Heart Like Wax

A winter candle, poorly cupped, dripped off its holder and made a mess. The settee below it was made of leather, so warm water should remove the scarlet deposits of hard wax. Still, it reminded me of Psalm 22:14, which states

I am poured out like water, And all My bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; It has melted within Me.

This painful psalm foretells the Christ’s sufferings and death. In it, we glimpse the mind of our Crucified God, whose terrific sacrifice paid for human sin. As the candle is barely recognisable and totally out of shape, so the Lord Jesus was aggrieved by the physical pain and God the Father’s turning away. 

Still, the psalm later dwells on the delectable fruits of so trying an ordeal:

All the ends of the world

Shall remember and turn to the Lord,

And all the families of the nations

Shall worship before You.

 

For the kingdom is the Lord’s,

And He rules over the nations.

All the prosperous of the earth

Shall eat and worship;

 

All those who go down to the dust

Shall bow before Him,

Even he who cannot keep himself alive.

 

The last time we shared the Lord’s Supper as a fellowship, I was moved as we sang Charles Wesley’s great hymn:

 

 ‘Tis finished! the Messiah dies,

cut off for sins, but not his own.

Accomplished is the sacrifice,

the great redeeming work is done.

 

The veil is rent; in Christ alone

the living way to heaven is seen;

the middle wall is broken down,

and all the world may enter in.

 

 ‘Tis finished! All my guilt and pain,

I want no sacrifice beside;

for me, for me the Lamb is slain;

’tis finished! I am justified.

 

The reign of sin and death is o’er,

and all may live from sin set free;

Satan hath lost his mortal power;

’tis swallowed up in victory.

 

Christ’s pure and holy heart ‘melted’ within Him, that my stony, deceitful heart might be cleansed and made alive.