Why Did Jesus Have to Die? - Isaiah 53

Garrison Keillor has written about the Thanksgiving dinners of his childhood. The family would gather and go around the table naming the blessings of the past year, and then somebody would ask Uncle John to pray. And when Uncle John began to pray, everybody started to squirm — because they all knew that sooner or later he would have to mention the cross of Christ, and when he did, he would start to cry. And sure enough, he would. Every year. Keillor's line about it is the one worth keeping. Everyone at that table knew perfectly well that Jesus had died on the cross for them too. Uncle John had simply never gotten over it. That is what a Good Friday service is for. Not to weigh you down, not to make anybody feel guilty — only to keep us from ever getting over the cross. From ever arriving at yes, but that was two thousand years ago. Yes, but that would not happen today. Yes, but what has that to do with me? Today's verse divides the world by exactly this. To those who are perishing the cross is folly. To us who are being saved it is the power of God. There is no third category where it is simply familiar. So be honest about which way the drift has gone. Not whether you believe it — whether it still moves you. When did the cross last make you squirm, or go quiet, or cry? If you cannot remember, that is not a verdict on you. It is an invitation to go back and look again.

There are at least forty-eight major messianic prophecies in the Old Testament, and this is the clearest of them. Isaiah 53 was written down somewhere between six hundred and fifty and seven hundred years before Jesus was born. Hold on to that number, because of this line: he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. Crucifixion would not be invented for another hundred and fifty years after Isaiah set those words down. He is describing the scourge and the cross — the specific, inhuman cruelty of a Roman execution — centuries before Rome thought of it. The whole book has been climbing toward this song of the suffering servant. His humiliation and his exaltation. His sacrifice and our salvation. His pain and our peace. And then the line that puts you in the passage: all we like sheep have gone astray; each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Sheep are not the rocket scientists of the animal kingdom. Kent's people were farmers, and he will tell you that you get dumber standing near them. So when Scripture calls us the sheep of his pasture, part of him thinks: Lord, could we not upgrade slightly? German shepherds, perhaps? But it is the right word. Wandering off from the shepherd is not merely wayward and not merely rebellious. It is stupid, because away from him you are defenceless and everything that hunts you knows it. Where have you turned to your own way lately? Say it as the verse says it — each of us, and then you.

To understand what happened on that Friday you have to know about the Day of Atonement. Read the whole of Leviticus 16 today if you can. Israel does not have a temple yet, only the tabernacle — a great tent that travels with them through the wilderness. Inside it is an inner sanctum, the holy of holies, holding the Ark of the Covenant with the mercy seat on top, where God meets his people. Nobody goes in there. Ever. On pain of death. Except one man, one day a year: the high priest, on Yom Kippur. He brings in two goats. Over the first he symbolically transfers the sins of the people, and then that goat is killed and its blood poured out on the altar as payment. Theologians call that propitiation. Then he lays his hands on the head of the second goat — today's verses — transfers the sins of the people onto it, and drives it out. Outside the walls, outside the camp, into the wilderness, carrying their sins away. The Hebrew is azazel. We translate it scapegoat, and that is where our word comes from. That one is called expiation. One pays. One carries it away. You need both, because guilt has two problems: a debt, and a stain. And then the whole thing has to be done again next year. And the year after that. Every year, forever. Until Good Friday. What are you still carrying that was already carried out of the camp? Name it, and then stop going back into the wilderness to look for it.

Jesus sheds his own blood as payment for the sins of his people. And notice where they take him to do it. Golgotha. Outside the walls. Outside the camp. Today's verse makes the connection explicit, and once you see it you cannot unsee it: the bodies of the animals whose blood is brought into the holy places are burned outside the camp — so Jesus also suffered outside the gate, to sanctify the people through his own blood. He is our sacrifice and he is our scapegoat. He is our Day of Atonement, on a Friday that also happens to be Passover. It all converges on one man from Nazareth. He does not merely carry our sin. He becomes it. And understand: he did not have to stay. At that mockery of a trial the witnesses could not get their stories straight. Had he simply said none of this is true and they cannot prove it, the Sanhedrin would have had to release him. Pilate asked him directly whether he had anything to say in his own defence, and he said nothing. He is fully God and fully man, and do not kid yourself about the man. He must have been sorely tempted to say enough — I will not suffer any more for these people. He was not tricked into the cross. He drank the cup his Father poured. Which means the cross is not something that happened to him. It is something he did, on purpose, for named people, and you are one of them. Sit with that for one minute today without moving on to anything else.

Alan Walker, an Australian pastor, was driving home through the rolling hills one afternoon when he noticed a hawk circling. Around the next bend he saw a flock of sheep, and one small one out on its own, and then the hawk dropping. He pulled the car onto the verge, ran out, and got the hawk off. When he turned the sheep over, she was dead. Underneath her was a newborn lamb. Alive. Sheltered by her body, covered in her blood, because she had given her life so that it could live. Today's verse is one sentence: I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Read it beside the hired hand two verses later, who sees the wolf coming and runs, because the sheep are not his. The difference is not courage. It is ownership. He stays because they are his. We are sheltered by a broken body. We are covered by his blood. He gave his life so that we might live. And here is where the week has been going. By ourselves, scattered and lost. In him, found and gathered — because the same passage that says all we like sheep have gone astray also says the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all. Both halves are about the same sheep. So do not spend today trying to feel worthy of that. The lamb under its mother did nothing but be there. Go and live like somebody who has not gotten over it.