The Sufferings of Jesus
Philippians 2:5-11 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death– even death on a cross! 9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
I knew I wanted to preach about Jesus this coming Sunday, but the structure of the message did not come into shape until after our Wednesday night Bible class. We sang “One Day when Heaven was Filled with his Praises” as a part of our worship time and I couldn’t get verse 3 out of my mind.
One day they left Him alone in the garden,
One day He rested, from suffering free;
Angels came down o’er His tomb to keep vigil;
Hope of the hopeless, my Savior is He.
One day He rested, from suffering free. This verse kept playing over and over again in my mind. Jesus was freed from suffering only when he died. That is our human condition, is it not? We suffer in life until we find rest in death. The grave is the only respite for the human condition. Sadly, that is the only hope for the non-believer. You hear it all the time after a death, “At least he/she is not suffering anymore.” I think the common epitaph “RIP” (rest in peace) is evidence of that. The only thing that mere humans can look forward to is cessation of suffering after death. Of course, in the merely human worldview we will also have ceased to exist. With death comes also the cessation of love, joy, consciousness, and life itself.
In context, this verse is referring to Christ’s sufferings on the cross, but that was not the beginning of his suffering; it began when he became a human. Jesus was subjected to all the indignities and sufferings of the human condition. He became like us in every way to rescue us from these very sufferings: Hope of the hopeless, my Savior is He! The song continues in the chorus…
Living, He loved me; dying, He saved me;
Buried, He carried my sins far away;
Rising, He justified freely forever:
One day He’s coming—O glorious day!
I’ll say more in my lesson. — Joey
Leave A Comment