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[0:00] Amen. Please can we turn then to Isaiah 52 verse 13.! This is the section that we're going to look at today.

[0:11] We're going to have a time of worship.

[0:37] Our worship for the next three quarters of an hour or so will be doing God the honour of listening attentively to what he's saying. People sometimes puzzle over what is God saying.

[0:51] Well actually the answer in many ways is very simple. He's written it all down. Now we can just look at it and listen and hear the voice of God together. And God says that his word is life-giving and life-changing.

[1:08] And we sort of put that to the test this morning. Let's listen and see whether God does change our lives and give life to those who don't yet have it. So that's what we're going to do.

[1:18] We've already prayed. I need, if I may, just to wind back a little bit and say what we've already seen in these servant songs. They're ancient prophecies. They tell us about a servant who is going to come.

[1:33] So this was written, I'm just guessing, sort of 700 BC. It's definitely an ancient text. If you follow through how texts are transmitted, this has all the authentic signs of an ancient text.

[1:53] It tells us about a very crucial person. A destiny-changing servant. And I need to put it into a context. It's in a historical context.

[2:04] It's not a European text. It's a Middle Eastern text. It's not sent to the Anglo-Saxon races. It's sent to a particular ethnic group, ancient Israel.

[2:16] And God called ancient Israel to be his people. You might say, well, why did he pick on them? No idea. God never told anybody. He said, I've just decided to pick on you.

[2:28] And to call you to be a light to the nations. If I put on the screen there the word Gentiles, meaning the nations of people who are not Jews.

[2:40] And you might say, why did God work this way? And I have no idea why. He just did. And you take it or leave it. Israel, in fact, failed to be a light to the nations.

[2:54] She was faithless, thankless, and idolatrous. And left off worshipping the Lord and worshipped idols. And lest you should think the implication of that is that one nation is worse than any other.

[3:11] I simply, the way this is put in the Bible is it's just a test case. If God had picked the Welsh, for example, they would have been no better. Or the English or whatever race you happen to think of.

[3:24] It's just that this is a test case to show the human condition. Given privilege, our natural tendency is to be faithless, thankless, and idolatrous.

[3:36] And what became of Israel was, as a historical fact, she was taken from her homeland in exile to Babylon and put at a distance from God.

[3:47] Instead of being a free nation, she was imprisoned. And instead of being in the light of God, she was in darkness. The people sat in darkness. And the Bible is the story how God said, well, these people in their fickleness, in their ingratitude, have not fulfilled what I offered and promised them.

[4:10] But God says, I'm not going to leave it at that. Not going to leave it at that. I'm not going to let these people's stupidity stop me blessing, not only them, but the whole world.

[4:25] And God determines that he will raise up Israel and, you might remember this from the other week, that's too trivial. I want to bless all nations.

[4:38] I want there to be, in a thousand years' time, people reading this text, not only in a re-established homeland, but across the world.

[4:54] I want people in Brighton to be reading this text and believing it applies to them. And of course, that's exactly what God's done, to bring light to the Gentiles too. So, this is a text for us.

[5:10] It is the text which tells us how we can be close to God, how we can live in liberty, how we can have light.

[5:22] And it's all about the servant, and it says to us, the key to these things for us too now, is this servant. We need him and what he has done.

[5:35] And of course, the him is Jesus. So, I did a little graphic there of the servant. And along with him, the people, the blob represents the group of people that he is involved with.

[5:54] And we find that that idea of the servant and his people keeps on cropping up over and over again. So, if I may borrow your patience just for a little bit more.

[6:05] We've seen these servant songs. Whoops. Verse 42. No. Chapter 42. Behold my servant. That was the one which said, he's so gentle, he won't break a bruised reed.

[6:20] The second servant song in Isaiah 49, that was the one where it said, it's too trivial a thing for you to restore the tribes of Jacob. I'll make you a light to the Gentiles.

[6:32] And the third one is the one where it says, the servant says, my ear you've opened. Every day I listened as you taught me. I offered my back to those who beat me.

