SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/24/2023 10:53 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “The
Proportion and Power of His Suffering”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
20:19b
Message of the verse: “to mock and scourge and crucify Him, and on the third day He will be raised up.”
I want to quote from John MacArthur’s commentary,
and the reason is that he has written something that I have never heard. “The physical pain of crucifixion
was excruciating, which was why it was Rome’s preferred means of execution for
enemies of the state. But by itself it was not always fatal,
and there are numerous historical records of men surviving it. When they wanted death to be certain, the
victim was scourged beforehand. The
great loss of blood, as well as frequent exposure of internal organs, not only greatly
increased suffering but assured death.”
The highlighted portion of this quote is something that I
have not heard of before.
Now what I am about to write is something similar to the
quotations from the sermon that MacArthur preached on this subject. The physical suffering of Jesus is something
that cannot be minimized. Jesus felt
every sting of the reed and every cut of the lash. Jesus also felt the agony of His bruised and
lacerated muscles as He tried to carry the heavy cross out of the city and then
up to Golgotha. He also felt the surges
of pain as the nails were driven through His hands and His feet, and then He
was hoisted to an upright position so that the entire weight of His body rested
on those nails. Jesus also suffered
great thirst, which was yet exceeded by the suffocating pull of His body
against His lungs.
Now we want to talk about the greatest sufferings He
endured, which were not physical but were emotional and spiritual which can be
seen through the pen of the prophet Isaiah as he vividly predicted what would
happen to Jesus.
Let
us begin by looking at Isaiah 53:2-8. “2 For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a
root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we
should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. 3 He
was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised, and we did not
esteem Him.4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet
we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But He was pierced through for
our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening
for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. 6 All
of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but
the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. 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?”
Isaiah makes it clear that the sufferings of Jesus
went much deeper than the physical. Once
again I think it best to quote from MacArthur’s commentary for all of us to
best understand more about the sufferings that Jesus went through in order to
bring about salvation for all of those who will accept it.
“The Messiah would endure inner
sufferings far more devastating than the pain in His body. He had to suffer as a sinless Man for the
offenses of sinful men who despised and rejected Him. He was, indeed, stricken even by His own
heavenly Father in order that He could bear the penalty that fallen man
deserved but could not survive. ‘The
Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself
as a guilt offering…He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the
transgressors; yet He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the
transgressors” (Isa. 53:10, 12).
“Jesus suffered the pain of disloyalty. It was one of His own disciples, one of the specifically
chosen Twelve, who betrayed Him to the chief priests. He could declare with the psalmist, ‘Even my
close friend, in whom I trusted, who ate my bread has lifted up his heel
against me’ (Ps. 41:9). One whom He had
called, taught, and loved had turned against Him and delivered Him into the hands
of His enemies. The anguish of betrayal
must have cut deeply into Jesus’ heart many times before the night when the
wicked deed was actually committed. He
not only was betrayed by a friend but with a kiss. There can be little human suffering more
overwhelming than that caused by someone close and dear who violates the
intimacy and trust of friendship even to the point of treachery.”
It is my desire to continue looking
at this in my next SD.
Spiritual meaning for my life
today: I have thought about the
sufferings of Christ in the past only by the physical pain that He went through
on the cross, and now I am learning about a deeper suffering that He went through.
My Steps of Faith for Today: To better
understand the suffering that He went through, remembering that He did it all
so that I could become one of His children.
4/24/2023 11:27 AM
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