You are an eternal being and if you are in Jesus Christ think about this, the suffering you experience in this world is the only suffering you will ever know in your entire life. Think about your eternity and what part is seventy eighty ninety hundred years of eternity? Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. I’m David Pick and Colin, it’s good to be reminded to look at life that way, that no matter how difficult life can be, it’s really just a blip on the radar screen of eternity. Yes, it really is and we walk by faith, not by sight, I mean marvellous to know that we are going to be in the presence of Jesus. The challenge of course is we’ve got to walk by faith now and that’s what we’re really focussed on in the message today. So this message is the first in a series we’re calling Restore My Soul and I think this is a really encouraging series, Colin, because we do go through tough times in life and times when our soul really does need to be restored. Yeah and of course Psalm 23 has that really clear – The LORD is my shepherd, he restores my soul. Now that tells me there are times when my soul needs to be restored, when I get so low in terms of my own faith, in terms of my own worship, God doesn’t seem to be near to me and it’s only God himself who’s able to restore me. The good news is that he does, the LORD who’s my shepherd does restore my soul. So this great theme of restoration that we are going to discover in the prophecy of Isaiah is full of hope for every Christian. As you say, we find this message in the book of Isaiah, so join us if you can today in Chapter 53 as we begin the message, Restore Faith. Here’s Colin. I have a great sense of anticipation as we begin this new series in the later chapters of Isaiah the Prophet, under the title, Restore My Soul, Nine Heart Cries For Revival. I found it a helpful thing at the beginning of a new series just to focus personally by asking this question. Colin, what is your prayer for your own life and for the congregation as we begin this nine-week series in the fall? And here’s the answer to that question. I want for all of us to have a deeper and fuller experience of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in our lives. For you to experience what Jesus Christ offers in the gospel more fully in your life. Just last week I was speaking to someone in the congregation here who teaches students preparing for Christian ministry. And she was telling me that she had been teaching a class on the character of God and the students were able to respond very easily to her question about what God is like, quoting scripture about how God is true and good and love and righteous and holy and wise and so forth. And then she asked this question, she said, how have you experienced this character of God in your life? And she said they really struggled. And maybe if you’d been in the class, you might have struggled too. How have you seen the wisdom of God then in your life? How have you experienced the love of God in your life? The righteousness of God in your life? Those who have visited London, will know that the underground the tube, as it’s called over there, is a marvelous system for getting around the great city. It was built in Victorian times. Many of the stations, the platforms are in a straight line, as you would expect them to be. But some, because it was built in Victorian times, are on a curve and so when the train comes in, there is a gap between the edge of the platform and the edge of the train onto which you are about to step, and because there is an obvious hazard that with that, you get this recording that nearly drives you crazy if you go in one of these stations everyday. And you can say it with me, it says, mind the gap. Mind the gap. Mind the gap. And if you go to London you could get a t-shirt that says mind the gap. Now, there is a very great gap that often exists in the lives of Christian people between the faith we profess and the life that we experience. And maybe you would be able to say today, boy, I just would like to tell you about all my experience of the love of God and the wisdom of God, but I think many of us may feel that there’s a gap, and my prayer for this series is that God will very graciously close that gap, and that in His mercy and in His grace, we will experience the gospel more fully in Our lives. Now, this gap between professed faith and the reality of experience was a struggle for God’s people when Isaiah wrote this book about 700 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, so the message of this book is right on target for us today. Just so you know where we are, I have a frame of reference, Isaiah’s ministry lasted about 50 years, from about 740 to 690 BC, and right in the middle of that time, 700 years ago, 122 years before the birth of Jesus, came the first of two great disasters in the story of God’s Old Testament people. The northern kingdom of Samaria where 10 of the tribes lived in the Promised Land, was overrun by the army of Assyria, and if you glance at