[6:44] It's the sovereign Lord who helps me. Who will accuse me? And those are the ones that we looked at before. And in each case, you have this thought that he's an individual, yet what he does affects a group of people.

[7:01] And this is the text that we're going to look at today. So just one more thing before we dive into the text. Who is going to be listening this morning? So I thought, suppose John Humphreys, the Radio 4 presenter, was sitting here this morning.

[7:18] He would probably have walked out by now, but he's not particularly, I don't think he's particularly sympathetic to Christianity. He would say he was an outsider.

[7:29] He'd probably feel that sitting here, he was an outsider. And I thought, John Humphreys, what would I say to you this morning? And then I thought, maybe Joan Indigo is here. She's a churchgoer.

[7:40] She comes occasionally, but she's not quite sure, really, why all the other Christians get so enthusiastic. Because this seems to pass her by somehow. And then Jane Jacket has happened to pop in this morning.

[7:54] You see why I've given them these names? Because they become parts of the alphabet. H-I-J. I thought that was really clever when I did it. And I thought, I don't know why I bothered, really. But Jane Jacket has come along.

[8:06] And she's just wandered in, out of curiosity, to say, what is this Christianity thing? A little bit surprised that we haven't got an altar and stained glass.

[8:18] Because she thought all churches were like that. But she's sitting and she's, what does go on in Christianity? Christianity. And then Jim Coggins, who has come along this morning, you see I got stuck on the K.

[8:31] I thought it was G, and then I was, no, that's not the way the alphabet goes. And Jim Coggins has come along this morning, and he's a believer, and he's struggling a bit.

[8:42] And to be honest, he wasn't quite sure whether he'd come this morning. Because he's got various problems. Maybe his family is disappointing him. Maybe when he got married, everything seemed to be wonderful and rosy, and he's found that married life is not as easy as they gave him to understand.

[9:01] Maybe he's pressed by time. Maybe he's suffering long-term pain. Maybe he's got financial difficulties. What would I say from this text to those people?

[9:12] And to John Humphreys, I would say at this point, please listen. Because God is claiming your attention in this ancient prophecy. He's saying, there's something to be seen here.

[9:26] And to Joan Indigo, I would say, if you haven't quite got the point of Christianity, if you look into these verses, it's definitely there. Because this is at the heart of things.

[9:40] This isn't a random text. This is really at the heart of things. And to Jane Jackett, the Enquirer, I would say, if you're looking for answers, you'll find them here.

[9:54] If you look carefully enough, they're in this text. And to Jim Coggins, I would say, follow through Isaiah 53, and it will bring you to Isaiah 54, which says, sing and rejoice.

[10:11] You've got really good reasons to not feel you're on the back foot all the time. But there's something here to say, I'm glad I'm a Christian.

[10:23] I can go back home saying, whatever life throws at me, I want to be glad I'm a Christian. So, that was a lot of introduction, wasn't it? We're looking at poetry.

[10:36] If you want to, if you have the text there, you can divide it up. I like putting little pencil lines in my Bible. So, 13 to 15 is one stanza, one block.

[10:49] And then, 53, one to three is another block, another stanza. Then, four to verse six is a third stanza.

[11:00] Verse seven to nine is a fourth. And then, 10 to the end. 10 to 12 is another block.

[11:12] The first one seems to summarize everything. The next one seems to give us facts. The next one gives us interpretation. The following one gives us facts. And the one after that mostly gives us interpretation. And there are a number of intertwining ideas here.

[11:27] Which we shall see. Because we'll go through it in a moment, verse by verse. But, just looking at the whole thing here, it's a lot about suffering, isn't it? Do you see that? Would you agree with that?

[11:37] This poem, this text, is a lot about suffering. It says, in verse five, he was crushed for our iniquities.

[11:49] It's talking about somebody who was crushed. That's not a very pleasant theme to talk about, is it? But there's something actually real in this text.

