GOD’S SO GREAT SALVATION (Lenten 45)

I wonder if Isaiah who was known as the MESSIANIC PROPHET could fully comprehend in his finite minds the words he spoke and penned in Isaiah 53:1-12  NKJV

Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
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.
He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.
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.
Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,
And He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.

MESSAGE The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling,
a scrubby plant in a parched field.
There was nothing attractive about him,
nothing to cause us to take a second look.
He was looked down on and passed over,
a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away.
We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.
We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost.
We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong,
on him, on him.
He was beaten, he was tortured,
but he didn’t say a word.
Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered
and like a sheep being sheared,
he took it all in silence.
Justice miscarried, and he was led off—
and did anyone really know what was happening?
He died without a thought for his own welfare,
beaten bloody for the sins of my people.
They buried him with the wicked,
threw him in a grave with a rich man,
Even though he’d never hurt a soul
or said one word that wasn’t true.
Still, it’s what God had in mind all along,
to crush him with pain.
The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin
so that he’d see life come from it—life, life, and more life.
And God’s plan will deeply prosper through him.
Out of that terrible travail of soul,
he’ll see that it’s worth it and be glad he did it.
Through what he experienced, my righteous one, my servant,
will make many “righteous ones,”
as he himself carries the burden of their sins.
Therefore I’ll reward him extravagantly—
the best of everything, the highest honors—
Because he looked death in the face and didn’t flinch,
because he embraced the company of the lowest.
He took on his own shoulders the sin of the many,
he took up the cause of all the black sheep.

I thought I would share a modern paraphrase as well, to spotlight OUR SUFFERING SAVIOUR

Today, we celebrate what is  called GOOD FRIDAY unless you understand what Jesus and our heavenly Father did on this day, you could not call it a good day.

Our God had to maintain His unchanging character towards His creation, so man’s sin had to be punished, this could only be done by a sinless offering and the shedding of sinless  blood. So  in eternity past the Godhead decided that the Son of God  THE LORD JESUS CHRIST would take on  human form, and lay aside the perogatives of deity and become that sinless sacrifice that the Father could pour His wrath out upon.

How many people have been born since creation??? the number is in the many Billions, and all their sins and sicknesses were laid on Jesus. I cannot calculate the number of sins I have committed pre and post conversion but they have been so many, multiply that number  by many billions and they were all placed on Jesus.

YES, IT WAS A GOOD FRIDAY

The third member of the Trinity is also involved, as He CONVICTS men and women of their sin, and gives mankind the ability to respond and repent. Paul expresses it this way in Eph. 2: 8-9 NLT God saved you by his GRACE when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.

NKJV For by GRACE you have been saved through FAITH, and that not of yourselves; it is the GIFT of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

WHAT A GLORIOUS SALVATION WE HAVE THROUGH THE LORD JESUS CHRIST.

• God chose us before He created the world Eph.1:4
• God so loved us and gave Jesus as the answer to the “sin question” John 3:16
• God gave us His unmerited favour GRACE
• God put FAITH in our hearts through the Word of God. 1 Peter 1:23
• This enabled us to REPENT
• Then God placed ASSURANCE in our hearts that we were ACCEPTED
•  Then God gave us the GIFT OF ETERNAL LIFE Rom. 6;23

We have been on this Lenten Journey for nearly 7 weeks, and it has brought us today to THE FOOT OF THE CROSS, where THE BURDEN OF OUR SINS ROLLED AWAY 

HALLELUJAH WHAT A SAVIOUR