Lesson for the Lord’s Day
And there came a Voice out of the cloud, saying, This is My beloved Son; hear Him. Luke 9:35
Although God has spoken to each one of us through His word and through the striving and leading of the Holy Spirit, none of us has heard, with our physical ears, a voice from Heaven – or even from a cloud. Peter, James, and John must have been astonished to hear this! They would never forget that Voice, nor the message. Its impact lasted until the end of their days. In a much less dramatic way, as the Lord’s people assemble on His day to remember Him, God has the same message to present to us.
As we read the prophecies of the Old Testament concerning the One Who would come into the world, we are made to understand that this One is none other than the Beloved Son. As we pore over the accounts in the Gospels of His birth, His introduction by John, His miracles, His teachings, His encounters with the scribes and Pharisees, and His compassion on lost souls, we reach the conclusion that He is indeed the Beloved Son. A study into His agony in Gethsemane, His betrayal by Iscariot, His abandonment by the disciples, His shameful mistreatment before the Sanhedrin, His submission to the false judgment of Pontius Pilate, His torture before Herod and among the Roman soldiers, we recognize the willing and obedient Beloved Son. When we lift our eyes by faith to behold the agony of the middle cross at Golgotha, when we hear the cries of abandonment in the darkness there, and the words of forgiveness, of care for His mother, and of His raging thirst, and then read of the final cry of Finished, Who else could we possibly see but the Beloved Son.
After we grasp the significance of the Lamb of God bearing away the sins of the world, read of the tenderness with which loving hands laid the body of the Saviour in a borrowed crypt, and then ponder the angels’ words, He is not here; but is risen, we rest in the joyful conclusion that He who rose in total and eternal triumph is the Beloved Son.
If we gather today to acknowledge that the Beloved Son has drawn us to Himself to remember His death, let us heed the message from the Voice in the cloud: Hear Him. -Jim MacIntosh