“Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou
shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall
prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.”-
Isaiah 53:10.
What myriads of eyes are casting their glances at the sun! What multitudes of
men lift up their eyes, and behold the starry orbs of heaven! They are
continually watched by thousands-but there is one great transaction in the
world’s history, which every day commands far more spectators than that sun
which goeth forth like a bridegroom, strong to run his race. There is one
great event, which every day attracts more admiration than do the sun, and
moon, and stars, when they march in their courses. That event is, the death
of our Lord Jesus Christ. To it, the eyes of all the saints who lived before
the Christian era were always directed; and backwards, through the thousand
years of history, the eyes of all modern saints are looking. Upon Christ, the
angels in heaven perpetually gaze. “Which things the angels desire to look
into,” said the apostle. Upon Christ, the myriad eyes of the redeemed are
perpetually fixed; and thousands of pilgrims, through this world of tears,
have no higher object for their faith, and no better desire for their vision,
than to see Christ as he is in heaven, and in communion to behold his person.
Beloved, we shall have many with us, whilst this morning we turn our face to
the Mount of Calvary. We shall not be solitary spectators of the fearful
tragedy of our Saviour’s death: we shall but dart our eyes to that place
which is the focus of heaven’s joy and delight, the cross of our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ.
Taking our text, then, as a guide, we propose to visit Calvary, hoping to
have the help of the Holy Spirit whilst we look upon him who died upon the
cross. I would have you notice this morning, first of all, the cause of
Christ’s death-”It pleased the Lord to bruise him.” “It pleased Jehovah to
bruise him,” saith the original; “he hath put him to grief.” Secondly, the
reason of Christ’s death-”When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin.”
Christ died because he was an offering for sin. And then, thirdly, the
effects and consequences of Christ’s death. “He shall see his seed, he shall
prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.”
Come, Sacred Spirit, now, whilst we attempt to speak on these matchless
themes.
I. First, we have THE ORIGIN OF CHRIST’S DEATH. “It pleased Jehovah to bruise
him; he hath put him to griefs.” He who reads Christ’s life, as a mere
history, traces the death of Christ to the enmity of the Jews, and to the
fickle character of the Roman governor. In this he acteth justly, for the
crime and sin of the Saviour’s death must lay at the door of manhood. This
race of ours became a deicide and slew the Lord, and nailed its Saviour to a
tree. But he who reads the Bible with the eye of faith, desiring to discover
its hidden secrets, sees something more in the Saviour’s death than Roman
cruelty, or Jewish malice: he sees the solemn decree of God fulfilled by men,
who were the ignorant, but guilty instruments of its accomplishment. He looks
beyond the Roman spear and nail, beyond the Jewish taunt and jeer, up to the
Sacred Fount, whence all things flow, and traces the crucifixion of Christ to
the breast of Deity. He believes with Peter-”Him, being delivered by the
determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked
hands have crucified and slain.” We dare not impute to God the sin, but at
the same time the fact, with all its marvelous effects in the world’s
redemption, we must ever trace to the Sacred Fountain of divine love. So
cloth our prophet. He says, “It pleased Jehovah to bruise him. He overlooks
both Pilate and Herod, and traces it to the heavenly Father, the first Person
in the Divine Trinity. “It pleased the Lord to bruise him, he hath put him to
grief.”
Now, beloved, there be many who think that God the Father is at best but an
indifferent spectator of salvation. Others do belie him still more. They look
upon Him as an unloving, severe Being, who had no love to the human race, and
could only be made loving by the death and agonies of our Saviour. Now, this
is a foul libel upon the fair and glorious grace of God the Father, to whom
for ever be honor: for Jesus Christ did not die to make God loving, but he
died because God was loving.
“Twas not to make Jehovah’s love
Toward his people flame,
That Jesus from the throne above,
A suffering man became.
“Twas not the death which he endured,
Nor all the pangs he bore,
That God’s eternal love procured,
For God was love before.”
Christ was sent into the world by his Father, as the consequence of the
Father’s affection for his people. Yea, he “so loved the world, that he gave
his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but
have everlasting life. The fact is, that the Father as much decreed
salvation, as much effected it, and as much delighted in it, as did either
God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit. And when we speak of the Saviour of the
world, we must always include in that word, if we speak in a large sense, God
the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, for all these three, as one
God, do save us from our sins. The text puts away every hard thought
concerning the Father, by telling us that it pleased Jehovah to bruise Jesus
Christ. The death of Christ is traceable to God the Father. Let us try if we
can see it is so.
1. First it is traceable in decree. God, the one God of heaven and earth,
hath the book of destiny entirely in his power. In that book there is nothing
written by a stranger’s hand. The penmanship of the solemn book of
predestination is from beginning to end entirely divine.
“Chained to his throne a volume lies,
With all the fates of men,
With every angel’s form and size
Drawn by th’ eternal pen.”
No inferior hand hath sketched even so much as the least minute parts of
providence. It was all, from its Alpha to its Omega, from its divine preface
to its solemn finis, marked out, designed, sketched, and planned by the mind
of the all-wise, all-knowing God. Hence, not even Christ’s death was exempt
from it. He that wings an angel and guides a sparrow, he that protects the
hairs of our head from falling prematurely to the ground, was not likely,
when he took notice of such little things, to omit in his solemn decrees the
greatest wonder of earth’s miracles, the death of Christ. No; the blood-
stained page of that book, the page which makes both past and future glorious
with golden words,-that blood-stained page, I say, was as much written of
Jehovah, as any other. He determined that Christ should be born of the Virgin
Mary, that he should suffer under Pontius Pilate, that he should descend into
Hades, that thence he should rise again, leading captivity captive, and then
should reign for ever at the right hand of the Majesty on high. Nay, I know
not but that I shall have Scripture for my warrant when I say, that this is
the very core of predestination, and that the death of Christ is the very
center and main-spring by which God did fashion all his other decrees, making
this the bottom and foundation-stone upon which the sacred architecture
should be builded. Christ was put to death by the absolute foreknowledge and
solemn decree of God the Father, and in this sense “it pleased the Lord to
bruise him; he hath put him to grief.”
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
