CHRIST AS THE MAN OF SORROWS

J. D. Gray

Isaiah 52: 7, 13–15; 53: 1, 4–6; John 1: 9–13; 1 John 5: 18, 21

I suppose that in the literality of the scripture in Isaiah 52 it refers to the day that is yet to come, although the spirit of it would mark the present dispensation; but it refers, I think, to a day that is yet to come, that there are going to be feet upon the mountains that announce glad tidings of peace, publish peace. From verse 13 where I read,

“Behold, my servant shall deal prudently; he shall be exalted and be lifted up, and be very high”, it is an indication that it is a time when Christ is going to come into His own and take up His reins of government. There is not much peace in this world at the present time; thank God for any peace we do have. But here there are announcers of glad tidings of peace. It says,

“Thy God reigneth!”, that is the day that is yet to come. What a day for the world it will be when these announcers of peace, after a long dark night of sorrow and suffering in this world, herald that Christ will take up His kingdom in this world. The Lord Jesus Christ is in heaven at the present time, having suffered on this earth as we shall see. He is in heaven, but He is coming again to take control of the world and to reign for a thousand years. I think that is what this scripture refers to in its literality, but it is a wonderful thing to hear the glad tidings now about Christ.

In the day to come there are going to be kings that are astonished at Him, at the place the Lord Jesus will be given as the Son of man. The Lord Jesus as the Son of man has a distinctive place, and He is going to be very exalted, be lifted up, be very high. There are many who will be astonished at the place that Christ will have as He appears in His glory; coming in the clouds, coming with His saints. This prophet brings out that “kings shall shut their mouths at him”, when they see the place that Jesus has been given. There is an interjection by the Spirit of God that I want to draw your attention to, his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the children of men”. That does not refer to Him when He is coming in His glory, but it is interesting that the Spirit of God puts it in, right in the midst of the section telling us about the coming of the Son of man in His glory, to tell us that that Person, that blessed Man, was the same Person whose “visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the children of men”. That statement stands without compare, no matter how our visages, or our faces, have been marred, and our forms have been marred. Here is a Man whose visage was marred more than any man’s. His face bore the tokens of what He suffered, “and his form more than the children of men”.

The Lord Jesus, thirty-three-and-a-half years old when He was crucified, bore the tokens of a suffering Saviour, of “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”. What is on my heart in this scripture was verse 4 of chapter 53 which I will come to. It says, “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows”. What it is to think that the Lord Jesus when He was here displayed such remarkable powers, powers of the world to come; disease never remained in His presence, death never occurred in the presence of the Son of God when He was here in manhood here below. No man ever died in His presence, no man ever suffered in His presence but was relieved of the sufferings. He is the blessed Man who bore the marks of it, what He took away in His power He bore in His spirit, but His body showed the marks of His entering in sympathetically to the sufferings of humanity. Isaiah 53, in its setting in the Scriptures, refers to the remnant of Israel coming to appreciate what Christ had been for them. For the believer, Isaiah 53 is a choice portion of Scripture, and it gives the expressions of a believer when reflecting all that Christ has been to him, and for him. It is not exactly the expressions of a soul seeking God, it is the expressions of a soul who has known God, the expressions of a soul who is coming to repentance, maybe not fully arrived at it, but coming to repentance, and yet by the time he goes through Isaiah 53 he has come to repentance. God is looking for repentance from us all.

What struck me in regard of this scripture was not only what Israel felt as coming to God, because Israel had been a nation that had gone after idols, and the book of Isaiah is dealing with God’s issue with them

because of idolatry, but the Spirit of God would have more in mind than only Israel’s appreciation of Christ. I think it would have in mind all who come to God by Him, in appreciation of Christ, who has “borne our griefs and carried our sorrows”. Oh the sorrows of humanity! In the flesh and blood condition that we are all in, we all know what sorrows are, what sufferings are. The fall has brought it all, the fall of man. Those telling words when God said to Adam, Where art thou? and what has thou done? (Genesis 3: 9), concisely tell us everything. All the sufferings that have come into this world are a result of the fall, whether it is the awful conditions in the world presently as you think of Somalia and people starving through civil war, power-seeking men, or Bosnia, or Yugoslavia, or these islands in which we are, which through God’s mercy have a government that maintains a degree of law and order for which we are thankful; but humanity is suffering worldwide as a result of the fall, generation after generation, and Christ bore it all. He has “borne our griefs and carried our sorrows”, that is the sorrows of humanity. The Lord knew it all, He encompassed it all. In anticipation of the cross in Gethsemane when He prayed, He fell to the earth and prayed intently. Jesus could cover the whole history of man, the whole history of you and me. But what a comfort to a believer, what a comfort to a person seeking Christ, to understand he is coming into contact with One who has borne his griefs and carried his sorrows. I would encourage all of us to seek the face of the Lord Jesus in prayer, because of Him, and of Him alone, it could be said, “he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows”. He was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”, as we sang in our hymn—

‘“Man of sorrows!” what a name

For the Son of God, who came

Ruined sinners to redeem!

