During this celebration of the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, join with me in acknowledging with gratitude the awesomeness of the God we serve! I recently looked at a beverage container that I received as a gift. The message printed on the container stated that, “God is so much bigger than: your hurts (and rejection); your pain; your shame (and humiliation). . .” I thought about those truisms, my friends, and I gave a heartfelt shout-out, “Yes he is!”
We have all been hurt, rejected, felt pain and some of us have experienced shame and humiliation at some point in our lives. Putting that in perspective: Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ felt all of our pain when he came to this earth to offer his life to bring salvation to all. He was hurt, rejected, put through shame and humiliation by the very ones he came to save! John 1:11 states that:
Pilate then had Jesus flogged by the Roman soldiers who stripped him naked and chained him to a stone pillar. He was then flogged with a Roman flagrum, a whip with three to twelve strands of leather with metal balls woven into the leather. At the end of each of those strands were pieces of broken glass, pottery, nails, bones, and twisted metal! As the Roman soldiers beat Jesus over and over again, the flagrum grabbed and ripped the flesh from his body! His skin, muscles, back and lower parts of his body were bloodied ripped, torn and mangled! Many who experienced Roman floggings did not survive the beatings! Jesus, however, endured because of the purpose for which he came to the earth. The Roman soldiers mocked him, calling him “King of the Jews.” They put a purple robe on him and placed a crown of thorns on his head.
As a disfigured Jesus was brought out, the Jewish leaders continued to demand that Jesus be crucified as Pilate sat down on the platform’s judgment seat. Because of fear that the crowd would accuse him of treason before Caesar, he turned Jesus over to be crucified. (John 19:16) However, John 19:19-22 states that Pilate did this, he:
. . . had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews. Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”
Jesus, carrying his own cross (later helped by Simon of Cyrene), was taken to Golgotha to be crucified! The Roman soldiers again, mocked, slapped and spat on him, as they stripped him of his clothes. Both scriptural and historical accounts suggest that Jesus was stripped naked! John 19:23-24 and Psalm 22 signify that Jesus was stripped of all of his clothing. Historically, the Romans would strip crucified people of their clothing to intensify the humiliation and shame. (The loincloth. Was added in later centuries for modesty.) They then threw him down on a wooden cross; stretched out his hands; and hammered a spike nail through his wrists. (They used the wrists because the weight of his body, once lifted on the cross, would have torn his hands, whereas the two connecting bones on his wrist supported his body.) They crossed his feet and hammered a spike nail through them. After nailing Jesus to the cross, he was lifted up and dropped into the hole dug for the occasion. At the jolt of the impact, Psalm 22:14 notes that Jesus’ bones came out of joint!
Jesus labored with each breath for hours, the weight of humanity’s sin was upon him! At the end, Father God turned away from him because he could not look upon sin. Matthew 27:45 notes Jesus’ despair and feelings of abandonment between the sixth and ninth hour:
Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli Eli, lema sabachthani?’ That is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”
At around the ninth hour, Jesus declared, “It is finished.” The price had been paid for the sins of the world!
Friends, because of Jesus’ momentous death on the cross, he delivered us from, not only sin, but also afflictions and sufferings. (Psalm 34:19) Just remember this: In times of hurts, rejection, pain, sorrows, shame and humiliation, Jesus has your back, front and sides because he has already borne our pain and sufferings on the cross. (Isaiah 53:4) Moreover, if that suffering is for righteousness sake, it is promised in 1 Peter 3:14, that you will be blessed.
So, in this time of celebration of Jesus’ birth, let’s do it with the soberness and solemnity for which the occasion deserves. Yes, he came as a babe, born in a manger, but he died on that cross for all of our sins, our sicknesses, our sorrows, our grief, our pain and our shame!
Have a blessed and grateful Christmas season!
Scripture References:
Isaiah 53:5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.
Matthew 20:28 even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
John 3:17 For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
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