Dennis Tuuri

for us this morning. Nowhere probably in the entire Old Testament do we have a clearer picture of the suffering Christ and the nature of his work. Many have commented on these verses that they read as if written at the foot of Golgotha itself.

Note in passing by the way that Psalm 22, the first half of which we read responsively before this responsive reading a little couple of minutes ago and the second half which we shall read in a couple of minutes following this talk, follows the same theme as this passage of scripture before us as do many messianic songs in the Old Testament. That theme is from suffering to glory.

We must this day remember that to grasp the full implications of the empty tomb, we must first consider and understand the bloody cross. As the empty house of the people being delivered from Egypt could only be understood as one looked at the bloody doorposts that they went out through, so we must look at Christ’s cross and his passion to fully understand the empty tomb.

Isaiah 52, the last three verses, 13-15, that we began our responsive reading with really have a brief summary of what comes in Isaiah 53, the rest of our responsive reading. The second portion, then, Isaiah 53 builds on the first three verses of Isaiah 52. And Isaiah 52, the last three verses of that chapter point toward Isaiah 53. It’s a summation as it were. We’ll address these verses by following the outline provided by the Apostles’ Creed, a document of great historical and theological importance for the church, founded of course by the work that we celebrate this day accomplished by the Messiah Jesus Christ.

The Apostles’ Creed says that Jesus died, was buried, and descended into hell. That’ll be the topic for our first short talk here. And then secondly, the Apostles’ Creed also says the third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father. The resurrection, ascension, and reign will be the topic of our second short talk.

But first, Christ’s death, burial, and descent into hell.

Notice in the portion of scripture that you have there in front of you with the responsive reading, which is our text for today of course, that we have many expressions from verse 4 on about the various sufferings of Jesus Christ. Verse 4: he hath borne our griefs. He hath carried our sorrows. Verse 5: he was wounded, bruised. Chastisement came upon him. The word chastisement can be more properly rendered punishment. He had stripes laid upon him in verse 5.

Verse 6: the Lord laid our iniquity upon him. Verse 7: because of that he was oppressed, which word means to be driven hard, to be bullied to the point of death. He was afflicted. He was led to the slaughter. He was cut off out of the land of the living. And he was stricken.

Verse 4 that begins these series of expressions of our Lord’s passion are generalized terms. Griefs—the grief there that’s first mentioned—is a generalized term for the sufferings of Christ. Carrying our sorrows is a generalized term that encompasses all that’s to come. Then in the next few verses, verse 5 gets very specific in terms of it being wounded, being pierced as it were, and being bruised or crushed and having punishment come upon him.

Now these verses also, besides giving us the passion of Jesus Christ, also reflect upon our sin, which was of course the reason for the sufferings that he went through on the cross. There’s a strong distinction in the verses in this section of scripture here through verses 5-7 in that entire context between his work and our work. You notice in verse 4: he bore our griefs. He carried our sorrows. Verse 5: he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him.

And so we have this distinction to point out that Jesus Christ is pictured in these verses as the coming Messiah who would voluntarily take upon himself the sufferings for sin of the entire covenant community. He took them up. He hath borne. It says in these verses he voluntarily took them upon himself.

In spite of him taking upon himself these sins, the sinner by way of comparison esteems Christ stricken. The very ones he takes up his sins upon himself esteem him stricken and despise him. Romans 5:7 says that scarcely for a righteous man will one die. Yet perchance for a good man some will even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

We were enemies of him in ethical rebellion, suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness. Would we in our unregenerate state be any different than the crowds pictured in these verses that esteem Christ as stricken and smitten by God and cursed? Would we be any different than the crowds that cried out, “Crucify him!” in our unregenerate state? The answer of the scriptures is a resounding no. We are no different in our unregenerate state.

I remember that when I was teaching my oldest girl, Lana, the fifth question of the Heidelberg Catechism—”Can thou keep this law perfectly?”—the answer is: “No, for I am prone by nature to hate God and my neighbor.” And I remember when I first taught that to Lana and she read the verse to me out of the catechism booklet, she looked kind of shocked in her face to say that. But it’s something we must come to say and accept from the word of God that apart from his regeneration by the power of the Spirit, we do hate God and we hate our neighbor. That’s our fallen nature.

Margaret Thatcher, after hearing a sermon recently in England by a minister about original sin, remarked that if England simply knew the truth of this one biblical doctrine—original sin and man’s ethical rebellion against God—that many of the problems of that nation would be overcome. An understanding of original sin must lie at the root of our conception of the civil state, of course, and how it is to exercise its office in godly fashion. But more than that, the truth of original sin and our rebellion against God, and this truth about ourselves, must lie at the root of a full appreciation of what Christ is accomplishing as described in these portions of scripture before us.

