THE SUFFERING SERVANT OF GOD
Meditations in Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12
OUR GREAT BLESSING IN CHRIST

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THE Servant of God was wounded so greatly that those wounds ended in his death, and those wounds were in nature of punishment for sin and wrong. He was wounded and punished for evil and wrong committed, but it was not any sin that he had committed. Jesus, the Servant of God, was punished for the sin of the world. It was our sin that was put to his account, and so as we considered last time, he was wounded for our transgressions. It was our punishment Jesus bore on the cross. The wounds he endured should have been inflicted on us, and the death he suffered should have been ours, but he took our place so that by faith in him we are saved and delivered.

The two sentences before us in this meditation speak of the blessing which this substitution of Jesus has brought. The punishment he bore in our place and the wounds he endured bring two great blessings. Jesus won for us PEACE and HEALING. These two blessings encompass two great gospel doctrines - JUSTIFICATION and REGENERATION. Whole books have been written on each of these Bible truths. It is not the purpose of these meditations to go into these great truths at such depth. The aim of this meditation is to see this peace as Isaiah speaks of it here, and in the next sermon to do the same for the healing.

Peace is a concept that covers many areas in human life, but we shall not understand properly the peace which Jesus brings us, unless we first and foremost see this blessing of peace which he brings as peace with God. The Apostle Paul, in speaking about the blessing of Christ's atonement in Romans chapter 5 commences in verse 1 by saying "Being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." It is from this glorious peace that all peace for us is truly found and experienced.

Until we have peace with God there is no possibility of any true peace for us in this world, nor in the world to come. The need for peace with God, presupposes that there is controversy between us and God. There are many today who would deny that there is any need for peace with God. They would argue that God is all love and his goodwill towards us is constant and infinite, and that there is no barrier on his side for us to come to him. They would say that the barrier is all on our side, and whenever we want God he will be there for us, regardless of how we treat him or feel about him.

This is not the revelation which God has given of himself in the Bible. God's love as revealed in the Bible is something much stronger and more real and powerful than this. Further God has revealed himself as holy. He has revealed that he cannot abide anything that tarnishes that holiness. It is an offence to his very character and to his creative purpose. He has revealed that he is unable to overlook any falling short of his glory, and where such falling short has occurred, satisfaction must be made to his just law on account of that sin. God has revealed that forgiveness for sin cannot be pronounced until satisfaction for that sin has been made, and that if this holy principle is not upheld, God would cease to be holy and become a sinner himself. The bible reveals that there is a just wrath in God against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of human beings. Thus there is no peace with God until satisfaction is made for our sin and God's holiness is upheld.

There seems to be a wrong conception concerning the wrath of God in peoples minds who reject this revelation which God has given of himself. People seem to be unable to think about God's wrath in any other way than in terms of human anger and wrath. People seem to think that God's wrath can be nothing else than suggesting that God is in a rage against us and that God is having a tantrum because we will not do as he wishes. This is totally wrong. God's wrath is not an emotional thing. God does not have rages. God's wrath is a constant just reaction to all that falls short of his glory. God's wrath is concerned with evil and purging it away. God's wrath is essential to his Holy nature. He would cease to be holy if he did not show wrath against sin and evil.

Here is the heart of the nature of peace with God. God's just wrath against our sin, and against us because we are sinners, must be exhausted and quenched. We need someone to come and exhaust that wrath and so become a propitiation - that is, by satisfying all the demands of God's holy standard, God needs to be made propitious towards us and his wrath turned away from us. God's frown and quarrel against us needs to become a smile and an acceptance through someone making propitiation for our sins. This is what Jesus did. We have propitiation by his blood (Romans 3:25 in the Greek and AV).

God is perfectly holy and infinitely loving at the same time. His holiness must judge and condemn sin, but his love had to find a way to justly forgive the sinner. So his love caused him to give his Son, the Servant of God, to be the propitiation for our sin. So Jesus bore our sin in his body of the cross, and exhausted all God's justice against sin in our place, so making peace between God and the sinner who believes in Jesus.

Here is exalting and true greatness. Here is a love which is beyond all computing and measuring. God made Jesus sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be the righteousness of God in him.

The blessing of this peace with God is wonderful and far reaching. The blessing is concerned with our relationship with God and has an objective reality. What I mean is that the blessing of this peace, although it has effect on how we feel, is concerned with God and how God looks upon us and deals with us. The dying of Jesus on the cross was first and foremost and offering to God. It was an offering to God to satisfy the demands of his holiness and purge away sin and evil.

a. Reconciled to God.

Firstly, then, peace with God means God is reconciled to the sinner. We are reconciled to God because God is reconciled to us. When Adam sinned he lost contact with God. He was thrust out of the Garden of Eden. The fellowship he had enjoyed with God before he sinned ceased. His sin separated him from God and the blessing of knowing God and having fellowship with him. The very purpose for which we human beings were created by God, to know God and enjoy him for ever, was lost. This is why there is no peace and satisfaction, joy or fulfilment in this world without reconciliation with God through Christ.

This is a blessing wholly independent of us. We are not reconciled to God because we are good. We are reconciled to God because Jesus was good and because Jesus was obedient to the will of God in paying the wages due to God for our sin. We are reconciled to God because of what Christ has done, and because of the perfection of that work. Our relationship with God is based on what Christ has done for us and not upon anything that we have done. We may sin and we do sin continually and grievously, but we are still reconciled to God through Christ. This is an objective fact based on Christ's perfect atonement. Thus we do not lose the sense of God's love and presence because of the daily falling short of his perfection through the sin that is always present with us in this earthly life. Even when we sin deliberately and grievously, we are still reconciled to God, even though God may withdraw the sense of his love and presence in order to bring us to repentance.

