A Suffering Savior
For Meditation (Ed Satterfield)
These texts help us start the Christian year. This Sunday is the first Sunday of Christmas. We have just celebrated His coming during the Advent season, yet we still wait His coming every day – to meet us in the challenges that this life presents while we look to His coming again to make all things new.
Christmas has provided time to be with family and friends. Perhaps they did not meet your expectations or your desire for joyous, life-giving closeness. Instead, they may have brought conflict and tension and have made you aware of how far you are from the life and relationships you long for. Many of us have missed loved ones who are no longer with us. What do we do with our disappointment and hope for something better?
Read these texts and note the connections between them. Then, read the full chapter of Isaiah 63. Ask the Lord to help you see how they relate to what you are dealing with right now.
The message of hope in verses 7-9 of Isaiah 63 is given in the middle of a proclamation of God’s judgement on the nations for their opposition to God and God’s enmity with Israel for their rebellion against their God. The message if hope is even more vibrant when we grasp our broken condition. Despite the disobedience and distance of God’s people from Him, God has compassion. He Himself is full of goodness toward His people. He becomes our savior and “is afflicted” with our affliction. Through His suffering, His mercy saves and redeems us.
Entering into our affliction, Jesus suffers for us. He does not take away our troubles, but He changes the experience of suffering by meeting us in it. Because Jesus suffers, we are not alone in our suffering, our disappointments, and our longing for things to be right. He is with us, He bears our pain with us, and He works to make all things right.
Isaiah 63:7–9
I will tell of the kindnesses of the LORD,
the deeds for which he is to be praised,
according to all the LORD has done for us—
yes, the many good things
he has done for Israel,
according to his compassion and many kindnesses.
He said, “Surely they are my people,
children who will be true to me”;
and so he became their Savior.
In all their distress he too was distressed,
and the angel of his presence saved them.
In his love and mercy he redeemed them;
he lifted them up and carried them
all the days of old.
Matthew 2:13–23
When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
“A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”
After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”
So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.
Hebrews 2:10–18
In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. He says,
“I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters;
in the assembly I will sing your praises.”
And again,
“I will put my trust in him.”
And again he says,
“Here am I, and the children God has given me.”
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.