Jesus Wounded & Crushed
[Read Isaiah 53:4-8]
Everyone is searching for the good life. That’s why the vast majority of the books on the New York Times Best Seller list are Self-Help books. Everyone is searching for the good life.
Yet, that only points to one important reality. Everyone realizes—to some degree—that they are not currently living the good life. If everyone is searching for the good life, everyone realizes that they are not quite living the good life. Something is missing. There’s something more out there. And we just can’t quite find it. As we search for the good life, it always seems to be a mirage on the horizon. We keep heading for it and it never seems to get any closer.
One of the commentators this week put it this way: “We wish for more than we are able to achieve, so that the good life is always eluding us; we long for a truly happy life but are constantly baulked by sorrow in whatever form it ay come—disappointment, bereavement, tragedy, whatever.” (Motyer, p. 430).
As a congregation, we know this quite well don’t we? Like I mentioned back in January, we have been plagued by serious health issues. Many struggling with cancer, struggling with MS, struggling with failing organs, struggling with failing joints. Some of you have lost loved one after loved one. Some of you would categorize this past year as one marked by grief and sorrow.
One a different note, many of us are very aware of our own sinful struggle. Although we are seeking to live our lives for Christ, sin lies close at hand—our sinful nature waging war against the Spirit inside us. All of us find ourselves struggling with certain sins over and over and over again. We even know that these sins are deadly—leading to destruction—yet we find ourselves committing them over and over again. Anger, bitterness, lust, lies, lack of trust, selfishness each take their turn as our pet sin of the week.
It’s no wonder why we look for something better—something better than the grief and sorrow, better than the sins that so easily entangle us. There’s something inside us that recognizes this is not the way it’s supposed to be. This is not good. So, we long for something more.
Then, as we look at our lives marked by grief and sorrow we read, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.” (Isaiah 53:4, ESV). As we see our lives marked by a struggle with sin we read, “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities…” (Isaiah 53:5, ESV). As we live lives marked by grief and sorrow, we’re reminded that Christ has carried our griefs and sorrows upon his back. As we recognize the sin that weighs us down and the sin that entangles our lives, we’re reminded that Christ was pierced and crushed for those sins so that they would be forgiven—washed white as snow and cast as far as the East is from the West. The reality is you cannot find the good life apart from Jesus Christ.
There’s a lot of imagery in this passage. One of the images relates to “weight.” We know that feeling. We know that weight of grief and sorrow when we lose a loved one. The weight that hangs heavily upon our soul—deep down inside us. We know the weight of guilt that hangs on our conscience for the sin in our life. That sin bears down upon our guilty conscience—sometimes making us feel as though we cannot go on. One of the Psalmists talks about how his sin weighs upon him so heavily that he can barely walk, he’s weak in the knees, he’s on the verge of collapse. We know that feeling of weight when it comes to grief and to sin.
Yet, the image is that Christ has come and carried that weight on his own back. He carried the weight of your grief and your sorrow upon his back. He did this as He suffered through this life, but also as he suffered leading up to the cross and on the cross itself. As he did that he was carrying the weight of your grief and sorrow. He was also carrying the weight of your sin and death. He was crushed for the sin that was crushing you. The weight of sin and death that weighed heavily on your back, was removed from you and laid on his back. He bore that weight for you on the cross. You don’t have to carry it anymore. Christ has carried it for you.
We’re reminded that everyone needs this. Isaiah says, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6, NIV). It’s not that some of us are carrying this weight and others aren’t. We all are carrying around the weight of grief and sorrow. We are all carrying around the weight of sin and death. We’re doing this because we all keep trying to do things our own way. We’re like sheep who keep trying to go our own way. The shepherd keeps trying to bring us to green pastures and quiet waters, and we keep running away from him into the valley of the shadow of death. We are all doing it. There’s not a single one of us who doesn’t have a rebellious streak. There isn’t a single one of us who doesn’t look at God like a stubborn toddler and say, “I’m going to do it MY way!” And because of that, we carry around with us the weight of our sin and death. And because we live in a world that wants to do everything our way, and has ignored the shepherd, we carry around the weight of grief and sorrow. We all carry this weight.
