Isaiah 53:3-9

Posted on by Kristin Peck

He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.  Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.  But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. 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.  He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.  By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?  And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

A Kiss from Judas

Posted on by Kristin Peck

Luke 22:47-48

While He was still speaking, behold, a crowd came, and the one called Judas, one of the twelve, was preceding them; and he approached Jesus to kiss Him. But Jesus said to him, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?”

Judas – the despised disciple – the hated one – the betrayer

When the name Judas is mentioned with regards to the betrayal of Jesus, it is said with a sense of immediate disgust and blame. Yet while Judas may have been the one to physically hand Jesus over to the guards that drug him away, it was truly each one of us that played Judas’s role that night. The fingers point back to us.

To put it simply, every commandment that we break each and every day of our lives is a kiss from Judas. Our transgressions are the betrayal that put Jesus on the cross. Therefore, every one of us has placed a death sentencing kiss upon Jesus’s cheek. Each lash that split into Jesus’s back was an act of sin being washed away from our dirty records. Even though we were not the guards that day, each one of us is carrying a whip in our hands.

The nails that were driven into Jesus’s hands and feet were driven by our own hands, by our own actions, with our own hammers. The execution of a man so pure and so holy was carried out by those born into sin even generations after the event actually occurred. To say that it was all Judas, is to say a drop of water is an ocean. We all are equally at fault, no matter how minor a weight we may think our sins carry – we all make up that ocean of betrayal.

Here is what we need to remember:

At the end, when Judas took his own life, he still had the option to cry out to God for forgiveness. The reason we are still alive is because Jesus did not call down his angels to rescue him that day. He willingly sacrificed his life to save ours and now we live in a period of grace where, while we strive to do our best and improve day by day, God is forgiving and gives us another chance. Yet no day is promised, and now is the time to reach out to Him.

Psalm 103:13-17 “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s children.”

Picture retrieved from: Thebibledude.net