Hallelujah! what a Saviour!’ (Hymn 426).

That is the Person we have to tell you about. I want to endear this verse to your heart tonight.

“Surely he

hath borne our griefs”; “he”, that Person, emphatically. The Lord Jesus is distinctive in the Godhead. He is the Person of the Godhead who came into humanity; He has the sympathies of humanity in His heart because He is a Man. He remains a Man for ever, Scripture tells us that, He lives in the power of indissoluble life (Hebrews 7: 16). He has carried our sorrows, He has borne our griefs, He knows what they are. He bore them when here, He sympathises with us now even when He is above, but for Him, in view of peace being ours, “the chastisement of our peace was upon him”, that is the Lord Jesus Christ. In Isaiah 52 verse 7, the preacher publishes peace, the preacher has never made your peace for you, but here is One who has made peace for those who believe on Him, “he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed”, Isaiah 53: 5. The sin question cannot be ignored. Cain sinned in slaying his brother and God said to him, the sin-offering lieth at the door (see Genesis 4: 7). There was availability for repentance and a way back, God has made that way back. The Lord Jesus is the One who is “the chastisement of our peace”, if we are to know peace. I wonder if we all know peace with God? We were speaking this afternoon in the reading of the Scriptures of the Lord Jesus when going away from His own, He said, “I give my peace to you”, John 14: 27. That is the peace we can have in the presence of God, without fear, without conscience being disturbed. When you go into God’s presence and you kneel on your knees, is your conscience disturbed? There is no need for it to be disturbed any more, because “he is our peace” (Ephesians 2: 14); Christ has “made peace by the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1: 20), only trust Him. What a Saviour He is, the Lord Jesus Christ! The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1: 7). I can put my faith in that Person, I can trust in His precious blood and I can have peace with God. What a peace it is to have! But for believers to have peace with God, the Lord Jesus Christ had to suffer. I can tell you what the scripture

says, I can tell you what I know myself, that He bore my sins in His body on the tree. It is available for you, it is available for all. What a blessed thing it is to be refreshed by the knowledge of it, that He bore my sins in His body on the tree, to be able to say that. There are many believers who can say that, some have been able to say it for a long time, but it never grows old, “the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me”, Galatians 2: 20. It ever remains fresh and true. What a blessed state it is to be able to go into God’s presence and be at home there.

When God came down in the garden in the cool of the day to commune with man, Adam hid himself because he had sinned. What a moment for God to discover that, to speak simply; but what a time for God when Christ bore our sins, when He bore my sins in His body on the tree, and I come into the gain of that, come to know what forgiveness of sins is, peace with God, and go into the divine presence and seek His face. Oh, seek His face, I appeal to you.

Seek it first as a repenting sinner, then as repenting and forgiven seek it again. What a blessed state it is to know the presence and the sympathy of Christ as the One who has borne our sins and carried our sorrows, no matter what sorrows we carry. Some among us have carried sorrows, we all have carried sorrows, and a good number of us carry sorrows, but to know that He has carried them; and not only that, but He has put away our sins by the sacrifice of Himself. The Lord Jesus Christ offered Himself without spot to God by the eternal Spirit (Hebrews 9: 14); that is, the Lord Jesus took up the matter Himself. “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all”. He never turned to His own way. “All we like sheep have gone astray”, that is true of all of us. There is no exemption for any, “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”, Romans 3: 23. When you come to know Christ as your Saviour, you have to admit it, that you were going astray when He found you. “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way”, wilfulness on our part yet He went after us, left the ninety-and-nine in the wilderness to go after that which is lost. If you are the stray sheep, my friend, he will go after you; and we have all known that because we have all been stray sheep, scripture says so, “we have turned every one to his own way”. We exercise the right of our own wills over against the will of God, and that is sin. Sin is lawlessness. In preferring my own will it is a despisal of the will of God; but through the glad tidings God brings me to a conviction and my will is broken. What a day when my will was broken, what a day when your will was broken. There are many here, their wills have been broken, brought into subjection to the Lord Jesus Christ. That is a blessed state, to come into the blessing of subjection to that blessed Person, the One who has been made Lord and Christ, to come into subjection to Him, the One of whom it says, “Jehovah hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all”. He is the One who could say on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” He is the One who put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. May the Lord help us to appreciate these things.

In John’s gospel it says, “He came to his own, and his own received him not”. As I understand it, it would be to Israel that He came, as the people that God had owned, but they rejected Him. Then there is another company, “as many as received him”. Do we all belong to that company? “As many as received him, to them gave he the right to be children of God, to those that believe on his name”. Now my friend, if you have received Christ, you have a right to take the place of being among the children of God, that is a distinguishment. God introduces distinguishment, and that is a distinguishment to those that believe on His name, it says, “who have been born, not of blood, nor of flesh’s will, nor of man’s will, but of God”.

