SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/3/2013
7:55 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
Resignation: the Silent Servant
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Isaiah
53:7-9
Message of the
verses: “7 He was oppressed and He
was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to
slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not
open His mouth. 8 By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His
generation, who considered That He was cut off out of the land of the living
For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due? 9 His grave was
assigned with wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He
had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.”
Let’s talk about sheep or lambs, for twenty-eight times
in the book of Revelations Jesus is referred to as The Lamb, and in John 1:29
John the Baptist says “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the
world. I must repeat a story about the
death of a lamb and how the lamb died, something I wrote about in an earlier
SD. My wife and I were vacationing in
Florida and we went to a Baptist Church while we were there. They were looking for a Pastor and had a
guest Pastor speaking in one of the services we attended. The Pastor told a story about a black man who
worked in a slaughter house and one of his jobs was to kill the cattle that
came through the slaughter house. One
day his boss told him that he would have to kill some lambs and he only killed
one before he went to his boss and told him that he could kill no more
lambs. The reason was that the lamb would
just walk up to him as if nothing was going to happen to him and actually sat
in his lap while he killed him. This
story surely reminds me of Isaiah 53:7 where Jesus is referred to as the Lamb
who did not open His mouth like a lamb that is led to slaughter.
At the Passover celebration one lamb died for a family,
and on the Day of Atonement one lamb died for the nation of Israel, but on Calvary
one Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ died for all who would put their trust in Him
for their salvation. The Shepherd became
a Lamb to save the sheep of the Shepherd.
As we look at the trial of Jesus Christ we know that He
did not talk very much, and when He was in front of some He spoke nothing at
all as this fulfills Isaiah 53:7. In
today’s world, that is in our country if there is proof that there is fraud or
wrongdoing in a trial it must be done over.
There was nothing about the trial of Jesus that was right, but because
it was the will of the Father that Jesus died in the manner that He died then
it had to be completed the way it was.
Verse eight was fulfilled through the Lord Jesus Christ
as there were not many who though He would die the way He died or when He
died. The enemies of the Lord Jesus
Christ did not want to kill Him during the feast of the Passover, and the
reason was they were afraid of the people, but it was the plan of God to have
Him died when the Passover Lamb was slaughtered, and that is exactly when He
died.
Verse 9 speaks of His grave, as criminals were not buried
but Jesus was and His grave was a rich man’s grave, the grave that Joseph had
carved out near the place where Jesus would die and he and Nicodemus would get
the body of Jesus and anoint it with 100 pounds of spices and then bury Him in
the tomb of Joseph. The soldiers would not have given the body to them if He
had not been dead, so this blows out of the water those who say that Jesus did
not really die. Isaiah said that He would die and David also wrote
about His crucifixion in Psalm 22, and His death is as much a part of
the Gospel as His life: “1 Now I make
known to you, brethren, the gospel
which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, 2 by
which also you are saved,
if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.
3 For I delivered to you as of first
importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was
raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve
(1 Cor. 15:1-5).”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: The story of
Jesus’ death is the worst and the best story that has even been told. The worst because the Lord Jesus was sinless
and the Son of God, and the best because His death paid for my sins, all of my
sins that I ever committed or will commit.
I cringe when I read about the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, but I
also rejoice in the provision that He made for me, and desire to live for Him
forever.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to think about the seriousness of
sin, my sin.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
Question: “Evil” (Hebrews 3:12).
Today’s Bible
Question: “Where did Jesus get the food
with which to fed the 5,000 people?”
Answer in our next SD.
12/3/2013 9:16 AM
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