Devotionals

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HOW COULD HE!?
By Chuck Johnson



I was studying the fifty-third chapter of the book of Isaiah tonight. I wanted to get my eyes off of my circumstances and get them on Jesus. To remind myself once again on this, the eve of the anniversary of Jesus'resurrection nearly two thousand years ago of what He had endured for me!

In the tenth verse of Isaiah I read these words, "Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief" (emphasis mine). I was horrified! How could a loving Father be pleased with His Son being tortured and nailed to a cross? I'm a father, and the thought of being pleased when one of my children gets hurt turns my stomach. There must have been an error in the translation. So I searched for the definition in the original Hebrew. To my astonishment I read as follows: to be pleased is to take delight, to desire,favor,to be "well pleased".

What was God thinking? Or more accurately, who was God thinking about? To understand how God could look upon the brutilization and death of His only begotten Son, we must go back to the beginning. In Genesis 1:26 we read that God said, "Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness." We were made to resemble God, when He looked at man it was as if He were looking in a mirror. Now think about this, God is in control of all that ever was and all that will ever be! And yet He made time every day to meet Adam in the garden to chat, to have fellowship. Then came the fall and sin. And because sin cannot be in God's presence, He could no longer walk hand in hand with man.

We read in Exodus 33:20 "But He (God) said, 'you cannot see My face: for no man shall see Me and live." Now wait. We know that Adam saw God, because they walked together in the Garden in the cool of the day. It also says that God asked Adam, "Why do you hide yourself from Me?" Why could Adam see Him and live, yet if Moses saw Him he would die? Because sin had entered all of mankind through the bloodline of Adam. No human being since Adam has been able to see God. God is an all-consuming fire, and anything not pure is immediately consumed in His presence!

So why, why not just destroy man from the face of the earth? God had the chance. He chose instead to leave Noah and his family to once again be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth after the destruction of the "great flood". Then Noah, a righteous man, fell into sin (Genesis 9:21). Once again man had fallen out of God's grace and into sin.

So now let's get back to the point I was making about God taking pleasure in the death of His only Son. If God had just destroyed all of man when Adam sinned, or had not spared Noah and his family, then Jesus would not have had to go to the cross. Why then, why didn't God destroy man? Because God created man for fellowship, for His good pleasure.

I have five children, and I have had the privilege of being present for the birth of each of them. Now let me tell you, though, if you have never experienced it, it is difficult to see your wife go through such agonizing pain and travail to bring forth a new life. But all of the pain is soon forgotten when you hold your new son or daughter who resembles you, who is made in your image, your likeness.

You see, God's good pleasure wasn't just in the cross. It was beyond the cross and the grave, when sin was conquered, and He could once again hold His children, who were created in His image. What enabled God to send His Son to the cross? It was His love for you and for me, and His desire to once again experience walking hand
in hand with us. Jesus and God are one! And no greater love has any man than to lay down his life for a friend.

If you want to know what God looks like, look in the mirror after your sins have been washed away. You were made in His image and likeness. You have your Father's eyes and smile. That's Him looking back at you!


Hallelujah! He is risen!! He is risen indeed!!!!

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