Sermon Tone Analysis

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.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,

yet he opened not his mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,

so he opened not his mouth.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away;

and as for his generation, who considered

that he was cut off out of the land of the living,

stricken for the transgression of my people?

And they made his grave with the wicked

and with a rich man in his death,

although he had done no violence,

and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;

he has put him to grief;

when his soul makes an offering for sin,

he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;

the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;

by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,

make many to be accounted righteous,

and he shall bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,

and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,

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.

[1]

 

Christ Jesus is our Lord.

The title, “Lord,” sounds somewhat dated or even stale to our ears.

Perhaps we should more properly state that Jesus Christ is our Master.

According to the Word of God, the demonstration of His right to mastery over our lives lies in the fact that He is risen from the dead.

Paul insists that Jesus was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of Holiness by His resurrection from the dead [*Romans 1:4*].

Those words force us to confess a wondrous truth—Jesus our Lord conquered death, rising from the dead.

That He was dead was attested by the Roman soldiers who lanced His side and by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus who removed His body from the cross and provided a hurried burial.

The evidence attests that Jesus gave Himself as a sacrifice because of our helpless condition just as He said He would.

I confess dismay at the lack of contemporary preaching presenting Jesus as the divine sacrifice for mankind’s sin.

I hear multiplied calls to belief in Jesus, and we must indeed believe that He died for our sin and raised for our justification, but knowing that He sacrificed Himself because of our helpless situation leads to belief in Him.

With some reluctance, this past Spring, together with Lynda and some friends, I attended a screening of the movie *The Passion of the Christ*.

The emphasis of the movie was, not surprisingly, the Passion of the Christ.

There was a disturbing degree of liberties with the Gospel accounts—far more than mere artistic licence would demand.

There was also considerable distortion of events, as Mr. Gibson interpreted Scripture through Catholic cultural lens.

Mel Gibson is a devout Catholic, therefore it is not surprising that he emphasised the suffering of Jesus.

The universal icon adorning each Catholic edifice is a crucifix, with Christ forever affixed to the cross.

Contrast that to the emphasis of the Apostolic Faith, which is an empty tomb.

Christ is risen from the dead; He is no longer hanging on the cross.

This emphasis of the movie upon the physical torment Jesus experienced implies in part, expiation of sin through Christ’s physical suffering, laying, no doubt, a foundation for the popish doctrine of Purgatory as a necessary provision to permit man to make expiation for his own sin—if not in full, then certainly in part.

What astonishes me, yea, even appals me, is the apparent lack of theological perspicuity demonstrated among otherwise esteemed and sound evangelical leaders.

Godly men whom I respect in the Faith of Christ Jesus our Lord seem unaware of—or at the very least unconcerned with—the error associated with emphasising the suffering of Christ even as playing down the deliberate sacrifice of Himself because of our sin.

Did Christ suffer?

The answer is self-evident.

Of course He suffered, and no one would deny that physically He suffered most horribly.

However, I must insist that focusing on the physical suffering alone obscures the point of Christ’s sacrifice because of our sin.

Whilst the physical suffering of our Lord must surely have been great, it is not the suffering per se that is emphasised throughout the Word of God, but rather the willingness of His sacrifice because of our helpless condition.

As result of viewing this movie, I am concerned that I have provided inadequate teaching concerning the sacrifice of our Lord.

I am determined to at least provide a more solid foundation for this congregation, presenting yet greater emphasis upon the atonement of Christ our Lord.

In that vein, I invite your attention to the passage chosen for our study this day.

Turn to what must assuredly rank as one of the most powerful books of the Old Testament, the Book of Isaiah.

Why Must Christ Sacrifice Himself?

The *sixth verse* of this marvellous prophecy details the sole reason the Servant of the Lord—Christ our Saviour—must suffer.

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.

The inspired Word declares that we are the cause of His sacrifice.

Our choices and our actions demanded His sacrifice if we were to ever receive relief resulting from our fallen condition.

These words demand that we take the time to remember how we arrived at our current condition and that we recall precisely what that condition is.

Our first parents were created to know God and to walk with God and to enjoy God.

They were placed in a perfect environment and charged to care for the Garden that God had prepared for their enjoyment.

At some point following the Creation of all things, the guardian cherub grew proud and sought to displace God on His throne.

Precipitating rebellion against Holy God, he was cast out of Heaven together with one third of the angels.

Cast to the earth, He seduced our first mother and she was deceived.

She was led into rebellion against the command of God.

Her husband, our first father, however, chose to rebel against God’s will and thus plunged the race into ruin.

Death now reigned where life had previously prevailed.

Entropy defined all systems ensuring that the whole of creation would move inevitably toward destruction.

Decay became the fate for all living entities and corrosion defiled all materials.

Man was separated from God and from conception he began an inexorable march toward death.

Though the Spirit of God would call man to remember His Creator, entire societies and whole cultures would ever after move ever further from God; and man himself was suddenly thrown into the situation where he was utterly incapable of pleasing God.

This is what Isaiah is speaking of when he says,

 

All we like sheep have gone astray;

we have turned every one to his own way.

We are utterly helpless to change our condition.

We are utterly incapable of seeking God in our own strength.

We may be religious, but we always seek to establish our own righteousness instead of seeking the righteousness of God.

We are hopelessly lost as we become captives to urges and drives that are not only beyond our capacity to resist, but too often we are even unaware that we are surrendered to those very drives.

The Psalmist has pointedly defined our condition in his pitiful confession:

 

Indeed, I was guilty [when I] was born;