If any man comes to this holy convocation and thinks not that he must confess his sins the past week before the Almighty God that he is to worship, he has not learned the first thing of the faith—that he daily walks in disdain and disregard for the things of God.

Martin Bucer in his liturgy that he produced at Strasbourg—the great Strasbourg Reformer—in the prayer of confession that he would have the congregation read in their liturgy as they went to communion included some statements like this that show the implications of our own sinful nature:

I confess that I have taken thy holy name in vain, that I have often sworn falsely and lightly by the same, that I have not always professed it, nor kept it holy as I ought, but even more I slandered it often and grossly with all my life—words and deeds. I confess that I have not kept the Sabbath holy, that I have not heard thy holy word with earnestness, nor lived according to the same. Moreover, that I have not yielded myself fully to thy divine hand, nor rejoiced in thy work done in me and in others, but have often grumbled against it stoutly and have been impatient.

I confess that I have taken life, that I have offended my neighbor often and grossly by word and deed, and caused him harm, grown angry over him, borne envy and hatred toward him, deprived him of his honor and the like. I confess that I have stolen. I acknowledge my greed. I admit that in the use of my worldly goods, I have set myself against thee and thy holy laws. Greedily and against charity have I grasped them, and scarcely, if at all, have I given of them when the need of my neighbor required it.

I confess that I have borne false witness, that I have been untrue and unfaithful toward my neighbor. I have lied to him. I have told lies about him, and I have failed to defend his honor and reputation as my own.

I think if many of us ponder these words in the truthfulness of our hearts, we’ll see that this past week saw us falling into many of these same sins. And so we come before God no different than the crowds for which he died 2,000 years ago.

But this sorry, sinful state of man is not the emphasis of these verses really, but they’re given here as a reality. And then built upon that is the great truth taught that Jesus by his death made satisfaction for that terrible sin of ours. The wages of sin are death. And it was death that our Lord took from the cup of God’s wrath that we might have the peace that these verses speak of, that we might drink fully of the cup of God’s blessing.

As a demonstration of the reality of his death, we read that he was led as a lamb to the slaughter—obviously a reference to his death—that he was cut off from the land of the living—obviously death. And finally, the conclusive statement that he made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death.

The burial of Jesus Christ is important as proof and demonstration of his death. But these verses contain something else and begin to show us what will be accomplished in the latter half of this chapter. It says in verse 9 that he made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death. Now J. Alexander in his commentary on the Hebrew words here says that the word “with” is a word of intention. It’s not necessarily a word of prediction. In other words, the intention for Jesus as he went to the cross was to have him die a thief’s death and then to bury him as a thief.

But God in answering the cry of his servant instead laid Jesus in his death not with the wicked but with the rich. Joseph of Arimathea is specifically told to us to be a rich man. Specifically mentioned is that in Matthew 27:57. And so because of the second couplet of verse 9—”he had done no violence, neither was there any deceit in his mouth”—the intentions to bury Jesus as a common criminal were not to be carried out by those who wished that for him, but rather God providentially provided the grave of a rich man to demonstrate his sinlessness.

These verses meet then, of course, with excellent preciseness the fact of our Savior’s actual death and burial. And this construction makes the second couplet of the verse the reason for the second half of the first couplet of the verse. So in the burial of the savior, we have another strong statement as to his own sinlessness and the vicarious death that he is accomplishing on behalf of his very enemies who are us.

But the penalty for sin is certainly more than physical death as evidenced in one’s burial. And so the creed goes on to talk about Christ’s descent into hell.

The punishments described in verses 4 through 8 are all inclusive relative to the effects of our sin. In other words, he’s dying for our sin and so he must take upon himself the full penalty for that sin. The griefs, as I said before in verse 4, are broad in implication. Verse 5 says, “It was for our transgressions, for our iniquities that he was stricken. Our peace is what has been affected by his work.”

Tacitus wrote of man that they make a desert and call it peace. Now, that’s not the peace of the Lord that he has earned for us with his death and his burial and his descent into hell. Were his sufferings limited to physical death and our peace limited to the salvation of our bodies, then we would indeed be left with kind of a desert-like peace as it were. But that’s not what these verses tell us.

