He was Despised and Forsaken of Men

Good evening. Tonight we'll be looking at Isaiah 53. We'll be looking at verses 3-6. In our passage, there's a lot that could be said about Christ's death, His atonement, forgiveness of our sins, and other doctrines. Tonight, I want us to focus on how we respond to Jesus. Our text tells us that we despised and did not esteem Jesus. My hope for us this evening is that we would see the ways that we despise our Savior and that it would cause us to repent and instead of despising and turning away from Him, that we would cling to Him. My desire for us tonight is to cling to the cross as the remedy for our rejection of our Savior. If you're able, I invite you to stand for the reading of God's Word. This is the Word of the Lord and it is eternally true. He was despised and forsaken of men.

A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and like one from whom men hide their face, he was despised, and we did not esteem him. Surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried. Yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 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. All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way. But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. This is the Word of the Lord. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, thank You for Good Friday and for Easter Sunday. Thank You for the death, burial, and resurrection of Your Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

We thank You that we could gather this evening. We pray, Father, that You would be with us now as we spend time in Your Word, that You would bless the words of my mouth, that You would give me words to say, that the words of my mouth and the meditation of each and every one of our hearts tonight would be pleasing to You, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. And we ask and pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. You can be seated. So Isaiah 53.3 starts with, He was despised and forsaken of men. What does it mean that Jesus was despised and forsaken? What does it mean later in this verse that we did not esteem Him? It means that He was looked down on, scorned, abandoned, disregarded, snubbed, rejected. All men despise and forsake our Lord Jesus.

As we read through the details of Christ's sufferings leading up to His death, we quickly notice that what Isaiah says here in verse 3 is true. That all the men around Jesus hated Him. When we read the story of Christ's sufferings and the crucifixion, we see how the Pharisees and the scribes and the Roman soldiers despised and mocked Him. Spit on His face and beat Him. and ultimately crucified him. And not only were there people that hated him, that despised him and forsook him, but his own disciples despised and forsook him. They abandoned him. Jesus' own friends abandoned him. A prime example of that being Peter, when he denies our Lord three times because he's afraid. Our Lord was left alone. He was completely abandoned.

When we think about the ways that Jesus was abandoned at that time, it's really easy for us to, we have the temptation to kind of boo and hiss at everything that the disciples did when he's arrested. They run away and Peter denies him. They couldn't even stay awake with him in the garden, right, when he's praying. They can't even, and it's really easy to get kind of, I don't know, self-righteous about it. We're tempted to despise them for their weaknesses and their sins. And it's funny, as I was thinking about this, that this is what we do when we read about Israel after they're brought out of Egypt. We read about Israel and all the grumbling and complaining they do and we just, can't you get a clue? Why do you keep grumbling and complaining and getting upset and then Moses has to intercede for you because you've upset God? Why can't you remember that God has been good to you? It's the same temptation. We're tempted to be irritated with the disciples.

just like we're tempted to be irritated with the Israelites. But we do the exact same things that the disciples did. We despise and abandon Jesus just like they did. How? We might object to the notion that we despise and reject Jesus. We're here. We're Christians. And so I think it would be kind of natural for us to object to that kind of notion. But Isaiah here assumes that everyone despises and rejects our Savior. He says we did not esteem him. And all of us, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way. Isaiah doesn't say they and them. He doesn't single himself out. He doesn't single Israel out, the people of God out. He says we, all of us. All of us despise and reject Jesus. Despising and rejecting Jesus is the natural inclination.

The natural disposition of every person. We don't have to try to hate Him or disregard Him. We just do it. This is how our flesh responds to the Savior of the world. We despise and forsake Him. We disregard Him. So what does that look like for us? What does it look like for us when we despise and forsake Him? Because it's not going to look like the Roman guards who beat Him and mocked Him, right? It'll look different. So what does it look like? One of the ways that we despise and forsake our Lord is that we do not defend Him. We allow our co-workers and our friends to blaspheme His name, to use His name as a curse word, and we say nothing to them. We may express some sort of discomfort, but we probably don't address it outright. We're afraid to speak up and defend our Lord. We're afraid to tell that person, that it's offensive to use His name that way. Or maybe worse, we hear it so often that it no longer offends us. It doesn't cause us to be offended anymore. We just accept it. Instead of defending our Lord, we disregard Him, we turn our backs on Him, and we do not defend Him. I'm not suggesting that Jesus needs us to come to His defense either.

Our God is perfectly capable of defending Himself. He doesn't need us to defend Him. But because He's our Lord and our King, we should feel compelled to defend Him. Earlier this year in our apologetics class, our instructor gave us an analogy that I found really helpful. And the analogy is this. If your child is out playing in the playground and his friends or his classmates are gathered around him, And they start telling him that his parents are stupid or dumb or losers or whatever. Whatever little kids use as insults. I don't know. Wouldn't you want to know that your son defended you? Not that you need your son to defend you from grade schoolers, but that you'd be interested to know whether your son actually cared about you to defend you. Whether he respected you and defended you. That should be our response. We should be the son who defends his father.

