What is the good pleasure of the Lord? That through crushing Him, He saves the elect. The good pleasure of the Lord will succeed in His hand. All that the Father gives to me will come to me. I will lose none of them.
I will raise Him up. The work of Christ will be complete. Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. It's been said the most fundamental reason Jesus Christ went to the cross was not his love for us, though that was true, but rather his desire to obey his Father's will.
Still, maybe you find yourself asking, how could it be the Father's will to crucify his only Son? John MacArthur answers that vital question today in his study titled The Gospel According to God.
Now, friend, John's lesson today will be heard in all 50 U.S. states and around the world. That's a staggering reality. And of course, none of that is possible without the partnership of many faithful radio stations. And that partnership dates back to a seemingly chance encounter between a radio station on the East Coast and sermons that John had preached 3,000 miles away on the West Coast.
Here's how John told that story.
Well, first to back up on that. My father Preached on the radio.
So I. the effect of radio, it was a once a week. Sermon on the radio. I knew radio was a wonderful tool. When I began preaching at Grace Church, I wasn't thinking about that.
We were just preaching, and a guy in our church started recording the sermons on reel-to-reel tape, big reels. And I asked him, his name was Vern. I asked him, What are you going to do with that? He said, We're going to take him around and play him for the shut-ins. He can't come to church.
Well, that morphed into cassettes and. and once they got into cassettes they were easily transportable. I began to get letters from people in Baltimore, Maryland. Saying, thank you for your radio ministry. We we love listening to you preach on the radio.
I said, I don't know anything about this. What are you talking about? There was a radio station back there called WRBS, I think it was, in Baltimore. And there was a guy named Tom Bissett who ran that station, and he just took those early tapes and put them on the air. I think it was like radio pulpit or something.
They'd take an hour and just throw a tape on. And we didn't have a radio program, but we learned very rapidly that there was a tremendous response to just putting a tape on. I thought, well, maybe we ought to do something with this. Maybe we ought to try to make a program. Got together with Norm Speer, as you will remember, and we said, well, let's try a half an hour daily program.
We got time on a local secular station in Glendale near here between country music and the horse races. That's good position. And we were, yeah, great position, really. We were talking exactly to people who couldn't have cared less about us. But it didn't go anywhere, but we realized, wow, we need to keep doing this, but we need to get a different station.
And so we went on KDAR up in Oxnard, California.
So we had a radio program before we had a radio program, and it backed us into that, and the rest is history. from those meagre beginnings, To the point where Grace to you is on the air 24-7 all year long. What has happened to make that possible? Is the support of tens of thousands of people across America and around the world who support this ministry? God has given us supporting friends who invest in this ministry because they believe in the Word of God, and that's what's taken this ministry to where it is now.
That's right, friend. Your faithfulness enables us to put verse-by-verse Bible teaching into the hands of God's people around the world. Thank you for supporting our work. And if you'd like to know more about partnering with us, stick around. I'll give our contact information after the lesson.
But right now, here's John to continue his series, The Gospel According to God.
Now for our study of Isaiah 53, and you can return to that. Section. We come to the final stanza. The final of five stanzas in this servant song, verses 10 through 12. And here We meet the servant again.
The one identified throughout this section of Isaiah as the servant of Yahweh, the servant of Jehovah, the servant of the Lord. None other than the Messiah. In stanza one, he was a startling, astonishing. Servant in stanza number two, a scorned servant, in stanza number three, a substituted servant, in stanza number four, a silent and slaughtered servant. And now, as we come into the final section, we see him as the sovereign.
servant, the sovereign servant. servant. Up to this point, The provisions and the benefits of the servant's death have been viewed from the perspective of the people. And that'll be true all the way down to the midpoint of verse 11. The final lines from midpoint, verse 11 to 12, will shift.
And we're not going to hear the Jews' perspective or the sinner's perspective. We're going to hear God's perspective.
So it ends in a powerful way as God affirms the truthfulness of their confession. That gets us to verse 10.
So let's look at it. This is what the Lord has done to his servant. They have a full soteriological understanding of the cross of Christ. These Jews in the future generation who make this confession, they get the whole picture. There's nothing missing in their soteriology, their gospel is a complete gospel.
This is amazing. Because remember now, this is 700 years before Christ even comes. And this is words coming from Jews thousands of years after that. And indicating a complete understanding. of the cross.
