Word of Salvation – Vol.45 No.07 – February 2000

 

Amazed By Grace

 

A LENT Sermon by Rev. P. Kossen on Isaiah 52:13-15

Scripture Readings: Philippians 2:1-12; Isaiah 52:13-53:12

Suggested Hymns: BoW 180; 98a; 300; 404; 445; 528

 

Brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ, boys and girls.

Have you ever been lost?  I remember when I was young I got lost once.  Our family went to a friend’s house, and I went for a walk.  And I kept on walking.  And I didn’t know the way back home.  When that happens, how do you think your mum and dad feel?  How far do you think they would go to find you?  Mine were sick with worry and eventually rang the police.  And the policeman said, “Don’t worry, he’s sitting here eating ice-cream.”

I know a mother whose son ran away from home once.  His mother looked for him for twenty years.  Every day she would be looking at every face who walked past, hoping to find her son.  And after twenty years, when she had given up all hope of seeing him again, he came home for Christmas.  How do you think his mother reacted?  Do you think she was happy?

There is nothing harder than when parents and children don’t see each other anymore.  I know mums and dads who have said, “I have lost my children.”  They are struck with sadness.  And they would give anything to have their children back again.  Who can understand a parent’s pain when their children push them away; when they don’t understand their parents; when they even hate them, and don’t even know anymore what they are really like?  What I want to look at today is how far parents would go to find their lost children.

Our text, boys and girls, is from the book of Isaiah, and in this part of the book, there are a group of songs, which we call, the servant songs.  And our text today, and over the next weeks leading to Easter, is from, the Fourth Servant Song.  These songs, while they point in the first place to someone who would deliver Israel from the Babylonian captivity, point above all to Jesus.  We read Isaiah 53 before.  And as we did so, could we not see so clearly, that this chapter points directly to the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ?

In this fourth servant song, we have our majestic eternal Father in heaven showing us how far He would go for us.  I think again of all those terrible cries of fathers, crying for their children, my child, where are you, in words of emotional pain.  But none of this can equal that horrible cry from heaven: “Adam, where are you?”  Or, the cry of anguish at the time of the flood, when God saw how far his children had gone, and his heart was filled with pain.

We don’t often think of God crying, do we boys and girls?  Do you know why?  We don’t know Him well enough.  Our picture of God is sometimes so far away.  But remember Jesus, when He wept over Jerusalem because He wanted to gather them, but they didn’t want Him?  Or God shaking his head at His people in Ezekiel, “O Israel my child, why will you die?  Why not turn to me, and live?”

Have you ever thought, brothers and sisters, that it is maybe precisely because we are made in God’s image that we also feel the pain of lost children.  Have you ever heard of a dog crying for its pups twenty years later?  No, it is we who are made in God’s image.  But our pain is only creaturely pain, only a small glimpse into the infinite pain of our heavenly Father over a creation which doesn’t know Him and want Him anymore.  In our text today, we are seeing how far our heavenly Father will go to draw us back.

To understand our passage, I want to look at some of the main verbs.  In verse 13, first you find two verbs, the Servant will act wisely, and then, be highly exalted.  I will come back to them in a moment.  The first verb I want to look at is in verse 14: ‘appalled’.  God is talking here about Jesus, in his suffering, and he says that first of all, when men saw Jesus and the depth of his humiliation, it appalled them.

Do you know what that means, boys and girls?  It horrified them.  They saw something really horrible, gruesome, awful, and it made them sick.  And why was this picture of the suffering Jesus so sickening?  Well, the picture is described for us.  “His appearance was so disfigured, beyond that of any man, and his form was marred, or twisted, beyond human appearance.”  So great was Jesus’ suffering, that just looking at Him made men sick.  It was gruesome.

But for now, we are just looking at how men reacted to Him.  It was the most appalling horrible thing they had ever seen.  It turned them away in horror.

That, however, was not the end of it.  In verse 15, you find another verb.  In the NIV it reads ‘sprinkle’.  (He will sprinkle many nations.)  But I want you to look at the text note, and there you find that another translation says, “Many will marvel at Him.”  And the word seems to come from a Hebrew word, meaning, ‘to spring up’, ‘to startle‘, ‘to cause to leap up’.  And in the whole context, I think this is the better translation.

You see there is a deliberate contrast in these two verses.  First of all, in verse 14, they see Him and are appalled at Him.  But then all of a sudden in verse 15, all of a sudden, it astounds them, astonishes them, staggers them, startles them, utterly amazes them.  First of all they are appalled, but all of a sudden, many nations marvel at Him, and kings also all of a sudden, shut their mouths because of Him.

Perhaps a good way to illustrate it, boys and girls, is with the picture of the most horrible, ugliest toad you have ever seen, turning into the most amazingly beautiful princess.  First the thing horrifies you by its ugliness, but then when it is transformed before your eyes, it takes your breath completely away so that you have nothing to say; it is so beautiful, beyond words.  As so it is with Jesus.  First He utterly, completely appalled them, but then as they continued to look, all of a sudden, they were amazed and startled, and the kings of the earth, were stunned into an awesome silence.

And that leads us to the final verb of our passage.  What changed men’s opinions about the Lord Jesus Christ?  How did they move from horror into awesome silence?  It was, in verse 15, that they ‘understood’.  You read there, “For what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand.”  What was it they understood?

They understood that this horrible, gruesome, suffering servant was, not just some man, not just some criminal dragged from the streets, but that this was our Eternal, Majestic, Father in Heaven Himself, showing us how far He would go for us.

