The sermon, titled 'The Iniquity of Us All,' delivered by Scott Brown, explores Isaiah 53 to unravel the central doctrine of salvation in Christianity. Brown begins by emphasizing the significance of Jesus' sacrifice as a substitutionary atonement for humanity's sins, highlighting the dual nature of God's justice and mercy. The sermon discusses the spiritual diseases and sorrows borne by Jesus, emphasizing that His sacrifice is not just a partnership in suffering but an act that lifts the burden entirely from believers. Brown contrasts the world's non-judgmental stance with the biblical understanding of sin's gravity and the need for divine judgment, highlighting the incomprehensible mercy of God that allows believers to go free. He elaborates on how Jesus' wounds and bruises were for humanity's transgressions and iniquities, stressing the personal and collective acknowledgment of sin within the church. The sermon concludes with the reminder that Jesus' chastisement brings peace and healing, urging believers to recognize both the judgmental nature of God against sin and His boundless mercy through Christ.

Good morning. I'm going to begin reading just a little bit before our sermon text starting in Isaiah 52 verse 13 through Isaiah 53 verse 6 Isaiah 52 verse 13 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 that when we see him 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 esteem him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the inequities of us all. Let's pray.

Lord God we thank you for the tremendous opportunity and gift to assemble this morning and study your scripture and to have it preached to us through your preacher. Lord, I pray that you would fill your preacher with the Holy Spirit and that your word would be preached with power and that it would be effectual and that it would affect us Lord and that we would apply it rightly to our time period. Thank you Lord God for all here today. We ask your blessing upon this meeting in the name of Jesus amen. It's been such a joy to be able to work through Isaiah 53 as we find ourselves in really what is the centerpiece of the whole doctrine of salvation.

In the Old Testament it really presents the whole matter of Christianity, the whole heart of it, and it assumes many things about us and life here on earth. It assumes the hopelessness of sinners to bear their own sin. It assumes the justice and the righteousness of God and His wrath that must be appeased somehow and it displays His mercy in the father sending his son to pay a penalty that would be a substitute for sin. And what can we say but like like the Apostle Paul said, thanks be to God for an indescribable gift. And this is what we're contemplating here.

We learn why Jesus suffered. It was not for himself. It shows us the sinfulness of our sin. It shows us the greatness of the suffering of Christ for sinners, how God vindicated His just wrath toward the rebellion against His law, and how he vindicated his justice on the back of his son. You know, there's a lot of judgment here.

There's a lot of harsh judgment in this passage of Scripture, on the one hand, and yet there is enormous, almost incomprehensible mercy. On the other hand, it's mercy that I find it hard to grasp, that God would punish his own son and let me go free. It's so hard to understand such mercy. But at the same time, there's so much judgment in it. And it stands in pretty sharp contrast to the world that we live in.

One of the highest virtues in the world today is to become non-judgmental. And we carry this over to ourselves. You know, we don't want anyone else to judge us. And in turn, We're not supposed to judge others. We have a hard time knowing which is worse, for people to judge us and think poorly of us or whether it's worse to think poorly of others.

The therapist is going to tell you that it's worse to think poorly of yourself. It's worse to judge yourself. And we don't want to look at ourselves and see anything but the positive. In the same way, we don't want to be judgmental toward others, lest we would be accused of being harsh and judgmental. And we would want to be kind and sensitive to others like we are to ourselves.

But Isaiah 53 doesn't let you be very kind or sensitive toward your sins because it raises the danger, the specter of sin, to be worthy of the striking of His Son, to literally the judgment of His Son, and having all of His wrath and judgment to fall on His Son. And so it's a passage that it takes you from one side of the extreme to the other to the extreme mercy of God that you're actually free. I mean really you are free. There's no judgment. It's done.

It's all over. You will not suffer the judgment of the wrath of God Isn't that remarkable and you think about your sins you think of what you've thought and done Think of think of things that you haven't been able to master. And is it true for that? It is absolutely true for that. It is good news.

