Behold Your God, Isaiah 53, Part 1

Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. Centuries before Christ was born, Isaiah prophesied that one would come to bear the sin of many, to make many to be counted as righteous. Isaiah 53 gave ancient Israel a peek at the mighty and gracious work God would complete through His Son's death, a plan that would bring many to Himself. In today's message, Pastor Rich shares what Isaiah 53 can show us about the character of our God.

Let's listen in. It's time now for the exposition of God's Word. Please have your copy of the Scriptures open with me to Isaiah 53.

The title of this series is Behold Your God, Isaiah 40 through 55. It is most important to us that we know God in the way that He has revealed Himself, lest we worship God inadequately or idolatrously. God is a gracious God and that is our focus today. Gracious is the Lord, is the text that we read in Psalm 116 5.

Gracious is the Lord. In honor of the Lord and His Word, would you please stand with me this morning as we seek His help to hear and heed His Word. Eternal God and imminent Father, truly it is our delight and our high privilege to come together and fellowship with each other as we commune with you.

Thank you, O God, that you have made yourself known to us so that we can know you, so that we can walk with you and serve you with delight. And Father, I pray now that as we open your Word that you would find us coming to your Word with expectancy, with humility. Open your Word to us and guide us by your Spirit. Open our hearts and our minds, Father. Reveal yourself to us in all of your majesty and goodness. Guide us by your Spirit, I pray, Father, and mold us more into the image of your Son, the Lord Jesus. For it's in His name we pray. Amen. Please be seated. Mark Twain said, heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

You would stay out. Heaven is only by favor. Gracious is the Lord. And this word gracious that is in the Old Testament, it is defined as a heartfelt response by someone who has something to give to one who has a need. And we must remember that grace is about giving.

It is not about God withholding something. It is about giving Himself. This text in Isaiah about the servant actually begins in chapter 52 verse 13 where he says, behold, my servant. Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, meaning he will succeed.

He will prosper. God manifests Himself through this servant. And the work that he does is described in chapter 53 verse 1, to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

His doing. His most awesome work was done through the frailty of his son. And so we need to ask the question then, why is it that the servant needed to come?

And we understand the servant to be the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Why is it that he needed to come? As you read the text of Isaiah 53, it is replete with suffering and anguish and sorrow.

Why did he have to experience that? It is because of our situation. And the Bible reveals to us our situation and is revealed to us in certain words, terms that it uses. One is transgressors, our iniquities. We are transgressors.

What does this mean? We have crossed a line. We have crossed the line of God's holiness. God is a holy God and God dwells in holiness.

And this is the line and we are over here. We are outside of that holiness. It means that we have missed the mark. We've missed the mark of God's righteousness. The mark of God's righteousness, which is the measure of the way I should be. God's righteousness is the way life should be.

It is the standard in that expectation and the design of life and yet I have missed it. I am not as I ought to be. And life is not as it ought to be.

I have missed the mark. And because we are transgressors, because we are people of iniquity, the Bible tells us that we have all gone astray. We have all turned to our own way.

And that describes it all, doesn't it? I am off course. I am contrary to God's design and purpose. That has been my bent. That has been the direction of my life.

God says life is designed for this and to be this way. And I, in my selfishness, I have gone astray and like a train leaving the train tracks headed for train wreck. And we have all turned to our own way, which means I am inherently self-centered. I am born with the problem of self-preeminence. I am born believing that I am the greatest and most important reality in existence.

And that is a problem because I am not. We have all gone astray. We are all inherently selfish. You ever gone fishing? Some of us like to fish. To catch a fish, you have to think like a fish. To a fish, life is about the maximum gratification of appetite and the minimum expenditure of energy.

That sounds like some people I know. To a fish, life is see a fly, want a fly, eat a fly. The fish are just a collection of appetites. A fish is a stomach, a mouth, and a pair of eyes. Have you ever been struck by how dumb fish are? You put the lure on the hook and you throw it in.

It is not the real thing. It is just a lure and you think it will feed you, but it won't. It will trap you. And if you were to look closely fish, you would see the hook and you would know once you were hooked that it is just a matter of time before you are reeled in. You would think fish would wise up, wouldn't you?

And notice the hook or see the line. You would think fish would look around at all their fish friends who go for the lure and fly into space never to return, but they don't get it. It is ironic, isn't it? We say fish swim together in a school, but they never learn. Aren't you glad we are smarter?

Really? What has our selfish gotten us? Words that describe it in Isaiah 53 are two, grief and sorrow. Grief and sorrow.

Translated, they mean pain and anguish. We experience the frustrating effects of a fallen creation. We are rebels oppressed by the powers of darkness to which we have submitted ourselves and sold ourselves. Pain and anguish, grief and sorrow. Why? Because we've gone our own way.

We think we know better than God. We've gone after the lure on the hook. And then we experience the pain and the anguish. A paramedic told about one of his more grisly experiences on the job. He received an anonymous call reporting a heroin addict was on the verge of death in an abandoned apartment building.

When the paramedic got to the apartment, the man was huddled in a corner, shivering and unresponsive, surrounded by his piles of rotten trash, used syringes, lighters, all the paraphernalia of a heroin addict. The paramedic, a Christian, when asked what that was like, related that it was terrifying, but that he also thought it was probably the first time he fully understood what worship looks like. For all sin, all sin as idolatry is essentially counterfeit worship. We have all gone astray.

We've gone our own way. And yet we don't want to sit here and talk about those people who have been addicted to substances. In his book, Counterfeit Gods, Tim Keller writes, idols generate false beliefs such as, if I cannot achieve X, then my life won't be valid. Or since I have lost or failed at Y, now I can never be happy or forgiven.

He illustrates that point with the following. A young woman named Mary was an accomplished musician who once attended my church, his church up in Manhattan. For many years, she had battled mental illness and had checked in and out of psychiatric institutions. She gave me permission as her pastor to speak to her therapist. Thanks for joining us here at Delight in Grace. You've been listening to Rich Powell, the lead pastor at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. The Delight in Grace mission is to help you know that God designed you to realize your highest good and your deepest satisfaction in him, the one who is infinitely good. We hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10 AM.