reject Him anyway and knowing that it had to be that way. And on top of that, Jesus endured mockery.

It says in verse 4, He’s borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. We’ll talk a little bit more about this in just a moment. We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

So that first part tells us that he suffered tremendously. But that second phrase is what I want us to focus on. We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

So when he suffered, we looked at him and thought, God’s given him what he deserves. And there were people that stood around the cross, mocking him as though he was getting what he deserved for some imagined crime against God. So in spite of Jesus’ innocence, the world looked at him like he got everything he deserved.

And he had to deal with that mockery, and he didn’t deserve a bit of it. We see in verses 4 and 5 that Jesus endured incredible brutality. It says in verse 5, he was wounded.

It says he was bruised. That wounded, the phrasing there literally means his body was broken. When it says he was bruised, he was crushed.

It talks about his stripes there in verse 5. This refers to the intense beatings that were inflicted on him. Jesus endured the most horrific torture imaginable.

And we need to understand what he went through on the cross. And I don’t tell you this morning just for shock value or for shock value at all, but we need to be reminded, we need to understand what he endured on the cross. He went through the beatings.

I mean, not even to mention the mockery of the crown of thorns and the spitting in his face and the slapping and everything else they did to him. But when they beat him, they used a Roman device called a cat of nine tails that had these leather cords with embedded pieces of bone or pottery or things like that that they would whip him with, that it would begin to break down the skin. It would begin to dig into the skin and rip it out every time they pulled the whip back so that by the time he’d had 30 plus lashings with that, His back would have been open and bleeding.

And then they wrapped him in robes. I believe they did the wrapping in robes and the crown of thorns thing multiple times. Because I read through the Gospels and it seems like they’re describing two different instances.

And think about that with his back being lacerated like that. They put the robes on him and every time they would take it off, it would be reopening those wounds. He would have lost an incredible amount of blood.

Just recently, I’ve read multiple medical studies written by doctors about what this process would have done to a person. He would have begun going into what they call hypovolemic shock, where blood loss begins to affect your body systemically. And through all of that, he would have been weakened, and still they would have made him carry part of the cross up the hill.

He stumbled. We have that story where he couldn’t even finish that. And so they got Simon of Cyrene, who happened to be standing nearby, to come and carry the cross for him the rest of the way.

When they got there, they would have laid him down, outstretched his arms, and nailed him to the crossbeam of that cross. They would have driven massive Roman spikes through a spot right here that would have been able to carry the weight of his body. And this still would have been described as part of the hand back in that day.

But where the bones met here in the joint, They would have driven the nail through there to support his body weight, nailed him to that cross, injuring some of the major nerves that traveled down his arm in the process. Then they would have taken that cross beam and they would have hoisted it up onto a vertical beam. And they would have positioned that and they would have placed a nail through his feet for some kind of support.

Not enough for him to stand all the way up, but for him to be in a position like this with his arms behind him and above him that makes it difficult to breathe. And for what was it, six hours? He would have had to push up for every breath.

Not only pulling against those wounds and pushing against the wounds in His feet, but rubbing His back against the cross every time He came up and down. Dealing with shock and blood loss and the blood pressure changes and everything that would have been going on in His body that would have made it excruciating. As His body began to suffer from oxygen deprivation, As everything began to shut down and fluid filled his lungs, he lost incredible amounts of blood and died the slow agonizing death of asphyxiation, probably compounded by cardiac arrest. There is nothing about what he endured that sounds pleasant.

None of us would want to endure even one of those things. He went through all of that. Jesus endured incredible brutality.

But we need to understand from that, Jesus endured the cross for us. What was the meaning of all of that? It was for us.

He did that for me. And He did that for you. And we know that because it says in verse 5, He was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon Him. And by His stripes we are healed.

I’ve already talked about what those words mean. He was wounded. He was bruised by His stripes.

When it says our transgressions, He was wounded for our transgressions. It means He suffered for our wickedness and rebellion. That word transgression seems to describe when we make the defiant choice that we’re going to rebel against God.

