The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
I was on the executive committee for eight years in the SBC, and one day the the head of the executive committee, Frank Page, came to us and he said, “Look, the Department of Tourism in Israel has said that they will pay for the officers and their wives to go to Israel. They give you a seven or eight day tour. They’ll pay for your plane flight, pay for your meals. I called Peg and said, “Pack.” So we get on the plane now before we go. So two things happen when I land in Israel. Number one, they were very clear with us. They said, “Look, don’t jack with the Israeli TSA guys. Certainly don’t mess with the American TSA guys, but don’t mess with the Israeli guys. They, if you mess with them, they’ll put you in jail. You will not be coming home with us. We were flying on El Al, the Israeli airline. It had never been hijacked, and they said, “Don’t mess with me.” So I go to get on the plane. We’ve had the tour. We’re coming home. I go to get on the plane. I hand the guy my passport, and it’s got several countries in it that are not friendly to Israel. So the guy looks at it a little bit, looks up at me, and he goes, “Do you have a bomb?” No, sir. I, I don’t have a bomb. He said, “I’m just jacking. We could get on the plane.” When I got out of the hospital from fainting, we got home. So that was crazy thing that happened. But the other interesting thing that happened, obviously, Department of Tourism is bringing us over, so we’ll bring tour groups, which my wife and I’ve done over the years. So we had an evening supper, and it was a supper with a Jewish rabbi who was going to talk to us that night after supper, and his grown daughter was with us, with him. So we’re sitting at the table, dinner table, and out of the blue, she looks at us and he goes, “I don’t understand as a Jew how I understand the Day of Atonement, but what happens to me if I sin the day after the Day of Atonement? How does God see me? It’s an incredible question. So Cindy Bodo, who’s with us, she immediately took and went to the passage we’re looking at today and read her that and walked her through the blood of Jesus. Now it was interesting because the rabbi, Jewish rabbi, is hearing all this. Obviously, the table, he’s been instructed by Israel: don’t make these guys mad because they’re going to be bringing money back to Israel. So we get into the meeting later that night, where he speaks to us, and he said, “Look, Isaiah 53 is not about Jesus; it’s about Israel. And that whenever Israel suffers, the world is always blessed. That’s wrong. I want you to listen. We’re going to walk through chapter 53. We’re going to walk through slowly. Now listen to what he says. We’re going to start in verse one because it’s interesting what he says about him. Who has believed what they heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a young plant, like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. There was nothing distinctive about Jesus physically. God didn’t want us following because he looked cool. He wanted us following because who he was and what he did. He didn’t want us following because of how he looked. So he’s not like I mean. We had a bunch of Easter pageants at Central and brian, and they were always the same. Every Easter pageant I’ve ever been to, you can tell when Jesus comes out. Right, he’s got a white robe, long hair, and he’s always taller than everybody else in the in the cast. That’s not the case here. Matter of fact, Judas says it’ll be the guy kiss because he can’t even ID physically. So there’s nothing physical about Jesus that we look at and you can see who he is. But now here we go. Look at this.
