Wednesday Reading: Isaiah 53:10
Key Verse: Isaiah 53:10
10 Yet it pleased The LORD to crush Him; to grieve Him; that He should put forth His soul as a guilt-offering. He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the will of The LORD shall prosper in His hand.
Devotion:
When I first read this verse I read it as ‘Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him,...’ because that is how I know the verse from my King James bible. But after reading it again from the Modern King James version I thought that I needed to stick with this chapter for another day. The impact of Christ’s death on the cross is not something that we will understand fully until we get to see what happens when we do die. Yes we can read all about what death and hell are like but they are just words and somehow they don’t seem real enough for our modern society.
Today we see very graphic illustrations of what things are like with films using all manner of stunts and special effects to give us a very graphic view of death and destruction! Not much is left to the imagination anymore! But after seeing the difference between the wording in the two bible versions I started to think about what Christ has actually done for us. There is no way that anything will ever actually crush Christ because He is God, but that word more aptly describes what He had to endure in going to that cross. Genesis says that His heel would be bruised signifying that in effect that is all the damage that could ever be done – not even death could constrain our Lord and Saviour!
Christ went through all of that because of His love for us. That must speak volumes to us. The fact that He was willing to put up with so much just so that we would not have to face up to the terrible fate that stands at the end of the line for us all until we accept Him as Lord and Saviour. No special effects or stunts could ever aptly describe what hell is going to be like. God does not give us such a terrible and graphic view of it because that would in effect be unfair on us, frightening us into a single choice. He still wants us to love Him, but He wants us to love Him because we want to, not because we have to – that is why He gave it all, so that we could still have our freedom to choose Him!
Points to Ponder:
Would you like to take the blame for what you have done wrong?
Are you willing to accept that Christ has done that for you?
