Wednesday, March 9, 2022

Orange Moon "Wednesday, March 9, 2022 "The Greatest Mystery"

The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…


"The Greatest Mystery"

    

   

    To make possible His living and eternal presence within our hearts, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit abandoned the Lord Jesus Christ to suffer and die alone on the cross of Calvary for our sins.

    "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46).
    "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee" (Hebrews 13:5).

    At Calvary, the Christ who had ever been the delight of His Father became the object of His wrath - "smitten of God" (Isaiah 53:4).  "He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (II Corinthians 5:21).  Indeed, the sublime and breathtaking simplicity of the Gospel - "Christ died for our sins" - actually drives us to our knees and faces by the greatest of all mysteries:  Who is the God who would so wondrously do such a thing? (I Corinthians 15:3).  How can there be such a One who smote and forsook His beloved Son for His enemies?  How can He bear such a heart of love and mercy?  How can grace so abound in our hearts where sin once abounded?  How can former rebels become sons and daughters wherein the goodness of God will forever be known and displayed in glory beyond wonder?  

   "God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved), and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in Heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:4-7).

   The Father's promises to us and the Spirit's presence within us bless us because of the Son's price paid for us.  Again, mystery abounds.  What would it have meant for One who had forever known the love that "passeth knowledge" to be stripped bare of it?  What agony rent the soul of the Lord Jesus, making possible the rending of the veil that separated our spirits from the Spirit of God?  What loneliness broke His heart during a time of separation that must surely have seemed like forever in the Holy One "made to be sin for us?"  These, and so many other questions never to be answered, fill our being with the Light of God that perhaps best shines within us not by what we can know, but by what we cannot.  "The Light shineth in darkness" (John 1:5).

   To the degree the Lord Jesus was forsaken on the cross of Calvary, born again believers will never be forsaken.  This is the holy proportion of salvation in Christ.  God gave Himself to us when we believed, the Holy Spirit coming to dwell within us forevermore.  He did so at the highest cost He could have remitted, the smiting of His eternally beloved Son with His wrath.  Mystery indeed, a wonder only explicable by the realization that the God we love must be far more good and glorious than most devoted saint has ever begun to contemplate.  He is, and as He forever "shows the exceeding riches of His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus," we will forever grow in the realization that we cannot fully know the terrible price paid to redeem us, or the eternal measure of the gift it purchased.

"But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all."
(Isaiah 53:5-6)

Weekly Memory Verse
   "The LORD will perfect that which concerneth me.  Thy mercy, O LORD, endureth forever."
 (Psalm 138:8).

 

   





 





































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