To Encourage You

Isaiah 53:12 “He poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors.”

I was reading from C.H. Spurgeon’s “Morning and Evening” devotional this morning and read some of his thoughts on the wonderful passage above.  It caused me to stop and think more deeply on such awesome truth. I thought about King David’s confession from Psalm 51:5: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” What was true for David is true for us all – we were born in iniquity, sinners, transgressors from birth. I read some statistics about the number of people who have ever lived on the earth – it was an estimate of over 108 billion. That’s a big number!  That’s a lot of transgressors.  If the names of all these sinners were written on a list – you and I would be numbered among them. We would all be members of that fraternity. 

But then there’s another list – the list of the righteous.  It’s a short list. Its number? One – the Lord Jesus Christ.  But by the wisdom and grace of God, the sins of the whole world were laid on Him, and He paid the penalty for that sin on the cross. And the result?  In Spurgeon’s words, “(Jesus) transfers His name from that list to this dark indictment, and our names are taken from the indictment and written in the roll of acceptance, for there is a complete transfer made between Jesus and His people.” Some have called it “the great exchange,” the wonderful truth that “For our sake he (i.e., God the Father) made him (i.e., God the Son) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”  (2 Corinthians 5:21). It is by putting our faith in God’s perfect sacrifice for our sins that we can be moved from the roll of the transgressors to the roll of the righteous.  It’s the best news that’s ever been told to the world?  

So, this morning, which list are you on?  It doesn’t matter which number you or I are on that list of over 108 billion – we can be erased from that list and added to the number of the saved.  It’s these that the apostle John described in his vision of heaven which he told us about in these words from Revelation 7:9-10: “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” 

Are you listed in that number, that number taken from every tribe, people, and language that there has ever been in the world?  When the roll is called up yonder, will you be there?