Sermon for the Funeral of Bart Rieck: The Savior Who Suffers for Our Sins
"He was despised and
rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from
whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely He
has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions; He
was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us
peace, and with His wounds we are healed. 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” (Isaiah 53:3–6).
Cindy, Erica, Chris, Craig, Nick, other family
members and friends of Bart:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ!
Well, it appears that death
has kept its perfect record intact. God had warned the first man and woman to
not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “for in the
day that you eat of it, you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17). But the man and
woman disobeyed, and ever since that fateful day thousands of years ago no human
being has escaped death.
St. Paul tells us in Romans
5:12, “Sin came into the world through one man (Adam), and death through sin,
and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” He adds later, “The wages
of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), and after a valiant fight with cancer and other
health issues, Bart, your loving husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather,
neighbor, or friend is another casualty. For Bart was a sinner, just like you
and me.
But God, in His mercy
and grace, has not left us in our sin. God so loved the world that He gave His
only-begotten Son, that whoever believe in Him shall not perish but have
eternal life. God send a Savior to Bart, to you, me, and the whole world—the Servant
of the Lord, Jesus Christ.
In confessing, “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” (Isaiah 53:6), Isaiah calls us to
consider who we were in connection with this Servant of the Lord. By nature, we
all are like straying sheep, unconcerned about their Shepherd. By nature, we
are unaware of the great events that took place and oblivious to the blessings
won for us by the Servant. We wander, each one absorbed in his own way, busy
with our families, work, hobbies, sports.
What a tragic picture
of human life! People are often so absorbed with themselves, their problems,
their joys, and their struggles that they have no time to think about anyone or
anything else. Our contemporary world seems to want to keep busy doing things
so that it doesn’t have to stop to think about God, death, and sin. Satan has
bewitched so many to remain in a state of denial about the real issues of our
relationships with God. Our sinful nature becomes his willing ally. We—and I am
included by virtue of my own sinful flesh—just don’t have time for all this
religious stuff, and, if we do, the concept of grace robs us of our
self-righteousness, so we reject it. The preaching of the cross is still
foolishness and a stumbling block. We remain creatures of the law, seeking to
earn the notice and favor of God by our good thoughts, intentions, and actions.
Yet God did not leave
us to wander aimlessly through this life. He acted to help us. He could have
given up on us. He should have. But He did not. We did not deserve God’s
persistence to save us. But He persisted despite our human penchant for wandering
and self-absorption. And He kept seeking us to save us.
While all humans were
wandering about concerned with their own affairs, the Lord intervened and took
care of everything. He acted. The Lord caused these blows we deserved to fall
upon His Servant. These words are a final exclamation point. They add one significant
thought: the sins God placed upon His Servant were the sins of all of us.
Isaiah characterized
the life of Jesus on earth very well. He was a man of sorrows and familiar with
suffering. He was filled with compassion at the pain, sickness, and sorrow He
saw during His ministry. He shed tears at the death of Lazarus. But more than
that, He Himself, in His own person, experienced all that sin brought into the
world. The next verses explain this.
“Surely He has borne
our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by
God, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed
for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and
with His wounds we are healed. 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” (Isaiah 53:4-6).
Isaiah asserts the
vicarious suffering of the Servant of the Lord in these verses. They are among
the most treasured words of the Scriptures. Meditate on these words of Isaiah.
Let them fill your soul so that you may share the wonders of God’s grace and
fill the souls of others. Without this message of Christ’s death for us and His
resurrection, we have nothing to offer people except the hollow hopes of human
aspiration. But this is God’s Word, His message of comfort and triumph,
intended not for Himself but for all sinners of all times.
Part of the value of
these verses lies in the contrast between the Lord’s Servant and the people—between
Him and us. The fourth verse begins with the adverb surely, which points
to a strong contrast. In the previous verse, Isaiah had written that the Servant
was a man of sorrows who knew pain. Now the prophet takes us down an unexpected
path. The Servant’s pain and suffering are not His own but ours. He carried our
sorrows, your sorrows. The word surely comes first in this
verse and becomes an emphatic signpost marking the important lesson of these verses.
What belonged to us became the Servant’s, and He carried it all to the cross, where
He paid for our debt of sin with His holy, precious blood, His bitter suffering
and death.
Jesus did not do this
for His own sins. He had none. He is holy, righteous, sinless. He did nothing to
deserve such harsh treatment from God. 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.
In the last few days of
Bart’s life, we met up in his hospital room, sharing Scripture and God’s
promises of forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life in Christ. We also prayed
for patience and hope, as well as for healing according to the heavenly Father’s
gracious will. The evidence might suggest that God’s answer was no or that our
prayers for healing were in vain.
But God’s Word tells us
different. In His resurrection, Christ has conquered death, disease, and all
the consequences of sin. The perfect record of death has been broken. And Scripture
tells us that “Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those
who have fallen asleep. … For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all
be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:20-22).
As Christians, we pray
knowing that God will indeed grant healing, not always in this life; but most
certainly in the resurrection, when Christ will return to raise Bart, you, me,
and all who have died in faith in Him to life—body and soul—free from every affliction,
infirmity, and sin and take us to live with Him forever in His Kingdom that has
no end.
This is the hope that
sustains us even during great sorrow and as we grieve our losses. For Christ’s
sake, there is a much brighter future ahead for all of God’s children. St. John
pictures the new heaven and new earth, where the dwelling place of God is with
man. Where we will be His people, and God Himself will be with us as our God.
When He will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and death shall be no more,
neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former
things will have passed away. Amen
The peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture
quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001
by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by
permission. All rights reserved.
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