It pleased the LORD to bruise Him

Sermon for Good Friday

Isaiah 52:13-53:12  +  John 18-19

Of all the verses of Scripture that we’ve heard today, of all the injustice and hatred and pain that Jesus endured from His friends, from the Jewish leaders, from Pilate and his soldiers, from His own countrymen who called for His crucifixion, there’s a phrase that’s almost beyond the comprehension of man: It pleased the Lord to bruise Him.

Someone who didn’t know any better would think God cruel for such a statement. It pleased the Lord to bruise Him. That phrase sounds so uncharacteristic of God. How can the same God who says in Ezekiel that He “takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked” be pleased—take pleasure—in the bruising and in the death by crucifixion of His own perfectly innocent Son? What did Jesus ever do to cause His Father to be pleased to bruise Him?

The people there on Good Friday assumed it was Jesus who made God angry. Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. The people looked on, Pilate looked on, the scribes and Pharisees looked on and thought, Now there’s a man who’s cursed by God. There is a man whom God must hate. Look at how God has abandoned Him! Look at how God allows Him to suffer! It looked like God was punishing Jesus for some terrible thing Jesus had done, for the wicked life Jesus had lived.

But you know better. You know it’s not what Jesus did. It’s what you did, what everyone has done. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

And He was pleased to do it. The Father was pleased to bruise the Son for our iniquities, and the Son was pleased to be bruised by the Father’s will. As we heard on Monday, Jesus had a choice. He chose to have the iniquity of us all laid on Him. It pleased Him to be bruised.

That’s a lot of iniquity, a lot of sin. The sin of all men, of all times. Laid on Him. Every sin against God’s Holy Ten Commandments. Sins of failing to fear, love and trust in God above all things. Sins against our neighbor. Sins of omission and of commission. Big sins and little sins. Even the very sins that were committed against Him on Good Friday. Laid on Jesus, who stood before the court and was condemned for them all. God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. And it pleased Him to do it, because more than it pleased God to spare His Son from the cross, it pleased God to provide a way for the unrighteous to be found righteous in His heavenly court, for the unjust to be justified. Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.

That was the Lord’s goal and purpose of Good Friday. Yes, it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. He has put Him to grief. But the verse continues: When You 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. The “pleasure” of the Lord is a play on words. In Hebrew it’s the same word as “it pleased” the Lord. So even though it pleased the Lord to bruise Him, the pleasure of the Lord would prosper in Christ’s hand, because the Christ would not be abandoned to the grave. He would rise, and He would have “seed,” spiritual offspring, people who would be born again of water and the Spirit, followers, believers, brothers, children of God, a Holy Christian Church—all because it pleased the Lord to bruise Him.

What pleases the Lord now is for sinners to take refuge in the labor of Christ, to behold His sacrifice and to use it— to use it by being baptized into it, to use it by holding it up in God’s courtroom as the one and only reason why God will be merciful to you and allow you, a sinner, into His kingdom, to use it when the devil accuses, to use it as the reason why you will follow this Christ from now until your dying day. Because it pleased the Lord to bruise Him, so that by His stripes you may be healed. Amen.