In his sermon titled 'The Accomplishments of the Pleasure of the Lord,' Scott Brown delves into the profound theological insights of Isaiah 53, emphasizing its pivotal role in illustrating the core message of the Bible: the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. Brown explains the significance of God's pleasure in the context of Christ's suffering, asserting that it was God's deliberate action to bruise and grieve His Son for the redemption of sinners. He highlights how this chapter in Isaiah intricately ties the Old and New Testaments, portraying God's glory through the salvation of sinners as the ultimate purpose of creation. Brown notes that understanding the pleasure of God is crucial to knowing His character, urging listeners to contemplate what brings God joy. The sermon underscores the concepts of justification and sanctification, describing justification as a completed declaration of righteousness and sanctification as an ongoing process of spiritual growth. The sermon concludes by affirming God's pleasure in redeeming sinners and the resulting joy and transformation in the lives of believers.

Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. 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. So shall he sprinkle many nations. 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. Who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed for he shall grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground he has no form or comeliness 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 we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised and we did not esteem 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.

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 it sheers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment. 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 and they made his grave with the wicked but with the rich at his death because they had done no violence he had done no violence nor was any deceit in his mouth.

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 his knowledge my righteous servant shall justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great and he shall divide the spoil with the strong because he poured out his soul unto death and he was numbered with the Transgressors and he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors Let's pray Lord we thank you for today we thank you that we can examine your word that we have it written and passed on through the years and sustained by you that you would allow us to understand it, to hear about it, and to expound on it. We ask that you would have truth be spoken today that it would it would pierce hearts and change hearts and minds and that you would help us be refined through it. We ask this in your name. Amen. Here in this final section of Isaiah 53, we learn the secrets of substitutionary atonement, but particularly the things that lie behind it, the background of all that God ever does, but more particularly the background behind God's striking his Son.

And so in this final section of Isaiah 53 we're given a window into the thoughts of God, the emotions of God, and the basis upon which He has done everything. And there's this fundamental principle that God operates by, and Everything that he does flows from that fundamental principle. And so what we have here before us in this final section of Isaiah 53 are three different motivations of God. We're only going to cover one of them today. We're going to cover one verse, verse 10, and then we'll proceed through this.

I just could not figure out how to deal with verse 10 and then 11 and 12. What we find in these three verses is what God is like. We learn about his inner motivations and we see the backdrop of his plans and his motivations for for everything that he does I Think as we as we go through this verse and the following two verses We should always be thinking what What am I learning about God? What is God like? This person that I either love or this person that I resist, that I am running from, who is he?

What is he like? This is the most important question for anyone to resolve in their own mind. What is my view of God? Is God wonderful? Or does he want to destroy my plans?

Does he want to break up the way before me and hurt the things that are so dear to me? Who is God? Who is this one who made the universe that calls me to come to him and to obey him? So, this is a journey of these three verses in the knowledge of God, to know him and the power of his resurrection. John Piper has said this, you don't truly know someone until you know what makes him happy.

Our pleasure is the measure of our character and so it is with God. We can only know the greatness of his glory if we know what makes him glad therefore we must understand the pleasures of God. John Piper wrote that in the introduction of his book The Pleasures of God which he wrote over two decades ago. I recommend the book and he itemizes the various things that are of the pleasures of God. So we learn here in this passage of Scripture who this one is who has called us by name or who that one is who is calling us and we continue to resist him to throw him off.

We know we know that God takes pleasure in the redemption of sinners in Zephaniah chapter 3 verse 17 we see the greatness of God's desire in such beautiful language where the prophet Zephaniah says, the Lord your God is in your midst. The mighty one, he will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you with his love. He will rejoice over you with singing.

It is in God's pleasure to find pleasure in his people. In Isaiah chapter 62 verse 4 we read very similar things here. You shall no longer be termed forsaken, nor shall your land anymore be termed desolate. But you shall be called Hepsaba and your land Bula, for the Lord delights in you. And your land shall be married.

