Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

the scriptures to Isaiah the 53rd chapter. Think rather than have you rise to hear the word, we’ll remain seated because of the floor, and it is a good thing to remember that we rest in this word. It is a command word to us, but it’s always a grace word. In particular, so as we read the full context of what Elder May read earlier from Isaiah 53, tremendous words of comfort to us.

Isaiah 53:

“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 was 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 everyone 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 its shearers 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 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.”

Thus endeth the reading of God’s word.

We have a problem. We have a humongous, huge, inestimable problem. Children, you have a problem. Your problem is sin. And your problem really consists of two things. One, it is the sin of Adam imputed, or legally declared to your account. You stand convicted before you do a single thing wrong in your life. And yet, you know also that you have actual sins as well as original sin from Adam.

And so do your parents. And so do the mature Christian single people at this church. We all sin. We’re not sinners because we sin. We sin because we’re sinners. We were born sinners. As our father Adam sinned and turned against God, and it is a humongous problem—the results of this sin. Because you see, the word of God says that sin calls forth punishment. The wages of sin is death—eternal death. Because of our sin, we have a tremendous debt which we could never pay to God Almighty.

There are people literally at this moment suffering in hell, eternal torment. They’ve been there—some of them—for 4,000 years. And you know what? 4,000 years, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, all that time, all those minutes, all those seconds and hours and years and eternity will not reduce their debt enough to satisfy Almighty God. They’ll be there eternally. And they’re there today. Easy to think of eternity and block it out of our mind, but they’re there today suffering for that huge problem of their sin.

And yet, after 4,000 years, they’re no closer to making satisfaction to God. You see, we serve a God who is indeed love. But we serve a God who is sternly just as well. We serve a God of holiness. We serve a God of justice. And justice demands satisfaction. We’re talking about the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ for the last few weeks. We will for yet a couple more weeks. And that atonement is about satisfaction.

Through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, for the sins of those people that God calls to himself out of his grace, expiation. Big word, huh? But you kids can say it. Expiation. Not so tough. Expiation. Someone needs to pay the price. That’s what expiation is about. The expiation of God’s wrath through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Atonement is about expiation. In the Old Testament, there are animals and these animals were put on the altar and slain, and they were to be so seen as making expiation for the guilt of the people—atonement.

In other words, you put your hand on the animal, you identified with it, the animal died on the altar, and as a result, expiation is pictured. But of course, the animals, as we just sang about—”Oh, all the blood of bulls and beasts could take away the stain”—that horrific problem. They couldn’t keep us from hell and eternal fire and torment. But they pictured the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ who would indeed make expiation through his work on the cross.

Now, we have talked about in this discussion of the Canons of Dort, we have talked about the redemption of men. This is—we talk about atonement, limited atonement—but really the head of doctrine we’re discussing is the death of Christ and the redemption of men thereby. And there’s a big bunch of words. Atonement itself is a big word for some. You can think of it just like it’s spelled—”at one meant”—atonement. He atones for our sins.

But it’s more than just expiation. It is reconciliation as well. In other words, it’s not just taking care of the problem—that horrific problem of our sin. But it also, in Christ’s atonement, he provides the positive righteousness for us by his life. He makes us one with God. He reconciles us. He just doesn’t take away the problem. He actually favorably disposes the Father toward us.

And so there’s another word: propitiation. Little bigger word, still not hard to say—propitiation. “Pro” means in favor of something. And Christ has made propitiation for our sins. He has made God no longer not just angry at us. He’s taken away the anger, but now God favorably is working toward us in everything that he does. God’s love mediates everything that he does to his people on the basis of Christ’s work.

Now, Christ didn’t come to make it so God could love us. God loved us. Remember, we said first of all, it’s God the Father loving us in eternity that produces the atonement by sending the Son to make atonement for our sins. But that love is on the basis of the satisfaction of his divine wrath and justice through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Canons of Dort talk about this doctrine of atonement, and we’ll be discussing that today. But remember that in the context of the atonement it is in the middle of a process. We’re talking about these heads of doctrine from Dort, and we began with their first one which talked about divine election. Now we’re talking about the death of Christ, and in a couple weeks we’ll start the third and fourth head of doctrine which has to do with how God affects the salvation in our souls—how he regenerates us.

