If Christ is not risen…

Posted on April 7, 2024 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Quasimodogeniti – Easter 1

1 John 5:4-10  +  John 20:19-31

As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, If Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty…If Christ is not risen, then your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. We could add to that list. If Christ is not risen, then Jesus was a liar. If Christ is not risen, then He is not the Son of God, not the King of anyone, not your Savior from anything. If Christ is not risen, then evil truly does triumph in the end.

Those thoughts must have hit Jesus’ disciples like a ton of bricks on that first Easter evening. In their minds, there was no “if” about it. Christ had not been raised. Being raised from the dead, especially on a permanent basis, wasn’t a thing, even though Jesus had prophesied that very thing on several occasions, even though the women had seen Him alive that morning, even though Peter, apparently, had seen Him already, too. In a way, it’s hard for us to comprehend how they could still be in disbelief. But that’s only because we have gotten so used to this story. And we have seen how the Church of the risen Christ has spread throughout the world—spread, largely, by men who believed so strongly in the resurrection of Christ that they were willing to abandon their homes, willing to be hated by their countrymen, willing to be tortured and killed for His name’s sake. We haven’t seen the resurrection, but we’ve most definitely seen the effects of it. Those first disciples had only the word of Jesus, and of the handful of people who had seen Him that day—which should have been enough! But wasn’t.

So they were gathered together in that locked upper room, fearing the Jews, because if the Jews could crucify Jesus, they could certainly crucify His disciples. And they weren’t wrong! The Jews eventually did persecute Christians and have them stoned and imprisoned and put to death. But the only reason to fear any of that is, if Christ is not risen.

Or, if you don’t know or believe that He’s risen from the dead, which was the case with most of Jesus’ disciples on that first Easter day. But unbelief and fear were soon replaced by astonishment and joy when the Lord Jesus appeared out of nowhere in the midst of that locked upper room and said, Peace to you!, and showed them His pierced hands and side, no longer painful wounds, but signs of the death that had now been overcome.

Peace to you!, or Peace be with you! More than just a Jewish form of greeting. On the night before He died, Jesus had told His disciples, Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. If Christ is not risen, then that peace that He left with them and gave them is worthless. But if He is risen, then it changes everything. It means that God is reconciled to sinners through Christ, that we have peace with God through faith in Christ Jesus. And, since Christ is risen, He is able to maintain that peace forever and ever. What do you think it means to have peace with the God of the universe? What do you think it means to have peace with the One who holds the keys of eternal life and the keys of eternal condemnation?

Speaking of keys, Jesus said again to the apostles, Peace to you. Then He said, As my Father has sent me, so I also send you.” We’ll get to the keys themselves in a moment. First, how had the Father sent Jesus? The Father had sent Him to accomplish a mission. Several missions, actually. He was sent, for example, to die for our sins. But that mission was accomplished. Jesus wasn’t sending the disciples to do that. What was the mission, then? It was to reconcile sinners to God, just as St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. Through Christ’s preaching, God the Father was reconciling sinners to Himself, calling them away from their sins to faith in Christ Jesus. The apostles were ministers like that, sent like that. More than ministers. Ambassadors for Christ, sent out in His name to reconcile sinners to God. That’s how Jesus proceeded to send them, the authority Jesus went on to give them:

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.

Jesus wasn’t at that moment breathing the Holy Spirit onto the disciples. (Remember, the word “spirit” means “wind” or “breath”). He was showing them, vividly, that He would soon (50 days from then, actually) send the promised Holy Spirit upon them in a special way, to enable and empower them to carry out this ministry in His name, which is summarized in what He said next: If you forgive the sins of any, their sins are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, their sins are retained. This is basically a restatement of what Jesus had already said to His apostles earlier: I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. The apostles were sent out with these keys, with this office of the ministry, directly by Jesus. The ministers after them are sent by Jesus through the call of the Church. But the ministry is the same: to preach the Gospel, to baptize and forgive the sins of those who repent believe, and to pronounce judgment and the non-forgiveness of sins to those who don’t believe.

