Not a Warm Fuzzy Story

Isaiah 53

Verse 10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer, and though the Lord makes His life an offering for sin, He will see His offspring and prolong His days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in His hand.

Yesterday we talked about how Jesus didn’t fit the Jews’ image of what the Messiah would look like but they also couldn’t see His mission as matching that of the perceived Messiah.

We have discussed how Jesus was the ultimate Passover lamb but one of the toughest things for the Jews to grasp about Jesus was that He suffered. Even today the idea that the Messiah had to suffer is more than some orthodox Jewish people can accept. Their image of what the Messiah would be had a more glorified image. They believed He would come and take away all their strife from neighboring countries that kept trying to control them and take away their promised land. But God’s plan was much bigger.

In today’s passage we see some of the prophecies that tell of some of what Jesus experienced on the cross. To say these were not pleasant things to go through would be a grotesque understatement. There was nothing enjoyable about anything that Jesus was experiencing. The fact that He could see the hypocrisy among the religious leaders as He hung there in agony must have added to the emotional pain that He was dealing with.

How it must have hurt seeing them rejecting the truth of who He is because He wasn’t what they were wanting and therefore looking for. He saw them using Rome, the very people that they claim to want to be saved from, to get what they desire. He sees them so sure they are doing the holy thing that they can’t see the truth. They were refusing to admit that maybe He was the Promised One.

The truth of the matter is that God knew they wouldn’t accept Jesus. That was part of the prophecy after all (Isaiah 53:3). And it is better for us that they didn’t accept that Jesus was the Messiah. If they had accepted Him they would not have crucified Him and it would have gone against God’s will. He had to die and it had to be this way. And it was all for God’s glory and our salvation.

Making It Personal

What does knowing that Jesus suffered through all of this mean to you? Does seeing His pain make you see your suffering in a new light? How could looking at His suffering give you comfort as you go through trials in life?

Making It Personal Kids

How bad do you think Jesus’ pain was? What does it make you think when you remember that He went through all that so you never have to? How much does Jesus love you?

Closing Prayer

Father, thank You for loving us so much that You would go through all this suffering for us. Help us never lose sight of who You are and why You came. In Jesus’ name, amen.