And, we are all trying to dump this weight off somewhere. We’re sick and tired of carrying that weight around. So, we try to dump the weight of our guilt and sin on other people—we blame them for the weight we’re feeling, trying to dump it off on them. We try to dump the weight of our guilt and sin by trying to forget it—by drinking ourselves into a stupor, or busying ourselves with work, or by working hard to ignore the weight bearing down on us. Yet, none of these things actually take the weight away. They can’t. In all reality, they only make the weight even weightier.
I was just listening to someone talk about how R.C. Sproul speaking to non-believers about the Gospel. R.C said that whenever he was speaking with an unbeliever about the gospel, the conversation would eventually come to one question: “What do you do with your guilt?” That’s really the question. What do you do with the weight of your guilt?
No other religion has a good answer to this question. If you are a Hindu, you deal with your guilt through Karma, trying to do good deeds so that you will be reincarnated to a higher level. In Islam you deal with you guilt by doing good enough good deeds to tip the scales in your favor. If you don’t believe in a god, you end up placing yourself in the position of god—and do you know how you deal with your guilt? You do what I mentioned in the last paragraph—try to dump it off in some way—OR you do the same thing as all the other religions—try to tip the scales in your favor by doing more good than bad. Yet, when you try to “tip the scales” by working for your own salvation, you only place a greater burden upon yourself. You only weigh yourself down even more because you now carry the burden of saving yourself—which is an impossible task. So, in trying to save yourself, you only place a heavier weight upon your shoulders, a crushing weight.
Another one of the images in this passage is the image of something crushed—crushed under the weight of sin and death. As I thought about that image, I couldn’t help but think of a ruined city. A number of years ago, I went on a trip through Turkey and Greece, visiting cities from Paul’s missionary journeys. Many of those cities are abandoned, ruined cities. As I walked through those cities, I found myself picturing/dreaming about what they once were like in their greatness. At one time these cities were bustling with life and activity. Now, they were empty, dead, crumbling into pieces, broken down walls.
That’s the picture of our lives under the weight of sin and death. Our lives become empty, dead, crumbling to pieces under the weight of sin and death. Shells of what they once were. People searching for life and activity, dreaming about what life could possibly be like, searching for “the good life” that is possible out there. Yet, only coming into contact with ruined city after ruined city. Longing for something more but never finding it.
Yet, in the midst of our own ruined city—our life crushed by sin and death—Jesus Christ was crushed. “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5, NIV). Jesus Christ was crushed so that our crushed lives could be rebuilt. That’s what the word “healed” really means—to be rebuilt. His crushing resulted in our rebuilding. The ruined city of our lives can now be rebuilt because Christ was crushed—ruined—on our behalf. The anxiety and uneasiness that results from living under a guilt and sorrow can now find peace…peace…because Christ bore that guilt and sorrow for us.
What people are truly looking for in this life is peace and healing. Right? In the midst of a broken world, full of grief and sorrow, living under the burden of a guilt that you can’t remove on your own, you want peace and healing. That’s the good life. That’s what’s missing. And you can only find that peace and healing in the one who was pierced and crushed in order to bring us peace and healing—in Jesus Christ. It is only through Christ that you will ever truly find peace and healing in your life. It is only through Christ that you will ever begin to taste the good life that you’ve been searching for.
The rebuilding process doesn’t happen immediately. You do not immediately find perfect peace and healing. Yet, through faith in Christ, we can stop trying to save ourselves and trust in Him alone for our salvations. Through faith in Christ, we can take the weight of sin and guilt from our shoulders and place it on Christ. Through faith in Christ, we can cast the griefs and burdens of this life on Him, knowing that he cares for us. Through faith in Christ, we can begin to experience the peace that surpasses all understanding—the peace that the world is trying to find in all the wrong places.
It’s also through faith in Christ, that he will begin to restore the ruined city of our lives. Through faith in Christ, the Spirit begins to restore the broken down walls and doors and windows of our lives. He begins to put the broken pieces back together until we find wholeness and healing. Through faith in Christ, the ruined city of our life is slowly restored to become a city on hill that shines forth the glory and praises of God to the rest of the world.
Through Christ we can begin to live the life we’ve been created to live—the good life, the beautiful life, a life lived in peace and wholeness to the glory of God.