OH HOW HE LOVES ME!
MERRY MONDAY BY PARRIS BAILEY
“Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.” Is.53:10
I never tire of mediating on my redemption and the redemptive work of Christ upon us sinners. Last summer we took a quick trip to New Zealand and Australia to minister. We seemed to jump off the plane and arrive into a crowded multi culture church in New Zealand, l so love seeing the mixed races coming all together. The Pastor afterwards began to tell us how he met Christ and I noticed it wasn’t about drugs, sorrow and defeat. While he was in college he saw the futility of life in just getting a degree, then married and raising children all for what? Redemptive changes the whole story of our life.
Spurgeon says, “if we read the Bible with the eye of faith, desiring to discover its hidden secrets, we see something more in the Saviour’s death than Roman cruelty, or Jewish malice: he sees the solemn decree of God fulfilled by men, who were the ignorant, but guilty instruments of its accomplishment. He looks beyond the Roman spear and nail, beyond the Jewish taunt and jeer, up to the Sacred Fount, whence all things flow, and traces the crucifixion of Christ to the breast of Deity. He believes with Peter – “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” We dare not impute to God the sin, but at the same time the fact, with all its marvelous effects in the world’s redemption, we must ever trace to the Sacred Fountain of divine love. “It pleased Jehovah to bruise him. He overlooks both Pilate and Herod, and traces it to the heavenly Father, the first Person in the Divine Trinity.”
Christ becomes the “corn of wheat” or the sacrificial lamb that came and sought me out. He took us into an eternal marriage union with himself, even though I came with liabilities and in debt with no ability to pay. Nor can I ever pay him back or ever fathom the pain and separation that my Lord must have gone through. Redemption, we can never comprehend it.
Spurgeon goes on to say: “In Christ’s finished work I see an ocean of merit; my plummet finds no bottom, my eye discovers no shore. There must be sufficient efficacy in the blood of Christ, if God had so willed it, to have saved not only all this world, but ten thousand worlds, had they transgressed the Maker’s law. Once admit infinity into the matter, and limit is out of the question. Having a divine person for an offering, it is not consistent to conceive of limited value; bound and measure are terms inapplicable to the divine sacrifice. The intent of the divine purpose fixes the application of the infinite offering, but does not change it into a finite work. In the atonement of Christ Jesus there is “bread enough and to spare.” AMEN!