DAY THIRTEEN

 Who has believed our message

and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,

and like a root out of dry ground.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him,

nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him.

He was despised and rejected by men,

a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering.

Like one from whom men hide their faces

He was despised and we esteemed Him not.

Surely He took up our infirmities

and carried our sorrows,

yet we considered Him stricken by God,

smitten by Him and afflicted.

Isaiah 53:1-4

 What proof do we have of God’s love for us?  “Greater love has no-one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”  Read through this very familiar passage of Scripture again and again.  Jesus left the place where He was the darling and focus of all the attention of heaven to this – unknown, unrecognised, unappreciated, rejected, despised, scorned, humiliated and thrown away like a bit of garbage – and that by the very people He had created in His own image and for His glory.  Could He have stepped any lower?  And yet He did it for you and for me.  He absorbed all the blows that were meant for us so that we could walk free and be completely acceptable and accepted by God.  He was no “Mr Universe” or “Mr Sexy” as the world loves to categorise men. He was so ordinary that no-one recognised Him as God.  Even His miracles were misrepresented as the works of the devil.  For you and for me He became NOTHING.