Christ Died for You

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You know, there is plenty of evidence that Jesus died on the cross. There’s enough evidence. A friend of mine in Arkansas told me one time, and I thought he made a very good point.

I’d never thought about it this way. There’s enough evidence of his death, burial, and resurrection that if you choose to believe it, there’s enough evidence for you. If you don’t want to believe it, there’s just enough question to make you question.

So it really comes down to whether you want to believe the evidence or not. There’s plenty of evidence that Jesus Christ died on the cross, that he shed his blood and died just the way the Bible says he did. As a matter of fact, as we get closer to Easter later on, I’d like to take some time and share with you the historical evidence, why I believe that it’s historical fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross, that he was buried, and that he rose again.

I believe that it’s not just a fairytale story. It’s not just something that we see in the Bible, although to me the Bible is true. I believe it to be true, every word of it.

But it’s not just something that we take on blind faith. There is evidence, ladies and gentlemen, that Jesus Christ shed his blood. He died on the cross.

He was buried, and he rose again. And I’ll give you some of the evidence later on, but most people, at least in our part of the country, most people believe that Jesus Christ existed, that he did miracles, that he taught great moral teachings, and that he died on the cross. Now they may be iffy on the resurrection, but most people believe that Jesus died on the cross.

I think if we went out into Seminole, went out here into town, and we did a poll of the people, I think we’d find the majority of people would say they believe that Jesus Christ really died on the cross. But then you look at the numbers of people who say that they’re born-again Christians, and they don’t match up with the numbers of people who say that they’re Christians, that they believe in God, they believe in Jesus Christ. And I’ve really begun to think over the last few years that a part of the problem, part of that disconnect, so many people say they believe in Jesus Christ and that he died on the cross, and yet have never trusted him as their personal Savior. I believe a big part of the reason for that disconnect is people don’t realize why he died on the cross.

You say, how’s that possible? We live here in the Bible belt. I could understand if we went to California or if we went to New York, there are people who don’t know that.

But here in Oklahoma, how is it possible that they don’t know that? Well, it’s partly possible because we haven’t been telling them as much as we ought to. We just assume they know.

But I run into people from time to time who don’t understand the fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross for them. See, There’s a big difference between believing he died on the cross and believing that he died on the cross for me. See, one is historical fact.

One is an event that happened 2,000 years ago that affected the history of Israel during that time. Another is something that has consequences for me today. One changed Jesus’ life if he was just a man and he died on the cross.

It changed his life to die on the cross. The other changes my life if I realize that he died on the cross for me. This morning as we prepare to take the Lord’s Supper, I want to take just a few minutes and take you back about 700 years before Jesus died on the cross.

Because not only did God say, not only did God through his prophets foretell that Jesus would die on the cross, but he also told the people in advance why Jesus would die on the cross. If you’ll turn with me to Isaiah chapter 53. Isaiah chapter 53.

I think this is one of the most incredible passages in all of Scripture. 700 years, 700 years before Jesus was even born, God spoke to and through a man named Isaiah who wrote this passage, and some people have said, well, it could have been talking about anybody. I’ve heard from Jewish people who have read Isaiah chapter 53 and come away from it convinced that it could only be talking about Jesus Christ being the Messiah, and people have come to faith in Christ as a result of reading this passage.

We’re going to read it this morning and look at it. I don’t think you’ll find there’s any way it could be talking about anybody else. But 700 years before the fact, God told the people that the Messiah would come and that he would die, and he laid out, I think, very clearly why the Messiah would be dying on the cross.

Isaiah chapter 53, starting in verse 1, says, Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed. He’s talking about the Jewish people here and Isaiah’s previous prophecies, all the things that God had said through Isaiah, all these messages about sin and about repentance and about redemption.

He said, who’s believed these things? Who has the arm of the Lord been revealed to? He’s talking about it has been revealed up to this time to the Jewish people.

And he says in verse 2, for he shall grow up before him as a tender plant. Now the he he’s talking about as we go through this passage, we eventually see it’s talking about the Messiah. And they would it was talking about the Messiah, but didn’t quite understand all the ramifications of that.