They know now. what the reality is. Verse 10, they know The Lord was pleased to crush him. Putting him to grief. If he would render himself As a guilt offering.
They get it. They understand the vicarious substitutionary sacrificial atonement of Christ in the place of sinners. They understand that. that great core doctrine. They understand that he was made sin for us who knew no sin.
They understand that he bore in his body our sins on the cross. They get it. They understand what the New Testament epistles explain in detail. And by the way, in the Hebrew, the term Lord, Yahweh, The tetragrammaton, the name for the Lord Himself, is emphatic. The Lord was pleased to crush him.
Even though, it says, but it could be yet, even though, as verse 9 says, there's no violence, no deceit in his mouth. In other words, he's perfectly holy, perfectly righteous, perfectly sinless. In spite of his sinlessness, The Lord is pleased to crush him, putting him to grief. Not just crush him, but a kind of crushing that is described with a modifying phrase: putting him to grief. In other words, the Lord is doing something to him that is horrific.
Men, of course, are unjustly crushing him. Men are doing the worst that they can do with an unjust trial and brutality and abuse and harassment and punching and slapping and hitting with sticks and crowning with thorns and nailing and piercing. Men are doing the worst that they can do, the worst that sinners can do, and they're pleased to do that. But here God is pleased, and God is delighted to crush him. While men are doing the worst that they can do, at the very same time, God is doing the best that.
He can do. Men are doing the worst that they can do for the sinless one. And God is doing the best that He can do. For sinners. His death is God's work.
He is God's lamb, chosen by God. Acts 2, Acts 4, chosen by the determinate. Counsel of God, the purpose and counsel of God has determined that he will die. It is God who laid on him. The iniquity of us all.
It is God who crushes him. It is God who cuts him. off out of the land. of the living. God, who finds no pleasure in the death of the wicked, as Ezekiel 18 says, finds full pleasure in the death of the righteous one.
He calls him that in verse... 11. The Righteous One. God, who finds no pleasure in the death of sinners, finds full pleasure in the death. of the sinless one.
Now listen carefully. God's delight and God's pleasure in the death of Christ. God's pleasure in crushing him. God's pleasure in putting him to grief. And let me say a word about the phrase, putting him to grief.
It's a very powerful phrase. putting him to grief because it has the idea of making him sick. Not sick with an illness or sick with a disease. But literally, such an excruciating experience as to completely debilitate his entire being. God not only crushes him, In the sense that he Kills him.
But he makes it as excruciating and painful as conceivable or inconceivable. He is Crushed agonizingly. painfully, excruciatingly. And God is doing the crushing.
Now, this is not the death, as some have suggested, of a martyr. This is not the death of a martyr. Martyrs don't die like this.
Now, the physical difficulties are present, whether they are burned at a stake. Killed another way? But if you study the history of martyrs, you find something quite interesting. You can go all the way back to the Fox's Book of Martyrs and read the thousands of accounts of martyrs there. You can study martyrs through the history of the church.
And you will find that martyrs die with songs on their lips. Martyrs die singing. Martyrs die. Testifying. to faith.
In the Lord, martyrs die with hope in their hearts. Martyrs die amazing over the measure of joy. Because martyrs Die, listen, under the sweet comforts of grace. Martyrs die under the sweet comforts of grace. Martyrs die.
With the Holy Spirit coming around. Martyrs die with God's presence palpable. Martyrs die under the sweet comforts of grace. Martyrs die and in dying begin to taste heaven. Because that's Grace.
Our Lord's death was not like that. No. hymns were sung after they left the Passover. No scriptures recited, no comfort. No Holy Spirit.
No father. No. source of comfort. Why? Because Jesus didn't die.
Under the sweet comforts of grace. Jesus died under the relentless and unrelieved terrors of law. Jesus died under divine wrath unmitigated. No comfort. Only divine fury.
Jesus died. Tasting hell. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? No believer ever died like that. And every unbeliever dies like that.
Every believer dies Tasting heaven. Every unbeliever dies. Tasting hell. Jesus died tasting hell. He died the death of an unbeliever.
With no comforts. And no grace. And no mercy. The Jews get it. They have a very rich understanding.
Of The death. of Messiah. But why was God pleased? Why? What was it?
that pleased God. How could God be pleased. Be pleased. With such Agonies. Listen.
God's delight And God's pleasure. in crushing his son. In this way, was not in his pain. But in his purpose. It was not in his agony.
