WEDNESDAY January 24th
So far as I have been preparing the devotions looking at the life and the ministry of the apostle Paul, it may seem that I have been here, there, and everywhere, as I have moved from one devotion to the next. This is what I wrote in the first of them back on November 13th, ‘Even as I am preparing this first one, I don’t know what direction it will take’. Well, I still do not know, but will continue as I have been, and the best way to describe it is like being on a mystery tour!
I don’t know if it still happens, but I recall the local bus and coach tour operator, Wye Valley Motors back in Hereford as I was growing up, they used to advertise among their regular trips a ‘mystery tour’, you booked your ticket, turned up on time, jumped on the coach and went to a mystery destination.
Well, one of the words that turns up in Paul’s letters is the word ‘mystery’, or on occasions ‘mysteries’. In the ESV these two words appear 33 times, seven times in Daniel, four times in Revelation, all the other occasions are in Paul’s letters.
One of them we quoted in the run up to Christmas, from 1 Timothy 3:16 ‘Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.’
And it is a glorious mystery, the wonder of the Word becoming flesh, and the whole realm of everything he underwent in his suffering, his atoning death, his triumphant resurrection and his glorious ascension, we believe it all by faith even though with our finite minds we cannot fully understand or comprehend it, the hymn writer penned these words, I will end the devotion with this song in the audio version;
‘Tis mystery all! The Immortal dies!
Who can explore His strange design?
In vain the first born seraph tries
To sound the depth of love divine!
‘Tis mercy all! Earth adore,
Let angel-minds enquire no more.
Yes, ‘tis mystery all’, yet we can truly declare as we have come to believe and accept it
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose went forth and followed thee.
No condemnation now I dread,
Jesus, and all in him is mine;
Alive in him, my living head,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach the eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.
Charles Wesley RH324 MM 343