Several years ago, the wife of a pastor friend of mine in Oklahoma went out to her car at school and found a traffic ticket on it. But when she looked at it closely, she found that the ticket was actually for another car: it was the same model car as hers, but it had a different license plate number! Some sly person was trying to get HER to pay their ticket! That would be nice, wouldn’t it, to have someone else pay the penalty for your infractions?!

And of course, that is exactly what Jesus DID do for us, with His death on the cross. Last week, in our study of Isaiah 53, we looked at the concept of the “Substitutionary Atonement” of Jesus, how “OUR griefs, HE Himself bore; OUR sorrows HE carried.” Jesus bore OUR sins in His body on the cross: as our substitute. That is what “substitutionary atonement” means: He made “atonement,” “payment,” as our Substitute on the cross. Now this week, in Verse 5, we see some of the costs and blessings of Jesus’ Substitutionary Atonement for us: “But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.”

I. THE COSTS OF HIS ATONEMENT
Verse 5 shows us 4 costs that Jesus endured for us on the cross:

A. “Pierced”: The word refers to a mortal wound; it means a decisive, deadly blow. This same Hebrew word is used in Job of how God “pierced” the dragon as with a mortal stab from a sword. It is extraordinary that this is exactly and literally what happened to Jesus. He WAS literally “pierced” for our transgressions: His hands and feet were pierced through with nails, and His side was pierced with the spear (though He was already dead at that point). Franz Delitzsch, the great Hebrew scholar, said of Isaiah 53:5 that it “looks as if it had been written beneath the cross upon Golgotha”! This “piercing” for our transgressions literally took place in Jesus’ death on the cross.

B. “Scourged”: Again, this literally happened; each of the four Gospels tells us that Jesus was scourged — whipped with a cord tipped with fragments of metal — before He went to the cross to die for us.

But it’s very interesting, in light of these two very specific predictions of the suffering of Jesus, that NONE of the New Testament accounts goes into what you might call “gory detail” on the crucifixion of Jesus. The Gospels don’t describe the “gory details” we sometimes hear from pastors or evangelists about how the scourging ravaged Jesus’ body, or how the nails pierced His hands & feet, and so on. In fact, if you read the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke & John, there is NOTHING about that at all! You know what they say, every single one of them? “They crucified Him.”
— Matthew 27:35 says “And when they had crucified Him”
— Mark 15:24 “And they crucified Him”
— Luke 23:33 “There they crucified Him”
— John 19:18 “There they crucified Him”
That’s IT! The Bible does not share all the gory details that many seem to focus on. Why might that be? I’d suggest a couple of reasons:

Perhaps one reason is that the people of the first century were familiar with crucifixion. Crucifixion was the Roman method of capital punishment, and it was carried out in public places, as an example and a deterrent to others, so many of the readers had seen seen crucifixions. They knew the gory details already.

But I think another reason for the brevity of the descriptions in the Gospels is that the physical suffering of Jesus was the most important thing here. What is important is that He carried our SINS. The other two terms used here in :5 describe that a little better:

C. “Crushed”: This word denotes the complete destruction of the person involved. Job 6:9 says, “Would that God were willing to crush me”! Job wanted God to just crush him and do away with his life; it means a total destruction and death. A couple of weeks ago we saw how Isaiah 53:1 says that Jesus grew up before God like a tender plant, but then :10 says God “crushed” Him like a flower is crushed for its fragrant perfume, in order to accomplish the payment for our sins.

D. “Chastened”: This word means “punishment.” This word is used of the discipline of children by a parent. Jesus took the punishment that was due to US from God the Father upon Himself. I once heard someone talking to some children what Jesus did for us, and they said that when a child disobeys a parent, they deserve a punishment, like a spanking. We have all sinned; we have all broken our Heavenly Father’s commands, and so we deserve to be punished for our sins. But Jesus in a sense “took our spanking” for us, by dying for us on the cross.
That’s not a bad explanation. Jesus was “chastened” for us; He took our punishment from God upon Himself, on the cross. Again, this is not what HE deserved. As we’ve seen, Jesus “committed no violence, nor was there any deceit in his mouth.” He was the only One who had never sinned — yet He took the chastisement of God upon Himself for the sins of the world.

So what we need to understand is that the greatest suffering Jesus endured on the cross was not physical; it was not the scourging or the nails in His hands and feet. That’s why I think the Bible does not emphasize those things in dramatic ways. Jesus’ greatest suffering came from bearing the weight of the sins of the world on Himself; from the “chastening” from His Father that should have come upon us, for our sins.

