January 24, 2019: Day 54 – Isaiah 50

Not really a chapter in Isaiah that you would want to read at wedding.  It is a bit of a downer, but what would you expect from people who  were taken away from their home land and forced into captivity and slavery.   This is the result of their time away from their homeland.  In the first few verses of this chapter you read the questions that are asked as to why they were sold into slavery.  The answer comes back very clearly that it was because of their sins (vs.1).  Now, we cannot, absolutely cannot extrapolate this verse into the 18th century era slavery.  The sin that was committed was not by those who were taken into slavery, but by people like us who went to a foreign land and took people for our own use.  God’s judgment will come down upon us one day for that, I am sure.  But here since God is speaking to His own people, the people of God, he tells them that they were sold because of their sin.  This was the relationship that God had with His people.

Starting at vs. 5 and following we read this servant song in Isaiah which speaks about this person being disgraced.  He was struck, his beard pulled, they spit upon him.  I’m wondering if any of that sounds like what happened to my Savior.  It actually is a direct reference to the suffering that the Messiah would undergo.  It is a direct reference to the suffering that Jesus underwent.  At some point we read  in vs.9 that it is the Lord who helps and declares us innocent.