The Cross Before the Crown: The Final Sacrifice - Day 46 Through the Bible

Near Mt. Celo Church in Western North Carolina is a place known as the Crossnore School...Mountains of Hope and Miracle in the Mountains... their story

Triumph or Tragedy - The Final Sacrifice Skeptics throughout the ages - even most present at the crucifixion - saw the Cross of Jesus and His death as proof that He was not the Son of God - that until the last moment Christ had thought God would rescue Him.  The chilling, heart-breaking words that Christ "cried out with a loud voice, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46) echo down through the ages as THE definitive moment of hopelessness, helplessness, loneliness, emptiness... FORSAKEN.  What then are the gospels - the entire New Testament - all the purpose of the Old Testament shadow of the law, the prophecies - why after Jesus Christ Himself has affirmed that God has forsaken Him - what, therefore, is the hope that is in each of us (1 Peter 3:15)?

My Lesson and Application
Again...I cannot fully understand the New Testament without knowing the Old Testament.  And I must remember God's Plan, God's Purpose, and God's Character   - that I learn through Bible study and prayer with Him.  Jesus came to die on the Cross as an atonement - a sacrifice...once and for all...for sinful man.  Holy God is a just God as well as a loving God.  Man is sinful.  How can the two fellowship together? What fellowship has light with darkness? (2 Cor. 6:14) Jesus Christ is the Just and Justifier - the Mediator - the Sacrificial Lamb, the veil is torn, the work is finished, and man can now have access to Holy God.  All of the Leviticus sacrifices in today's readings - of how they must be carried out in a meticulously, well-ordered plan - are a foreshadowing of this moment, this Sacrifice, this Lamb of God, this final and great culmination of God's Plan of love for the world.  Jesus Christ is our Passover.  Just as at the ninth hour of the OT Passover, the lambs were being sacrificed, Jesus at His ninth hour on the Cross, was being sacrificed - His blood shed, His life given - for me - for you.  This was the meaning of Gethsemane - knowing that He would at this moment become sin for us.  At this moment, He would have to be separated from God - hopeless, helpless, lonely, empty, forsaken.  It was the evidence that He had fully drained "the cup" that He had prayed might pass Him if God so willed it.  The work of propitiation is done.  The glory follows - the Resurrection.  But for today, I contemplate this unspeakable gift of God - to sacrifice "My Beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased" for us - that we might spend eternity with Him... Oh, Father, to fully understand and live in the light of this Your love for me...this is my prayer and paean to You.

They gave our Master a crown of thorns.  Why do we hope for a crown of roses?  Martin Luther

From Agape Bible Study:  Was It God's Plan That The Christ Should Suffer and Die for the Salvation of Man?