For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground, he hath no form nor comeliness, and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. Now, speaking of Jesus, he’s talking about him growing up as a tender plant. Now, that talks about lowliness and vulnerability.

And if you think back to the Christmas story, was Jesus Christ born as we would expect a or a military commander, someone of greatness to be born, or was he born as average, maybe below average as you could get? He was born to an unwed mother. She was betrothed to Joseph, but it was kind of scandalous in that day because they were not fully married.

He was born to an unwed mother. He was born in a stable, wrapped in rags, laid in an animal’s feeding trough. It was not the birth that we would expect for someone who would be the ruler of Israel.

It was not the birth that they expected for the Messiah. And he came as a root out of dry ground. Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of the message of the prophets.

God had been speaking for hundreds of years, for thousands of years really through the prophets, about what he was going to do. And then for about 400 years he just stopped. We don’t have any written record of any prophecies that God spoke through.

And then out of this 400 years of silence to the nation at least as a whole, God reveals himself in the person of God the Son, this root out of dry ground. He hath no form or comeliness, and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. You know, I answered, I went through a list of questions about this time last year when I was teaching at a Christian school there in Moore.

I noticed some of my students had questions that weren’t getting answered, and they were asking me questions in Bible class, and I got to thinking, well, maybe they were more outside of just my middle school students and gave the entire school opportunities to ask questions and then I would answer them sort of these apologetics questions in chapel. One of the questions that I kept getting asked was, what does Jesus look like? And I gave them a long answer I’m not going to give to you this morning, but the short version is we don’t know.

The Bible doesn’t tell us because it really doesn’t matter. But what we can figure out is he probably looked just like any other Middle Eastern person during that time. There was nothing, I think if there was something remarkable about his appearance, his height, his complexion, any of that, it probably would have been mentioned in the scriptures.

And yet Isaiah tells us that when it comes to the Messiah, he would have no form or comeliness, there was no beauty, there was nothing remarkable that people would be drawn to him. You know, he wasn’t George Clooney or Brad Pitt or one of these actors that people swoon over. He wasn’t an amazingly charismatic figure that people were just drawn to him for reasons other than supernatural reasons.

He would have looked and sounded just like everyone else around him. But it was the spirit that was within him and it was the teaching and it was the power that he exuded that would have drawn people to him. What he’s saying here is there’s nothing external that would have drawn people to him.

And we see that in verse 3 that he was despised and rejected. Have you ever felt despised or rejected? I have.

It’s not a fun feeling. And I can guarantee you that none of us have been as despised and rejected as Jesus Christ. You read through, not only, I mean we think about the crucifixion, but not only at the time of the crucifixion was he despised and rejected. Throughout his earthly ministry, throughout those three years of his ministry, he was despised and rejected.

Maybe even before that, because we see later on his siblings weren’t quite sure they believed in him. So it may have gone back even further before his public ministry. But throughout his public ministry, people were always attacking him.

They were always trying to undermine him, trying to trip him up with trick questions so he would get in trouble, so he’d get thrown in jail. They would try to kill him. And then you come to the point of the crucifixion, and they mocked him.

And not only mocked him for who he was and what he taught, they mocked him as though he had no connection to God whatsoever. if you’re really the son of God, come down from there. They mocked him.

They rejected him. They didn’t believe that he was who he said he was. He was rejected.

He was despised. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He was, I think, acquainted with grief is an understatement.

The Bible indicates that he understands the entirety of the suffering that we go through as humans. I talked last week when we were talking about the church at Smyrna and their suffering. and how he talks about being the first and the last and being there with them and seeing their suffering.

Jesus walked among us and he knows what it’s like to be one of us. And so he not only suffered as a man, but he suffered all these things while being God in human flesh and being surrounded by sin and God can’t stand sin. And it breaks God’s heart and it breaks God the Son’s heart to see the sin and the destruction that we have brought into the world.

A man of sorrow is acquainted with grief and we hid, as it were, our faces from Him. We hid our faces from Him. He came to seek and to save us when we were lost, and we turned away from Him.