It should be the most freeing, hapifying news ever. But at the same time, it shows you the rank filthiness of sin and the wrath of God against it and how no sin will go unpunished God is God will judge every sin God is a judgmental God and so it's a it's a passage of scripture for me. It tears me back and forth to the filthiness of my sin, to the freedom by which I've been set free. And so it's a remarkable passage of Scripture. And this is the dilemma of Isaiah 53.

It forces us to choose whether we are good or bad. And It wedges us into a decision about who we are before Jesus Christ. And so it brings these two contradictory doctrines together, the justice and the mercy of God found in this one place on the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, I don't, I don't, I can't think of anything more wonderful than to know that all of your long-term liabilities have been covered by God through his son. All of them.

Every real threat in your life. Set aside all the fake ones. Set aside all the ones your mind trumps up every day as you live, as you fear this and you fear that. All those liabilities are nothing. There's only one liability that matters.

It is that liability that you bear when you stand before God. And you either have been forgiven and the wrath has been shifted to his son, or your long-term liabilities will fall upon your head for all eternity. So God has been so kind to give us these things. You know, I think this is a word of comfort to the weary here. Now, There are a few things that we need to understand about this passage of scripture.

First of all, the doctrine of sin, the doctrine of judgment, the doctrine of the wrath of God, those are critical. Substitutionary atonement is central to this whole matter. At the same time, We should be careful to understand the New Testament speaks about this. And when we come back next week, I'll spend more time in First Peter, Chapter 2. First Peter, Chapter 2 is perhaps the great fulfillment section of Scripture that teaches us really what some of the applicability of this passage of Scripture is.

Peter teaches us how you apply this. Now we are not going to get to that in much detail today, but we will next week as we move into the next section. You see there are the sections that are here, there are five sections in Isaiah 53. It begins in chapter 52 and I was grateful for the reading of scripture that began in 52 13 today and then we dealt with the second section in 53 1-3 last week and now we're going to deal with Christ's suffering and the focus is on Christ's suffering and his submission that he had to his father towards sin now there are a couple things I want us to see in this text and and There's something to see about the reasoning that's here. There are words that tip us off onto the force of the argument, because God is making an argument here.

And He's arguing with His people in many ways. He's declaring a truth that they can hardly grasp. And so I want us to see the argument that is here. Now if you go back to verse 3, you can see the structure of the argument. He is despised and rejected of 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. So this is the whole matter of not esteeming him, not seeing him for who he is, not understanding Christ's sacrifice on the cross. We did not esteem Him. He's rejected, He's a man of sorrows, He's not successful, He doesn't look anything like the success of the world, and so why listen to Him?

He's a nothing. He owed nothing, He borrowed a boat, He borrowed a tomb. He's nothing! We did not esteem him So that's the argument so far you get that then you get to this word surely surely surely He has borne our griefs now. This is like saying Verily absolutely, like the Lord Jesus Christ said, truly, truly I say to you.

And what God is saying is Set that, set your lack of esteem aside and understand this, surely. Surely he has absolutely, unequivocally, eternally, faithfully, absolutely he's done this. So you have to see the logic that's here. The surely or the verily is emphasizing the contrast. He's making an argument that you should not forget that even though Jesus Christ was despised and rejected and unsuccessful on every human measure, surely He did something.

He did something for you. He bore your griefs and carried your sorrows. Now that's what we read in verse 4. And then verse 5, there's the word but. Now, verse 4, Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

And now God does the exact same thing. He takes you back. Oh, you regarded Him as stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. You regarded Him as a throwaway, as nothing. You didn't pay attention to Him.

You didn't love Him. You didn't pray to Him. You do not even regard Him. You do not esteem Him. And then he comes back with this word but but and he reminds again in the same way that he uses surely in the previous verse but But he was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. Now read it that way. But he was wounded. You didn't esteem him? But he was, he was, He absolutely was wounded.

God is arguing with his people. He was wounded. He was bruised. Don't you see that? And the chastisement for our peace was upon him, for by his stripes you are healed." So God is arguing with his people and he's taking us back and forth from unbelief to say, no, see the value.