It was in his accomplishment. It was not in his suffering. It was in his salvation. And that's what it says. Why was the Lord pleased?
Why pleased to crush him, putting him to that grief? Literally in Hebrew, because he would render himself as a guilt offering. Because He would give his life to save sinners. It was the outcome that pleased God. Not the pain.
But the pain and the agony. was necessary. He had to die under the full, unmitigated, unrelieved, comfortless realities. of divine law and wrath. The Jews understand it.
He was the guilt offering. He was the guilt offering. Why would they say that? Why would the Holy Spirit put those words down for Isaiah to write? The guilt offering.
I'll tell you why. There were five offerings the Jews gave according to Leviticus when they had their sacrificial system laid out by God. There was the burnt offering, and then there was the grain offering, and the peace offering, and the sin offering, and the guilt offering. And without going into too much detail about it, those that were animal sacrifices were pictures of. The Deadly Results of sin.
that sin produces death, but also they were hopeful in the God would Allow A substitute to die in the sinner's place. And the sacrifice of an animal pictured the fact that God would allow a substitute. It was just that none of those animals were that substitute, they only pointed to the reality that there would be a substitute. But of those where you have animals involved, the burnt offering, the sin offering, and the guilt offering. That final one is the most comprehensive offering, that fifth one, the guilt offering.
It adds a dimension that the others don't have. And I don't want to go into all those details, but it adds a dimension the others don't have. And most all commentators would agree that the characteristic of the guilt offering, or sometimes called the trespass offering, is the same one. It was the offering that added the dimension of Restitution or satisfaction or propitiation, which is a verb that means to be satisfied. It is the last of the offerings in Leviticus in the first seven chapters.
It is an advance from the others. By the way, it was the sin offering and the guilt offering that were the offerings offered every day in the morning and evening sacrifices.
So they had these offerings going all the time. It advanced the notions and ideas in the sin offering. In the sin offering, you had repentance communicated. In the sin offering, you had the recognition of sin bringing death and the hope of a substitute. But in the guilt offering, because the whole animal was put on the altar, There was the picture of completion or complete satisfaction.
Complete satisfaction. And the Jews will see that the offering of Christ. was the guilt offering in the sense that it was the most complete offering. It provided full satisfaction. Full restitution, full propitiation.
The satisfaction of God's justice is demonstrated in the wholeness of that sacrifice. The debt is fully paid. and the sinner-free. How rich is this understanding? He's the guilt offering.
The sacrifice of the servant as the full compensatory payment given to God to satisfy his holy justice and to pay in full the penalty for all the sins of all who would ever believe, those then whose sins are paid will be forgiven. Forever. And John says he's the propitiation for our sins, the guilt offering, the trespass offering that satisfies God. And not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. This is understanding the gospel.
That Christ is the complete satisfaction, the complete sacrifice to which nothing can be added. God is satisfied. That's why God is pleased. pleased to crush him, not because he delighted in the agony. But he delighted in the atonement.
pleased because he was the guilt offering For all believers from Adam to the end. who paid in full. Divine justice. They have a full understanding of the cross. But they don't stop there.
Here's More of their confession. Middle of verse 10, he will see his offspring. He will prolong his days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hand. As a result of the anguish of his soul, he will see and be satisfied. Wait a minute.
He's dead. What's going on here? How can he see his offspring? Prolong his days. Do the work of God in His hand.
See and be satisfied. Would have to be alive, wouldn't he? Have to be alive. This is the confession of the resurrection. And it's in the image of childbirth.
It's just magnificent. He will see his offspring. He will see his posterity. That is future tense.
Now they shift, these Jews, into future tense, the results of what he has done, he will see his offspring. I mean, this is such an obvious uh analogy. And we would all like to see the generations ahead, right? That's why we're so preoccupied with the ones behind. There are whole websites where you can go and check out all the dead people that are in your family.
That's sort of a bad substitute for the fact that you're not going to see the ones in the future. You know, we all say, I'd love to see my children. I'd love to see my children get married. I'd love to see my children's children, my grandchildren. I'd love to see my grandchildren's grandchildren.
I'd love to see where this thing goes. I'd love to see down the path a few generations to see if the faithfulness to the Lord in this generation is sustained. And I'd love to see where the kingdom goes and how the people that have come out of my family fit into the purposes of God in the future. But I'll never see that. They know, I'm blessed in ancient times.