For as a young man marries a virgin, so shall your sons marry you. And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride so shall your God rejoice over you." These are the pleasures of God. It brings pleasure to God to redeem sinners, to turn people back from their insolence, from their hatred of Him, from their rejection of His laws. It pleases Him. This is the heart of His pleasure, to find people in this world who have so ruined their lives, made a wreck of everything, perhaps in their own mind, an interminable wreck, unable to come back, and God says, no!

I redeemed sinners. I redeemed. This is my pleasure. He multiplies his pleasures in his redeemed sinners, and this is why we learn from David in Psalm 16 verse 11 you will show me the path of life in your presence is fullness of joy at your right hand our pleasures forevermore this is the pleasure of God and I I pray that as we go through this section of scripture when we finally get to it that you will give thanks to God for his pleasures and the pleasures that have resulted in his labors for your soul. Because in his pleasure he has labored for your soul in a particular way that he explains in these verses here.

And so I pray that it is a time of rejoicing. Now the primary and central message of the Bible is that Jesus Christ, the slain lamb of God, has become the sacrifice for man's sin and he becomes a mediator between God and man. Revelation chapter 13 verse 8 speaks of the Lamb of God who was slain from before the foundation of the world. This is the heart of every word that exists in the Bible. Every single word, phrase, chapter, section points to this one issue in the kingdom of God and it's that God intervened in our degradation he lifted us up out of the waters that we couldn't resist and he inserted his son on our behalf and he he brought himself into our condition and he lifted us out of it.

So as we examine these final verses in Isaiah 53, I want us to understand how pivotal this section is in all of Scripture and in the entire message of the Bible. Isaiah 53 is the Old Testament explanation of what is the center of the whole message of the Bible. That God glorifies himself in everything, particularly in the salvation of sinners. And this is why many over the centuries have referred to Isaiah as the fifth gospel. And this is why Isaiah itself is the Bible in miniature.

Let me illustrate it in this way. There are 66 books in the Bible. There are 66 chapters in the book of Isaiah. The 66 chapters correspond obviously with the 66 books of the Bible. There are 39 books of the Old Testament and the first 39 chapters of Isaiah form the first proposition of the judgment and the wrath of God.

The first 39 chapters in the Bible, like the first 39 chapters in Isaiah, are confrontations of idolatry. This is the force of the Old Testament, that God saves idolaters. And then there are 27 chapters from Isaiah 40 to Isaiah 66. And there are 27 chapters in the New Testament. The final 27 chapters in Isaiah are like the 27 books of the New Testament.

They declare this message of hope. You who have been with us in our entire study of Isaiah can see it. You can see it now. You can see how the first 39 chapters were of divine judgment and God took us through this season of just recognizing the wrath of God and His chastisements and our whole orientation of God's chastisement changed in so many of our thoughts. We had so despised it, but we began to love it.

We saw the motivation. And then now as we're in the second half, in the final 27 chapters, we're seeing the beauty and the glory, the majesty, the redemption, the love, the tenderness, and now the pleasures of God. Isaiah chapter 40 begins with a voice crying in the wilderness. The New Testament begins with John the Baptist, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Quoting Isaiah 40, all flesh is grass and his glory is as the flower of the field.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of the Lord stands forever. Isaiah chapter 1 has many connections with Genesis 1. Isaiah chapter 40 has connections with Matthew. Isaiah 66 is very much like the book of Revelation. In fact Isaiah and Revelation contain the seven verses, they share them where God reveals himself as the first and the last.

And so this is why in one chapter in Isaiah 53 you find Isaiah summing up the whole matter of the suffering and the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the summary of not only the whole Bible, but of the summary of the purpose of everything. It is the reason for which God created the world so that God would glorify himself in the salvation of sinners just like you and I. People who weren't so lost that they couldn't be saved. People who were not beyond the hand of God even when you thought you were beyond his hand his hand came and held you and we'll learn more about that hand in this section here So here we have a summary statement of God's pleasures in this section. If you have your outlines in front of you, you'll sort of see the bird's-eye view getting back and seeing the whole logic and thrust of Isaiah chapter 53.

