Now, one thing that’s very important for us to learn here is that it is possible to believe in God and be completely mistaken about Jesus. You’re listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. I’m David Pigg, and today we’re going to continue looking at Isaiah chapter 53. Colin, perhaps we can start today by reading verse 4. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we consider him stricken by God, smitten and afflicted. So, here are people who believe in God, and yet they’ve come to a completely wrong conclusion in regards to Jesus. They assumed that in his dying on the cross, that he was actually being placed under the discipline and the judgment of God for his own sins. That he actually, in some way, had defied God, grieved God, offended God. And what we’re going to see is that God himself reveals what was actually happening at the cross. And this, to me, is one of the most wonderful verses in all of the Bible. We read these words, he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed, but you see, it was for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. Well, there couldn’t be a more wonderful verse of scripture for us to ponder together today as we open the Bible. May God give us understanding and light that we may see the glory of what Jesus Christ has done for us through his death on the cross. Let’s get ready to hear that message, substitution. Here’s Colin. Well, please open your Bible again to Isaiah and chapter 53. We are seeing that the whole of this marvelous chapter is about Jesus Christ and all that he has accomplished. And last time we saw that the verses we’re looking at, verses 4 to 6, take us to the very heart of what the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross. Why did Jesus die on the cross? Well, we saw there are many ways in which you can answer that question. The first answer that might be given is, well, so that we are forgiven, and that’s wonderfully, wonderfully true. But why does God want to forgive our sins? Why does he reconcile us to himself? What’s the ultimate purpose behind all of this? And the answer of the Bible we’ve seen is that God, in his great mercy, is committed to a complete restoration of everything that has been lost by the entrance of sin into the world. That is why the Bible story ends with a new creation where God will be with his people, where death and mourning and crying and pain will be gone forever, and God himself will wipe away every tear from our eyes. Now, this is the glorious future that lies ahead of every Christian believer. This is why a Christian always has hope. And the darker the world around us becomes, the more bright this glorious hope shines. Now, Isaiah points, as we saw last time, to this new world in verse 4. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. And we saw that griefs and sorrows are the effects of sin entering into the world. And the great purpose of God is to bring us into a glorious new world where griefs and sorrows will be no more. Now, in order to deal with the effects of sin, which is the focus of verse 4, Jesus clearly had to deal with sin itself. And that is the amazing subject of verse 5 that we are looking at together today. We’re going to pick up where we left off last time in the middle of verse 4. We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But, verse 5, he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds we are healed. Now, these verses show a very stark contrast between what we think, on the one hand, and what God says. Do you notice that at the end of verse 4, Isaiah describes our misconception regarding the death of Jesus? And then in verse 5, he describes God’s revelation regarding the death of Jesus. Notice our misconception. We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. Now, at this point, very obviously, Isaiah is speaking about those who do not believe. That, after all, is where the chapter begins. Verse 1, who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? This, of course, is how people responded when Jesus came into the world. We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God. This was the view when Jesus died on the cross. God is smiting him. God is punishing him. God is bringing justice to him. That’s what people thought when Jesus was on the cross. We esteemed him stricken. Now, this word, esteemed, is a word that we saw before in verse 3. Remember, it’s the accounting word. It belongs to the world, in other words, of the balance sheet. And it involves making a calculation. So, what’s being said here is, here are people who are saying, we’ve done a calculation, and we’ve figured that it’s God who struck him. It’s God who smote him. It’s God who afflicted him. We figured that God had no place for him, and so neither do we. And, of course, when you read the story of the crucifixion in the Gospels, you see that this is exactly what happened. Matthew records how the crowds actually taunted Jesus as he was hanging on the cross. He trusts in God. Well, let God deliver him now if he desires him, for he said, I am the son of God. Now, you see what they’re saying. This man has claimed to be the son of God, but look at him now. Well, clearly, God doesn’t want him. God won’t have anything to do with him. They’re saying, if he really was God’s son, God could come down and deliver him. But it doesn’t look as if that’s going to happen. So, when they looked at Jesus hanging on the cross, they figured that he was getting what he deserved, that God was afflicting him, that God was smiting him, that God was bringing to him justice for all of his own sins and his own blasphemies. That’s what they thought. Now, one thing that’s very important for us to learn here is that it is possible to believe in God and be completely mistaken about Jesus. Remember that Isaiah is speaking here to people who believed in God. These people are not secularists, and they certainly were not atheists. They believed in God, and the God they believed in was God. And the God they believed in is the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. They believed in God, but they were completely mistaken about Jesus. We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. We thought that he was pierced for his own transgressions. We thought that he was crushed for his own iniquities. That was our misconception. That’s what Isaiah is saying here in verse 4. But now, here is God’s revelation. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. Now, do you see that in this verse, God is telling us very clearly what happened at the cross? And what God tells us here can be summed up in a single word, and that word would be substitution. We all know what this looks like. Your sports team, pick any sport, your team is doing its best, but things are not going very well. And then one of the players gets injured, and she’s not able to continue. So she comes off the field, and the coach sends on the substitute, and the substitute plays in the place of the injured player. Now, what Isaiah is telling us here is that that is what happened when Jesus suffered and died on the cross. He took our place. He came on for us. He became our substitute. And what that means at its very heart is that the punishment that would have been on us the punishment that was ours for our transgressions and for our iniquities, it was on him. And Isaiah says, this is how God heals us, and this is how God brings us peace. Now, there is a very great irony in these words here. The people in Jesus’ day thought that God had no place for him. No place for him. They thought that God was punishing him for his sins, that God was smiting him for his iniquities. God struck him. God smote him. God afflicted him. And you know what? In a profound sense, they were right. God did strike him. God did smite him. God did afflict him. But it was not for his transgressions. It was for ours. It was not for his iniquities. It was for ours. Now, friends, this amazing truth at the very heart of the gospel that Jesus Christ became the substitute for us, it’s a truth that could only be known by revelation. Nobody could ever work this out by observation or by intuition. If you had stood beside the cross when the Lord Jesus Christ was suffering and dying there, you would not have said, ah, I see what is happening. Jesus is dying as the substitute for my sins. No, the only way that we could ever know this is if God were to tell us, and that’s exactly what he does right here in this verse that’s before us. Jesus purchased our restoration and he did it by substitution. God’s telling us what his son would accomplish when he died on the cross. You’re listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and our message, Substitution, part of our larger series, The Gospel According to Isaiah. And if you ever miss one of our messages, you can always go online and catch up, go back or listen again. Go to openthebible.org.uk. You can also find our messages as podcasts. Go to your favorite podcast site and search for Open the Bible UK. Look for the purple logo. Whether you listen online or to the podcast, it’s only possible for Open the Bible to bring you these messages because of the support of our listeners. That’s people just like you. And if you feel that’s something you’d like to do, we have an offer for you this month. In return for starting a new donation to the work of Open the Bible in the amount of £5 per month or more, we’d love to send you a copy of a book. The book’s called Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, and it’s by J.I. Packer. In this book, the author describes what God does in salvation and what he calls us to do. He talks about the sovereignty of God and how that’s the biggest possible incentive for sharing the gospel with others. We’d love to send you a copy of the book if you’re able to begin a new donation to the work of Open the Bible in the amount of £5 per month or more. Full details on our website. That’s openthebible.org.uk. Now back to the message, substitution. Here’s Colin. Now in this wonderful verse that we’re focusing in on today, God himself reveals why it is that Jesus had to suffer. He points to all that Jesus endured as he suffered. And then he tells us what comes to us wonderfully as a result of all that Jesus suffered. So let’s begin here with why Jesus suffered. And do you notice that there is in this verse a fourfold description of the human condition? First, we learn here that we are defiant. Notice he was pierced for our transgressions. And transgressions, very simply, are deliberate, willful floutings of God’s law. We want to be our own God. We want to decide what is right and what is wrong for ourselves. We resist the right of God to rule over us. We think that God owes us, that somehow he exists to serve us, to give us the life that we want, and woe to God if he does not do as we want him to do. Now maybe you’re asking at this moment, is that really true of me? Am I really defiant towards God? Is there anything that’s defiant towards God in me? And the answer to that question is, absolutely there is. That is why it is so hard for us to live a holy life. The desires of the flesh, the Bible says, are against the desires of the spirit. Our flesh is defiant towards God, always has been, and always will be. And that’s only the beginning, because not only are we defiant, in this verse we see that we are by nature twisted. He was crushed for our iniquities. Now the word iniquity has the meaning of twisted. And again, you may be asking at this point, well, is this really true of me? Well, let me ask you, don’t you know what it is for a cutting word suddenly to come into your conversation? It’s out of your mouth before you knew it, and then you find yourself saying, where did that come from? And why is it, for example, that we often find it so difficult to remember good things, and so hard to forget bad things? Why do you do things that you