We ignored Him. My kids try to do that to me sometimes when I talk, and that doesn’t work out well for them. But nobody taught them to do that.

That just comes naturally. That’s a defiant, I don’t care what you have to say, I’m turning my back to you. And He came to love us and to save us, and we turned our backs on Him.

we hid our faces from him he was despised and we esteemed him not folks he was not even worthy of our time he’s somebody that we would not pay attention to or notice and that’s saying even with all his following that he developed even with all the waves he made with the things that he was teaching even with all the people who were convicted and knew that what he was teaching was right they still turned their backs on him where were all the crowds who loved him at the uh at the feeding of the 5,000, which is really the feeding of the 5,000 men plus their wives and families, feeding of a lot of people, the crowd that loved him, where was the crowd who wanted to sweep him into power on Palm Sunday, where were those crowds of people who loved him when he was put on trial for his life? They esteemed him not. Not worth following at that point.

Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. You know what? Our grief and our sorrow comes from sin.

Now please understand when I tell you this. I’m not saying, oh, every time something bad happens to you, it’s because you sinned. That question is asked in the Bible of Jesus.

Who sinned? This child or the parents, that the child would be born with a disability? And Jesus said neither.

I mean, not that they were sinless, but it wasn’t the result of somebody’s sin. It was done so that the power of God could be seen here. So just because something bad happens to you, it’s not because you sinned, but it’s because we live in a sinful world.

And so sometimes bad things will happen because we bring them on ourselves. Sometimes bad things will happen because somebody else made a sinful choice and did it to us. Sometimes bad things happen because we live in a sinful world and death followed into the world with sin.

And so people get sick and people die. And it’s not because God’s punishing them for something in particular that they did. And so all of our grief and sorrow is ultimately a result of sin.

And Jesus bore that on himself. He carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. When he went to the cross, everybody assumed it was because he had blasphemed God.

He’s not really the son of God. If he was, he could come down. Where’s God now?

He cries out to God. Yeah, call out to God to save you. Well, that’s a mocking tone because they really didn’t believe that God would or could save him because they thought that God had put him there and that he was getting what he deserved.

Verse 5 says, but he was wounded. Hear this, one of the most important concepts in all of Scripture. He was wounded for our transgressions.

That word transgressions is one of several words used that falls under just the general umbrella of sin. And I won’t go into today what’s the difference between transgressions, iniquities, all those words. They all mean some form of sin.

Hear me on this. He was wounded for our sins. He didn’t just die on the cross.

He died on the cross because of our sins. And Isaiah says these two things in contrast. They thought he was smitten of God. They thought he deserved to be on the cross.

I’m speaking past tense, but hundreds of years after Isaiah wrote this, they would think he deserved to be on the cross because of his crimes, because of the things he taught. But really, he was there because of our sins. He was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. Again, our sins. Every lash of the whip was because of our sin.

Every one of those thorns that dug in to his head in that crown was because of our sin. Every nail that was driven in was for our sin. He was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. Folks, not his own. Not his own.

Ours. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. See, it turns all of this back on us.

Not to say we’re what’s important, we’re really the ones that matter, but to say he was there on the cross for our sins. He was tormented for our sins. He was put through agony for our sins.

And he was put there to bring us peace. Not just peace so I can feel good about myself, but peace with God. Peace with God that we could not have had otherwise.

And by his stripes we are healed. The problem of sin is healed. All we like sheep have gone astray.

We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. Here he sort of repeats and reemphasizes what he’s already said. All of us like sheep have gone astray.

I don’t have a lot of experience in dealing with sheep. Any, really, other than trying to count them. As you’re going to sleep, not in a farm.

But I have talked to people who have sheep, and they have told me what I’ve always suspected, that sheep are dumb. Anybody know that to be the case? I mean, just watching them, they don’t seem to be nearly as intelligent as the dogs who herd them.

Sheep run loose. You have to fence sheep up. Sheep evidently, if they get out, they don’t just come home on their own.

My neighbor’s dog keeps getting into our yard and he told me just open the gate and let him run in the neighborhood and eventually he’ll come back home. Okay, that’s a good dog. Sheep don’t do that.