And some commentators have said quite usefully that this is really a picture of the Trinity in action. God the Father eternally loves us, and as a result sends his Son. And the Son, in his love for us, willingly submits himself to death on the cross and eternal death. He took upon himself all that suffering that we couldn’t do—he does for us on the cross 2,000 years ago out of his love. And then the Holy Spirit regenerates us, and the Holy Spirit applies that salvation in our lives and changes us. And we’ll talk about that in a couple of weeks.

So it’s really the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost in this process of love and redemption and then regeneration. But today, our specific topic is indeed the atonement offered by the Son.

Now, I’ll actually—the topic for today, the title is “A Strange Atonement.” Strange atonement—not referring to the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, but what some people do in perverting that atonement because they want man to be sovereign and not God.

Strange atonement is the topic. But you know, it’s been said, and you’ve heard this illustration before, I’m sure, but that the way to tell counterfeit money is to get yourself acquainted with good money. They train people who are going to be trained experts in counterfeit money. Apparently—I don’t know, at least they used to—they train them what good money is like. If you know what a good dollar bill feels like and looks like, then you’re going to know when something is counterfeit to that goodness.

Okay. And in a way that makes sense because you can never figure out all the ways people would make counterfeit stuff. So it’s important to keep ourselves from counterfeit, strange atonements that do not provide the satisfaction of Christ’s work on the cross. It is important to acquaint ourselves with the real deal, with the truth of God’s word as it relates to atonement.

And I want to begin by looking at the Canons of Dort and their delineation of what they thought the word teaches. And after we look at the Canons of Dort for a little bit, then we’ll turn to Isaiah 53 and see how well it comports with what the Canons teach and what we’ve talked about the last couple of weeks. And then we’ll talk about the strange atonement, and the Canons address the strange atonements of their day and age and condemn them. And we’ll see that has implication for our day and way, our day and age as well.

So let’s start first—and hopefully you picked up one of these Canons of Dort. It’s got the Second Head of Doctrine, articles 1-4 and numbers 8 and 9 on it. We’ll deal with 5, 6, and 7 in two weeks. It has to do with the proclamation of the gospel. But today we’ll deal with 1 through 4 and number eight, and then later as we go to communion, number nine. So I’m just going to read these very briefly. You can follow along if you have a copy, and if not, feel free to get up and get one.

The first article reads this: “God is not only supremely merciful but also supremely just, and his justice requires, as he has revealed himself in his word, that our sins committed against his infinite majesty should be punished—not only with temporal but with eternal punishments, both in body and soul—which we cannot escape unless satisfaction be made to the justice of God.”

The foundation of the biblical teaching on atonement is the twin attributes, as it were, that go together of God’s justice and mercy. And God’s justice must be dealt with, and his mercy must be on the basis of satisfaction for that terrible problem we spoke of at the beginning of the sermon.

That satisfaction must be made in order for his justice to be satisfied, that he can extend mercy to us. And the satisfaction involves judgment. It involves punishment upon sin. It involves temporal and eternal punishment. And it involves punishment in body and in soul. Okay. The whole thing is pictured as the punishment due for sin and the satisfaction that must be made through the work of our Savior. So they start with laying the foundation of God’s justice and mercy requiring satisfaction.

The satisfaction means that we must suffer eternally in body and in soul, or there’s no satisfaction made.

Secondly, the Canons of Dort go on to say: “Since therefore we are unable to make that satisfaction in our own persons or to deliver ourselves from the wrath of God, he has been pleased of his infinite mercy to give his only begotten Son for our purity who was made sin and became a curse for us and in our stead, that he might make satisfaction to divine justice on our behalf.”

