God’s Unspeakable Gift

God's Unspeakable Gift

(No. 2290)

INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, JANUARY 8, 1893.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable Gift." 2 Corinthians 9:15.

IF you will read, at home, the chapter from which our text is taken,
you will find that Paul was stirring up the Corinthians to an act of
liberality. He had boasted of what they would do, but he had just a
little fear that they might fall behind and not quite come up to what
he had promised on their behalf. He stirred them up to liberal giving,
telling them that they who sowed liberally, should reap liberally, and
they who sowed sparingly would reap sparingly. Once upon that theme of
giving, the Apostle could not help speaking of another gift. He saw a
track just off the main road and he felt that it led him straight away
to his God and to his Savior. And so, while the ink was yet flowing in
his pen, he began to write about it as though he would say, "I am not
thinking now, my Brethren, so much of your gifts as I am of another
gift–not so much of your gifts to the Lord's poor people as of the
Lord's great Gift to you–His poor people. "Thanks be unto God for His
unspeakable Gift."

A person, who was collecting for some good objective, called upon a
friend one day and, as he needed him to be very generous, pleaded hard
with him. After a while, he seemed to quit the subject altogether, and
he said, "I knew your father." "Did you?" "Yes, and I called upon him
about a certain business, just as I do upon you, and your father did
not need any prompting. He said, 'State the case,' and as soon as the
case was stated, he pulled out his purse and gave me ten times as much
as I had expected to obtain from him." You see, our friend was not
exactly pleading with the son when he told that story, and yet I do not
know how he could have pleaded better, for reverence for his father's
name and the desire not to seem to fall off from his father's standard,
were the very best arguments that could have been used with him!

So I admire the wisdom of Paul. When he would bring these Corinthians
up to a high standard of liberality towards their poor Brethren in
Judea, he says, as though it were only by the way, "Thanks be unto God,
your Father and my Father, for His unspeakable Gift. Whatever you give,
I can speak about, but what He gave surpasses all powers of speech!
Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable Gift."

Now, this text, tonight, gives me three things to speak of. The first
is, that Christ is a Gift. And, secondly, that as a Gift, Christ is
unspeakable. And, thirdly, that as a Gift unspeakable, Christ calls
forth praise to God from us.

I. First, then, CHRIST IS A GIFT.

How often you hear people speak about Christ and His salvation as
though they were the reward of merit–as though we did something by
which to win his Divine favor! If they do not teach that salvation
comes through our own merits, yet, according to them, it is the effect
of our feelings and our experiences. Somehow or other, according to
this common notion, we must get fit to receive God's Gift and thus,
what comes to us is more our due than an alms of heavenly charity! I
hesitate not to say that this teaching flies in the teeth of the entire
Word of God. Everywhere in the Scriptures the great word is not merit,
but GRACE–not deserving, but receiving freely of the great mercy of
our God!

Our Lord Jesus must be a Gift to us if we are ever to possess Him. He
could only come to us sons of men by way of a gift. Consider the
dignity of His Person for a minute and then ask how it is conceivable
that we could have deserved that such a Person as He should come here
and live and die, that we might be saved! I can conceive of a man
meriting this or that honor among his fellow men, but when I think of
the Prince of Life, the Lord of Glory equal with the Father, King of
Kings and Lord of Lords, very God of very God–and when I see Him
giving Himself up to die for men, my very blood boils at the thought
that we could ever have deserved that Sacrifice! One is indignant that
human pride should dare to go the length of even imagining that a life
of perfection could have deserved to be rewarded by the Gift of Christ!

No, my Brothers and Sisters, if we had kept God's Law without a flaw.
If there had been no omission of duty, no commission of sin and we
could have taken the compound merits of a perfect world and laid them
at the feet of God, they could not have deserved that Christ should
become Man–that Christ should live in poverty–that Christ should die
in shame for man! There would have been no need of Christ's death if
man had not sinned. But had there been a supposable need, Christ's
Sacrifice could not have been deserved even if we had remained
innocent, like our first parents in the Garden of Eden before the Fall!
I am sure that none of you could, for a minute, tolerate the thought
that any human merit could deserve the Incarnation of God upon this
earth, the coming of the Divine Son in our nature into this world and
His shameful death upon the Cross of Calvary.

