Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Sin-Bearer

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

If you’re reading through the book of Isaiah, you get to this passage and you’re shocked. Up until now, Isaiah indicates that God’s going to send a great king to put things right in the world. Then Isaiah starts talking about a servant. But then, here in chapter 52 and 53, he says this person has no majesty. He has no majesty? Well, who is this?  It’s surprising and it’s shocking. It subverts every human category of thought about salvation.  Let’s look at three ways in which it’s so surprising, and see what this teaches about the salvation Jesus Christ brings. Let’s notice 1) the ordinariness, 2) the violence, and 3) the vicariousness. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 21, 2016. Series: Bible: What We Are Receiving: The Gospel Goods. Scripture: Isaiah 52:13-53:12. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel and Life. This may sound strange at first, but in many ways Jesus is an upside down Savior. He came not in strength, but in weakness. He came not to gain power, but to give away power. As a teacher then, he spoke in a way that turned people's expectations on their heads, calling people to lose their lives to gain them, to die to themselves so they can truly live. Some of his teachings can be difficult to understand or accept. Today Tim Keller is teaching through one of the hard sayings of Jesus, showing us that while Christ's teachings aren't always easy,

they provide the answers to having a meaningful life and a relationship with him. After you listen, please take a few seconds to rate and review our podcast. Your review can help others to discover our podcast and experience the hope of the Gospel. Now, here's today's teaching from Dr. Keller. Our reading from the book of Isaiah, chapter 52, verse 13, through chapter 53, verse 12. See, my servant will act wisely. He will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. Just as there were many who were appalled at him,

his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness. So he will sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him. For what they were told, they will see, and for what they have not heard, they will understand. Who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before Him like a tender chute, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract

us to Him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering and familiar with pain, like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him,

and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before it shears his silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away, yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living, for the transgression of my people he was punished.

He was assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and calls him to suffer. And though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied. By his knowledge, my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong,

because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors, for he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. The word of the Lord. session for the transgressors. The word of the Lord. So as Jeff just mentioned in the coming weeks, we're gonna be looking at Redeemer's mission

in the city over the next few years. We're finishing a sermon series today that has been looking at the gospel, the goods of the gospel, the benefits the gospel brings to us. And tonight we're looking at the final passage that we're going to look at it explains how we get all these great gospel goods, how the salvation is accomplished, and the only way to look at Isaiah 53, a passage so important, so crucial to the Bible, the whole Bible, so deep and profound,

but the only way for me to lay this out in front of you is to use simplicity. In some ways it's deeper than the universe, but in other ways, it's a fairly simple passage. And so I'm just going to lay out simply what it teaches, and then at least briefly give you a panoramic view of how this radically shapes every area of your life. But if you're reading through the book of Isaiah, and you get this passage, you're shocked because up until now, Isaiah has been indicating that God was going to send a king to put things right in the world. A great king, a majestic king, a powerful king was going to put everything right. And now, starting in chapter 42,

Isaiah started talking about a servant, God's servant. And when you read that, you say, okay, well, maybe that's the king. But then you get here. He is no majesty. He has no majesty. Well, who is this? Could this be the king? So when you read through this, if you're reading through the book of Isaiah, and you get here, you're confused.

It's surprising and it's shocking. It actually is. It's a surprising shocking passage. It actually subverts every human category of thought about salvation. So let's just take a look at the three ways in which it is so surprising. And we'll just simply draw out the implications and see what this teaches us about the salvation

that Jesus Christ brings us. You know, Jesus himself in Luke chapter 22 verse 37, on the night before he died, pointed to this passage and said, this is about me. He said he was numbered with the transgressors, quoting verse 12 of Isaiah 53, and applying it to him. So Jesus himself said, if you want to understand what I've come to do, and what I'm going to be doing tomorrow, I've never he's talking about the day before he died. If you want to understand what I'm going to do, what I'm doing tomorrow, read as AF53.

Let's notice three things that are remarkable, surprising about the passage. I want to show you the ordinariness, the violence, and the vicariousness, the ordinariness, the violence, and the vicariousness. First of all, let's look at the ordinariness. You see it in verses one, two, and three. Talking about this servant who's going to come, in Isaiah 42 it says, God's servant is going to come and bring justice to the nations. You see why? You get to Isaiah 53 and you're expecting someone of power and greatness.