But now we're in the final section in verses 10 through 12 and there are three aspects of it and we'll handle just one of them this morning in verse 10. His pleasure in our prosperity. And then next week, his satisfaction in his labor. And then thirdly, his generosity in dividing spoil and interceding. So, just to get ourselves back to the whole context here, after declaring that Christ would be buried with the rich, which begins to hint at the victory that Christ will experience, The focus now at the beginning of verse 10 continues with this same idea of victory and explains what is behind the victory, why the victory happened.

And This is the message of this final section. Why did this victory take place? And it's the victory of his pleasures and his satisfactions and his generosity in the lives of Sinners the sinners who sought their own glory who made up their own morality who who worshiped the creature rather than creator This is your God and He comes in order to do His pleasure. So it was His pleasure to bring many sons to glory through the punishment of his sin, through his bruising of his son and the grieving of his son and the shedding of the blood of his son and raising him up to his father's right hand. So that's the introduction.

So let's begin to look at this verse. We first see this his pleasure in prosperity. Now I want us to see a number of things that are critical in this first phrase here and that is first of all that it was God who bruised his son. It says here, it pleased the Lord to bruise him, and he has put him to grief. So first of all, we learn that this was God's work.

You know, the modern atheists contend that God is the cosmic child abuser. And they at least have one aspect of it right, and that is that it was God who struck His Son. They at least see that one thing that is true, but because they've never tasted in His mercy and His kindness, they look at His ways as abuse. And you know, this is why the things of God are often slanderously called abuse by those who hate God. They feel that the law of God is abusive.

This is the spirit of the devil and the antichrist. Whenever you feel that the law of God is abusive or harmful in any way. This is the work of the devil himself. Because it pleased the father to bruise him and he was not a cosmic child abuser. So the emphasis in the first phrase here is the Lord.

The Lord brought it about. Now this brings to us some seemingly contradictory thoughts about God bruising and grieving his son. Because we see here that God did it, but we also know that men did it. And how in the world do you reconcile those two contradictory things? And you find this expressed in this very same way in Acts chapter 2 verse 23.

If you can get there quickly, Acts 2, 23, I'll just read it to you slowly because it states exactly how the bruising of the Son of God took place. Verse 23, him being delivered by the determined and purpose and foreknowledge of God. That's the first part. He was delivered according to the purpose and foreknowledge of God, but that's not all. You have taken by lawless hands, have crucified and put to death.

This is the interplay between God's foreknowledge and man's will. And this is just an example of the interplay between foreknowledge and foreordination. These are two different doctrines. There's foreknowledge and there's foreordination. God foreknows all things that will happen.

And because he, God foreknows all things that will happen, because he foreordains all things that will happen. God is not caught by surprise. The Lord Jesus Christ in John 18 and 11 says that this cup was the cup that his father gave to him. It was not Judas, It was not the Jews, it was not Satan, it was God. There's this doctrine that has raised its head in modern times called open theism promoted by pastors and theologians like Greg Boyd and Clark Pinnock and they contend that God is a responder, that He's the first and greatest first responder, that when God sees something going on in the world, He rushes down to fix it.

He's going here, He's going there. Oh no! Mankind is going astray. I think I'll just have to get in here. And God is just running around in order to fix the things that man has ordained.

And this is the complete contradiction to this verse, 10, that we see. So it was God. It was God who struck his son. And then we see that it was his pleasure. So There's an emphasis here in this verse on the pleasure of God.

The word yet says yet. This qualifies what was said before in verse 9, that he was with the rich at his death. So now He speaks of the work of his pleasures. In reading this, our move to ask, what is pleasing to God? What is it that brings pleasure to God?