The old Puritan Jonathan Edwards has a masterful sermon that pictures how Jesus is the very glory of God. Edwards said that just as the sun, by its very nature, has rays of brightness proceeding from it, so God, by His very nature, always has the glory of His Son shining from Him. Hebrews says that Jesus is “the radiance of His glory.” Jesus was absolutely holy, absolutely glorious, absolutely perfect. As we have seen, “He committed no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth.” All He had ever heard from God the Father was “This is My Beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” But this perfect, glorious, spotless Son of God, “bore our sins in His body on the cross.” That Perfect One, who had never been separated from God, was suddenly weighed down with the weight of the guilt of all of our sin.

Think of the worst sin you ever committed – something specific may pop into your mind right now. The guilt for that worst thing You ever did: fell upon Jesus on the cross. And not just yours, but mine too, and the sins of everyone ever in the whole world! THAT was the agony of the cross: that the pure and perfect Son of God had the wickedness of all our sins come upon Him who hated sin, AND that He would then take the “chastening” — the wrath, the punishment of God — for ALL of the sins of the whole world, upon Himself. No, Jesus didn’t sweat drops of blood at Gethsemane just because He was afraid of nails or scourging; rather He recoiled at the prospect of bearing the FILTH of all of our sins — and at facing the wrath of God Almighty for our sins in order to pay for them all. That was the cost Jesus bore in His substitutionary atonement.

But this cost of Jesus’ atonement is also a blessing: if He bore the worst sins you ever committed in His body on the cross, and paid for them — that means that the worst thing you ever did has been PAID FOR! That means that the worst thing you ever did can be forgiven, if you will bring it to Him! So many people struggle with forgiveness: “How could God forgive me of this certain sin?” But as Jonathan Edwards said, “Such a sacrifice suffered in such a manner is doubtless sufficient to atone for the greatest sins… it is enough to balance the debt contracted by the sins of the whole world.” Don’t you see: the chastisement that Jesus bore for our sins was so great, that it can pay for every sin. Mine; yours — your greatest sin; your smallest sin — every sin! This is why I John 1:9 can say: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive our sins, and cleanse us from ALL unrighteousness.” (Every Christian should memorize that verse, by the way! We need that!) We need to hear that. We need to know that “ALL means ALL”! There is no sin, large or small, that He will not forgive if you will bring it to Him! All of your sins can be forgiven because Jesus was “pierced;” He was “scourged;” He was “crushed;” and He was “chastened” for us in His Substitutionary Atonement.

II. THE BENEFITS OF HIS ATONEMENT
This leads us to the two blessings or benefits of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus which are listed here in Isaiah 53:5, “well being/peace;” and “healing.”

A. “Well being” or “peace” is the familiar Hebrew word, “shalom.” In this context, the Bible is especially referring to our peace with God, with whom we were at war because of our sins.

God originally created us to know and love Him, and be at perfect peace with Him. But Isaiah says later in 59:2, “Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God.” When we sinned, we said in effect, “God we know You are the King of the universe, but we do not want to serve You; we want to do what WE want to do instead.” We rebelled against God, and did our own thing. That is what sin is: war with God. Some of us today might say, “YES, that is ME! I feel like I am ‘at war’ with God!” And you are suffering the consequences of it! You can’t win a war with God! You are suffering from this battle with Him, and you need to make peace with God. How can you do that? Some of us may be trying to “make peace” with God by coming back to church, or maybe by “turning over a new leaf,” or by giving to help the poor — hoping that by doing these good things you can somehow “buy peace” with God. But your best efforts can never achieve peace with God. But what you could not do, Jesus did for you. HE made peace for you with God by His death on the cross:

— Romans 5:1 “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
— Ephesians 2:14+ “For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall” between us and God. The blood of Jesus on the cross bought peace for us with God.

In 1995, after a generation of wars between the nation of Israel and its Arab enemies, Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, had stretched out his hands in peace towards the Arabs, but he paid for it. As Rabin was standing on the speaker’s platform at a rally for peace, an Israeli extremist shot Rabin. In Rabin’s pocket was a program with the words to a song of peace they were singing that day, and after they carried him away, they found that song sheet stained with his blood. I watched the news report that night; the reporter’s words were striking: he said: “Rabin paid for peace with his blood.”

But what Yitzhak Rabin did symbolically, Jesus Christ did in reality. Jesus literally paid the price for peace between us and God with His blood. You do not have to be “at war” with God any longer; the price for your peace with God has been paid in full by Jesus in His Substitutionary Atonement.

