ISAIAH SPEAKING OF CHRIST
Richard J Gray
Isaiah 53: 4-6; 42: 1-4
These scriptures are very well known and very precious. Mr Darby says that chapter 53 of Isaiah should be engraved on the heart of every believer, Synopsis vol 2 p236. It is remarkable to think of Isaiah speaking all these years ago, and prophesying as to the greatness of the Saviour who would come in, and the greatness of the salvation He would accomplish. You really wonder how much Isaiah actually understood the greatness and the far-reaching character of what he was speaking about. Peter refers to that in his epistle, “Concerning which salvation prophets, who have prophesied of the grace towards you, sought out and searched out; searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ which was in them pointed out, testifying before of the sufferings which belonged to Christ, and the glories after these”, 1 Pet 1: 10, 11. I was struck with that, dear hearers, how men in the Old Testament such as Isaiah received such great prophetic light from God. But we are living in a greater day, the day of grace, when God has come out fully into the light; He has come out in Christ. The present day is a day of great opportunity, a great opportunity to be saved. I desire that none here would miss that opportunity.
Verse 6 of this chapter has come particularly before me. We might say that we could have a preaching on each of the verses of this chapter, there is so much wealth and greatness in them; but I was thinking of verse 6. One thing it sets out is our position and what we have done: “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way”. But then the prophet says, “and Jehovah has laid upon him the iniquity of us all”. That is what God has done.
There is what we have contributed; our sins, our distance from God, the fact that we have gone astray, “we have turned every one to his own way”. Speaking very simply, that is not just an accident; it is not only that we have been turned aside and lost our way. I think, if we are honest with ourselves, being sinners involves what we have done deliberately. We have desired to do what we wanted to do. That comes out in very small things as well as great things. We wanted to do our own will; we wanted to do what we felt like doing. And that is what this describes, “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way”.
That is a very serious position to be in, dear hearers. It is not just that you have to answer to your parents, or to your teachers, or others that might be in authority, but we have to answer to God. It is with God that we have to do. So I feel in that way that it is a solemn moment, and it is very important that you understand God’s word and that God is speaking. God desires to have to do with you for your blessing. It is a serious thing to turn that aside or to say that it is not for me, because God is speaking in the glad tidings and He is speaking for your blessing. The beginning of that blessing is to recognise your true position before God. You might say that the excuses come to an end. There is nothing else that you can present before God, but that you are a sinner. You need to have to do with Him about that.
I was thinking about the preaching in the Acts, when the Jews ask Peter about the way in which the lame man had been healed. They ask by what power or what name had Peter done this (Acts 4: 7), and Peter speaks faithfully about “the name of Jesus Christ the Nazaræan” (v 10); and he goes on to say, “And salvation is in none other, for neither is there another name under heaven which is given among men by which we must be saved”, v 12. I say that simply: you must be saved. That is not a question to be put off, or to be left for another day. The gospel preaching is going out today and God desires that you might be saved, that you might have the knowledge of your sins forgiven, and that you might come into the assurance of eternal salvation. He desires that you should come to Christ and that you should find salvation in Him. How simple these words are: “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way”. You might say, ‘Well, do not sheep follow each other? Is not someone else to blame? I will follow someone else’. But no, it says, “we have turned every one to his own way”. That, putting it very simply, is really what sin is, that we have done what we wanted to do. We should have done what God wanted us to do.
How old that question is! It goes right back to the beginning of Genesis. Man at the beginning listened to Satan, and listened to his own desires, and did what he wanted to do, rather than what God had said. And that is the history of the whole world, the history of every one as a sinner. If you read the early chapters of the epistles to the Romans, you see how that downward spiral continued. By getting away from God, what degradation man has got into. We cannot just say that applies to someone else; that is you and me as sinners. We did not think good to have God in our knowledge, Rom 1: 28. The apostle Paul outlines the state and wickedness of man as away from God. But I was impressed that when we come to chapter 3 of Romans, Paul speaks about the righteousness of God being manifested, “righteousness of God by faith of Jesus Christ towards all, and upon all those that believe”, v 22. There is something remarkable in that about our position as sinners. If we are convicted by the hopelessness of the situation and the wickedness of our hearts, we would say: what will God do about it? And we find that He has moved to bring in the answer Himself, not by condemning man but by providing a full and free salvation: “righteousness of God by faith of Jesus Christ towards all, and upon all those who believe”.