The very same word, pleasure, that we find here in verse 10 is the exact word that Isaiah used in Isaiah chapter 1 verse 11, where the Lord says that, I do not delight, I do not have pleasure in the blood of bulls or lambs or of goats. And here in Isaiah chapter 1 verse 11 he speaks of it like this, "'To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me?' says the Lord. I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats and what what God is saying to his people is that he does not delight in their fake worship he doesn't delight in their going through the motions he doesn't delight in their perfunctory religion he would he and he says he says stop bringing them to me they're noxious to me they're a stench to my nostrils Stop sacrificing if your heart does not desire to be sacrificed unto the Lord your God. That's the whole message there.

So we find that God does not delight in this one thing in Chapter 1 and now in Chapter 53 we learn of what he does delight in. So we are learning here what pleases the Lord. I was reading an 18th century pastor, Charles Simeon, on this verse and he said that God was pleased with the bruising of his own son because it would prove so beneficial to man. It would be so beneficial. This is the heart of the matter of all of the pleasures of God.

It's the purpose for the Word of God and It is the function of all the prophets of God. And it was the work of the Son of God in order to bring what is beneficial to man, to replace the things that were not beneficial, the things that were harming him, and to take those from his hand, to take the cup of cursing and give them the cup of blessing so that they might drink the sweet wine of his love. You know, when you think about the beneficial work of God in the life of the soul of man. What does that mean? It means that God cares for the soul of man.

Does anyone really care about the brokenness of man? Does anyone really care what has happened to man? And yet what you find in the world is that the people who seem to care about the brokenness of man, what do they give them? They give them a pill, they give them some cheap entertainment, they give them some trip that wears off. This is what the world will give you.

It will just give you a little moment, what the Bible calls the passing pleasures of sin, which Moses rejected the passing pleasures of sin. He realized it was just a moment of nothingness. But man wants to soothe man's troubles with things that don't work at all. And who really does care about the brokenness of man? Who knows how to deal with the brokenness of man?

It is God. It is God in His pleasures where we find all the answers to the brokenness of man. You can find all of your healing in the brokenness of Jesus Christ and in the pleasures of God that caused him to be broken. And so there are many things that please the Lord. In the Bible we could make a very long list.

You know, for example, righteousness and uprightness pleases the Lord. You can read about that in 1 Chronicles 29, verse 17. He has pleasure and uprightness. You can read about the same thing in Psalm 147, verse 11, that the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him and those who hope in his mercy and Isaiah 48 verse 14 we learned that God God delights in social justice where the poor are taking care of and the weak are protected and not taken to the slaughter as they are so much in our day today. God delights he finds pleasure in the separation of his people from the world we learn from that in Ezra chapter 10 verse 11 we learn in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 9 that it is the pleasure of God to rule the universe and to bring the mysteries of God to his people.

And this book that I referred to at the beginning, The Pleasures of God by John Piper, this entire book is about this subject, and I'll just read to you the various passages of scripture that he unpacks in order to explain the pleasures of God. In Matthew 17, 5 you find the pleasures of God and His Son. In Psalm 135 verse 6 you find the pleasure of God and all that He does. In Psalm 104 verse 31 you find God's pleasure in His creation. In 1 Samuel 12, 22 you find God's pleasure in his creation.

In 1st Samuel 12 22 you find God's pleasure in his name. In Deuteronomy 10 14 and 15 you see God's pleasure in election. In Zephaniah 3 17 you see God's pleasure in the good of his people. In Isaiah 53, 10 you see God's pleasure in the bruising of his son. In Psalm 147, 10 and 11 you see his pleasure in those who hope in his love.

In Proverbs 15, 8 you see God's pleasure in the prayers of the upright. In 1 Samuel 15, 22, and 23 you see God's pleasure and obedience. And in Luke 12, 32 you see that it is God's pleasure to give you the kingdom. This is God's pleasure. And what did he do?

What was so pleasing to God? Well there are two things that he did to his son. He bruised him and he grieved him. These are the two things that were expressions of his pleasure. And so it pleased the Lord to bruise him.

And this is a bruising that comes from an external force. It's a very harsh word that Isaiah uses here, to crush or to smite. And the Lord came and He punished His Son physically through His wounds and then spiritually through His bearing of the sins of all the world. The past and the present and the future sins of mankind were laid upon his son. Remember earlier in Isaiah 53 we saw how he took the burden off of you and he laid it upon his son.

