The language of true salvation is the language of Isaiah 53. When the Jews in a future generation, or when you and I in this generation, look at Jesus Christ, this is how we have to see him. Not as a teacher, not as sort of a benign, willing savior, but we have to see Christ in the language of sacrifice. Welcome to Grace to You with the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.
Imagine standing before a packed courtroom facing a potential death sentence and for a crime you didn't commit. no one is there to speak on your behalf, and so to stay silent could well mean forfeiting your life. Of course, you would be more than justified to speak up at a moment like that, to defend your innocence loudly and at length. Yet when Jesus faced that scenario, he said nothing. Why?
What held him back? Consider that to day, as John MacArthur shows you what the Old Testament says about the cross, and why Jesus willingly went to it. John's current series is titled The Gospel According to God. And now here's John with the lesson. The last Old Testament prophet, John the Baptist.
Amazing man. He was an isolated prophet. There weren't any other prophets but him. And he came 400 years after the previous one. He is the one of whom Isaiah writes in Isaiah 40, verses 3 to 5: The voice of one crying in the wilderness, saying, Make straight the path for the Lord.
He is the one of whom Malachi wrote both in Malachi 3 and 4, where Malachi says that when the Messiah finally comes, there will come one previous to him to declare his arrival. He is that promised. Herald, that promised forerunner, the prophet who identifies Messiah. And when the dramatic moment came, And John the Baptist and Jesus came face to face, eye to eye, in a public place. And Jesus was about to launch his ministry.
It was at the Jordan, and all Jerusalem and Judea, it says, were going down there to be baptized by John because John was saying, Messiah is here, Messiah is here, prepare your heart, prepare your heart. And he was preaching the kingdom and righteousness, and telling people to get ready. And he was offering this baptism, which was a symbol of their desire to be cleansed. And masses of people were there. And one day Jesus shows up.
And how does John introduce Jesus? He doesn't say, Behold your king. He says, Behold the Lamb of God. Who takes away the sin of the world. And that is right out of Isaiah 53.
That's what he said the first time he pointed to Christ, John 1:29. The next day, the day after, again Christ is there and again face to face, and John again says, Behold the Lamb of God. John doesn't explain anything. There was enough in Isaiah 53 to understand that the Messiah will come as a lamb and a sacrifice for sin, one to be slaughtered and to be silent in the slaughter. Israel would have its living, exalted king, but only after.
He was a dying, rejected lamb. The imagery here is so Prosaic. Verse 6 says, All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way. That's the picture of uh Sinful humanity.
We're all Sheep gone astray.
So the Servant. becomes One of us. A lamb. In order to become the sacrificial lamb to save. The sheep.
Now, we're going to embark upon verses 7 through 9. Not finish it. But it is the um Next to the last, the fourth stanza in the five stanzas that make up this amazing passage. And the chief emphasis in verses 7 through 9 is silence. Or if you will.
Submission. Willingness, obedience. Here is The suffering servant of Jehovah. Suffering unto death. Willingly.
voluntarily. This is where he lives out. Not my will, but yours be done, as he prayed in the garden. The mouth, you might say, of the Messiah is featured. In verse 7, He doesn't open his mouth.
Twice it says that. And in verse 9. There's no deceit in his mouth. He is silent in his trial. That's verse 7.
He is silent in his death. That's verse 8. And he is silent in his burial, and that's verse 9. Here again, in the future. Israel will look back and realize.
That his silence was a willingness To be killed, as verse 8 says. For the transgression of my people. My people. To whom the stroke, was due. They will have a totally different view.
of his trial and his death. and his burial.
Now I want to say something here. in a broader sense. This chapter is so critical for anyone who wants to present a faithful. Gospel. Because the language here is the language of the gospel.
And I want to show you what I mean. A lot of people want to talk about Christ. Talk about believing in Jesus. talking about accepting Jesus as Savior. talking about letting Christ take over your life.
That's all. True and fine. But the language of true salvation is the language of Isaiah 53. When the Jews in a future generation, or when you and I in this generation look at Jesus Christ, this is how we have to see him. Not as a teacher.
Not a sort of a benign, uh willing savior. Although he is a teacher and certainly a savior. But we have to see Christ in the language of sacrifice.