He's going to bring justice to the nations. And here it says, verse 2, he had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. Look at verse, the second half of verse three, he was despised and we held him in low esteem. Now, what this is saying is that this servant, who of course is Jesus Christ,

had none of the markers of the indicators that the world looks for in trying to assess whether this is a person of dynamism and of power and of success. The world looks for certain things. You've applied for jobs in New York City. They're looking for these things, okay? But Jesus had none of them.

What do I mean? Well, it says, he had no beauty. Now, in other words, if they did head shops back there, his head shop would have been terrible. This says he was not attractive. He was not good looking. He didn't have looks. But he didn't have majesty.

See, he didn't have looks. He didn't have money. He didn't have connections. He didn't have credentials. He didn't have any of this stuff. That if you come to New York and try to make it, they're going to be looking for you. He didn't have any of this stuff. That if you come to New York and try to make it, they're going to be looking for you. He didn't have any of it.

There's a place I once read a commentary on. You know, the couple of places where Jesus went back to his hometown, Nazareth, and tried to preach. And everybody said, aren't you just Mary's son, the carpenter's son, and they wouldn't listen to him? And the commentator said, they could not penetrate the veil of ordinaryness around Jesus Christ. Ordinaryness.

Now here's what I'd like you to consider, first point. Even though he was ordinary, verse one, who has believed our message into whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? What's the arm of the Lord? That's a metaphor for the power of God. And this is saying that this man, this servant, despised, taken lightly, held in low esteem, no beauty, no majesty, this is how God's power

works in the world. In fact, it actually says, who is believe our message, where do whom is the arm of the Lord have been revealed? What it's saying is the world just doesn't get this, because the way the power of God operate, not only in Jesus, but in general, the way the Lord of the Lord operates is not the way the world thinks power operates.

So you have to be really careful. If you are going to become a Christian, or if you are a Christian, you have to recognize that the power of God does not operate the way that most people in the world thinks the power operates. In other words, it operates in extraordinarily ordinary ways. Let me give you an example. It's several.

Do you know the ordinarianess of how the grace of God and the life of God grows in your life, do you know how it does? Through daily Bible reading, through daily prayer, through self-examination, through worship, through taking the bread in the cup, week after week after week, by hanging out with people that make you better, not worse. These are ordinary things, and you just have to do them over and over and over. G. Campbell Morgan, the great English preacher, priest in London for many years, in 20th century, tells a story about how he went to, I think, was Italy, and he was in a graveyard, and he was looking at all these wonderful monuments and these great big graves that usually had huge marble slabs over the grave where the body was buried. And he saw a remarkable sight. He saw that a tree, I guess it was an oak tree, had grown

up out of one of the graves and it had become large to the place where it not only had rolled the slab away, but it had broken it in half. And of course, you know what this means, it was in eight corners. A sun kind of was down probably in the soil beneath the body. I got in there when they were digging the grave, who knows? But that eight corn had grown up into this huge tree that had actually, snapped the, in half, this huge marble slab. So Campbell Morgan, the preacher, says, now imagine trying

with that little acorn to actually in the beginning. Imagine when the grave was first laid out and the slab was laid. Imagine taking an acorn and trying to break the slab with the acorn. Ch. Wouldn't it work? Imagine taking an acorn and trying to break the slab with the acorn. Wouldn't it work?

The acorn would have been smashed not the acray, but Morgan says, but give it time. Slow, slow, slow, ordinary growth. Nothing spectacular. Ordinary growth. There's power in that acorn. Because by the way, you do know, inside an acorn, there's not only power to grow one oak tree,

but then to grow all the other kinds of trees that come out of the acorns in that one tree. In other words, you could cover the entire world with wood, with a life that's in one acorn. And that, the Bible says, the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds, grows in the largest of trees. But how does it grow?

How does it grow? Slowly through the ordinary means of grace, Bible reading, prayer, community, fellowship, Lord's Supper, weekly worship, daily Bible reading, self-examination, that's how it happens. Do not, has the armor of the Lord been revealed to you? Are you missing it? The armor of the Lord is in those practices, those practices, that's where it is. Because that's what's going to take that little acorn of infinite power that is planted in you if you're a Christian.