And we should be that way, especially when people use our Lord's name in vain. When they abuse it. He doesn't need us to defend Him, but we should defend Him because He's our God. Because He's our Lord. Because He's our Savior. We shouldn't stand for His name being dragged through the mud by His own creatures. And we should also speak up when people lie about our Lord. If we hear people bearing false witness and false testimony against Jesus, we should say something about it. And we should say something to them. Another way that we despise and forsake our Lord is by being slow to speak of Him, just generally. We are so quick to talk about all the other things that we love and prioritize in our lives. We're quick to talk about our favorite shows and movies, sports teams, our favorite games. Oh, did you see that movie?

Oh, you've got to watch this show. It's the best show you'll ever watch. We love to talk about what we love. Talk about our favorite sports teams and players, and we can talk about that stuff for hours. We enjoy talking about it. And we're quick to share those kind of things with complete strangers, people that you just met. All of that comes really easy to us. But when it comes to Jesus, we have a hard time broaching the subject. Talking about Jesus Christ and his death on the cross, sharing the good news. It's one of the hardest things to do. Or we think it's one of the hardest things to do. We feel this tension, this pressure that for whatever reason we can't. We freely talk about everything else that we love. But we have a hard time freely talking about our Savior. Another way that we disregard our Savior is by forgetting. Now what do I mean by forgetting? By forgetting exactly what we're here today talking about. We forget.

We forget the Gospel. In our daily lives, we walk around not remembering the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We forget His work and what His work has accomplished for us. Jesus died for our sins and took them on Himself. Just as Isaiah says, surely our griefs He Himself bore and our sorrows He carried. And we forget that He suffered in our place and died to save us from sins. Now, do we really forget it? I think it's there. We always kind of know that it happened. But I think we forget the power of it. We forget the power of the Gospel. We forget that He didn't just die and sins generally are forgiven, but actually all of my sins are forgiven. When we do this, we're disregarding His suffering, like Isaiah says in verse 4. So in verse 3, He says that He was despised and we did not esteem Him.

And then in verse 4 he says, yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. We see the suffering, but we don't see the why behind it. We don't see what the suffering accomplished. We don't have any regard for Jesus and his work on the cross because we don't regularly remind ourselves about it. We don't remind ourselves that he died for us. We don't remind ourselves that all our guilt and all our shame were taken care of. On the cross. And then we fall into sin and we feel the weight of our guilt and our shame. And then we forget to look where we're supposed to. We forget to look to our Lord Jesus and to look to the cross. Or we despise our Lord by minimizing our guilt. Thinking that our sins aren't that big of a deal. Or presuming upon God's grace that I'm forgiven anyway. What does it matter?

Or we might try to atone for our sins ourselves. We attempt to correct our sins by doing good works to salve our consciences. We refuse. We find all sorts of ways that we can avoid looking to the cross. We refuse to look to the cross and remember that Jesus died for us. And what we need is to remind ourselves of the Gospel constantly. We need it every day. And we need to... be actively reminding ourselves so that we don't forget. So that we don't disregard our Lord and the work that He did for us on the cross. So why? Why do we despise and forsake our Lord? One of the reasons that we despise our Lord is because the rest of the world despises Him. They despise the truth of the Gospel and His teachings. And in our flesh, we think like the rest of the world.

We feel the tension, right, of being in the world but not of it and having the pressure to conform to the way that they think, to conform to the standards of the world. You know, just think about Israel and Jesus' life and ministry and what Israel thought his life and ministry were supposed to look like. Jesus' actual life and ministry wasn't quite what Israel was expecting. They thought a Messiah would come and usher in a new age of prosperity for them. Wipe out all our enemies, remove Israel from Rome's oppression, establish a permanent kingdom there in Jerusalem. And it didn't quite happen the way they thought it would. But they were thinking about these things the way that the world thinks about these things. Jesus' life and ministry aren't flashy or appealing to the world. His death is even less appealing to the world.

Paul says, for the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. And consider what Peter says about Jesus' suffering and death. Jesus, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth, and while being reviled, he did not revile in return, and while suffering, he uttered no threats, but kept entrusting himself to him who judges rightly. And so here we see Jesus had done no wrong, was reviled, was mistreated. but he did not defend himself. He does not fight. He does not argue. He does not threaten. And that looks weak. The world would say that's weak. And so we feel the pressure. We feel the pressure to conform to the world's standards. But we need to fight against the way the world despises our Lord. We are to be in the world and not of the world. We should fight this pull that we feel to despise and forsake our Lord Jesus.

