THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
"The Pleasure of God in Bruising His Son”
Rev.
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prca.orgDear
radio friends,
As we seek to
contemplate the wonder of God’s love and grace in the cross of our Savior Jesus
Christ, we turn today to the Old Testament prophecy of Isaiah, chapter
53:10. We read: “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt
make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his
days, and the pleasure of the Lord
shall prosper in his hand.” The prophet
Isaiah is our dependable guide to bring us to the cross and to see the wonder
of God’s redeeming love and grace. Let
us go and follow what the prophet says, taking the shoes from off our feet,
for, as we read Isaiah
53, we walk on the most sacred spot in time and eternity. We come to the place where God spared not His
own Son but delivered Him up for us all.
We might call Isaiah
53 the gospel according to Isaiah, as if Isaiah the prophet, who lived 800
years before Jesus was born, stood at
And if you ask,
“How could Isaiah know such details, for it would take place 800 years in the
future?” The answer is: “God told him. And the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ
had long been planned in the eternal heart of God.”
And if you wonder
about that, then you must remember that the gospel declares that God saw
Calvary from all eternity, that this lived in His eternal breast, that He
planned it, that He brought it to pass, that He delighted in it, that it was
His pleasure, that God gloried in it, that God would show the wonder of His
grace to worthless sinners by bruising His Son.
And
if you say, “But why would God do that?”
The answer is: “He loved us.”
And,
again, if you would say, “But why would He love us, unworthy sinners?” Then the answer is: “Because He saw in the cross His own
glory. He would reveal His own glory in
His justice against sin, His mercy, His righteousness, His grace toward those
whom He chose to be in Jesus Christ.”
Nothing so pleases
God as to reveal His own glory!
So let us go with
Isaiah for a few moments today and let us see the heart of the heart, the soul
of the soul, of the cross of Jesus Christ.
Let us take fast hold of it by faith, let us humble ourselves, and ask
the Holy Spirit to open our eyes that we may have understanding. For many can go to
There are those who
want to reenact the passion and the cross of Jesus Christ. But when they reenact it in a movie, they
miss it. And they miss it by an
eternity. For no movie can reveal what
took place at the cross.
God bruised His
Son. God put Him to grief. The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us
all. God numbered His Son with the
transgressors. God made His soul an
offering for sin.
Why? Because God is glorious in
His love. Because God’s glory is
this: Rather than that our sin should go
unpunished, He hath punished it in the bitter and shameful death of His own
Son, that He might be revealed as the just God and the merciful heavenly
Father.
God was at work at
the cross. We read in verse 10 of Isaiah
53, “Yet [that is, although Jesus was innocent and there was no violence or
deceit in His mouth] it pleased the Lord
to bruise him; he [the Lord] hath put him to grief.” Jesus was not swept away to
When we read the
account of the cross, we trace the death of Jesus, of course, to the hatred of
the Jews and to the fickle, unmanly Pontius Pilate. Yes, that is certainly true. There was the great sin of nailing Jesus,
God’s innocent Son, to a tree. And that
sin is to be laid at the door of man.
Peter later will say in Acts
2:23, “Him [Jesus], being delivered by the determinate counsel and
foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and
slain.” Yes, man’s sin and
responsibility.
But Isaiah, and we
with him through faith, see something more in Jesus’
death than merely Roman cruelty and Jewish envy. We see the solemn decree of the eternal
God. We see God’s predestination, God’s
predetermination, of what would take place.
We see that the death of Jesus is the very center of all the other
decrees of the eternal God. It is the
foundation-stone on which they all stand.
Look beyond the scourging and the reproach, as awful as it was, and the
Roman nails pounded through His hands and feet.
Hear beyond the Jewish taunts and jeers and hatred. Trace the crucifixion of Jesus to the breast
of God! Trace it to a fountain, to the
spring from which it cannot be plumbed—God’s love for us.
For Isaiah says,
“It pleased the Lord to bruise
him; he hath put him to grief.” Isaiah
looks past Herod and Pilate and the chief priests to the heavenly Father.
Isaiah’s prophecy means
that the true sufferings of Jesus Christ were those that the Father laid upon
Him. There was something infinitely more
agonizing than the nails that were pounded through His hands and His feet, and
His body hanging upon those nails and tearing.
There was something more than the hot, stinging, bloody welts across His
back inflicted by the Roman lash. God
bruised Him.
A bruise is the
swelling of the body where it has been struck.
And God had said, “I will smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered.” Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why hast
Thou forsaken Me?” as He hanged upon the cross. The sunshine of God’s presence that has
cheered many a dying saint and martyr was drawn away from Jesus. God put Him to this grief. And oh, oh, such grief!
You say, “I have
known such a grief when it seemed to me that it had been better that I had
never been born. I have gone through
sorrow when for a while there seemed to be no answer to me.” Oh, but His grief was the grief of sin—all
our sin, all our woe, all that we deserved in an eternity of hell was put upon
Him. It pleased the Lord to bruise Him,
to place what we deserved upon Him.
And the climax of
this woe was the darkness, the three hours of darkness, when the Father bruised
Him and put Him to grief. It pleased the
Lord to bruise Him.
That is more than
just that God willed to bruise Him.
Pleased.
It was the Father’s pleasure.
There was emotion from God. There
was a delight in this. This word is used
also in Isaiah
62:4. There we read, “Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land
any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be
called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah:
for the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married.” Hephzibah—My delight
is in her. The Lord delights in
thee. That is the same word: it pleased the Lord, it gave Him delight.
