Encounter God with Everyone
Isaiah 52:13-15

† Jesus, Son, Savior †

May the grace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ convince you that God desires all to be transformed because He loves you!

 A Different Perspective

The Crowds stood there that day…. Looking upon Jesus, and they cried out for Him to die for Him to be crucified.

Isaiah’s description of it was all too accurate.

Beaten, whipped thirty-nine times, a crown of 1’inch thorns smashed on his head, beaten and slapped senseless.

Then carrying that beam, significantly over 100 pounds, out of the city, then up the mountain, to the peak of the hill, then spikes hammered through both wrists and through the ankles.

Is it any wonder that the prophet describes him as one so disfigured that he hardly looked human?  That stomachs were upset as they looked upon what they had cried out for?

Sunday is undoubtedly coming, but we have to pause a moment here, on Friday, and consider the way Jesus looked?

We need to consider what our sin did to him,,,,
We need to see Him, and the pain our sin caused…

Beautiful

We need to be part of the group Isaiah describes, that looks upon Jesus on the cross and marvels. We need to join the leaders of the world, who are unable to speak.

We need to understand how this wretched sight is a most beautiful thing…

We need to see and understand…

(long pause.._)

We need to understand that it is love that drove him to this point.

We need to understand what the author of Hebrews wrote that Jesus did this for the joy set before Him. The shame he despised, the pain he dreaded, but He volunteered to take this beating.

Not just the physical torture.

Not just the agony of seeing his friends betray and abandon him or his mother look upon his broken body.

But he bore the spiritual trauma of taking every sin, the millions upon millions of sins committed by you and me.

He accepted that weight, that burden, all the guilt, and shame.

See Him them, crushed, almost inhuman,

And now we see and understand, absolutely, stunningly beautiful.

He took this on… for us.  AMEN!