Challenge Accepted?
He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! (Isaiah 53:3-4) We often hear this passage quoted on Easter. It carries the message of a Messiah - the rejection of the one who would come to save us from our sins and restore our relationship with God the Father. Yet, do we hear the real message of this passage? "And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God..." We thought...just how many things do we get wrong when we think one way, all the while forgetting there could just be a different perspective we aren't privy to at all? God gave this prophecy so many years before the Messiah came, yet many missed it because they 'thought' one way and refused to see Jesus as the red...