FROM SUFFERING TO GLORY

April 27, 2014 ADULT SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON FROM SUFFERING TO GLORY MINISTRY INVOCATION “O God: We give thanks to You for the manifold blessings to us....
Author: Anna Wood
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April 27, 2014 ADULT SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON

FROM SUFFERING TO GLORY MINISTRY INVOCATION “O God: We give thanks to You for the manifold blessings to us. You did not have to bless us but You did. We shall remain eternally grateful. Amen.” WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW AND UNDERSTAND Confusion, disappointment, and sorrow in life can often result from misunderstanding fully what happened. After Jesus explained his life, death, and resurrection within the context of Hebrew Scripture, the two travelers on the way to Emmaus understood better what had happened. THE APPLIED FULL GOSPEL DISTINCTIVE We believe in the indwelling of the Holy Ghost for all believers and that the Holy Ghost verifies and validates the Believer as part of the Body of Christ. TEXT: Background Scripture – Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Luke 24:25-27, 44-50 Key Verse – Luke 24:27 Lesson Scripture – Isaiah 53:5-8; Luke 24:25-27, 44-47 Isaiah 53:5–8 (NKJV) 5 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. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 7

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He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.

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Luke 24:25–27 (NKJV) 25 Then He said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” 27 And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. Luke 24:44–47 (NKJV) 44

Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.” 45 And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures. 46 Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, 47 and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

COMMENTARY Isaiah 53 Verse 5.—But he was wounded for our transgressions. The Great Truth is that all Christ’s sufferings were for us, and constituted the atonement for our sins. The form is varied, but the truth is one. Christ was “wounded” or “pierced” (1) by the thorns; (2) by the nails; and (3) by the spear of the soldier. The wounds inflicted by the nails caused his death. He was bruised; or, crushed. The chastisement of our peace was upon him; i.e. “the chastisement which brought us peace,” which put a stop to the enmity between fallen man and an offended God—which made them once more at one. With his stripes we are healed; rather, we were healed. Besides the blows inflicted on him with the hand (Matt. 26:27) and with the reed (Matt. 27:30), our Lord was judicially scourged (Matt. 27:26). Such scourging would leave the “stripe-marks” which are here spoken. Verse 6.—All we like sheep have gone astray. “All we” means either the whole nation of Israel, which “went astray” in the wilderness of sin or the whole race of mankind, which had wandered from the right path, and needed atonement and redemption even more than Israel itself. We have turned everyone to his own way. Collectively and individually, the whole world had sinned. The Lord hath laid on him; literally, the Lord caused to light upon him. God the Father, as the primary Disposer of all things, lays upon the Son the burden, which the Son voluntarily accepts. He comes into the world to do the Father’s Will. It does not lessen the Son’s exceeding mercy and loving-kindness in accepting the burden, that it was laid upon him by the Father. The iniquity of us all (compare the initial “All we”). The redemption is as universal as the sin, at any rate potentially. Christ on the cross made “as full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice … for the sins of the whole world.” 2

Verse 7.—He was oppressed. As Israel under the Egyptian taskmasters. The cruel ill usage in the high priest’s house, and before Herod is, perhaps, specially pointed at. He was afflicted; rather, he abased himself. He was oppressed, but he abased himself and opened not his mouth. The silence of Jesus before his judges when he could so easily have vindicated himself from every charge, was a selfabasement. It seemed like an admission of guilt. He opened not his mouth. The contrast of the Servant’s silence and passivity with men’s ordinary vehemence of self-assertion under ill usage is most striking. Who was ever silent but he under such extremity of provocation? He is brought as a lamb; rather, as the lamb. The Paschal lamb is, perhaps, intended, or, at any rate, the lamb of sacrifice. The prophet has often seen the dumb, innocent lamb led in silence to the altar, to be slain there, and thinks of that touching sight. As a sheep before her shearers. Verse 8.—He was taken from prison and from judgment; rather, by oppression and a judgment was he taken away; Who shall declare his generation? literally, his generation who considereth? It might include: (1) his origin; (2) his earthly life; and (3) his everlasting reign in heaven. He was cut off; i.e. taken away before his time, cut down like a flower. For the transgression of my people was he stricken. “My people” may be either “God’s people” or “the prophet’s people,” according as the speaker is regarded as Isaiah or Jehovah. Luke Verse 25.—Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! better translated, O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! The Stranger now replies to the confused story of sorrow and baffled hopes just lit up with one faint ray of hope, with a calm reference to that holy book so well known to, so deeply treasured by every Jew. “See,” he seems to say, “in the pages of our prophets all this, over which you now so bitterly mourn, is plainly predicted: yon must be blind and deaf not to have seen and heard this story of agony and patient suffering in those well-known, well-loved pages! When those great prophets spoke of the coming of Messiah, how came it about that you missed seeing that they pointed to days of suffering and death to be endured by him before his time of sovereignty and triumph could be entered on?” Ver. 26.—Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? better translated, ought not the Christ, etc.? “St. Luke dwells on the Resurrection as a spiritual necessity; St. Mark, as a great fact; St. Matthew, as a glorious and majestic manifestation, and St. John, in its effects on the members of the Church.… If this suffering and death were a necessity, if it was in accordance with the Will of God that the Christ should suffer, and so enter into his glory, and if we can be enabled to see this necessity, and see also the noble issues which flow from it, then we can understand how the same necessity must in due measure be 3

