The God Who Bleeds

Welcome! Today we begin a new series that focuses on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Last week, we had our final message on the book of Esther, and we talked about how Old Testament passages sometimes hint at the future role of Jesus, proclaiming mysterious things that make no sense until you read and understand the New Testament. Of course, to the people alive before Christ came on the scene, these mysteries remained mysteries. One such mystery we looked at last week was account in which Abraham is asked to sacrifice his son Isaac. An angelic messenger stops Abraham at the last moment, when it has become clear that Abraham was willing to carry out the sacrifice, and God provides a ram caught by its horns instead. The mystery is that Abraham calls the place “The Lord Will Provide,” future tense. From the perspective of the account itself, the Lord has already provided. But God gave Abraham this name because a time would come (in the future) when the Father would not withhold His Son, His only Son, whom He loves. 

Prophecies in the Old Testament are also often like this, in that there is a more immediate fulfillment, but there are mysteries that are clearly not yet fulfilled. One such prophecy about Jesus is the following:

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. – Isaiah 7:14

The immediate fulfillment has to do with the timing of defeating one of Israel’s enemies, but there are multiple strange mysteries. One is in the phrase “the virgin will conceive”. Some might explain away this by saying that it refers to someone who had been a virgin, or someone who was simply young, but it is clear from sources outside the Bible that Jewish religious leaders saw the passage as simultaneously referring to a future promised messiah, and they believed that a miraculous birth would be a sign of this messiah. This makes sense, because a young person conceiving is not much of a sign; it’s no big deal at all.

The second mystery has to do with the name, Immanuel. The name means “God with us.” On the one hand, and probably with regards to the immediate fulfillment, the name could be simply interpreted as referring to a statement of celebration that God is with them and will defeat Israel’s enemies. But what if the name were quite literally true, that God Himself would be somehow down on Earth, with the people? This was almost unthinkable, but with Jesus, this is in fact the absolute truth.

Another passage from Isaiah that points to Christ is the following:

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this. – Isaiah 9:6-7

This verses before this passage simply state that this will happen “in the future,” and there is no clear immediate fulfillment. Again, apart from the revelation of Jesus Christ, there are mysteries here. How can a man, a future leader, be called Mighty God? How can a man be called Everlasting Father? How can his government and the peace he brings be eternal, having no end? How can he reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom forever? None of it makes any sense, if you don’t know about Jesus.

But Jesus is God. In John 10:30, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one,” and the Jews listening to Him immediately pick up stones to stone Him, because such a statement is blasphemy to them. They don’t yet understand the idea of three-in-one, of the trinity, of one God, three Persons.

Another mysterious passage (one of many) appears in the book of Daniel:

In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. – Daniel 7:13-14

In this passage there are three main mysteries. What kind of man comes with the clouds of heaven? What does this even mean? The unthinkable answer is that he comes from heaven rather than born on Earth. In Jesus we have the amazing revelation that both are true; Jesus comes from heaven before being born! In John 8:58, Jesus says, “Before Abraham was born, I AM,” which attests to His existing thousands of years before His birth, and it also attests to His being God, in that He uses the “I AM” phrase that God told Moses was His name. Can you guess what the Jews listening to Him did after He said that? You guessed it, they picked up stones to stone Him. They fully understood what He was claiming.

And later, after Judas betrayed Jesus, we read this account in Mark:

Again the high priest asked Him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?”  “I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”  The high priest tore his clothes. “Why do we need any more witnesses?” he asked. “You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?” They all condemned Him as worthy of death. Then some began to spit at Him; they blindfolded Him, struck Him with their fists, and said, “Prophesy!” And the guards took Him and beat Him. – Mark 14:61b-65

It wasn’t just because He said He was the Messiah that the priest tore his clothes and called this blasphemy. It was because of the reference to coming on the clouds of heaven. The priest and those around him knew that Jesus was referring to the prophecy in Daniel. But the person in the prophecy had to be a man – who else could it be that approaches the Ancient of Days, clearly referring to God? If you had asked the high priest to explain the prophecy, he would have been utterly unable to do so.