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, as one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised, and we esteemed him not. And it’s exactly the case for Jesus. I mean, it looks like at times that that’s not going to be the case. For example, in John six, you’ve got nearly 15,000 people following him. Everybody’s there. They love him. They’re chasing him all over Galilee. They think he’s wonderful until later in John six he looks at them and in five times in five verses he says, “If you’re going to follow me, you have to eat my flesh and you have to drink my blood.” When he finished that, broke his heart because all 15,000 people packed out. We know that because the next thing he says, he turned to the 12, and with poignancy, he said, “Are you guys leaving too? Are you packing out of me just like everybody else?” Crushed him. It looked like it was good, but then it wasn’t. Same thing, Palm Sunday. Everybody’s clapping. They’re throwing branches out. They’re throwing coats out. He’s great. He’s wonderful. And in five days, it’s an interesting little phrase that’s mentioned in Matthew. In five days, those same people are going to scream for him to be killed, and there’s a little tiny statement in Matthew that says the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude to ask for Barabbas and to kill Jesus. Somehow, in a matter of seconds, these guys got the crowd to turn on Jesus’s crew for his crucifixion, which they do the whole time he’s on the cross. He’s despised. They hate him. They mock him. He saved others. He can’t save himself. I mean, there was all this attack. So literally, Jesus Christ comes into world. You need to understand this. He’s not just creator coming into his created. It’s the creator coming into his elect, His people, and he steps in, and it’s his people, not the world. It’s his people that despise him. It’s his people that don’t want him. It’s his people that scream for him to be killed. The staggering thing. And look at this. They watch him suffering. Look in verse four. Surely he has borne our griefs, carried our sorrow, yet we seemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. They thought every bad thing happening to Jesus was his fault, and that God was hacked off at him. That God was mad. God was furious with him, and so every bad thing that happens in Jesus’s life, all the rejection by Israel, the guys calling him to cast out demons because he is a demon, all the rejection of Israel they felt was God’s problem, that God had caused it. That if he really were God’s Messiah, God would have had his back. God would have blessed him. Everybody would love him, but they said no. The reason nobody likes him, the reason nobody believes in him, the reason everybody hates him, is because God doesn’t have his back. Here’s the irony, maybe the greatest irony in the entire Word of God. They were half right. Look in verse 10. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief. When his soul makes an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring. He shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see, and be satisfied by his knowledge. And listen, shall the righteous one my servant make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities? They thought God’s fault when, in fact, it really was. Problem is, they felt it was God against them because of something Jesus did. What they do not realize, it’s God put him on the cross because of their failure, not because of his faith. And it’s intriguing to me. Nobody gets this except one person when he dies, and it’s not the centurion. He gets it after he dies, but as he’s dying, there’s nobody gets it except one guy. The apostles don’t get it. If they’d gotten it, they would have been standing at the tomb on the day of the resurrection when he said he was coming out. They’d have been sitting there waiting, but they’re not. They don’t get it either. But there is one guy.
There’s two men being crucified on each side of me, and for a while they both mock him and laugh at him until finally we have no idea how God got this to him, but literally at some point, one of these guys looks at the other guy and says, “You need to shut up. He does not deserve what he’s getting. We do.” He saw a fundamental difference between himself and Jesus’s holiness, and he saw something else because he looked at Jesus, and he said, “Today, he said, when you come into your kingdom, let me be a part of that.” He knew two things now. He knew that Jesus was going to die just like he would, but that somehow he was a king, and he was headed into that kingdom, and he wanted to join him. Jesus’s response to him is said, “Look, today you’ll be with me in paradise.” One guy that figured this out while he’s dying; nobody else does. They assume that he’s dying because he failed, when in fact he’s dying because they. But what happens? His he’s wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. We have peace because of his chastisement. We’re healed because of his stripes. And he says two things are done for us. Look at this in verse 11, he will make many to be accounted righteous, and number two, he shall bear their iniquities. Exactly what Paul says in the New Testament. Listen, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Let me tell you something. Jesus Christ died. I don’t have any other better phrase than the idea of perfect perfection. When our Lord dies, He dies with two kinds of righteousness. He’s fully God and He’s fully man. As fully God, He dies with an innate, intrinsic righteousness as God, but He also does with a righteousness as a man who, for 33 years, has lived absolute perfection. He’s always done what the Father wanted Him to do. He’s always said what the Father wanted Him to say. He judged what the Father wanted Him to judge. He went where the Father wanted Him to go. That’s why, even when he starts his ministry, the father sends a voice and says, “This is my beloved son, in whom I’m well pleased.” He was well pleased all the way to the cross because Jesus Christ, as a man, lived out what God wanted him to be and do, and because of that, he was able to do two things for us: count us righteous and remove our iniquity. Now, let me be clear today: if you die without Jesus Christ, here’s what you face: you have two ledgers. You got a ledger over here that lists your sin. You got a ledger over here that lists your holiness. If you die without Jesus Christ, when you look at this ledger of your sin, it is full. It is complete. There’s no empty space in here. When you look at your ledger of holiness is completely blank. So here’s the problem: I don’t have anything to get me in, and everything that would keep me out, I have. So when Jesus Christ, in that perfect perfection, when according to him, the metaphor he uses is the cup. He drinks my filth, my lies, my shame, my embarrassment, my guilt. He drinks that for six hours, and he takes on my sin. My God puts my sin on Him, so that if I believe this, I come to Jesus and say, “I believe You are sinless. I believe I’m not. I believe Your redemptive sacrifice is what heals me. I want You to forgive me.” If I do That then the ledgers are reversed. Now, when I look over here, my sin ledger is completely blank. When I look at my holy ledger, it’s completely full. But when I look at it closely, it’s not my righteousness; it’s His. So now, there’s nothing to keep me out. There’s everything to get me in. That is exactly what Jesus Christ did. Now, question is: How you know that’s true? Well, verse 10. It was the will of the Lord to crush him. He put him to grief when his soul does make an offering for sin. Now listen, he shall see his offspring. He shall prolong his days.