Because if you're a Christian, the Bible says we become, second Peter has that amazing place, which is when the Holy Spirit comes into you, you become partakers of the divine nature. Do you understand the ordinairiness of how that grows? Don't miss it. There's a place in screw tape letters, the guy who wrote

the same thing, and it's always a little bit difficult to quote anything from the screw tape letters. The truth is that it is a satire. They are supposedly letters of a senior devil written to a junior devil on how to tempt human beings. And so whenever you read something, you always have to get people into the moment because you have to understand the enemy in this quote is Jesus. Okay? And the patient is a person who's just become a Christian. And he's under the care of a particular devil and a senior devil is

trying to say, hey, he became a Christian, he's starting to go to church, but all is not lost yet. And so this is what the letter says. It says, work hard on the disappointment which is certainly coming to him during his first weeks of church. The enemy, that's Jesus, remember, allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavor. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted with stories from the Odyssey buckles down to learning Greek.

It happens when people who have been in love with each other have actually gotten married and begin the real task of wanting to live together. The enemy, Jesus, takes this risk. What's that risk? The risk is that all good things happen slowly. The enemy takes this risk because he has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting human vermin into what he calls his free lovers and servants. Desiring their freedom, he refuses to carry them

by their mere affections and habits to any of the goals which he sets before him and their lives are opportunity. Can you hear that, huh? Okay, that's intel. Don't miss the ordinarianess of God's power working in your life or the devil might make something of it in your life. So don't miss the ordinary. Secondly, let's look at the violence.

So the Messiah, the suffering servant, Jesus is ordinary, and that has implications for how you live your life. But secondly, Jesus suffers violence. And that has implications, implications of how you live your life. Do you see the words, especially verse 4 and 5, okay? Strican, pierced, crushed, then down in verse 8, cut off. And the Hebrew experts tell you that the Hebrew word translated cut off means the most violent possible death. They tell you that the Hebrew word that says in verse 5 is pierced.

That Hebrew word conveys the most painful possible death. So the point is that it even says Jesus Christ suffered enormously and terribly. Now in a minute I'm going to talk about why he did, but just for three or four minutes, let's pause and realize that he did, that Jesus Christ, who was the servant of God, who came into the world to save the world, who came into the world to put things right. Jesus Christ who was loved by God, suffered, suffered terribly. Many, many people have said, I thought God loved me,

but then He let me suffer like this, so how could He love me? I think most people believe, yes, I know that God might let some things happen. He could work through some difficulties, but not this, not this terrible thing I'm going through. If God really loved me, He would never let me suffer terribly. And the only response to that is, have you seen Jesus? Jesus Christ, God loved.

He says at His baptism, the voice came down from heaven. As Jesus was coming up, it said, this is my beloved son, in whom I'm well pleased. But then immediately, he was led out into the wilderness to be assaulted and attacked by the devil, because it was part of what he came to do. Put it like this. God's wise redemptive love in your life is compatible with very rough experience.

God can be with you, God can love you, God can be working in your life and God can be working through you God can love you, God can be working in your life, and God can be working through you, and you still suffer terribly. Why? Because that's how it worked with Jesus. Jesus became high and exalted and saved us through suffering. I can just tell you, I'm an infinitely better person than I would have ever been if it wasn't for my suffering. Anyone who has ever given Christianity half a chance and is stuck with Christianity for any period of time

will know that what Paul says is right, that when I'm weak then I'm strong. My power, God's power has made perfect in weakness. Joseph, you remember the story? I mean, Joseph is sold into slavery, and then he starts to work his way up, you know, as one of the top slaves, but then he's betrayed and thrown into prison, and then he starts to work his way up, and then he meets somebody who knows the king and can get him out of there, and the guy goes out and then forgets all about him. I mean, for about 20 years, everything goes wrong for Joseph. Everything.

Every prayer is unanswered. Every one. But at the end of his life, he can look back, and you see this in Genesis, chapter 50, verse 20, at the end of his life, he can look back far enough to know that every single bad thing that happened to him had to happen to him, or his family would have starved or would have spiritually been lost in bitterness and blindness. But even he couldn't see what you and I can see because we can see from our perspective

where we are at our period in history, we can see what? We can see that God through all that suffering was actually nurturing and shaping a family out of which would come the salvation of the world. And what that means is there is no way you will ever have the perspective necessary to see why God is letting go through the things He's letting you go through right now, right now. You might get some perspective as time goes on, but you'll never get sufficient perspective. You'll never, ever, ever see in this life.

