The prophet Isaiah foresaw our text tonight. Isaiah famously prophesied about Jesus: He was crushed for our iniquities. (Isaiah 53:5) He says Jesus was “crushed.” It’s a vivid word. Picture taking a hammer to a Ritz cracker or a piece of glass. That cracker or glass would be smashed into a million pieces. That is the idea of being “crushed.”
Hardly a day goes by that we don’t hear about some tragic death. The news is filled with stories of war-casualties and natural disasters and murder and overdose. There is a human tendency in these moments to speculate. We wonder why it happened to “those” people. There is an underlying assumption beneath much of the speculation. The underlying assumption runs something like this: “Good things happen to good people; conversely, bad things happen to bad people.” The logic is then simple, cold, inescapable: That person met with a bad end so they must have been a bad person.
Pastor David Horton from Eastside – Madison is leading our Lent worship today.
We have before us today in our text a study of contrasts. A sharper contrast can scarcely be imagined. It is the contrast the Lord God first mentions in the Garden of Eden after the Fall into sin. He spoke already then of the “seed of the woman” and the “seed of the devil.” It is the contrast between children of light, and those who walk in darkness.
Pastor Jacob Scott from Zion – Leeds is leading our Lent worship today.
“This man is our champion?” You can just imagine how Israel’s fighting men might have said those words when they saw David stepping forward to meet Goliath on the battlefield. I mean, this is David. He wasn’t even old enough yet to be in the army. He was only in the camp that day because he had been sent by his father to check up on his older brothers, who were soldiers in the army. David, he was still just a shepherd back in Bethlehem. “This man is our champion?”
It is time to make our yearly journey to Jerusalem. The one we make each year in heart and soul. That is why the words we hear Jesus speak to us this Ash Wednesday are pleasing to our ears. He says to his friends, Look, we are going up to Jerusalem. (v. 31) Jesus says “we.” He wants his friends to come! He wants the company! He wants you and me to join him on this journey!
Today is all about glory. It is about the glory of the LORD. The term “glory of the Lord” is first used in the book of Exodus. The Lord God tells the Israelites who have just come out of Egypt that the next morning they were going to see a special manifestation of his presence with them. They were going to see “the glory of the Lord.” And they did. Many times after that, the “glory of the Lord” would appear to them. The “glory of the Lord” filled the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle.
The whole scene is too delicious! It couldn’t be scripted any better. It sets up to be the ultimate story of revenge. There are the brothers. They are before the one they believe to be the second-in-command in all the land of Egypt. They believe his name to be Zaphenath-Paneah (Genesis 41:45). Little do they know the man is really their own brother, Joseph! Their brother Joseph whom they had cruelly sold 22 years earlier.
Paul once experienced something I am not sure anyone else ever experienced. Paul got to go to heaven before he died. That’s right. He tells about it in the verses just before our text. He flashes back fourteen years. He tells of the time he was caught up to the third heaven (2 Corinthians 12:2). This is a Jewish way of speaking.
