A LENTEN ADVENTURE for 2024 - Wednesday March 20

 

“He is an excellent builder ... He has built us a great house. But the house has its flaws. I only became aware of them this week, because it wasn’t until this week that I began to live in the house.  Once you have settled into a place, you become aware of every detail …” (ML)

 

“When I saw the list of mistakes the builders made, I thought that God is surely making a list of my own mistakes.  After all, hasn’t He made my heart his dwelling place?  And if I see flaws in my house, just imagine what He sees in me.  Would you dare to think about the list He is making on your life?  The hinges of the prayer room are rusty because the door is almost never opened. The stove called jealousy is overheating ... The basement is almost overflowing with secrets ...” (ML)

 

“The list of our weaknesses. Would you like to see yours?  Would you like to make it public? How would you feel if it were displayed so that everyone, including Christ Himself, could see it?  Would you like me to take you to the moment when that really happened?  Yes, there is a list of your mistakes. Christ has written down your defects. And yes, the list was made public.   But you haven’t seen it. I haven’t either. Come with me to the hill of Calvary and I’ll tell you why ...” (ML)

Let’s take a moment to think about the “hand of God”. The hand of God is a powerful hand.  That hand created the heavens and the earth, and formed Adam from the dust. That hand wrote the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone, tore down the Tower of Babel and parted the Red Sea. That hand, many centuries later, calmed a storm, cleansed the Temple and finally conquered death. When Christ was crucified …

“The crowd at the cross concluded that the purpose of the pounding was to skewer the hands of Christ to a beam. But they were only half right. We can’t fault them for missing the other half. They couldn’t see it. But Jesus could. And heaven could. And we can. Through the eyes of Scripture we see what others missed but what Jesus saw.” (ML)

 

Colossians 2:14 says, “He canceled the record that contained the charges against us. He took it and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross”. (New Living Translation)

“Between His hand and the wood there was a list. A long list.  A list of our mistakes ... A list of our sins. Dangling from the cross is an itemized catalog of your sins. The bad decisions from last year. The bad attitudes from last week. There, in broad daylight for all of heaven to see, is a list of your mistakes … The list God has made, however, cannot be read. The words can’t be deciphered … Those at the top are hidden by His hand; those down the list are covered by his blood.” (ML)

What does this mean for us?  It means that our sins have been blotted out by the powerful hand and by the blood of Jesus.  Jesus did not close His fist and did not resist the nails in His hands because he saw the list of our sins, and He knew that the price of those sins was death.  Our death. And because He could not bear the idea of spending eternity without us, He chose the nails. It wasn’t the Roman soldiers that killed Jesus. It wasn’t the furious Jews who crucified Him … Jesus Himself chose the nails.  “As a Savior … He knew that the purpose of the nail was to place your sins where they could be hidden by His sacrifice and covered by His blood.” (ML)  

 

The hand of God. The mighty hand of Jesus. “… The same hand that stills the seas stills your guilt. The same hand that cleansed the Temple cleanses your heart … And as the hands of Jesus opened for the nail, the doors of heaven opened for you.” (ML)

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