Isaiah 53:4

Isaiah 53:4

Jesus Christ is the comforter we need, for

I. He is an afflictedMan, the most afflicted of all the human race, a Man of sorrows. If He wishes to sympathise He has only to recall the past. We cannot take a single step in our gloomy path without finding some traces of Him. We cannot light upon an affliction through which He has not passed before us. He knows what sorrow is, and this is why He can comfort. We have not a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

II. Jesus Christ has not only shared our sorrows, He has redeemed our sins.Observe, that He truly represents humanity, not merely because He is its ideal type, but also because He has entered into full communion with its sufferings and made Himself partaker of its destiny. He has thrown Himself into the midst of the battle-field; He has in some sort covered us with His body, and so the chastisement which we deserved has fallen on Him. It is precisely because He is the only man on earth who, as a representative of our race, endured a punishment which He did not deserve, and did not add a fresh sin to a fresh pain, that His suffering rises to the height of a redeeming sacrifice. This redemption was completed on the Cross. It would not have been enough for the Son of man to have been pierced with all the sorrows of humanity except the last. It would not have been enough for Him to have endured all the consequences of man's rebellion except the last. Death is the wages of sin, and the striking sign of God's condemnation resting on a guilty world. These wages have been received for us by Him who did not deserve them, because He freely made Himself a partaker of our misery in order to save us. Our comforter is the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world. In all our distresses, therefore, and in all our shipwrecks, there is but one shelter, and that is the Cross.

E. de Pressensé, The Mystery of Suffering,p. 16 (see also Pulpit Analyst,vol. iii., p. 205).

References: Isaiah 53:4. J. Baldwin Brown, The Divine Mysteries,p. 5; C. Clemance, To the Light Through* the Cross,p. 35.Isaiah 53:4; Isaiah 53:5. R. Tuck, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiv., p. 8. Isaiah 53:4. Homiletic Magazine,vol. x., p. 200. Isaiah 53:5. Bishop Moorhouse, The Expectation of the Christ,p. 63; Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Ecclesiastes to Malachi,p. 249; Ibid., Sermons,vol. xiv., No. 834, vol. xviii., No. 1068; Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 91; Pulpit Analyst,vol. i., p. 702.Isaiah 53:5; Isaiah 53:6. C. Clemance, To the Light Through the Cross,p. 46. Isaiah 53:6. A. Watson, Sermons for Sundays, Festivals, and Fasts,2nd series, vol. ii., p. 68; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xii., No. 694, vol. xvi., No. 925; Ibid., Evening by Evening,p. 94; W. Hay Aitken, Mission Sermons,vol. ii., p. 112; C. Clemance, To the Light Through the Cross,p. 195.