REACHING THE SATISFYING LIGHT OF LIFE

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

After He has suffered, He will see the light of life and be satisfied; by His knowledge My righteous servant will justify many, and He will bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and He will divide the spoils with the strong, because He poured out His life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Isaiah 53:11-12

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Isaiah 53 could very well be one of the darkest, gloomy chapters in the Bible, at least through its first ten verses.

I say this because the prophecy about Jesus goes into great detail about the gruesome details of how His life would end on earth. He would be beaten and disfigured, shunned and rejected, despised and forsaken, all before He was led away in abject suffering like a sheep to slaughter. He was pierced for our transgressions and hung on a cross, murdered before a crowd which mostly mocked Him as He was being murdered right before their very eyes, not for anything He had done but for the sins of everyone else in humanity.

Jesus, the loving and caring Savior of the world, died an excruciatingly painful death and He did so willingly because it was His Father’s will to do so.

It was the most tragic death in all of the world’s history, a death that cast darkness over the whole land (Matthew 27:45). But darkness would not endure for at the dawn of day three days later, Jesus was resurrected from the grave in glorious, majestic victory over death and the grave. The Light of the world had risen and this beautiful even was foretold in the final verses of this chapter that opens up and carries through with so much gloom. Look at these final two verses of splendid hope:

After He has suffered, He will see the light of life and be satisfied; by His knowledge My righteous servant will justify many, and He will bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and He will divide the spoils with the strong, because He poured out His life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.  Isaiah 53:11-12

Note that after Jesus had suffered, He had not reached the end but rather the magnificent beginning of a life full of light, a satisfying life punctuated by His saving of all mankind through His sacrifice on Calvary’s cross. Such was the delight that God the Father had for Jesus His Son that He raised Him to sit at His right hand, delegating authority over creation to Him. Thus, Jesus, who interceded for and justified the sinners of the world, was rewarded by God and given a portion of the great because He willingly poured out His life unto death.

And He did so because He loved us.

You see, this chapter makes sure that we do not forget the steep price Jesus paid to ensure we would have a chance at salvation some day, a chance to escape the sure wrath and judgment we deserve as sinners. And He entered into the satisfying light of life forever with God the Father to open the way for all of us to follow someday when this worldly life is finished.

That’s the good news of the gospel. For sinners who have no chance to be saved without someone intervening and pardoning them before the God the Father can find that salvation through believing in Jesus, knowing and trusting that He has already paid the punishment. Through Jesus, every believer can stand before God as if they had never sinned, washed clean by the precious blood shed by Christ on the cross. And on that day when we stand in judgment, instead of hell, we will be ushered into the eternal light of life promised to us by God’s very words in the scriptures (John 3:16), a life where we will be set free from any and all afflictions and hardships this worldly life brings.

Friends, I don’t know about you but this chapter has done two things for me. First, it has acutely brought me back into focus on just how appalling and dreadful our Savior Jesus suffered for us, a suffering that we deserved in His place. And secondly, it has reaffirmed my deep joy in knowing that, through Jesus, I have an everlasting, glorious hope that no one can take from me, a hope embedded in a new life to come, a new life that will be full of the satisfying light of salvation.

I hope to see you there one day.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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