Again, fathers, how far would you go for your children?  In the words of Philippians 2, Jesus, our God, laid aside the robes of His Majesty, He made Himself nothing, into a servant.  The Word through whom all things were made, was Himself made in human likeness.  And not only did He simply come to identify with us.  He also submitted Himself to complete obedience, to a gruesome death on a cross.  This is our Father in heaven, showing the full extent of His love for His creatures, gone astray.  When we understand Who the suffering servant is, we must also stop our mouths in the silence of awe.

And may we all understand this today.  So often we can make God into the God out there who doesn’t care, who is distant from His creation, who is indifferent to human pain and suffering, who couldn’t care less about the world.  We make Him into an impersonal force, into a monster.  We can box Him up with all our theological distinctions, and rob Him of His Being, His Personality, His Feeling, His Emotion, His Glory.

But do you want to know what your God is really like, behind all the theological jargon?  If we could enter right now into the highest place, where God lives, the Throne Room of the Universe, exalted there in the highest place, we would see Jesus.  We would see Him in the fullness of His Glory and Majesty and Power.  We would see Him as the Almighty Creator through whom all things were made.  We would see Him as the Sovereign Ruler over the universe.  We would see Him with all things placed under His feet, and exalted to the highest place.  And we would wish to cringe away from such a Glorious being.

But then, we see also, still now, in His hands, the holes of the nails; the evidence of how far He came down in order to demonstrate, not His power, but His love, and grace, and compassion, and faithfulness.  Remember that scene in Revelation 1, where John in vision saw the risen ruling Lord.  John, who at one time had leaned tenderly on Jesus’ breast, now sees Jesus in all His Glory.  “Who is He!?!”  And in the light of that splendour he fell at his feet as though dead.  And Jesus said, “Do not be afraid.  It is I, John.  I am the First and the Last.  I am the Living One.  I was dead, and behold I am alive, forever and ever.  And I hold the keys of death and Hades.” Utterly amazing words.  God the Living One, saying, I was dead.  But the very point of His death was so that He might purchase the keys of death and Hades, to have the power to release us from the penalty and power of our sins.

He is the Lamb upon the Throne.  The servant, in the words of verse 13 of Isaiah 52, has acted wisely, doing the will of God.  And He is now raised and lifted and highly exalted.  And not one of his running away children can say anymore, “God, we don’t know you.  We don’t know what you are like.”  For He is saying, “My creatures, don’t you know Me anymore?  Here I am.  Here is your God in the exalted Jesus Christ.  No greater love does a man have, than he lay down his life for his friends.  And I have shown you, the full extent of my love, by becoming your servant, washing your feet, being humiliated beyond belief, being crucified on a cross, to take away your sins.  Don’t say that you don’t know Me!!”  I have come to you in My Son Jesus Christ, and I cannot tell you anymore clearly who I am than I have done in Jesus Christ.  I am the Word of God made flesh.  I am the Image of the Invisible God.  All the fullness of the Godhead lives in Me.  And I have come into the world to turn myself inside out, to show you my very heart, to show you the full extent of My love.  I have come to show you Who I am.  Do not push your Father in heaven away.  Here I am.  Return to Me, My children!!!  It is finished.  It is done.  I have redeemed you.  Do not ignore Me any longer.”

Let us remember that Jesus also said, “…when I am lifted up, I will draw all men unto Myself.”  Yes, first, when we hear the message of the Gospel, we too may be appalled.  But when we understand, the cry of our Father in heaven, and when we come to see Him in all His fullness, as the Father of the prodigal, watching and waiting for His son to come home, then we can no longer ignore Him.  We must come running home to our big hearted Father, or join the rest of His persecutors and spit in the face of the Christ on the cross.  Seeing Him, you must choose.  But what choice is there?  If God lifts the curtains from your heart, and you truly understand the terrible, beautiful message of the cross and the full extent of the Father’s love, and the full and free gift of forgiveness, acceptance and eternal life, this grace must irresistibly draw you to itself.  Grace is irresistible.  No man can see the incredible Beauty of the Lord, and walk away.

I want you to go away today thinking about the love which parents have for their children.  Your love for your children.  And boys and girls, the love your parents have for you.  Let us think of the pain which rebellion causes us.  Let us think how gladly we welcome our repentant children home with open arms.  And if you, as sinners, treat your children like this, how can you think any less of God?  Is He not, the original Father?  Are we not just image bearers of Him?  Are not our emotions and feelings and noblest actions just a little copy of what lives in Him?

Maybe today you are not living in a good relationship with your Father?  Come Home!!!  Maybe today you have pushed God away into the realm of a God who doesn’t care?  Come Home!!!  Maybe you have lost, or perhaps have never known what it is to have a good, personal, living relationship with your Father in heaven?  Come Home!!!  Maybe today you are causing your Father a lot of pain by your hard hearted rebelliousness?  If that is you, will you not come home today, to the Father of your soul?  May we not be slow to understand everything that the Bible says.

And if you are slow to understand, then today, I invite you to join the disciple Thomas.  When he heard that Jesus had risen, he refused to believe, until he had put his fingers in the holes in Jesus’ hands.  The next Sunday Jesus came again, and held out his hands, and said to Thomas, “put your fingers in the holes.  Put your hand in my side.  Believe.”  If you think God doesn’t care, by faith rise up to the heavenly places.  And when you put your fingers in the holes of the hands of the Risen Ruling Lord of the Universe, and when you finally understand, you also will fall down with tears over the slowness of your heart to understand the Truth about your Father in Heaven, and over the many arrows of pain you have directed into His fatherly heart.  And you, too, will bow before Him: “My Lord and My God.”  And when you have found your home with Him again, in His Glorious Gracious Presence, you shall know again the power of forgiveness, and eternal joy.  As Jesus Himself said.  “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet, believe.”

Amen.