In the eighth chapter of Acts the church is in the middle of its first burst of explosive growth. Philip, who had been working north of Jerusalem, finds himself sent by the Spirit to stand by the road to Gaza, the road that runs south from Jerusalem towards Egypt, and then further south, down to Ethiopia.
He’s standing at the side of the road,
wondering what Gad has brought him here for, when a carriage trundles past with
a man in it, a eunuch from
The man was reading from the book
of Isaiah, “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked. 31 “How
can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to
come up and sit with him. 32 The eunuch was reading this passage of
Scripture: “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the
shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. 33 In his
humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For
his life was taken from the earth.” 34 The eunuch asked Philip,
“Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” 35
Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the
good news about Jesus.’
The passage he was reading from was Isaiah 52 and 53, and this morning we’re going to retrace some of the steps that Philip might have taken as he sat beside that Ethiopian and trundled south through the desert.
Acts says that ‘Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.’ What’s good about that passage of scripture? The next chapter of Isaiah, chapter 54, is really upbeat. Its first words are a command to “sing… burst into song, shout for joy!” But this passage, the one that the Ethiopian was reading, the one that was read for us this morning, is not a happy piece of writing. In fact, some of your Bibles might have a little header at the beginning of it that says something like, “The Song of the Suffering Servant.” Hardly a number one hit title!
But clearly the early church thought that this passage from Isaiah held a major key to understanding what Jesus’ life, death and resurrection all meant. Just look at how often this “Song of the Suffering Servant” is referenced directly in the New Testament.
Isaiah 52:15 is quoted in Romans 15:21
Isaiah 53:1 in John 12:38 and Romans 10:16
Isaiah 53:4 in Matthew 8:17
Isaiah 53:5 in 1 Peter 2:24
Isaiah 53:6 in 1 Peter 2:25
Isaiah 53:7-8 in Acts 8:32-33
Isaiah 53:9 in 1 Peter 2:22
Isaiah 53:12 in Mark 15:28 and Luke 22:37
And those are just the direct quotes; I’m not counting the times that writers just allude to Isaiah 53.
Last week we looked at Mark 10:45 where
Jesus spoke of giving his life as a ransom for many, and we focussed on
understanding what that word “ransom” meant; paying a great price to set people
free from slavery and bondage. In the first half of that verse, before he talks
about ransom, Jesus says “the Son of Man did not come to
be served, but to serve.”
In Mark 10:45 Jesus first speaks of himself as a servant, then goes on to speak of his suffering. He ties together suffering and servanthood. I think the New Testament writers apply this passage in Isaiah to Jesus because Jesus did it first, himself.
There’s no question that Jesus knew
he was going to be arrested and executed. Even without his prophetic foresight
by the Holy Spirit, he had seen what happened to his cousin, John the Baptist.
The question wasn’t whether he would be arrested and executed. The question
was, “What did that mean?” He came proclaiming the
Before we go any further I’d just like to take a little detour to talk about metaphors. Last week we talked about the metaphor of ransom, of paying a price for someone’s freedom. After the service someone came to me and asked, “But who was the ransom paid to?” And that points to a problem with metaphors.
They’re powerful word pictures. They help us get a grasp on things that we otherwise would be unable to get our heads around, like the way that God reaches out to us and draws us back to himself. But they are also limited. My response to the question “Who was the ransom paid to?” was “The Bible doesn’t go there, so neither will I.”
A metaphor isn’t a description of something. It’s a way of looking at something. It’s a lens. The lenses in my glasses work when I look through them, not when I look at them. When I look at them I can’t see much of anything. But when I use them as they’re supposed to be used and look through them, I can see everything much more clearly.
Metaphors are like that. And what Jesus accomplished in his life, death and resurrection is so powerful that the Bible uses all kinds of metaphors, all kinds of lenses, to look at it from all kinds of different angles so we can at least begin to get a grasp of what he has done. When we find ourselves trying to figure out things like who the ransom was paid to, when the Bible doesn’t go there, it’s a pretty good indication that we’re looking at the metaphor rather than through it.
Last week we looked at the cross through the metaphor of ransom. This week we’ll be looking at the cross through the metaphor of substitution. We’re not trying to analyse the mechanics of what happened. The goal is to try and live in the story, to live in the metaphor and let it speak to you.
So, back to Philip and the Ethiopian on the
road to
Now, remember that it is probably less than
two years since Jesus’ death and resurrection. The church has been growing by
leaps and bounds, so much so that the religious leaders in
Is 53:7 He was oppressed and
treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter.
And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth.
The gospel writers all make the point that Jesus
didn’t defend himself when he stood trial. He knew what
was coming but he didn’t try to avoid it. Verse 8 describes him perfectly. 8 Unjustly
condemned, he was led away. The gospels all make it
clear that the Jewish authorities and the Romans conspired to kill Jesus on
trumped up charges; and that when it came to the end… No one cared that he died without descendants, that his life was cut
short in midstream.
Although the crowd had cheered for Jesus when he arrived in
Verse 8 goes on to say, But he was struck down for the rebellion of my people.
