Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain. When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.
Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
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From the time that we’re children,
we have embedded within us a deep sense of fairness. How many of you have had to intervene between
children who are yelling at one another that ‘it isn’t fair!’? We’re already working on our speech to teach
Caleb about how life isn’t always fair.
Although we know that life should be fair, we’re also very aware that it
isn’t. We know that things don’t work
out as they should, that hard work doesn’t always pay off, that things don’t
always even out, and that sometimes things just don’t go the way they should.
For the last few months, I’ve been
battling a constant, nagging source of fatigue.
I don’t understand it, and I’ve had doctors give a range of opinions on
it. For all the doctors seem to know, it’s
just as likely that my arm will suddenly fall off as it is that they will find
a cure. There are many promises, but few
answers.
The most frustrating thing about it
is that I live as healthy a lifestyle as possible. I eat right, I exercise often, and I haven’t
yet joined into the bacon craze.
Everything in my life indicates that I should be healthy—but I’m clearly
not. And I can’t help but be frustrated
by how unfair it is—why should I suffer from health problems when I have treated
my body well? It’s not fair.
Life’s not fair. Each and every one of us could sit here and
recount stories of how life’s unfairness has caught up to us, revealed itself
in small and big ways, some of them particularly ugly. We know stories about people who have worked
for one company for decades, only to be abandoned or let go at the worst
possible moment. We know about people
who have done everything right, everything to the letter, and then seen life
fall apart for no good reason. We know wonderful
people who have illnesses they do not deserve and people who seem rather evil
who are healthier than they deserve. Just
Friday, a middle school principal in Bledsoe County was killed standing in line
at a restaurant when a car barreled into the building. Anytime something happens to a child, all we
can do is be astounded by the unfairness of it all.
Life is not fair. We all have to come to terms with it, but it
is still striking at times. So we turn
to God, and we worship God as righteous and just, but is he fair?
In Scripture, we find a picture of
a God who is not fair.
And that is a wonderful thing.
Let’s talk for a moment about
sin. I don’t want to dwell on sin too
long in this sermon, because it will turn this into a day about us, when we
want it to be about God, but it’s important.
Each and every sin is a slap in the face to God, the Almighty Ruler and
Creator of the universe. God is perfect
and dwells in perfection, and yet we have chosen sin rather than constant
worship of him. Temptation was too
strong for us, and so we have dwelt in sin since Adam and Eve.
Now, God had every right to smite
us all from the face of the earth, to turn his back on his creation and start
anew. We gave God that right, and we do
so every time we sin.
But God chooses not to do so. Rather than make us pay the price for our
sin, a price we cannot afford to pay, a price we cannot pay, God instead chose
to send Jesus Christ to pay the price for us.
What happens is that Jesus Christ takes on the full weight of our sin,
and in return, those who believe in him as Lord and Savior receive the full
measure of his righteousness. In
exchange for our sin, we receive his reward, are covered in his grace and love,
and dwell forever in God’s perfection.
Let’s summarize, here—We sin, Jesus
is punished, and we are rewarded.
That’s not fair, is it?
It’s not fair that we do wrong and
yet aren’t punished, is it?
And it’s not fair that Jesus doesn’t
do wrong and yet is punished, is it?
So God is not fair, and this is a
wonderful, wonderful thing. It’s
marvelous, and should lead us to worship.
As the Isaiah passage so
beautifully illustrates, God’s unfairness was crafted long before Jesus was
born in a manger. This passage was
written hundreds of years before Christ was born, showing us that God has had a
plan in place to deal with human sin since before the foundations of the world
were lain. This was not plan B.
What is that plan?
We’re told that Jesus Christ bears
our infirmities and diseases—all of our human frailty and sin is cast upon
him. The reality of death and disease,
brokenness that has been a part of creation since the fall, it is all cast upon
him.
And even though he was willing to
carry all of this, we read that he was wounded and crushed. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet did not
open his mouth. He came willing to save
us, and rather than worship him we crucified him, abused him, neglected him,
such is the extent of our sin and brokenness.
We kill the doctor who has come to heal us, and yet rather than cast us
off as completely depraved, God’s love goes deeper still.
People often wonder what the will
of God is. They want to know God’s
mind. Well, here it is in this passage—it
was God’s will to crush Jesus with pain, it says, because there is a greater
will at work here. The next passage says
the will of the Lord prospers through this—and that will is that people will
see light, that many will be made righteous through this suffering. He will pour himself out for sin, and yet the
reward will be richer still—Christ shall reign in power, and those who believe
will become righteous through his suffering.
Those who believe will be transformed by his pain and by his death, and
our sin will be no more.
Friends, this is an astounding
truth. God’s will is that sin and death
shall not be our end. God knew that we would
choose sin. God knew that we would turn
from him, and yet rather than choose insulted rage, God has chosen
compassionate love and reached out with grace to pay the price for our sins. It is a heavy price—it cost him the suffering
and painful death of his only Son, and yet he was willing to pay that price so
that we might reign with him in power forever.
God knew that his Son would not succumb to the finality of death, but he
still had to endure the horrors of the cross so that we would not suffer eternity
in death’s clutches. We have given God
every reason to despise and reject us, and yet God has reached out in love to
forgive.
In Christ, your sin is no
more. You are defined by life, not
death. When you accept Christ as Lord
and Savior, you are forever changed.
Your past cannot weight heavily upon you, keeping you chained to sin and
regret for all of your days. Our future
with Christ is bright.
It isn’t fair, friends, and we can
thank God that God is not fair, for we receive more than we deserve. Let us rejoice at that truth, and let us live
with gratitude refreshed. You have
received an eternal gift—how does that affect your day to day life? It should.
It should transform the way we see the world, the way we do
everything. Does it?
Do you genuinely want a deeper
relationship with Jesus Christ more than you want anything else?
I challenge you to let that
question rest in your hearts and minds this week.
In Jesus Christ, God has said ‘Yes’
to you.
What will your grateful reply be?
Let us pray
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