Crushed For You by Maria Hartman

Isaiah 53:10 Yet it pleased the LORD to crush Him. Read that again. Isaiah chapter 53 is about the One and only Messiah, the Son of God, who personally took all the punishment for our sins. It tells of how He was despised and rejected; a Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief, wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth: He was led as a lamb to the slaughter...(v. 7a).

All of this is just a glimpse into some of the horror that Jesus suffered for me and you. But what stopped me cold this morning was that it pleased God to crush His precious Son. Why wouldn't God then see fit to bring degrees of crushing to we who were born in sin, who need to die to our sinful ways? If it pleased the LORD to crush holiness and perfection on our behalf, can't we see that it would please Him to crush sin and worldliness in us for the sake of Him?
We don't like 'crushing' in our lives because it feels wrong. But our opinion of how the work of God feels is completely irrelevant. I wish I could always see it that way, but unfortunately I don't. I deserve the ultimate crushing, Jesus did not. He deserves glory and honor and worship. Not only did He go THROUGH all this, but it pleased His Father to do it. God was pleased by His Son's obedience, and by the purpose His sacrifice achieved. But as a parent, can you even for a second imagine being pleased that your son was suffering for a person who spit on him? Crushed for someone who mocked him or betrayed him? God was. What an impossible calling unless we are made new by the very One who was crushed to make us that way.

Mark 10:45 For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many. A grueling and costly ransom. If Jesus' sinless life was deemed by God as fit for the ultimate sacrifice for sinners, how much MORE expendable are the lives of those who follow Him........how much MORE expendable is my life?

FOR TODAY: His sacrifice was for us; our sacrifice is for Him. He deserves our all no matter what the Father chooses for us.