You have to go find sheep. Sheep wander. You know, there’s an expression that doing something is like herding cats.

You can’t get cats to go where you want them to go. They just go their own direction. Or this morning in prayer meeting we talked about roping children.

Something I might ought to try. Brother Greg’s going to have to teach me how to rope one of these days. They just wander their own way.

And he says we’re like sheep who’ve gone astray. We should have stayed put in the pen. We should have stayed with the shepherd.

But instead we thought, oh, I’ll go down this way. No wolf could possibly eat me. Oh, this way looks good.

Let me wander off down here. And we’ve all gone astray away from the shepherd. Folks, that’s in line with what the rest of the Bible teaches.

There’s not one of us who’s righteous. The world looks at us and thinks, well, Christians, you’re supposed to be perfect. You’re supposed to have it all together.

We’re not perfect. We’re just sinners who realized that we needed a Savior and found salvation in the only place we could. We’ve all gone astray.

Christian, non-Christian, black, white, brown, red, yellow, rich, poor, we all, like sheep, have gone astray and turned everyone to his own way. There’s nobody who just naturally says, you know what, I’m going to do things God’s way. We all have that sin nature that says, no, I want to do what I want to do.

And yet, the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. You know what, we deserve to be punished like Jesus was punished. and we deserved even more than that really we deserve to be punished like that for eternity and yet God took the sin that we carried the sin that was in us all the disobedience all the times we’ve rebelled against God every time we’ve shaken our fist or our finger at God and said you can’t tell me what to do God took all of those instances of sin all of those things that separated us from him he took that sin and he put it right on Jesus Christ he laid the iniquity of us all on him and because of that he was oppressed and he was afflicted and yet he opened not his mouth.

You know what? He could have stopped all the proceedings there at his trial, but he didn’t open his mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.

He gave no defense. He didn’t say, hey guys, it’s not me. Hey, I really am.

Here, let me show you I’m the son of God. He went quietly and willingly. Folks, don’t ever miss that point.

Jesus Christ went to the cross for you willingly. I heard some sorry excuse for a preacher, and I would tell you the name of him if I could remember who it was. I heard some sorry excuse for a preacher who’s nationally known in some circles say a few years ago that to believe that God sent Jesus to the cross to pay for our sins was to believe that God was a monster or he was a cosmic child abuser.

Wrong. You know what, folks? I don’t see anywhere in Scripture where God the Father sent Jesus to the cross at bayonet point, where he just marched him down there.

I see where he says, my son, you’ve got to go. And Jesus went willingly. Jesus prayed in the garden, if there’s any other way, let this cup pass from me, but nevertheless not my will but thy will be done.

Jesus said, if there’s any other way, in his human form, if there’s any other way for them to be saved and me not have to go through what I’m about to go through, then please don’t make me go through what I’m about to go through. And yet, if this is the only way, Father, whatever you want to be done is what will be done. That’s somebody who went voluntarily, who went willingly.

Not that he loved the cross, not that he loved everything that he went through, but someone who loved you and who loved me enough that he said, I’m going to do this. And he was taken from prison, verse 8, and from judgment. And who shall declare his generation?

He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people was he stricken. Again, he was cut off from the land of the living. He was killed.

And it was because of our sin, because of our transgression, he was stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, he was taken and laid in a rich man’s tomb, Joseph of Arimathea. Because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

You know what? Even at his trial, they had to find people to lie about him. They couldn’t convict him on real charges.

They had to try to find people to lie about him. They couldn’t find evidence that he’d done anything violent, anything wicked, anything deceitful. They had to make it all up.

And we see throughout this passage, we see this continuing theme of his innocence and our guilt. His innocence, our guilt. What we deserved and what he suffered.

Because it goes back in verse 10, after talking in verse 9 about how there was no violence, there was no wickedness, there was no deceit in him. It goes back in verse 10 and says, and yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. Now I don’t think that means that God the Father said, I’m going to get him.

It didn’t please the Lord to bruise his only begotten son. It didn’t please the Lord to put him through the anguish that he put him through. It didn’t make the Father’s heart happy to do those things.