This brings us to the security of this peace. Nothing, no nothing, can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. The apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans, after he has gone into in great length the greatness and perfection of all that God has done for us in Christ, states in chapter 8 that nothing can separate us from the love God in Christ (v.35-39). Why could he say this? He tells us in the previous verses 33 and 34. We read Paul saying - "Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus who died - more than that, who was raised to life - is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us."

Paul is telling us that our security is based on God's declaration that we are righteous in his sight because Christ has died and paid the price of our sin fully, and he is telling us that the resurrection of Jesus assures us that God was fully satisfied by the work of Christ in dying for our sins. This is why we can never lose peace with God, because Christ has died and risen. It is his perfect work for us, and no imperfect faltering work of ours, that his the basis of our assurance. Christ's work in dying is eternally perfect and complete. He died for all our sins from the moment we were born to the moment when we die, and so it would be unjust for God to condemn us when Christ has satisfied his law on our behalf. This is why Paul speaks of Christ's intercession as our assurance. When Christ intercedes for us he presents his perfect work to the Father, and God can't see any sin in us any more. Christ's presence at the right hand of the God, with the evidence of his infinitely great death in his hands, feet and side, is the eternal intercession he makes for us.

Toplady expressed this security, and wrote in a hymn

The wrath of a sin hating God,
with me has nothing to do,
My Saviours obedience to blood
hides all my transgressions from view.

(All transgressions means future ones as well as present. Toplady goes on -)

The work which his goodness began,
the arm of his strength will complete;
His promise is Yea and Amen,
and never was forfeited yet.

So to the end I'll endure,
as sure as the earnest is given;
More happy but not more secure,
when glorified with Him in heaven.

The blessing of our peace with God through our Lord Jesus is further experienced in the access we have to God. We read in Hebrews that we have access into the holiest of all by the blood of Jesus. The expression 'holiest of all' looks back at the Tabernacle in the Old Testament. The holiest of all was the room behind the thick curtain in the tabernacle which contained the Ark of the Covenant with its top known as the mercy seat. The veil of the Tabernacle excluded all human entrance into this room where God's presence was specially known. Only the High Priest entered this holy of holies once a year, with the blood of the atonement to sprinkle on the mercy seat, in order to obtain putting away of the sin of the people for another year. Sinful humanity could not approach God in his holiness. Now in Christ this curtain has been taken away, and not just from an earthly tabernacle, but the true 'holy of holies' which is heaven itself.

The blessing of the peace with God Jesus purchased for us is that now we have access directly to God. Access into the very presence of his holiness in the holiest place of all in heaven. We have access to the throne. This is the blessing we have in prayer. At any time God is available to us. We may enter his presence with our praise and petitions. So we read Paul declaring; "Don't be anxious about anything, but by prayer and supplication make your requests known unto God; and the peace of God which passes all understanding will fill your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. The peace we have with God through Jesus, allows us to experience peace which God gives as we lay all our burdens upon him.

This peace with God means acquittal. As far as the east is from the west, so far has God put our sins from him and out of his sight. When we look upon God as judge of the whole earth, we hear his pronouncement concerning us of acquittal. We are pronounced, for Christ's sake, not guilty. There is no sin recorded against our name. Our names are written in the book of life in heaven, where no sin is recorded against any name written in it.

Here again this is not a question of how we feel. There are times when our many failings and sins bear heavy upon our consciousness. We are ashamed. We know we deserve condemnation on account of our sins, but we know as Toplady puts it in the hymn quoted above "my Saviour's obedience to blood, hides all my transgressions from view." We can never, never, be accused again, because Christ has been accused in our place.

Following from our acquittal is the blessing that there is now no condemnation for us because by faith we are in Christ Jesus. This means that the punishment for sin is finished in our case. There is no judgement for us before God on the last day, and there is no casting of into hell.

We have no need to fear death. The process of dying may be painful and unpleasant. The unknown of physical death is fearsome. But to die is gain. In Christ we have nothing to fear. Death has become the gateway to real life, where all sin will be removed, and all the painful consequences of sin in this life will cease.

So the blessing of this peace is eternal life. The promise of the Gospel is that as soon as we believe we have eternal life. Faith in Jesus causes us to enter into eternal life now and in the future. We have already been raised together with Christ and made to sit in heveanly places with Christ. We will be more happy when we enter heaven itself, but we shall not be more secure than we are now, because Christ has restored to us the eternal life Adam lost. Death is no more for us, and the experience of physical death is simply falling asleep in Jesus, to wake up rejuvenated in the new world of glory.

All the blessings of eternal life are ours now. We have access to God. We are adopted into the family of God. We have fellowship with God. These are all ours now, though our experience of them is not complete while in this life.

Lastly the blessing of the Peace with God, which Jesus has achieved for us, is fellowship with God. The glory of paradise for Adam was that he walked with God in the cool of the day, and had conversation with him. This peace with God has restored this to us. God is our Friend and our Father. His presence is with us. We have him near always caring and loving us. We can bring to him all the secrets of our hearts, all the trials we face, all the pains we have to endure, all the difficulties we are called upon to overcome. We can share we God all our joys and achievements, and it becomes one of our greatest joys to thank him for these successes because we know that he has given them to us.

Our greatest joy here on earth is fellowship with Jesus and seeing him in the Bible and in the exposition of the Bible. We love Jesus and our greatest joy is to dwell with him in his word and prayer, and experience his love through the Spirit. Our great hope, which is certain and sure, is the fact that death and entering heaven will mean that we will see Jesus face to face.

Jesus bought our peace with God through taking the punishment for our sins in our place. Let us meditate deeply on this great salvation that we may have no doubt of this peace, and live in consciousness of it all our days.