Saturday, February 27, 2010
Psalm 22:16b They pierced My hands and My feet.
JESUS WOULD BE CRUCIFIED FOR US
Historians have determined that death by crucifixion was not practiced until the Persians came to power 330 years before Christ. Yet it was approximately 1000 years before Christ was born that David wrote Psalm 22 which speaks of our Savior's hands and feet being pierced. Long before David's Lord would hang on the cross, forsaken by God with nails hammered through His hands and feet, the Holy Spirit would describe the manner of His death.
We do not have the time here to discuss in detail the cruel and excruciating details of death by crucifixion. Suffice it to say that it was one of the most brutal and painful means of execution imaginable. The question we ask today is not why such a painful death, but rather why did our Savior need to die at all. God makes it quite clear that "the wages of sin is death." And yet, Jesus did nothing to earn such a wage.
To find a clear answer to the question of why, we need only turn to the Old Testament writer Isaiah that we might better comprehend again what our Savior accomplished for us.
Isaiah tells us (53:3-6):
He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
On the cross, Jesus became the object of God's wrath. When they hammered the nails through the hands and feet of our Savior this was not God trying to do away with His Son. It was God doing away with our sin, for our iniquity, our sin, was laid on Him.
Jesus was crucified for us!