Praise God for that one. The end of the first article—we’re left with that problem we had at the beginning of my talk. This horrific problem of 4,000 years of people suffering in hell, not being able to make satisfaction. What can we do? God, out of his love and mercy for us, sent the Lord Jesus Christ to make that satisfaction which we can never make in and of ourselves. And by that satisfaction on the cross, to be our Surety and to produce God’s mercy for us.

So we can’t make that satisfaction, but he loves us, and in order to deliver us, he sends his Son that he might become a curse for us and in our stead, that he might make satisfaction in our behalf.

Thirdly, the Canons teach: “The death of the Son of God is the only most perfect sacrifice and satisfaction for sin and is of infinite worth and value, abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world.”

So this one who makes the satisfaction for us, it is the only satisfaction that can be made. Any strange atonement is no atonement. In other words, you know, Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire on the altar. Remember, they were called as priests, sons of Aaron, and they were supposed to do the worship the way God said to do the worship. And the fire was supposed to be God-created fire. God set down fire to burn up the first offering and to get the fire going.

And Nadab and Abihu, as good priests in the Old Testament, were always supposed to use God’s fire. But they said, “We can make our own fire.” And they went and had their own fire in their censers, and they go into the place to offer sacrifice. And God killed them immediately, burned them up, because they were trying to create fire on their own terms. They had strange fire. The King James translates it as strange fire.

And if we try to come up with an atonement other than what the scriptures say, the perfect satisfaction of the Lord Jesus Christ, it’s strange atonement. And its result is that we’ll be consigned forever to hell should we believe in atonement other than what the scriptures teach. You see, it’s not a matter of personal opinion. It’s a matter of what the word of God instructs us in terms of the atonement for our sins. And this Canon says, as the scriptures say, the only satisfaction is of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that satisfaction is of infinite worth and value.

Why? Well, we read about why in article 4: “The death is of such infinite value and dignity because the person who submitted to it was not only the begotten Son of God of the same eternal and infinite essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit—which qualifications were necessary to constitute him a Savior for us.”

Okay. So, first of all, it’s because Jesus was both God and man. And in his Godhood, he is eternal, and he is infinite. And so only he could pay the price for our sins, because remember they deserve—they deserve eternal damnation both in body and soul, both temporally now but also in eternity. And so Jesus’s value of his atonement is found in the fact that he is very God of very God, and in his humanity and in his deity he suffers on the cross for us. And as a result, he can make that satisfaction, and that’s why it is of eternal value.

But secondly, the Canon says: “Moreover, because it was attended with a sense of the wrath and curse of God due to us for sin.”

It’s of such value because it received the wrath and curse of God for us. Now, this is real important just to mention for a minute here. The infinite value—okay, we say limited atonement. We don’t mean limited in the sense of what it could provide redemption for. It’s unlimited in its value. It’s limited in its application and purpose.

But those who would say it’s unlimited in value because he died for the sins of the world—you see, that’s wrong. Because let me ask you something. The world has a finite ending time, right? There’ll come a time in which Jesus comes back and everything is over in terms of created history. No more births will happen. Now, I know it would take a long time, but you could line up every person from Adam all the way through to when the world will cease. And that is a finite number. It’s not—it’s you can count. In other words, take a long time, but it has a beginning and an ending point, so you can count that number of people, right?

And if the value of Christ’s death is because he died for so many people, it may be big, but it’s not infinite value, then is it? Because it’s not an infinite number of people. It’s a finite number of people. The infinite value of the Lord Jesus Christ is not because the number of people he died for. It’s because of the value of the one who died, and he affected satisfaction in eternity by suffering in some way eternally for our sins on the cross.

So the Canons tell us that the death of the Lord Jesus Christ has this tremendous value because of him being God, and also because that this death was attended with the curse and wrath of God upon him.

