The Sins of the Redeemed (Isa. 53:6)

This sermon was preached on 23/9/2012

In this verse the redeemed people of God continue their contribution to this Servant Song, a contribution that began in verse 4. In verse 4, they revealed that they now understood why the Servant was the man of sorrows and in verse 5 they described their contribution to the extreme sufferings that he had to endure. Now, in verse 6, they continue to detail further discoveries about themselves and about the Servant.

Introduction

One of the most effective ways of communicating a message is the use of word pictures. A word picture appeals to the imagination of a listener and draws him into the message. The obvious biblical example is the parables that Jesus taught. When we listen, for example, to the parable of the Sower, we are compelled to ask to which group we belong. Some word pictures can be short stories; others, like the people here in the verse, may use a simile in which a person is said to be like something. Here they say that they were like sheep. Yet we must also remember that while an illustration can help make a sermon lucid, it is a mistake to assume that its purpose is to make the sermon simple. Instead a word picture should help us grasp the seriousness of what is being said.

Another aspect of a coherent message is that it should be able to be summarized in a sentence. Isaiah 53:6 is a summary of this Servant Song because it tells us what happened to Jesus and why it happened to him. Yet the verse is not only a summary of this Song, it is also a statement that summarises the message of the entire Bible. The Bible is about our need and God’s remedy, and both are detailed in this verse.

This verse is also a very effective evangelistic tool. Sometimes a Christian will say, ‘I don’t know what to say to another person about the Christian faith.’ This verse puts them and us on the same level and tells us what God has done for sinners at the cross of Calvary. It tells us of our personal involvement and it details God’s personal involvement in bringing about salvation.

Deep realities about themselves

The people in the verse confess that they were like sheep that had gone astray from the shepherd and his fold. It is amazing that the Lord wants this confession in his song about his Servant. But here we have a reminder that we cannot fully understand Jesus unless we connect him to our sins.

To begin with, their confession is a corporate one, they had all gone astray. Then they confess that each of them had gone astray in an individual manner – each had turned to his own way. In what ways did this departure from God take place?

I don’t think there is an allusion here to the way all humans became sinners through Adam, although his failure as our representative in the Covenant of Works is the root cause of our personal methods of sinning. Nor do I think that the prophet, in comparing human sinfulness to the behavior of sheep, means that we should take every feature of a sheep and apply them to humans. Instead he wants us to think about the ways that sheep go astray. So here are some suggestions, bearing in mind that we are thinking of sheep in the Middle East and not about sheep on the Scottish hillsides.

One way by which a sheep would go astray would be by jumping over the barriers that its shepherd would place to prevent it getting out of the fold. The shepherd would place the flock inside a walled enclosure and then put some rocks or pieces of wood across the entrance. It would only take one sheep to discover how to jump over the barrier and the rest would follow. God has placed humans in an enclosure – the enclosure of his law. But we don’t want to be constrained by it and so we jump over its boundaries, often imitating the example of someone else, and wander away from God.

Why do sheep leave the care of the shepherd? A basic answer is often curiosity. They see a bit of grass that they would like to taste, and off they go. I suppose they have some way of anticipating how sweet the grass will be. In a far more serious manner, many people sin out of curiosity. This was part of the process by which Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, and it is still a major part of the motives we have in sinning. Sin looks good and we want to taste it.

It is also the case that sheep leave the shepherd’s care gradually and unwittingly. We can imagine the flock being led by the shepherd to a green pasture. Bit by bit, they wander about, and without intending to, they find themselves well away from the shepherd. In the real world, the shepherd will do what is necessary to bring them close to him again. We also go astray gradually, but when we go astray we put ourselves out of the place of the heavenly Shepherd’s care. We travel to locations in which he does not remain (this is not a denial of divine omnipresence, but merely an acceptance that there are many locations where God’s presence cannot be sensed by his creatures). When we wander gradually further away from the things of God, we will find ourselves inevitably where he is not. Many a person has found himself in a place where he never intended to be, and wherever that place is, it has a destination marker which reads, ‘Far from God!’

