Isaiah 53:7

Often it is simply the answers to our prayers that cause many of the difficulties in the Christian life. We pray for patience, and our Father sends demanding people our way who test us to the limit, “because . . . suffering produces perseverance” (Romans 5:3).

We pray for a submissive spirit, and God sends suffering again, for we learn to be obedient in the same way Christ “learned obedience from what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8).

If the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter.—I lay down my life for the sheep. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.

It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.

Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: in burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure.

The meek . . . shall increase their joy in the Lord , and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.

Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Christ was chosen out of the people, that He might know our wants and sympathize with us. I believe some of the rich have no notion whatever of what the distress of the poor is. They have no idea of what it is to labor for their daily bread. They have a very faint conception of what a rise in the price of bread means; they do not know anything about it. And when we put men in power who never were of the people, they do not understand the art of governing us. But our great and glorious Jesus Christ is one chosen out of the people, and therefore He knows our wants.

Jesus suffered temptation and pain before us; our sicknesses He bore; weariness —He has endured it, for weary He sat by the well; poverty —He knows it, for sometimes He had no bread to eat save that bread of which the world knows nothing; to be houseless —He knew that, too, for the foxes had holes and the birds of the air had nests, but He had nowhere to lay His head.

He was led like a lamb to the slaughter.

Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him.

What grace it requires when we are misunderstood yet handle it correctly , or when we are judged unkindl y yet receive it in holy sweetness! Nothing tests our character as a Christian more than having something evil said about us. This kind of grinding test is what exposes whether we are solid gold or simply gold-plated meta l.

If we could only see the blessings that lie hidden in our trials, we would say like David, when Shimei cursed him, “Let him curse, for the LORD will return good to me instead of his cursing this day” (2 Samuel 16:1 1–12 NASB).