Now, the ministry of Christ, the ministry He has given to men, includes preaching and teaching the whole counsel of God. It includes teaching people the story of the world, from creation to the coming of Christ in humility to His coming again in glory at the end of the age. But the message centers in the preaching of repentance, which would be useless without the authority to forgive the penitent. And Christ’s authority to forgive sins to the penitent is useless, if Christ is not risen from the dead.

So Thomas was still in a bind. He wasn’t there to see Jesus alive again, or to hear Him speak. Worse, even though every one of the other ten apostles gave him their eye-witness testimony, he refused to believe and spoke those bitter but famous words of unbelief: Unless I see the nail prints in his hands, and put my finger into the nail prints, and place my hand into his side, I will not believe.

Now, if Christ is not risen from the dead, then a person certainly can’t be faulted for not believing in something that isn’t true. But if it is true, if Christ is risen from the dead, if He who has never once lied to you did exactly as He said He would do, and if the people you trust most in the world are all assuring you that it is true, that Christ is risen from the dead, and you still refuse to believe, whose fault is that? It isn’t God’s fault. Or the fault of the witnesses. It’s your fault.

Thomas, on this occasion, exemplifies the atheistic scientific age in which we live. I just watched an interview with a man who is trying to cheat death itself. He believes that, with the right scientific measurements and the right diet, suggested by science, and with the right scientifically developed therapies, he can solve the problem of death. When it was pointed out to him that Christians think they have already solved that problem, through faith in the risen Christ, he replied, “Show me the evidence.”

Dear friends in Christ, God has shown mankind a lot of evidence, both of His existence and of His faithfulness to His promises. But I ask you, when has it ever been enough? Adam and Eve walked with God and yet still rebelled against Him. Noah’s sons walked off the ark God told them to build and within a generation their offspring worshiped pagan gods. The Israelites who walked through the Red Sea on dry ground were worshiping a golden calf within two months. The Jews saw miracle after miracle from Jesus and still kept insisting. “Show us a sign! Show us the evidence that You are who You say You are!” You and I can see the universe in all its complexity, the human body and the human mind in all their wonder. We can comb through the Bible and see how everything that’s verifiable in it has been verified and yet the vast majority of the world continues to insist, “Show me the evidence!” The problem has never been a lack of evidence. The problem has always been blind unbelief.

So you can’t blame God for refusing to perform when people have demanded it of Him, can you? “Show me the evidence!” over and over again, even as they completely ignore His Word and His faithfully-kept promises. No, God chose not to reveal the risen Christ to everyone. As Peter says in the book of Acts, God raised Jesus up on the third day, and showed Him openly, not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before by God, even to us who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead.

Thomas was one of those chosen witnesses, so Jesus mercifully showed him the evidence He demanded. Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put your hand here and place it into my side, and do not be unbelieving any longer, but believing.” And Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” And then Thomas, and the rest of the apostles, went on to become witnesses in all the world of Christ’s. And the only evidence they were given to pass on was their own eye-witness testimony, combined with the words and promises of God in Holy Scripture which pointed to Jesus as the Christ. And that would be enough to convince everyone who could be convinced.

Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed.” In other words, blessed are you when you stop demanding more and more evidence, when you hear and believe the Word of God, which is the word of all the witnesses who saw the evidence firsthand, from Moses to the apostle John. More than that, it’s the word of God. Let it be enough! As St. John wrote,  To be sure, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that, by believing, you may have life in his name.” If Christ is not risen, then it doesn’t matter what you believe. But if He is, then it matters more than life itself. So believe in Christ Jesus, risen from the dead. Put all your hope in Him. Because He is risen, and one day you will see Him, too, just as Thomas did. All men will see Him. And all who have believed, all who have been born of God, who have already been victorious over the world by faith, will sit down with Jesus at a feast that will never end. May God grant that we be among them! Amen.

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God’s Word the foundation of faith

Posted on April 3, 2024 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the Week of Easter

Acts 10:34-41  +  Luke 24:13-35

We spent a lot of time last week hearing the Holy Week Scriptures. It’s important to know the events of Holy Week. In fact, it’s vital for us Christians to know them. But it’s just as important to know the Word of God that prophesied those events ahead of time, which is why we also spent some time reviewing the prophecies of Isaiah. This is how the Holy Spirit works faith in a person’s heart, through the Word of God, through the prophecies and through the fulfillment of them. Faith comes by hearing the Spirit-inspired words pointing to the crucified and risen Lord Jesus. Faith has to be founded on God’s Word, or it will never last.