Okay, that's the operative phrase. We have to see him in the language of sacrifice. When you're looking here, you're hearing the confession of the Jews in the future and the confession of any truly converted person in the present. And what is the language? You go back.
To verse 3. Despised, forsaken, man of sorrows, Acquainted with grief. Verse 4. Grief, sorrow, stricken, smitten, afflicted. Pierced, crushed.
Punished, scourged. Verse 7: Oppressed, afflicted, slaughtered. Verse 8: oppression, judgment. Cut off, meaning killed. Struck.
The end of verse 8. Verse 10, the Lord was pleased to crush him. Putting him to grief. He's a guild offering. Verse 11 and 12.
Bearing iniquity. Bearing sin. What am I saying? The gospel is about sin. And it's about judgment, and it's about atonement, and it's about death, and it's about sacrifice, and it's about blood.
The gospel is about oppression, affliction, judgment, execution, being struck. It's about iniquities, transgressions, sins. That's the gospel. That's the way it has to be understood. and explained.
Of course, the current trend is toward an inoffensive message. Reductionist marginal Reference to Christ. S. Lewis Johnson said, Christians reset their theology to every new idea. Like resetting your watch every time you find a clock that is different.
But the words of salvation are the words that you find in Isaiah 53. This is how you have to understand the death of Christ. This is how others. have to understand it. Who is being Referred to here?
Who suffers such a trial as verse 7 describes, such a death as verse 8 describes, and such a burial as verse 9 describes? Who is this? Who is this suffering, submissive slave of Jehovah? Who is this innocent, sinless, yet patiently, willingly enduring. Man Afflicted with such brutal Death, who is this?
There's only one possible answer, and that is The servant of Jehovah, who is Messiah, who is Jesus. And he is not caught in some web of circumstances that are out of control, but rather he is silently yielding to everything that happens.
Now The Messiah speaks. In the 42nd servant song, the Messiah speaks in the 49th servant song. The Messiah speaks in the 50th chapter of the servant song. The Messiah says nothing in Isaiah 53. No speech at all.
He is the silent. Suffering servant Says nothing. Does nothing. But lets everything happen. to him.
This is the voluntary, willing, vicarious, substitutionary death. of the servant.
Now for just a few minutes, let's look at verse 7. The first of these three. And the trial of Jesus is here presented. How do we know that? Verse 7, he was oppressed.
He himself, literally in the Hebrew, he himself emphatically. was oppressed. This is a word that takes us to brutality. It takes us to enslavement. It is a word that refers to being arrested.
to being abused. And it was severe.
So severe was his treatment when he was arrested and abused that verse 14 of chapter 52 says, Appearance that he had, his appearance was marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men. He didn't even look human. By the time they were finished with him, both in terms of the physical beating that he took on his body and the abuse that he took on his head and his face from a crown of thorns and sticks that beat him in the face and spit and sweat and blood running down his face, he didn't even look human. After the lashings and the bloodbath splattering all over him. Being bent over and the tortured anguish of his own face in the emotion of the moment.
This is his abuse. It started with his arrest in the middle of the night in the garden. And then it continued through the mockery of trials, false witnesses, the abuse that came to him there, the psychological torture that he underwent there, then the outrageous injustice of turning him over to the Romans and the way they handled him and abused him physically. From the arrest in the garden through the trial at the house of the high priest, trying to indict him by false witnesses, giving false testimony, his time before Herod, before Pilate, all the mistreatment from the Jews and the Romans, no crime ever validated, no proof ever given, no guilt ever established. According to Luke 23:15, Herod declared his innocence.
Three times in Luke 23, Pilate says he's innocent. Three times, and he was the governor.
So it was a legal Verdict. Three times innocent. Still, the leaders of Israel, the Jewish leaders, with consent from the people, pushed Pilate. His triple declaration of the innocence of Jesus with a call for execution. That's what he does in Luke 23:25.
Well, that's what's seen here in verse seven. He was oppressed. And then it says he was afflicted, but it's a passive verb, and it really needs to be looked at a little differently or a little more closely. He allowed himself to be afflicted. That's the way you would translate a passive verb.
Passive means it happens, the action happens to you, not from you. It also comes to mean, and could fairly be translated this way, as it is in Exodus 10:3. He humbled himself. which is another way of saying he allowed himself to be afflicted. Paul may well have had this very phrase in mind.
