This Day in History: 0000-04-19

April 19 – Isaiah 53: 3-6

He was despised and rejected – a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.  We turned our backs on Him and looked the other way.  He was despised, and we did not care.
Yet it was our weakness He carried; it was our sorrows that weighed Him down.  And we thought His troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for His own sins!
But He was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins.  
He was beaten so we could be whole. 
He was whipped so we could be healed. 
All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.  We have left God’s paths to follow our own.  
Yet the Lord laid on Him the sins of us all.

No day in all of history was quite like that day a little over 2000 years ago!  The day which was both magnificent and terrible.  The day when Jesus Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God died in our place.

Carefully read these verses one more time.  Take in each word.

Do you find yourself both comforted and heartbroken as you consider what great pain our Lord endured on our behalf?

Have you ever felt despised and rejected?  Jesus knows.  He felt it too.  Do you sometimes feel like sorrow defines you?  Jesus was acquainted with the deepest grief!  He knows our pain friends, because He experienced the most wretched anguish the world has ever known.

For us.

Let’s take a moment to reflect in humility on what a magnificent act of love that was!

How will we respond to such a great sacrifice?  Will we recognize our wandering?  Will we acknowledge our tendency to stray away from the path God sets before us and to instead go our own way?  Will we accept that it was our weakness, our sins God laid on His Son that day?  He was beaten and bruised and utterly crushed because of our rebellion.  He was despised and rejected and endured the agony of being forsaken by His Father because of our sins.

And praise God,  because of His wounds, we can be whole.  Because of His pain, we can be healed.  For God so loved the  world that He gave His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.