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00:25 Amen. Lord of God, welcome to the program. Welcome to the cafe.
00:29 Pastor Clark Covington here with another episode of KJV Cafe. I’m glad to be here. I hope you are too.
00:35 Amen. And hopefully you’re having a wonderful day, a wonderful week. Amen.
00:41 We’re getting into Isaiah 53, and we are, it’s a short chapter. There’s only actually in Isaiah 53:12 verses, amen. There’s just 12 verses and yet they’re so powerful.
01:00 Those 12 verses have been preached on for many hundreds, if not thousands of years. Amen. And they all point to a living God, to Jesus Christ, the one that came to give his life on the cross at Calvary.
01:10 Amen. And Isaiah 53 is so poetic and beautifully written. It gives us just a very intricate and detailed picture of who Jesus is.
01:20 In the beginning of Isaiah 53 verses one and two, we learn more about how Jesus is coming to earth and how he came to earth, or he will come from Isaiah’s perspective and our perspective that he did come,
01:34 but that he came unexpectedly as a root out of dry ground, that there was no beauty in him that we should desire, that he was despised.
01:44 In verse three, he was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. And we hid our, as it were, our faces from him.
01:53 He was despised and we esteemed him not. You know, think about why would we hide our faces from him? What makes us hide from the living God? Well, sin, amen, sin.
02:05 The example I’ve heard for years from multiple preachers is the idea of the darkness being sin.
02:12 It’s like darkness under a rock, right? And you pick up that rock and all of a sudden you see light. Well, what happens when you see the light? Oh, the little animals, the little bugs are running for cover. They like the darkness.
02:25 They do not like the light. They prefer the darkness, the darkness over the light, amen.
02:33 And so sin is like that.Sin is something that people don’t want to depart from, amen. They want to be left alone in their sin.
02:44 Whether it’s from shame, whether it’s just the carnal human nature, maybe a little bit of both. John 3:19 puts it this way, and this is the condemnation that light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. And so the light coming into the world is Jesus Christ.
03:05 And men, they love darkness, right, rather than light. Why do they love the darkness rather than the light? Because their deeds were evil, amen? And Christ came not to condemn, but to save.
03:17 And at the same time, the way that God’s plan or his program for salvation is, is for us to recognize our sin, for us to repent, amen, to say, okay, God, I recognize that I’m a sinner in need of a savior.
03:30 And if you’re not repentant, as in you don’t believe that your sin nature is wrong or that you deserve judgment from a righteous God, then that’s a problem.
03:42 You love the darkness, not the light. And by the way, is that not happening today? People were hiding from Jesus then, that’s what Isaiah is saying, okay?
03:53 And we, I love how it’s written, we, as in everybody, even him, and we, as it were, our faces, and we hid, as it were, our faces from him.
04:01 And we, read that one more time, make sure I get it right, just, I was kind of thinking of something, wanting to say it before I was done reading, and we hid, as it were, our faces from him.
04:12 And so we think about this idea of collectively hiding our faces from him, the idea that that sin condition, it has us in bondage, as in we can’t free ourselves. And almost, and this is ironic and crazy, but it’s almost like we think we can free ourselves, so we don’t want help, right?
04:37 We think we’re fine, we don’t realize our blindness, so we don’t want to truly see, amen. Verse four, surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
04:53 So how did we look at Jesus? We looked at Jesus as plagued, as troubled. What did they say?
05:02 They said, release Barabbas, release Barabbas. The people did, at the advice or the guise of the Jewish people, saying, hey, this is what you should all say, I believe.
05:12 The upper crust of the Jews, the Pharisees and the scribes certainly wanted him crucified the most, it seemed, but they convinced the people, and everyone’s calling for the release of this common criminal, because they looked at Jesus, they esteemed him, right?
05:35 And so he took our griefs and sorrows, and he lived as a willing sacrifice, and the people, for the large part, didn’t even understand that or acknowledge him, and what he was doing for them. I’ll put it this way, it’s like someone’s trying to do something good for you, and all you can do is lash out and hate them.
05:50 And so the Israelites, as Isaiah was giving prophecy that would happen, were lashing out at Jesus, who was trying to save them, like a mother hen trying to call all the little birds under his wings, amen,
06:04 and what they were doing, or her wings in the mother hen example, but he was trying to do the saving, amen, and yet they were rebellious.
06:15 And here we are today, and again, we see this in the Bible times as it is today, that as the preachers and as the teachers and as those that the Lord has called to share the good news of the gospel,
06:27 to share the Bible truth that Jesus Christ alone saves, that our works don’t save us, that our pedigree doesn’t save us, that our jobs don’t save us, that our good deeds don’t save us,
06:36 that our popularity doesn’t save us, on and on and on. We preach Christ crucified, we preach the blood, amen, we preach the atonement, everybody’s up in arms, nobody wants to hear it, amen.
06:46 You want to scatter a big church, go into a big modern church with lots of just entertainment and lots of fun, fun, fun, amen.
06:54 You want to scatter that up, go in there and preach about sin week after week, preach about the need to get right with God, preach about holy living and separation, and you’ll see them run fast, amen,
07:05 they’ll run every which way, and they might run and take you away in the process, amen. And that’s what happened. Jesus Christ, he took on our griefs and sorrows.
07:14 This is the idea of the atonement, of the substitutionary death. And our response is no respect for him, but we look at him as judged by God, even though it’s God’s loving sacrifice for our judgment.
07:28 And so we were judging him incorrectly and poetically in only God’s plan, he was providing Christ to be the judgment for us.
