Thursday, October 6, 2005
Isaiah 53:8-9 He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken. And they made His grave with the wicked -- But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth.
I BELIEVE HE WAS CRUCIFIED, DEAD, AND BURIED
All along Jesus knew that this is where He would end the journey of His Humiliation. He knew that ahead was the cross on Golgotha. Throughout His ministry, and especially in the several months preceding His death on Good Friday, Jesus had told His disciples that He would have to die. The evangelist records the content of Jesus' words saying, "And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again."
The fact that Jesus would have to die for our sins was demonstrated even back in the Old Testament at the time of the Passover. The children of Israel were told to choose an unblemished male lamb which they were to kill and whose blood would be put it around the frame of their doors. By the blood of the lamb they were spared. This was also a picture of how we are spared by Christ's blood shed for us at His death on the cross.
Jesus was crucified along the road that led to and from Jerusalem so that those who were traveling on the road could see what would happen to those who disobeyed the law of the Roman government. People walked by and saw Jesus as a wicked man, a criminal or a murderer. But God did not allow His Son to be thrown into a common grave with the common criminals. It was God's will that Jesus be rich at His death. Matthew tells us that this was fulfilled when Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus and placed it in his own new tomb near Calvary.
Jesus died by crucifixion at the persuasion of the Jewish leaders, at the command of Roman authorities, and because of the sins of every one of us.
But through His death Jesus has procured our salvation. Paul says, "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13). Not only did Jesus allow Himself to be mocked and abused, scourged and crucified, but He suffered even to death for our sins.