Two disciples were walking toward the town of Emmaus on Easter Sunday afternoon. One is called Cleopas, who is probably the same man who is called Clopas by the Apostle John. He was Jesus’ uncle, in fact, married to Mary, the sister of Jesus’ mother Mary, who was one of the women at the foot of Jesus’ cross, together with Jesus’ mother. We don’t know the other disciple’s name, but, like Cleopas, he was not one of the Twelve apostles. They had witnessed all the events of Holy Week, and then their hopes that Jesus might be the Christ were dashed when He died. Even the reports of the women that day and of the empty tomb weren’t enough to give them hope.

Why did Jesus not allow them to recognize Him as He walked with them? Why were their eyes “restrained” so that they did not recognize Him? Because the kind of faith they would need for the rest of their life doesn’t come from seeing. It comes from hearing.

And so Jesus walked through the Old Testament with them, as He walked on the road with them, making the connections for them between prophecy and fulfillment, between shadow and reality, even as we did last week. Using the Holy Scriptures, Jesus swept out the debris in their hearts, the debris of misinterpretation that plagued the people of Israel, the notions that the Christ would appear glorious at His coming, that He would restore an earthly kingdom to Israel, that He would take up the throne of His kingdom without suffering, without dying, and without rising from the dead. As they walked, they began to see the truth, that the Christ, whose coming was prophesied in the Old Testament, had to come first to suffer for sin, that He was to be like the Passover lamb, and like all the Old Testament sacrifices, shedding His innocent blood in order to keep safe all who believe in Him. He had to be lifted up on a cross, like the bronze serpent that Moses lifted up in the desert, so that all who look to Him in faith are saved from the serpent’s venom. He had to be like the tabernacle and the temple, God’s dwelling place on earth. And the temple of His body had to be destroyed and rebuilt in three days.

The hearts of those two disciples burned within them as they listened to the Word of God that Jesus spoke, and only then, after their faith was resting securely on the foundation of God’s Word, only then did Jesus reveal Himself to them and allow them to recognize Him. He didn’t first show them visible proof of His resurrection. He first led them to faith through the Word. Then He allowed them to see.

And so it is with us, too. We haven’t seen Jesus. But He has sent His Gospel out into the world, and His Holy Spirit has caused our hearts to burn as He shows us that all of Scripture was pointing to the cross and to the empty tomb of the Christ, so that we might believe in Him and be saved. That’s the message that brought us to faith, and it’s the same message and the same preaching of Law and Gospel that will bring others to faith. No programs, no activities, no gimmicks, no youth groups, no amount of training in apologetics, no Shroud of Turin will bring a single soul to be convinced of Jesus’ resurrection or to trust in Jesus for salvation. Only the Scriptures. Only the Word of God. Only the preaching that centers on Christ, and on Him crucified. And risen! According to the Holy Scriptures.

And if the Scriptures were telling the truth about the Christ’s death and resurrection, then you can be sure they are also telling the truth about Christ reigning at the right hand of the Father, and about His constant care for His Holy Christian Church and for every single baptized believer in it.

So even though you don’t see Jesus, listen to the Scriptures! Listen to the Word of God! And your faith will grow! And then, if you know someone who doesn’t know the risen Lord Jesus, don’t try to convince them with arguments and proofs. Just use the Scriptures. Tell the story of God’s Word. It’s the Holy Spirit’s only tool for bringing people to faith. And if we come to know Christ through God’s Word, then He will surely abide with us here on earth by His Spirit, until, after believing in Him through the Word, we see Him in person, with our own eyes, when He comes again in glory. Amen.

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Everything went according to plan

Posted on March 31, 2024 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Easter Sunday

1 Corinthians 5:6-8  +  Mark 16:1-8

Every year, on Easter Sunday, we have two main tasks before us: to review the story (the true story!) of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, and to consider the significance of it—what it means for the world, and what it means for the Church, including what it means for you and me as individual members of the Holy Christian Church.

