“Yet it was the LORD’S good plan to crush him and fill him with grief.” Isaiah 53:10a
It was on Thursday that Jesus had his final meal, a complete Passover meal, celebrating the way God saved the people of Israel from death, even while delivering a plague of death on the people of Egypt. By the blood of an innocent lamb were they saved…and there Jesus sat/reclined, the innocent lamb by whose blood the people of the world would be saved from death. In that evening he would be crushed and filled with our grief.
Those who knew and followed Jesus, and the ever growing early church would remember his words of command during that meal every time they gathered together: “Bread…wine…do this in remembrance of me.”
Isaiah said “it was the LORD’S good plan to crush him and fill him with grief.” When we look at the cross we se the justice, love, wisdom, and power of God. It is not easy to decide which is the most luminously revealed; the justice of God in judging sin, the love of God in bearing the judgment in our place, the wisdom of God in perfectly combining the two, or the power of God in saving those who believe. For the cross is equally an act, and therefore a demonstration, of God’s justice, love, wisdom, and power. The cross assures us that this God is the reality within, behind, and beyond the universe.
“Dear Lamb of God, I remember. I remember that you took to yourself humanity and a human body, and that your body was crushed to atone for my sin. Dear Lamb of God, I remember that you gave your lifeblood for me, and that you were filled with my grief…and with the grief of all those who have lived or will live. Dear Lamb of God, wash me clean so completely that I will never again cause you grief. I ask this in your holy name…Amen.”
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