He bruised his son. God is punishing his son for the sins of mankind. And in doing so, he's declaring how important, how pivotal his laws are, because he is punishing for the breaking of his law, which is the most harmful thing you can ever do to your soul, to your family, to your church, to your nation. And so he's defending here how true and how pure the law of God is. Because after all, the law of God is the very expression of his character and of his mind.

And so the breaking of his law has massive implications. And so He bruises his son with the curses of the law of God. And so in doing so, he's giving us an illustration of the seriousness of rejecting even the slightest law of God. He was telling us that to break the law of God is a terrifying and a harmful thing, desperately destructive. And what does this tell us about God?

It tells us that he cared about the burdens of mankind. It opens our eyes to see his mercy toward broken humanity. His bruising wasn't for abuse. It was for the spreading of his love and making it prosperous wherever it would be believed. So he bruised him, then it says He grieved him, he put him to grief.

Now while bruising is from an external force, grieving is internal. It's experienced on the inside, in the realm of the thoughts and of the emotions. And the word literally means sicknesses. And the Hebrew word means that God made his son sick, sick with the sins, with the infirmities, just shot with infirmity. If you can picture cancer, metastasized, just absolutely growing uncontrollably to overwhelm, to overcome you, this is an internal force and it can't be seen on the inside, on the outside.

It's known on the inside, but it's not seen on the outside, normally. It can be so easily hidden in the way that we like to hide our griefs and our sorrows, the troubles from our sins, how We not only want to hide from them, we want to hide them. And so we put on this face and we have this external appearance of success when actually there's something that grieves us that has gone on in your soul. There's a sickness. There's a soul infirmity that's being spoken of here in the grieving of his son.

And you see what kind of pressure and heartache and grief internally it caused the Son of God and you can see this in Matthew 26 verses 37 through 39 where the Lord Jesus Christ he took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee with him on ahead when he was in the garden of Gethsemane And we read that when he did that, quote, he became, he began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Here you learn of the emotions of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was a man. He is experiencing the grief and the distress that human beings experience. And then in the next verse the Lord Jesus turns to these three of his disciples and he says, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful even unto death.

And then he said to them, Stay here and watch with me. And then he went a little bit further and he fell on his face and he prayed to God and he said oh my father if it is possible, let this cup pass for me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. And so with this testimony, you learn two things. First of all that the curses of the law that we have broken have fallen on Christ.

And the second thing you learn is that God is not a cosmic abuser because his son, while he suffered the pain of it, delighted and he found pleasure in it so much that he would say, not my will, but thine be done. In Luke chapter 22 verses 40 through 43, we get more language about his agony. And We find here that an angel appeared to him and we read this, and being in agony he prayed more earnestly. Then his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And when he arose up from prayer, he had come to his disciples and he found them sleeping.

Why? Why were they sleeping? From sorrow. They were sleeping from their sorrows in the same way that their Savior was sorrowing so mightily. They too were sharing in his in his sufferings and in his sorrows, in a very light way comparatively.

You know, the Roman Catholics get very obsessed about the sufferings of Christ. You know, they think that the wounds in his hands, you know, the crown of thorns and the blood, this was nothing. This was absolutely nothing compared to the sufferings for sin. The sufferings internal, the things on the inside, the pressures, the griefs, the sorrows, the agony. The agony from sin.

And why? So that sinners would be saved from that agony. So that you would be spared the agony from the curses of the law falling down upon your head so that they would not fall upon you, but they would fall upon his son. His grief became so great that he said on the cross, my God, my God, Why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me and?

From the words of my groaning. Oh my god. I cry in the daytime But you do not hear and in the night season And not silent here. This is Psalm 22 verse 1 as a prophecy of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross and his suffering that's there. So what we learn from this is that there is there's both a temporal and an eternal impact on the bruising of the Son of God.

