The Good News Of Good Friday - Isaiah 53:4-9
INTRODUCTION:
About 6000 years ago God formed man from the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being. God created a beautiful garden full of plants and animals and trees that produced fruit that was good to eat. The garden was a place that was pleasing to the eyes and God placed the man He had created in the garden to care for it. In the middle of the garden was a tree that God called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the only rule that God gave to man, one rule was that he was not to eat the fruit of this one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God said that man would surely die the day he ate of that tree.
God saw that man needed someone like himself so that he would not be alone, and he would have someone to help in the caring of the garden. So, God put the man into a deep sleep and took from his side a rib and from this rib God created a woman, the first woman to be the wife of the first man. God brought the woman to the man and they became husband and wife and they had a perfect life caring for the perfect garden that God had created for them and they had a perfect relationship with each other and a perfect relationship with their Creator. God, their Creator, would come to the garden in the cool of the evening and walk with Adam and Eve and commune with them. Life was perfect, life was as God intended it to be.
But one day that all changed and the perfect life in the perfect world ended. The woman, Eve, was tempted by Satan who came to her in the form of a serpent, and tempted her to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, she fell for Satan’s lies and chose to eat from the tree, the only tree that was forbidden for them to eat of, she gave some of the fruit of the tree to Adam and he willfully ate the forbidden fruit as well and their perfect life ended. Their relationship with God was severed because they had disobeyed the one rule He had given them to keep. They were put out of the garden and the perfect world that had been easy to care for became difficult, they now had to work and toil to grow crops and it seemed that weeds, thorns, and thistles were the only crop they could produce and man’s life became a burden and in the end his body died. He would be eternally separated from God, his Creator.
God loved mankind whom He had created, but God had a holy standard that had to be upheld, if it was not upheld it meant the offender had to die and be separated from God forever. Mankind was lost unless a perfect, sinless substitute could be found to die in man’s place. The master plan of God to save His lost and dying creation was enacted and He began promising man that a redeemer, a perfect, sinless deliverer would come, and He would save them from their sins, God Himself would die in man’s place.
--PRAY--
Turn in your Bibles this evening to Isaiah 53. About 3000 years have gone past since the events that I just described took place. God was still promising a Redeemer for mankind. God had raised up men during those 3000 years whom He spoke to and revealed parts and pieces of His plan of redemption. Isaiah was one of the men that God raised up and God revealed more to him about the coming Redeemer than He did to any other prophet. God revealed to this prophet how he would redeem and deliver mankind from his sins. You may follow along as I read Isaiah 53:4-9.
Isaiah 53:4-9,
“Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered That He was cut off out of the land of the living For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due? His grave was assigned with wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.” (Isaiah 53:4–9, NASB95)[1]
GOD’S PLAN OF REDEMPTION (Isaiah 53:4-6)
These verses are the two central stanzas of a five-stanza poem known as a Servant poem, this is the fourth Servant poem in Isaiah. This entire poem begins in chapter 52:13 and goes through the end of chapter 53. This evening I want us to look at only the heart of this poem, the good news about Good Friday.
Isaiah begins verse four by stating that this Servant bore our griefs or infirmities and carried our sorrows or diseases. The Gospel writer Matthew 700 years after this was written by Isaiah applies this verse to Jesus Christ when he writes in Matthew 8:16-17, “When evening came, they brought to Him many who were demon-possessed; and He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were ill. This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet: ‘He Himself took our infirmities and carried away our diseases.’” (Matthew 8:16–17, NASB95)[2] Because of this we know that this Servant that Isaiah spoke of was Jesus Christ. Even though Jesus spent three years of His earthly ministry ministering to people and their needs, He was rejected by His people and they viewed what happened to Him as a judgment from God.
In verse five Isaiah gives a different reason for the way in which Jesus’ life ended. Isaiah writes that Jesus was pierced through for our transgressions. His crucifixion which we remember this evening was not for something that He did, but for our transgressions spikes pierced His hands and feet pinning Him to a cross. For our transgressions He was pierced with a spear in His side. He died the most humiliating death known to man by being exposed on a cross for all to see. He was pierced through for our transgressions. Transgression is rebellion against God, it is crossing the line that God has drawn and openly rebelling against His holy standard. This is what Adam and Eve did when they willfully ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, plunging all of mankind into sin.
Next Isaiah writes that Jesus was crushed for our iniquities. This means that He was crushed under the weight of a burden. That burden of weight was the sin of the world that was laid on Him. Isaiah calls it iniquities, which refers to the crookedness of our sinful nature. We are sinners by nature and by choice. Adam and Eve chose to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We inherited Adam’s sin nature, but we also sin by choice.
