Mh2>Isaiah 53:2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground:he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. | 53:53 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
I have an old book on my desk. It was copy written 1949, smells like an old book, and shows the signs of being read many times. There are scuffs and ragged edges. You can see the leather is showing its age. So I started reading this book a while back and you know what?
What is inside is still very enjoyable to read.
In fact this time after I am done with it I will hand it down to my son Jeremiah and hopefully he will enjoy it as much as I have. So right now I haven’t mentioned what the book is but I will say it is not the Bible. So later on I might let you in on what the name of this book is
It’s funny this old book that has set on my desk for so long and has so much age showing. But it is still very refreshing. You know some times this is the way people may be. We may look at them and right away we see their outward appearance and think the worse. Or because they don’t act the way we feel they should, we start to judge them. I know you aren’t like this but let me share a time when I was a much younger man raised by a very strict set of rules and just been married a little over.
A few years and there were these fellows who had big piercings in their ears. Now before you judge me I once had my left ear pierced. But these weren’t just small earrings that was there it was long spikes sticking through the ears and with being young I was apt to judge very quickly. Well, anyway I didn’t trust these people because I felt their outward appearance just wasn’t right.
Judging
I know you may be thinking, “Shame on you for that” and rightly so. But see there was a lesson for me to learn. God has a way of opening peoples eyes and he opened mine that one summer. I was just coming off of a weeks vacation at the shop I worked at and was out in the shed and putting tools away. Picture this: I set the box of tools down on the shelf and one of the tools drops right on top of my bare feet. It is was the long sharp pointed hole saw and it went down into the top of my foot and stuck there.
The first thing I did was to pull it out. The nest thing I did was to start to bleed very badly, but no one but me was home. I hobbled to the outside water hose and still needing help. God has a way of opening up our eyes. The only ones around was you might be able to guess was the ones that I had judged so harshly. So I called for help and they came running. Doing everything they could to help me out one washed my foot with water and another ran inside and grabbed a towel. They worked on my foot till they got the bleeding under control.
But their help did not stop there: they contacted my brother in-law and he came over and got me to the hospital. And, they stayed right with me till more help came!
Lessons
I told you God has a way of opening your eyes — thats if you will let him. I was taught an important lesson that day, and that was not to be too fast to judge.
Not to judge a book by its cover.
Look at the scripture at the top of this blog. Whats it say? “He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.” Do you know who the scriptures are talking about? That’s a description of our Lord, our Saviour, who has done more for us than anyone else.
So in todays terms we would say he’s not that much to look at. But it’s not the outside of a person we should be looking at. Look what is stated in verse “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” We hid our faces from him.” The one who sacrificed himself for us we hid our faces from him. He was spit upon, his beard was plucked out, he was bet with a whip and the scriptures says WE hid our faces from him. But for everything that was done to him he forgave each and every one of us. All we had to do was asked.
I mentioned earlier its not what the outside looked like that matters and heres an example for you. I was Sunday school Superintendent and Lucille one of my teachers made me an apple pie one time. But she forgot to mix the sugar up inside of the apples, so she thought that if she just put the sugar on top it would be all right. If anyone reads this and knows Lucille tell her I would enjoy another one of those apple pies with the sugar on top and not inside — it was really good. Now I did say I had an old book on my desk that is in rough shape, and I said it was not the Bible, the books name is The Greatest Story Ever Told. And you know the gospel of Jesus is the greatest words we can hear. May God Bless you and may you find some comfort in this Blog.