It's as if he's saying, do you see the value, the way that the world values all the wrong things the world doesn't esteem Jesus Christ the world doesn't think that Jesus Christ is Lord the Lord of glory but but please know this that he was wounded for your transgressions. So that's the argument. Okay, let's jump into the text. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Now with this sentence There's a kickoff to something to observe for most of the sentences in this section.

And there are three terms that we find in Isaiah 53, and it forms the emphasis, our, us, for us, our, us, and for us. There's an emphasis here in the passage that he has very personally for his people come and carried our sorrows. It says here that he has borne, he has borne our sorrows. This, the word that is used here in the text speaks of taking the weight off of the shoulders of one person and putting the burden on another. In this case, the Lord Jesus Christ takes the burden off of your shoulders and He puts it on Himself.

And it's to take up, to lift. It means to lift a burden, to take it off completely and transport it away and put it somewhere else. And he's speaking of guilt, and he's speaking of well-deserved divine wrath. And guilt and the wrath that it deserves is universal in human society. Everyone has guilt.

The guilt of the people of the world is astonishing and people try to cover it up with drugs and entertainments and trips and all kinds of things. You try to cover it up, just put a band-aid upon the cancer, but the cancer keeps growing. And so you have to keep finding more and more innovative ways to cover up your guilt and to justify yourself and to talk to yourself lies about yourself. But guilt, guilt is a reality. What do you do with your guilt?

And here it says that he takes it off of your shoulders. He takes the guilt off of your shoulders And he lays it on himself. But we need to recognize that he's not saying something here. He's not saying in this passage that he is sharing your sorrows. He's not saying that he's sharing your guilt.

He is not a partner with us in bearing our sorrows. He does it on his own. It's not the idea that he stands with us in the middle of our griefs. It's the idea that he takes them away so that you don't bear them. So He's not standing with you in your griefs, He's actually taking them away from you.

You know, how do we as a church grasp this in our everyday life, and even in our life today? You know, as we talk to one another and we eat with one another, that, you know, here we are. We are a people whose griefs have been carried off of our shoulders. That's what it means to have a substitute. Now he bore our griefs.

I think let's talk about that. What did he take off exactly? These are sufferings that we would call spiritual diseases and sicknesses. That's what the word indicates. Matthew Henry called it a very low condition.

I think it's related to what Isaiah said in Isaiah 2, the whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint. There's nothing but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. I think he's speaking about the hardship, the hardness, the spiritual diseases that come to us as a result of our sin. And 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 24 quotes this in the midst of an application of how to apply it, but he says, who 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. For all you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls." So the Lord Jesus Christ is saying that He is taking off your sicknesses, your spiritual sicknesses.

In Matthew chapter 8 verses 16 and 17, there's a scene where this is quoted. And when evening had come, they brought to him many who were demon possessed. And he cast out the spirits with the word, and healed all who were sick. That it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet saying he himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses the Lord Jesus Christ says he bore our sicknesses And here this is why the Lord Jesus Christ was healing people's bodies. He was illustrating to them what he could do for their souls.

He said the sick you allow, the poor you will always have among you. You'll always find people who are having trouble in this world. But the Lord Jesus, when He was healing so much, He was demonstrating His power over sickness. And he was bringing an outward sign to demonstrate the power of his grace. And you know, is it easier to heal a man's body or a man's soul?

Well, the Lord Jesus says it's easier to heal a man's body. It's not as easy to heal a man's soul. And so these things bear witness to the Lord Jesus Christ as the healer of our souls. And you know our bodies are meant to heal and they often do over time, but souls only heal by a supernatural power of the grace of God. And then Isaiah mentions, in addition to our griefs, he says he carried our sorrows.

And so with this first phrase, he suffered for the diseases you deserve to suffer from. That's the point. He suffered for the diseases you deserve to suffer from. You think about all of your maladies and diseases, Jesus Christ bore the punishment for all of them. And then He carried our sorrows.

The emphasis here is on pain and grief and sorrow. These are the pains of the mind. They correspond with anxiety and discouragement and depression and fear. These are the sorrows he's speaking about. This is why David said in Psalm 32, many are the sorrows of the wicked.

