Jesus Foretold: Despised And Rejected (MP 77)

What kind of God loves His creatures so much? He was despised and rejected when He came, Bringing men redemption from Satan’s clutch, Freely saving believers on His name! It was not rank-and-file who turned Him down; It was the shepherds, guarders of the flock; They made sure common folk were not around; When the Savior was shanghied* in the dock**! Jesus knew in advance He would be spurned, Yet He came for you, me, and all the rest, So in afterlife we would not be burned— If we believe in Him, we will be blest! He did all this, knowing He’d be maligned, To redeem those who are to Him inclined! *Shanghied = condemned unjustly **dock = on trial Scripture Quoted (NIV) [Brackets added] Prophecy Made: Isaiah 3:3—“He [Jesus] was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” (Written in the 7th century B.C.) Prophecy Fulfilled: Luke 23:18-23—“With one voice they [the mob of Jewish priests and Pharisees desiring Jesus killed] cried out, ‘Away with this man! Redeem Barabbas to us!’ (Barabbas had been thrown in prison for an insurrection in the city and for murder.) Wanting to release Jesus, Pilate appealed to them again. But they kept shouting, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ For the third time he spoke to them, ‘Why? What crime has this man committed? I have found in him no grounds for the death penalty. Therefore I will have him punished and then release him.’ But with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed.” (Written in the 1st century A.D.) Commentary On: “Despised And Rejected” The despicable mistreatment Jesus of Nazareth received at the hands of the Roman soldiers and the leading religious authorities of Israel, His chosen nation, probably hurt Him more than the physical pain He went through at the time of His trial and crucifixion. You must remember Jesus was not just a human carpenter from Nazareth, a man, but He was God Himself, the Creator of the universe and men; He had voluntarily come to earth motivated by love for the human race who had brought upon itself condemnation to death and hell because of the first man’s sin and the sins of every man and woman that ever lived; He had come to offer them the good news that salvation from the predicament they had gotten themselves into was available, simply by belief in Him. He had left His palatial heaven and His glory and the adoration of millions of angels; He had confined Himself into the limited frailty of the body of a man, and spent His 33 years preaching the good news, healing hundreds of handicapped Jews, and demonstrating the way God had wanted them to live from their beginning, and the priests and Pharisees had despised Him, refused to believe He was sent from God, and plotted to kill Him. Not only all this, they knew their own Scripture, that He had come at their own request (Deuteronomy 18:18 plus 340 revealing prophecies that were fulfilled perfectly by His actual life, including that they would reject Him); despite all this, they rejected Him and fraudulently had Him put to death! Even Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea and whose authorization the Jews must receive to employ the death penalty, believed Jesus was innocent. He did his best to convince the mob, which was composed of the highest and supposedly most holy Jews, that there was no evidence worthy of the death penalty against Jesus, but they refused to accept his verdict and persistently howled “Crucify him!”; they even illogically demanded that Pilate release Barabbas, a known murderer and insurrectionist, and to kill Jesus. Pilate lacked the personal virtue of upholding justice, instead caving in when threatened with Jewish complaints of his inability to keep peace in Judea to the emperor in Rome; by giving in, he demonstrated the typical reaction of a politician’s placing his own survival above the doing of what he knew to be right. The rejection of Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Messiah by Israel, of course was known to God millenia in advance; by dulling their spiritual insight (See Isaiah 6:9-10) 700 years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, God actually aided the Jews to reject Him, for it would have been disastrous if they had accepted Him. Israel’s misinterpretation of scripture guaranteed their inability at that time to spread the gospel of salvation by grace to the whole world. So their rejection brought upon themselves destruction and anti-Semitism and a long delay in Israel’s eventual acceptance of Jesus Christ; God turned to the Gentiles with the good news of salvation and established the Church to accomplish what He had planned for Israel to accomplish. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) “That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the grave, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)