You'll never see why God is allowing you to go through what you're going through. You'll never see it, but here's what you do see. You see Jesus. Do you see Jesus? Are you suffering? Then see Jesus. For many in our culture today, Biblical Christianity is a dangerous idea, challenging some of their

deepest beliefs. In her book Confronting Christianity, 12 hard questions for the world's largest religion. Dr. Rebecca McLaughlin explores the hard questions that keep many people from considering faith in Christ. Tackling issues, including gender and sexuality, science and faith, and the problem of suffering, McLoxon shows that what seems like grow blocks of faith in Jesus can become signposts

to a relationship with Him. Confronting Christianity is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel and Life share the love of Christ with people all over the world. So request your copy today at gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give. Okay, so thirdly, see the ordinarianess, see the violence, and then thirdly, see the vicariousness. The vicariousness. I know the word doesn't show up in there, but I'm wrestling in a way because I'm looking

for a word, and that's the best one I could come up with, to describe what is probably the main theme of this whole passage. At least 10 times, an idea shows up that I'm calling vicariousness. 10 times at least, what do I mean? Well, first of all, one of the things that keeps coming up here is that the servant, is that Jesus keeps taking on things that are not His. He took our pain, verse four. He bore our suffering, verse four.

The punishment that brought us peace, this is in verse five, was on Him. So over and over again, it says He's taking on things that do not belong to him. That's fai-carious. He's taking on things that don't belong to him. Well, wait a minute. What does that mean? What does that mean? What do you mean, taking on those things?

Ah, then if you look over at verse 12, which is the verse that Jesus quotes on the night before he dies, which is a big, extremely important verse, on the night before he dies, which is a big, extremely important verse. On the night before he dies, here's what he says, he was numbered with the transgressors. You know, you're about to die, and you know you're about to die. You think of the most important things you've ever read, the most important, the best music you've ever heard. I mean, you think at the, you grab hold of the most important things you've ever read. You know what's the most important, the best music you've ever heard. I mean, you think at the, you grab hold of the most important things you've ever known or ever read.

And on that night, just before he died, he remembered Isaiah 53 verse 12. He was numbered with the transgressors. And see, there's the key. What does it mean that he took our punishment? What does it mean that he took our sorrows? To say he was numbered with the transgressors, doesn't mean he became a transgressor. No, no,rows? To say he was number with the transgressors doesn't mean he became a transgressor. No, no, no, to be number with the transgressors means to be

counted as a transgressor. Not that he was, not that he was a sinner, no, but he was treated as one. And that's the first part of what happened in this transaction. When God says, I've sent my servant, and it says he was punished. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was punished for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace. Ah. So on the one hand, he takes on what we have, which means he's treated as if he'd done all the things

we've done. But then it says, my servant will justify many. In verse 11, it says the most amazing thing. In verse 10 and 11, he says, the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer. And though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring. In other words, he'll see the results. He will see the results of his suffering and he will be satisfied.

For by his knowledge, my righteous servant will justify many. What does it mean to justify something? What does it mean to justify somebody? It means to make them righteous and see over here when it says, the punishment that brought us peace was on him.

He deserved the peace. We deserve the punishment, but guess what? He gets the punishment and we get the peace. And what this must mean is, and here's the heart of the gospel, it's what, by carousness is one way to put it, but another way to put it is substitution. Jesus Christ is treated by God as if he done everything we have done, so that if you believe in Him, you're treated as if you have done everything he has done, and that's

the gospel. That is radical. That is different than any other religion. Don't you see that every other religion is from the strong to the strong? Every other religion, the founder of the religion, dies in strength, dies surrounded by adorings, disciples. Every other founder of every major world religion dies successfully with not only adorings, disciples around,

but being well known and having established this great movement. Jesus Christ died? Absolutely rejected. In utter weakness, he was despised, but he not only comes in weakness because he's weak, but then his salvation is only for the weak. It's only for those who say, I will never. See, the other religion says, the strong person,

the strong founder saying, if you want to be connected to God, live like this. Summits up your strength and do this and be this. Yes, that's the every other religion. Christianity is different. Christianity says, our founder dies in weakness. But he accomplishes a salvation that we could never accomplish ourselves.

We're not strong enough to do it. In fact, if we think we're strong enough to do it, we lose it. And that means we're only, salvation is from the weak to the weak. Salvation is from a weak dying Jesus Christ, who says salvation has to be a gift, a complete gift. I'm treated the way you deserve to be treated, says Jesus.

But if you believe in me, the Father will treat you as if I deserve to be treated, as righteous. And therefore salvation is a complete gift. And this is the reason, by the way, why Jesus is both king and servant, by the way, why Jesus is both king and servant, you know why? Because God is both righteous and loving. He's both just and absolutely holy and loving.

