Gospel:
CHRIST THE SCOURGED
Michael Browne, Bath
"Many a time they have afflicted me from my youth," Let Israel now say— "Many a time they have afflicted me from my youth; Yet they have not prevailed against me. The plowers plowed on my back; They made their furrows long." The LORD is righteous; He has cut in pieces the cords of the wicked.” (Psalm 129. 1-4)
Past Affliction
Israel looks back to a history of affliction and grief imposed by their enemies from earliest times, verse1. In present trials they remember past sufferings and draw comfort from the fact they already survived generations of national persecution, ‘Yet they [their enemies] have not prevailed against me’, verse 2.
They liken their afflictions to a pitiless plough scoring its long furrows across the back of their agony, verse 3.
This was written more than three thousand years ago, but foreshadows Israel’s tortured cry during the ‘time of Jacob’s trouble’ (Jere. 30:7) as they await national liberation by the Hand of the righteous LORD delivering them from ‘the cords of the wicked’, verse 4. This will be fulfilled at the Second Advent.
Prophetic Sufferings
Yet through the corporate voice of a tormented nation rises the prophetic cry of another. It is the sob of Messiah Himself as He suffers beneath the terrible Roman flagellum (a whip of leather thongs with slivers of bone and metal tied to them) as ‘they made long their furrows’ across His lacerated back.
When the wicked and unrighteous command of Pilate, John 19.1, had been carried out, the bloody weals across Christ’s bared back resembled the long furrows of a ploughed field. Terrible imagery! No matter what Israel had suffered, it could not be compared to the unparalleled agony of Israel’s Messiah. ‘Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, Wherewith the LORD hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.’ Lam. 1.12
Present Worship
Oh what glorious wounds they are to the redeemed of the Lord today. What grateful clouds of incense-worship ascend to our God and Father when we call to remembrance those blessed sin-healing stripes, 1 Pet. 2.24.
Isaiah too prophesied of these same redemptive sufferings when he wrote, ‘But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed’ Isa. 53.5.
‘Dear suffering Lamb! Thy bleeding wounds, with cords of love divine, have drawn our willing hearts to Thee, and linked our life with thine.’