[11:59] It's saying, you know, I'm not just talking about fluffy things here. I want to be taken seriously. This is about somebody who really suffered. It's about somebody who was misunderstood and rejected.

[12:13] In verse three, it says, we esteemed him not. So this is somebody about whom people have made colossal mistakes.

[12:24] They've looked at him and completely misunderstood what he was about. Another feature of this text is the purposefulness of God.

[12:36] God, in this person who suffers, who's so deeply misunderstood, God has a purpose. And if I may, can I contrast this?

[12:49] Did any of you ever see that TV program, Lost? Okay, just you and me, Adam, on this. Okay, Lost. Let me just explain. It was a long-running series about bizarre events, wasn't it?

[13:01] People landed on an island and bizarre things happened. And the longer it went on, you thought, I'm really looking forward to the ending because it'll all, there'll be a purpose behind it all and it'll all become clear.

[13:13] And the longer the series went on, you thought, the writers are going to have real problems resolving all this. And of course, what they did was, they just ended the series without resolving any of it. It was just left as a complete set of complete meaningless puzzles.

[13:28] And the Bible insists that the world is not like that. That although it may seem to have meaningless puzzles, God has a purpose in it. And in this particular thing of the servant, it says, it was the Lord's will to do such and such.

[13:46] God has a purpose in it. And there's a constant appeal to this idea of exchange, which I was talking about with the children. So, dad pays, but the children consume the Kentucky Fried Chicken.

[14:00] So, there's a sort of exchange. So, you get it in verse four. He carried our sorrows.

[14:12] So, ours were the sorrows, but he picked them up and carried them. We get this exchange going on all the way through. And you also get this amazingly grand result, because it all looks so bleak, but it ends up so triumphant.

[14:28] Verse 12, for example, therefore, I will give him a portion with the great. He will divide the spoils with the strong. So, it's not a tragedy, but it's that they all lived happily ever after, or in a substantial way.

[14:48] It all came right in the end, in a most remarkable way. Let's look at the verses one by one. See, my servant will act wisely.

[15:02] He will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. Three times, we're told. This first stanza sort of summarizes everything, and it looks at the end, doesn't it?

[15:12] My servant will succeed through wisdom. He will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.

[15:23] Interesting that Jesus was those three things, raised from the dead, ascended into heaven, exalted at the right hand of God.

[15:37] Verse 14, just as there were many who were appalled at him, his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man, his form marred beyond human likeness.

[15:48] He suffers terribly. so that people look at him and they're absolutely appalled. Can this really be, I was almost saying, can this really be a human being?

[16:04] So disfigured, so badly treated. And the, and then it goes on to take us to the grand result.

[16:17] So he will sprinkle many nations. And the scholars have spilt a lot of ink over that word to sprinkle. You might even have a translation which says startle.

[16:30] I think there's a number of things in this where the translation is certainly beyond my my understanding. The word is sprinkle and it's usually used of what happens in a sacrificial context in ancient Israel.

[16:51] So to cleanse, for example, water would be sprinkled or blood would be sprinkled. And the effect of that is to make people who were unclean clean.

[17:04] and the poem says this servant will sprinkle many nations. He'll make clean many nations.

[17:18] And it refers to kings, this element of surprise. They will shut their mouths because of him because what they were not told they will see, what they have not heard they will understand. The sense that this comes to them as a complete surprise.

[17:31] Nobody had been preparing the kings for this over the years. Someone comes and tells them and they're completely taken by surprise. And the Apostle Paul would have said, well, I'm glad that verse is in the Bible because that's exactly what I do.

[17:48] The Apostle Paul would have said, because I go to kings if I can get the opportunity, I'll go to anybody if I get the opportunity and tell them what God has done because otherwise they wouldn't know and it comes to them as a complete surprise.

[18:02] And it's shockingly revealed, what they have not heard, they will understand. Let's go to the second stanza. It begins with the question, who gets it?