Oh my goodness, it was with the cross. It's one or the other. Do I throw the law at them? Or do I love them? Do I make them pay what the law says they must pay? Or do I love them? But the cross to see the law by love fulfilled on the cross. They come together.

He's king and servant, see? So that God can be both just and justifier to those who believe in Him. Just punishing sin but just, and loving you. Now, what does vicariousness mean? I put it like this. This now is a way for you to live the rest of your life. Just as the ordinaryness had an implication,

don't miss the ordinary way that God's power works, and the suffering and violence had an implication. Recognize that suffering can be one of the main ways in which God works in your life. And don't reject it as if somehow it's not his love, or he doesn't love you, or you wouldn't suffer. But now thirdly, vicariousness, God substitutes himself for us on the cross. That's what John Stott says. The cross is the self substitution ofstitution of God. God puts

him, self, where you deserve to be, so that now you can stand where he deserves to be, honored and loved. He goes to where you deserve to be, punished, suffering. So you can stand where he deserves to be, honored and loved. Now, live the rest of your life like that. Are you a Christian? Were you saved that way? Now, I want you to see that every, the rest of your life should be substitutionary sacrifice. Let me give you two completely different examples,

but they both work. The one is, let's say you're a parent. OK? Let's say you're a parent. And? Let's say you're a parent. And a child comes into your life, or children come into your life, and immediately you realize, wow, this is really going to hamper your freedom. All sorts of things that you won't be free to do that now, you know, you used to be able to do.

So you have a choice. You can say, look, I'm not going to let these children get in the way of doing the things I want to do. I want to travel, I want to go play, I want to do things. So, I'm going to hold on to my freedom. But you realize if you do that, if you are that selfish, frankly, your child will grow up, filled with insecurities and unsure of anybody's love. And so your child, a sense will grow up enslaved. If you hold on to your freedom, your child will grow up enslaved.

On the other hand, if you give up your freedom, the way a parent should. If you really allow, if you give so much time to your children that ordinarily you would have spent on yourself. If you give up that freedom, hold on to your freedom, your child's a slave. Give up that freedom and your child will grow up emotionally, self-sufficient and free, and you'll find a new kind of freedom. You'll find a new kind of freedom. A freedom that comes from a relationship with a child, a freedom comes from the richness

of family life, do you see that? Hold on to your freedom, they become a slave. See, it's them or you. But if you love them, if you are, all love is a substitutionary sacrifice. All love, all real love, means I sacrifice for you and I find in the end that though I'm weakening myself to strengthen you, I'm getting a new strength that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Or let me give you another example, it's more of a justice issue. You have wealth, you've got power, you've got assets, you don't feel that way, but you do compared to poor people in other parts of the world and compared to poor people in other parts of this town. Now you can hold on to all your money, you can hold on to all your time, you can hold on to all your power, right?

So you hold on to your riches and they just, they perish in poverty. Or you can start to give up your riches in various ways. You can start to share your riches, you can start to invest your time, you can start to invest your money charitably. And in other words, the hold on to your riches, they say poor, give up your riches and they begin to come up. They enriches them, but you'll find some new and real kind of riches. When Jesus Christ gave Himself away on the cross to win us, he then got the name, which is above every other name.

He deserves rightly far more honor for having lost his honor. He is a kind of honor that only comes from somebody who is willing to give up all of his honor in his glory. Now you go live that way. At the end of his great book, it was a series of radio talks, Merry Christianity, CS Lewis says this, The principle runs through all of life from top to bottom. Give up yourself and you will find your real self.

Lose your life and you will save it. Submit it to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day. Submit with every fiber of your ambitions, and favorite wishes every day. Submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will really ever be yours.

Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred loneliness to spare, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him and with Him everything else thrown in. See, that's what Jesus Christ did on the cross. Now you take up your cross and follow Him. Let's pray. So Father, we thank you for not only the simple

profundity of what your son did for us on the cross, but the vision for what a life lived in the shadow of the cross would look like, make us a community of people who live life in a shadow of the cross. So filled with your love that they can give, they can give their money away, they can give their freedom away, they can give their life away, and thereby find greater freedom,

greater wealth and greater life. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Thank you for joining us today. If you were encouraged by today's podcast, please rate and review it so more people can discover the hope of the gospel, and thanks again for listening. This month's sermons were recorded in 1993 and 2016. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to

2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. you