TEXT: Isaiah 53:3

SUBJECT: Attributes of Christ #8: Sorrow

God wanted His people to recognize the Messiah. To help them do it, He gave them the Old Testament Scriptures that told them what the Messiah would do and the kind of man He would be.

If they saw great works done in God’s name, you were to look carefully at the man doing them. If his character was doubtful, He was not the Messiah—his were lying signs and wonders.

But if His character matched His works, then the people would know their King had come—come at last to redeem them from their sin and misery.

The Old Testament sketches the character of Messiah—and does it with very fine detail. Some of His qualities were expected: Of course the Messiah would be wise and brave and just. What kind of King would He be if He weren’t? A cowardly king, a foolish king, and crooked king is not God’s King—not the Son He would set on Mount Zion and to whom He would give all the nations! These traits were expected of Him.

But others weren’t. And on the list of unexpected qualities, none is more surprising than the one foreseen in Isaiah 53:3.

The Messiah—God’s Son and the Israel’s long expected King—would be…"A Man of sorrows". This is one of our Lord’s most striking attributes: His sorrow. And this is the one we’ll think about today at the Lord’s table.

When we think of the attributes of God, the things that first come to mind are holiness, sovereignty, justice, love, and so on. These are rightly said of Him, of course. But one that is not thought of very often is happiness. When did it last occur to you that God is happy—infinitely, eternally, and unchangeably happy!

The Bible says so. I Timothy 1:11 calls Him "The blessed God"—and "blessed" means happy. How can He not be happy? What fault is there in Him to interrupt or reduce His happiness?

What’s said of God the Father applies equally to His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Near the end of I Timothy, Paul names Him "The blessed and only Potentate"—that is, the Happy King. Not only is Jesus the Lord, but He’s the Joyful Lord!

Full and uninterrupted happiness is what our Lord Jesus Christ had before the Manger.

But then He joined the human race. And when He did, He entered into the sorrows of mankind—which are many, deep, and lasting.

Long before He was a Man of sorrows, He was a baby of sorrows and then a boy of sorrows. He lived on earth for more than thirty years and every one of them was full of sorrow.

I don’t need to pile up examples: you know the stories as well as I do. Sick and desperate people came to Him—and He was touched by their plight. A woman bent over for eighteen years; another woman who bled for twelve years; a father who’s son was possessed by a lunatic demon; and then, of course, the two dear sisters who had lost a brother. These physical things tore up the Lord’s heart. At the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus wept—and did it so long and sincerely that everyone noticed how great the loss was to Him.

Spiritual things grieved Him too. He saw the nation as sheep without shepherds—or whose shepherds had become butchers. The wandering nation broke His heart. His disciples were not much better: their pride and ignorance must have made our Lord sad times out of mind.

People heard the catch in His voice; they saw the lines on His face; perhaps His warm tears fell on John’s face. He didn’t yuck it up through life or pretend everything’s coming up roses all the time! No! He was—for everyone to see—"A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief".

Actors, politicians, and preachers are taught to cry on cue. It’s a way of deceiving people, of manipulating them. It’s amazing the power tears can have on others—how many conniving wives got what they want by shedding a few fake tears!

Fake tears. Phony concern. Pretend sorrow. Make believe grief. Can you think of anything worse?

The Lord’s sorrows were real. There is no actor in Him—nothing phony. He’s the Real Thing, the Genuine Article.

His sadness wasn’t in His voice or in His eyes or in His gestures; it was in His heart. His life was full of sorrow.

Two things make His sorrow stand out. They make it—not just a thing, but a thing to be admired and a thing to love Him for.

The first is that His sorrow was a choice. You and I have got no choice. We’re as happy as we can be! We’re at a party and celebrating some good fortune. But the phone rings and a shaky voice says, Mom is dead!

You don’t run through the options of how you should feel. Your great has been crushed by the weight of sorrow. There’s no choice…for you and me.

But our Lord had a choice. He didn’t have to become a Man, no less the Man He became. He could have remained in heaven were all tears are banished. Or, He could have come to earth as a Superman—a man without feelings, a man not affected by bad news.

But He didn’t make these choices! He chose to be a Man of Sorrows. How dear that choice is…to me.

The other thing that makes His sorrow so good is that it wasn’t fixed on Himself! I know a lot of sad people—and most of them—are sad for no one but themselves. There’s a word for that condition: self-pity! This is no virtue—moping around because things haven’t always gone your way. Because you’re not popular; because you’re not as young as you used to be; because you’ve suffered more than other people! The Lord was often sorry—of course—but He was never sorry for Himself!

No, His sorrow was for other people. He felt sorry for the sick; for the poor; for the lonely; for the grieving; for the confused; for the underdog.

He was a Man of Sorrows—not because He didn’t have much—but because sin has so ravaged people. It tears people up directly—think of the promising young man reduced to nothing through years of heavy drinking. It also wrecks people indirectly—think of the drunk man’s family: they’re innocent, yet he comes home drunk and beats his wife or touches his daughter in the wrong way, or sends them all to the poor house because he can’t hold a job!

Sin is a cancer on the whole human race! It is eating our life away and filling us with pain and fear and nausea. The Lord didn’t sit back and click His tongue! No, He wept over the damage sin was doing all around Him.

This makes me love the Lord Jesus Christ: that He would trade in total happiness for appalling sorrow for my salvation! Cf. II Corinthians 8:9.

This disturbs me for my hardness of heart. Think of all the people I know who are suffering and how little their pain touches me. How seldom I pray for them. How rarely do I think about them. How little I’ve done to comfort them. But surely the sorrow our Lord felt for others we should feel too!

This convicts me of my own selfish sorrows: how often I have moped around because of what I don’t have or because I have something I don’t want.

At the Lord’s Table let’s remember that the bread and wine stand for the body and blood of Christ—broken and shed. And let’s recall the sorrow His sufferings brought down on Him were all for us. And let us love and the thank the Lord Jesus Christ for being A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.