The will of the Lord will prosper in his hand, out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied. How does he see? Because he came out of the grave. His resurrection enables him to see his offspring. It enables him to see those who have been accounted righteousness, whose iniquity has been ruled, he’s able to see the prospering of the Lord by His hand. He’s able to see it because He came out of the grave. He’s the only person that’s ever come out of the grave and stayed out. Lazarus came out, but He went back in and He did not stay out again. Jesus is the only person that’s ever gone into the grave, come out, stayed out, went home, and is coming back. That’s the problem. So you and I can have a ledger swap. If you don’t, you’re going to face God with a full ledger of sin and absolutely no holies. You trust Jesus Christ. The ledgers are swapped. I don’t have any sin. I have His holy. So, a couple of things. If you’re here today and you know your ledgers aren’t right, this would be a good day to make that change through Jesus Christ, there’s not a person in here that knows this. I wouldn’t be glad to share with you if you have questions. That includes any professor. We’ll be glad to cut class, do whatever we need to do to spend time with you to let you know exactly what this means if you have questions. Secondly, would you listen to me carefully? It’s not a political statement. Don’t care. If you’re called to ministry, now listen. The core of your ministry is Isaiah 53 four to six. The core, the base, the foundation, but the base and the core and the foundation are the fact that Jesus Christ, perfect perfection, died, rips out my sin, gives me His holiness, and now I have a chance at eternity with the Father. That is the core, the greatness of Jesus. Your calling is not what I hear today. It’s the government’s job to make America great. It is your job to tell America Jesus is great. That’s the issue. And lastly, no matter what you face, and I’m telling you, you you live in a world that will sting you. It’s broken. It’s not going to be fixed until Jesus Christ comes back. It will sting you. It’s broken. It’s awful. I get it. And when you minister, you’re going to have to minister with people who are also stung while you’re being stung. But this fundamental truth about the ledger swapping is permanent. It never swamps back, and that’s the one thing you can be sure of, no matter what you face in this world. My son’s here today, and when he was a little guy, he had some physical issues, and young, he was in the hospital in Texas Children’s for about six weeks, and I was pastoring in Midland at the time, and so I would dry. I would fly down on Mondays. I take the nights. My wife would take the days, and I would fly back on Saturday. We did this for about six weeks, and at night, particularly, he would go through immense bouts of pain for a long period of time, and I would I would pray didn’t make any difference. Texas Children’s Gray Hospital, great nurses, doctors would give him everything they could. Didn’t make any difference. It just took sometimes an hour for the pain to subside. So, I remember particularly it’s a it’s a Friday. I’m heading home the next day, and I’m it’s been a rough night. And I I remember was honest with God, and I said, God, I’ve got to go home tomorrow, and I’ve got to shepherd your people, and right now, kind of struggling with who you are and where you are in my life. And I walked over the window. It just happened to glance out, and there was a blinking, fluorescent light down on Fannin Street from Texas Children’s, and it was a cross.
Father said, “Look, what’s happening to your son isn’t near what happened to me.”
I met Christ my junior in high school. My ledger’s been shifted ever since then until they had day I die. It stays intact, so that when I come to the end, nothing keeping me out, and His righteousness gets me in, and not even the enemy can undo that. Let’s pray, Father. Thank you for the integrity of Your Word. Thank you for what You.