know you shouldn’t do? Why do you not do the things that you know you should do? There’s only one explanation, sin has twisted the human heart. And as an old prayer puts it, we do what we ought not to do, we do not do what we should do, and there is no health in us. So this verse is laying out the human problem, the human condition. What is it? We’re defiant towards God, that’s our transgressions. We’re twisted in our very nature, that’s our iniquities. Thirdly, we are guilty. Notice the chastisement that brought us peace was on him. Now, that word chastisement, or punishment, really tells us that our transgressions, our iniquities, bring a consequence. And what is the consequence of our transgressions and our iniquities? Well, the Bible says the wages of sin is death. And after death comes the judgment. We are all guilty before God, that’s what this verse is telling us. There’s a sentence hanging over us, the wages of sin is death. The fact that we all die is the ultimate proof that we are all sinners. Sooner or later, we all get our wages, we all get what we have earned. And then, fourthly, do you see here, we are wounded. With his wounds, we are healed. Now, of course, Isaiah is speaking here about the wounds of Jesus, rather than ours. But notice that he says that by Jesus’ wounds, we are healed. Now, a person who is healed is, by definition, a person who has been wounded. You remember that the Lord Jesus told a story about a man who was walking on a dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers who stripped him, and they beat him, and they left him, Jesus said, half dead. Picture this man lying, beaten, and bruised in the road. Now, that’s a picture of our spiritual condition. Sin has robbed us. Sin has beaten us up. Sin has left us wounded, lying in the road. Sin’s assault on us has led us to believe the wrong things, to love the wrong things, to desire the wrong things. We’re beaten, we’re bruised, we’re lying in the road, we don’t know what’s going on. We’re beaten, we’re bruised, we’re lying in the road, we don’t have the strength to get up and to pursue the will of God. So, here you have, in this one verse, a remarkable fourfold description of the human condition. What is it? We’re wounded, and we are guilty before God. We are twisted by nature, and we are defiant. And Isaiah says, this is why Jesus had to suffer. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds, we are healed. You’ve been listening to Pastor Colin Smith on Open the Bible, and we’ve been looking at why Jesus suffered on today’s broadcast. Next time, we’ll look at what Jesus suffered and what was accomplished by his suffering. So, I hope you’ll be able to join us for that. The message today was called Substitution, part of our series, The Gospel According to Isaiah, looking at the way in which the book of Isaiah prophesied the life and work of Jesus. If you ever miss any of our messages, you can always go online. You can go back and listen to any of the previously broadcast messages. Go to openthebible.org.uk. You can also find the messages as a podcast. Go to your favourite podcasting site and search for Open the Bible UK. Look for the purple banner. If you subscribe to the podcast, you’ll receive regular updates. On our website, openthebible.org.uk, you can also find Open the Bible Daily. This is a series of short two or three minute reflections written by Pastor Colin Smith and read by Sue McLeish. There’s a new one every day on the website and you can also find them as podcasts. Again, search for Open the Bible UK and then look for Open the Bible Daily. Open the Bible is supported by our listeners and we want to thank you for that. If you’re able this month to set up a new donation in the amount of £5 or more, we’d love to send you a free gift. It’s a book by J.I. Packer entitled Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. So Colin, the book is about evangelism and God’s sovereignty, but why is this book so important? Well, it has been very important in my life. I read it first many years ago and the mark of a good book in my view is it’s one you keep going back to and this is one that I do keep going back to because Packer speaks so clearly about this really important issue of evangelism and the sovereignty of God. And the issue is simply this, that the Bible quite clearly proclaims that God has done more than make salvation possible. God actually saves people. Salvation is of the Lord and that’s the sovereignty of God. God saves and believers know this by instinct that though I have made a decision to follow Christ, God somehow laid hold of me and has wonderfully turned my life around. But of course, the question that then arises is, well, if it’s God who saves, then why don’t we just leave him to do it? And of course, that would cut out evangelism altogether. So how does our responsibility to share the gospel with people who don’t yet believe relate to the wonderful truth that God is in the business of saving people? Evangelism and the sovereignty of God Packer’s book helped me on seeing how these things don’t fight each other. They actually complement each other and they hold together very wonderfully. It’s beautifully written. It’s very clear. And I’m really excited that we’re able to share this with folks who listen to the programme. If you find it a tenth as helpful as I’ve found it, you will be greatly blessed. Well, we’d love to send you a copy of this book if you’re able to set up a new donation to the work of Open the Bible this month in the amount of £5 or more per month. You’ll be joining many other listeners who are supporting the work that we do, both online and on the radio. Full details of the offer on our website, openthebible.org.uk. For Open the Bible and Pastor Colin Smith, I’m David Pig, and I very much hope you’ll be able to join us again soon. The Bible tells us that Jesus’ death on the cross was a demonstration of his love for us. Find out how next time on Open the Bible.