A second mystery of the Daniel passage is that people of every nation and language worship this man who comes on the clouds of heaven. Wait – you cannot worship a man! That’s blatant idolatry! Isn’t it?

Was Jesus worshiped? Multiple scriptures attest to this. (By the way, notice that they didn’t worship Mary.)

On coming to the house, they [the Magi] saw the Child with His mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped Him. Then they opened their treasures and presented Him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. – Matthew 2:11

The crowds that went ahead of Him [Jesus] and those that followed shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” – Matthew 21:9

This is clearly an expression and activity of worship. And as proof, look at how the Jewish leaders responded, and how Jesus responded to them:

But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things He did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant. “Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him. “Yes,” replied Jesus, “have you never read, “‘From the lips of children and infants You, Lord, have called forth Your praise’?” – Matthew 21:15-16

Note that “Your” praise means praise of God, which Jesus is applying to praise of Himself. And recall that after Jesus walked on the water, the disciples worshiped Him, and Jesus did not stop them. And when the women were on their way to tell the disciples about Jesus’ resurrection, Jesus met them on their way, and when they realized it was Him, they clasped His feet and worshiped Him. A final example is “doubting” Thomas, whose doubt was removed when Jesus showed him the nail marks in His hands and feet and wound in His side. Thomas responded by saying to Jesus, “My Lord and my God!” – not only an expression of worship, but a direct equating of Jesus with God.

The third mystery associated with Daniel is one we saw in Isaiah – His kingdom is eternal, which implies that the King is also eternal. How can this be true for a man? We can say that Jesus is “doubly” eternal, in that He has no beginning and no ending.

I want to give one more passage from the Old Testament that hints of Christ as God and of His work, although it doesn’t give much of a hint as to how this will happen:

On this mountain He will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; He will remove His people’s disgrace from all the earth. The Lord has spoken. In that day they will say, “Surely this is our God; we trusted in Him, and He saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted in Him; let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.” – Isaiah 25:7-9

The early Jews probably assumed that this would be God (the Father) who somehow did this, but there was perhaps a human side to this – wiping away tears? And a future without death? How could this be? How could someone defeat death? We know that Jesus did this by giving Himself as a once-for-all sacrifice on our behalf.

And this leads into today’s title, The God Who Bleeds. The title is inspired in part by an original series Star Trek episode (The Paradise Syndrome) in which Captain Kirk crashes a shuttle on a planet and gets amnesia. The local people find him and think he is a god, especially after he revives someone using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Kirk goes along with it, concluding that perhaps he is a god. But when the displaced leader comes at Kirk with a knife and cuts his hand, he declares, “You bleed! You bleed! Behold a god who bleeds! Behold a god who bleeds!” Ultimately, the local people stoned Kirk for being a false god.  (Of course, Spock and the Enterprise rescue Kirk just in time, and help save the entire planet as well.)

You see something similar in Acts 14, in which Barnabas and Paul are in Lystra, and Paul, through the power of God, heals a man who had been lame from birth. The people call out in Lycaonian, “The gods have come down to us in human form!” They called Barnabas Zeus and Paul Hermes, because he was the main speaker. Barnabas and Paul tried to convince the people that they were not gods, and the tried to tell them about the real God, but they had difficulty doing so – the people still wanted to bring sacrifices to them. But then, Jews who hated Barnabas and Paul and hated their message came into the town and turned opinions around 180 degrees. They began to stone Paul. You can just imagine them saying, “You bleed! You bleed! Behold a god who bleeds!” They dragged him outside the city, thinking him dead.

But in Jesus you actually have the God who bleeds. From the perspective of the Old Testament Jews, even if they could have somehow been able to come to accept the idea that the Messiah was God, I doubt they could then accept that the Messiah was also a man, a man who bleeds. I can imagine the same taunts made by those who beat Jesus. I think of the passage in Luke where the men who were guarding Jesus began mocking and beating Him. They blindfolded Him and demanded, “Prophesy! Who hit You?” It says they said many other insulting things to Him. I can just imagine the same statement: Behold, a god who bleeds!

