Devotionals
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Mark 15:29-32 ...Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down from the cross so we can see it and believe Him.
During Palm Sunday we usually talk about the crowds that hail Him on Sunday and crucify Him on Friday. [Mark 11:8-10]We talk about their fickle devotion. We sometimes look at the three groups; the crowd, the disciples, and the religious leaders. It is bad enough that Jesus knew that two of those groups would leave Him and one was plotting His death but more hurt was inflicted on Him as He hung on the cross.
Jesus is hanging there in their place and ours and still they attack Him with hurtful words. With all their religious training they have no clue as to why Jesus is there. What would have happened if He had said enough and gotten down? Would they have believed Him? How long would their loyalty last? And what about the prophesy concerning Him, would that act invalidate all of Scripture for many? What about our sin and the forgiveness He was purchasing by His death?
Sometimes we are just like these people. We want God to act according to our dictates. We want Him to fix things the way we see they should be done. Some of us have a godly upbringing and we think God should give us preferential treatment. He should answer our requests and demands because we are the religious ones.
Some of us have heard of Jesus and perhaps even heard about the plan of salvation but we don't have time to really acknowledge what it all means. We are those 'people passing by'. We have a life that does not include taking God seriously. We are just too busy to bother.
Maybe we were once His followers and we tried to live up to what we thought a Christian should be. But we have become disillusioned because life has not turned out as we thought it should and we feel betrayed by God.
Chances are we have missed the truth about salvation. Our forgiveness for sin is all on Jesus. It is His sacrifice that won us that. But without our true remorse and seeking of that pardon what we have is all superficial. Like the Easter story it is just a page out of history.
Our salvation comes from recognizing we need a Savior. It comes from seeing that it doesn't matter how good or bad we have been or what we do or don't do in the future that saves us. It is the shed blood of Jesus alone. It is that personal relationship, that open communication with Him that allows us to live the life of a Christian.
There is a saying, 'Religion changes us on the outside and will lead us to changes on the inside but Christianity changes us on the inside that leads to changes on the outside.' That is the fact that the mockers at the cross didn't understand and what many people of today don't either. We are still who we are. We still have the same emotions, dreams and hang ups; God made us that way and doesn't want to change who we are. He wants to take all that makes us -us and help us become our best self. But it begins at the foot of the cross.
It all starts there because that is when the rules changed. All the do's and don'ts of the Old Testament was changed for two new rules [Mark 12:29-31] Love God totally and love others. If you do those two things you fulfill all the do's and don'ts. The other thing that changes at the cross is that religion is changed to relationship. [Ezekiel 11:19,20]
Lent tells us the story of how all this came about in a nutshell. Jesus offers Himself in our place knowing what it will cost Him. He displays the struggle we face in choosing to follow God [in the garden] He makes sure we see that there is a cost in His prayer asking for a different path. We see that many will desert us and even deny knowing us even as Peter did Jesus.
We see that we must recognize that we really have spent our life denying Christ and His love for us. And we must understand what the crucifixion really was...payment for our sins and a pardon from God. It also started a new path forward where God is with us always and unlike what Jesus suffered when He took our sins on Himself, God will never leave us.
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...in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them... 2 Cor 5:19
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