There's a temporal impact on the life of the sinner who comes to him and his burdens have been lifted off and he's free and he can hold his head up and he can rest in the in the salvation of Jesus Christ. Yeah he really can rest. He knows he's still a sinner. He knows he stills fall short and yet he has only one hope of rest and that is in the in the bruising and the grieving of the Son of God who has saved him from it. This is the temporal aspect and we could speak at length of the many results of the sufferings of Jesus Christ in our lives and the freedom that it has given to us internally and externally because sin as it turns out sin doesn't just hurt you on the inside it hurts hurts everything on the outside too And while you try to hide it, it's not really hidden.

And while you might be able to veil it from people a little bit, you cannot veil it from God. And so there's this matter of our whole being being empowered by the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and then eternally. And I just as I was reading this section I just couldn't help but think you know does anybody care about the sorrows of sinners? Does anybody really care about the hurt that people experience because of sin? And this tells us that God cared in a completely different way and he didn't offer you a movie or a silly video clip.

He didn't offer you a vacation. He offered you something that went down to your very innermost being and it healed your insides and your outsides. This is the love of God in Jesus Christ and this is why His pleasures are so important to understand. It shows us what God has done to care for the broken people of this world He's offered an effectual work the work of his son So it pleased the Lord to bruise him. And his soul was made sin.

When you take, When you make his soul sin, you as the Father has done something for sin. That's why Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5, 21, He made him who knew no sin to be made sin for us." This is not the divine cosmic child abuser. This is the Lord of glory who does His pleasure. In Isaiah 46 verse 10, we heard Isaiah say, �My counsel shall stand. I will do my pleasure.� And that part of his pleasure had to do with the destruction of the Assyrian threat.

But Assyria really stands for the devil in the same way that Pharaoh stands for the abusive devil who never gives you any rest. God gives you rest. He came to give his life as a ransom for many. You know Micah chapter 7 speaks of this so beautifully. Micah chapter 7 verse 18, Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of his heritage?

He does not retain His anger forever because He delights in mercy. He will again have compassion on us and will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. This is the pleasure of God is to see all of your sins being cast into the depths of the sea, having them wash like white as wool, to separate them from you as far as the east is from the west. This is the pleasure of God to separate you from your sins.

God is a God of mercy. Do you think of him that way? Do you think of his laws? Every one of them is laws of mercy. Do you think of every one of His commands as beautiful and good and beneficial for you?

Or do you think that God is kind of like a divine abuser, like He's the cosmic child abuser who just tells you what you don't want to do and you don't need and you know what you need and you will do it. But God is rich in mercy. It says that he made him an offering for sin. The bruising and the grieving of the Son of God are at the core of the doctrine of justification by faith. And there was pleasure in salvation.

There's pleasure in justification. Their justification and their sanctification Both please the Lord because in the sufferings of Christ are both his justifying and his sanctifying work. So Christ's sacrifice results in both of these. Justification is a declaration of a fact. In justification you are declared righteous.

This is an act of a righteous God which is declared once and for all and it is finished. This is the whole idea of the finished work of Jesus Christ. And then there's sanctification, and sanctification is not the same as justification. Sanctification is a work in progress. In sanctification, you are made righteous continually.

Over time, you're put on the highway of holiness, and on that highway, as you make your way down that highway. He's healing your soul He's healing your mind. He's healing your emotions. He's healing you from the inside out. That is sanctification.

So justification is a declaration and sanctification is a work in progress. And that's what's happening here in the church. There's this work of sanctification where sinners come together and they work out their salvation. In fear and trembling, everyone comes into the church hurt and many things burn down to the ground. But through the preaching of the Word of God, the work of the Holy Spirit, through the fellowship of the saints and all the things that God does and has gathered people who love one another from the heart and they say the same thing that Jesus Christ says, I will never leave you or forsake you.

They say that to one another. So you have this healing society, this community of love that causes the progress of the soul and the pleasures of God to take place over time. If you catch the church at any moment in time, you'll think she's nothing. She's like the Son of God on the cross, suffering, bruised and bloody. Who could say there's anything good in that?