But next, this will be very evident from the nature of the work for
which Christ was given. It is clear from the Scriptures that He was
given for the undeserving. He came into the world to save sinners. He
took upon Himself, not our righteousness, for there was none for Him to
take, but, as we read just now, "the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity
of us all." The prominent and paramount idea of Christ in the Scripture
is that of a Priest offering sacrifice–but the Priest is for men who
need atonement for their sins–the expiation, the sacrifice, the
sin-offering, is for guilty men. How could Christ die on the Cross for
deserving men? The idea is absurd! No bruises were required for those
who needed not to be healed. There needed to be no chastisement of
peace for those who deserved well of God. The very work of Christ in
dying, "the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God,"
implies that we were at a distance from God. It also implies our
injustice and, consequently, our total inability to deserve such a Gift
at God's hand. No, no–a Savior is for sinners–a dying Savior must be
for those who deserved to die! Christ does not come, therefore, to us
as deserving Him, but He is God's unspeakable Gift!

And let us think of the splendor of His Grace, the lavish wealth of
blessing which comes to us through Him. Know you not that as many of
you as have believed in Christ are made to live with an everlasting
life? There pulses in you, tonight, the life of eternity, the life of
Heaven! You have begun to live the life that shall last forever and
ever. Know you not that you have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit,
adopted into the family of God? You are the children of the Most High.
"Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we
should be called the sons of God." Did you deserve this? Could you
deserve this? Is it possible? Being adopted into the heavenly family,
you have been justified– made just in the sight of God! And now you
know that you are loved with an everlasting love, that you are
predestinated to glorify God here, by being conformed to the image of
His Son. And now you know that you are ordained by Divine decree to sit
upon a throne which He has prepared for you, and to reign with Him
forever and ever. Did you deserve this? Can it be conceived that
anything you have ever done could have been rewarded with such
extraordinary gifts as these?

A boy runs an errand for me, and I give him two pence, or, if I am
generous, I give him sixpence. But if I were to give him a thousand
pounds, he would not believe that it was a payment for his service–he
would not think that possible! He would feel that the reward was far
above anything that he had earned, that his service was quite unworthy
of so great a gift–and he would conclude that if that great sum of
money was really his, I must have given it to him out of pure
generosity. He would never dream that he had earned it, even supposing
that he had done his errand with all the diligence in the world! And no
child of God, however much he has served his Lord, ever thinks that he
deserves to be a child of God, that he deserves to be an heir of
Heaven, that he deserves to be a priest and a king, to live forever at
God's right hand in untold blessedness! Oh, no, all this must be a
gift–we could not have earned such a blessing as this!

You know that there are two things to make a gift–there cannot be a
gift without, first of all, one to give it, and then another to receive
it. Have you received Christ? It is essential, to make Him a Gift to
you, that you should accept Him. It is little enough that you should
take into your empty hands the priceless treasure that God bestows. It
is little enough that, like an empty cup, you should stand under the
flowing spring and let the crystal stream flow in. But it is necessary
in order to complete the Gift! I will not ask you to thank God for His
unspeakable Gift unless, God having given, you also have received! You
may receive Christ, oh, so freely! If salvation were to be bought–if
it were to be earned–woe would be unto you! But being a Gift, nothing
is more free! The poorest man in the world may accept a gift. A
trembling hand may receive a gift. He that is a thief and a robber,
yes, a murderer, doomed to die, may accept a gift, if it comes not of
merit, or by way of reward, but entirely of the generosity of the
bestower. Oh, what a glorious thing it is that you and I and all of us
may receive God's unspeakable Gift!