And so our Lord took on sorrows of the mind, the ones that we deserved. It implies that they need to be removed. It's good to move past your sorrows and to move on. And how do you do that? Only through Jesus Christ.

Only in Jesus Christ is there hope for the healing of your sorrows. And we know that he does it progressively over time. He is healing us of our sorrows. He's delivering us from our fears. This is what he does with his people.

You come to Christ typically a very, very fearful person and your fears recede in time. This is because the Lord Jesus Christ is healing you. He is your healer. Now, he bore our sorrows on His cross once and for all. And that once and for all gift of His death and of His resurrection unleashed the power of the resurrection, which is a healing power in our lives.

You know, the whole creation groans. The whole creation is groaning because of the fall, because Adam and Eve sinned. But the Lord Jesus Christ will prevail over that. He carried our sins as His own. He carried our sins on His own, and He carried these sins to make us His own.

And when you become His own, then this is what you get as a result. He suffered the sorrows that you should have suffered for, and he continues to take them away by His grace. The third thing that we see about His work here on the cross is that He was esteemed, stricken, smitten, and afflicted. It says, Yet we esteemed Him, stricken, smitten, and afflicted by God. Now, recognize the perspective that Isaiah has us in.

Many times we've seen Isaiah take us into these remarkable scenes where something is happening and we're looking upon it. And he's taken us to another one of those scenes here. And it's the scene at the foot of the cross. This is where all of Isaiah 53 is lived. When you Come to Isaiah 53, Isaiah would have you ushered right to the foot of the cross to see the sufferings, the crucifixion, his bearing the sin of mankind and his death.

This is the scene that's in play here. And that's why this language is here. And this has to do with his rejection. We esteemed him stricken. It means we rejected him.

It means that we saw what happened to him and could only say that he was unworthy of praise, and he was not worthy of us. In fact, he was a loser, and why would we want to be identified with him at all? He was despised, and we regarded him not as useful to us at all. Now I want to suggest that Isaiah is pointing here to two kinds of people when he says this. Those who did not esteem him because that's what we're talking about.

Those who did not esteem him And the Lord Jesus Christ bore the shame for that lack of esteem. There are two kinds of people. The first kind are those who rejected him. And I think that rejection can happen in two different times. You're rejecting him before you came to him.

And we rejected the Messiah and we did not want to identify with him. We esteemed him, stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. He was nothing helpful to us. To be identified with Jesus Christ would be very unprofitable for your friendships. And you knew that.

You knew that if you followed Jesus Christ you would lose something. And so it's I think He's speaking of those who rejected Him before they turned to Him and did not want to identify with Him. And this is what sinners do. They condemn Jesus Christ. And Isaiah's documenting the ingratitude.

Jesus was called a winebibber and a glutton. He was slandered. His family said that he lost his mind and the Pharisees said he has a demon and he casts out demons. These are the sins for which Jesus Christ died for those who blasphemed him before they were for they were forgiven So it's those people he died for those who were not attracted to Him. We despised what was best of Him, His humility.

We despised His submission to His Father. We despised that He did not open His mouth. We despised that he didn't rise up and torch everybody in the room who are contradicting him, because we want a God that's different than that. We want a God that makes us powerful in the world, and we despised him. The second kind of person I believe he's speaking about is his bearing our current rejection of him as Christians.

He's bearing the punishment for our ignoring him. He's bearing the punishment for our ignoring Him. He's bearing the punishment for our unmindfulness of Him. He's bearing the punishment that we deserve for our prayerlessness. Do you pray enough?

Are you mindful of Him enough? Do you ever just shoot your mouth off? You know, the Bible says it will be held account for every word that was said. And he bore the punishment that we deserve for our unmindfulness of Him. How stupid we often are, how unaware we often are of Him.

And here we find Him bearing the punishment that we deserve for our ingratitude, our lack of attention, our prayerlessness. We grieve the Holy Spirit. We push Him aside and we do the things that we shouldn't do and we don't do the things that we should do. You know what happened to Christ should have happened to us because of our unmindfulness of Him. We started out our relationship with Him not wanting to be identified with Him and saying, you are nothing and I do not want to have your reputation shine on me." That's what we said for years before we turned to Jesus Christ.

