The Man of Sorrows – Part II / The Reality of Our Joy Because of His Sufferings

  We looked very quickly at the sufferings of our Saviour Jesus Christ in our last blog. We saw Isaiah 53 in order to bring this out.

Isaiah 53:1-12 – “Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

  Because of this suffering of the Saviour we have a joy we can experience. The reality of the situation we must understand is that we can and will have joy this Christmas season very simply because He was willing to suffer and be a man of sorrows for us. It is because of the suffering of Christ that I can live a life free from the curse of death and sin. It is because of the shed blood of Christ on the cross that I can rest assure that I will spend eternity in heaven and not hell. No matter what I may go through in this life, there is a joy that can still be found because of Christ and His sufferings. If I accept Him as my Lord and Saviour and ask Him to forgive me of my sins I truly have something to rejoice about, not just at Christmas, but all year long.

  Words cannot express the love that Christ must have had for us. We had rejected Him and did not love Him; yet He still came and endured multiple sorrows and suffering for our sake because of His great love. I guarantee there is nobody in this world today that has ever had such a great love to anybody, including your spouses and children, as Christ had for you.

  It is the sufferings of Christ He went through because of His love for us that gives a reason to have joy this Christmas.