Reading: “Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee.” —Psalm 76:10

If you consider His death, that was shameful, bloody, and accursed. We see Him on the cross, hanging on the soreness of His hands and feet. We see Him pierced to the heart by a ruffian soldier. We see Him crowned with thorns and the precious blood trickling from the head, to meet those other rivers that were running from His side and feet. We see Him forsaken by His disciples. And, what is more, we hear Him complaining of being forsaken by God too!

Oh blessed Saviour! What eyes can refrain from weeping, what heart from bleeding? Is this the entertainment that the world gives to Jesus, the dearest pledge that God has or can send? Is this your welcome to it, your departure out of it? Shall we mock and scourge, crucify, pierce, and murder you? And will You by all these outrages committed against yourself accomplish our salvation?

Oh victorious love, that can pardon when abused, and exalt us by being abased, and glorify us by being despised! Yet God will have it so, that His good will may be commended by the affronts and by the indignities, which peevish mankind puts on it.

(Taken from “The Nativity of Christ” in The Works of Ezekiel Hopkins, 3:428)

 

O victory in Jesus,
My Savior, forever.
He sought me and bought me
With His redeeming blood;
He loved me ere I knew Him
And all my love is due Him,
He plunged me to victory,
Beneath the cleansing flood.

—Eugene Bartlett