These are persons who are believers, “children of God”. They belong to the family of God, “as many as received him”.

There is a dignity attaching to the children of God. The children of God are viewed in Scripture as believers in this scene, in this world, testimonially, and their parentage would be acknowledged in their lives. If you are a believer there is a work of God in your soul, and that work of God ever remains, nothing and no one can ever destroy the work of God in a believer’s soul. As many as have received Christ can take that place, He gives us the right to take the place of children of God.

But then there is an exercise that develops in my heart as to the fact that I belong to a dignified family, the family of God. As I said, the children of God are always viewed as in the testimonial sphere, and character comes out in children. We know that by parentage in the flesh; character comes out in children that is not always to our benefit. I say that in a sober way, but it is true. Then other things come out in our children that are honouring to our character, I am talking naturally. Children of God derive their character from God, it is the divine work in the believer’s soul. If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus there has been a work of God in your soul. He has imparted something to you, and He has imparted it by His own working, it began in new birth. “The wind blows where it will, and thou hearest its voice, but knowest not whence it comes and where it goes”, John 3: 8. Divine sovereignty has entered into your life in operating in your soul in new birth, giving you a taste and a desire after God. That is God’s goodness, it leads man to repentance. Divine sovereignty operates in divine goodness leading you to repentance till you come to a point in your life where you accept Christ as your Saviour, you receive Him, that is the Lord Jesus Christ, the One who

“coming into the world, lightens every man”. There was nothing hid from that light when He was in this world. He lightened every man, the light was cast upon every one, nothing was hid, it was not done in a corner, but then there were those who received Him. Perhaps most in this room are under that category of having received Him, and therefore

belong to the children of God. There is divine workmanship in your soul, the knowledge of God resident in an earthen vessel, resident in a body of humiliation, a body of suffering and sorrow and disease, and in that vessel there is something that belongs to God, it is a treasure that He has placed there. Oh to give scope to that treasure!

John’s epistle says that such a person keeps himself, and that is what I wanted to come to in regard to ‘born of God’, “We know that every one begotten of God does not sin”. Now that is a statement that John makes which is a repeat of what he says in chapter 3, verse 9, “Whoever has been begotten of God does not practise sin”. If we are true to the work of God in ourselves we will not practise sin. Now this is as much a challenge to me as to any person sitting in this room, “Whoever has been begotten of God does not practise sin, because his seed abides in him”, that is God’s seed, “and he cannot sin because he has been begotten of God”. Now that is true of the work of God itself, but then I have to tell you that we are still in flesh and blood condition which, if I use the word a ‘mixed condition’, means it is a condition to which in me sin attaches, that is the flesh and blood condition. So I need power to be true to the work of God in me, that is what the scripture says. “We know that every one begotten of God does not sin”, now that is an abstract statement taking the work of God by itself, and if I am true to it I will not practise sin. But then there is the exhortation, “he that has been begotten of God keeps himself”, that is the believer. Now I ask us all whether we keep ourselves. That is responsibility. Although we are brought to Christ as Saviour, brought to God to know Him as Father, a Father who is in heaven who cares for us, and brought to know the Lord Jesus Christ who cares for us, we still need to keep ourselves.

The Lord Jesus, when He went on high, sent the Spirit of God here to indwell believers, and the Holy Spirit is the power that we can exercise within ourselves to keep ourselves; a divine Person taking His abode in the believer in order that he may keep himself. He is a bulwark against sin operating in the flesh; that is the Spirit of God, I can turn to Him. I can turn to any of the divine Persons, but the Spirit of God in the believer becomes a bulwark to protect him. We all need to protect ourselves. We are all vulnerable, there is not one of us here that is not vulnerable, we are in flesh and blood condition. We go out amongst men into company through business and other ways, and you find you have to pray that you be helped to comport yourself like a believer. That is, he that is begotten of God keeps himself; you cannot trust yourself, you cannot trust the flesh, you cannot trust the weakness of the flesh. The capability is there in me to sin, after the flesh, but if I am true to the work of God in me I will keep myself, because I do not want to sin, I do not want to practise sin. Though I have been begotten of God and belong to the family of God, in the present circumstances while I am in flesh and blood condition, I need to learn what it is to keep myself, “and the wicked one does not touch him”. The Spirit of God is a greater power in the believer, helping you and me to overcome the world and overcome the wicked one, “greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world”, 1 John 4: 4. The wicked one is always seeking to divert, always seeking to introduce failure into the life of every true believer, but you learn by experience daily to keep yourself. Oh to know what it is characteristically to bow the knee to Christ every day, morning and evening! Learn what it is to be kept, given the power to keep yourself by the Spirit so as to be pleasurable to God. The dignity that belongs to the family of God becomes evident in believers in this world who are a testimony to the power of God, because they keep themselves so that the wicked one does not touch them. May the Lord help us in these things, for His name’s sake.

Preaching at Edinburgh
27 December 1992