We begin with the familiar story. The women who had so faithfully followed Jesus around throughout His ministry, who had served Him and listened to Him and believed in Him, were there on Good Friday, too, when the disciples hurriedly wrapped up Jesus’ body and placed it in the newly carved-out tomb. They watched as the large stone was rolled into place to block the entrance. They rested in their homes on the Sabbath, even as Jesus’ body rested in the tomb. And then, after the sun set on Saturday, they went out and purchased more burial supplies.

At the soonest opportunity, before dawn on Sunday morning, they set out on their way, sad, confused, afraid, but committed to doing a better job of caring for Jesus’ corpse than the disciples had been able to do on Friday. Among their worries was the question, How will we move that large stone out of the way? As it turned out, they wouldn’t have to. An angel had come down from heaven and moved it for them, so that all could see that the body that once rested there was gone.

As we put the four Gospel accounts together, it appears that Mary Magdalene arrived before the other women. She saw the stone rolled out of the way, and assumed that someone had stolen Jesus’ body, so she immediately ran to find Peter and John. Meanwhile, the other women arrived and saw exactly what Mary had seen, except that they saw two angels there who told them, Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His disciples—and Peter—that He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him, as He said to you. Luke adds something else that the angel said: Remember how He spoke to you when He was still in Galilee, saying, ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.

The women were still afraid, we’re told, but they hurried away to seek out Jesus’ disciples.

Meanwhile, Peter and John arrived at the tomb. Mary Magdalene came back with them. Peter ran right inside, and found nothing except for the grave clothes neatly folded up and sitting where Jesus’ body had been. John looked inside, saw the empty tomb, and believed that Jesus’ had risen. Then those two left, while Mary lingered, weeping. She went into the tomb, and suddenly there were two angels there asking her why she was crying. They’ve taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him. Clearly she didn’t recognize them as angels. That’s when Jesus confronted her in the garden outside the tomb and asked her the same question: Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? She thought He was the gardener. She gave him the same answer. And then, as she wept, she heard Him say her name. “Mary.” Then she recognized Him and was overjoyed. And Jesus told her to go back and tell His brothers the good news, which she did.

Then, as the other women were still making their way back to the city, Jesus appeared to them also and said, Do not be afraid. Go and tell My brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see Me. And the women went and did as Jesus had told them, with joy, and with great relief in their hearts. They had all assumed that things had gone so wrong, and they didn’t see any path forward. Now that they had seen Jesus alive and well, they finally began to understand: Everything had gone according to plan.

And that’s the significance of Jesus’ resurrection, or at least, the part we’re going to focus on today. Over the past three days we heard the prophet Isaiah unveil God’s plan before our eyes. No one in Israel understood it all before it happened, but after Jesus suffered and died and rose again, the plan becomes obvious.

No, His betrayal by Judas, His abandonment by the disciples, His arrest in the garden were not unexpected. It went according to plan.

No, the torture and condemnation Jesus received from Jews and Gentiles alike, the coordination of Pilate with Herod on Good Friday, were not mistakes. It went according to plan.

No, the form of Jesus’ death, being lifted up on a cross, having His hands and feet and side pierced, the soldiers casting lots for His clothing, His thirst, His prayers for His enemies, His death and burial were not accidents. It went according to plan.

The resurrection demonstrates that. God was not thwarted or defeated in Jesus’ suffering and death. His plan for the salvation of mankind was being accomplished through it. That’s why we celebrate the death of our God on Good Friday, because it was part of our God’s plan, part of His victory. And now Jesus’ disciples can look back and see the truth: Jesus was in control the whole time. That doesn’t in any way excuse any of the bad actors along the way. It just means that God is so great, so powerful, so wise that He was able to steer everything where it needed to go so that mankind could have a graphic picture of God’s commitment to mankind, and a valid sacrifice of atonement in which to take refuge, so that sinners could be saved.

For the world, this means that Jesus Christ is the King of the Jews, and the King of all, which means that all need to repent, urgently. And while Jesus died for everyone’s sins and wishes to reconcile all people to God through faith in His blood, if they remain enemies of Christ the King, the only Mediator between God and men, then they will remain enemies of God for eternity.