Mr Stoney often uses the illustration of a child who has broken a clock and is sent to his room in disgrace until the clock is mended. He asks what could the child possibly do to mend it; where could he begin? He would only damage it further. Then the father says, ‘I will mend the clock myself’. Mr Stoney says that shows two things; one is that the father loves his child and does not desire the distance to continue - he wants the relationship with the child to be restored. And the second thing he says it proves is that, if the father mends the clock, then it will all be done to his own satisfaction. Nobody can say anything against it because the father has mended it, eg JBS vol 6 pp1 and 94. That is only a simple picture, but you think of God seeing the plight of man away from Him and coming in in grace in Christ. What could we do to remove that distance, to come back to God? We could do nothing. We were lost and away from God, and yet God comes in with the answer Himself. It says, “I have laid help upon a mighty one”, Ps 89: 19.
And so the prophet says here that, “Jehovah hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all”. The Lord Jesus has been here, and He has been that suffering way to the cross. He was perfect in Himself, but He went that way for you and me. I would like to appeal to all here, that if you feel your position as a sinner before God, then I would point you to the finished work of our Lord Jesus. There is One who has borne the judgment of God against sin. God has not overlooked anything, and His righteousness has been upheld. Can you say that the Lord Jesus has suffered in your place? It is a very simple but profound soul experience when you come to it that your salvation is not based on what you can do, or anything in yourself, but that you must look to the precious Saviour who has borne the judgment on your account: “Jehovah hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all”. Paul says in Romans, “righteousness of God by faith of Jesus Christ towards all, and upon all those who believe”. So that the work of the Lord Jesus upon the cross has satisfied God’s holy claims as to sin. I feel the need for myself to get a greater sense of that in my soul, that it satisfies God’s claims of righteousness. If it does that, then surely I can be satisfied too. The hymn writer says:
God is satisfied with Jesus,
We are satisfied as well.
(Hymn 410)
Are you satisfied, dear hearer? Are you satisfied in the finished work of our Lord Jesus? It is towards all. It is not limited to the Jews who were under law, but God having come in in Christ must involve the blessing being available to all, without any limitation whatsoever. And then that scripture says that it is “upon all those who believe”. I just want to point you to the Saviour, that you might lay hold by faith of what He has accomplished, and that you might believe, if never before, that He took your place. The judgment has been exhausted, and God is free, because of that finished work on the cross, to come out in blessing towards you. You can be assured that God is towards you in Christ because “Jehovah hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all”. There is no uncertainty about it. And if the Lord Jesus has borne your sins they have been taken away and they do not need to be borne again. I would appeal to all here afresh as to the greatness of what the Lord Jesus has accomplished on the cross, that He has shed His precious blood, and that God can come out in blessing to you as a sinner because of what He has done. The moment is urgent; there is no time to be lost. It is the only Name given whereby we must be saved. I cannot promise you tomorrow; I cannot promise you any more time. Today the gospel message is going out. It is this message to point you to the Saviour and to His precious finished work.
God was prepared to give up that which was so precious to Him. Scripture says, “He who, yea, has not spared his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him grant us all things?”, Rom 8: 32. How that brings out to us the greatness of the love of God, that He was prepared to deliver up His own Son so that you and I might come into blessing. Are you going to turn the word away? It is not the preacher that you are rejecting, but it is God’s word that is coming, and God desires that you might be saved and come into the greatness of the blessings that are in His heart: “how shall he not also with him grant us all things?”. Think of the greatness of the blessings in the gospel: salvation, peace, hope, the gift of the Holy Spirit, a link with the living Man in the glory. How precious these things are. Are they yours?