Once received and accepted, Christ is ours. If a man has made a gift to
me, I would not say anything that would hurt his feelings, but it is
not his any more. If he has given it to me, it is mine. A person once
handed over to me a house that was to belong to a certain part of the
work that I had to conduct, and if I had taken possession of that house
when it was given to me, it would have been mine. But I did not. The
person died and though I held the deeds and writings, yet the gift was
invalid by the law of mortmain. Had I taken possession when the house
was handed to me, it would have been mine, but as the case stood, it
was not mine. I must, if I had taken possession, have said to the
person giving the house, "You must get out of it, or you must pay me
rent, however nominal it may be, to acknowledge that this is really
mine, and that you have given it over to me." But I could not have
asked such a thing as that, or even dreamed of doing so and, therefore,
the gift was void, and the house was not mine for the Lord's cause.

Now, dear Friend, if you accept the Gift that God gives, remember that
it will be yours–Christ will be yours, eternal life will be yours! You
will have the title deeds of your inheritance! You will stand possessed
of it. But do not put that off till death, I pray you. No–take
possession, now, of that Christ whom God gives over to you to be His
Gift to you, and your possession forever!

And I will say one more thing. When once you receive this Gift, you
will never lose it, "for the gifts and calling of God are without
repentance," which means that God never regrets that He has given this
unspeakable Gift. He will never say, "You must let Me have that back."
If God has given you Christ, and you have accepted Him, He is yours
forever! And this is the glory of this Divine Gift! A possession that I
may lose is a very poor possession, after all. A suit at law may be
brought against me and I may lose what I thought was mine. I would not
like to have such a possession as that! I could not go to sleep at
night through fear that I should lose it. But if God has given me
Christ and I have taken Christ, He is mine! Death, nor Hell, nor
anything else, shall ever be able to separate the soul from Christ, or
Christ from the soul that has accepted Him. It was well spoken, "Christ
and a crust, yes. Christ and no crust would be better than all the
world without Him." Oh, give me Christ, and let me die, sooner than let
me live without Christ, for that cannot be truly called life which is
without Him who is "the Way, the Truth, and the Life."

I know that some of you have been straining after doing something or
being something in order to obtain God's unspeakable Gift. Will you
have it? Will you have it for nothing? Do not insult God by bringing
your poor wretched merits as the purchase-money for His free Gift of
Christ! Come just as you are and freely take what He freely gives–and
Christ is yours forever!

I was surprised, the other day, when I found that a poor soul in deep
despair had obtained comfort from a sermon of mine, not upon the
universal redemption of men, nor upon the free offer of salvation, but
the man had laid hold of the sharp angular points of a sermon upon the
Everlasting Covenant and upon the Doctrine of Election. When I heard of
it, I saw how God can give a soul comfort simply by the exhibition of
His Sovereign Grace. "It is not of him that wills, nor of him that
runs, but of God that shows mercy." O Soul, if you will have Christ as
a Gift, you may have Him tonight! You need not go home, first. You need
not wait a moment. But if you will not have Him as a Gift, you will
never have Him, for in no other way can Christ ever belong to you and
me, except as God's Gift which we, by His Grace, are led freely to
accept!

Thus much, and perhaps too much, considering our time, on the first
point, that Christ is a Gift, the free Gift of God's Grace.

II. Now, in the second place, let us consider the fact that, AS A GIFT,
CHRIST IS UNSPEAKABLE. "Thanks be

unto God for His unspeakable Gift," said the Apostle Paul–and so say
we. "Why," asks one, "do you speak about Him, then?" Well, principally
because He is unspeakable. By this time, after nearly 1900 years, if
the theme we have to preach about were speakable, we should have
exhausted it–but as it is unspeakable, a sea without a shore, an ocean
without a bottom–we will keep on preaching for another 1900 years, if
the Lord does not come–and we shall never get to the end of this
theme, I am quite sure!