You'd be blessed if you lived after the flood to see a generation or two. I'd be blessed to see my children, my grandchildren. I don't know if I'll see great-grandchildren, certainly, we won't see beyond that. Because I'll be dead.
So If he sees his offspring, if he sees his posterity, he's got to be alive a long time. And he will. He will prolong his days. That's a Hebraism. for long enduring life.
He's alive now.
So here is Romans 10, 9, and 10. They not only believe in the death of Christ, but they. They acknowledge that God raised him from the dead. Here's the resurrection. He will see his posterity.
He will see the generations in the future. He will see all of them. Because he's alive. He's alive. And he would have to be alive, wouldn't he?
To rain To be exalted. I love this in Hebrews 2. Two nine. He was made a little lower than the angels. For the suffering of death.
But we see him crowned with glory and honor. And then verse 10. It was fitting for him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory. Just stop right there. He will see them all.
All the ones he brings to glory, he will see. John 6, he says, All that the Father gives to me will come to me. I'll lose none of them, but raise him at the last day. He will live to see his posterity. He ever lives to see his children.
He will see his bride complete. He will see his flock gathered into glory. He will see his children. An amazing Reality. Yes, he prospers.
That's what it said in verse 13 of 52: my servant will prosper. And here, his prosperity is indicated in the final phrase of verse 10: the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hand. And what is the good pleasure of the Lord? That through crushing him, he saves the elect. He will see it.
Not only will he see it, He will do it. The good pleasure of the Lord will succeed in his hand. All that the Father gives to me will come to me. I will lose none of them. I will raise him up.
The work of Christ. will be complete. God's pleasure is in saving sinners. And to satisfy his pleasure in saving sinners, he had to. Slaughter his son.
But he delights in crushing his son.
so that he can delight in saving sinners. who will forever and ever praise and glorify Him. All this whole salvation, as Ephesians 1 says, is to the praise. of His glory. And they have a final word in their confession.
Verse 11. As a result of the anguish of his soul, He will see. And be satisfied. What will he see? He'll see the plan to its completion.
He will see. the good pleasure of the Lord succeed. He will see his spiritual offspring. He will see the redeemed gathered in God is satisfied by the atoning sacrifice of Christ, and Christ is equally satisfied. By seeing all His children gathered around his throne forever.
The spiritual offspring, the redeemed of all the ages. forever His love, forever his bride, forever his sons and daughters, loving, worshiping, honoring, serving him in his presence in the glories of eternal heaven. And especially Oh, especially. Will he delight? in the salvation of that adulterous wife Israel.
Listen to Isaiah 62. For Zion's sake, I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake, I will not keep quiet. Until her righteousness goes forth like brightness and her salvation like a torch that is burning. The nations will see your righteousness. And all kings, your glory.
And you will be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord will designate. You will also be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. It will no longer be said to you, Forsaken, nor to your land will it any longer be said, desolate. But you will be called, My delight is in her, and your land, married, for the Lord delights in you, and to him your land will be married. For as a young man marries a virgin, so your sons will marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so your God will rejoice over you.
God will rejoice over the salvation of Israel that we're talking about in the future. And so will Christ. And as the result of the anguish of his soul. Literally. He will see.
His spiritual offspring, including Israel. And be fully satisfied. Or another way to translate that: he will enjoy it to the max. The servants full joy And satisfaction comes from providing righteousness, redemption. Forgiveness.
and eternal heaven For his children. What a day that will be. What a day that would be. You're listening to Grace to You with the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. John's current series is called The Gospel According to God.
Well, friend, back to something I mentioned before the lesson: grace to you exists because of men and women like you who support what we do. Thank you for financially standing with us in reaching God's people with biblical truth. To take a tangible role in unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, express your support when you contact us today. You can mail your tax-deductible donation to Grace2U. P.O.
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and our website gty.org.
Now, if you'd like to review any lesson from John's current series, The Gospel According to God, keep in mind that all 10 messages are available in MP3 and transcript format. In fact, all of John MacArthur's sermons, more than 3,600 in all, are available online free of charge. You can tap into all that verse-by-verse teaching when you visit gty.org.
Now for the entire Grace DU staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for joining us today. Remember to watch Grace to U television this Sunday on DirecTV Channel 378. Or you can watch anytime at gty.org. And be back tomorrow as John MacArthur takes you back to the events of Calvary.
Details you can't afford to miss. Tune in for another 30 minutes of Unleashing God's Truth one verse at a time. on Grace to You.