Isaiah, chapter 52 and verse 4, you’ll see that already the specter, the looming horizon of Assyria, is there. Isaiah says, lately Assyria has oppressed you. And so it was during Isaiah’s ministry that this terrible disaster happened. Ten tribes displaced, repatriated, 10 of the 12 tribes moved out of the Promised Land and that whole vast area of land now subject to a foreign occupying army. Now try to imagine this. In our terms imagine that five out of every six homes in America were destroyed. Five out of every six homes destroyed. Or that in your extended family five out of every six people had been displaced, repatriated and you had no idea where they were now living. And we hear we are gathering on Sunday morning against that kind of background. than 80 percent of the country you love being occupied by a brutal oppressor, the army of Assyria. Well, that’s exactly how it was during the ministry of Isaiah and what God did at that time is that He sent this man, this prophet with a message about Christ and all that Christ would do for these people and indeed all that He has done for them and for us. Now, remember as we think about this, that these people lived 700 years before the birth of Jesus. They never saw Jesus. Just as we lived 2000 years after the birth of Jesus, we’ve never seen Jesus either. And so in a real sense, they and we are in precisely the same position. They live by faith in a Savior who was to come, just as we live by faith in a Savior who has come. We live by faith in a Savior we have not yet seen. Now I’ve called this series, Then Restore My Soul, with the great prayer and passion that God would renew within our hearts experience of all that is ours in Jesus Christ. And this is one of his great promises. Remember David says in Psalm 23. This is where the title comes from. He says, the Lord is my shepherd. Here’s what that means. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters, and say it with me, He restores my soul. Well that’s what we’re looking for Him to do for us, and the way that God restores the soul is by leading you to Jesus Christ. That’s what He did through the ministry of Isaiah 700 years before Jesus was born. And that is what He will do for us through his Word on these Sunday mornings as we gather together. Now the subtitle, just a brief comment on that before we plunge into the passage, Nine Heart Cries For Revival. Boy we’re at a moment in the life of this church, and many of us at a moment personally in our lives, where surely it is a good and a right thing for us to cry out to God that by his breath, by his life, and by his Spirit he would do a new thing in his people, individually and together, that he would give to us a new love for him. Would you join me in praying for that? That he would give for us a new life in him, a new confidence in him, a new joy in him, a new strength that comes to his people from him, and a new kind of obedience towards him. And I cannot think of a better time for us as a community of the Lord’s people to cry out to him to say Lord, do a new work in our hearts, individually and together than right now. So Restore My Soul, 9 Heart Cries for Revival. We’re going to pause the message right there, just for a moment and we’ll be back very shortly. The message is called Restore Faith and it’s the first in our series Restore My Soul based in the book of Isaiah and chapter 53. And if you tuned in late or if you ever missed part of the series, you can always catch up Come to our website openthebible.org.uk and there you can listen to any of the messages which have already gone out on air. Back to the message, now we’re in Isaiah chapter 53. Here’s Colin. Now I hope you have your Bible open at Isaiah chapter 53. One of the best-known passages in the Scripture, this is where we begin our series and I want to summarize the message of this great chapter like this. Isaiah’s message to us here is that Jesus Christ came to redeem you from suffering and from sin forever by sacrificing Himself as your substitute on the cross. Say that one more time that Jesus Christ came to redeem you from suffering and from sin by sacrificing Himself as your substitute on the cross. This is the great message that God brings through Isaiah to these people facing such extraordinarily difficult times. Let’s try and open that up together. Christ came to redeem you from suffering. Verse four, surely He took up our infirmities and He carried our sorrows. Now you might expect that when Isaiah speaks about the death of the Lord Jesus, he would begin with speaking about how Jesus’ death deals with our sin and our guilt. But have you noticed that that’s not where He begins? He starts with our infirmities. That would have to include your migraines, your arthritis, your depression, your cancer. He took up our infirmities. And He carried our sorrows, Isaiah says. That would have to include things like perhaps the division in your family, the loss of your job, the death of your husband, the pain of your past. And what Isaiah is saying to us here