But if you catch the church a year later, or a year later, and you see her people, and there's, oh, there's a bruise that's gone away. Oh, there's a scar that he's taken care of. Oh, there is an internal torment that has evaporated. This is sanctification. And this is why The crushing of the Son of God was the pleasure of God the Father.

Because He's the healer. He is poor, yet making many rich. And then we see the impact of this here. You see this prosperity. Look at the word when.

When you make his soul an offering for sin. When. This signals something significant. Something that's going to happen. When, not if, when.

When comes after, and so what comes after the when, when tells you what's going to happen. So when he makes an offering for sin, something is going to happen. Now we see the word offering. This takes us back to Leviticus, and the whole sacrificial system, Leviticus 517, speaks of this offering, and you have the sin offering, And the various offerings that are part of the ceremonial law, the substitutionary sacrifices of the Old Testament are all implied here. They are prefigured in Christ and spoken of all throughout the Scriptures, referred to in the New Testament, cast forth as prophetic visions of justification in the Old Testament.

And so now Isaiah speaks of them and he's drawing the language from the sacrificial system and he's connecting it with the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 10 speaks of it. By that will, by that will, Interesting. That word will is oftentimes translated delight or pleasure. But with that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God. And now, after declaring the power of the offering, he begins to explain it, and he gives three results of the offering. And I'll cover them each one. First of all, he shall see his seed.

He shall see his seed. This is a reference to the great multitude that God will bring forth out of the earth as a result of his mercy. This is the spread of the gospel. This is the expansion of the love of God throughout the whole word, earth, to every tongue and tribe and nation. This is God coming to the Gentiles.

When you hear Gentiles, you need to think about yourself. You need to think about the filthy and unwashed paganized torn torn to shreds. Go think of the most pagan pagan country or people you can imagine and the ridiculous harmful things that they do to one another and to themselves. This is code for the Gentiles. It's code for rejecting God and going your own way.

That's what Gentiles do. They go the way of the Gentiles. God says, don't go the way of the Gentiles. And so he shall see his seed. This is prophesied in Genesis 3.15.

And it's of the expansion and the growth of his seed. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel this was promised in Psalm 89 verses 34 through 37 my covenant I will not break nor alter the word which has gone forth from my lips. His seed shall endure forever and his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established forever like the moon, even like the faithful witness in the sky." So this is the ongoing prosperity of the souls of those who turn to Jesus Christ.

When we read, He shall see His seed, it's code for people being born again and then multiplying. It says that He shall see His seed. And I take that to have meaning on two levels. He shall see his seed in the world as the gospel spreads and he sees sons and daughters turn to him and he's bringing many sons to glory. And he does that in this world.

And he's interceding for those who will be saved. That's what he's doing. He sees the seed. He sees the answers to his prayers in the real world. And then he sees it in heaven forevermore.

So it's a multiplication of his seed. You know, John speaks of this in kind of a surprising way in 1st John chapter 3 where he says, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous just as he is righteous he who sins is of the devil for the devil has sinned from the beginning for this is the purpose of God for this the purpose of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil and listen to this whoever has been born of God does not sin why for his seed remains in him and he cannot sin because he has been born of God. This is the implanted seed of the living God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and there is a seed that lives and it and that seed expands and it overcomes sin over time. The second result of his soul being given as an offering for sin is that he shall prolong his days.

Now this has to do with time. This is fulfilled in many places in scripture. In Psalm 132 we learn that he lives for all eternity. But this has to do with the prolonging of days. This theme of the prolonging of days can be found all over the Bible.

And every place you find it, it's a prophecy of Jesus Christ. Even in Deuteronomy chapter 6, that famous chapter about fathers, where we learn that there is longevity. Fathers are to teach their children so that their days may be prolonged. So a father in obedience to God is prolonging the days of his offspring. And my understanding of Deuteronomy 6 is that the father in Deuteronomy 6 is prefigured and fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is just like that Father in Deuteronomy 6. So Christ fulfills the prophecies of days being prolonged. This is why in Ephesians 6 we read, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, that your days may be prolonged. It is in the obedience of every son or daughter of God that their days are blessed and prolonged.

