quote from Ray (Who & what is Jesus?)
Luke 4:22 …And they said, "Is not this Joseph's Son?"
v. 23 And He said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to Me this proverb, 'Physician, heal Yourself.’
Did you get that? Doubtless He said, your going to say that to Me. Why? He healed people, right? But He was sick and diseased! So your going to say to Me, well if you’re the great Physician and You're healing all these people, surely you're going to say to Me, “Physician, heal Yourself.”
Christ had a burden to bare. He was nothing to look at though, sickly and diseased, “a tender shoot out of dry ground” (Isa 53:2), sick, diseased with infirmaries.
Now it says in Isa 53:3, “He is despised and rejected by others, a Man of suffering (Heb.-pain).” Because when we say suffering, right away we think of some spiritual thing. You know He suffered persecution and things of that nature. It’s still suffering, but the word is pain. Why was He in pain? Because He had infirmaries. Is this a different Jesus than you have been thinking about?
Isa 53:3 “...and as One from whom men hide their faces…” that’s not what it says in the Hebrew, it should say “As One who hides His face,” Imagine the Son of God, Creator of the universe and in a body that’s uncomely, diseased, infirmaries and pain. It’s like when you go through a crowd, you don’t want to call attention to yourself, because there’s nothing here to see, you know.
Isa 53:3 “… He was despised, and we held Him of no account. V. 4 ….. and carried our diseases;”
Do you understand where this says He was tempted in all ways as we, yet without sin (Heb 4:15). And we think once in a while a pretty girl passed Him, He had to say, well I’ll look the other way. No! This is a whole lot more real than that.
He carried our diseases, oh. They will say, no He went to the cross for our diseases. No, He carried them in His body. And now is where they say, God just really beat the living day lights out of Him? That we count Him stricken down and afflicted? Who would say that?! It says WE. It doesn’t say God struck Him down. That is blaspheme. WE accounted Him stricken down and afflicted, we that’s a people. When they saw Him, they said 'this Man is being cursed of God, look at the pathetic thing. God is cursing this man bad, I wonder what He did wrong.' And then He would heal the people.
I mean it wasn’t the first time where He said, I know your all looking at Me saying, “heal Yourself Physician.” That must have come up many times, you know. It’s not in the Bible though it says;
John 21:25 Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
I mean how many hundreds of times did someone say, Lord you’ve healed me, I’m whole, why doesn’t God heal You? He would say that’s not My job to be healed and walk around whole and handsome, fortified and all that. He came to carry your diseases. I heal you, but I carry them in My body. WE account Him stricken down by God and afflicted, because that’s what you would conclude and that’s what people would look at.
Look at me I’ve got bad feet and ankles, horrible knees, diabetes, sleep apnea, heart murmur, high blood pressure and a huge blood clot on the brain. People would say, Ray why is God cursing you like that.
tIsa 53:5 ‘But He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the punishment that made us whole, and by His bruises we are healed.
Isa 53:6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”
So not only did He have to carry all of our sins and shortcomings and everything else to the cross. But all His life He carried the pain, the sickness, the disease and the infirmaries in His body. Why? Because God is not going to put us through something that He is not willing to go through Himself! That’s why we follow in His footsteps, see. Now you have to understand in the same way that God spoke through Christ, every time He opened His mouth and God healed people, every time Christ said stand up or walk or whatever, the Father was doing it! In the same way, the Father is suffering through His Son.
Do you not suffer when your children suffer? Would you not trade places with them when they hurt and when they cry? Doesn’t it hurt you more than them, right?
This one little boy, his Dad said now son this is going to hurt me more than you. The boy said, well Dad hit yourself then. But really it’s more painful for the parent to see a child suffer, then it is for the kid to suffer I think. Because we see their youthfulness, their weakness, their innocent and we say, just give it to me Lord. Just give me their suffering.
So God was suffering through His Son. What is this all about? Is this more of this bizarre stuff? What is this all about? Here is the Son of Man, all filled with diseases, sicknesses, infirmaries and all of that. He put the iniquities of us all on Him.
Isa 53:7 “He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth.”