Finally, Isaiah speaks of the result of this hideous, humiliating death of Jesus, the good news of Good Friday. Isaiah says the chastening or the punishment that Jesus received was for our well-being or our peace and brought about our healing. The only way a lawbreaker can be a peace with the law is to suffer the punishment that the law requires. Jesus Christ was not a lawbreaker, He kept God’s Law perfectly, yet He took the scourging that was ours, he took the punishment that was due to us and because He took our place at the whipping post and on the cross we have peace with God and can never be condemned by God’s Law because it has been satisfied by Jesus Christ. The healing spoken of here refers to our sins being forgiven. Sin is like a disease that only the blood of Jesus can cure.
Isaiah then describes our nature before Jesus went to the cross. He says that we are all like sheep. Sheep are dumb and by nature will go astray unless someone leads them. Each of us is born with a sinful nature that prompts us to go astray. Like sheep without a shepherd we foolishly decide to go our own way. We are sinful by nature and we are sinful by choice. But God has taken all our iniquity, all our sin and laid it upon His Son so that we might have peace with God. Warren Wiersbe writes, “Under the Law of Moses, the sheep died for the shepherd, but under grace, the Good Shepherd died for the sheep (John 10:1-18).”[3]
THE HUMILITY OF THE REDEEMER (Isaiah 53:7-9)
Jesus Christ came to earth as the Servant of God; He came to do the will of His Father in Heaven. The will of the Father was that Jesus would die for the sins of the world. Jesus in submission to the Father did not protest when He was oppressed and afflicted. He was silent when He was arrested and judged. He was silent before Caiaphas, before the chief priests and Sanhedrin, before Pilate and Herod. He did not protest when the soldiers mocked Him and beat Him and placed the crown of thorns on His head. Isaiah 53:7 speaks of His silence under suffering and verse 8 of His silence when He was illegally tried. Everything about His trials were illegal and should have been declared a mistrial. But Jesus endured it silently knowing it was the will of the Father that He suffer and die for sinners like you and me.
Isaiah compares Jesus to a lamb. A lamb was a frequent symbol of the Redeemer in Scripture. A lamb was killed for each household at Passover and Jesus died for His people, He was the true Passover Lamb. John the Baptist declared that Jesus was the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world. He died for you and me also, He is our Passover Lamb as well. He died, was cut off from the land of the living, for your sin and my sin and the sins of the world. He became the perfect substitute to die in our place. This is the good in Good Friday.
Because He died as a criminal His body should have been disposed of as a criminal’s. Crucified victims were often buried in a mass grave or just thrown on a trash heap, but God provided for Jesus that He would have a grave with the rich in His death. Isaiah spoke of it and about 700 years later it came to pass, after Jesus died a rich man, who was a member of the Sanhedrin, who had secretly put His faith in Jesus went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. When Pilate learned that Jesus was truly dead, granted the request of this man named Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph and Nicodemus, another secret follower of Jesus, took the body of Jesus and placed Him in Joseph’s tomb in a garden near where He had been crucified. God used Joseph to fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy.
Isaiah ends his prophecy by again reminding us that Jesus had done nothing deserving the death that He died. He was sinless in word and deed. He was righteous. The death that Jesus died was for you and for me, He became our perfect substitute and paid the penalty required for our sin, which is death. He took our punishment on Himself. This is what makes Good Friday good, it is good for sinful mankind, it is good because God made a way for man to restore his relationship with God.
CONCLUSION:
Jesus died because of His love for mankind, His love for men, women and children that He had created and will create. It was the master plan of God to redeem mankind from death and eternal separation from Him. God’s holy standard had to be satisfied for man to be forgiven and to satisfy it blood had to be shed, someone had to die. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh came to this earth and died as our substitute to satisfy God’s holy standard. Paul wrote in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8, NASB95)[4] This is the good news of Good Friday, Jesus Christ died for us that we might be forgiven and be restored in our relationship with God, no longer separated, but with the hope that we will forever be together. Our hope is based on what was once said, “It’s Friday, but Sunday is coming!” Maybe you are listening this evening and you do not have this hope, you can have it right now, in your own home in the quietness of your own heart you can repent and admit that you are a sinner and you need a Redeemer, a substitute to die in your place, and then in faith believe that Jesus Christ died for you, paid your penalty for sin and that He was buried and rose again and you will be forgiven and saved. You can say, “Its Friday, but Sunday is Coming!”
[1]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[2]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[3]Wiersbe, Warren W., Be Comforted. Wheaton, IL : Victor Books, 1996, c1992 (An Old Testament Study), S. Is 53:4
[4]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.