Verse 10 says that God made his soul an offering for sin—not just his body. Throughout the descriptions before us, we see this same emphasis. In the other portions of scripture before us, we see the continual reference to the death of Jesus Christ relative to his soul. Verse 11: he shall see the travail of his soul—not just his body. In verse 12, because he takes upon him the sin of the many, so the many are made righteous.

The term used in verse 10 for offering is a technical term describing the expiatory sufferings of the Mosaic system. The word of God tells us then that Christ’s soul—not just his body—was given for this offering, for this expiation of God’s wrath. Christ redeemed not only our bodies but our souls. He delivered us from the anguish and pains of hell as well as from physical death.

Ursinus, the man who wrote the excellent commentary in the Heidelberg Catechism and was responsible for developing it, basically eloquently writes in his commentary that the descent into hell of the Apostles’ Creed is this. These are his words now: “It, meaning the event, signifies those extreme torments, pains, and anguish which Christ suffered in his soul, such as the damned experience.” End quote. “It embraces also the greatest and most extreme ignominy which Christ suffered during the whole period of his passion.”

Psalm 116:3 says, “The pains of hell get hold upon me.” Calvin writing on the descent of Christ into hell says this: “He had to not only die in the body, but to undergo the severity of God’s vengeance to appease his wrath and satisfy his just judgment. And for this reason, he must also grapple hand to hand with the armies of hell and the dread of everlasting death.”

Now, the creed places the descent of Christ into hell after his death and burial. This is not to be seen in point of time, but rather in point of emphasis. The creed begins by saying what Christ did in the sight of man: he died and was buried. And it ends by saying that his descent into hell is God’s observation of what Christ accomplished on the cross and in his agony in the garden as well. The creed first sets forth what he suffered and could be seen by men and then what this suffering was in God’s sight.

One more indication of this descent into hell is the fact that the verse says that the punishment of our peace was accomplished by him. And the word “peace” there—shalom—means a comprehensive peace. As I said before, not the peace of the desert but a comprehensive peace engaging all salvation, blessing and happiness. And so that’s why Christ suffered also the pangs of hell.

These verses teach us then that the bloody cross, the necessary precursor of the empty tomb, signifies to us that our Lord, who knew no sin, had our sins laid upon him, imputed as it were to him, and that he suffered in body and in soul, becoming obedient unto death—the death of the body and the soul—and enduring all the horrors of hell that were rightfully ours to endure and so redeemed us. He did this to make peace with God for us, to pay the price, the debt of our sin which we could never pay, to provide the full atonement that we could never provide, to satisfy the full wrath of our Creator that our death could never satisfy, and so affect our peace.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the work of Jesus Christ. We acknowledge before you that we are these sinners for whom he died and we thank you, Lord God, for the conversion into salvation. Help us, Father, never to forget what he accomplished on the cross and how he did that by taking upon himself death, burial, and descent into hell, taking upon himself the cup of your wrath, so that we might experience the cup of your blessing. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

This begins in verse 10 as we read: “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He hath put him to grief. When thou shalt 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.”

As the term used for Christ’s expiation is a Mosaic term of the old order, so the first references to the blessings in these verses which accrue to Jesus for the successful completion of his work are also in those same terms, namely long life and much offspring. Job, certainly a figure in many senses of the suffering servant, enjoyed both of these blessings of course, albeit in truncated fashion when compared to the Messiah to come.

J. Alexander commenting on these verses before us—verse 10—says that here begins the account of the Messiah’s exultation. All the previous sufferings were to have an end in the erection of God’s kingdom on earth. That’s the effect of Calvary.

Reverend Reed wrote in the late 1800s in a book entitled The Hand of God in History the following:

“Such is the progress and the progress of Christianity. The apostles cast the leaven into the corrupt mass of humanity. The fermentation began and has never ceased and shall never cease till the whole immense mass of this corrupt world shall be leavened. It has been a steady, silent, irresistible process, always onward, though not always visible, and sometimes seemingly retrograde. It is pervading the whole lump. Yet no marked effect shall appear till the process shall be complete.

“Kingdoms rise and fall. Moral earthquakes shake the earth. Commotions unaccountable and terrific follow on the heels of commotions. The leaven of Christianity seems lost in the fearful and general fermentation. The sun is darkened. The moon is covered in sackcloth. The stars fall from heaven. All human affairs are thrown into perturbation, and Christianity is from time to time scouted from the habitations of men.

“Yet all this is but the silent, invisible, onward, restless workings of the leaven cast over the world from the hill of Calvary. Every revolution, every commotion, war, oppression, persecution, famine, pestilence, the wrath of man, and the rage of the elements are under the mighty hand of God, but parts of the great fermenting process in which the world is undergoing—undergoing rather—from the leaven of Christianity. Seasons of unpropitious appearance are often times seasons of the most decided advancement, especially are these seasons of preparation for some onward and glorious progress.