Although the Jews rejected the idea of God who bleeds, a powerful picture of this can be found in the Old Testament. Let’s look at Isaiah 53:1-12. I’m going to read the entire passage, and then highlight some key points as pertains to the idea of the God who bleeds.

Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. 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.

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. – Isaiah 53:1-12

This is an absolutely astounding passage. It is completely obvious it is describing Jesus to anyone who has learned about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. It was one of the most important pieces of evidence that led me to faith in Christ. Nobody can argue that Isaiah was written after Christ, as we have a complete Dead Sea scroll of Isaiah that is scientifically dated before Christ.

Verses 1-2 highlight His humanity, even His “plainness” in appearance. Verse 3 describes how fully familiar He was with suffering, not suffering at the hands of enemies, but at the hands of those who should have embraced Him. Verses 4-6 tell the remarkable reason for His suffering – He bled and suffered ultimately because it was God’s will for Him to do so, and the reason God wanted Him to do this was so that the Messiah could take on Himself the punishment that we deserve for our sins.

Verses 7-8 describe Him like a lamb, a description used by John the Baptist. (Behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!)  It is also used to describe Jesus in Revelation. The verses also describe how He did not speak up while being oppressed, something that happened during the trials of Jesus. And He was taken away, from the Garden of Gethsemane into custody. The passage asks who protested? Nobody did, not even His disciples. Peter even denied knowing Him. And then at the end of verse 8 it says that He died – He was cut off from the land of the living. And the passage reiterates that the death of the Messiah was really about Him taking the punishment for the sins of the people.

Verses 9-10 says He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and Jesus was sentenced to death by crucifixion, a horrible tortuous death only given to the most severe criminals. The passage reminds us that this punishment was despite the fact that He was innocent. And then the passage says perhaps the most impossible thing of all, that although He died because it was the Lord’s will to do this and to have Him die for our sins, He will yet live! He will continue to be used by the Lord! How can this be?

Verses 11-12 conclude by saying that His dying will “justify” many! His one death will count as a substitutionary payment or atonement for many people. And this is what we know is true of Jesus. Because He was without sin, He was able to do this. And we know that all who profess faith in Him, who choose to make Him Lord of their lives, will be forgiven, be justified, and will look forward to eternal life in and with Him. 

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! Behold the God who bleeds! I have shared this before, but I will remind you that this passage from Isaiah so “undid” me after reading it in a NIV Study Bible that I became convinced that the Christian Bible must have radically doctored the New Testament. I did not tell my Christian friends this, but soon after, I had a conversation with a Jewish believer in Christ who just happened to mention to me that He had a Jewish Publication Society translation of the Bible. I immediately asked to see it as soon as possible, and in his apartment, I opened it up and flipped straight to Isaiah 53. These were the days before you could just go to the Internet to find every translation under the sun. The Jewish Publication Society rendition of Isaiah 53 showed me that the NIV was not doctored at all, and in fact, perhaps a bit muted compared to the more vivid word choices used in the Jewish translation. Now I was really undone, and it wasn’t long after that I became a believer.

I love what Micah Murray writes:

“You would expect a god to wield a sword in his hand, distributing vengeance on all His enemies. But Jesus’ hands healed His enemies who’d been wounded by the sword. For a moment it had seemed like He would be the god we had always imagined – overthrowing the Empire, leading a victory parade through the city streets, planting His flag in Jerusalem. Instead, He was betrayed with a kiss, arrested without a fight, and prosecuted without cause.

“Then He was beat up.

“I wonder what those soldiers thought as they punched and whipped and spat on Jesus. They had seen others worship Him, the very man they were now beating. Who would worship a guy they could beat up? And the hopeful followers, who dreamed that this would at last be the end of the long oppression? They slipped away quietly in the shadows. As they heard the sharp sounds of fists on flesh, their hopes were broken. After all, who would follow a guy who gets beat up?

“Every moment of Jesus’ story is a profound miracle. The Divine in human form. The Creator among the Created. The Word made flesh. A God who bleeds.

“You would expect a god to make someone bleed. But our God? Our God shed His own blood for us, His enemies. He died to set us free. […]

“The Immortal died for the mortal. The Creator was beat up by His own Creation.

“This is a God I can worship.”

Let’s pray.