And then when He forgave us, when He made us sons and daughters, then we still struggled with our attentiveness toward him. And we didn't pray like we ought to pray. And we didn't talk like we ought to talk because we weren't aware of him like we ought to have been aware of it. He was aware of it. He was despised and rejected.

Now notice this, it was not, it was, he was smitten and stricken he was, and afflicted and rejected. You know, what did we do to deserve being stricken? What did we do to deserve to be smitten and afflicted? Well, God laid all of these things on His Son. Notice these things happened in the past.

These things happened in the past. They were done by God. It's in the past tense. It was a moment in time. They happened at one time.

This is completely different compared to the Roman Catholic vision of the continuous suffering of Jesus Christ. The Roman Catholics put Jesus Christ on the cross every time they have a Mass. They drive another nail in His hand. This says, no, the nails were driven into his hands once and for all. The Roman Catholic doctrine of salvation says you put Christ up on the cross whenever the priest lets you.

Whenever he takes authority, the priest will put Jesus Christ on the cross and crucify him again for you. And this is why we get the idea, you know, if I sin, well that's just another nail in Christ's hands. No, it's not another nail in Christ's hands. Christ suffered the full measure of the wrath of God for all sins done by humanity, past, present, and future. He suffered and died.

He said, it is finished. A true Christian understands that he was crucified for them. He suffered the rejection and the unmindfulness and the prayerlessness That we should have suffered for that's the point the fourth thing verse 5 He was wounded for our transgressions You know he has he has not he's not forgotten about us trapped in our sin He doesn't leave us to wallow under the pressure and the hardship of our sin. He rescues us and he puts us on the highway of holiness in order to put to sanctify us but it says here he was wounded now this this term has to do with running a sword through someone it has to do with piercing with the Lord Jesus I think we can say that it has to do with piercing His hands and His feet with nails and His side by the point of the spear. And the term is an agonizing term that indicates the stabbing of someone and then the writhing that takes place as a result of it.

And so you have an innocent man who's being speared for a guilty man. You would think that God would spear the guilty man, but no, He spears the innocent man. And why was he wounded? The answer is right here, for our transgressions. This has to do with missing the mark through our acts of disobedience and negligence.

There are intentional and unintentional sins in this category, But he was wounded for our transgressions, so he suffered the wounds for transgressions that we should have suffered for. But he doesn't stop with just the word transgressions. He speaks of iniquities in the next phrase. But he was bruised for our iniquities. And this word brings up images of failing in your duty you've been given the moral law to guide you and You reject that law you violate the law And that is the definition of iniquity.

I once heard somebody say that there were three crimes for which the Lord Jesus Christ was punished for. First of all, religious crime, which is blasphemy and worship. The second was moral crime, which has to do with ungodliness in relationships. And the third is civil crime, treasonous rebellion against authority, from your father and mother to your civil magistrate to your boss to the one that God has put over you. There are many categories of iniquity.

And what did God do about it? Well, it says that He bruised His Son. And this is a word that has to do with crushing, a sharp force that actually breaks and it brings and it mars the contour of what it is coming against is coming against. He was bruised for our iniquities. He was bruised for the failures in our duties, to the moral law that we should have suffered for.

And then number six, He was chastised for our peace. The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed." These words speak of God as a judge who is very much like a father. Because it's given to fathers to chastise their sons and their daughters. God has given means to deal with this. The very same word for chastisement here is used in Proverbs 22-15.

Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. The rod of correction will drive it far from him. Proverbs 23, 13, and 14, do not withhold correction from a child, for if you beat him with a rod, he will not die. You shall beat him with a rod and deliver his soul from hell. This is the whole matter of chastisement.

God is a Father who chastises His Son. And here the weight of His chastisement, the full measure of it is laid upon His Son. But notice it's the chastisement for our peace. You know, anyone who's ever been faithful to discipline their children with the biblical means of chastisement demonstrated in a godly way understands the peace that comes to a child that you chastise. And how often there's no peace in that child's heart until you chastise them.

