Isaiah 53:3-7 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 came to interfere with the natural current of event. And it made Him tired. And a man, even a Divine man, is less apt to laugh when He is tired. A good deal of what we call our gladness of heart, if we will care to scrutinize it, is simply the congenial luxury of drifting down the current of event. If you are pulling your boat up-stream you will be sober while you are about it. Strained powers are serious. It is the farthest from our thought to disparage exuberance or even hilarity; nevertheless, it remains a fact that hilarity is feeling out at pasture and not feeling under the yoke. It is steam escaping at the throttle because it is not pushing at the piston. I venture to say that Christ could not shake His purpose off. He was here to stay the downward drift of event; the purpose was too vast to be easily flung aside, and His muscles were too solidly knotted to it to be easily unknotted and relaxed. And we shall have to go on and say that it was an inherent part of Christ to have a purpose and to be mightily bent to its achievement; and not only that, it was an inherent part of Christ as the Saviour of this world to seize upon the current of event and of history and to under. take to reverse it. Exactly that was the genius of the Christ-mission. (C. H. Parkhurst, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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. |
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