What this means was it satisfied, I believe it means it satisfied his justice. Not that Jesus Christ was being bruised, but that the sin he bore was being punished. And when Jesus Christ was bruised, when he was broken on the cross, ladies and gentlemen, he bore the full weight of God’s wrath against my sin and yours.

He hath put him to grief. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed and shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. And Jesus Christ was made a sin offering.

He was made a sin offering. It wasn’t just that he was punished in our place. He was a sin offering that wiped the slate clean.

This is something they would have understood from the Old Testament, which we’re in. I keep forgetting we’re in the book of Isaiah as I read through this. Because it sounds so much like something that could have been written after the fact in the New Testament.

The readers of this would have understood a sin offering to be when they would bring in the animal and they would lay them out on the altar and they had different animals and different sacrifices that they would do for different purposes. But the animal would shed its blood and would die as a sin offering because the people had sinned against God. and that blood, that life was given as an offering for their sin.

The innocent died for the guilty. That started back in Genesis chapter 3 when God had to kill an animal to make a covering of skins for Adam and Eve. And it continued all the way through Jesus Christ, that principle of the innocent dying for the guilty.

But the Bible also teaches that the blood of bulls and goats could never satisfy the demands of God’s justice. And so he made a sin offering once and for all. The book of Hebrews talks about Jesus Christ being a sin offering once and for all.

That, you know, you would have to go in every so often with the bulls and the goats to sacrifice them because they couldn’t really take away the people’s sins. All it was was looking forward in faith to the offering that God was going to make. When he sent his son who had no sin of his own to be an offering for ours.

And when he shed his blood and when he gave his life, he made a sin offering once for all time. Once for all people. Once for all sins.

And as we prepare this morning to observe the Lord’s Supper, folks it’s not enough to know that Jesus Christ died on the cross. You need to know it was for you. Many of you already know that.

Many of you are already sitting here because you’re believers. You’ve trusted Christ as your Savior. That’s why you’re even here.

You need to be reminded. It’s not just a historical fact. It is that.

But His death is not just a historical fact. It was a personal act that he did for you. And if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior before, you need to realize he didn’t just die, he died for you.

He died to pay for your sin. Every lie you’ve ever told, everything you’ve ever taken that didn’t belong to you, every time you’ve ever been angry with somebody for no reason, every time you’ve ever done anything that God said don’t do that. Or here’s where our problem lays, I think, more often.

and any time you’ve ever not done what God said to do. All of those instances of disobedience are sin. And my sin put him on the cross, and your sin put him on the cross.

He didn’t just die. He died for you. He was rejected for you.

You know, the pain and anguish of the rejection and being despised by his people, he went through that for you. Because if his own people that he came to seek and to save, and the people that he loved, if they hadn’t turned on him and rejected him, he would have never gone to the cross. but he said from the very beginning that the Son of Man needed to be rejected Luke chapter 9 says the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected of the elders and the chief priests and scribes and be slain and raised the third day he had to be rejected and he was rejected for you, he went through misery for you, when he was beaten, when he was whipped, when he was mocked when folks he did that for you he endured the pain of the cross for you He shed his blood.

He shed his blood for you, for your sins. And folks, he made peace with God for you. He didn’t just get punished.

He made peace with God. Romans chapter 5 says that being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s an even more incredible statement when you realize it means that at some point we didn’t have peace with God. We don’t like to think about it this way, but our sin really has made us enemies of God.

Not because God said, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. But because God is a king we rebelled against. We fired the first shots in that war of rebellion against God. And we made ourselves enemies of God.

The Bible says that friendship with the world, meaning loving the sin and the wickedness of the world, is to be an enemy of God. Friendship with the world is enmity with God. But the Bible says we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. He did that for you.

We could not have had a relationship with God the Father if it were not for Jesus Christ. And so what he did on the cross brings us salvation. It brings us salvation. Salvation means three things.

It means that our sins are forgiven, the slate is wiped clean. It means we now have a relationship with God the Father that we could not have otherwise had. We have peace with God the Father.

And it means we have the promise of eternal life with him in heaven. And he offers that because he paid for our sins.