Despised and Rejected

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
(Isaiah 53:2b-3)

Meditation

Just look at how our society uses physical appearance to decide what they might think about someone. We actually make character judgments about someone we don’t even know, based on our first impression of them. I admit, I do it all the time too. I was once called up for jury duty. When the attorneys were asking the jury pool questions, to determine their fitness to serve, the defendant was sitting right in front of us. To be honest, to me, he looked sleazy and creepy, and so I judged him guilty. Thankfully, I wasn’t picked for the jury because I was so prejudiced because of what he looked like. He may very well have been innocent. How many people do we prejudge like that every day?

How many people in Jesus day, looked at him and thought he didn’t look like a Messiah? How many of them thought he was just another uneducated Galilean? How many of us would have thought the same thing? We like our heroes to be one of the beautiful people, and Hollywood makes a lot of money every year advancing that idea. Rest assured, Jesus did NOT look like Jim Caviezel or Max Von Sydow. He probably didn’t look like the European white male, with long wavy brown hair, like the paintings make him look. I've got one of those on my wall right now. He looked like a common Jew of the day. His hair may have been long, but it was probably curly and black. He wore a tunic and cloak, with sandals on his feet. There was nothing about him to make anyone think he was the king of the Jews.

It’s true the Jews of that day should have known who Jesus was from the scripture and accepted him as their Messiah. We know as much or more than they did, yet we are still rejecting him to this day. Every time we turned our back on Jesus, every sin we committed, we were showing him how much we despised him. For all the years we were living without Jesus, our rebellion was what nailed him to the tree. He suffered the most horrible torture, not because no one else has been treated as harshly, but because he was totally innocent of any wrongdoing. He knows what suffering is and didn’t deserve any of that treatment, but he willingly went to the cross to save us.

Daily Prayer

Heavenly Father, how do we describe your exquisiteness? We are made in your image, but we cannot match your radiant beauty and magnificence. Jesus came into the world as a humble servant to do your will, not as a conquering king. He didn’t have what the secular world would call physical beauty to make people desire to know him. Lord, when his own should have known him as their Messiah, he was reviled and hated by them. He suffered horrible torture on the behalf of us all. He willingly took the punishment for sins that hadn’t even been committed yet, our sins. Even today, people look at pictures of Christ on the cross and don’t give weight to how important his sacrifice was to them and the entire world. Father, please soften the hearts of the people who don’t care about what Jesus did for them; who even hate him, so they don’t have to submit to him. It’s in his precious name, we pray. Amen!