Song of Substitution

We turn again to Isaiah 53—the most Gospel centered passage in the OT. Isaiah’s poem begins in 52:13 and continues through 53:12 and all 15 verses literally bleed with grace. It is here that we see the Suffering Servant promised 700 years before Jesus walked the earth. Every single verse with the exception of verse 2 is either quoted by the Jesus or the NT writers in reference to Jesus. This is the song of substitution describing how sinners can be made right with a holy God. The song has five stanzas and the one that they all point to is our stanza for the next few days—verses 4-6.

Every verse builds upon the other—each word carries with it the echo of the word before and all 15 verses of this song point out three things that I want us to study for the next three days.

First, we are sinners. Paul said it this way, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” In Isaiah we see the theme repeated over and over again—

● transgressions and iniquities in verse 5,

● gone astray and turned in verse 6,

● transgressions mentioned again in verse 8,

● wicked in verse 9,

●guilt in verse 10, iniquities in verse 11, and

● transgressors and sin in verse 12. We are sinners and we are guilty and we are cut off from God.

The word transgression speaks of willful rebellion—of revolt. We like Adam and Eve have all willfully revolted against our Maker and we have all committed Cosmic Treason. The word iniquity speaks of perversion,

we have perverted God’s gifts and used them for our own glory;

we have perverted God’s Word and made it all about our happiness;

we have even perverted the worship of God by worshiping the created things rather than the Creator.

Verse 6 says, “All we like sheep have gone astray…” that is, every man and every woman that has ever been born has gone astray, but we can’t just get lost in the flock. WE can’t say, “Well that is just humans being human…” No, Isaiah goes on to say, “…we have turned—every one—to his own way.” There is not one person in this room who has not willfully rebelled against God and the moment you did that three things happened.

We find those three things in the Garden when Adam and Eve sinned against God. God made them and as the Creator He has the right to tell us what to do. Every man made religion is an attempt to throw off God’s expectations and to create our own way, but we can’t escape the fact—God made us and has the right to tell us what to do and how to live. The moment Adam and Eve sinned they (1) died spiritually. That is why Paul said we are “dead in our sins.” A person outside of Jesus is spiritually dead. (2) they began to die physically. We die physically because of sin, but sin did one more thing to Adam and Eve—just as it did to us, (3) they were separated from God. The moment Adam and Eve sinned they died spiritually, they began to die physically, and they were separated from God and because of their sin every son of Adam and every daughter of Eve is born spiritually dead, they are born moving toward physical death, and they are separated from God. That is the plight of every single human—the great question Isaiah wrestles with and the question Paul wrestles with in Romans is how can sinful people be brought back into a relationship with a holy God? That leads us to our second point…we will look at that tomorrow.