I heard of a minister who explained to one of his hearers what a
trouble it was for him to get a sermon. "Oh," he said, "it takes me
days, and makes my head ache, and I do not know what to do." "Sir," his
friend replied, "if it is like that, I should think you must be near
the bottom of the tub." And I should think so, too. But when we come to
speak about Christ, we have an unspeakable subject! Here is a well
springing up that overflows and we can speak forever upon this
unspeakable theme!

How is it unspeakable? First, he who spoke best of Christ declared that
He was unspeakable. Do you know anybody who spoke better of Christ than
Paul did, Inspired as he was? What majestic sentences! What wonderful
paragraphs you come across in Paul's writing, where he piles up his
words, mountain upon mountain, in order to glorify Christ! If anybody
could have spoken Christ out from Alpha to Omega, and told all about
Him, Paul was the man! And though he did not give up the blessed task,
but lived and died at it, he declared that God's Gift was unspeakable,
and I am sure it is so.

Next, he who needs a Savior most, will tell you that Christ is God's
unspeakable Gift. You know that man. He sits down in the deep distress
of his soul, with his hand to his heavy head, but he cannot lay his
hand on his heavy heart. It would break his arm to try to hold that up!
Laden with guilt and full of fears, he says, "There is no salvation for
me but by Christ. Oh, that I could get Christ! Oh, that I could get
Christ! It would be an unspeakable blessing if I could but believe in
Christ." I know one who talked like this to his mother, the other
night. "Why, John," she said, "you look very miserable! You look as if
you had the whole world hanging on you." "Mother," he replied, "I could
better bear the whole world with Christ than live without Him." When a
man thus feels his need of Christ, he knows that Christ is God's
unspeakable Gift!

When you receive Christ, you will find that he who enjoys Him most
feels Him to be an unspeakable Gift. When we do not enjoy Christ much,
we can talk like parrots about His charms, but when we get our souls
full of Christ, generally we cannot talk at all about Him! The man who
feels that Christ is his, that he is saved, and that Christ has filled
him full of heavenly treasures and made him to possess all things–such
a man as that–when he begins to try to talk about Christ, gets choked
up. The tears are in his eyes. "Oh," he says, "let me go home, let me
get alone and sit down, and quietly think this subject out, for it is
altogether unspeakable." He who thinks that he could tell all that he
knows about Christ may also conclude that he does not know much, for he
who knows most of Him feels that He is God's unspeakable Gift.

And, Beloved, he who has used Christ most and used Him longest will
tell you this. At first, Christ is everything to the new-born soul in
one direction. By-and-by, He is everything in another direction and, in
the end, Christ is everything in every direction! Tell me, my
gray-headed Friend, what do you think of Christ? If you have known Him
50 years, at what is Christ best, Man? "Best?" you ask, "He is best at
everything!" And so, indeed, He is. And to what use do you put Christ,
my Brother, in the midst of the battle of life? Do you find Christ good
as a helmet, breastplate, shoes, or belt? "Oh," you say, "He is good as
a full armor. All I need, I find in Christ, yes, more than all." It
would be impossible to tell all the uses to which Christ is put. You
who have used Him most and longest will say, "He is unspeakably
precious to us, for He has been good to us in sickness and in health,
in poverty and in wealth, in joy and in depression. He is equally good
everywhere! Oh, that we might still go on to know more of Him, for as
God's great Gift to us He is unspeakable!"

Again, the preacher who has preached Him most fully knows that Christ
is unspeakable. Ah, dear Friends! I do not suppose that you can
understand the feeling that comes over me at times. I have sometimes
had glorious liberty in preach-ing–I have felt like Naphtali, a hind
let loose–and I have talked away of my Master to my own joy, and I
think to yours, too. And then, when I have been on my way home, I have
begun asking myself, "Now, how did you preach, after all?" And it has
seemed to me a poor, miserable affair. I have said so little in honor
of my Master compared with what I ought to have said, that I have felt
half inclined to come back here and begin again–only the thought has
often struck me–"You will do it worse if you go back, so that you had
better leave it alone as it is."