“Above all these contending elements of human strife sits serenely the majesty of heaven guiding them all to the furtherance of his cause.”

McLaren commenting on this verse says that on these two acts Christ’s dominion rests: Sacrifice and intercession are the foundations of Christ’s throne.

Now it’s quite important as we consider the transition from suffering to glory to see the necessary connection. In this regards, it’s helpful to remember the jubilee. The jubilee began with the day of atonement. Jesus came and said that he came to announce the year of the great jubilee toward which all the jubilees and sabbaths of the old covenant pointed—to announce the acceptable year of the Lord, to say in effect that through his work on the cross, through his atonement, through the empty tomb—the empty tomb then should be seen as the sign that “the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.” To take a phrase from our text, from then and forever.

Having left then the great day of atonement, the text moves on before us to declare the acceptable year of the Lord. And so the satisfaction of God by the atonement made by the Messiah in verse 11 is followed with the full-blown implications of the resurrection, ascension, and reign of the Messiah in verse 12, saying: “I will divide him a portion with the great. In other words, he has conquered. He is a conqueror as the great are. And then saying he shall divide the spoil.”

Now the same word there “with”—”He shall divide the spoil with the strong.” The word “with” there should be seen as emphasizing locality as opposed to comparison. Jesus is dividing the spoil with the strong. The strong are his spoil. They are what he has won in accomplishment. In other words, he takes the mighty ones of the earth as his spoil. The numerous will he share as bounty. This sense is in agreement with the final couplets then indicating his intercession for and hence ownership of the transgressors spoken of. He has saved them and they are now his.

And so this section in Isaiah 53 ends with the same note of victory with which it began in proletic fashion in the last three verses of Isaiah 52, the beginning of our text. That text began in verse 13 of Isaiah 52 as saying: “Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high.”

Isaiah 52:13 says that because Jehovah’s servant, the servant of the Lord, deals prudently, wisely, and as a result prosperously, he shall be extolled, exalted, extolled, and become very high. To act prudently is to prosper and in fact Calvin translates the word not as prudently but as prospering. The two are really inescapable one from the other. The wisdom of Jesus Christ becomes his prospering.

We read for instance in Jeremiah 23:5: “Behold the days are coming,” says the Lord, “that I will raise up for David a righteous branch and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. The name by which he shall be called,” Jeremiah says, “is the Lord our righteousness.”

Began linking Jesus’s intercessory work for those whom he makes positionally righteous before God as his righteousness, linking that to his reign over the nations. The verse in Isaiah 52:13 goes on to say he shall be exalted, extolled, and be very high. Some translate this as saying he will rise, he will be still more exalted, he will stand high. And many commentators have seen the necessary connection with these three phrases to the phrases in the creed: Jesus’ resurrection, his ascension, his reign.

He shall be exalted—resurrected from the dead. He shall be extolled—ascended. And become very high—to rule. The empty tomb of Christ’s resurrection is but the first stage of the fulfillment of this prophecy and an indication that God’s wrath has been satisfied and turned and that Christ’s work has been given the sign of God the Father’s full acceptance. And so he lives. But more than this, he moves to ascension and to reign.

And so the passage in Isaiah 52 goes on to speak of the obedience of the nations on the basis of his work and of God’s exalting him, extolling him, and raising him high. Verse 15: “He shall sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths at him.”

The many that are astonished or appalled in verse 14 at his visage, which was beastlike and not manlike, are now outnumbered in verse 15 by the many nations that will see the positive effect of the Messiah’s work. We see here the same pattern as we saw when the people of Israel were led out of Egypt. They went in as 70, and if you remember our studies in the genealogies of the people that came out, they came out as 70 massive units of people, from 70 single ones to 70 nations.

And so these verses go from those that are appalled individually to the effect of his work on the cross—the many nations will serve him. The word for “sprinkle” is a technical term here in the Mosaic law for sprinkling water, oil, or blood as a purifying rite. Jerome then correctly commenting on this says that he’ll sprinkle many nations, cleansing them of his own blood and consecrating them in baptism to the service of God.

Because Christ’s humiliation is the deepest, so his exaltation will be the highest. Philippians 2: “He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. And therefore, God hath given him a name which is above every name, in heaven, in earth, and under the earth. But at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow.”