And then finally, paragraph number eight really sums up this head of doctrine for us very well, and I’ll read it. Article number eight rather—the Second Head says this:

“For this was the sovereign council and most gracious will and purpose of God the Father—okay, so first of all, it’s the sovereign council of God in all eternity that decides this—that the quickening and saving efficacy of the most precious death of his Son—so it’s not just a possible efficacy, it is a saving efficacy, it’s sure, in other words, it will accomplish this of the most precious death of his Son—should extend to all the elect, to them only, for bestowing upon them alone the gift of justifying faith, thereby to bring them infallibly to salvation—not of you, it doesn’t depend on you. Jesus didn’t die and then hope that people would come to salvation. He died to affect salvation for the elect, and that infallibly. That is, it was the will of God that Christ by the blood of the cross—whereby he confirmed the new covenant—should affect, redeem out of every people, tribe, nation, and language, all those and those only who were from eternity chosen to salvation and given to him by the Father—that he should confer upon them faith, which together with all the other saving gifts of the Holy Spirit, he purchased for them by his death, should present them all—should purge them rather from all sin, both original and actual, whether committed before or after believing—and having faithfully preserved them even to the end, should at last bring them free from every spot and blemish to the enjoyment of glory in his own presence forever.”

That’s a wonderful statement of this doctrine. It’s really the heart of this Second Head of Doctrine. This statement is really built up to with the other explanations, but this is really the heart of it—that God has a particular people. The Father sent the Son for a particular people whom he had placed his love upon, and for those particular people, the Lord Jesus, by his death on the cross and through his atonement, provides not just a possible salvation but an actual salvation, and confers upon them the gift of faith.

Okay. And on the basis of that, will bring them surely to glory. And so, children, that huge problem we spoke of—and the fear I hope that struck your heart as you heard and thought about—not just an eternal hell for some people but people there 4,000 years—that fear that strikes our heart is removed through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as we believe in this atonement that the scriptures pour forth from beginning to end—the Lord Jesus Christ for his people—we are saved eternally from damnation through it.

Now, these are great words, but do they really comport with the scriptures? Well, they do. Let’s turn to Isaiah 53 and look at what this chapter has to say about God’s tremendous salvation he has affected for us once for all.

Isaiah 53: “Who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”

Notice—now this is not the purpose of this sermon, but notice in passing here—that the ones who believe the report are those to whom the arm of the Lord has been revealed. See, it’s not of us. It is of the revelation of God. In other words, you—if you believe this report that Jesus died for your sins—it’s because the Lord has revealed this to you. He has revealed his arm to you sovereignly. It’s his sovereign choice. Again, if you’re blinded, you’re blind because God hasn’t opened your eyes yet. But if it’s God who opens your eyes, then it is his sovereignly—his sovereign calling of you to election.

Well, that’s what the first verse says. And then we go on to read the next few verses about our Savior: “He shall grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground.”

Now, I think that can be said to refer to our Savior’s house. He was of the house of David, but at this particular time in history, the house was in disrepair. He was of the root of David. David comes forth from him really, but he’s a root out of dry ground. It appears that there’s no value to the house of David at this particular time in history when our Savior came. He had no—in other words, historical lineage at that point that was evident to people that would be of value.

And secondly, “He has no form or comeliness, and when we see him there is no beauty that we should desire him.”

What he will accomplish is not based upon people’s appreciation of his family status at the time. Nor is it an appreciation of his physical beauty. Some commentators say he was actually somewhat revolting in appearance. I don’t know if we can get that out of this. Certainly we can say that when he went to the cross, when he was beaten, etc. But we do know from this report that the value of the Lord Jesus Christ wasn’t somehow that people saw him and thought, “Oh, this man is tremendously blessed in his appearance.” No, he was common in appearance.

It’s a comfort, isn’t it? But it’s also of shame to us, because so often we judge on the basis of these things, don’t we? People’s—how well has their family done for the last generation? That’s the basis on which the world will have relationships with them. Or what do they look like? Do they look good on the outside? Men judge by appearance. Not so God. And he sent forth a Savior who is not comely in appearance.

And then finally: “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.”