Sometimes you chastise them too lightly and they have no peace. And then you ratchet it up, and then they have peace. But here the chastisement fell upon the Lord Jesus Christ. The corrections are needed, And yet here they are diverted. Now this doesn't mean that God doesn't chastise his children.

We know from Hebrews chapter 12 that he disciplines every son whom he receives. So there are these temporal disciplines that he brings to us, but this full measure of his chastisement is laid upon his son. It's a different kind of chastisement, but it does so many of the same things. But this chastisement was by stripes. And these stripes drove the pain.

Now, it says that it was a chastisement for peace. That beautiful word, shalom, is here. Peace from the top of your head to the bottom of your toes. Shalom. The chastisement for our peace was upon him.

The Lord Jesus Christ was struck so that you would have peace. So that you would have peace with God. So that you would have peace when you walk around in this world knowing that it was Jesus Christ that bore your shame. And it brings peace. You know, as we fellowship together, as we are a people together in this community, you know, are we the people who are known by their peace their peace with God they know they know that they are at peace with God and so they are at peace.

They're not a fretful people, but there are people who are at peace. This chastisement of the Son of God was designed for that. That's why the Apostle Paul said, Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. God smote his son so that you would have peace, so that you would stand in grace. You would walk along in this world And you would know that you're standing in grace like a rain You know I went out and I was exercising the other day and a big cloud came over and the rain came down It was such a heavy rain, but it was one of those rains where it was just coming straight down You know and it was it was so refreshing to walk in that rain.

And I thought, this whole matter of standing in grace, and I was just absolutely soaked by walking through the rain. Standing in grace. This is why you were chastised, for your peace, why he was chastised, for your peace. So that you would stand in grace. And then by His stripes we are healed.

This is the seventh thing that the suffering of the Son of God endured. Again, this is the word bruise. It's used to describe marks on the skin from a blow. It literally means black and blue. These are the marks of the blows from chastisement.

The Jews would limit lashes to 40 lashes. The Romans did not have the same law. So his stripes were of a different kind than the Jews would have inflicted upon him. In this case, there was a whip, but it wasn't like the bullwhip you buy for your son when he's nine years old down at the toy store. That's made of leather, you get in a foreign country.

It wasn't like that at all. It was a brutal whip. It had small pieces of bone and glass and chips attached to the cords. And the Son of God was held probably by a pillar. And he was struck on the back and then on the face and the head and the front most likely all around him and it was it was torture And when the Lord Jesus Christ experienced this final brutality on the cross, he fainted.

Now, I think most of us are aware that it wasn't Christ's physical sufferings were the great problem. They were the sufferings for having the sins that the world laid upon him. The physical sufferings were minor compared to that. But he did suffer and there was a very physical suffering that he endured in order to demonstrate what happened to him. And it says, by his stripes you are healed.

This is medicine for the soul, there's spiritual healing in the chastisements that were laid on the Lord Jesus Christ as the wrath of God was diverted. When the wrath of God is poured out you get sick, I think is part of the meaning here. But when the wrath of God is diverted you are healed. He sets in motion these powers of your recovery by the power of the Holy Spirit. You know the Apostle Paul tried to explain this to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21, For he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

I was reading an author who spoke of the various maladies that he heals his people from. He called it the maladies this wondrous medicine removes. Number one, the mania of despair. Number two, the stony heart. Number three, the paralysis of doubt.

Number four, the stiffness of the knee joint of prayer. Number five, the numbness of the soul. Number six, the fever of pride. Number seven, the leprosy of selfishness. Number eight, anger.

Number nine, the fretting consumption of worldliness. Number 10, the cancer of covetousness. The Lord Jesus Christ is the healer. He's the healer of your diseases. And is He going to heal all of your diseases?

Yes. Someday. But perhaps not today. James 5 makes it very clear that there will be diseases and we should pray for them. It's very clear that God does not heal all diseases as the Apostle Paul demonstrated with the thorn in the flesh.