is you must understand, as God’s people were going through great suffering then and many of God’s people go through great suffering today, and you must understand that God has not abandoned you to your infirmities or to your sorrows. He has not stayed remote in heaven passively neglecting the pain of your life. No, He came. And when He came, Isaiah says He took up our infirmities and He carried our sorrows. The Lord Jesus Christ will not allow sorrow to be the last word of your life. The Lord Jesus Christ will not allow infirmity to be the last word of your life. He came to redeem you out of all of that into an eternal future of unclouded joy in His immediate presence. And He came to redeem you not only from suffering but also from sin. See, suffering and sin are always wrapped up together in the Bible. They came into the world together, they exist in the world together, and God will bring them out of the world. He will kick them out of the world together. Think about this, what kind of heaven would it be if there was no cancer but there was still human trafficking? What kind of heaven would it be if there was no death but there was still sexual abuse? What kind of heaven would it be if there were people from all over the world redeemed there but it was still divided by racism? In order to have a world that is free from suffering, you have to have human hearts that are set free from sin. You want to get rid of human trafficking, you want to get rid of sexual abuse, you want to get rid of racism, you have to get rid of selfishness, lust and pride that are sins hidden in the human heart. And so because these two are so mixed up together, it makes sense, does it not, that suffering continues, all kinds of suffering continue as long as sin remains and redeeming the world from suffering, which is what Jesus Christ has come to do, must include redeeming the heart from sin. And suffering then will end when sin is defeated. But Jesus Christ has come into the world for that purpose, and Isaiah tells us precisely how he goes about this. He has come to redeem us from suffering and from sin by sacrificing himself as your substitute. In other words, this is very important to understand. When the Lord Jesus was suffering on the cross, he was more than a friend suffering with us, he was a substitute suffering for us. That’s very important. Look at how Isaiah describes it in this amazing verse five. He says he was pierced. Now think about this, Jesus being pierced in his hands and in his feet and in his side. What was all that about? He was pierced for your transgressions. He was crushed, think of Him under the beam of the cross as He carried it, stumbled under it, as His body was scourged. His frame was crushed. What was that all about? It was for your inequities, that is the twistedness of your fallen nature and mine. His punishing, that is the punishment poured out justly due to the sin He was carrying, what was all that about? It was so that you might have peace with God and His wounds. Think about the lacerated back, the thorn-crowned head of the Lord Jesus Christ, these wounds, what were they for? They were so that you should be ultimately, finally, fully, joyfully, and completely healed in the totality of that Word in the joy of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ forever and forever. And this Lord Jesus Christ, He came to redeem you from suffering and for sin, and He did this forever, forever. Now, think about this, because you are an eternal being. And if you are in Jesus Christ, think about this, the suffering you experience in this world is the only suffering you will ever know in your entire life. Think about your eternity. And what part is 70, 80, 90, 100 years of eternity? Whatever pain, whatever sorrow, whatever trial, whatever difficulty you experience in this life is the only taste of suffering you will ever have in all eternity, if you are in Jesus Christ, because He came to redeem you from suffering, and for sin forever, and He did it by sacrificing Himself as a substitute on the cross. Isaiah makes it clear to us that He did this freely, and He did this gladly, counting the joy of your redemption greater than the pain of his own suffering. We see this in verse eleven, after the suffering of his soul, the Lord Jesus will see the light of life, that is a great reference of course to the resurrection, and the risen Lord Jesus Christ will be satisfied. Now remember the Lord Jesus, because He is God and man, He is not limited by time in the way that you and I are. He already sees the future and knows it, which is why He was able to reveal it to John in the book of Revelation. The risen Lord Jesus Christ already knows the joy of looking out over a vast company of redeemed people from every nation and tribe in this world and rejoicing over their joy in His presence. And think of this, He already knows every one of us by name. He already sees you if you are in Christ and rejoices over you as one who is forgiven and one who is healed and one whose sorrows are brought into His everlasting joy, and He counts His own joy in you, now and forever, as greater than all the pain of His suffering, so that when He looks at it all, He is well satisfied with what He has done.’ And this risen Lord, Jesus Christ, lives to bring you into this everlasting joy. Now, all this is the message of hope that Isaiah brought 700 years before Jesus was born. This is what the Savior will do. It says to us, this is what the Savior has done. And if you really take in what he’s saying here, you will realize that, in Jesus Christ, you are more loved than you ever dared to dream. You really are. To be loved this much, that He would have so much joy over redeeming you, that He would count that infinitely worth all the suffering that He endured, that He would love you that much. I tell you, for some of us, being loved that much is going to be pretty scary. You say, my, I don’t know. Do I want to be loved that much? You are loved in Jesus Christ more than you ever dared to dream. And this love, the love of the Savior who offers Himself as a sacrifice for your sins, substituting Himself under the piercing, smashing, punishing and wounding that belonged to us so that we might be liberated, redeemed into peace and healing and brought out of our sorrows and our infirmities into eternal joy forever and ever. This love, this sacrifice, this Jesus is your salvation. And that’s Isaiah’s message. But who believes this? Now I want you to notice that that’s how the chapter begins, with a question and some of us who are very familiar with Isaiah chapter 53 rejoice in what’s been said in these last moments. You could perhaps recite Isaiah 53 by heart. Have you ever noticed the headline? The headline, the banner over the whole chapter is a question. Who believes this? And the most important thing to get about this question is that it is a question that Isaiah the prophet asks of the people of God, the people who bear the Lord’s name. Who has believed our message. He’s asking, if I can put it this way, the church crowd, the folks who profess faith, the folks who have come into difficult times, and he’s saying, I’m asking this question as I open up this doctrine of what the Lord Jesus Christ, who will come as the Messiah, Savior will do. I’m asking, who believes this? And then to make it doubly clear, he asked a second question. Who gets this? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Who really gets the life-changing power of this redeeming work of Jesus Christ? We’re looking at why Christ came to redeem us here on Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and you’ve been listening to the first message in the series called Restore Faith and the series is called Restore My Soul. And if you’ve missed any of today’s broadcast or if you miss any of the series, come online to our website openthebible.org.uk There you can catch up with any of the previously broadcasted messages. Open the Bible is supported entirely by our listeners and if that’s something you’ve been considering doing, then this month we have a great offer for you. If you’re able to set up a new donation to the work of Open the Bible in the amount of £5 per month or more, we’d love to say thank you by sending you a copy of C.H. Spurgeon’s book Encouragement for the Depressed. Colin, who is this book for? Well, this book is really for anyone who is discouraged or going through a dark time, and I can’t imagine that there’s any Christian who doesn’t experience that at some point in life. What’s so striking to me about this book is that it’s written by a man who was known for his extraordinary faith. I mean, the Spirit of God rested on the life and ministry of C.H. Spurgeon, and yet he knew what it was to go through times of extraordinary darkness and even a sense of despair at some points. You know, he suffered from smallpox, gaut, rheumatism, inflammation of the kidneys. And his wife was bedridden for decades. I man really knew what it was to suffer, and yet he found in all of this that he was forced closer to the Lord Jesus Christ. I love what he says. He says, I, I’ve learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the rock of ages. I love that. Kiss the waves that throw me up against the rock of ages. Here’s biblical wisdom, from a man of faith, who knew what it was to really struggle in dark times. And I have found his writing to be wonderfully encouraging, refreshing, and uplifting. And that’s why I’m really grateful that we have the opportunity of getting this book out this month. C.H. Spurgeon’s book Encouragement for the Depressed is our gift to you, if you are able to set up a new donation to the work of Open the Bible this month in the amount of five pounds per month or more. Full details and to give online go to our website at openthebible.org.uk. For Open the Bible and Pastor Colin Smith, I’m David Pick, and I hope you’ll join us again next time. Have you lived in the conscious enjoyment of God’s love this week? Discover the difference that could make your life next time on Open the Bible.