“and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.” (Isaiah 53:7b ESV).
The contrast between Isaiah and John couldn’t be more pronounced. Isaiah prophesied about a gentle, silent servant who refused to defend Himself when the time came. John talked about Jesus being the embodied Word.
Jesus, Who commanded light to come into existence and commanded souls to return to their bodies, stood in silence when the High Priest and Pilate questioned Him before His execution. It is unimaginable that the One who could speak the universe into existence by His word chose to remain silent when His word could have put a stop to the greatest injustice of all time.
Why?
Why did my Savior, like a sheep before its shearers, refuse to open His mouth?
Why did He stay on the cross when men clucked their tongues and wagged their heads saying, “Come off the cross and we’ll believe You!”
When the power of His word could do all that He pleased, why did our Savior remain silent?
When we are forced to think about the answer to that question, we are led face-to-face with our own corruption, our own need, and our own helplessness. Our sins caused Jesus to remain silent as evil men did their worst to their God and Creator.
We had lost paradise. We had lost fellowship with God. We had all fallen under condemnation because we all chose to sin and rebel against God. There was only one penalty due our error.
We were helpless and needed a Savior. We needed someone who could pay the price to redeem us back to the Father and offer a gift so precious it could wipe the guilt of sin away, leaving us pure and innocent before the Father.
When Jesus knew the flogging was coming and His back and sides would be split open and his muscles and bones would be exposed when leather straps with embedded rocks and bones tore into His flesh, He remained silent.
When Jesus knew His face would be disfigured when vile men blindfolded Him and beat Him, He remained silent.
When Jesus knew that evil men would press a crown of thorns into His head and beat it into His scalp with the reed they gave Him as a mock scepter, He remained silent.
When they put Him on trial and demanded He give a defense, He remained silent.
When they placed the nails on His hands and feet, drew back the mallet, and pinned Him to the tree, He remained silent.
One word from Him could have called 12 legions of angels.
One word from Him could have opened the ground to swallow His tormentors.
One word from Him could have caused the people He created to cease from existing.
“and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.” (Isaiah 53:7b ESV).
Why?
Because He saw you and me as He remained silent. He saw us and loved us. He knew that the awful deed had to be done, and He was willing to do it silently so He could become the sacrifice that appeased the Father’s wrath and redeemed us back to Himself.
His silence wasn’t a silence of weakness, but one of incredible strength.
The Creator of the universe, the sovereign God of all, the great I AM, stayed His mighty power and remained silent because of a love for you and me that we may never be able to truly understand.
Our sins led Him to the cross so His blood could cleanse us and give us hope. And the Word became flesh so He could face the day when He would be silent for you and for me.
Free will is a wonderful gift from a sovereign God who made us in His image.
It is true power and sovereignty to create another being, endow him with true free will, and still maintain Your sovereignty.
We often want to give God a crutch to help Him maintain His sovereignty as we consider our free will and how He accomplishes all His purposes in the presence of our free will.
But it’s not God who needs a crutch. We are the ones who can never understand the depth and riches of God.
Let’s not trip over our inability to fully understand God and project our inadequacies upon Him.
“But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.” (Matthew 22:29 ESV).
In my daily Bible reading, I read through the letters Paul wrote to Timothy and Titus and the letter he wrote to Philemon.
Reading these letters as a whole, we see a few things that may be lost when we dissect his letters line by line in our studies.
These are some of my takeaways.
1. Paul was concerned with building up brethren. The reason he wrote to these men was to lift them up in the Lord and send a message of encouragement to them as they labored in the Lord’s vineyard. Who do we know who labors in the vineyard, whether a minister of the Gospel, an elder, or a fruitful worker? Sometimes a letter, a call, or a text can be just the thing to lift their spirits, encourage them in their work, or give them relief when they are facing struggles and even discouragement.
2. Paul’s focus was on building up, not tearing down. Over and over, Paul urged these men to labor out of love and treat others with the respect they would show their own families. Very rarely does Paul encourage harsh treatment, and then only when it’s needed to preserve the peace in the church. When we interact with God’s people, do we do so like a bull in a china shop, or do we first desire to build up, encourage, and foster peace?
3. Paul underlays his letters with an encouragement to live with a servant’s heart. Throughout his letters, Paul encourages the men to approach others in a spirit of service. He asks them to approach older men, younger men, older women, younger women, and even a slave as people they should serve. Everything Paul writes that we often parse out is done for their benefit and service. I wonder how the local church we are part of would be if everyone approached everyone else with a spirit of service.
Paul said many things in his letters that are worthy of deep study, but only if we remember the spirit in which he wrote these things. Sometimes that is lost when we read sentences and paragraphs when the letter was meant to be read as a whole.
When you try to please everyone, you usually please no one.
Best to just please God and let the chips fall where they may.
It makes sleeping at night much sweeter and pleasing God usually ends up pleasing others in ways that really matter.
Growing in the faith is not just about learning what we need to know, it’s also about being willing to unlearn the false things we have been taught.
“See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.” (Colossians 2:8 ESV).
I’m reading Hebrews in my daily Bible reading. It is quickly becoming one of my favorite books for strength, faith-building, and confidence.
In it, the writer shows the preeminence of Jesus, showcasing His deity and His humanity in a chorus that only God Himself could compose.
As the book starts, I zeroed in on this verse:
“For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham.” (Hebrews 2:16 ESV).
This verse has buried in it so many things that should help us gain strength, confidence, and a hope built in expectation.
From the beginning, when God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” we realize that there is something different from man than any other part of creation.
We were not made to be simply a display of his glory as the rest of creation, but we were created to be much more. We were made to be His children.
God created us to be sons and daughters. God created us to share in aspects of His nature.
He endowed us with free will, a portion of His dominion and sovereignty, the ability to think and reason, and an eternal nature.
Because we are more than part of His creation, a part that He has made in His image to be His children, His love and longsuffering have been demonstrated to us to redeem us from sin.
In fact, God went to extreme lengths as a Father to redeem that which sin has taken away. The lengths He went to for us are unlike anything He has done for anything else He has made.
“For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham.” (Hebrews 2:16 ESV).
We are His children.
We are His offspring.
We have an inheritance worth more than we can imagine.
And our God desperately desires us to choose Him and to have a relationship with Him.
And so He helps us in ways He helps no other part of creation.
Here’s a question I’ve been wondering...
Is the United States on the path to severely persecute Christians?
I’m not sure the answer is an absolute foregone conclusion.
But the answer to that question is not nearly as important as the answer to this question:
Am I ready and prepared in my faith if it is?
I am beginning to shift the way I see a New Testament passage based on an Old Testament verse.
“And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34 ESV).
I had always thought that this was Jesus crying out because of our sins He had taken upon Himself and the darkness represented the Father having to turn away from Jesus because He could have no fellowship with sin.
But in Psalm 22, we read,
“For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.” (Psalm 22:24 ESV).
It seems that the Father was always there for His Son.
The Gospels seem to show us this event through the suffering Savior’s perspective. In pain and anguish, Jesus makes this guttural cry. Even though His head knew better, this is the way He felt.
We can understand this. In times of tremendous anguish, our head knows God is with us, but it doesn’t always feel that way. Don’t we often make a similar cry to God from our purest emotional heart when we hurt?
That is our perspective. But Psalm gives the Father’s perspective. He doesn’t turn His head from us or hide His face from our pain. He still hears us even when it doesn’t feel like He does.
Truly, Jesus experienced everything we did. He understands us more than we can imagine. And this is where His grace comes from. He gives it freely because He knows us and understands exactly what we endure and what we need.