Thanksgiving: He Was Crushed. We Were Saved

Several days ago, my wife and I were listening to KKOJ.  It was about nine in the morning.  For those of you who listen at that time, you know that each weekday at 9 am there is about a 15-minute conversation between Doug Johnson and John Reitmeier.  The basis of this conversation is supposedly John’s “Cool-Site Pick of the Day.”  On Monday, Doug and John spent a considerable amount of time talking about hunting related violations and the humorous stories behind many of them. I stepped out of the room for a moment and when I came back, Sara asked me if I had heard the joke that Doug had just told on the air.  I said I hadn’t heard it.  Sara then repeated the joke for me.  It goes like this:

What is the thing to be most thankful for on Thanksgiving? That you’re not the turkey!

Now, I’m a pheasant hunter, and if I were to hunt turkey the way I hunt pheasant, well, I guess it wouldn’t be so bad to be the turkey.  They would run little risk with me around.  And pheasants mock me openly.

The turkey hunting joke that made it on the radio was good for a laugh, but then I thought of something that wasn’t as funny.  Success in hunting means spilled blood.  Hunting is a tremendous privilege, because the animals we take are made to give their lives up to the hunter.  Therefore, it’s never really something that should be undertaken without some degree of self-examination, because hunting costs life.  We shouldn’t forget that.

What does this have to do with anything from our scripture reading tonight?  That’s a good question.

We are here tonight to observe God’s grace in this holiday called Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving was established specifically to thank God for the many blessings of this people we call a nation.  In our culture, the practice of giving thanks of this day has now largely been overtaken by the idolatrous pursuit of football, multiple parties, and, perhaps most centrally, shopping.  Thanksgiving is meant to mark off a time for, you know, giving thanks.  To someone. For something. But Thanksgiving has now suffered what so many holidays have suffered from in the midst of our countries amazing affluence. 

I think God led me to select text from Isaiah to remind me and you of the most extraordinary event that has ever happened in the history of the universe.  It was predicted here in Isaiah, and fulfilled in a person named Jesus Christ.

Our text is the fourth of a series of songs, commonly referred to as “servant songs,” in the book of Isaiah.  These songs speak of a human who is the Lord’s servant, who is heir to the throne of David, and who will bring healing to the people after they have so thoroughly rebelled against God in sin.

The entire song is well worth close examination, but there is not enough time for that on this occasion.  Instead, I want to focus on just two really key sections: 53:4-6 and 53:10-12.

Isaiah beings by telling Israel that the servant would take the appearance of one whom the people would likely not expect as their servant-king.  The one who will be “exalted” (52:13) is described as having “no form or majesty that we should look on him,” and “[3] He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”  The servant is described as being, in the eyes of the world, the biggest loser of all time, not worth looking at, worthy of being despised.  And, in a society that places such a huge premium on self-esteem and being liked, this servant will not be esteemed at all.  He will, in fact, be trampled upon.

And that brings us to one of the most important texts in the whole bible, 53:4-6:

[4] Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. [5] But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. [6] All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

This servant-king, who is despised and rejected by the people, isn’t considered worthy of anything.  And yet, look what he has done.  He bears the griefs and carried the sorrows of the people.  He was wounded, not for his own transgressions and sins, but for ours.  He was crushed for our iniquities and sins.  Upon him was placed chastisement due to us.  And by his stripes, the stripes of one who is beaten with the whip, we are healed.  There are two parties in this text.  The first is “we/us”.  That's you and me.  We are the ones with griefs and sorrows.  We are the ones who are the transgressors and sinners.  We are the one who from birth bear the iniquities and sins of our first parents.  The second party is the suffering servant. And do you see what happens in this text? All of this sin is transferred to him, to the servant.  He bears it all.  He is crushed by it.  We wonder off, recklessly perusing the ways of the world in pursuit of self-exaltation, worshiping idol entertainments and fleshy pursuits of money and sex, acquiring stuff at unprecedented levels in the vain attempt to secure our own salvation, rejecting the word of God and his rejecting the mantle of those who are created in His divine image. And all of that is transferred to him, the only one in this biblical scene who is innocent.

