“He is despised and rejected of
men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our
faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely, he hath borne
our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of
God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised
for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his
stripes we are healed.” (Isaiah
53:3-5 KJV)
A.W. Tozer says, “For our iniquities and our transgressions,
He was bruised and wounded—and Israel’s great burden and amazing blunder was
her judgment that this wounded one on the hillside beyond Jerusalem was being
punished for His own sin! [The Jews] thought He was smitten of God. [The Jews]
thought that God was punishing Him for His own iniquity [because they] did not
know then that God was punishing Him for [their] transgressions and [their]
iniquities.” Because the Jewish leadership was blinded to the true mission of
their Messiah, they applied their narrow understanding of righteousness to the
situation and murdered Him.
Tozer continues his discussion of Isaian’s prophecy saying,
“For our sakes, He was profaned by ignorant and unworthy men!”[1]
To be profaned is to be violated, to be desecrated. The Jewish leadership that
drove Jesus to the cross definitely violated and desecrated Him. When we bow
under the weight of profane words spoken by ignorant and unworthy men in our
generation, we mistakenly assume that we are being violated. That is not the
case; it is Jesus Christ they profane in ignorance if in fact we are righteous
in our actions. Jesus said we are blessed when men persecute us “on
account of me.”
Paul wrote many times that we have new lives, a new self,
after we rise from the waters of baptism. We are told to put to death the old
self and walk as new creatures. That walk, done properly, means we are living
in Christ. More than that, we live as Christ. Paul
told the Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer
live, but Christ lives in me, and that life I now live in the
flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
We need to be “living
letters… known and read by all people.” As Jeff Vandersteldt says in his
book, Gospel Fluency, it is not enough to know the gospel or speak the
gospel; we must live the gospel if people are going to believe it.
There are many incidents in the Old Testament that show the
contrast between living as if we believe God is with us versus just believing
God exists. After the kingdom split into Judah and Israel, Moab rebelled
against Israel, refusing to pay their historic tribute. The Jews formed an alliance,
and they set off to attack Moab. They ran out of water. They wisely called for
a prophet of God who told them to dig trenches which God would fill for them.
They did; He did. They went on rehydrated to win a decisive victory over Moab
except for one, last city.
The king of Moab barricaded himself in the city, and in a
last desperate act sacrificed his son to his god, Chemosh. The Israelite
alliance was so frightened by this monstrous display that they feared Chemosh
would triumph over Yahweh. They fled. After miraculously getting water in the
desert, after defeating the Moabite army, when there was only one city left to
complete their victory, they fled. They didn’t trust their God, Yahweh. If that
were the only time Israel failed to trust God, it would still be significant.
Sadly, it is only one of many times the people whom God chose refused to
believe He would save them.
They could have remembered their own history and taken
heart. Time and again, God had delivered them from their enemies. One dramatic
example occurred at Jericho when the Israelites took the city by following
God’s orders: march around it as prescribed and the walls will fall. Joshua led
them to do as they were told; the walls fell. Another beautiful example of
trusting God against all odds is found in the record of David’s defeat of
Goliath. Tens of thousands of Israel’s warriors stood shaking with fear at the
taunts of the giant from Gath. David heard his blasphemy and set out against
him with his sling and five smooth stones. One stone, straight to the forehead
of Goliath was all he needed. That is living like you believe God is with you.
Going back to Isaiah 53, the “healing” we receive from
Jesus’ death is release from our sinful old self and the rebirth of a new self
being formed in the image of Christ. It is no coincidence that the word for
“healing” is the same word used for “saving.” In the context of Isaiah 53, it
makes perfect sense to see the metaphor fulfilled. The purpose of the death of
Jesus Christ on the Cross of Calvary was cosmic in nature; it brought to
completion the eternal plan of God to redeem His children from their bondage to
sin initiated by Satan’s deception. The Cross represents nothing less than a
world-shaking paradigm shift that returned the Earth to its rightful master,
tearing it from the grasp of the deceiver.
Elsewhere, Tozer said: “The heart that learns to die with
Christ soon knows the blessed experience of rising with Him, and all the
world’s persecutions cannot still the high note of holy joy that springs up in
the soul that has become the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit!”[2]
R.C. Sproul comments: “The Incarnate Christ is no longer walking the earth…. Yet
the threatening power of His holiness is still felt. Sometimes it is
transferred to His people. As the Jews at the foot of Mt. Sinai fled in terror
from the dazzling face of Moses, so people today get uncomfortable in the mere
presence of Christians.”[3]
If you are living for Jesus and getting bruised and beaten
(metaphorically speaking), remember that He said the servant is not greater
than his Master; he promised that His followers would suffer injustice on His
behalf. Paul called it filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ.
The bruises and beatings are the proof we are living as Jesus. Show me the
bruises.
Related Posts: Is
it the Devil or is it God; Digging Trenches;
The
Knowledge of Good and Evil
[1]
A. W. Tozer and Gerald B. Smith, Evenings with
Tozer: Daily Devotional Readings (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers,
2015), 107.
[2]
A. W. Tozer and Gerald B. Smith, Evenings with
Tozer: Daily Devotional Readings (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers,
2015), 109.
[3]
R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God
(Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1993), 99.
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