For the Church, including each of you, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this means, you can either shout for joy, or, at least, breathe a sigh of relief. Because Jesus’ resurrection means that, no matter how great your sins have been, no matter how much you’ve suffered, no matter how difficult life in this world has become, for however out-of-control things seem to be, it’s going to be okay now. Christ is risen! That means that everything has gone according to plan, just as Jesus said it would. Everything is going according to plan. Everything will go according to plan—God’s good plan to gather His Church and to preserve those whom He has gathered, His dearly loved sons and daughters, whose Brother, the Lord Jesus Christ, has already risen from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, and is now preparing a place in glory for each one of His brothers and sisters, that we, too, may rise from the dead one day and join Him in the life that is truly life. Amen.

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You are part of your Savior’s victory

Posted on March 30, 2024 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for the Vigil of Easter

Isaiah 54:1-17

We can’t do justice tonight to the 54th chapter of Isaiah’s prophecy, which you heard earlier among the Old Testament readings. You’ve heard so much from the Holy Spirit this evening and this week, so many Scriptures so full of meaning. So I offer you this brief summary and encouragement from the prophet Isaiah for our Vigil of Easter.

The theme of Isaiah 52 was, Rejoice, O Church of God! Your Savior is coming! Isaiah 53: Behold! Here is your Savior, who will bear your sins, suffer and die for them, and rise again in victory. Isaiah 54: Rejoice, O Church of God! You are part of your Savior’s victory!

Now, what is the victory of your Savior? He made it all the way through His life, and especially through His sufferings, sinlessly. He died innocently, providing the atoning sacrifice for all mankind. He rose from the dead victoriously. But His victory goes on! As Isaiah had put it in chapter 53, He lives to justify many. Or as the Lord says at the end of chapter 54, This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is from Me. The Christian’s righteousness before God doesn’t come from ourselves at all. It comes from the Lord Jesus. Christ’s victory over the grave enables Him to apply His perfect righteousness to all who believe, to clothe us with it as a garment, a garment we’ve all put on—or are about to put on!—in Holy Baptism.

And when He justifies people, when He forgives them their sins, the Lord doesn’t leave them out in the cold. He brings them into His Father’s family, into His Holy Christian Church, and cares for them there. I will build My Church, Jesus had told His disciples months before His death and resurrection. I will bring My sheep into this fold.

And so God comforts His Old Testament Church, Sing, O barren woman, you who have not borne! Break forth into singing, and cry aloud, you who have not labored with child! For more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married woman,” says the Lord. Enlarge the place of your tent, and let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings; do not spare; lengthen your cords, and strengthen your stakes. For you shall expand to the right and to the left, and your descendants will inherit the nations.

You, dear Christians, are those descendants of barren Jerusalem. You are part of the vast expansion of God’s holy Church. The true Church of the Old Testament has given birth to the children of the New Testament. Look! Here you are, the children of desolate Jerusalem, listening patiently, with joy in your hearts, to the story of God’s works for the good of mankind! Look, here you are celebrating your Savior’s victory over sin, death, and the devil. Look! Here they are, two more who will be added to the number of baptized believers tonight. You are Christ’s victory! You are His prize! And you won’t be the last! Amen.

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The Servant’s suffering and triumph

Posted on March 29, 2024 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Good Friday

Isaiah 52:13-53:12

Behold! My Servant! God says through the prophet Isaiah about the coming Christ. Nowhere do we behold the Lord’s servant like we do on Good Friday. Isaiah 53, and the final verses of chapter 52, unfold the events of Good Friday for us, both the “what” and the “why.” They talk about the suffering of the Christ, but their theme is His triumph over suffering and His exaltation after His humiliation. We begin with the last few verses of Isaiah 52.

Behold, My Servant shall prosper; He shall rise and be lifted up and be highly exalted. One could also translate that last word as “glorified.” “He shall rise and be lifted up and glorified.” Maybe that reminds you of what Jesus said about Himself just three days earlier on busy Tuesday: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified…But if I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to Myself.” St. John tells us that this was a reference to the kind of death He would die, by being “lifted up” on a cross. So, you see, even this verse from Isaiah’s prophecy points, in a cryptic way, to the crucifixion of the Lord’s Servant. That understanding goes well with the next verse: Just as many were astonished at you, so His visage was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men.