Now, you couldn’t tell from looking at Jesus’s family at that particular point in time that he was particularly well off. You couldn’t tell by looking at his physical appearance. And you couldn’t tell by the way his life turned out. He had a lot of problems. Walked around with a lot of grief and sorrow. Man of sorrows.

And the scriptures, in this, also—as I said—chastise us for judging so often on the basis of what a person’s family is, how well they’re doing, what they look like, and then how well the external blessings of God are upon them. And we would look at Job at a portion of his life and say, “Oh, this man isn’t a very good guy.” And yet God was holding up Job as the example to Satan of someone who loved him and was committed to him.

And here our Savior—the same thing. Looks like his life wasn’t particularly blessed. Man of sorrows. So all those things aren’t the basis for the great value of the Lord Jesus Christ. What was? Well, it goes on to say:

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.”

You see, he’s being obedient to the Father, because he doesn’t come to live a blessed life of triumph in his suffering. Rather, he comes to take up our griefs and our sorrows. He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Why? The same two Hebrew words—it says that he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief—are the words that relate to the fact that he was bearing our griefs and taking up our sorrows in the context of his life.

See, he was come as a substitute, as that substitute for us. And yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. And indeed he was afflicted, because verse 5 goes on to say that he was wounded, afflicted—in other words, for our transgressions:

“He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him. And by his stripes we are healed.”

Here’s the imputation of our sins, our transgressions, our tremendous problem that we talked about, upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And in the imputation of these things, he bears our sins. And through his death, fully taking upon himself our sins and transgressions, our wounding and bruising, he—this chastisement for our peace was upon him. We are brought into that peace, or satisfaction, through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we’re healed. We’re delivered. We’re saved.

We’ve talked about that. That’s the effect of the atonement. Not a possible one, but an effectual one by our Savior. And here these words from Isaiah 53 tells us that very thing—that the imputation upon him was to the end that a particular people, the people of God, would indeed be brought into peace, atonement, reconciliation with the Father through his suffering, the imputation upon him of our sins and transgressions, and we’re healed as a result.

We who were dead in our trespasses and sins are brought to life. Great work of the Lord Jesus Christ—was healing souls, giving salvation from sin. Throughout this text in Isaiah 53, we read the words: transgressions, iniquities, iniquity, transgressions, wicked, transgressors, and sin. Over and over again throughout this—the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of the Father extended to him, because he willingly went to the cross and in one giant drink from the cup of God’s wrath made satisfaction for the eternity of suffering and hell and damnation that you deserved.

And not just you. Look around the room. 100, 150 people here. Times in eternity of suffering and misery that we deserve for our sins. And the Savior took those things upon himself on the cross. And now think of this entire world. Billions of people, and many of them Christians. And then think of the history of man—6,000 years so far, probably another 20, 30,000 left. And think of the literally billions of people that the Lord Jesus Christ received the imputation of those sins upon himself, and in one act on the cross drank that cup of God’s wrath of eternal damnation and suffering for billions of people.

And like that he accomplished through his death all that wrath being poured upon him, the satisfaction for our sins, and affected peace for us and our healing.

Isaiah 53 goes on to talk about this:

“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.”

Imputed to him, laid upon him, he bore our sins on the cross. And those who understand this, those to whom the arm of the Lord is revealed sovereignly by God, are brought then through an understanding of the imputation of sin and his satisfaction that he makes vicariously, as our substitute, as our atonement on the cross, to this confession:

We are not brought to confess that our problems are because of our wives or our children or the world or our environment or the rain or the heat or the sticky floor or whatever it is. We’re brought to say this: “All we like sheep have gone astray, and we have turned everyone to his own way.” We’re brought to the confession of our sins.

And there is this relationship then to a proper understanding of the atonement revealed only by God from on high. And that brings us then, with an understanding of his substitutionary, vicarious atonement for us, to the place of confession. It brings us to accepting the atonement of Christ and not going off to false atonement, strange atonements which are no atonements at all.

“He was oppressed. He was afflicted. Yet he opened not his mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter. As a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.”