What we then learn is that this oppression of the suffering servant serves a divine purpose, which is disclosed in verses 10-12:

[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 guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. [11] Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. [12] Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.

Verse 11 is the critical verse: “[11] Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.”

The one who suffers anguish because of what he has to bear from us shall himself be satisfied.  We, the rebels, the sinners, the ones who deserve divine wrath for sin, are instead given freedom which is completely unmerited grace.  “By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities” (11).

He takes ours sins and the guilt and the punishment of death.  We receive his forgiveness, pardon, and eternal life.  This is what Jesus Christ accomplished for us by his incarnation, life, death, and resurrection.  He took your sin, and my sin, and all of the crushing punishment we deserved.  For those who accept his sacrifice as sufficient to cover over all sin, he grants his righteousness, total forgiveness of sin, and the gift of eternal life.  That is genuine cause for not only Thanksgiving, but worship to the one who grants us such overwhelming grace.

So I ask you, dear ones, what are you thankful for this Thanksgiving?  As you consider the person and work of Jesus Christ for sinners like you and me, what are you most satisfied with?  What is the source of your joy? Are you most satisfied when you are able to raise some material trifle over your head in triumph, having just grabbed the last one from the store shelf during the 2 a.m. Black Friday sale? Or with the latest victory of your favorite high school, college, or pro football team? Or with the astonishing estate you’ve amassed?  Or are you most satisfied in Him, the one who secured your eternal salvation at the cost of his own blood, so that you might live forever enjoying the glory of your Creator?

I want to be clear, the good things we have are gifts from God, and they ought to be enjoyed.  But they are not ultimate.  I think the gifts we are given are enjoyed most when we stop and consider carefully the amazing freedom and forgiveness and mercy and love shown to us by the Father in the blood of His precious Son.

This Thanksgiving, we can all be thankful that we’re not the turkey.  Hunting requires the taking of blood.  Sin requires payment by blood.  And this Thanksgiving, we can sing for joy that we were not held to account for our sins with our own blood, but by the blood of Jesus.  May that be for you and me the source of ultimate joy and satisfaction this Thanksgiving season and into eternity.  What a wondrous gift!

And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain—
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

He left His Father’s throne above
So free, so infinite His grace—
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race:
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For O my God, it found out me!

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him, is mine;
Alive in Him, my living Head,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach th’eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.¹

Thank you, Almighty Father, for Jesus.  Amen.

¹Wesley, Charles. And Can it Be. Hymn composed in 1738. The hymn is the 363 in the current United Methodist Hymnal.

Given at the United Methodist Church in Jackson, Minnesota
November 24, 2010
Thanksgiving Eve

"A Present Salvation"

One of the many good characteristics of the prayers contained in the terrific little book "The Valley of Vision" is humility.  God is always exalted.  Here's the prayer I read today:

Creator and Redeemer God,
Author of all existence, source of all blessedness, I adore thee for making me capable of knowing thee, for giving me reason and conscience, for leading me to desire thee; I praise thee for the revelation of thyself in the gospel, for they heart as a dwelling place of pity, for thy thoughts of peace towards me, for they patience and thy graciousness, for the vastness of thy mercy.  Thou hast moved my conscience to know how the guilty can be pardoned, the unholy sanctified, the poor enriched. May I be always amongst those who not only hear but know thee, who walk with and rejoice in thee, who take thee at thy word and find life there. Keep me always longing for a present salvation in Holy Spirit comforts and rejoicings, for spiritual graces and blessings, for help to value my duties as well as my privileges.  May I cherish simplicity and godly sincerity of character. Help me to be in reality before thee as in appearance I am before men, to be religious before I profess religion, to leave the world before I enter the church, to set my affections on things above, to shun forbidden follies and vanities, to be a dispenser as well as a partaker of grace, to be prepared to bear evil as well as to do good. O God, make me worthy of this calling, that the name of Jesus may be glorified in me and I in him.