[18:13] Who gets the idea? Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? So who gets it? Maybe no one. Or maybe no one you would have predicted.

[18:27] It just raises it as a question. It is not obvious. Who understands it? And it talks about the servant in his fragility.

[18:39] So we get a vegetable metaphor here. He grew up before him meaning before his face, before God's face.

[18:50] Here is a servant growing up like a weed out of the cracks in the pavement, dry ground. the weed grows up.

[19:01] He grows up like a tender shoot and a root out of dry ground. Very surprising that this fragile plant should grow up.

[19:13] And he's unimpressive in many ways. He has no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. So he's not a Hollywood hunk or whatever you might like to think.

[19:29] He doesn't attract through his glamour or his being photogenic or eye catching. I know that the pictures that people paint of Jesus nowadays is fascinating they're always recognisable as Jesus and it's also fascinating there's no basis for them whatsoever.

[19:49] How on earth would people even claim to know what Jesus looked like? But we are told that in his physical appearance there was nothing outstanding.

[20:02] There was nothing that made people say wow he's rather special. Some people do have that appearance don't they? I hesitate to look round in case my eye lands on the wrong person.

[20:13] But some people they do stand out in a crowd and say oh gosh that person must be rather special. But of Jesus we get this he was not eye catching. And there is this element of embarrassment perhaps we should say rather stronger than that he was despised and rejected a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering that's verse three.

[20:46] Some of these words are really quite strong the suffering there is being plagued there's some medical metaphors of sickness and disease and like plague you know the Egyptian plagues he he was plagued and he was the sort of person that you would look the other way rather than go towards him he was like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised and we reckoned him not we esteemed him not that the normal the default condition is that people look at this servant and they say you know what a loser don't see anything there of any significance I suppose if you went back to ancient Jerusalem there would have been a number of people who were crucified even on that particular afternoon when Jesus was crucified there were three crosses and I don't particularly think there was anything visually to distinguish one from the other you just not want to know any of them we esteemed him not well most people esteemed him not we esteemed him not we did not reckon him third stanza this one is sort of interpretation and what is going on here so the writer of this prophecy brings us in on the secret of what's really happening what's really happening as this servant has this shocking appalling experience activity he took up our infirmities he carried our sorrows and we thought

[22:50] God was getting even with him for some nasty thing he must have done and we didn't want to have anything to do with it we considered him stricken by God smitten by him and afflicted and we thought well you know God must have something against him and we just walk by on the other side but he was pierced for our transgressions he was crushed for our iniquities and the punishment that brought us peace was upon him there's him and us and he is treated this way because that's how we ought to have been treated end of verse 5 by his wounds we are healed we all like sheep have gone astray each of us has turned to his own way and the

[23:52] Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all loads of things to comment on there just to think about this idea of exchange because it bears thinking about it a little bit it's not quite as simple as you might think so there's us that's the us of which the text speaks and it attributes to us iniquity infirmity transgressions that's what we've done and of course that is over a period of years isn't it if the us were thought to be Israel it would be a period of centuries if the us were thought to be the individuals composing that nation it would be over the course of their lifetime they accumulate this record of transgression and the servant but the servant carries this and he doesn't carry it now for a lifetime it doesn't quite work as an exchange like that he carries it just for a temporary moment when

[25:09] Jesus died on the cross it was a matter of hours wasn't it and so many sins but one sin bearing action one suffering action and the result of this is that the we the us no longer carry that sin but are brought into a place of long standing peace it's just worth thinking about because it isn't as though we're sinners we exchange it with Christ who is righteous Christ becomes permanently a sinner we become permanently righteous doesn't work like that does it he bears our sin momentarily deals with it we become righteous in him but he isn't always a sinner is he he having dealt with our sin he remains righteous this thought doesn't need to think about that because we could not think that through properly let's go on to the fourth stanza which talks this is mostly about facts he was oppressed and afflicted but he did not open his mouth seems to imply the idea that whereas if we were being badly treated we would probably complain get your hands off me leave me alone what do you think you're doing but when he is oppressed and afflicted he does not open his mouth he's led like a lamb to the slaughter and like a sheep before her shearers is done so there's an animal metaphor now and

