460: Man of Sorrows (Good Friday) | Dave Sloop

Introduction

Well, good evening. Tonight we're gonna be looking at a passage from Isaiah chapter 53. We just heard Isaiah 53 read, and then right after that, we heard the Passion of the Christ read. It sounds like those could have been different accounts of the same story that happened at the exact same time in history, but one was written 700 years before.

As I studied that passage this week in Isaiah chapter 53, I was, I mean, it points the hair on my neck, stood up, and how closely detailed Isaiah gets how the suffering servant would die. We're gonna read about a servant who would come to suffer, and that salvation would come to God's people because of his death.

This passage is crucial to understanding the ministry of Jesus. In fact, this very chapter is referenced six different times in the New Testament as the New Testament writers are seeking to understand his ministry.

And tonight, with the few minutes that I have, I just want to look at two of those New Testament references and how they can help us understand the ministry of the suffering servant.

The Ministry of the Suffering Servant

The first one comes at the very beginning of Jesus' ministry in the gospel of Matthew. Right after he heals Peter's mother-in-law, Matthew says this. He says these things happen so that the word about Jesus might be fulfilled. And then he quotes Isaiah 53, verse 4, and it says this:

Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. — Matthew 8:17

Matthew followed Jesus around, he saw his ministry, and this passage of Scripture came to mind—that he was someone who bore our griefs and carried our sorrows.

If you follow along with the life of Jesus, you cannot help but see this in his life. Jesus was almost magnetically drawn to people who were suffering. He couldn't help it.

There's a word, I've referenced this here before. There's a Greek word called splagchnitzomai. It's typically translated as filled with compassion. But the truth is, we don't really have an English word that complements it. It's this overwhelming compassion that Jesus feels.

So much so that he can't help but move and act on behalf of the person he's feeling it for. Sometimes he feels it for a crowd of people. It says one time he saw the crowd—they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. He was filled with compassion.

Other times, he directs that compassion at an individual person. If you remember, Jesus sees the leper. It's like he instantly identifies with that leper's pain — not just the physical pain of being a leper, but the emotional and relational pain that he must have suffered.

And it says, filled with compassion, he reached out his hand and he touched the man.

Surely he has borne our grief and carried our sorrow.

What we see in the ministry of Jesus is someone who identifies with pain and suffering. He gets close to it.

I wonder if any of you have ever been on a mission trip. I remember the first time I experienced this kind of identification with someone else's pain and suffering. I was a teenager. I went with a friend to inner city Philadelphia, where we were confronted with a kind of poverty and addiction and suffering that I had never experienced as a teenage kid from Harrisonburg, Virginia.

I remember laying in bed at night, not being able to sleep, just thinking about what these people endured—the addiction, the mental illness, the poverty, the people just sleeping out on the streets. And we ministered to them.

But then, at the end of the weekend, I got in my car and I went home. I was moved by their pain. But I went home to the comfort of my life because the reality was, their pain wasn't my pain.

It's as possible to be moved by pain but to not experience and feel pain.

And one of the things that we need to understand about the ministry of Jesus—this ministry of suffering that Isaiah is talking about—is this: this is not describing someone who's like on a weekend mission trip, who gets close enough to pain to feel bad for it, but then gets back in the car and drives home.

Because listen to the verse that precedes Isaiah 53:4. It says this, and Isaiah 53:3:

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. — Isaiah 53:3

He didn't just feel other people's pain. And, by the way, when he did feel their pain, he instantly made their pain his problem and did something about it.

But Jesus, he felt his own pain. He was rejected. We're gonna read from this passage that he was oppressed. He suffered himself.

You see, Jesus did not just get close enough to experience the pain of others. He himself became someone who suffers in some excruciating ways.

He suffered emotionally. He suffered relationally. He was betrayed by his best friend. He was a victim of abuse. He was spat upon and mocked and punched. They put a purple robe on him and a crown of thorns, and they hailed him as the king.

Jesus understands pain.

Why was this so important to Matthew? And why does this matter for you and me today? Because you and I need to know that we worship a God who understands suffering.

The incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ is profound in a number of ways, but let me just mention two of them to you.

One of them is this: when we look at the person of Jesus Christ, we see what God is like. We see that he's a God of compassion and tenderness and kindness and love and wisdom. When we look at Jesus, we see what God is like.

But here's something else that's profound about the incarnation. Not only does it reveal to us what God is like, but when we look at Jesus, what is revealed to us is that now we see a God who knows what we are like.

He has stepped into our shoes. He identifies with our pain. And when we cry out to a God in the midst of our suffering, he doesn't just hear us—he gets us.

That's who our God is. He is acquainted with grief, a man of sorrows.

That's the first thing—that is the ministry of his suffering. And we need a God like that.

Jesus Numbered with the Transgressors

But then, here's the second one. In Luke's gospel, in his account of the last supper, at the very end of that time, Jesus says to them this, in verse 37:

For I tell you that this scripture must be fulfilled in me. And here's the scripture. It's from Isaiah 53:12, and it says, he was numbered with the transgressors—for what is written about me has its fulfillment. — Luke 22:37

Jesus knew what was about to happen the next day. And here's what he said: this scripture needs to be fulfilled—I must be numbered with the transgressors.

What did Jesus mean by that? When we follow the life of Jesus throughout the Gospels, we see that he was associated with sinners quite a bit.

In fact, I like to think this was probably Jesus' favorite nickname for himself—the friend of sinners.

