Peace

How was your Saturday?

Did you spend it meditating on the fact that Jesus is fully man and fully God?

Or, that He holds everything together?

Or, that He is the Head of the body (the church)?

 

Have you taken a moment to think about the fact Jesus was the long-ago-promised Messiah?  Woven throughout the tapestry of the Old Testament are pictures, pointers and blatant references to the coming of Messiah.

 

I visited a Messianic Jewish Congregation yesterday with Debbie & my dad.  It was not their normal service.  They were remembering "The Day of Calamity."  It was Holocaust rememberance day.  Throughout the Old Testament up and to this day, the Jewish Nation has been oppressed, persecuted, had genocidal warfare waged upon them and been scattered around the world.  And yet, God has NEVER forgotten His people.  God is not finished with His promises to the nation of Israel.  I've heard some scholars say if the church is the bride of Christ, then the nation of Israel is the wife of God. 

 

If you haven't spent a study reading through the prophecies about Jesus in the Old Testament, I would highly recommend it!  As someone mentioned last night, the Old Testament gives such a full picture of God's character and loving, faithfulness to His own.  I was moved by the horrific images of the holocaust.  But, like my dad, I was more moved by the passages read at the conclusion of the service descriving God's love, faithfulness and plan for the redemption of His people, which includes you and me, as gentiles, being grafted in to God's redemptive plan.

 

Because of Jesus, we can have permanent peace with God.

 

Read on to find out why.  Praise God for HIs plan.  Praise God for reaching across the chasm of sin, through the perfect sacrifice of Jesus, to us and rescuing us from His wrath upon sin.  At the same time, it should humble us at what cost we were redeemed.

 

Praise God for the Lamb that was slain.

Who was, and is, and is to come!

 

PlanetWisdom.com Devotionals

Peace through Blood Posted: 17 Apr 2009 07:08 AM PDT "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross." (Colossians 1:19-20) Even more gargantuan ideas about Jesus as both man and God: 1) All of God's "fullness" lives in Jesus. Not only is Jesus the image of the invisible God, He is full of God on the inside, as well. In other words, Jesus is what Bible scholars call "fully God" -- God inside and out. 2) Jesus is the agent God used to reconcile "all things" to Himself. Another way of saying it is that Jesus was (and will be) the way God chose to fix all the broken things in the universe -- to end every conflict forever. 3) God fixed (will fix) everything broken thing by breaking Jesus, by crushing Him, by allowing Him to bleed as the sacrifice in place of all who deserved to bleed, instead. He brought peace by killing His Son. Think: Would Jesus have qualified as the ultimate sacrifice for sin -- the peacemaker who fixed every broken thing -- if He had not been fully God? Could He have been the reconciler of "all things" if He was not also fully man? (Hint: No and no.) Pray: Thank God that He was pleased to have His fullness live in Jesus. Thank Him that He will eventually bring peace forever through what Jesus did on the cross. Do: If you started a list yesterday of all the things we've learned about Jesus this week, add today's 3 points to it. Visit PlanetWisdom.com for more great resources!