[26:55] I'm not sure whether sheep usually do go quiet when they're sheared I suspect! they probably don't I suspect that's an unusual thing but whether it's usual or unusual he says this is how the servant reacts to this he goes quietly to the slaughter he goes quietly to the shearing by oppression and judgment he was taken away the words imply there's some sort of legal process he is imprisoned he is arrested put on trial that's the idea of that by oppression and judgment he was taken away and then this question which I can't quite understand who can speak of his generation so it's a nice simple translation to say who can speak of his descendants and maybe that's what it means what sort of descendants would a condemned man have he's only got a few hours of life left who could speak of his descendants he was cut off from the land of the living you remember that

[28:10] Israel in her in God promised that if she didn't walk with God she would be cut off from the land and the servant is cut off from the land of the living for the transgression of my people he was stricken that exchange and his burial is in a grave with the wicked verse nine and with the rich in his death even though he is innocent and there's a contrast between the burial which seems to be with the rich and the corrupt and his own track record of innocence and complete integrity it's interesting that when Jesus was buried these verses are quoted I don't think they're quoted to say that the person who provided the burial ground for Jesus was corrupt but he was rich and the

[29:11] New Testament writers flagged that bit up let's go to the next stanza verse! 10 now I meant to check the translation of this because I did go through it but I need to refresh my memory which I didn't do this morning it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer and let me hazard a guess on my memory I think the word that's used is delight the Lord delighted to crush him I'll check it this afternoon if I was wrong I'll have to apologize but let's just assume that I remembered that correctly what a text to say the Lord delighted to crush this innocent servant what possible pleasure could

[30:17] God see in this poor person being crushed but it says the Lord thought this was a brilliant plan the Lord delighted to crush him or as it's translated here it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer and then we get more interpretation the Lord makes his life a guilt offering in case you're not familiar with ancient Israel they had a huge vocabulary of animal sacrifices of all different sorts with various different permutations of what you did but the basic idea is pretty much the same in each case that the nation or the person is guilty the animal is brought and is deemed to be innocent manky animals were excluded from this it had to be a good looking animal the person would lay their hands or have the priest on their behalf lay their hands on the animal as if to pass contagion on to the animal then the animal would either be slaughtered or excluded or something like that and in ancient

[31:43] Israel this happened to thousands upon thousands of animals and the insight of scripture is that actually the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sin and what Isaiah is seeing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is a man who is treated like this he makes his life a guilt offering this man becomes a sacrificial animal and this verse has got a sort of U shape to it so that what he goes down into and what he comes up with at the end you might say this raises all sorts of ethical questions about whether whether imposing suffering on anybody else can ever be ethical

[32:46] I'm not going to deal with those questions here but I'm just going to say here is the blunt stark fact and I suppose you take it or leave it that this text speaks about a servant who suffered for others I should point out that the New Testament makes it abundantly clear that Jesus did not do this against his will Jesus wasn't saying no I don't want to do this stop it it's one of the remarkable things about Jesus that he faced with the opportunity to do so which of course is what was happening in the garden of Gethsemane he did struggle with this but in the end said not my will but yours I will accept this because of the benefits that it will bring to other people and the fact that we might flag up there are ethical problems with this not too happy about this what this is doing is showing up the real radicalness and depth of what

[34:00] Christian truth is and also flagging up the radical sacrificial love that Jesus had to be willing to go through this for us where do we get to so verse 10 the Lord makes his life a guilt offering but and this is surprising he will see his offspring and so I'm going to put the offspring along with the servant he will see his offspring and prolong his days and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand after the suffering of his soul he will see the light of life and be satisfied so he definitely goes down into this appalling darkness but he doesn't stay there it doesn't make the darkness any less dark does it but he comes through it he will see the light of life and be satisfied and the benefits will be huge by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many and I pause on the word justify because it's justify means to make righteous or to declare righteous in some method or some way so