When he wrote Philippians 2, He humbled himself. and became obedient to death. Even death. On the cross. That may well be a direct reflection of Isaiah 53, 7.
This is not normal for tortured people. This is not normal for innocent people who are being tortured. Normally an oppressed Tortured person who is innocent and knows that this is a gross injustice, cries out, cries out about the injustice and cries out about. Innocence. But not the servant of Jehovah.
He doesn't say a word. Yet he didn't open his mouth. In spite of the fact that this was all Evil. Wicked, wretched, injustice against not just an innocent man, but a perfectly holy and righteous man. He didn't open his mouth.
Sinners don't suffer silently. We don't. There is the voice of guilt. When we suffer for our sin, we cry out. As David did in Psalm 32 and Psalm 51, right?
Against thee thee only have I sinned. Wash me. Purge me. Make me clean. That's the cry of the guilty sinner.
The cry of the innocent sinner is Job. Who repeatedly cries out to God about his innocence? Job 7, 1 to 13, the whole thing is saying, God, why is this happening? I'm an innocent man. I am not guilty of what even my own friends are accusing me of being guilty of.
The sinners don't suffer in silence. That when we suffered Because of guilt, we cry out to God. For forgiveness, and when we suffer for innocence, we cry out to God and ask, why? But this is a silent sufferer. He has been hunted down.
In the middle of the night, and found in the Garden of Gethsemane after midnight, They have come to him, the New Testament writers tell us, with a massive crowd. Temple police. Religious leaders Roman soldiers to arrest him. hunted like some kind of a nocturnal animal. He is arrested.
He is betrayed by Judas. He is taken into custody, ill-treated, tortured, tormented, harassed. Abused In every way imaginable and unimaginable, and then led to execution. without any resistance. without any complaint.
When he was brought before the high priest, Matthew 26. tells us that he was silent. In the next chapter, Matthew 27, he was taken before the chief priests and the scribes. Elders? And he was silent.
In Mark 15, He was taken before Pilate. And he was silent. And John 19 records the same thing, his silence before Pilate. In Luke 23, he was taken before the Idumean vassal king under Rome by the name of Herod. And again, he was silent.
He was silent before the high priest, the Sanhedrin. He was silent before Pilate. He was silent before Herod. He never. Said a word in defense of himself and his innocence.
And Isaiah Says He was like a lamb. It was led to slaughter. And like a sheep that's silent before it cheers, So he did not. Open. His Mouth.
The issue here is the willingness Of the Messiah. To die. This is not a good plan gone wrong. 700 years before Jesus showed up. The prophecy is crystal clear that when he comes, he will come as a lamb for slaughter.
And when he arrived, before he began his ministry, John says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And that means that he must be a sacrificial lamb because only in the death of the sacrifice is the sin removed. When Jesus died at the end of the three years of his ministry, that was not as some have tried to portray it. A good thing gone bad. That was the very reason he came in the first place.
There was plenty he could have said before his accusers. Oh my, there were plenty of things he could have said to the high priests, the chief priests that made up the Sanhedrin, plenty he could have said to Pilate and Herod. But he didn't. It was the silence of submission to the will of his father. But it was also the silence of judgment.
You wouldn't listen. And now I have nothing to say to you. When I did speak about life and salvation, when I did speak about forgiveness and the kingdom of God, you would not listen, and now I have nothing more to say to you. He is absolutely silent. In judgment.
And verse 7 ends again by saying, He did not open his mouth. He not only accepted the unrighteous judgment of men. But he accepted the righteous judgment of God. On behalf of unrighteous sinners, in order to make them righteous. No sacrifice was ever so Perfect.
No sacrifice ever so pure. Here is the sinless, spotless. Lamb of God. Acceptable to God, chosen by God. and elect Dying for sinners.
It is here, dear friends, that Old Testament soteriology reaches its apex. This is the high point. of the Old Testament. The Messiah is the sacrifice. slaughtered by God.
Yeah. He is the Servant of Jehovah. He is the slave of Jehovah. And his service requires that he die. that he be punished for our well-being, that he be scourged, for our healing.
That he be crushed for our iniquities, that he be pierced through for our transgressions. And as verse Eight puts it. that he be cut off out of the land of the living. for our transgressions. to whom the stroke is due.
