Our sermon this evening is based upon Isaiah 53:8 which you heard read just a few minutes ago. But during these next minutes we are going to be referring to a more literal translation of the original Hebrew text, which reads as follows: “He was taken away by oppression and without justice. Who would have considered His descendants? For He was cut off from the land of the living; because of the transgression of My people He was stricken.”
“Is there no justice in the world?” How often have you heard someone ask that question? We hear stories of criminals who are obviously are guilty but get off on some technicality and go free – only to injure or sometimes even murder more victims. In large cities, victims of crime may scream for help, but their cries are ignored by those who don’t want to get involved. In the business world, those who bend the rules and step on those beneath them often do come out on top; nice guys may finish last. Is there no justice?
Why doesn’t God do something? Why doesn’t God come down from heaven and punish the wicked? That’s what He did with the flood – in Genesis chapter 6 we read that “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth” – and He sent the flood to destroy all but Noah, his sons, and their wives. Many years later He saw the great evil of Sodom and Gomorrah and destroyed those cities and the sinful people who lived there.
So why doesn’t God carry out His justice today? Why doesn’t God do something? Some people see all the evil in this world and they conclude that “There must not be a God” or “God must not be good” or “God must not care about us,” and three years ago Brooks and Dunn had a hit song entitled “God Must be Busy.” Some years ago a bestselling book suggested that God is nothing more than an impotent wimp – that God is simply not powerful enough to stop evil. Is there no justice in this world?
If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we may be part of the problem of injustice. We may be the ones who go unpunished when we speed on the highway or fudge on our taxes. We may be the ones who turn a deaf ear to others who are in need of or ask for help. We may be the ones who step on others as we rush to climb to the top of the heap. We may be the ones who don’t want to get involved. If God would completely eliminate injustice, we would have to go.
But God wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For now – and we certainly don’t know for how long – God continues to let the world go on, postponing the Day of Judgment so that more can be brought to faith in Christ Jesus. For the time being God tolerates humanity’s injustice and grants time for people to turn from their and our unjust ways. Judgment Day will come and injustice will be no more. Each person will be either in heaven, forever worshiping the Lord, or in hell, with what Isaiah describes as a “worm that shall not die” and a fire that “shall not be quenched.”
Yet God has not simply sat silently and watched while people suffer one injustice after another. God has in fact done something—something amazing, something wonderful. God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer the greatest injustice the world has ever seen.
As we have studied Isaiah’s “suffering servant song” during these Lenten weeks, we have seen that Jesus Christ never rebelled nor deviated from His Father’s plan. He committed no violence, nor did any deceit ever come from His mouth. Jesus humbled Himself as the silent Lamb of God, led to the slaughter. He was spotless, without sin or blemish of any kind.
Yet as Isaiah writes: “He was taken away by oppression and without justice.” As Jesus prostrated Himself in prayer in Gethsemane, an angry mob came with swords and clubs to arrest Him. He had never used force to coerce anyone to accompany Him. But now the mob tied him up and forced Him to come with them. Jesus could have blown them all away with a word, but He told Peter to put his sword away. Jesus surrendered without a fight in order to fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy.
Our Lord was deprived of justice. In today’s legal terminology, we would say that He was denied due process of law. He endured hurried, makeshift trials before the high priest and the Jewish council, before Pilate, before Herod, and then back to Pilate. According to ancient Jewish laws, these trials were unjust for many reasons: Jesus was tried at night, before the Passover, and in a private home instead of a court of law, and the verdict was reached prematurely. Even the false testimony of the false witnesses against Jesus did not agree. Pilate and Herod together acquitted Jesus a total of five times.
The sham trials of Jesus Christ were a travesty, an absolute miscarriage of justice. Yet the greatest injustice was this: the Innocent One voluntarily suffered for the sin of us and all humanity. He was stricken because of our transgression. He suffered the due penalty for all the injustice we have ever done. He was pierced for our transgression and crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brings us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed. The Lord laid on Him the sin of us all. As St. Paul writes in his second letter to the Corinthians, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
In this way, God carried out His own form of justice: the justification of sinful humanity. The wages of sin is death, but by the grace of God, it was Jesus Christ who endured that death in our place. He was cut off from the land of the living so that we may have everlasting life in His name. His condemnation is our pardon; His judgment is our acquittal.
Isaiah writes: “He was taken away by oppression and without justice. Who would have considered His descendants. At the time of Christ’s death, probably no one imagined that He would have any future, or any future followers. Christ’s enemies thought that He would be quickly forgotten, that His disciples would disband. After all, who would want to risk suffering the same kind of unjust fate as Jesus did?
But Christ rose from the dead. His disciples rejoiced and spread the good news. Pentecost came, and on one day three thousand were baptized into Christ, receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. The communion of those baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection has grown astonishingly ever since. Today Christ has millions of descendants—not biological, but spiritual – those who are begotten by water and the Spirit, given new life by the Word and Sacraments. Only God knows the full number.
So now when we confront injustice, we need not despair. God has done something about it. We take refuge in the perfect love of God’s justice that condemned the innocent Christ for all our sins so that we might be justified—that we might be declared righteous – and be His descendants, heirs of life eternal. So is there justice in this world? Thanks be to God the answer is – yes!
Note: This sermon was freely adapted from a sermon series entitled “Our Suffering Servant” (Christopher W. Mitchell, published by Concordia Publishing House).
Return to Pastor page
