His Death Foretold - Part B

Jesus was different. The purpose of His birth and life were not so He could establish a world religion, were not so He would say some wonderful things that would be put on posters and on refrigerators in years to come.

The purpose of His birth and life were His death, His atonement, to save people from their sin. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Pastor Skip continues his message, his death foretold, and shows you how Jesus brought enduring fruit to a fruitless nation. But first, here's a resource that will deepen your love and understanding of God's Word. Over the years, Skip Heitzig has invited a number of notable speakers to come to Albuquerque. For an end-of-year resource, we want you to hear some of these amazing messages by speakers such as Tim LaHaye.

I travel all over the country and speak at prophecy conferences and it's very seldom that you find churches that really recognize the importance of history written in advance only by God coming true so we can believe what we believe. Also a part of this pulpit package, the familiar voice of Pastor Chuck Smith. I'm overwhelmed when I see what God is doing here.

What a thrill to see the work of God being wrought here in Albuquerque. This package contains 10 full-length messages available on CD or as a download. We will send it to you as a thank you when you make an end-of-year donation of $100 or more to support this program. Request your pulpit package at connectwithskip.com or by calling 1-800-922-1888. This resource is available through the month of December and this pulpit package includes a classic teaching by J. Vernon McGee.

I count it a privilege to be here to talk to many young people and especially those that are interested in Bible study. This is sure a high pulpit made for a tall fellow. Request your pulpit package at connectwithskip.com or by calling 1-800-922-1888.

That is connectwithskip.com or call 1-800-922-1888. Okay, we're going to be in Isaiah 52 as we join Skip today. After three years of ministry, do you remember how many authentic believers, authentic followers were in that upper room after Jesus rose from the dead and ascended? How many? How big was the church? 120 people.

It's pretty small. 120 people. You say, oh, come on, he had lots of followers. He was thronged by people. So many people came to see and to hear him. You're right, they did. But they weren't all authentic believers. There were very, very few in that large crowd. You say, wait a minute, after all those miracles? Yeah, glad you brought that up.

Listen to this. John 12 tells us after Jesus healed multitudes. Although he had done so many signs before them, they did not believe in him.

That the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled which he spoke, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Then for this Galilean to go to a Roman cross, be lifted up and die a shameful death, remember the Jewish scripture says it's a curse to be hung on a tree. And Paul the apostle will say the cross is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks.

I mean, think of it. No other religion has at its heart the humiliation of its God. He will be abandoned by unbelief and by unfruitfulness. In verse 2, please notice, 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. When we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. When Jesus came 2,000 years ago, the nation of Israel was hardened ground, barren ground. It wasn't as fruitful as God wanted it to be. In fact, you may remember Isaiah the prophet also had a pretty hefty prediction about the nation of Israel and Jesus and the other New Testament authors quoted it, related to it.

This is what it says in Isaiah 5. Now let me sing to my well beloved a song of my beloved regarding his vineyard. My well beloved had a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. He dug it out and he cleared out its stones and he planted the choicest vine within it. And he expected it to bring forth fruit, good grapes, but instead it brought forth wild grapes. What will the owner of the vineyard do, asks Isaiah? He will take its hedge away.

It will be trampled down by others and burned to the ground. Then this is what it says, for the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel and the men of Judah are his pleasant plant. You see, by the time Jesus came to Judaism 2000 years ago and the temple structure, the priesthood was already corrupted by the Sadducees. The truth had been trampled by the Pharisees. But in the midst of that fruitless nation, there was a root growing out of dry, hardened, parched ground. That was Jesus.

Just like the little green shoot that comes out and pokes his little head out of the ground from a root. That's the idea of the passage. He would be the fruitful one in the midst of fruitlessness.

I want to jog your memory. When the patriarch Jacob was on his deathbed and he gathers all of his boys around him, 12 of them, which would be the 12 tribes of Israel. He goes to each son and he predicts something about their future and he comes to Judah. Jesus comes from the tribe of Judah. He comes to Judah and this is what he says, The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes.

Strange thing to say. The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes. The word Shiloh means the one to whom it belongs. Again, historically throughout the ages, the Jewish rabbis saw that as a prediction of the Messiah coming from Judah. It's in their writings. Shiloh, the one to whom it belongs, the Messiah.