He is our Passover Lamb, isn’t he? You probably had a manger, some kind of scene, a nativity scene, in your home this last month. We did. He was born in a cave where the sheep were normally kept. We don’t know this, but it is possible that the shepherds that were received the angelic visit when our Savior was born, they went right to find him. Maybe it was their sheepfold that he was in, that manger in the context of.

Why were they keeping sheep out there in those hills? Why were there so many sheep around that they needed all these caves to house them in? Well, they weren’t particularly, I don’t think, for eating mutton for Sunday meal. I think what they were particularly for was the sacrificial system. Sheep were slaughtered by the thousands. Blood everywhere from the offering of these sacrificial animals for all these people.

The Lord Jesus Christ came and was born in a sheepfold. Really? Why? Because he was the Lamb of God come to take away the sin of the world. What’s being emphasized here, of course, is this submission to the Father. The beauty of this is that, you know, you can think of that eternal torment that he suffered for us and the separation from the Father that caused him to sweat drops of blood as he went to that cross. And yet he went willingly for our sakes. He went willingly to affect this once-for-all atonement for our sins.

“He was oppressed and afflicted. He opened not his mouth. Led as a sheep to the slaughter. He opened not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment.”

He went to prison first. They held him for a while. They took him to judgment courts. “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.”

You see, there it is: “For the transgressions of us, he was stricken. He died for our sins. Our sins were imputed to him. And not just imputed, they were laid upon him. The scriptures say that God made him to be sin for us. Not his sin, our sin—not just imputed, actually taken upon himself and suffering in the context of that for us.

He made him to be sin for us. And so the heart of the atonement message here is here given to us.

And then goes on: “They made his grave with the wicked, but with the rich at his death. And some commentators think there the Hebrew’s a little bit obscure, but it seems that they wanted to make his grave with the wicked. He was crucified, of course, between two thieves, but he was actually put in a tomb of a rich man. Why? Because he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.”

God’s picture, even in his burial, of his perfection and his righteousness.

“Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him.”

It pleased God the Father to bruise him. Now, don’t misunderstand this. It pleased God the Father because of his great love for you and because of his desire to manifest his justice and mercy. But the Father suffered in the context of the atonement as well. This was his beloved Son that he sent to the cross for your sake, and he didn’t just stand by as his Son died in the body, but he suffered spiritual death as well. And he suffered not just temporally but eternally for us as well, in body and soul, to make that satisfaction for our sins.

And the Father—it did please him. But don’t misunderstand that plea. “The Lord bruised him. He has put him to grief.”

“When you make his soul an offering for sin”—here is the offering. Specifically used here is the same term used in Leviticus, chapters 5, 6, and 19, of the offerings for atonement that were used for sin in the sacrificial system with animals—all which pointed to the coming of the Lord Jesus—”that made 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.”

You see, through all this, our Savior was new and was blessed by the Father with resurrection. Indeed, his generation shall be reported. He is brought through that suffering and atonement to the joy of the resurrection and the joy of knowing that his work was accomplished.

And indeed, some commentators think here that it is the Lord Jesus Christ who sees his offspring. He knows and sees in his resurrection that we are his offspring. Spurgeon says that when we read in Hebrews that “he, for the joy that was set before him, endured the shame and suffering,” Spurgeon thinks that joy is nothing short of—part of the knowledge that you are here saved by his blood, saved by his work. That you—whom the Father sent his love upon—are here through the effectual work of the Lord Jesus Christ. That the joy was not a personal joy in his exaltation, but was the joy in knowing of your accomplished salvation.

And here, that joy of the Savior, that knowledge of seeing his offspring, is linked specifically to the atonement. You see, it wasn’t that he died and was resurrected and thought, “Well, maybe it’ll work for some people, and what we need is for people to believe now on me, and maybe some will do it, and maybe some won’t.”

But in his work on the cross and his resurrection, he knew it was an accomplished fact that he accomplished the salvation of his people. And that yes, faith is the vehicle by which God brings that and applies it to our account, but that faith itself, as the Canons said, are purchased with the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and made effectual by it.

