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| Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted (Isaiah 52: 13- 53:12) |
| Written by Pastor Fausel | |
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God’s Mercy and Grace be upon us all this day … in the name of Christ, the Crucified. Amen. We all know the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Each one written with a slightly different perspective. Each one somewhat unique in content …but all four of them contain detailed accounts of the events of this Day, Good Friday. But there is another book that describes these events … it’s often referred to as the Fifth Gospel. And that’s the Old Testament Book of the Prophet Isaiah. The reading which we heard from that Book at the beginning of our service today sounds like Isaiah was as much an eye-witness to Jesus’ crucifixion as the disciples themselves. And yet Isaiah penned his words about 600 years before the events of Good Friday actually occurred. We hear these again: Who has believed what they heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. I think if I had been Isaiah… and had seen that vision which he described… or however the Lord revealed those words to him… I think I would have shuddered to my core having written them. As we read those words … it’s as if Isaiah were standing beneath the cross … describing the torture Jesus was enduring on Good Friday and interpreting the meaning for us as well. His words reflect an objectivity that the disciples could not have had that day … and a sense of assurance that the Son of Man was going the way that God had intended. The point that Isaiah was making is that you and I are the ones who deserve to be stricken, smitten and afflicted by God, not Jesus. Why? Because truly, we like sheep have gone astray, we have chosen time and time again to go our own way … to Reject God as the ruler of our hearts and our lives. To do so, to live that way, is to live in iniquity. A state which we cannot make up for … nor free ourselves from. God had to fix it. He would have to take our iniquity upon Himself. And to do so, He had to become one of us; a human being that could experience physical death as we do. That’s what Isaiah was prophesying even to the people of His day … because in His day, God was about to bring His judgment for sin upon the City of Jerusalem. And yet, God’s punishment of His people like this couldn’t go on. The Old Testament people of God kept finding themselves in a cycle that repeated time and time again … Faithfulness of the people followed by apathy … followed by unfaithfulness… followed by their rejection of God’s call to repentance … and then, finally … God’s Judgment. A faithful and repentant remnant would remain. But the cycle would only begin again. Leading to another cataclysmic act of God’s Judgment on the people’s iniquity. Jesus was the suffering servant that would take God’s Judgment for sin on Himself, once and for all … However, God’s judgment for those who rejected His solution to mankind’s sin embodied in Jesus would find His judgment on them still remained. And so, as Jesus is carrying his cross to Calvary … He warns the women following Him not to grieve for Him, but to grieve for themselves and for their children … For in about a generation, the Romans, who were willing to execute Jesus to appease the Jewish leaders while the wood was green … would turn around and take care of the rebellious Jews in 70 AD by burning Jerusalem to the ground … when the wood was dry. Jesus was prophesying God’s act of Judgment upon all those who would rejected His Christ … the one God sent to bear the iniquity of all who would receive Him by faith. As Isaiah wrote: [Because] he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.. God, we will find, accepted Jesus’ pouring out of His Soul unto death. That we’ll see on Easter morning. But the text concludes with these very comforting words. “He bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors.” Jesus began praying for you and me on the Cross, as he said, “Father for give them, for they know not what they do.” For as certain as we live and breathe, even as we try to do our best to live in God’s will… We sin … and one sin, however how small, however how slight a sin of omission, would be sin enough, iniquity enough, to sentence us to being stricken, smitten, and afflicted by God … for as we fail in keeping that one point of the Law … we are judged guilty of breaking it all. In truth, … we know not what we do. And so, in our ignorance … as well as in our selfishness… we nail Jesus to the Cross. But there, He, out of Love, gives His body to the affliction and suffering we deserve … all the while, praying to His Father for our forgiveness. He indeed still makes intercession for us … the Transgressors. And in Him, through His wounds, we are healed. We have been made, now, His friends forever. And so we call this day, “Good Friday.” Amen. Let us continue by singing the hymn. |