And this is how they interpreted it. The scepter, the right to rule, the right of national tribal identity in Judah. That will not depart. We will have autonomy until Shiloh comes. When that's taken away, the Messiah will come. So, 23 years before the trial of Jesus of Nazareth by Pontius Pilate, 23 years before that, the Romans came in and occupied the land of Judah and took away the right of capital punishment and their right to adjudicate using the law of Moses in their cases, and when that happened, one rabbi writes that the Sanhedrin, the Jewish rulers, paraded around Jerusalem with sackcloth and ashes, and this is what they said in the lament. The scepter has departed from Judah, but the Messiah has not come. What they were unaware of is that just north of them in that rugged town of Nazareth, there was a 10-year-old boy at that time, the apprentice of his stepfather, a carpenter, who would be coming soon on the scene to Jerusalem. But at that point, just this young child, a little shoot, a little root out of dry ground in the midst of fruitless Israel, would come and bear fruit to salvation. Notice in verse 3, he was despised and rejected by men. A man of sorrow is acquainted with grief, and we hid as it were our faces from him, and he was despised, and we did not esteem him. You know, we know that Jesus suffered on the cross. He suffered the beating, the crown of thorns, and we usually kind of go into that whenever we talk about the cross, but what we often fail to realize is he didn't just suffer physically.

But think of the emotional grief by being rejected even by the closest friends he had. When Jesus shared the last supper in the upper room, how many were seated with him? Twelve. He had twelve apostles.

Very good. He had twelve. He had supper with twelve. One of them, toward the end of the supper, got up and walked out. What was his name? Judas.

Good, straight A so far. So now he has eleven left, and with those eleven, he goes to the Garden of Gethsemane where he will be arrested, and he's going through sorrowful contortions emotionally. So he takes his three buddies, Peter, James, and John, and says, Guys, over here, I need you to pray with me.

What do they do? They fall asleep. Then he gets arrested and taken to the courtyard of the high priest, and Peter and John follow him, and what does Peter do while he's there?

Denies him in straight A's. And the Bible says, And they all forsook him. They all fled from him.

John was the only apostle who showed up at the cross with Mary, the mother of Jesus. So you begin the night with twelve. Now you have eleven. The three that are your closest fall asleep.

One of them denies you. And then when he's on the cross, he cries out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? As he felt the distance now between his father as the weight of sin was laid upon him. The abandonment at his death. There's a third element that Isaiah shows us, and that is the atonement in his death.

Gets better as we go. Verse four. Surely he has borne our griefs. He's 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.

By the way, the word bruised could be translated crushed, literally. 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 afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare his generation? For he was cut off from the land of the living for the transgressions of my people he was stricken. And they made his grave with the wicked, but with the rich at his death.

Because he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Notice the language throughout that little section we just read. The language of substitution.

One being substituted for somebody else. Theologians call this, ready for it, vicarious atonement. There's a word you can throw out this week.

Throw down some science with your buddies. Vicarious atonement. It means substitutionary atonement. It is captured so perfectly by Paul, 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21. For God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be the righteousness of God in him.

God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be the righteousness of God in him. Let me put it to you this way. God the Father treated Jesus Christ as if he were guilty of every single sin ever committed by every single person who would ever live. Let that fall on your heart for a moment. I'll put it another way. God the Father treated Jesus like you and I deserve to be treated. So that he could treat you and I like Jesus Christ deserves to be treated.

That's substitution. I read the story of a little boy who was notoriously late to come home from school. One morning his parents said, son, we want you to be on time today. It's a very important day.

We need you to be here on time. Not only was he late that afternoon, he was much later than he had ever been before. His mother met him at the door, said nothing, just opened the door, he came in, he said nothing. At the dinner table, the little boy looked down at his plate and there on his plate was a single slice of bread and just a glass of water. While his father had steak and potatoes and trimmings and it was like so good.

He looked down and there was nothing and his heart sunk because of that. His father watched that happen, let it happen, let it just sort of sink in for his son. And then the father got up with a smile, walked over and took the boy's plate with bread and exchanged it for his sumptuous meal. The father took that single piece of bread and that's all he had for dinner while his son enjoyed that free, gracious meal. The little boy grew up and he said, all my life I have known what God is like by what my father did that night.

It's the language of substitution that helped him understand. And that's what the angel was saying to Joseph when he said, you will call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sin. It's what the angels in Bethlehem were meaning when they said, there is born to you this day in Bethlehem, the city of David, a savior.

A savior, one who will save people, who need saving, who is Christ the Lord. That's the meaning behind the gift of the royal visitors, the magi who gave him gold, the medal of a king, frankincense, the fragrance of priests. But then that third thing, myrrh. What's myrrh? Embalming fluid, used as embalming fluid in ancient times.

I'm sure Mary and Joseph thought, really? This is what you're giving my son? I like the first two gifts.

We can use those. But embalming fluid, talk about the gift that balms or embalms, I should say. Why myrrh? Why embalming fluid? It was a prediction of the purpose of his life, to die.

Death. By the way, you know something fascinating about myrrh? Myrrh gives off no scent until it's crushed. When it's crushed, it gives off the most beautiful fragrance, which fulfills what Isaiah said. He will be pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities.

So even in Bethlehem, at his birth, the shadow of the cross predicted by Isaiah fell upon the manger. Mary and Joseph would come to understand that that baby was born to die. I want you to think about this, parents. When a child is born, when your children were born, you have such excitement, anticipation. You have plans for that child. You don't think about their death. You don't plan their death. No, their purpose is life, education.