To disregard Him and His suffering. Another reason that we despise and disregard Jesus is that we're afraid. We're afraid of what acknowledging Him will actually cost. We're just like the disciples in this way. We're scared of being associated with Jesus and afraid to acknowledge Him before men. That was Peter's whole reason for denying Him. The thought of being associated with Him. Of being persecuted with Him. It was scary. We're afraid because everyone around us, the rest of the world, despises Him. And by identifying ourselves with Him, we open ourselves to being a target of their resentment and scorn too. Jesus even said that. That they hated Me, they'll hate you also. We're afraid to go to our neighbors and our brothers and sisters even and confront their sins and point them to Jesus. Tell them to repent.

We're afraid to acknowledge our Lord before them. Why? Well, yeah, fear. And we also want to be liked. We're afraid of not being liked. We're afraid of other people's rejection. And so, often when we're around our co-workers and our friends and family, other unbelievers, we tend to disregard Jesus. Because we're afraid to have conflict and tension with the world. We're afraid to create conflict with our friends and family. We're afraid we might offend somebody. We're afraid we'll be despised if we acknowledge Christ before men. And if we proclaim the truth that we find in God's Word before men. So we don't. Instead, we treat Jesus just like Isaiah says. Jesus is like one from whom men hide their face.

We hide our faces from the Lord and treat Him like a beggar or a panhandler on the street. But when we talk about fear, we do have to remember what Jesus said about being afraid of men. Jesus said, everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven. And Jesus also tells us, he who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. We can't allow our fears to rule us. We can't let our fears cause us to hide our faces from our God. Fear cannot dictate whether or not we share the Lord. And I don't just mean evangelism. I just mean allowing ourselves to be associated with Christ. It doesn't have to be evangelism. It could be telling someone, stop doing that.

That's sin. Jesus says it's sin. Our fear of man should not be allowed to overshadow our love for our God. I mentioned forgetting the Gospel and the cross as a way that we often disregard or forsake our Savior. And this is tied to our shame and our guilt as reasons why we disregard our Savior, why we forget Him, why we abandon Him. When we're overcome by our guilt, it's hard to turn our attention back to Jesus because we're so focused on our own sins. But that's exactly where we need to go. That's exactly where we find healing for our sins. For these sins too. But for all of our sins. We have a tendency, whether it's guilt and shame or pride, to be very introspective, especially when it comes to our own sins and our shortcomings.

And what we want to do, what we end up doing is exactly what Adam and Eve did in the garden when they sinned. They throw on makeshift clothes and hide away from God. They don't want to be found out. They don't want to go to Him. They don't want to run to Him. And when we sin, it's very much the same way. We feel the shame and the guilt. It's hard for us to turn our attention back to Jesus because we're so focused on our own sins. But that's where we need to go. That's where we find healing. Isaiah 53.5 says, by His wounds we are healed. Jesus' wounds are the only way we can be healed from our sin and shame. And it seems so counterintuitive because we've offended God. And Jesus is God. And so it seems really strange to go to the One who we've offended with our sin. It's counterintuitive. It doesn't make a lot of sense. But that's where God's Word tells us to go.

When you sin, you go to the cross. When we're grieved by our sins, we need to look to the cross. We need to remind ourselves the Gospel. Our sins should point us to the cross because that's where they're taken care of and paid for. I remember when I was in high school, I was writing with my pastor. I can't exactly remember what we were talking about. I think we were talking about regrets in his life. I don't know how we got on that topic. At some point, he's telling me about, we started talking about sin. I asked him a question about it. And he said, the thing about sin is that in some ways, I look back on my past sins and I'm thankful. And I was like 13 or 14. I was like, that seems really strange to me. Please explain. And he said, well, because my sins actually cause me to look back to the cross. My sins are what drive me there.

Because that's the only place for hope. That's the only place where I find salvation. That's the only place. The blood of Jesus, the shed blood of Jesus over my sins is all I've got. And so my sins point me back to Jesus. When we sin, that's where we need to go. We need to remember our Lord dying on that tree for our sins. And we need to cling to that. We need to cling to the cross and the mercy found there. Don't run from the cross. Don't hide your face from your Savior. He went to the cross willingly to save us. He's not someone that we want to turn and hide our face away from. Look to the cross when you sin. And then keep looking. Because it will help us fight our sin. When we consider how much it cost our Lord Jesus to save us from sin and its power, and the guilt of it, it should strengthen us to fight against our sin.

and to rest in Him. So look to the cross. Don't despise the cross or our Lord. Don't feel ashamed because the rest of the world thinks it's weak. Don't be afraid to share it because the rest of the world thinks it's weak. Let's not despise the cross or our Lord because the cross is offensive to the world or because it doesn't appeal to the world. Let's look to our Savior because He's the only hope of the forgiveness of our sins. His death, burial, and resurrection accomplishes the forgiveness of our sins and life everlasting. Let's pray.