A man of sorrows
He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows
(Isaiah 53:3-4).
It is difficult to comprehend the deaths of over 100,000 people in the UK. The sorrow which fills the hearts of those who grieve over the loss of someone in the COVID pandemic is immense. Other lives have also been lost during the same period because of age, disease, accident and crime. Numbers never describe the personal loss and heartbreak which death brings. This is especially felt when death comes suddenly and early in life.
In Isaiah 53 the Lord is described as “A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”. Isaiah wrote prophetically of the Lord’s person and work of redemption. He came into the world as the Sympathiser and the Saviour. God spoke to Moses in the book of Exodus about this,
And the Lord said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them (Exodus 3:7-8).
These verses explain that God felt in heaven what His people endured on earth; He sympathised. But He also promised to deliver; He saved. Christianity is about the Creator coming into His creation. The Lord Jesus used the simplest of illustrations to describe His profound ministry. In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, He comes to where we are. In the Parable of the Lost Sheep, the shepherd searches until He finds us. Jesus also came to Sychar’s well to meet a lost woman, and to Jericho to meet a lost Zacchaeus. At Calvary, He came to sacrifice Himself for a lost world. His heart of love is revealed in His pain, suffering and death.
In her loss, Mary wept, broken-hearted at the feet of Jesus. Jesus did not declare to Mary, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Instead, He saw her tears and sorrow and felt her pain in His own heart, and He wept. The bystanders witnessed that moment: “See how He loved him!” (John 11:32-36).
One day, Jesus will take away tears, death, sorrow, crying and pain (Revelation 21:4). The Bible teaches us that, in the future, we will be gathered as one great company to be with the Lord, and be united by Him – so shall we ever be with the Lord
(1 Thessalonians 4:15-18). We are to comfort each other with this hope. But that day is not today. Today is when Jesus empathises with us in our tears, our sorrow, our crying and pain. It is the day when He feels and shares in our broken heartedness. It is a love that comforts us in our loss and fills our hearts with hope. It is a love that sustains us through the bitterest of circumstances. It is also a love that makes us sensitive to the loss of others, encouraging us to always be compassionate, loving, tender-hearted and humble (1 Peter 3:8).
This is the love of Christ. It is a love that never fails (1 Corinthians 13:8).
