The God Who Knows Grief

Isaiah 53 actually begins in 52:13

This beautiful passage in Isaiah chapter 53 actually begins in 52:13 and runs through the end of chapter 53.

We see five stanzas of three verses each. Each stanza reveals a different facet of the gem that is the Savior.

52:13–15 he is exalted, but shocking; 53:1–3 he is rejected and despised; 53:4–6 he suffers for sinners (“us”); 53:7–9 his ministry is unrecognized and he is treated unjustly; 53:10–12 he is the sacrificial victor.

Polycarp that great disciple of John who had appointed him Bishop of Smyrna calls this "The golden passional of the Old Testament"

It was written some 700 years before Christ, who it is talking about. There are many titles and words used in the Bible to describe Jesus: Son of God, Son of Man, King of kings. Isaiah is the only one in the Bible to refer to Jesus the suffering servant as, "The Man of Sorrows."

The Man of Sorrows, what a beautiful and touching title. He doesn't just sympathies with our pain, he empathizes.

One of the greatest ways perhaps that Jesus was a man of sorrows was the fact of rejection. Notice the terms given in this passage:

There is no beauty that we should desire him

He is despised and rejected of men

We hid as it were our faces from him

He was despised and we esteemed him not

We did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted

It is interesting that in 2003 research specialists learned that the brain reacts to the pain of rejection in the same way it does with intense physical pain.

Phycology Today some time ago wrote a blog post that gives 10 effects of rejection. Here are a few of those;

1. Rejection piggybacks on physical pain pathways in the brain. fMRI studies show that the same areas of the brain become activated when we experience rejection as when we experience physical pain. This is why rejection hurts so much (neurologically speaking). In fact our brains respond so similarly to rejection and physical pain that…

2. Tylenol reduces the emotional pain rejection elicits. In a study testing the hypothesis that rejection mimics physical pain, researchers gave some participants acetaminophen (Tylenol) before asking them to recall a painful rejection experience. The people who received Tylenol reported significantly less emotional pain than subjects who took a sugar pill. Psychologists assume that the reason for the strong link between rejection and physical pain is that…

3. Rejection served a vital function in our evolutionary past. In our hunter/gatherer past, being ostracized from our tribes was akin to a death sentence, as we were unlikely to survive for long alone. Evolutionary psychologists assume the brain developed an early warning system to alert us when we were at risk for ostracism. Because it was so important to get our attention, those who experienced rejection as more painful (i.e., because rejection mimicked physical pain in their brain) gained an evolutionary advantage—they were more likely to correct their behavior and consequently, more likely to remain in the tribe. Which probably also explains why…

4. We can relive and re-experience social pain more vividly than we can physical pain. Try recalling an experience in which you felt significant physical pain and your brain pathways will respond, "Meh." In other words, that memory alone won’t elicit physical pain. But try reliving a painful rejection (actually, don’t—just take my word for it), and you will be flooded with many of the same feelings you had at the time (and your brain will respond much as it did at the time, too). Our brain prioritizes rejection experiences because we are social animals who live in "tribes." This leads to an aspect about rejection we often overlook…

5. Rejection destabilizes our "Need to Belong." We all have a fundamental need to belong to a group. When we get rejected, this need becomes destabilized and the disconnection we feel adds to our emotional pain. Reconnecting with those who love us, or reaching out to members of groups to which we feel strong affinity and who value and accept us, has been found to soothe emotional pain after a rejection. Feeling alone and disconnected after a rejection, however, has an often overlooked impact on our behavior…

6. Rejection creates surges of anger and aggression. In 2001, the Surgeon General of the U.S. issued a report stating that rejection was a greater risk for adolescent violence than drugs, poverty, or gang membership. Countless studies have demonstrated that even mild rejections lead people to take out their aggression on innocent bystanders. School shootings, violence against women, and fired workers going "postal" are other examples of the strong link between rejection and aggression. However, much of that aggression elicited by rejection is also turned inward…

7. Rejections send us on a mission to seek and destroy our self-esteem. We often respond to romantic rejections by finding fault in ourselves, bemoaning all our inadequacies, kicking ourselves when we’re already down, and smacking our self-esteem into a pulp. Most romantic rejections are a matter of poor fit and a lack of chemistry, incompatible lifestyles, wanting different things at different times, or other such issues of mutual dynamics. Blaming ourselves and attacking our self-worth only deepens the emotional pain we feel and makes it harder for us to recover emotionally. But before you rush to blame yourself for...blaming yourself, keep in mind the fact that…

8. Rejection temporarily lowers our IQ. Being asked to recall a recent rejection experience and relive the experience was enough to cause people to score significantly lower on subsequent IQ tests, tests of short-term memory, and tests of decision making.Indeed, when we are reeling from a painful rejection, thinking clearly is just not that easy. This explains why…

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9. Rejection does not respond to reason. Participants were put through an experiment in which they were rejected by strangers. The experiment was rigged—the "strangers" were confederates of the researchers. Surprisingly, though, even being told that the "strangers" who had "rejected" them did not actually reject them did little to ease the emotional pain participants felt. Even being told that the strangers belonged to a group they despised such as the KKK did little to soothe people's hurt feelings. Still, the news is not all bad, because…

10. There are ways to treat the psychological wounds rejection inflicts. It is possible to treat the emotional pain rejection elicits and to prevent the psychological, emotional, cognitive, and relationship fallouts that occur in its aftermath. To do so effectively we must address each of our psychological wounds (i.e., soothe our emotional pain, reduce our anger and aggression, protect our self-esteem, and stabilize our need to belong).

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201307/10-surprising-facts-about-rejection

Jesus understood well the pain of scorn and rejection, not just on the cross but

He was scorned by his family. John 7:5 For even his own brothers did not believe….

He was scorned by his friends. John 1:11 He came unto his own but they received him not.

He was scorned by his followers. John 6:64 Yet there are many of you who do not believe

He was scorned by his foes. In many passages in the New Testament we read of his foes mocking him and ridiculing him……especially at the cross.

Charles Spurgeon preached so eloquently many years ago, "Let it never be forgotten that the subject of the sorrows of the Savior has proven to be more efficacious for comfort to mourners than any other theme in the compass of revelation, or out of it. Even the glories of Christ afford no such consolation to afflicted spirits as the sufferings of Christ. Christ is in all attitudes the consolation of Israel, but He is most so as the man of sorrows. Troubled spirits turn not so much to Bethlehem as to Calvary; they prefer Gethsemane to Nazareth. The afflicted do not so much look for comfort in Christ as He will come a second time in splendor of state, as to Christ as He came the first time, a weary Man, and full of woes. The passion flower yields us the best perfume; the tree of the cross bleeds the most healing balm. Like in this case cures like, for there is no remedy for sorrow beneath the sun like the sorrows of Immanuel. As Aaron’s rod swallowed up all the other rods, so the griefs of Jesus make our griefs disappear. Thus you see that in the black soil of our subject, light is sown for the righteous; light which springs up for those who sit in darkness, and in the region of the shadow of death. Let us go, then, without reluctance to the house of mourning, and commune with “The Chief Mourner,” who above all others could say, “I am the man that has seen affliction.”

Jesus doesn't just know about suffering and sorrow, Jesus doesn't just understand your suffering and sorrow, He has been there, he has experienced it, and still experiences it daily in the rejection of those who refuse to come to him.

Isaiah tells us the that Jesus is acquainted with grief, that is an intimate knowledge, he knows grief, pain, sickness all too well.