But will he heal all of your diseases? Absolutely he will. He will heal all of them. All of your sicknesses will be will be taken care of on that last day and you'll have a new body and he will heal all your diseases until that time you're in a process of healing of your diseases and so what we learned from this from these stripes is that He was whipped for what we should have been beaten for. And then number eight, and finally, iniquity laid on Him.

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." This first phrase, all we like sheep have gone astray. Do you notice the tone of this? Isaiah is now speaking for the elect. He's representing his people.

You always have to be aware of the voice in Isaiah. The meaning is there and here his voice is now our voice. This is now the voice of the church where we say, all we like sheep have gone astray. You know, have gone astray. You know, through Isaiah the Lord puts many words in our mouths.

And we've seen this many times in the book of Isaiah. Remember back in the first section in Isaiah, you read, and in that day you will say, in that day you will say, Oh Lord, though you were angry with me, you comfort me." Well Isaiah is doing it again. And now he's having us say together, all we like sheep have gone astray. It's the whole congregation, it's the whole people who believe in God and they're saying this together as a family. All we like sheep have gone astray.

We have turned every one of us, every individual of us, to his own way. So it's a declaration where the whole church says all of us have gone astray and I have too. That's what's being put in our mouths and this is the cry of the person who loves the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a confession of those who've seen Christ suffer for them. It's a declaration of his mercy and his goodness.

And it's a cry of relief and anguish all at the same time. Because remember what Isaiah is doing? He's bringing two seemingly contradictory things. The absolute mercy of God towards sinners and his absolute judgmental, unstoppable wrath. He brings those two in this verse where the people say all we like sheep have gone astray and Then we individually each one of us have turned to his own way but the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." So you have this manifestation of individualism, we want to go our own way.

We follow the ways we want to go. We want to make up our own lives. We did go our own way. We did not see ourselves as under submission to God. We want to go our own way.

We just want to live life. We just want to go make it happen. We just want to go get it done, right? You know, my wife Deborah was telling me a story about a woman she was with recently for a few days, and she told me that every time they were transitioning to do something different she would she would have everyone she would pray If they were going to get in the car, they would pray. If they were getting ready to get out of the car, they would pray.

What Deborah said is this is a woman who doesn't want to go her own way. She wants to be mindful of God. She wants the Spirit of God, the Word of God, the goodness of God, the blessing of God on her life. And so she doesn't go anywhere. She doesn't make a transition from one thing to another without praying because she wants God.

She wants, she doesn't want to go her own way. And this is the true heart of a Christian. But every Christian can acknowledge, Oh Lord, how many times do I just go on my own way? I'm not mindful of you. I don't bathe everything in prayer.

I just go get it done. Because I want to exalt myself and make my life happen for me. And every Christian recognizes that. That problem. There are many ways that we go astray.

This is why David said in Psalm 14.3, The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there any who understand who seek God. They have all turned aside. They have together become corrupt. There is none who does good, no not one. Have all the workers of iniquity, no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call on the Lord." This is the problem that the Lord Jesus Christ died to solve.

He died for that. He died for all those times, all those ways you want to go your own way, because you still in many ways do want to go your own way, but it grieves you. And you're saying this, you're praying this prayer, All we like sheep have gone astray We've turned everyone to his own way, but but the Lord Jesus Christ and that changes everything Notice that it was the Lord that laid upon him all of this iniquity. He laid a heavy weight speedily upon him, lowered it down upon him, taking it from your shoulders and putting it down upon him. Putting it down upon him.

The Lord Jesus Christ was burdened for what we should have been burdened for. And so there you see it. He bore our griefs, he carried our sorrows. He was esteemed, stricken, smitten, and afflicted. 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 were healed and our iniquity Was laid upon him Okay, let me just try to close with a few applications here This passage Though it it is so staggeringly comforting it is I I don't know how to completely understand this, but to think that he really has paid the penalty for all of my sins is astonishing. All of them, and I'm free. At the same time, we're brought to the realization of who we are. And in the midst of our joy, we cannot forget about the devastating nature of sin and its gravity.

