On the cross Christ exposed the greatness of our sin. Our sin is so great, so serious, and so severe, that it required nothing less than the death of the Son of God to make satisfaction. Jesus took all the punishment that we deserve and drank down the cup of judgment and now gives us the cup of blessing. In this great work of redemption, the Lord reveals the foolishness and emptiness of all our pride. We have nothing to be proud of in ourselves and we desperately need Christ to set us free.

The title of this message is Poor Contempt on All My Pride. And I would like to really continue the thought that Anthony brought to us regarding the realization of our sin, but to see our sin in the sufferings of Jesus Christ. Because it is in the sufferings of Jesus that we are faced with the depths of our sin. And of course this title, Poor Contempt on All My Pride, comes out of that great hymn, When I survey the wondrous cross. When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain I count but loss and poor contempt on all my pride." When the author wrote this he was thinking about the exposure of sin on the cross.

That on the cross our Lord Jesus Christ exposed our pride. He brought us into a realization of sin and the realization of our sin is exposed most graphically in the sufferings of Jesus Christ. So that's what I really want to speak about and I think what's important about this is that we really understand who we are. John Calvin said in book one of the Institutes that it's very important that you know two things in this world. That you know who you are and that you know who God is.

These are two of the most important things. As we walk through the scripture here tonight, I pray that we'll see who we are with greater clarity. Our pride blinds us to who we are. But the sufferings of Jesus Christ take off the blinders and they give us a realization of our sin and who we really are. So I want us to walk through this.

Now there are two ways I want to do this. First of all, I want you to open your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 53. And I want you to find verse 4. We'll sort of pick up the context of this whole idea of seeing our sin in the sufferings of Jesus Christ. Isaiah 53 verse 4.

It's very difficult for me to just skip to verse 4, but I want to have us see the heart of this matter here. Of course it's revealed through the entire chapter, but in verse 4, we read that he bore our griefs. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. And what this means is that he took our griefs and our sorrows and he took them upon himself. It was as if a weight was lifted off of our shoulders and put onto his, like a yoke.

A yoke was removed from us and we saw that it was laid upon him. So he bore, he has borne our griefs and he carried our sorrows. You know these griefs, these are the sufferings that we would call, you know, spiritual diseases, the sicknesses of our souls. You know Peter tells us in 1 Peter chapter 2 that he himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree that we having died to sins might live for righteousness by whose stripes you were healed. The second, this matter of this carrying our sorrow is that I think we need to recognize the emphasis here is on pain and grief and sorrow.

There are pains of the mind, There are anxieties, there are discouragements that we are beset with, depressions, fears, and these things come upon us as a result of sin. David said in Psalm 32, many are the sorrows of the wicked. Our sins always cause us sorrows of some kind. And these could be mental sorrows, they could be emotional and even physical because our sorrows affect us physically. And it says here that he carried them away.

He just carried them away. And then we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. That means that we rejected Him. We rejected Him and He bore our rejection of Him. All of us have rejected Him.

We talked earlier about this problem that we have on our affections. We know they're not what they should be. We're rejecting Him when that's the case. And it reminds us of the ways that I have neglected Him. I've regarded him as stricken, smitten of God.

And then he was wounded, verse five, he was wounded for our transgressions. You know, he hasn't left us to wallow under the pressure of the hardship of our sin. He's rescued us. He was wounded. He was run through by the sword.

Pierced, actually, in some of the translations. And it was for our transgressions. It was for our missing the mark. Acts of disobedience, acts of negligence, unintentional sins, various matters. He was wounded for those transgressions.

And we should have suffered for those transgressions, but he was wounded for them. And then he was bruised for our iniquities, it says. The word means broken, crushed. You know, I deserved to be wounded. I deserved to be crushed for my iniquities.

But he took the bruising and the crushing. And then at the end of verse 5, the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. The chastisement that I deserved was laid upon Him. And it says that by His stripes we are healed. And, you know, we deserve to be afflicted with stripes.