I know a man, an eminent painter, and a person sat for him 13 times for
his portrait–and the artist could not catch the sitter's expression. I
saw him throw his brush right into the middle of the painting and he
said, "I give it up! I cannot do it." That is how we sometimes feel
with regard to our Master. Who can paint Him as He ought to be painted?
We give it up! Go, Sir, and look at the sun, and then come back and
paint the sun upon your canvas! And then go and look at Christ, and
express Him by your speech. Nature, all nature together–

"To make His beauties known, Must mingle colors not her own." He who
preaches Christ most fully knows that He is unspeakable! You did well
to sing just now the verse that I often repeat to myself concerning my
own preaching–

"Vexed, I try and try again, Still my efforts all are vain! Living
tongues are dumb at best, We must die to speak of Christ."

I have come so far and reached my last point. I wish that we had more
time for such a glorious theme.

III. Now, thirdly, AS A GIFT UNSPEAKABLE, CHRIST CALLS FORTH PRAISE TO
GOD FROM US. "Thanks

be unto God for His unspeakable Gift."

The Gift of Christ makes us view God with thankfulness. Never fall into
the mistake that is often made by ignorant persons when they suppose
that our Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to make God loving. No,
no, no! Jesus Christ came into the world because God was loving and, in
love to us, gave His Son, Jesus Christ, to die for us–

"'Twas not to make Jehovah's love

Towards the sinner flame,

That Jesus, from His throne above,

A suffering Mian became.

'Twas not the death which He endured,

Nor all the pangs He bore,

That God's eternal love procured,

For God was Love before,"

and He so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son. God's
unspeakable Gift is not the cause of His love, but the fruit of His
love! Do not say, "Thanks be unto Christ for dying to placate the
Father." No, no! "Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable Gift." God
gave His Son–and we adore the Giver–and bless His name. Once we
thought of God with dread, but now that He has given us Jesus, we think
of Him with thankfulness. We are glad that there is a God. It is no
question with us whether there is a God or not! If there were no God,
it were eternal ruin to us! But because there is a God, there is Heaven
for us–no, our God is our Heaven, blessed be His name! Thus, we think
of God with thankfulness.

And notice, next, that we ought to express that thankfulness. The
Apostle says, "Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable Gift." But, Paul,
what brought you to that topic? You were talking to these Corinthians
about giving, not grudgingly, as of necessity, and so on. What brought
you to the subject of God's unspeakable Gift? Paul answers, "It is
impossible to say what brought me to this topic, for I am always at it.
Whatever I am talking about, whatever business I have on hand, I am
always thanking God for His unspeakable Gift." The Apostle broke out
into that burst of praise because he could not help it! His soul was
swelling with intense gratitude and he was obliged to cry out, "Thanks
be unto God for His unspeakable Gift."

Dear Friends, praising God is never out of season and never out of
place. You know that some of us who profess to be Christians are the
most orderly and proper people in all the world–that is to say, we
never intrude our religion upon other people. We can see a man for 20
years and yet never say a word to him about Christ. We do not have
those dreadful people crying out, "Hallelujah," in the service, do we?
We are so dreadfully proper! Besides that, we are dreadfully cold as
well. Perhaps we should speak about Christ very imprudently and do some
very rash things if we loved Him better, but we love Him so little that
we become wonderfully prudent and wonderfully proper–and we and the
world jog on together as if there were no difference between us! If a
man does roll out an oath, now and then, we are very sorry, but we
never rebuke him. Of course not! Ah, well, I wish that we could be at
least as rash as one old man who was employed at a wharf unloading. He
was weakly and sickly, and so they gave him less pay than others
received, and he was quite content. But there was a stevedore who, one
morning, swore at him, and the old man bowed his head and said nothing.
The blasphemer swore, again, and the old man bowed his head again. At
last the swearer said, "You old fool, what are you bowing to me for?"
The good man replied, "I was not bowing to you, but you named the name
of God, and I thought that I would pay Him reverence even if you did
not." Well done, old man! Well done, old man! May every Christian here
find some way of thanking God for His unspeakable Gift! The more the
world curses, the more let us bless! We are to express our thanks as
well as to feel grateful.