We started this series by asking the
question, “What’s the problem?” and we saw that the basic problem is that we
don’t trust God, which then moves on into disobedience and outright rebellion.
But Jesus 9… had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone. But he was buried
like a criminal; he was put in a rich man’s grave.
Can you imagine Philip sitting in the carriage with this Ethiopian and saying, “This was written 700 years ago, but it just happened! You asked if the prophet was writing about himself or someone else. I’ll tell you. He was writing about someone else. He was writing about Jesus.”
That’s the “who” of this passage. What about the “why?” I said that we need to look through metaphors to see clearly what they reveal. The early church saw the way in which Jesus died as a fulfilment of this passage, they looked at the cross through this passage of Isaiah (among others) and they came to and understanding of the “why.” Listen to the pronouns as I read verses 4-6.
4 Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows
that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a
punishment for his own sins! 5 But he was pierced for our
rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be
whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. 6 All of us,
like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our
own. Yet the Lord laid on him the
sins of us all.
Do you get the idea? Our, our, we, we, us, us… This may be the story of Jesus’ suffering and death, told centuries before it happened, but, strangely, when it comes to explaining why it happened, the focus isn’t on the one doing the suffering. It’s on us. Not just you and me, but all of us, all of humanity.
In Leviticus 16 there are instructions for
how to celebrate the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, when the sins of the people
of
20 “When Aaron has finished making atonement for the
There’s a famous painting by William Holman Hunt called “The scapegoat.” It shows a goat alone in the wilderness, and on the frame of picture it has these two verses of scripture, Isaiah 53:4 "Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down.” and Leviticus 16:22 "The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place." This is what Jesus does for us; like the scapegoat, he carries something that is not his own; he carries our sin.
The early church described Jesus’ ministry on earth; the whole thing, birth, life, ministry, death, as “recapitulation.” That means that he lived the life that we were meant to, a life of devotion to God and service to others. He did all that without sinning – and yet he died.
How could the Son of God die? How could the author of life be killed? Not because of anything that was in him. He was the only truly innocent person to walk the earth since Adam and Eve, and yet he died.
Isaiah makes it clear that he died, not because of any sin of his own, but because he took our sin on himself – and it killed him.
Was that a mistake? Did something go terribly wrong?
No! Verse 10 of Isaiah 53 says, 10 But it was the Lord’s good plan to crush him and cause
him grief.
Hard as it may be for us to grasp, this was God’s plan all along. He foreshadowed it in the Old Testament ritual of the scapegoat, but this was the real thing. This was how God, all of God, Father, Son and Spirit, dealt with our sin.
So what’s the result? Verse 10 goes on to
say, Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will
have many descendants. He will enjoy a long life, and the Lord’s good plan will prosper in his
hands.
Hang on a second. Back in verse 8 he died without descendents, cut off in midstream. How is he alive in verse 10, and with descendants to boot?
Because death couldn’t hold him. Paul says
that the wages of sin is death. What happens with someone (Jesus) who has no
sin of his own? Death “has nothing on him.” It can’t get any grip. There’s
nothing there to hold Jesus in the grave, and to prove it he rose again on the
third day. And we are his descendants if we have put our faith in him. We are
part of the “many” that he redeemed. (Paul develops this idea in Romans, you’re
either a descendant of Adam, on your way to death, or a descendant of Jesus, on
your way to life because Jesus has conquered death for you.)
11When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. The Moravians, who were the true forerunners of modern missions, when asked why they went to the ends of the earth to preach the gospel would reply, “That the Lamb that was slain might receive the reward of his sufferings.” That’s why we preach the gospel. Not so our church can get bigger. Not even, primarily, so that people’s lives can get better. But so that 11When he (that is, Christ) sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. It’s all about him!
And because of his experience,
my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for
he will bear all their sins.
How does that work? I don’t know. That image of being counted righteous was one of Paul’s favourites and we’ll get to that soon in the series. But the Bible doesn’t explain the mechanics of it, and the church has never come up with one theory that everybody agrees on, so the theologians have a field day with theories of how this works. The New Testament writers looked at Christ’s death and resurrection through a number of different lenses, but this passage, with its picture of Jesus bearing our sin, bearing my sin, and going to the cross for me, is one of the key ones.
If we miss the fact that Jesus’ death on the cross was for you and me, not just “for our benefit” but, in some way “in our place,” then we miss something crucial to our faith. If we miss the fact that, “that should have been me” up there on the cross, then we miss the point.
So what do we do with that? What do we do with the knowledge that Jesus took my place, your place, on the cross and died our death for sin?
My first response is wonder. That Jesus would do that – for me! And that all I have to do to receive the benefits of it is to turn to him in faith, to thank him for al that he has done for me, and accept the gift of new life.
It doesn’t matter how bad you’ve been, or how good you’ve been for that matter. Jesus steps into my shoes, shoulders the burden of my guilt and shame, and takes it to the cross, in my place. He does the same for you.
He has suffered on your behalf. He has been crushed by your sin so that all that stuff we talked about two weeks ago; distrust, deceit, shame, fear, blame, brokenness, failure, alienation, they can all be washed away and you can get a new start, with a clean slate. Because Jesus died for me, and for you.