Isaiah 49:7 says that the response of the nations is to leap up. “Kings shall see and arise. Princes,” and they shall prostrate themselves, leaping and then bowing before the Savior because of his work on the cross.

Isaiah 53 starts in verse 1 after these verses as saying: “Who hath believed our report? And to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?”

The arm of the Lord is of course God’s power. McLaren rightly says here that we have a prophetic paradox: that the mightiest revelation of the arm of the Lord and power is in his weakness, the weakness of the suffering Messiah. McLaren says the text is a wail over darkened eyes, blind at noonday to what God is accomplishing. God’s power is being stressed with his arm, but people don’t see it.

Sadly, after 200 years of God’s rich blessings upon this nation, the church in America still has blind eyes to the report of Isaiah 53 and 52. They still don’t believe the report that Christ’s suffering leads to Christ’s glory in his reign. Only a few today have the eye of faith that is required to see what has been accomplished 2,000 years ago in the cross of our Lord.

Verse 3 of Isaiah 53 says that he is despised and rejected of men. It ends with the phrase, “He was despised and we esteemed him not”—despised at the beginning of the verse, despised at the end of the verse. Certainly, this tells us the Messiah is not to be judged by outward appearances. He is the arm of the Lord. We’ve just been told that.

Is the church today any different than those that despised him? Is the visible church of Jesus Christ any different today? I for one am tired, dreadfully tired of men and women who call themselves Christians and are ashamed to proclaim Christ’s dominion over the nations. Christ’s dominion is not even limited to the nations. It’s over the entire earth.

We mentioned the Jubilee. The Sabbath and the Jubilee required the rest of the land, looking and pointing us toward the fact that Christ’s work would result in rest for the entire created order—in some sense not even restricted to the nations beyond that. All other creation is what’s been affected by Christ’s work.

But today’s church unfortunately must be characterized as denying the power of the gospel, the arm of the Lord revealed in the Messiah’s work 2,000 years ago. They await for the arm of the Lord yet future in judgment. They sit failing to take seriously the crown rights of the King that got his crown the old-fashioned way. He earned it with his death on the cross, with his burial, with his descent into hell, grappling with the armies of hell for our sake. That’s how he got his crown.

What will be the lot of these people that reject this teaching of the implications of that work and his resurrection, ascension, and reign? What will be their lot when that same Word returns and confronts them with their gospel of reconciliation that they have limited to the church and its services, or limited to their prayer life or their personal devotion time—to life and fire insurance to a gentile pietism that masks lawlessness?

They shall be found wanting the raiments of a life lived in attempted obedience to the Savior that they are so ashamed to proclaim in the workplace, the political arena, and the school. They’ll be found wanting the holiness, the raiments of holiness, without which no man shall see God. What little they have left of the biblical faith will be taken from them. They shall be assigned a place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth—despair over opportunities lost, over a life not lived wholeheartedly for the Lord, but inconsequentially for him.

The arm of the Lord will appear to them in judgment, not deliverance, because they failed—not through ignorance, but through ethical and moral rebellion—to acknowledge his arm in the Messiah’s work.

But to those who do hear this report, who understand and obey it, it is health to the bones. It is life and it is refreshment. It means that the empty tomb that we meditate on this day is a small but oh so important sign that Christ is resurrected, ascended, and sits at the right hand of the Father reigning over his messianic kingdom.

It means that when we take communion in a few minutes, we rejoice that as he is resurrected, so we have moved in him from death to resurrection life. Because he has ascended, so we have received the empowerment of the Holy Spirit who works in and through us, blessing our work for the kingdom. And as he reigns now, so we reign, being made kings and princes with him.

It means that we are dominion men and women, boys and girls, exercising dominion and bringing all that we are and touch under the dominion of our Savior of whom it was said, “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.”

Let’s pray. Father, continue to teach us these things from your scriptures. Remind us daily of the need to obey you and of the encouragement we can take in the empty tomb, in the ascended Lord who reigns now at your right hand. Help us, Father, then to go forward from here conquering in the name of Jesus. In whose name we pray, Amen.

Dear the beloved, our Lord Jesus Christ has declared and assured us that his church has been built upon himself the rock and that the gates of hell shall never prevail against it. He has appointed office bearers in his church to faithfully blow the trumpets of his scriptures, including the blessings and cursings contained in his law.

The responsibility of these office bearers to proclaim his judgment is recorded in the gospels. Matthew 16:19, “And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Matthew 18:18, “Verily I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

John 20:23: “Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them. And whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained.”

In faithfulness to the task that he has appointed to these office bearers, they must pronounce those judgments that our Lord has declared in his