He Opened Not His Mouth
6/21 Reading Portions: Deuteronomy 26; Psalm 117-118; Isaiah 53; Matthew 1
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6/21 Reading Portions: Deuteronomy 26; Psalm 117-118; Isaiah 53; Matthew 1
Isaiah 53:7
He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth.
YEARLING
Many years ago, a young man asked me about this verse. He said he’d witnessed the slaughtering of lambs and told me the bleats from the animals were deafening. He wanted to know if the Bible was somehow in error because of this. The following is a condensed version of my answer. The silence of a lamb led to the slaughter is an analogy that could only be truly understood by those who participated in the Passover. As a yearling was offered for Passover (Ex 12:5), it must be inspected four days before the Passover on the tenth of the month (Ex 12:3) and slaughtered at the twilight of Passover on the fourteenth (Ex 12:6). During the four-day period, the yearling is kept in the home, bonding with the family members of the household, especially the children. When the lamb was taken to be offered as the Pesach, its neck was gently laid in a wooden X (a cross, if you will), and bled before it was taken home to be roasted over fire. The little lamb was silent because it had grown fond of its new family. It was a yearling after all. The lamb’s silence was reflective of our Lord Jesus Christ, who was silent before His accusers and His executioners (Matt 27:12-14). Why was the Lord Jesus silent? He was taking your sins and mine as if they were His own. Jesus paid a debt He did not owe for a debt we owe and cannot possibly pay. Jesus, in paying our debt, suffered God’s wrath upon the tree, died a death as a Man, and shed His blood for the remission of sins; yet He never once said, “Those sins aren’t mine.” They certainly weren’t His sins. He remained the sinless, spotless, unblemished Lamb of God. Yet He took our sins upon Himself, not reluctantly or rebelliously, but silently and willingly. Is Jesus a Savior in whom the vilest wretch can find forgiveness? Absolutely! His silence most loudly and eternally proclaims it. Likewise, the sheep before the shearers presents several blessed truths of our Lord’s silence, but because we’ve run out of room for me to explain that part of the verse, perhaps we’ll cover it another time. Again, the silence of Scripture, and especially the silence of our Lord Jesus Messiah, speaks volumes. Hallelujah! What a Savior!