The second blessing Isaiah 53:5 speaks of is:
B. “Healing”. This word “healed” in Isaiah 53:5 is a metaphor, or word picture, describing the healing of our relationship with God. All through scripture, God uses “sickness” as a picture or symbol of sin:

In the Book of Hosea, we see a good example of this. Hosea talks about how Israel & Judah had turned away from God to sin, and they experienced different chastisements from God for their sins. In Hosea 5:13 it says: “When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria … but he is unable to heal you.” Here the “sickness” is not a literal “sickness”; the “sickness” was spiritual; he wasn’t saying there was literally a physical pandemic among the people; He was referring to their sins. Then in Hosea 6:1, it says, “Come, let us return to the Lord, for He has torn us, but He will HEAL us; He has wounded us but He will bandage us.” This isn’t talking about physical healing; it’s talking about the spiritual healing that takes place when people turn back to the Lord. “Sickness” here in Hosea is a picture of a person in sin; “healing” describes what happens when they get back right with God. This is just one example, from the Book of Hosea; but there are all kinds of examples of this throughout the Old Testament; where the word “sickness” is used to give us a picture of sin.

This is what Isaiah 53 is talking about here. When it says, “By His stripes we are healed”, it is talking about how we were “sick” in our sins, but just like Hosea 6 talks about, God will “heal” us when we come back to Him. Because Jesus was wounded/scourged on the cross, our relationship with God can be healed. He took our “sicknesses” — our sins — upon Himself on the cross, to “heal” us of the “sickness” of our sins, and to restore our relationship with God.

A few years ago, an earthquake and a tsunami hit the country of Japan, causing a crisis in a nuclear power plant that was damaged there. News reports told of how some workers in the nuclear facility continued to work almost non-stop in that plant, living with high doses of radiation, to try to restore power, so that the people of Japan around them might be safe. These men sacrificed themselves for the well-being of others, and they were living pictures of what Jesus did for us. By His wounds, His suffering on the cross, our relationship with God was healed, so that we can have peace with Him.

MISUNDERSTANDING THE ATONEMENT
This is such a wonderful truth that is portrayed here in Isaiah 53:5, but there is a common misunderstanding about this verse that we need to address. Many believe and teach that Isaiah 53:5 teaches that physical healing is guaranteed for all, in THIS life, by the substitutionary atonement of Jesus on the cross. You have undoubtedly heard this verse quoted in that context: “We can pray for so-and-so’s healing, and we know that God will do it, for ‘by His stripes We are healed’” — and they quote Isaiah 53:5. This teaching claims that because Jesus died on the cross, everyone has the right to claim and receive His healing. It is guaranteed: “By His stripes we are healed”!

But although this is a popular teaching, it is false, and as we have seen, it misses the whole point of Isaiah 53. Now, let me add here, that I DO believe that God can heal people. In fact, I think that more of us should gather and pray for healing — and all our needs — than we do. “Nothing is impossible with God” and He can and still does miraculous things. DO NOT walk out of here and say “Bro. Shawn doesn’t believe in healing!”
Let me make this as clear as I can; I DO believe that God can heal; but I do NOT believe that healing for all is guaranteed in the atonement in Isaiah 53:5. I don’t believe it for the following reasons:

1) It is not Scriptural. (And this is by far the most important consideration): If you read Isaiah 53 in the context of the Old Testament like we just did, you see that the scriptural context is that the “healing” here refers to our sin; this verse is not about healing. On top of that, this very verse, Isaiah 53:5, is quoted in I Peter 2:24 in the New Testament, where it says: “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross” — and then it quotes Isaiah 53:5, “for by His wounds we were healed.” Do you see that? Peter says, He bore our SINS in His body and then he tells us THAT is the meaning of Isaiah 53:5! Both the original context in Isaiah and its quotation in I Peter tell us this is talking about sin and not just physical healing.

Then there are examples in scripture of people even in the early church of the New Testament, who were NOT healed:
— Paul is writing in II Timothy 4 about some different people and situations, and in :20 he says: “Trophimus I left sick at Ephesus.” WHAT? He left him SICK? Didn’t Paul know Isaiah 53:5 says by His stripes we are healed, and that healing is guaranteed in the atonement? Maybe it doesn’t mean what some people think it means?!
— Then we have the example of Paul himself: Paul writes in II Corinthians 12:7 and tells how he had a “thorn in the flesh” that he asked God three times to take away from him. But God didn’t take it away; He said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in your weakness.” Paul had a “thorn in the FLESH” – that means it was a physical problem; it was not a thorn in the “spirit;” it was a thorn in his “flesh.” It was a physical problem. And God told him He was NOT going to heal him, because He had another plan: to give him the grace that he needed to deal with this ongoing problem instead of healing him. Well why didn’t Paul just quote Isaiah 53:5 back to God, and tell God He HAD to heal him, because healing was guaranteed in the atonement? BECAUSE THAT IS NOT WHAT ISAIAH 53:5 MEANS! It is not talking about physical healing, but the spiritual healing of our souls by the substitutionary atonement of Jesus.
So in all these places we see that this teaching of “guaranteed healing” from Isaiah 53:5 is not scriptural.