Now we ask, “How
can that be? How can it be that it
delighted the Lord to bruise His dear Son?
Did not He say from heaven, This is My beloved
Son in whom I am well pleased?” Did not
Jesus say, “The Father loveth the Son and shows Him
all things whatsoever He doeth”? How
could it please and delight the Father to bruise His Son? Delight in this? Would that not be awful for God?
The answer is
this. It pleased the Lord to do this
because in this way He would glorify Himself in the revelation of His infinite
love that He has for us and to us in Christ Jesus. He would declare that sin cannot be swept
away under the rug of the universe. But
rather than that our sin be unpunished, He has punished it in His own Son.
You say,
“Wait. You mean that, rather than let my
sin go unpunished, God has bruised His Son?
Could not God simply let bygones be bygones?”
No, He will never
do that. Why will He not let sin simply
be ignored? Because
God loves His glory. And sin
tramples that glory in the dust. Sin is
the belittling of the glory of God. We
all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. What is the essence of sin? It is that we have fallen short of prizing
the glory of God above homes and DVDs and alcohol and sex and sunshine and
health and money and self. God is
pleased to bruise His Son because in that He says “He alone is worthy. And sin must be punished. I will punish your sin in My Son.” He delights, He has pleasure, in laying our
sins’ punishment upon His own Son because in that way He shows Himself as holy
and just and righteous. And at the same
time, He is merciful and lovely and gracious and kind.
This was the reason
for Jesus’ death. Isaiah says, “When
thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin.” Christ was so humbled, so bruised, because He
was our substitute. He was an offering
for our sins. How can God be just and at
the same time justify His people? Well, it pleased the Lord to make His Son our
substitute. God said, “This pleases me,
that My Son be given as an offering to obliterate the sin of My
people.” When you see Jesus Christ
handed over to the soldiers to be led away to be crucified, you see the One who
has been chosen of God to stand in our place.
When you see Him stretched upon the cross, nailed and lifted up, the
whole company of the elect of God throughout all ages are
there. He represents them. And when He suffers there upon the cross and
He cries out, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
He actually, at that very moment, literally and fully, bore the sin of all the
elect of God. His soul was made an
offering for sin, that is, His perfect life in His soul. The exact punishment that our sin deserved
was poured out. All the woe, all the
grief, all the eternal agony that our sin deserved was inflicted upon Him.
And now there is
not so much as a speck, an ounce, an iota, a hair, an atom, a molecule of that
sin’s punishment left for those for whom Jesus suffered—all the elect of
God. God will never hide His face from
us. But He did so from His Son.
If Christ is
punished in my stead, then I shall not be punished. And the Father was pleased, the Father was
delighted, to show His grace, His justice, and His wisdom in giving His Son as
the substitute. God was pleased to do
this.
He did not say,
“Well, My chosen ones have made a mess and there is no other way, so, though
I’d rather not do this, I will.” No, He
delighted. He so loved us, He so loved
His glory. And He was pleased with His
Son. He was never so
delighted in His Son as when His Son bore the curse for us.
Jesus said in John
10:17, “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that
I might take it again.” He was pleased
because Christ on the cross sought the glory of God. Every step to the cross Jesus echoed the words: “My Father is of infinite worth. His will, His pleasure, His holiness, and His
justice are the reality of life.” And
every hammer blow driving the nails into His hands and feet on the cross echoed
through the universe: “My Father is of
infinite value. What He has purposed is
all that matters.” What alone matters is
His righteousness and holiness, His justice and His love. The Father delighted in His Son. His Son delighted in Him. And the Son and the Father delighted in us
out of mere grace. We are saved.
“He shall see his
seed,” we read, His spiritual offspring.
Not maybe, but He shall see His seed. Not, there might be a chance that He will see
them. No, He shall justify many, says
Isaiah. There is no uncertainty here. Christ knew that what He was accomplishing on
the cross would be certainly done. He
shall see His seed. He will see you for
whom He died as a child of God. He will
meet you at the throne of heaven when all is over and He will say, “It is
I.” He will see you now opening your
eyes to see Him and to love Him and to trust Him and to obey Him.
And He will arise
from the dead, for God says in Isaiah
53 that God “shall prolong his days.”
Up, out of the grave, says God.
You shall live. You shall burst
the iron bands of death and come out as One who is the
victor over death. And you shall come
unto Me forever, for God’s pleasure is that His Son
shall stand before Him and His name shall be confessed and honored and
exalted. All the
Father’s good pleasure shall be accomplished.
“And the pleasure
of the Lord shall prosper in his
hand.” All that pleases God, all that
God has willed to show forth the glory of His name, all of that is entrusted to
our Savior Jesus Christ, the crucified Lord.
And all of that pleasure shall be accomplished. It shall prosper. God’s pleasure is that all the church shall
be redeemed from sin and brought home in the last day. God’s pleasure is that all of His people be
led in just the right way, through this present valley of sin, to be prepared
for their place in glory. And this
pleasure of God in His church, entrusted to the crucified Jesus, shall prosper. It shall be attained. The cross has conquered.
From land to land
and from sea to sea and from age to age, until at last the King of kings shall
stand with us in all of His glory and we will shout, “Hosanna! To the Son of David.
Glory in the highest!”
Now, have you been
to
Let us pray.
Father, we thank
Thee again for the Word, the blessed Word of God. Seal it unto our hearts through Jesus’
Name. Amen.