Our expression of thankfulness for God's unspeakable Gift would make
ourselves all the surer that Christ is ours. A man who has received a
gift and never looks at it, and never thanks the giver, will come, by
degrees, to forget that he has it, or to forget the giver, and to
forget how he came by it. Cultivate a grateful spirit when you think of
what a Gift you have in Christ! Praise the Lord for Christ! Then you
will need to praise Him, again, and when you have praised Him again,
you will need to praise Him yet again–and the more you praise Him–the
more sure you will be that He is really yours! Suppose that a man has a
garden and that he knows it is his? He is quite sure it is his. And
suppose that for 20 years he has always gathered all the fruit of the
garden and lived upon it. Then nobody can question his right–he has

the right of possession, the right of enjoyment. He received his garden
as a gift and for the last 20 years he has thanked the giver of it. I
am sure that his title is clear enough. Oh, how some of you would clear
your titles if you praised God more! Your very praising and blessing
Him would be a re-examination of your title deeds–and your confidence
would grow to full assurance. You would not only know that you had
received God's unspeakable Gift, but you would also know why you had
received it!

Lastly, we are to wish for the spread of such thankfulness. If we are
in the right frame of mind, we shall not only, ourselves, say, "Thanks
be unto God for His unspeakable Gift," but we shall mean what Paul
meant–let everybody else who has received this unspeakable Gift praise
God for it! Brothers, let us thank God! Sisters, let us praise the
Lord! I remember being at a Primitive Methodist meeting where they sang
a hymn beginning–

"Come, soldiers, can't you rise and tell

The wonders of Immanuel?

Yes, bless the Lord, we can rise and tell,

The wonders of Immanuel." There was a very lively chorus to the hymn
and those Methodists did sing it, too! It ran like this–

"All glory to the Lamb of God,

Who purchased us with atoning blood!

We soon shallpass over Jordan's flood,

And join the saved in Glory!"

I learned a lesson in praise, the other morning. I think it was a
little after five o'clock, when I was just waking, I heard a blackbird
come and chirp a note or two close by my window. After a minute or two,
a thrush also began to sing, And when the two together became fairly
awake, they were not satisfied until they had aroused all the
chaffinches, and goldfinches, and sparrows! So they chirped away and
sang on until they awoke every bird near my house! What an oratorio of
praise the bird musicians gave forth! They never had to look to their
paper to see whether they kept to the score, but each one did keep to
the score, and they rose higher and higher and higher in their exultant
songs to the God of day who had chased the night away and given them
light, once more, in the morning!

Now I am the blackbird that would start the praise tonight. There are
birds of all sorts here, of different colors, and varying plumages, and
able to sing all manner of notes. Let us join together to give the Lord
an evening song as those birds gave Him a morning song–and let this be
the keynote–"Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable Gift!" Before I
dismiss those who are not going to remain for the Communion, let us all
sing–

"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,

Praise Him, all creatures here below!

Praise Him above, you heavenly host,

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON. ISAIAH53.

Mr. Moody was once asked whether his creed was in print. In his own
prompt way, he replied, "Yes, Sir. You will find it in the 53rd Chapter
of Isaiah." A condensed Bible is in this chapter. You have the whole
Gospel here.

Verse 1. Who has believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the
LORD revealed? Nobody ever does believe either Prophets or preachers
except through the work of God's Spirit and Grace. The Lord's arm must
be revealed, or else His Truth proclaimed by His servants will never be
accepted. All the Prophets speak in these words of Isaiah, as if they
all stood together, and lifted up this wail, "Who has believed our
report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?"

2. For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out
of a dry ground: He has no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see
Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. This is Israel's
King, the long-promised Messiah! Yet when He comes to Bethlehem, see
what "a tender plant" He is! Look at the house of David, almost
extinct, and see what "a root out of a dry ground" is–

"The stem of Jesse's rod."

