He said, “I must work the works of my Father.” He said, “I will say what my Father says, and I will do what my Father does. And if you have seen me, then you have seen my Father.”
Why did God send His only begotten Son? Because people seemingly could not touch God. They saw God their Creator up in heaven, that He was about His heavenly affairs, that we have no way of touching Him. And so He sent His Son in flesh. He came down to our level, when we couldn’t get up to His.
And for three years Jesus was in His ministry, in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in the Bible. The stories are told of the sermons He preached and the great miracles that He did.
He came to show us what God was like. He was man, and yet He was God. He was so much God, it was as if He were not man. He was so much man, it was as if He were not God. He was God incarnate. What does that mean? It means God, who came down in flesh.
Then one Friday they crucified Him. They accused Him of crimes He hadn’t done. And they drove nails into His hands and they drove nails into His feet. And they thrust a spear in His side. And they put a crown of thorns on His head. And they striped His back, 39 stripes.
There Jesus hung on that cross. And the devil mocked and laughed at Him. The devil thought he had won a great victory. But there was a reason why Jesus went to the cross, for in His shed blood was the remission of sin. He shed His blood so that you and I would not have to shed our blood. He became the sacrifice so that you and I would not become the sacrifice.
And through the shedding of His blood, there is the forgiveness of sin. But not just the forgiveness of sin, but each stripe He took on His back was for our healing, 39 stripes on His back.
In that day, 40 stripes was a death sentence, only one less stripe than a death sentence. Why 39 stripes? Why not 38? Why 39? I recently read an article in a medical journal. Medical science is lopping all kinds of sickness and disease into 39 categories.