That's the message of the gospel. And it's a message of sin. and judgment and death. and sacrifice. The suffering silent.
Submissive. Slaughtered. Scorned. Servant of Jehovah takes on himself the punishment. of God for the enormous moral debt of the elect of all human history.
And pays the ransom price with his life.
Now that is verse 7. That's the trial that takes us to his death in verse eight. We see him silent in death and even silent. In Burial. Verse 9.
Let's bow in prayer. Father, we can't help but Here The amazing words of Peter Who says of Christ, He committed no sin. Nor was any deceit found in his mouth. taken right out of Verse 9. But while being reviled, he did not revile in return.
While suffering, he uttered no threats. but kept in trusting himself to him who judges righteously, And He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross.
so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. For by he His wounds. You Were healed. We're in awe of the wonder of this sacrifice of Christ. And we're in awe of the fact that you have applied it to us who are Totally unworthy.
Why it is that You have selected us. out of all the world to be the recipients of this mighty accomplishment. It is beyond our comprehension. But it is behind our worship. It is why We love you.
Praise you. Adore you. And worship you. We ask, Lord, that you would draw some to you, Jew or Gentile, sitting and listening to this. May this be the moment.
When they come out of darkness into light, out of death into life. out of confusion into clarity. Out of ignorance. into knowledge. Out of death to life.
May they be drawn to Christ irresistibly by your blessed Holy Spirit. May this be a day of salvation. Father, do a work in hearts. and accomplish that For your glory. For your honor.
that heaven may rejoice. over the homecoming. of one lost sinner. We pray that you might be honored in that way, that you might be exalted. In the name of Christ, amen.
You're listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. John's current study is called The Gospel According to God.
Well, friend, today John talked about the heart of the gospel, the innocent Christ paying the penalty for guilty sinners. But unfortunately, countless people reject that truth. In fact, perhaps you've been asked how it could be fair for one innocent man to pay the penalty that millions of sinners deserve.
Well, here is how John answered that question. thinking of it reasonably as well as biblically. God is the one offended by every sin. God is perfectly holy and righteous, and every sin is an offence against Him.
So it is up to God to determine how that offense is. satisfied how that crime is punished and paid for. Jesus voluntarily gave his life.
So, God's the source of all justice. He is the judge of all the earth. And if he says that's a just payment, that settles it. Secondly, Christ voluntarily did what he did.
So He was not asked to do something against his will, so no one's will is overridden, nor is God's righteousness somehow slighted by this, because he is perfectly holy.
So, just from the reasonableness of those kinds of things. This is what God determined. And I would go one step further and say, We talk about Jesus as the Lamb of God, but we don't think about what that means. That's a possessive. He is God's Lamb.
When Jews came to Passover, they selected a lamb. and they offered that lamb. When it came time for the real Passover, all the others being pictures of the real one, God chose a Lamb, and God chose His Son, Jesus Christ.
So on all those levels, this was by God's design. And I might quickly add that these concepts and these truths in Scripture are all dealt with in detail in the book, The Gospel According to God, which looks carefully at Isaiah 53, that great chapter. Yes, friend, and I encourage you to pick up a copy of that book. Again, it's called The Gospel According to God, and it's the perfect complement to our current radio study. It looks at all that Christ endured to save sinners from the penalty of sin.
You can pick up your copy of The Gospel According to God when you contact us today. You can order by calling 80055GRACE. Or place your order online at gty.org. The gospel according to God will give you fresh appreciation for the Lord's work, it will propel you. to greater worship of Christ.
Our number again, 855 Grace. and our website gty.org. And let me recommend one more resource, the MacArthur Study Bible. This Bible gives you the entire text of Scripture, plus 25,000 footnotes written by John, along with maps and introductions for each book of the Bible, all of it designed to take you deeper into Scripture than ever before. It's affordably priced in several different covers and translations.
To browse all of the options and pick the MacArthur Study Bible that's right for you, visit gty.org or call us at 80055 GRACE.
Now for the entire Grace to U staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Watch Grace TU Television this Sunday on DirecTV Channel 378. And then be back next week as John MacArthur shows you a portrait of Christ's love that you cannot afford to miss. It's a part of his current series, The Gospel According to God. Join us Monday for another 30 minutes of Unleashing God's Truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.