laid upon his brethren.” And so we obtain a key to some of the darkest problems of humanity. Thus, the Stranger led the “two” to see the true meaning of the “prophets,” whose burning words they had so often read and heard without grasping their real deep signification. He led them to see that the Christ must be a suffering before he could be a triumphing Messiah; that the crucifixion of Jesus, over which they wailed with so bitter a wailing, was in fact an essential part of the counsels of God. Then he went on to show that, as his suffering is now fulfilled—for the Crucifixion and death were past—nothing remains of that which is written in the prophets, but the entering into his glory. Verse 27.—And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. The three divisions, the Pentateuch (Moses), the prophets, and all the Scriptures, cover the whole Old Testament received then in the same words as we possess them now. The Lord’s proofs of what He asserted He drew from the whole series of writings, rapidly glancing over the long many-colored roll called the Old Testament. “Jesus had before him a grand field, from the first great Gospel of Genesis, down to Malachi. In studying the Scriptures for himself, He had found Himself in them everywhere. The things concerning himself. The Scriptures which the Lord probably referred to specially were the promise to Eve; the promise to Abraham, the Paschal lamb. There is not one of the prophets without some distinct reference to Christ, except Nahum, Jonah (who was himself a type and prophetic sign), and Habakkuk, who, however, uses the memorable words quoted in Rom. 1:17. To these we must add references to several of the psalms, notably to the sixteenth and twenty-second, where sufferings and death are spoken of as belonging to the perfect picture of the Servant of the Lord and the ideal King. His hearers would know well how strangely the agony of Calvary was foreshadowed in those vivid word-pictures he called before their memories in the course of that six-mile walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Luke 25 Verse 44.—And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the Law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me. The words, “while I was yet with you,” plainly show that, in the Master’s mind, the period of His sojourn with men was, in the human sense of the expression, past. His abode now was elsewhere. This and the next verse (45) probably refer to what the Master said that first Easter evening to the assembled disciples, but the exact fixing the time in the forty days is of comparatively small importance. What is, however, of real moment is the weight Jesus showed that He attached to Old Testament words and types and prophecies by this repeated mention. 4

Verse 45.—Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures. Assuming (as is most probably the case) that vers. 44 and 45 refer to words spoken by Jesus on the first Easter evening to the eleven and to Cleopas and his friend, then the way in which he opened their understanding is described by St. John (20:22) thus: “He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” Among the new powers bestowed on them by this Divine gift, St. Luke especially dwells on the spiritual insight henceforth possessed by these men into the Scriptures of the Old Testament, hitherto only partly understood. This power was doubtless one of the great instruments of their success as preachers. In the next four verses (46–49) St. Luke evidently briefly summarizes the Master’s great sayings, some probably spoken in the course of the walk to Emmaus, some on that first Easter evening, some on other occasions during the forty days which elapsed between the Resurrection and the Ascension. Verse 46.—Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day. The verse should be read thus: “Thus it is written that Christ should suffer,” etc. These words probably were spoken on that first Easter evening. They were apparently repeated on several occasions during the forty days. The Old Testament—they would see now with the new light cast upon it—showed the necessity of an atoning Redeemer, from the sin which it everywhere reveals, and of a dying Redeemer, from the death which it proclaims as the consequence. While the same Scriptures no less authoritatively proclaim that through this suffering the Redeemer-Messiah should attain to his glorification. Verse 47.—And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his Name among all nations. This is more definitely expressed in Matt. 28:19 and Mark 16:15, where the universality of His message is found in the form of a definite command. Beginning at Jerusalem. St. Luke enlarges the thought contained in these words in his Acts (1:8). RELATED DISCUSSION TOPICS CLOSING PRAYER My God: I am grateful to have found You and kept You in the forefront of my being. Bless us continually with Your grace and mercy. They represent bountiful blessings for all of us. Amen.

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