But he took the lashing, but we were healed instead of taking the lashing. And then in verse 6, the iniquity was laid on him. You know, all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Now, there's nothing there's nothing here that takes sin lightly at all. Our sins cause the Son of God to be punished. And you know you can personalize this too here. You can say, surely he has borne my griefs. He's carried my sorrows.

I esteemed him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. He was wounded for my transgressions. He was bruised for my iniquities. The chastisement for my peace was upon him. You can personalize this.

You can say, I have gone astray. I've turned to my own way. And the Lord laid on him all my iniquities. So This is the logic of Isaiah 53. Now this is all about the humiliation of the Son of God.

And I would like to show us some of the ways that God meets us at our weakest point which is our pride. Now we all recognize that We have much pride, much remaining pride in our lives. And if you've been a pastor for very long, you know that God is waging war against your pride. And he brings so many things to afflict you to expose your pride. And by the way, he doesn't quit doing it once you pass, you know, age 50.

He just doesn't do it. It keeps coming because he is rooting out pride and but we but God has God shows contempt for our pride. Our pride is contemptible. We don't get a pass for our pride at all. And so when we come to this passage, we really come to the mountain peak of the Bible.

When you deal with the sufferings of Jesus Christ, you're dealing with holy ground, you know what looks like the greatest defeat is actually the greatest victory. Now, another way of saying this is that the crucifixion is a graphic demonstration of the sinfulness of our sin. And it shows us how pride runs so deep, it is so pernicious, and it is so pervasive that the sufferings of the Son of God expose how deep it is and how terrible it really is. And you know the problem that we have is that our hearts really can't know completely or accurately how prideful we are. Pride blinds us to the pride.

That's what Jonathan Edwards said. If you have pride, well guess what? You can't see it because your pride blinds you to your pride. This is the problem with pride. Our sin nature is a blinding force in our lives.

But here we find how evil our sin really is, but how kind God is to expose it in the sufferings of his Son. So we find ourselves here in Isaiah 53, you know, at the centerpiece of the doctrine of salvation in the Old Testament. This is the whole heart of Christianity. And it just explains the absolute hopelessness of sinners to bear their own sins. It exposes the righteousness of God, the holiness of God, the wrath of God, the justice and the mercy of God, and the penalty that is paid by a substitute.

And what it teaches us is that our sin is worse than we think it is. Now, I'd like for us to walk through some of the sufferings of Jesus Christ. Now we first come to the sufferings of Christ in its most graphic form in Gethsemane, where Jesus Christ agonized at Gethsemane. Matthew 26, 37 says, he began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed and he began to plead with his father, take this cup from my lips. And this sorrow, this distress that Jesus is experiencing is something that I deserved.

I deserved to be this sorrowful and this distressed. This is unspeakable anguish. I deserve the unspeakable anguish that would cause me to sweat blood. I deserved that. And then he was betrayed by a trusted friend, a friend who had walked with him.

He was betrayed by somebody who saw his glory. And he, with a kiss, betrayed him. He was his own familiar friend. David prophesies of this, even my own familiar friend in whom I trusted who ate my bread he has lifted up his heel against me. You know what this means is that I deserve the contempt to my pride to be betrayed by my trusted friend who observed my life, who saw me as I really was and he betrayed me.

I deserve that. Now if you're alive long enough you're gonna find that that will happen to you in real life, but it happened to our Lord Jesus. And then he was apprehended. This is such an astonishing thing to me, the way that He was apprehended. He was apprehended as if He was a dangerous criminal.

The one who had healed thousands, the most loving person who ever walked the face of the earth. And how was He apprehended? Well, Matthew 26 55 says, like a robber with, with swords and clubs, and Jesus says, have you, have you come out, have you come out for me like I was a robber? Really? That's what he said to them.