[35:29] I put righteousness if I and the question is what is the way in which somebody can be declared righteous and one way would be if they actually are righteous so you look at them and say what a beautiful life what a beautiful character I declare this person righteous but what's being said here is a way for sinners to be declared righteous for the people whose iniquities he bore whose transgressions he bore these people are justified declared righteous and they're declared righteous by knowing him my righteous servant will justify many and he will bear their iniquities and you get the sense of the exultancy of the text what a costly action the servant has taken and I just pause to say

[36:33] I'm expanding the text I'm telling what the text says I'm not making it up and I can't in any shape or form remove this text from the corpus of things that has been written in this world this text exists and the text claims it's God himself speaking and he's telling us about this fact of what was done when Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross and I can't take that out of history either that's there it is a brute fact he will bear their iniquities and I give him a portion verse 12 among the great you might look down as a footnote the many actually the many are a group that are often referred to here so let's stick with the many he will give him a portion with the many and divide the spoils with the strong so this is a sort of glorious outcome why because he poured out his life unto death he was numbered with the transgressors he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors intercession

[37:48] I think meaning to say that he interfered on their behalf and put himself between the judge and these transgressors and said hold on I want to make a case regarding how you deal with these people and the case will be based on the fact that I borne their sins he made intercession for the transgressors so those are the five stanzas and I've really done little more than just take us through them and think about them as we've gone through if John Humphreys is still here I would say a couple of things to him what do you make of the accuracy of this prophecy because it is remarkably accurate isn't it it isn't just that the New!

[38:38] Testament Jesus although I am sure Jesus himself read this and fitted his life into conformity with it but it is remarkably accurate Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief Jesus died in this horrific way even sort of verbal phrases match up he was numbered with the transgressors because there were three on crosses one two three and Jesus was in the middle the other two were terrorists he was numbered with the terrorists and he was buried with the rich the accuracy of the prophecy Jesus trial crucifixion resurrection and ascension it is remarkable and I don't think it would be a scientific or you know if John Humphrey's case a proper journalistic thing to say oh that's all just fixed

[39:42] I think there's a real issue here the accuracy of this prophecy and the second thing which I think Mr. Humphreys wouldn't like very much is this diagnosis of the human condition because this says or the writer says we like sheep had gone astray we turned everyone to his own way and I know that is not a politically correct thing to say in today's world people would say we don't go astray we choose which way we want to go and that's a good thing and we're allowed to do that and who's going to criticize us for it but the Bible does the Bible says we actually have got a master someone who's given the blueprint for life and if we don't go that way we're actually going astray we like sheep had gone astray and turned each one to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all there's a very strong word iniquity and

[40:42] Mr. Humphreys would be saying I don't like that word I don't want Christians pinning that on me to which I say I'm not doing it just to be awkward I'm doing it to be faithful to what the Bible says and to be faithful to what Jesus was all about because if there is not a truth that the human condition is one in which we are sinners then what a fool Jesus was to die on the cross to take away sin so I don't think he was a fool so I want to be faithful to him I think he knew what he was doing and the implication is that there is something fundamentally adrift in the human condition and again you might or might not like it but that's what it says if and it's sort of if you're not happy with that then I would suggest you go and argue that out with

[41:43] Jesus because if people aren't sinners why on earth did Jesus die so Joan Indigo the churchgoer who doesn't quite get the point of this what's at the heart of Christianity Joan because you might be thinking it's A Christianity is about being good to your neighbour having a nice polite culture a nice group of people that will think about you and pray for you and pray be doing charitable deeds and having a supportive friendship group and hopefully churches bring all those things and provide that is that what it's about you see that's the mistake that's what Christianity is about so I'm going to strike out A and I'm going to say Joan had you thought that Christianity is about human religious responses I mean maybe you were brought up in a version of Christianity in which the big thing was prayers pilgrimages candles that's why you're so puzzled you look around they haven't got a single candle in here what sort of