2) not Sensible: if all healing was guaranteed in the atonement, then every person you ever prayed for would be well. Is anybody here seeing that happen? Any of you? Every single person you prayed for is getting well? NO. NOBODY is seeing that — not even in all these churches that teach that healing is guaranteed in the atonement. They still have people who do not get healed; they still have people who die from sicknesses. You know some of them personally, and so do I. This teaching is just not sensible; it is just not reality.

3) not Spiritual: This false teaching shows just how short-sighted many people are spiritually: that everything has to be about this world, and what we have here and now.

Many of you are familiar with the testimony of Joni Earickson-Tada, who became a quadriplegic in a diving accident as a young woman. She wrote in her biography, Joni, about how so many people came to pray for her, proclaiming that if they had enough faith, God would heal her — and she described very painfully how many Christians who should have been helping and supporting her in this devastating time, instead criticized her, because they said she evidently didn’t have enough faith to be healed. That kind of unnecessary guilt is part of the fallout of this errant belief.

Our church supports Sanjay Charan, who is the director of Acts India Mission, which trains pastors to start new churches in India. Some years ago, Pastor Sanjay and his wife had a baby boy, Vivek, who was born with a physical condition that left him developmentally disabled. Some of the few Christians there are in India have unfortunately been influenced by the teachings of “charismatic” Christians who believe that healing is guaranteed in the atonement. Sanjay said these people kept coming to him, saying, why don’t you have enough faith for God to heal Vivek? These are the same people who teach that God guarantees all Christians riches and prosperity here on earth, too. But what they are missing is that the Christian hope is not all about this world.
— Paul said “if we have hoped in Christ only in this life, we are of all men most miserable.” (I Corinthians 15:19)
— Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” (John 18:36)
— Philippians 3:20 says: “Our citizenship is in heaven.”
The hope of the Christian is not that we will healed and rich and successful in this world, but that our ultimate reward is with the Lord in heaven. The Christian hope is not that Joni will be healed on this earth but that she will made whole in heaven. The Christian hope is not that Sanjay’s son Vivek will be healed on earth, but that he will be whole in heaven. The Christian hope for you and I is not that we will be healthy and wealthy and prosperous on this earth, but that we will have eternal glory in heaven. This contrast between “your best life now,” and the hope of glory in heaven is one of the differences in true and false Christianity.

In Matthew 9, when Jesus encountered the paralyzed man, the first thing He said to him was, “My son, your SINS are forgiven you.” Most people, looking at that man, would have thought that his paralysis was the greatest problem he had. But Jesus made it very clear that the greatest problem this man had was NOT his physical sickness, but his sin. And in fact He said later that He only healed the man to let them know that He did have the power on earth to forgive sins. But that man’s SIN was his biggest problem.

Most of us are SO earthly minded we don’t see this. We are so centered on this life that we can’t think of a thing that is worse than a physical illness here on earth. But there is a whole eternity before us, compared to which all of our time here on earth is like dot on a page! Our eternity in heaven is what the gospel is most concerned with — and it should be our greatest concern too. It is far better to bear a hardship or an incapacitating illness for the short time of our stay here on earth, and live in glory in heaven for eternity, than to be the healthiest, richest, most popular person here on earth, only to be cast into eternal fire forever in hell!

Jesus came to set us free from this. He came to “heal” the rift between us and God, to “make peace” with God for us by His death on the cross. And He did it — but He did it at a great cost, Isaiah 53:5 says: “He was pierced through for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His stripes we were healed.”

INVITATION:
— Some of us need to admit that we have been living more for this world than for the next. Your life has been all about your physical body, all about your money and accomplishments and status here on earth — when this life is just a DOT on a page, compared to eternity. It’s time to prepare your soul for eternity; to store up treasures for eternity. Many of us might say, “YES, I am a Christian.” If so, then you need to start LIVING like you are! Start living like you believe there is a heaven; start living like “your citizenship is in heaven.” What things in your life would change today, if you really believed that your greatest treasures were in heaven, and not earth? How would you spend your time differently? How might you spend your money differently? How might your priorities change? All of us today need to consider: how do I need to live differently, because life is not all about this present world?

—Maybe you are still trying to “pay the price” for your sins, when the price has already been paid, at great cost, by Jesus on the cross. Turn back from your sins, and put your trust in the payment Jesus made on the cross to make peace for you with God.