When Jesus comes before the sons of men, dressed in the garb of a
peasant, a poor Man, a sorrowful Man, a Man who had not where to lay
His head, notice how men say, by their actions, if not in words, "There
is no beauty that we should desire Him."

3. He is despised and rejected of men; a Man of Sorrows, and acquainted
with grief: and we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was
despised, and we esteemed Him not. We rightly sing–

"Rejected and despised of men,

Behold a Man of woe!

And grief His close companion still

Through all His life below!

We held Him as condemned of Hea ven, An outcast from His God,

While for our sins He groaned, He bled, Beneath His Fathers rod."

His own people, yes, His own chosen ones, turned away from Him! And you
and I did so till God's Grace changed our hearts and opened our eyes!
But why was He "despised and rejected of men; a Man of Sorrows, and
acquainted with grief"? Why was the Prince of Israel such a suffering
Man? He had no sin for which to be chastened. There was no evil in His
Nature that needed to be fetched out with the rod of correction. Oh,
no! The answer is very different–

4, 5. Surely He has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we
did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But 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. What a joyous note there is in that sorrowful line, "With His
stripes we are healed"! Glory be to God, we are healed of our
soul-sickness, cured of the disease of sin by this strange surgery, not
by stripes upon ourselves, but by stripes upon our Lord!

6. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, everyone, to his
own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. The
general sin of the race, the special sin of the individual–all
gathered, heap upon heap, mountain upon mountain–and laid by God on
Christ! We sometimes sing–

"I lay my sins on Jesus, The spotless Lamb of God. He bears them all
and frees us From the accursed load. I bring my guilt to Jesus, To wash
my crimson stains White in His blood most precious, Till not a spot
remains,"

and I will find no fault with that hymn. But the real laying of sin
upon Jesus was effected by God, Himself–"The Lord has laid on Him the
iniquity of us all."

7. He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth:
He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her
shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth. He never pleaded for
Himself. At the earthly judgment seat, He said not a word for Himself,
so that even Pilate "marveled greatly." Oh, the eloquence of that
silence! Truly it was golden! Omnipotence restrained Omnipotence!
Christ held Himself in as with bit and bridle. "As a sheep before her
shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth."

8. 9. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare
His generation? for He was cut off out of the land of the living: for
the transgression of My people was He stricken. And He made His grave
with the wicked, and with the rich in His death; because He had done no
violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth. Therefore He was allowed
to be buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathaea. He was no felon,
whose body must be cast out to the kites and jackals, but "He made His
grave with the wicked, and with the rich in His death; because He had
done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth."

10. Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief:
when You shall make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His
seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall
prosper in His hand. Wicked men slew our Lord, and their crime was the
blackest in the world's history, but, unconsciously, they were carrying
out "the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God." "It pleased the
Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief." Christ died

for others, but He lives, again, and through Him a godly seed shall
live forever and ever–"When You shall make His soul an offering for
sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure
of the Lord shall prosper in His hand." He is made to prosper because
He died.

11. He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied.
His death pangs were birth pangs–"the travail of His soul." He sees
the multitude that shall be born through His death, and He is content.

11. By His knowledge shall My righteous Servant justify many. Dear
Hearer, will He justify you? Do you know Him? If you know Him so as to
trust Him, He has justified you–you are a justified man tonight!
"Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ." "By His knowledge shall My righteous Servant justify
many."

11. For He shall bear their iniquities. They kick against this doctrine
nowadays. They cannot bear it, yet it is the very marrow of the
Gospel–Christ bearing sin that was not His own, that we might be
covered with a righteousness which is not our own, but comes from Him!
Paul, by the Spirit, put this great Truth of God thus, "For He has made
Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the
righteousness of God in Him."

12. Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall
divide the spoil with the strong; because He has poured out His soul
unto death: and He was numbered with the transgressors; and He bore the
sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. Thanks be
unto God for this great Sacrifice!