“He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied.”

Satisfaction. We’ve talked about that in the context of the atonement and the satisfaction through suffering and through expiation of sins. And that’s what Isaiah 53 is all about. As it reaches its climax, it says that indeed he shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied. The satisfaction of the Lord Jesus Christ is full and complete.

“By his knowledge, my righteous servant shall justify many.”

We’ve talked about justification being a direct result of the atonement. And indeed, “By his knowledge, my righteous servant shall justify many. Why? For he shall bear their iniquities.”

He bears their iniquities. The imputation, vicarious substitution.

“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.”

So, as the result of this—it’s not an end in and of itself. The end is that indeed he’s awarded the spoils of victory. He’s awarded you, and you go forth in the power of the atonement to go on and to sprinkle many nations. As Isaiah 52 says, just before we go into Isaiah 53, that on the basis of the suffering Servant’s work, the world shall be saved. Not every last person, but as a cosmos, as an entity, the world shall be saved.

Jesus receives victory on the basis of his work for us. And so Isaiah 53 is a picture that indeed what these Canons assert is true: that Jesus Christ comes to make atonement effectually. It is an accomplished fact, and on the basis of that, we are brought into salvation.

Now it’s necessary to speak briefly of strange atonements, and I’m going to very quickly move through this. But it is important to do this because we talked about what God has told us from his scriptures, based in Isaiah 53 as interpreted and then applied by the Fathers at Dort.

Hopefully you’ve understood these things, and they’ve gone deep into your being, and it produces a tremendous amount of thankfulness on your part. But it is important as well to distinguish then this real atonement that is affected through the Lord Jesus Christ from those false or strange atonements that go around—not just 300 years ago but now as well.

Let me briefly go through very quickly what the Canons say about this, and you can perhaps read this in more detail at some later point in time. But in affirming the orthodox truth, they also then talk about the errors that are rejected. And this is in the Second Head, paragraph 1:

They reject the errors of those who teach that God the Father has ordained his Son to the death of the cross without a certain, indefinite decree to save any. So that the necessity, profitableness, and worth of what Christ did by his death might have existed and might remain in all its parts complete, perfect, and intact, even if the merited redemption had never, in fact, applied to any person.

So there are some who say that the atonement was the atonement even if nobody ever really was effectually saved by it. That the atonement wasn’t necessarily with a certain, indefinite decree to save any person at all. And the Fathers reject that, and we reject that as well, because that’s the root of a strange, false atonement. We’ve seen that indeed the Lord Jesus Christ sees his offspring, and in his atonement he effectually produces salvation for those that the Father has set his eternal love upon.

In the second paragraph, they reject then those who, on the basis of this first error in the atonement, who say—teach that it was not the purpose of the death of Christ that he should confirm the new covenant of grace and it only gave him the right to establish with man a covenant as he might please.

This is what the strange atonement of the Arminians taught—that Jesus didn’t really die to save you. What he died for was so that God now could make up a new covenant and have new terms of obedience. You see, it wasn’t that the old covenant had to be satisfied with the punishments for sin that it spoke of being necessary. No, no, no. All Jesus did was to make it so the Father could set up new terms and conditions for the covenant that he would want to establish with his people.

Section three—paragraph 3 is really a blend of the first two errors. It says that we reject the errors of those who say that really what has happened here is so the Father can deal again with man and to prescribe new conditions, and that these new conditions would be dependent upon the free will of man.

You see, the strange atonement the Arminians said: Jesus didn’t come to effectually save anyone. He came so the Father can make up new conditions for a covenant, and that those new conditions would only be applied to those who through their own free will chose salvation.

See, there’s an order to what’s going on here. And then in paragraph 4, they reject those who taught that instead of the perfect obedience of faith required in the covenant of God, instead now he’s revoked the demand of perfect obedience and regards faith itself and the obedience of faith, although imperfect, as perfect obedience, and which receives the reward of eternal life.