Somehow you have to hold these two things. True Christianity doesn't give you a simplistic mantra. It gives you a way of thinking about everything that doesn't deny one thing for the sake of another. And so I think the challenge for me in this passage is how do you kick your heels like a stall-fed calf like Moses spoke about on the one hand for the mercy of Jesus Christ for the true freedom that you have that you don't have to bear your sins anymore and your brow doesn't have to be weighed down by all those sins. It doesn't have to be because Jesus Christ suffered for all that.

At the same time, at the same time we recognize that we have a judgmental God and He does judge sin and sin does deserve punishment. Now here's another application. Regarding the suffering of Christ, it started and it ended. And the suffering for a Christian ends as well. It has an end point.

But the unrepentant who goes to their grave without trusting Jesus Christ will find that they will experience personally the kind of anguished suffering that Jesus Christ suffered and they'll experience it here and they'll experience it for all eternity and that's the difference between the believer and the unbeliever The suffering that was deserved will be meted out on the unrepentant. And that suffering will be experienced in this world. And there are so many manifestations of it, It's not even funny. But they will also suffer for all eternity. God gives these small tremors, these minor shakes and difficulties from sin in this world to help us to realize that there will be the full measure of the wrath of God for all eternity in hell.

So listen to the suffering. Christ's sufferings had a beginning and an end. But the unbeliever in this world, it will just continue and it will escalate. You have sorrows from your sins, you have pains, you have depression from all of your idolatry and all of your worship of yourself, recognize, turn to Christ, because it will not end unless you do. You know, we have to recognize the danger of sin in the midst of it.

If we walk out of here and we only think, we only can think of our freedom and completely forget the responsibility that we have to deal with sin in our lives then we've missed the whole point because because God does deal with sin he will deal with it And you know one commentator that I read this last week said that sin was a wasting disease, a painful disease, a loathsome disease, an infectious disease, and a mortal disease. And he hooked it to self-righteousness, our impurity, our selfishness, our self-indulgence, our laziness, our lukewarmness, our fear. And the question I think we should ask when we see this full measure of the wrath of God, the judgmentalism of God is that are we dancing with touches of sin or lust or are we? Is there any theft going on in our lives? Is there any immorality?

Is there any adultery? Is there any covetousness? Is there any of this going on? Recognize how dangerous it is and don't think so lightly of it. Because your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, suffered for all those sins.

And so somehow, as we process these two remarkable truths that we must acknowledge of God's wrath, his unutterable judgmentalism against sin. One sin will cast you into hell and on the other hand the great mercy of God through the Lord Jesus Christ. Now let me end with two things. First of all, you can personalize this. You can read, Surely he has borne my griefs, and carried my sorrows.

Yet I esteemed him, stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for my transgressions. He was bruised for my iniquities. The chastisement for my peace was upon him. And by his stripes I am healed.

I have gone astray. I have turned to my own way. And the Lord has laid on him all of my iniquities." You can rightly read it that way because of the way that Isaiah speaks of it But that's the personal dimension we have to grab I think we should absolutely grasp that dimension But this is written in the form of the corporate dimension It's written for it's the all the people of God are saying this together. They are saying it individually, I believe, but they're saying it together. And they say Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

Yet we esteemed Him, stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was on him and by his stripes we are healed. 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." And so we have both of these dimensions running together in this passage of Scripture. You know, as we turn to the next part of our service, to the Lord's Supper, this is how we will read this. All of us together, the body will gather together and it will acknowledge its sins together and that the Lord Jesus Christ died for his church, for a people set apart in the world to recognize both the judgmentalism of God and a proclament and the great mercy of God in his Son Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Jesus Christ.

Let's pray. Lord, Lord I thank you for these astonishing words that stretch our minds, that take us from one dark consideration to the lightest and sweetest considerations we can even imagine. I thank you, O Lord, for the freedom for which we've been set free, for your love towards sinners, to provide. Thank you for providing for us, oh Lord. I pray if there's anyone not provided for, if there's anyone that doesn't know, that doesn't see, that doesn't hear, that doesn't want.

Oh God, I pray that you would give them a wanting. Amen.