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Closing Up The Chasm


"And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives."

Matthew 26:31

Jesus proceeds upon His path, and oh, how much is laid upon Him! The guilt of thounsands of years, the world's future - the salvation of millions! He goes in order, in His own Person, to plant the seed-corn of a new heaven and a new earth. Alas! wither should we have been going had He not traversed this path for us? Our future state would have ended in unquenchable fire. He knew this. That which He undertook stood every moment, in all its magnitude, present to His soul. But the glorious result of His undertaking was equally obvious to Him. At every step he apprehended Himself as being sent by the Father to close up the chasm which sin had caused between God and the creature, between heaven and earth.

~ FW Krummacher, The Suffering Savior, (Banner of Truth, 2004), 82


He Loved Them To The End


"Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end."

John 13:1

"O comprehend this depth of fidelity and compassion!... For it was to this end - is the Apostle's meaning - that he associated with sinners, that He might bear them eternally, on His heart. Those whom His Father had given Him were more the objects of His affection than the holy angels around the throne of God, and His love of them increased as the end drew near. O how He loved them when he took their sins with Him into judgment, and cast Himself into the fire which their transgressions had kindled! How He loved them, when His own blood did not seem to Him too dear a price to be paid for them, although it was they who were the transgressors; He loved them to the end; and to this day He loves them that are His in a similar manner. If a feeling of heavenly rapture thrilled through the apostle John at such a thought; let our hearts vibrate in like manner! Whatever may befall us, His love continues the same; 'For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the Lord, who has compassion on you' (Isaiah 54.10, ESV)."

~ FW Krummacher, The Suffering Savior, (Banner of Truth, 2004), 29-30


O Sacred Head, Now Wounded


“O Sacred Head, Now Wounded”


O sacred Head, now wounded,
with grief and shame weighed down,
now scornfully surrounded
with thorns, thine only crown:
how pale thou art with anguish,
with sore abuse and scorn!
How does that visage languish
which once was bright as morn!


What thou, my Lord, has suffered
was all for sinners’ gain;
mine, mine was the transgression,
but thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Savior!
‘Tis I deserve thy place;
look on me with thy favor,
vouchsafe to me thy grace.


What language shall I borrow
to thank thee, dearest friend,
for this thy dying sorrow,
thy pity without end?
O make me thine forever;
and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never


He is Risen Indeed


Next week is the most significant week of the Christian calendar and one that the broader culture will not help you prep for. Sure, the peeps and candy smorgasbords are filling aisles at Meijer and Pintrest-inspired bunny décor is being pinned and re-pinned. But those aren’t exactly pointing us to remember the “reason for the season.”

The Apostle Paul wrote, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” That’s pretty significant, to say the least. And next week, we get the opportunity to join together with saints the world over to consider the weightiness of what it would mean for us to still be in our sins. And not just that, we get to join together with God’s global people in celebrating the fact that we aren’t!

Pause.

Consider that again.

We. Are. Not. Still. In. Our. Sins.

Why? Because God died to bring us out of them and then rose from the dead to defeat death.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are small beans in comparison to what Resurrection Sunday is marking. And being the most joyful people as blood-bought sons and daughters of God, we ought to convey to the world how great our God is through how we celebrate his wondrous, saving grace.

So how will you do that? What will you do this week to be prepared next week to soberly consider what life would be like if you were still stuck in your sins? How will you get ready to think about what it means that Jesus took on flesh at Christmas so it would be pummeled at Easter as a pointer to the wrath of God he was absorbing? How will you express to your children, neighbors, or coworkers that Easter is about death and life, not candy and ham?

Here are a few suggestions that may help you along the way as they have helped me:

  • Read a short excerpt once a day from Nancy Guthrie’s Jesus: Keep Me Near the Cross.
  • Listen to CJ Mahaney’s sermon “The Cry from the Cross.”
  • Check out the new devotional from Desiring God, Love to the Uttermost.
  • Read through the Gospels’ narrative of Jesus’ last week before he returned to the Father.
  • Host a meal with family, friends, and neighbors and go all out—use the good china, let the kids eat a ton of dessert, pull out the nice table cloths.

Maybe by making more of Holy Week and Resurrection Sunday, we can say with Paul that we have delivered of first importance that Christ died for our sins and was raised on the third day.

He is risen indeed.

 


The Father Forsakes the Son for Us


The midday sky turned black as grief. The veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom, like the angry shredding of a contract. Three exquisite hours of the world’s most grotesque suffering imaginable and the Son of God drank down to the last drop the full cup of God’s wrath for sin.

He gave his life as a ransom for many. The whole church past, present, and future is redeemed. Surely millions are included for the picture of the beneficiaries of this suffering; there number is “myriads upon myriads.” All these are saved because the Father forsook the Son—for us.

How could one man’s suffering redeem so many? How could three hours pay for even one person’s eternal destiny in Hell, let alone the Hell-stay of millions? The answer lies not in the numbers but in the nature of the Son of God.

When the awestruck centurion cried out, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” (Mark 15:39), he was proclaiming far more than he realized. The value of the Son of God being God is infinite. The value of the Father’s glory offended by the sin of the church is infinite. Thus, the Son’s fall from the heights of the Father’s glory to the abysmal depths of becoming our sin is infinite. The degradation, the shame, the ignominy, the utter rejection of the Father that Christ suffered at his death cannot be overstated—nor can it be fully appraised.

But we must. Ponder anew the darkened grief we should have over sin. Reflect on the rivers of animal blood that was sacrificed to foretell the final sacrifice in Christ. Think again of the infinite disdain for sin that roils within the holy Godhead, and marvel again at the infinite love for God’s glory and for his own Christ demonstrated on the cross.

What a great Savior!

 

Join us this Sunday at 10:45am as we come together to praise this great Savior as Pastor Brent returns to the Gospel of Mark.


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