In the same way that God the Son and his days were prolonged by his obedience to his father. So it is that every child in every home's days are prolonged and blessed when they obey their father and their mother. And if they do not obey their father and mother, it will not go well with them. This is a sign. It's a sign of salvation.

Every rebellious child and feels that rebellion in his heart, the insolence, the rejection of his father has been given that to terrify him, to show him of his end, that it will not end well at all if he continues to disobey his earthly father and thereby disobeying his heavenly father because it was in the obedience of the Son that caused the prolonging of his days. The third effect of Christ's substitutionary work is God's pleasure will prosper in his hand. I love this language. God's pleasure will prosper in His hand. God the Father's pleasure will prosper in the hand of His Son.

And all of His sons who are held in His hand, they will prosper in the pleasures of the Lord they will find themselves saturated with the pleasures of God this is why we read in Ephesians 1 that That Christ made known the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in us In John 6 we learn this is my father's will that I lose nothing This is the prospering of the Son of God as we sit in His hand. This is all the result of the bruising and the grief of the Son of God. This is why it's so important that we understand the pleasures of God. We understand God. If you do not know God as the God of pleasure and hope, If you do not know God as the God who makes you happy, then you do not know God.

And that's why David speaks of it so clearly. He speaks of God this way. He says, you give, He says, God, you give them drink from the abundance of your house, and they drink from your river of pleasures. Behold your God. This is who God is.

And it's so tragic when we spend our lives desperately trying to find happiness, trying to heal our wounds, trying to get our pleasures from somewhere other than God. And it just brings me back to that question, does anybody care about the sufferings of man? Who does care about the deepest brokenness in the hearts of mankind? Who cares? The devil doesn't care.

He came to kill and steal and destroy. But God, the Father, through His Son, says, No, come to me. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. So this is the power of the shed blood of Jesus Christ. You know, I've been thinking of the benefits, the many, many benefits of the pleasures of Jesus Christ.

And I kept going back to a song. It's a song that I sing at my dinner table all the time. It's my father's favorite song. And it's called Oh Happy Day. It's written by an English Puritan by the name of Philip Dodridge back in the 17th century.

And I just want to close this message on this song that is about the pleasures of God. Oh happy day that fixed my choice on thee my Savior and my God. Well may this glowing heart rejoice until its raptures all abroad. Happy day, happy day when Jesus washed my sins away. He taught me how to watch and pray and live rejoicing every day.

Happy day, happy day when Jesus washed my sins away. But it goes deeper than that. Tis done, the great transactions done. I am my Lord's and he is mine. He drew me and I followed on Rejoiced to own the call divine happy day happy day when Jesus washed my sins away.

Now rest my long divided heart fixed on this blissful center. Rest! Here have I found a nobler part. Here heavenly pleasures fill my breast. Happy day, happy day when Jesus washed my sins away.

And the final verse, high heaven that hears the solemn vow, that vow renewed shall daily hear till in life's latest hour I bow and bless in death a bond so dear. Happy day, happy day when Jesus washed my sins away. He taught me how to wash, walk and pray and live rejoicing every day. Happy day. And here we are today.

That's what we're doing. We're here to make vows before God to to turn our heads and our hearts toward him that his pleasures might be filling our hearts that we would reject every every worldly imposter and we would seek all of our happiness in the pleasures of God and in the pleasures of God alone. Are you trifling with sin? Are you allowing the mess of pottage to mess up your mind and your heart? You're drinking the ways of the world?

If so, Turn to the pleasures of God, His river of delights, where there are pleasures forevermore. Let's pray. Oh Father, We thank you for revealing to us the beauty of your name, the glory of your majesty, the power of your love, the tenderness, your desire to save sinners, you who care about the broken life. Oh Lord, we praise you. I pray that you would give us a day of so delighting in all of your delights today.

Every conversation finding its root in your pleasures and your delights. Making this a day, truly a day of delight. Amen.