It has been said, I think, that it is good that there are believers at the gospel preaching because you can see examples of persons who are in the good of the gospel. You might be a young person, and you sit next to others who have happy faces, who are restful in the face of adversity, who are confident as to the future, and you might ask how they can be so certain about those things. Maybe you do not have those things, but you can come into the good of them as you come to Christ and as you come into the gain of all that He has accomplished. You come into it on the basis of repentance. The apostle says, “repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ”, Acts 20: 21. How important that matter is, is it not? We must recognise our true position before God and look away from ourselves to Christ. We must see Him as the Sin-bearer; we must see Him in our place. The greatness and extent of His completed work involved that He went into the grave; it involved His breaking the power of death and that He has been raised and glorified. You can have a link with the precious Saviour risen and glorified. How great the gospel is!
There is so much more that can be said about Isaiah 53 and I am limited in speaking about it, but it is very precious how the prophet prophesies as to the sufferings of the Lord Jesus and His willingness to go that way. It says in verse 11, “He shall see of the fruit of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant instruct many in righteousness; and he shall bear their iniquities”. Think of the great extent, dear hearers, of the work of Christ, the work of redemption. It can include you as you come to Christ: lay hold of the greatness of His precious finished work for yourself.
I read the scripture in chapter 42 of Isaiah simply because the prophet says, “Behold my servant”, and again it is a reference to Christ. God in the glad tidings would point to Christ. We need to look away from ourselves. How important it is to do that initially; we might be weighed down in our need and by our sins. How real these exercises are. We need to get a view of the Lord Jesus, to see where He is now crowned with glory and honour and to see the place that God has given Him because of what He has accomplished. You can see Him there and lay hold of Him by faith. You find that He is available for you as a Saviour. But then Christian exercises continue, and we need to continue to look to Him, to look away from ourselves, to realise that there is nothing in ourselves. As it says in John 3, “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son of man be lifted up”, v 14. That incident in the wilderness with the brazen serpent was towards the end of the wilderness journey. The children of Israel had been through many experiences in the wilderness, but in the type they needed to look to Christ for deliverance. I feel the importance of that for myself, as we go on in our soul history and other deep exercises as to sin in the flesh and as to deliverance and as to walking in the Spirit. All these are important matters. You think of the Lord Jesus lifted up: “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son of man be lifted up”. Have you got a view of Christ in that way, bearing not only the judgment of your sins, but having taken away the whole sinful order of man in the flesh from before God? So that the believer is no longer in Adam, but in Christ. What precious truths these are.
So the prophet says, “Behold my servant whom I uphold, mine elect in whom my soul delighteth!”. As we read those words, I just get the impression that God is not thinking of anyone else; He does not have any other person before Him but Christ. How precious He is to God! I desire that He might be increasingly precious to each one here. May our souls find delight in Christ and may we look to Him for everything and find our soul satisfaction in Him. The reality of these things is experienced in the power of the Holy Spirit. How important that gift is. As you come to Christ by faith, God would desire to give you His Spirit who would be a present link with the precious Saviour in glory. The Lord spoke to the woman in John 4 about the living water. What a remarkable figure that is, the satisfaction and joy that you can have as receiving the Spirit.
These things are available in the glad tidings, and I trust that each of us might come to Christ and see Him at God’s right hand by the eyes of faith and through the Spirit. May each of us have our faith and trust firmly in the Lord Jesus as Saviour and in His precious finished work. He is also able to help us in the spiritual exercises we go through, but we must look to Him. I feel the importance of that; I need to look away from myself and look to Christ. May we find the blessing, the continued blessing and joy in looking on the Lord Jesus where He is, and may we be increased in our appreciation of that precious One. The prophet says, speaking on God’s behalf, “Behold my servant whom I uphold, mine elect in whom my soul delighteth!”. You think of God’s delight in Christ. We too can find our certainty, our joy and our satisfaction in Him.
May it be so increasingly with each one of us.
For His Name’s sake.
Linlithgow
15th May 2022