The sheep who wander away will discover that although the shepherd’s presence is no longer sensed, other presences will make themselves known. Soon the sheep will hear the roars of wild animals. No matter how many sheep there may be in a lost flock, they are not able to defend themselves against these predators. How many sheep does it take to defeat a lion? Much more solemnly, sinners find themselves in real danger once they are away from the presence of God. Through their curiosity being stimulated by the devil, they will be allured by him until they find themselves in a location in which he recognises he can destroy them forever – and then they will hear his roar! How many humans does it take to defeat the devil?

Satan is not the only enemy. Just as a literal sheep will face the danger of sudden death through a fall or another type of hidden danger, so humans also face this powerful enemy at all times. We can ask the same question here: how many humans does it take to defeat the power of death? All the billions on earth today, just as did the billions who have ever lived, have found themselves led astray together by the enemy of their souls and he will eventually lead them to the place where death will devour them.

What terrible danger a curious flock of sheep can find itself in! Yet its danger is trivial in comparison to the real spiritual danger lost humans are in. And it is the realization of this danger that these individuals sing about in Isaiah 53:6. They have realised that they belong to a lost race, in real danger of perishing eternally.

But they realised more. In addition to recognizing their corporate guilt which they share with all other people, they also confess an individual contribution to the dangerous situation in which they personally found themselves. Each of them had made a peculiar and private contribution to their own danger. The picture used gives further insight into the nature of sin.

First, I am responsible for the contribution I have made to the sin of the world. It is true that I have been influenced by others, tempted by others, enticed and encouraged by others. Yet just as I have made my own mark in the location where I live, even so I have made a distinct contribution to the overall sin of humankind. Everything I have thought, said and done has taken place in a location where thousands of sinners live (and if we extend the location to mean the world, then my sins have also been done there as well). Yet I am responsible for each of my sins. I cannot plead mitigating circumstances because I did not need to commit any of my sins. I did not have to persist in thinking wrong thoughts (I could have cried to God for help in dealing with them), I did not have to say the wrong words, and I did not have to perform the wrong actions. It is evidence that one possesses real spiritual insight when he or she freely confesses responsibility for their sins.

There is another aspect to our sin that this personal confession reveals, which is that sin not only alienates us from God, it also alienates us from one another. Imagine the flock of sheep lost in a place of danger. Eventually each sheep will find itself alone, separated from the rest. It is the same with humans. Whatever sin we engage in, we eventually find ways of doing it that are peculiarly unique. I become isolated from others, not only from God, the longer I continue to sin. In pursuing my sin, my personal road becomes full of places where I am alone; what is more, they become places of which I am ashamed, places where I cannot blame anyone else for my sins. Such a realization is also evidence of Christian progress.

The thrust of this statement stresses the necessity of realizing the awfulness of our individual sins. It is easy to see the sins of others and to confess a general concern about such behavior. What is needed, of course, is that we become very specific about our own sins. They are not hard to find if we use the right tools. God’s Word is a light that shines brightly into our hearts and dissects our motives. The character of Jesus also shows us where we are wrong because his perfection is in contrast to our imperfection.

If that was all the people had to sing, their words would not be a joyful song but a personal lament. What makes them a song of joy is the inclusion of lines indicating what the Lord has down with their awful sins.

The activity of the merciful God

The singers describe what the Lord did with the personal and communal sins of his people – he laid them on his Servant, the Messiah. One cannot help but think of Abraham laying the wood on the shoulders of his son Isaac as they made their way together to Mount Moriah where the father was to offer his son as a sacrifice (Gen. 22). The remedy for our danger was a divine transaction in which we played no part, a transaction involving the Father and his Servant.

