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CHAPTER
28
CHAPTER
TWENTY EIGHT
A
MAN OF SORROWS
He
was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows,
and familiar with suffering---he was despised, and we
esteemed him not.
(Isaiah
chapter 53, verse 3).
We
have seen so many titles which speak of our Lord’s majesty
and power, are we now speaking of the same Man---a Man
of sorrows? The Bible tells us this is definitely so.
Jesus was a Man of sorrows like no other man has ever
been, or ever could be. But human beings in every age,
including ours, have suffered and do suffer horrendously---surely
millions have endured physical torture at least as bad
as that which Jesus went through. On the outside, possibly.
It is, I think, impossible for us to grasp what it must
have meant to our Lord, in suffering terms, to leave
the unspeakable joy, comfort and beauty of heaven; to
leave eternity and enter a body of flesh and blood;
to know discomfort and hunger and thirst; to enter a
world where He would weep; to exchange heaven where
He was adored and worshipped as God for a place where
He was rejected, hated and slandered---and all this
before the peculiar agonies of the cross. Just think,
for a moment, on what may seem a trivial notion: heaven
is not only beautiful and safe in the extreme, but it
is perfectly clean; not a speck of dust or dirt; no
slime or slop; no rot or decay; no deformity or disease;
no foul fumes or stenches; no waste and no death; no
mental, physical or spiritual torment---Jesus came to
all of these. Surely, He felt even the weight of His
own flesh as it drew on and imprisoned Him---this, in
comparison with the free and ecstatic heavenly state
He had left behind. He came from a place without a trace
of sin to the very bowels of a sin-monster. He came
to take the full burden, all of mankind’s depravity,
from Adam to the very last human being, upon Himself,
upon Him who had never known the bitter taste of sin---a
sorrowful burden indeed! The Man of sorrows came to
make a sacrifice that only God could make, and to carry
a burden that only God could take.
Surely
he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him,
and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that
brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we
are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each
of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid
on him the iniquity of us all.
(Isaiah
chapter 53, verses 4-6).
Amazing
foretelling of what was awaiting the Man of sorrows,
the Lamb of God---700 years hence. During the approximately
3 years of His ministry Jesus must have wept and sorrowed
on many occasions. Often He was distressed over
the hardness of the hearts of the religious Jews, those
who should have known better. He wept over Jerusalem,
knowing that because of the people’s rejection of their
true Messiah the city and its citizens would lose the
blessing of God---almost 40 years later it was totally
destroyed by the Roman army, and the Jews were murdered,
enslaved or deported.
As
he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over
it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this
day what would bring you peace---but now it is hidden
from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your
enemies will-------encircle you and hem you in on every
side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the
children within your walls. They will not leave one
stone on another, because you did not recognise the
time of God’s coming to you.”
(Luke
chapter 19, verses 41-44).
Notice,
as He wept, Jesus said, ‘if only you had known what
would bring you peace’. To have owned Jesus as their
Messiah would have brought countless blessings on the
Jews---including God’s full protection. To the many
in todays world who have no real peace, no inner spiritual
solace, let them think on these words, ‘if only you
had known what would bring you peace’, and let them
turn to the One who is able to bring that peace. The
alternative is to let your troubles and the Devil ‘encircle
you and hem you in on every side’. Only the Man of sorrows
can bring us lasting peace; only the Man of sorrows
can bring us true joy. We hear of Jesus being deeply
moved in His spirit and troubled as He approached the
grave of Lazarus. We read of the deep anguish as He
prayed to His Father on the night of His arrest. He
was surely beginning to feel the onset of the tremendous
suffering, both physical and spiritual, that He was
about to undergo:
And
being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his
sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.
(Luke
chapter 22, verse 44).
Then
he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow
to the point of death.”
(Matthew
chapter 26, verse 38).
We
sense the frailty of His flesh:
“My
Father, if it be possible, may this cup be taken from
me.”
(verse
39).
Even
then, as He always had, He would again choose His Father’s
will:
“Yet
not as I will, but as you will.”
(verse
39).
We
know that from that point on He was mocked, beaten,
whipped, spat on and, eventually, He suffered the ordeal
of the cross. Never should it be said that it was easy
for Jesus because He was God---nothing was easy for
Jesus precisely because He was God. If we die unrepentant
and in our sins, we can only carry the weight of our
own sin to the grave---and that is far too much for
any man to bear! But, Jesus, who knew no sin of His
own, carried every man’s. We can only suffer as a man
suffers; the Man of sorrows suffered exactly as a man
suffers---but, as well, He suffered as only One who
is God can suffer. And that is completely beyond us.
And
that should humble us and make us weep. It should make
us say, ‘I’m sorry, Lord. Please forgive me.’
He
became a Man of sorrows that we might become people
of joy.
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