TUESDAY February 4th
If you read the previous devotion, you will recall that I left us considering Jesus as he submitted to or surrendered to his Father’s will as he knelt and prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knew at that moment in time, the immense suffering that he was about to undertake as he trod the path to Calvary to enable you and I who are creatures of time to be able to know what it is to be made into new creations who would be able to enjoy eternity in his presence.
Earlier in these devotions I mentioned that as Jesus read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah in Luke 4 (verses 17-20) he would also have known what the prophet had written in what we know as Isaiah 52:13 through to the end of chapter 53, which is often given the heading, ‘The Servant’s Suffering’ or perhaps ‘The Suffering Servant’.
And it is there that we read the verses that so clearly prophecy or predict the way in which the One who knelt in the Garden, would eventually suffer as the Servant who became the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world.
And why was he willing to suffer, John gives us a wonderful answer in his first epistle, it is found in verses 9- 10 of the fourth chapter ‘In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.’
Because he loved us, yes, God loved us so much, that he willingly sent his Son, and the Son loved us so much, that even while we were still sinners he willingly suffered in ways that even though we have a record of what happened in the gospels, was way beyond what we can ever imagine, his love was immense, his suffering was immense and the salvation that we receive as a result is immense.
So today we will have as our verses some of what the prophet Isaiah had written, 700 years before it happened concerning the suffering Servant, who has become our wonderful Saviour.
‘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. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth’, (Isaiah 53:3-7).
He took my sins and my sorrows,
He made them his very own,
He bore the burden to Calvary,
And suffered and died alone.