The Father laid on Jesus all our individual sins, and how thankful we should be that that was the case. My heart was warmed by reading these words of C. H. Spurgeon on this aspect: ‘I am afraid I do not convey to you the pleasure of my own soul in turning over this thought, but it has charmed me beyond measure. Here were Lot’s sins, scandalous sins, I cannot mention them, they were very different from David’s sins. Black sins, scarlet sins, were those of David, but David’s sins are not at all like those of Manasseh; the sins of Manasseh were not the same as those of Peter — Peter sinned in quite a different track; and the woman that was a sinner, you could not liken her to Peter, neither if you look to her character could you set her side by side with Lydia; nor if you think of Lydia, can you see her without discovering a great divergence between her and the Philippian jailer. They are all alike, they have all gone astray, but they are all different, they have turned every one to his own way; but here is the blessed gathering up of them all, the Lord hath made to meet on the Redeemer, as in a common focus, the iniquity of all these; and up yonder Magdalena’s song joins sweetly with that of the woman who was a sinner, and Lydia, chaste, but yet needing pardon, sings side by side with Bathsheba and Rahab; while David takes up the strain with Samson and with Gideon, and these with Abraham and with Isaac, all differently sinners, but the atonement meeting every case.’

The verb translated ‘laid on’ stresses the accumulation of our sins as they are piled on top of one another. It is almost as if our sins were all disconnected from one another and scattered all over the place, with each one of them deserving God’s punishment. Then at the cross God the Father gathered them all together into one total amount as each of them was placed on his holy Son.

In addition, the meaning can include an action of aggression in which the energy of the person is included. For example, we can imagine a parent giving a pile of material to a child – the parent would lay each piece on gently because he/she would be concerned that the child would not have to carry too much. Our load was not given to Jesus in a gentle manner. Instead it was given to him in a manner that included all the heavenly Father’s wrath against our sins.

The word is used in several places in the Old Testament in a violent sense. For example, it was used of the avenger of blood when he slew the murderer; it is used of Benaniah when he slew Adonijah. Further we know that other Old Testament passages suggest the divine violence that would take place when God dealt with the sins of his people. One such passage is Zechariah 13:7: ‘“Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who stands next to me,” declares the Lord of hosts. “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered; I will turn my hand against the little ones.”’

James Durham uses the following illustration: he likens the sins of each believer to a stream or small river that people find impossible to cross; he then says that the combination of all these millions of rivers results in a vast sea, and that sea was given to Christ to pass through as he bore the punishment due against his people for their sins. It is like trying to imagine a person having to battle against the Atlantic Ocean without drowning under its depth of water.

In other words, Jesus was punished instead of his people for their sins. He remained sinless – although he bore their sins and was punished for them, he was not personally guilty of them and was not tainted by them. He remained pure and holy when under the punishment of God. Of course, the realisation of this teaches sinners how much the triune God loved them.

What should I do?

As we conclude our reflections on this verse of this majestic Servant Song, what points should we apply to ourselves and what demands do these points make of us?

First, we must remind ourselves of the horrible nature of sin – it leads us away from God, defiles us, and makes us potential victims of powerful enemies. Yet we cannot only look at sin in a general sense: we have to remind ourselves constantly that each of us had a unique way of sinning. For this guilt, we should humble ourselves and repent.

Second, we must continually express gratitude to Jesus for voluntarily taking our place on the cross. Our sins deserved eternal punishment, which he bore in our place. He bore the wrath of God that we should have borne. We should join with Paul on a daily basis and say, ‘Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift’ (2 Cor. 9:15).

Third, we should admire the great grace of the Father. Recall the words of Paul in Romans 8:32: ‘He who did spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?’ Jesus received what he did not deserve (punishment) in order that we would receive what we do not deserve (grace).

Fourth, we need to dedicate ourselves to Christ’s service. Prior to conversion, we went astray in both a general and in a unique way. Having been found by Jesus the Good Shepherd, we can keep close to his ways in both a general and in a unique sense. The fact is that each of us has the opportunity of doing something with and for Jesus that no-one else can do. The memory of our past should stimulate us to serve him well in the present and in the future.