But I deserve to be treated like a robber. One thing I have found over the years about myself is just how self-congratulatory I am toward myself. But I really do deserve to be apprehended like a robber. We deserve to be apprehended by force. He was forsaken by his disciples.

You know all of his disciples forsook him and fled. This is in Matthew 26 56. The Lord Jesus Christ stood in my place and was forsaken by those who walked with Him. And that's exactly what we all deserve. We all deserve that.

He was publicly shamed by being bound and led astray. The mob bound Jesus, led him away to the high priest. You know, I deserve the contempt to my pride by the public shame of being bound and led away and taken to the spiritual authorities with everyone watching me. You know for anyone who deals with pride recognizes they don't want to be seen in such a situation like that. If you're going to be apprehended, you don't want anyone to see it.

But Jesus Christ was apprehended with everyone watching, and he was led away like a common criminal by a mob, actually, by a mob. How about that? What if a mob showed up at your house and dragged you away? You deserve that for your sin. You can see how the sufferings of Jesus Christ display the depth of our sin.

It reveals, it reveals our sin. Jesus was misrepresented, the high priest and the Sanhedrin. What did they do? Well they, they looked for and then they listened to false testimony against Jesus. I mean has that ever happened to you or someone sought out false testimony about you.

If that's ever happened, just realize that Jesus Christ suffered for you. Maybe it hasn't happened enough. Maybe it could happen a hundred times. But I deserve the contempt to my pride by having someone try to dig up dirt on me and to misrepresent me purposefully. And I deserve that the authorities would listen." He was struck on the face.

During these proceedings, one of the officers struck Jesus with the palm of his hand because he judged his answers to be disrespectful to the high priest. But it was a false charge and I deserve the contempt to be poured on my pride by being struck on the face as my words are being twisted and contorted out of context. And then he was condemned to death by this tribunal, you know, this committee, this board, this panel. He's now, He's standing before this group and he's condemned to death by a whole group. I mean it's one thing if someone slanders you, but if an entire group, there must be something to it.

But we deserve to be condemned by a group. And you might say, well maybe I don't really, but I think the cross contradicts that. And then he was spat upon. He was mockingly spat upon him. The scripture says they spat in his face and beat him and they blindfolded him and they struck him with the palms of their hands and they said mockingly, prophesy to us Christ, who is the one who struck you?

And so I deserve to be mocked for the things that I've said." And then he was rejected by a very loyal disciple, by the name of Peter. Peter cursed and he swore and he said that he didn't know Jesus and then he wept bitterly about that and it's very hard on a man's pride when he is betrayed by a previously loyal disciple. That's what Peter was. You know when something like this happens in your life, in real life, if you're like me you think, well I didn't really deserve that. But Jesus was punished for that.

And then he was tied up and he was led away. He was actually bound and led away to Pilate. It's like as if you had gotten handcuffed and led away to the civil authorities. And he was treated with contempt and was mocked. He was made fun of.

They made a parody and a satire out of his claim to be a king and they arrayed him in a gorgeous robe and sent him back to Pilate. I deserved to be made a parody and a satire for my life. But Jesus Christ took the punishment for that. There was the injustice of preferring a criminal to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. You know Pilate capitulated to the pressure of the crowd out of the fear of man And he preferred Barabbas, a murderer, over Jesus.

I deserve to be punished because the authorities are afraid of popular opinion of me. I deserve popular opinion to sway those who have authority over me. I deserve that. Jesus was punished for that. And the crowds were made up of his countrymen.

And his own people were screaming, crucify him. Crucify him. And I deserve my countrymen, the people I grew up with, the people in my hometown to turn against me. And then he was scourged, he was delivered to be crucified, he was flogged. It's hard to try to explain the scourging and flogging that he endured.

The brutality of it, the bloody, vicious act of scourging by the Romans was horrific. And I deserve to be scourged for my sin. I deserve to be flogged until I'm bleeding. And then he was stripped and he was gawked at by the Roman garrison. The Bible says they gathered around him and stripped him.

