An unbelievable report

Everything had moved so swiftly. At one point, Jesus was telling His disciples to pray and the next, Judas turned up with an armed mob from the chief priest’s office. Jesus asked the men why they had not arrested Him, as He taught daily in the temple. The crowd rushed Jesus to Caiaphas’ courtyard and the trial commenced. Even though the alleged eye witnesses could not agree on their testimony and Pilate acknowledged that he could find no fault in Jesus, somehow the chief priests arrived at a guilty verdict (Matthew 26: 59-67; John 19: 1-16). There was no judge to declare a mistrial. There were no advocates to demonstrate outside the temple and say that this was a gross miscarriage of justice. There was no court of appeal process. There was just great emptiness. Peter, who had promised to be with Jesus until death had been unable to respond positivly to a simple statement; you are one of them. Instead, Peter denied ever having known Jesus and called down curses on himself to make his rejection of Jesus look more authentic (Matthew 26: 69-75). Why would he do this? Surely, everyone knows that temple going, scripture reading and believing people do not swear. Right.  The prophet Isaiah could not believe what had happened. He declared, “Who has believed our report? And to whom has the Arm of the Lord been revealed?  Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed,” (Isaiah 53: 1; 4 – 5). Isaiah was sharing the good news of the gospel, even while he expressed doubt that anyone would ever believe what he was saying. Isaiah shared how the love and power of God is revealed to His people. The death of Christ turned everything that people knew about sin on its head. Rather than allowing guilty people to face the wrath of the law, Jesus carried the grief, sorrows and sins of the world on His shoulders.  Kingdom citizens suffering from the terminal illness of sin, can look to Jesus and have the assurance that by His stripes, we are healed.