07:39 So we were judging our judgment. We were going away from the very thing that God gave us to save us and the very person in Christ. Verse five, but he was wounded for our transgressions.
07:56 He was bruised for our iniquities, that word iniquity means sin. The chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed.
08:05 He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities.
08:12 Jesus took the sin of all mankind for all time on himself, including you, including me, amen, so that we could be saved.
08:24 The idea is that every sin, Hitler’s sin, the child rapist sin, the genocide, the sin of genocide, the sin of abortion, the sin of murder, the sin of stealing, the sin of lying, all of those sins, not just globally,
08:42 but personally, that time you did that really bad thing, that time you said that really bad thing on and on, that time that you did something you don’t think you could ever be forgiven for.
08:50 Christ said, that’s okay, I’m going to take all that sin upon my shoulders.
08:54 I’m going to take the Bible word to be impute, right? God the father imputed all the sin on Christ and yet Christ was fully righteous.
09:04 He was sinless 33 and a half years, never sinned, amen. God took that righteousness and said, I’ll give it to you.
09:13 And so Christ had to take upon the sin of all the world for all time. And he did that on the cross at Calvary. And it’s a very sobering thought to think about what that would be like to drink of that bitter cup of sin.
09:23 Surely Christ didn’t want to do it in the Garni Yosemite. He asked the Lord, let this cup pass for me, if it be your will, but nevertheless, let your will be done. The Lord sweat teardrops of blood, amen, or excuse me.
09:37 He sweated drops of blood and he sweated drops of blood because of what was going to happen. And you can get into the science of how that happens, but as I understand it, it is a level of excruciating stress that’s almost indescribable.
09:51 And why was all of this coming about right before the cross? Because on the cross, Christ would have to drink that bitter cup of sin fully.
10:02 He had to take upon all the sin of all mankind. And if you think of a cup, think of a large cup and think of it collecting water drop by drop. And think of that really big cup.
10:13 It takes a long time to collect, but when it’s full, it’s really full, amen? That’s the way the cup of sin was during Christ’s time. It was all collecting for all time.
10:23 And God the Father, in his knowledge, because remember God knows all past, present, future, he’s all knowing, allowed that sin to be collected for all time and then put it upon Christ.
10:34 That’s why Christ on the cross, he declared, you know, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? Because the Lord himself, God the Father, had to turn his back on Jesus so that Jesus could bear that sin.
10:45 Because God is holy and sin must be dealt with and Jesus Christ was the one dealing with it. And when we, the sinner, recognizes what Christ the Savior did for us, then we can be saved.
10:57 But until that point, we are at opposition with God. We are, the Bible word is enmity or warfare with God. We have a problem with God that we cannot resolve on our own.
11:07 And that’s why when we accept Christ as Savior and what he did on the cross and dying for three days, being in the grave and being miraculously resurrected after the third day, when we accept that, what Christ did for us on the cross, then we’re saved, amen.
11:22 Then we’re born again. And the Bible tells us we’re reconciled to God.
11:27 We have peace with God. We are no longer under condemnation with God. Our sins have now all been forgiven.
11:34 They are all cast in the sea of forgetfulness, never to be brought up again, amen. Our name is written down in the Lamb’s book of life, never to be blotted out, never to be erased, amen. We are now one with God.
11:46 We are good with God. What are we going to do with that? We should then tell others about God.
11:53 But how can we tell others about God if we don’t understand ourself what Christ saved us from? We are healed.
12:01 Think about this. We are healed only by his, Jesus Christ’s, great pain and suffering. We are healed only by his great pain and suffering.
12:07 You know, just because he’s God in the flesh doesn’t mean he didn’t suffer. The Bible tells us he suffered. The Bible tells us that he was given that cross and that he had to bear that cross and he fell down.
12:19 The Bible tells us that his beard was plucked out one by one, that he was given gall to drink, that he was mocked and ridiculed.
12:27 The Bible gives us great detail about the suffering that Christ endured for our healing. So our healing, the only way that we are healed, is by what Christ had to endure for us.
12:38 And I want you to think about that today because it should cause you to praise the name of Jesus Christ, to say, Lord, thank you. Thank you for taking upon the sin of all the world, including mine, on your shoulders.
12:53 Matter of fact, I’ll focus just on mine.
12:58 Thank you, Lord, for saving me. That’s a personal salvation. Thank you, Lord, for what you did for me because I can’t repay you.
13:03 There’s nothing I can do. I can’t earn my way in. I can’t do anything to repay you, but what I can do is be grateful.
13:09 What I can do is believe. What I can do is not be ashamed. What I can do is tell others what you’ve done for me.
13:16 What I can do is stand up and live for you. What I can do is make you a priority in life. What I can do is spend time in the book and in the word in chapters like Isaiah 53.
13:26 And what I can do is adore you and praise you and love you and just absolutely cling on to the idea that you, Jesus Christ, thought of me on that cross at Calvary and saved me.
13:42 Glory to God, you saved me and you saved my wife and you saved my friends and those in my church and you did this for people all around the world that would believe. And you had a salvation and you have a salvation that is for all.
13:59 Amen. It’s for anyone. God desires all to come to repentance, all to come to knowledge of him, all to be saved.
14:06 You have the most inclusive salvation plan of all time for those that would believe, for those that truly will believe on you. Thank you, Jesus. I love you, Jesus.
14:15 Praise Jesus. I wish I had more time, amen, but I don’t. Thank you for tuning in.
14:23 Tune in next time and visit us online, kjvcafe.com. Thank you so much. God bless. Amen.Ctrl+bCtrl+iCtrl+j
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