"He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised, and we did not esteem Him." Isaiah 53:3 NAS

As we have seen in the last devotionals that the very heart of God was marred on account of us. His heart was marred because Jesus Christ the Son of God was beaten, despised and forsaken even to the point of separation from God the Father. We cannot explain what this truly meant or felt like.

Thankfully since the Christ suffered on behalf of you and I we will never have to know what that feels like. On the other hand we are here in these fleshly bodies in a temporal state called life. We live and breath and we feel and hurt and we suffer and we die.

We live in joy and happiness and we live in tragedy and loss. We all share one common bond. We will all go through periods of sorrow and grief it is unavoidable. There is not one person who can say they will never feel sorrow.

The thing we can say is that our Savior truly became a man of sorrows and one acquainted with grief. It isn't to say that God was not acquainted with our sorrows and grief before the cross, for He has always been the omniscient God. He knows all things all the time.

These words in this verse speak of great encouragement to those who are suffering and full of sorrows. First the word 'sorrow' in the Hebrew is mak'obah (mak-o-baw') and means anguish or (figuratively) affliction. The KJV usage is grief, pain and sorrow (1a).

The root word it comes from implies the meaning to feel pain or to grieve. The second word here is grief and the Hebrew word is choliy (khol-ee') and means malady, anxiety, calamity, disease and sick (-ness). This has a root meaning of to be rubbed or worn, to be weak or afflicted (1b).

The third word here that is key is the word acquainted and it means to know or to ascertain by seeing. Our awesome Savior knows full well of what it means to be in anguish and great pain. He knows what it meant to be full of anxiety and calamity. He understands the suffering we go through with disease and sickness.

Imagine for a moment the very grief Jesus must have felt in the garden of Gethsemane. It was so great that it says, “being in agony…His sweat became like drops of blood (Luke 22:44 NAS). His whole ministry was surrounded with hurts, sickness and sinners.

He felt the pain of those who were hurt. He wept over the anguish of His people. Jesus truly knows what it means to have sorrows. He is a compassionate God full of grace and always waiting for us to cry out to Him.

In the next devotional we will finish the second part of this devotional. I try to break them up so they are not so lengthy. This verse here has so much to encourage us with. Have a blessed, blessed day in Jesus Christ’s presence.