Isaiah continues, So shall He sprinkle many nations. Moses, the Mediator of the Old Covenant, sprinkled the blood of the Old Testament on the people of Israel at Mt. Sinai. So the Christ will sprinkle the blood of His New Testament beyond Israel, on many nations. In other words, after shedding His own blood on the cross and providing atonement for sins, He will apply that atonement throughout the world through preaching, through the sprinkling of Holy Baptism, and through the meal of the New Testament which is His holy Supper.

But if He’s going to do that, He can’t remain dead, and we can see that here in Isaiah’s prophecy, too. My Servant shall prosper; He shall rise and be lifted up and be highly exalted. Those words can also point to Christ’s glory in His resurrection and exaltation following His death. It’s all there underneath Isaiah’s prophecy. And it’s there for you and me, so that we can see that this was God’s will all along, for His Son to suffer, die, and rise again, and then prosper in bringing people from every nation into the New Covenant in His blood.

Kings shall shut their mouths at Him; for what had not been told them they shall see, and what they had not heard they shall consider. The word will go out of what He has done, and even kings will be amazed. They will be made speechless by this astonishing plan of salvation that no mind of man could have imagined. Many will believe!

But many will not believe, especially in Israel, as St. Paul explains the next words of Isaiah’s prophecy: Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? Even after all the prophecies fulfilled on Good Friday, even after the Lord’s resurrection, most in Israel would not believe. That unbelief is what led to Israel despising Christ in the first place. And that’s what we hear about in the next verses.

…He has no form or majesty; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And as one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Jesus never appeared regal, never looked like a king, much less like God Himself. But how much worse that became on Good Friday, after He had been abused and tortured. When Pilate brought Him out before the crowd in that purple robe, with the crown of thorns on His head and with all the blood and bruises from the blows He had received—truly He was despised.

Why? Was God really so angry with Him? Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Oh. That’s why He suffered. That’s why He died. Not because God was angry with Him. But because God was angry with us—with all sinners. We all have iniquities, we all have transgressions recorded in the books that will be opened at the Last Judgment. We have, every one of us, gone our own way, done things our way in this life. We all should have paid for those sins with our lives, with our eternal souls. But God’s anger against us for our sins was not as great as His love for us, not as great as His desire that we should be saved. So He caused His beloved Son to suffer the things we all should have suffered, to pay the price we couldn’t pay, so that everyone who believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. And the Son willingly obeyed.

He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. Jesus didn’t defend Himself before the Sanhedrin or before Pontius Pilate. Because His goal wasn’t to be released or to prove Himself right before men. His goal, all along, was to suffer and die for our sins.

By oppression and judgment He was taken away, and who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken. The death of the Christ is clearly prophesied here, and in the following words. And they made His grave with the wicked— but with the rich at His death, because He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. The innocent Christ had to die. And He had to be buried in the tomb of the rich Joseph of Arimathea. That small, small benefit had to be granted to Him, to be buried in an elegant, rich man’s tomb, because, although He was treated like a wicked man in His death, He was the only “unwicked” man who has ever lived.

Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You 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. He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By knowledge of Him My righteous Servant shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities.

What an amazing sentence! It pleased the LORD to bruise Him—to bruise His own beloved Son, and to put Him to grief, because it pleased Him to save us from our sins. And, because Jesus was innocent, because Jesus suffered not for His own sins but for ours, His resurrection from the dead is clearly prophesied here, too, as well as the success He would have in bringing many to faith in Him, by which He would justify them, save them, and make them children of God.

Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His life unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

In the coming days, we’ll talk about that “portion with the great” that God the Father would bestow on His Son. For now, take comfort in the Son’s willingness to pour out His life unto death, so that you and I, who deserved death, might share in His life. Yes, stand in awe of the Lord Jesus Christ, for His willingness to be numbered with the transgressors, so that you and I, who are transgressors, might be numbered with the saints, through faith in His blood. Amen.

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