Beautiful.

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On Biblical Mysticism

A great quote on the unique, rich physicality of biblical mysticism, from Richard N. Longenecker's excellent commentary Galatians:

Mysticism, of course, frequently conjures up ideas about he negation of personality, withdrawal from objective reality, ascetic contemplation, a searching out of pathways to perfection, and absorption into the divine - all of which is true for Eastern and Grecian forms of mysticism.  The mysticism of the Bible, however, affirms the true personhood of people and all that God has created in the natural world, never calling for negation or withdrawal except where God's creation has been contaminated by sin.  Furthermore, the mysticism of biblical religion is not some esoteric searching for a path to be followed that will result in union with the divine, but is always of the nature of a response to God's grace wherein people who have been mercifully touched by God enter into communion with him without ever losing their own identifies.

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in sun

via flickr.com

Cole Rise is one of my favorite photographers. Randomly found his stuff on Flickr. His website is http://www.colerise.com.

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David Hart on the Silliness of Contemporary Atheism

David B. Hart's excellent article in the May issue of First Things has to be read in all of its excellent entirety. Here's a taste (full article at the link, below):

A truly profound atheist is someone who has taken the trouble to understand, in its most sophisticated forms, the belief he or she rejects, and to understand the consequences of that rejection. Among the New Atheists, there is no one of whom this can be said, and the movement as a whole has yet to produce a single book or essay that is anything more than an insipidly doctrinaire and appallingly ignorant diatribe.

If that seems a harsh judgment, I can only say that I have arrived at it honestly. In the course of writing a book published just this last year, I dutifully acquainted myself not only with all the recent New Atheist bestsellers, but also with a whole constellation of other texts in the same line, and I did so, I believe, without prejudice. No matter how patiently I read, though, and no matter how Herculean the efforts I made at sympathy, I simply could not find many intellectually serious arguments in their pages, and I came finally to believe that their authors were not much concerned to make any. 

What I did take away from the experience was a fairly good sense of the real scope and ambition of the New Atheist project. I came to realize that the whole enterprise, when purged of its hugely preponderant alloy of sanctimonious bombast, is reducible to only a handful of arguments, most of which consist in simple category mistakes or the kind of historical oversimplifications that are either demonstrably false or irrelevantly true. And arguments of that sort are easily dismissed, if one is hardy enough to go on pointing out the obvious with sufficient indefatigability.

via firstthings.com

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Without Missing a Beat

Without question, this is the single best sermon I've ever read on Acts 20:7-12.  The sermon is about the story of young Eutychus falling asleep and falling out of a window as Paul preached at length to the people of Troas.  The sermon has the added benefit of being hilarious, thanks to the wonderful gifts of the preacher, Rev. Will Willamon.

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Disbelieving Preaching

William Willimon on the disbelief in contemporary preaching:

That many of us preachers still preach using essentially secular (i.e. godless) means of persuasion borrowed uncritically from the world is yet another testimony to our failure to believe that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, thus radically changing everything. In so doing we act as if Jesus were still sealed securely in the tomb, as if he did not come back to us, did not speak to us and cannot, will not speak to us today, as if preaching is something that we do through our strategies rather than through the speaking of the risen Christ.

Resurrection is not only the content of gospel preaching but also its miraculous means. Where two are three of us are gathered in his name, daring to talk about him, he is there, talking to us (Matt. 18:20). All the way to the end of the age, in every part of the world, in our baptism and proclamation, he is with us (Matt. 28:20).

I once heard a church growth expert declare, “Any church that doesn’t have a pull down video screen will be dead in ten years.” But I believe that better technology does not make sermons work. Lack of technology cannot kill a church. Only God can kill a church. Only a living Christ can make our sermons speak to a new generation.

Can I get a hearty "amen?"  You'll want to read the whole thing here.

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