And he hung naked for everybody to see. How about that? You know, the embarrassment of every secret thought and action exposed for the crowd to see. And then the parody and the satire just escalates and they twist this crown of thorns and they're bowing down, they're saying, Hail King of the Jews. And he's mocked for being a fake king.

And I deserve to be exposed as a fake before the watching world. And then the Roman garrison spits on him and then the soldiers are mocking and they just keep making the parody of him and they they take this mock scepter and hit him on the head with it. It's a reed. Oh, here is your crowning. And then they take him to the place of the skull and they crucified him there and they mocked him and they said, if you're the king of the Jews, save yourself.

And then they put a mocking inscription over his head in Greek and Latin and Hebrew, this is the king of the Jews. You know, His being slandered in the languages of the common people. Not just slandered in Hebrew, but slandered in Greek and slandered in Latin and slandered in Hebrew. And then they crucified him with two robbers, indicating that we really deserve to die with robbers. And then the pastors by blaspheming him and they're wagging their heads and they're saying, you who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself.

If you're the Son of God, come down off the cross. And then the robbers start criticizing him. They were actually reviling him in Matthew 27 44. The robbers now are reviling him. And then he's forsaken by his father.

He had experienced an unbroken unity and communion with his father from eternity past. I don't really even know how to explain how God forsook Him, but that's the words of Scripture. And Jesus said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And then, you know, After three hours of darkness, Jesus cries out and he says, it is finished and he yielded up his spirit. But that wasn't the end of it.

Because a soldier at that point came and speared him in the side to make sure that he was truly dead. And of course, you know, water and blood came out. And so why, why all of this suffering? Why did Jesus suffer like this? And why would he receive such undeserved abuse?

Well, Jesus was suffering for all of our sins. The deepest, darkest, secret sin. Every way we've sinned with our mouths, every way we have sinned with our minds, every way we have sinned with our bodies, every way we have misrepresented, every way He died for all of our sins. And I don't think we'll ever be able to see our sin so clearly as we see it on the cross when sin was punished, when the anger that I deserved, the contempt that I deserved was laid upon Jesus Christ. And he absorbs the punishment that we deserved for our pride and he suffers in our place and he drinks the cup of wrath that we deserved to drink and he drinks the poison cup for us, the cup of The cup of shards, the filthy cup.

He drinks that cup. And then he offers us a cup. He offers us the fruit of the vine. He offers us the cup of blessing. When we deserved every molecule of poison and every shard of glass in that cup.

And he gave us the cup of blessing. And so you find this act of God to soothe the wrath of God toward us. He pours contempt on all our pride on the cross. He exposes every part of our pride, the depths of our pride, the breadth of our pride on the cross. And I do believe He shows us who we really are on that cross, which is why His disciple who did love Him would write, for Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit." And the Apostle Paul, who was forgiven much, the murderer of Christians, and he says to the Colossians, and you being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh he has made alive together with him, having forgiven you all your trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us.

And he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross, having disarmed principalities and powers. He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them, triumphing over every condemning word that we deserve. And we deserve far, far more than we think we deserve. And this really is the love of God that the Apostle Paul communicated to the Roman church when he said, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.

And as we conclude our day after having been convicted of much sin in our lives. I know I have. I want us to conclude it by not thinking that we have been given a pass for our sin because that's not what happened. But what did happen was greater love was had by no one than this, than the one who laid down his life for his friends. And That's why Isaac Watts wrote, when I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of glory died, my richest gain I count but loss and poor contempt on all my pride." Now pride really is the most dangerous thing for a pastor.

And every pastor does struggle with his pride on multiple levels. But if we would understand what it means to be shepherds after the pattern of Jesus Christ we should first recognize the depths of our pride and the sacrifice that was made for it. And in doing such a thing, we would be able to be compassionate shepherds in our flocks when we first of all see the depths of our own pride. And we would be able to deal with compassion in the way that Jesus Christ does as a faithful high priest.