It's remarkable not just that he was a friend to sinners, but he was a friend of sinners. They loved him. They were drawn to him. They felt cared for. They didn't feel shunned or judged.

He was the friend of sinners.

In fact, Jesus' reputation often was at stake because of his relation to sinners. He was accused of being a drunkard and a glutton, not because he himself was, but because he was surrounded by other people who were.

He was accused of being someone who would eat or dine in the home of sinners and tax collectors. Jesus was associated with sinners.

What does it mean, though, that he was numbered with the transgressors?

One of my favorite stories about Jesus' interaction over the sinner is in John chapter eight.

Do you know this story? Jesus is confronted with a woman who was caught in the act of adultery.

Can you imagine that, by the way? Being caught in the act of adultery. This had to be the worst moment of this woman's life. She's dragged in front of a crowd where Jesus is teaching at this low moment of her life. She was caught in the act, which means she probably wasn't wearing a whole lot of clothing. Maybe she had a bed sheet to cover her.

And the Pharisees say to Jesus, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the law of Moses, it says we should stone such women. Now, what do you say? And then it says they asked him this question as a basis for accusing him—they were trying to trap Jesus.

And here was the trap. Would Jesus be loving or would he be just? Would he want to forgive this woman and kind of brush her sin under the rug? Or would he honor the word of God and, therefore, execute the full punishment that she deserved because of her sin? Would he be loving or would he be just?

Because he could not be both.

What does Jesus do? It says that Jesus, he got down on the ground and he started to write in the sand. We don't really know what it is that Jesus wrote, but I don't think that's the point.

See, when Jesus got down and began to write in the ground, everybody's eyes would have left that woman and would have come on to Jesus. He took all of the attention off of her and on to himself.

In a sense, he took her shame. Maybe she had a second to collect herself. And didn't he just stand back up and say this: let the first one among you that is without sin cast the first stone.

It says they left one by one, the eldest ones first because they knew they had committed sin. They weren't without sin. They were, in a sense, no different than this woman.

Her sin was just a lot more public than theirs was. And they went away one by one until it was just her and Jesus.

And he looks at this woman and he says, where are they? Does no one condemn you? And she said, no one, sir. And he said, then neither do I condemn you. Go and leave your life of sin.

Now, Jesus lets this woman off the hook. And it would be easy to look at this story and say, wait a minute, where's justice in that? How is it that Jesus honors justice? Oh, we see the love here, but doesn't he just kind of turn a blind eye to what she actually did in the punishment that she deserves?

On what basis does Jesus not condemn? I think this is what Isaiah meant when he said he was numbered with the transgressors. And it's this: Jesus knew that in a short time, the condemnation that she deserved, he would take upon himself.

The stones that were reserved for that woman would fall to him. And to borrow the language of Isaiah, he would be crushed by them.

He would be pierced for her transgressions and for yours and for mine.

She had a burden and a debt that she could not possibly bear. And Jesus pardons her that day, not because he's soft on sin, but because he was willing to take the punishment that she deserved.

See, this is what is meant by he was numbered with the transgressors. It means that he was treated as if he was one.

Jesus didn't just befriend sinners. He became sin. And in the moment that he allowed himself to be stretched out upon a cross and nailed to it, the full weight of God's wrath that you and I deserve for the sin that we have committed was absorbed by his perfect Son.

See, when we look at this cross, and in just a moment, we're gonna have the opportunity to come up here and nail our specific sins to the cross. And when you look at this cross, and when you imagine his cross, there are two things that I want to encourage all of us to think about.

On the one hand, we need to remember that the cross is a loud declaration that God is serious about sin. In our kind of modern post-Christian society, there's an idea that there's an Old Testament God that was pretty serious about sin, and there's a New Testament God that doesn't really care that much. It could not be further from the truth.

God deeply cares about our sin. In fact, God is more offended by our sin and rebellion than we could possibly fathom. It's not that he's soft on sin. It's that he was willing to let his son take the blame, take the fall, take the full weight.

But the second thing I want you to see when you look at the cross is not just the justice of God, but the love of God. You know, there's a passage here at the end of Isaiah 53. Well, we read this odd verse, verse 11. Well, first of all, in verse 10, it says, yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him. This was always God's plan.

700 years before Jesus would even come, and much longer before that.

In verse 11, it says, out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied.

How is it that Jesus, or this suffering servant, out of the anguish of his soul, could see and be satisfied? He continues, because by his knowledge, shall the righteous one my servant make many to be accounted righteous?

Jesus was satisfied by his own death.

We have a phrase that we used to say in Young Life: Jesus was not a victim; he was a volunteer.

He says of the good shepherd, nobody takes my life. I lay it down.

He gave his life willingly.

Do you know that on the cross, hanging there before he breathed his last, he looked out at his very murderers, and he says, father, forgive them, they know not what they do.

See the severity of his death and understand the justice of God, but then see the sacrifice, the willing sacrifice of his Son, and see his overwhelming love for you.

Perhaps there are some here today that feel maybe you have out sinned the grace of God. Can I encourage you? No matter how far you feel you may have wandered, his love has gone further.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for the cross of your Son, Jesus Christ. We thank you that not only was he satisfied by his death, but you were pleased to accept his sacrifice as adequate, more than sufficient payment for our sins.

God, forgive us for taking lightly those things for which Christ died. Thank you now, Lord, for a chance to reflect on that sacrifice and how wide we might live in light of it.

In Christ's name we pray, Amen.