The Weight of Sorrow and Sin | Isaiah 53:4-6

Jesus8Isaiah prophesied roughly 700 before Jesus’ life that he would be rejected (Isaiah 53:2-3). Looking back some 2,000 years after Jesus’ life we know that this rejection culminated in his crucifixion. The following sermon, preached in a darkened sanctuary on Good Friday, is a meditation on Isaiah 53:4-6, which explains what Jesus accomplished on that cross.

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.

SorrowThere is an accumulated weight of sorrow and sin.

Humanity, both as a whole and as individuals, must deal with this weight. With every second spent living for some other purpose than worshipping the one true God, the burden grows heavier. With every selfish action, the load grows larger. The guilt, shame, regret, consequences, isolation, alienation, pain, bitterness and fear grow like cancerous tumors on our lives.

As humanity sags under the weight of sorrow and sin that it has brought upon itself, good news rings out from the pages of Isaiah: “A Savior is coming who will bare our griefs and carry our sorrows! He will be wounded and crushed in order to bring us peace!”

Jesus bore the weight of humanity’s sorrow and sin on the cross.

In these verses, Isaiah says that Jesus:

  1. Bore our griefs
  2. Carried our sorrows
  3. Was pierced for our transgressions
  4. Was crushed for our iniquities
  5. Received the chastisement that brought us peace
  6. Healed us via his wounds
  7. Received the iniquity of us all.

Don’t carry the weight of sorrow and sin any longer.

You may feel a tugging in your heart to give your sorrow and sin to Jesus, trusting him as your Savior and following him as your Lord. If so, I urge you to pray, asking God to take your sorrow and sin away from you and place your trust and allegiance in Jesus Christ.

On the other hand, you may be so familiar with this news that your ears are dull of hearing. If so, I urge you to consider Jesus afresh, because even Christians can forget that Jesus bore all our sorrows and sins on the cross and can begin to attempt to carry them again. This is like my kids trying to help me move something heavy. They press up on the object with all their might and think they are accomplishing something, not realizing that I’m bearing the full weight until they let go and see that it doesn’t fall on them.

This reminds me of a passage in Les Miserables in which little Cosette is commanded to fetch a bucket of water from a stream on a cold winter night.

She grasped the handle with both hands. She could hardly lift it.

She went a dozen steps this way, but the bucket was full, it was heavy, she had to rest it on the ground. She caught her breath an instant, then grasped the handle again, and walked on, this time a little longer. But she had to stop again. After resting a few seconds, she started on. She walked bending forward, her head down, like an old woman; the weight of the bucket strained and stiffened her thin arms. The iron handle was numbing and freezing her little wet hands; from time to time she had to stop, and every time she stopped, the cold water that sloshed out of the bucket splashed onto her bare knees. This took place in the depth of the woods, at night, in the winter, far from all human sight; she was a child of eight. At that moment only the Eternal Father saw this sad thing…

Her breath came as a kind of painful gasp; sobs choked her, but she did not dare weep, so great was her fear of [her foster parents], even at a distance. She always imagined [them] nearby.

However, she could not make much headway this way and was moving along very slowly. As hard as she tried to shorten her resting spells, and to walk as far as possible between them, she anxiously realized that it would take her more than an hour to return… at this rate, and that [her foster parents] would beat her. This anguish added to her dismay at being alone in the woods at night. She was worn out and was not yet out of the forest. Reaching an old chestnut tree she knew, she made one last halt, longer than the others, to rest up well, then she gathered all her strength, took up the bucket again, and began to walk on courageously. Meanwhile the poor little despairing thing could not help crying: “Oh my God! Oh God!”

At that moment she suddenly felt that the weight of the bucket was gone. A hand, which seemed enormous to her, had just caught the handle, and was carrying it easily. She looked up. A large dark form, straight and erect, was walking beside her in the darkness. A man who had come up behind her in the darkness. This man, without saying a word, had grasped the handle of the bucket she was carrying.

There are instincts for all the crises of life.

The child was not afraid.

Do you feel like Cosette? How long have you been dragging that guilt? How long have you been pressed down by that shame? How long have you been haunted by regret? How tangled is your life in the consequences of your sin? How long have you lived in lonely isolation because of those secrets? How long have you nursed that pain and bitterness? How long have you hidden in fear?

No longer must you heave and pull the weight of your sorrow and sin. Jesus Christ has done it for you on the cross. Give it over to him. Trust him. Follow him.

   
 
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