You want them to marry well. Jesus was different. The purpose of his birth and life were not so he could establish a world religion, were not so he would say some wonderful things that would be put on posters and on refrigerators in years to come. The purpose of his birth and life were his death, his atonement, to save people from their sin. Now, this atonement for sin was hinted at all the way back in Genesis. Remember what God said to Adam and Eve?

In the day that you eat of the fruit, you will surely what? You'll surely die. But they didn't die. They didn't die. Oh, I know they died spiritually.

There was a chasm in relationship between God and them. But I don't think that's what they thought when God said, when you eat that, you're going to die. They thought we ate it. We're dead meat.

We're going to actually physically die. But they didn't die. But something else died in their place. Two animals died because the Bible says God clothed them with animal skins to cover them up.

Animals got to die for that to happen. I don't know, but I could only presume that perhaps those were two lambs. Nothing feels better than lamb skin as a covering.

So think of it. In the beginning parts of Genesis, there's one lamb for one person, one for him, one for her. But as time would move on and we get to the Passover, the exodus out of Egypt, it is now one lamb per one family. As God says, take the blood of the lamb and put it on the lentils and doorposts and everyone in your house will be saved. But then as time moves forward and the law is established and the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, is given, now it's one lamb for the sins of a nation as the high priest would dip the hyssop in the blood and sprinkle, sprinkle.

And it would be enough for a nation. So there's one lamb per person, one lamb per family, now one lamb for the nation. But at last the day came when he came and John the Baptist saw the Messiah coming and he said, look, that's the lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world.

Not just one lamb for one person, one lamb for one family, one lamb for a nation, but that is sufficient enough to cleanse anyone and everyone who will believe in him. That's the atonement of his death. Well, we're out of time, so let me draw your attention to the last part, the best part, and that is the accomplishment of his death.

We've seen the anticipation for his death, the abandonment at his death, the atonement in his death, but here's the accomplishment, the accomplishment of his death. Look at verse 10. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He has put him to grief. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied by his knowledge. My righteous servant shall justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. Verse 10 is disturbing, really. Any parent would be disturbed at it. In the language of a son being sacrificed all by the will and sovereignty of his father for it to read, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him.

In fact, the language is strong. The word please means to experience emotional delight. What kind of a delight could a father have in seeing his son butchered? The delight was in the accomplishment.

It's the same set of Jesus Christ in the book of Hebrews. And for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame. The joy? Who suffers with joy? Who goes to a cross and has bloodshed with joy? The thing that Jesus had in his heart, in his mind, the joy, the delight of the father, was seeing all of those who would believe in him and because of their faith, simply by his work and their faith, make it to heaven. You know what his delight was? You know what his joy was? You.

You. He saw the day in history when you would say yes to Jesus and you would follow him. And you would let his blood cleanse your sin and you would live for him. That was the delight. He will see his seed.

It's the joy of anticipating you. And then look at verse 11. By his knowledge, my righteous servant shall justify many. Or it could be translated, by the knowledge of him, my righteous servant shall justify many. In other words, coming to know Jesus, coming to know God the Father through his son Jesus Christ.

Remember what Jesus said in his prayer in John 17? And this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you have sent. So, behold my servant.

God says, behold, look, behold my servant. Here is a life of service. Here is a life of sacrifice. And think of what the sacrifice of one accomplished. We sacrificed for our children. I know my parents did. They saved up and they hoped that I'd make something out of my life.

They were not sure for a long time. But they sacrificed and they served and they put pennies away for college education. We know what that sacrifice some of us is like. We sacrifice for a good cause or some of us will sacrifice for our church because we believe in its vision.

We want to invest in the kingdom. Think of what God can do through your life if you see your life as a sacrifice. Where you serve people and sacrifice for his glory and his kingdom. That concludes Skip's message, His Death Foretold, from the series Jesus Hope Foretold. Find the full message as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at ConnectWithSkip.com. Right now, listen as Skip shares how you can share life-changing teaching from God's unchanging Word with more people around the world. Believers need to study God's Word in order to understand what he desires of us and for us. And this broadcast ministry exists to connect you and others around the world to God's Word so you can enjoy his presence and do his will. I want to invite you to join in that important work today. Through your support, you can expand this ministry into more major U.S. cities and help more people respond to the life-changing truth of the Bible. Plus, you'll keep these teachings that you love available to you wherever you listen.

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800-922-1888. Thank you for your generosity. Join us tomorrow for a message about the kingdom of Jesus and an important truth about the humanity of Christ. I've always found it interesting that the Evangelical Church has been very, very good at defending, as we should, the deity of Christ. That Jesus Christ is indeed God. And the Bible is filled with that language. But where we Evangelicals fall a little bit short and we get a little bit uncomfortable is defending the absolute humanity of Jesus. He was fully God, but he was also fully man. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on his word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Hyten is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.