Kind of like the child who knows exactly what you’re telling them to do and exactly what the consequences are going to be, and they just big fat do it anyway and dare you to do something about it. We all have those moments with God where we say, I know what He says, but I’m going to do this instead. Jesus was wounded.

His body was broken for every time I have defied God. He was bruised for our iniquities. He suffered for those times we invariably fall short.

Even when we’re not trying to, we’re sinners. It’s just part of our nature. It’s who we are.

I can wake up in the morning and not be feeling particularly defiant toward God, just trying to do my best, and still I sin. And I know I’m not alone in that. Jesus was crushed to pay for all those times that you and I fall short.

Where even our best is not good enough, Jesus paid for that. When He says the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, Jesus took the discipline we deserved so that we could be reconciled to God. When He went to the cross, He was paying the price for my sin and for yours.

For our peace, so that you and I could be at peace with God. Romans chapter 5 says that through Him we have peace with God. You know what that means?

Without Him, we don’t have peace with God. The Bible describes us as being God’s enemies. Not because God is mean and saying, I hate you, you’re my enemy.

We fired the first shots in this war. We are the ones that looked at God and said, no, I don’t want anything to do with your law. I don’t want anything to do with you.

And yet Jesus Christ took all the punishment that we deserved so that we could be brought back to peace with God that we were created for. By His stripes, we are healed. By Him being broken, He made us whole again.

By Him being broken, by Him being physically broken, we can be spiritually whole again. We need to know the meaning of what He did on the cross. And we need to explain to others the meaning of what Jesus did on the cross.

And Isaiah made it clear 700 years before the fact, as did so many after Isaiah and so many even after Jesus Christ, made it clear that the reason why He did this, the meaning for the cross was that He did this so that you and I could be forgiven. I can’t even fathom that kind of love. I can’t even fathom that.

I love my children with my whole heart. But with five of them, there’s always somebody wanting something, and sometimes I just don’t want to get up. I love them enough that I’d do anything for them, but sometimes I’m selfish.

And yet God looked at us who had been so actively rebellious against Him, who did not deserve His love, and He loved us anyway, and loved us in this incredibly self-sacrificial way. The Father gave up His Son. And before we listen to the progressive talking point that that makes God a cosmic child abuser, that this is somehow bloody and ugly, let me remind you that Jesus Christ was a willing participant in this.

Jesus knew what He was going to do before He ever came here. Before He ever went to Jerusalem, He was talking to the disciples about needing to be crucified, And it says his face was set like stone to go to Jerusalem. Before it happened, he told them, it’s time for me to go.

He warned them again what was going to happen with the Lord’s Supper that we’re going to portray next week. He told them what was going to happen and then said, now let’s go. When Peter tried to stop him from being arrested, he stopped Peter and said, put your sword up, I’ve got to go do this.

Even when he prayed, let this cup pass from me, he said, nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done to the Father. If there’s some plan B out there that’ll work, that’ll get them forgiven, that I don’t have to go through this, I’d rather not. But if this is what it takes, I’m willing.

Oh, the love that the Father and Son had for us. You want to talk about the meaning of the holiday, the meaning of what we’re going to be doing over the next week? That’s it.

Jesus Christ sacrificed everything that was necessary so that you and I could be forgiven. Not because we’re good, not because we’re lovely, not because we’re lovable, but because He’s loving. And there’s not a thing you or I have to do to try to earn it or deserve it.

Let me tell you, I’m thankful you’re here this morning. And it’s a good thing for you to go to church, for me to go to church, for us to be encouraged together, for us to learn from God’s Word. But coming and sitting in this building is not going to get you one step closer to heaven.

Giving money to the church is not going to get you peace with God. Religious rituals, being a nice person, folks, we can never do enough good to undo the wrong that we’ve done. Jesus Christ paid for our sins.

in full so that all you and I have to do is ask for God’s forgiveness now. Believe that he paid for it and rose again to prove it and ask for God’s forgiveness.