Submission Complete!

It’s a Psalm of praise kind of night!

The Lord is close to all who call on him,
yes, to all who call on him in truth.
He grants the desires of those who fear him;
he hears their cries for help and rescues them. Psalm 145:18-19 (NLT)

Mark 15:33-34 (<<click to read the passage)

I’m not sure that I ever understood that Jesus’ cry from the cross is actually a quote of Psalm 22:1

My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? (AMP)

We are familiar with His cry in verse 34 of Mark 15 but do you know that there was more to this prophetic Psalm – quite a bit more actually but for this time together I just want to point out the last couple of verses.

³⁰ Posterity will serve Him;
They will tell of the Lord to the next generation.
³¹ They will come and declare His righteousness
To a people yet to be born—that He has done it [and that it is finished]. Psalm 22:30-31 (AMP)

It. Is. Finished.

Sound familiar? Mark 15:37 states,

But Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed out His last [voluntarily, sovereignly dismissing and releasing His spirit from His body in submission to His Father’s plan]. (AMP)

The Apostle John in his account of the same incident proclaims,

…Jesus…said, “It is finished!” And He bowed His head and [voluntarily] gave up His spirit. John 19:30 (AMP)

When the Amplified Bible inserts the term voluntarily it implies that Jesus voluntarily and sovereignly released His spirit from His body in submission to God’s plan.

Absolutely everything points to the fact that not one thing in this entire event caught God – and Jesus of course, being God in the flesh – off guard. It had all been known before the creation of the world. There was a plan in place. God knew we would reject his sovereignty from the very get-go. So, He set in place before the get-go a way that we could be set free from the bondage of sin that we would (and still do!) willingly take upon ourselves!

Sure, he could have created us without a will to choose whether we would obey Him or not. But what truly is love unless we are chosen… unless we do have the option to say no. It is all the more precious. Even we as human beings can understand that much!

If my wife had no choice but to love me, what kind of love would that be? Would it even really be love? But we choose to love each other in spite of our issues…in spite of our struggles…in spite of our imperfections. And it is all the more precious because of it.

Lord Jesus, may we realize that You loved us so much that You made a way for us to be brought back to You before we have even been born, much less before we ever turned our backs on You. May we realize that we are cherished by You, that our love is precious in Your sight. May our realization motivate us to love You all the more, to give ourselves over to Your lordship. For there is no better place to be. Amen.

Sept 8^th, 2019, Sun, 7:05 pm