[42:49] Christians are they no statues either maybe you thought that was what the heart of Christianity was I say this text is at the heart of Christianity and there's nothing of that there at all so I'm going to go to option C to say the heart of Christianity is this because this is what the text is saying it is about one person offering themselves as a sacrifice for sinners and us responding that's what I need because I'm a sinner and I need what Jesus did the apostle Paul would have said that he said Christ died for sinners of whom I am the number one and if you haven't got that that's why you haven't got Christianity because that's the heart of it you see Jane Jackett you've come along here you've sat very patiently for three quarters of an hour you came to find some answers and

[43:53] I think there are some answers here because one of the biggest questions is who was Jesus who was Jesus of Nazareth it'd be foolish to say he wasn't a historical figure that's just escapism to say that he's there he was there who was he was he someone special and in the text it says that many people look at him and not understand him they'll say he's nothing they esteem him not but the text says but you should understand he is the human being who let's putting it very crudely the one human being who was made into an animal sacrifice and the text will claim that if you look down the length and breadth of history through all the religions of the world there is no other place where one man bears the sins of all his people and more than that that this one man is more than a man because when he is highly exalted!

[45:10] He goes to the throne of God the text doesn't say that it hints at it but the New Testament says that about Jesus that's who he is he came to die for sinners he is human and he came from God himself he is God himself and then another important question who am I and this text answers I am a sinner distant from God who made me and who calls to me in love and actually I deserve what this servant suffered becomes a real shock doesn't it I didn't I find it hard you might be thinking to credit that that is what I deserve but this is what the text says this is the text answer to that question and it goes on to say that though

[46:15] I am loaded and burdened and guilty I can be unloaded unburdened put right with God sprinkled all of those things I can be through Jesus Christ and it also poses this question who believes it it takes very realistic doesn't it who believes our message to whom has the arm of the!

[46:41] been revealed well here it is believe it and Jim Coggins the struggling believer and Jim when you came in this morning you were thinking about your mortgage you were thinking about the appointment with the doctor coming up you were thinking about how busy you had been you were worrying about your family and let me just say to you I am not going to disagree with any of those things but would you care to think what this text says about yourself the text says you are sprinkled washed clean from all sin that you are justified that God is not trying to get at you as if you are a condemned person but he's taken that all away he deals with you as an innocent member of his family you're justified you're forgiven you are Jim one of the seed for whom Jesus died he will see his offspring!

[47:44] and prolong his days Jesus has been you're like his grandchild he's been looking forward to seeing you he cares about you and do you honestly think Jim that if you take on those on board all those things what he's done for you that having done all that for you he's really going to neglect or withhold from you something you really need for your life New Testament argues it like this he who did not spare his own son but freely gave him up for us all how will he not also along with him graciously give us all things the big thing has been sorted Christ died for your sin and honestly for God finding you the right job getting you through that doctor's exam getting you through your exams that's just easy peasy stop worrying about it God's done the big thing he's on your side why don't you trust him in that if you want to put it in terms of

[48:50] Isaiah 54 take a look at that last last or so verse which says no weapon forged against you shall prevail and that's the Isaiah response to Isaiah 53 it says God says look I sent my servant to die for your sins do you think that was an easy thing that was a trivial thing I sent my servant to die for your sin and he did it and he has successfully risen from the dead he will prolong his days he's seated at the right hand of God that's who he is that's what he's done for you and I'm the lord of the universe and I'm on your side and every single thing in this world that you that you're fearing is a created thing I'm in charge of it all and even if it was a weapon that somebody has made I'm in charge of the processes that forge iron that strengthen steel that make explosives

[49:51]  I'm in charge of all that and I promise you that no weapon forged against you will prevail so stop worrying about it I think we've looked at enough I've got I had some other footnotes but I'll just sit through this and then we'll sing together 433 Man of Sorrows