So these strange atonement said: Christ didn’t come to confirm the covenant. He came so that God can make a new covenant, and this new covenant is not based upon the need for satisfaction of your sins, but rather it just says the only condition is faith. And even that condition is not the faith of God given to you. It’s the faith you exercise by your free will. And even that faith isn’t perfect, but God’s going to count it as perfect.

He’s going to say, “Well, it isn’t perfect, and it’s not a perfect obedience, but I’m going to count it as such anyway, and on the basis of your faith, I’m going to give you eternal life.”

You see the difference?

They deny the particular atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ for his elect. And then end up with creating a whole new covenant with a whole new set of conditions that has nothing to do with the demands and satisfaction of the law and the penalty for sin, but has everything to do with your personal decision. And that’s the strange atonement that the Arminians offered up.

They go on in this, in paragraph 5, to reject the errors of those who teach that all men have been accepted under the state of reconciliation under the grace of the covenant. Why do they say these things? Because they want to limit God’s atonement from being effectual to being unlimited in its application and in who he died for—to accomplish. But as a result they reject the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ and instead say that all men have had something happen to them on the cross, but it can’t be that all men have had satisfaction and all men have had the peace of the covenant brought through the Lord Jesus Christ, as Isaiah 53 says. It can’t be that all men are healed definitively and saved in eternity, but rather it just means they’ve been sort of brought the opportunity to exercise personal faith, and that personal faith is what’s going to bring men to eternal salvation—not the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Ultimately, in paragraph 7, the Arminians really were teaching what this error that they reject in paragraph 7 says: those who teach that Christ neither could die nor needed to die, and also did not die for those whom God loved in the highest degree and elected to eternal life, since those do not need the death of Christ.

You understand what that means? That is a perversion of God’s eternal love for the elect. They say that God looked down history, saw those who would choose for the Lord Jesus, elected those people who would choose and who would maintain and persevere in the faith. And for those people, the death of Christ is not really needed to effectually save them.

Now, I don’t want to bore you with history, but at this time there was an Arminian jurist named Hugo Grotius (Hugo de Groot), and he came up with a theory of atonement called the moral governance theory. And basically what it all comes down to is this: he said, as these men said, that the atonement—all it really was—is an example to us of God’s justice.

He said, it’s as if you had a troop of soldiers all who had rebelled against the commander. Okay? All deserving to be shot. But he doesn’t shoot them all. He takes one guy and shoots him. And by that example of shooting him, everybody else comes to their senses. That’s the theory of the atonement essentially that Grotius taught—that really the atonement is just a picture, and we’re supposed to meditate upon God’s wrath poured out on Christ and then change ourselves and regenerate ourselves and make ourselves better.

And that’s what salvation is all about. And we’re never going to be perfect necessarily. Some people thought we could be perfect, but we’ll be good enough that with these new conditions of the covenant, God will accept us eternally in Christ.

Now, you say that’s ridiculous, right? You’ve been taught, hopefully, through your evangelical churches, the Baptist churches, community churches, that Christ paid the price for our sins. But you see, this thinking is not so far from what we have today. This thinking that Hugo Grotius came up with was the theology of Charles Finney. Charles Finney, who has affected modern evangelicalism a lot more than one might suspect, believed in this strange atonement.

Now, we talked last week about the strange atonements of false imputation, right? Make somebody else responsible for your sins and kill somebody else—the rich, the poor, the communists, your parents, your children, the church elders, whoever it is—make them responsible for your sin and shoot them somehow and make them pay. That’s a strange atonement. It’s false atonement that will get you eternal punishment in hell if that’s your belief.

And this strange atonement is in the context of the church. Now, this strange atonement of Finney and Grotius, of the Arminians who taught universal atonement—that it’s universal because every person now is freed from original sin. You don’t have the problem anymore. Children, they would say, of Adam. You’ve got the problem that you like to imitate Adam. You’re not really fallen anymore. Jesus has paid the price for your original sin. You sin because you look at other sinners and you sin.

And they turn that into then the way your salvation is accomplished as well. Finney taught that your salvation