In the times before Jesus walked this earth the world had context of God. They knew He was the Maker of the Universe who caused intense disciplinary action to those people (or people groups) who did not obey His law-the Ten Commandments- or His voice itself. As kids we grew up reading these stories in Sunday School of men like David or Noah or Jacob. Guaranteed some of us still remember how to even recite passages of scripture from the bible that David wrote too: “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside still waters, He restores my soul and even though I walk through the valley of death I fear no evil for You are with me…”
God had His chosen people, the Israelites, and He remained loyal to them and encouraged their obedience in every way that He could (ways that many people criticize to this day, being quick and rash to label God because of His genuine heart for wanting the service and submission of us.) The entire Old Testament is about a God of intention, a God that man feared because they SHOULD have a healthy fear of Him (like you have a healthy fear of your Dad, as you should too), a God who wanted to have His kingdom be shown on earth in every way possible, a God who yearned for every son and daughter of His to either submit or serve Him or go to Hell for eternity.
But you see, God didn’t want for it to be that hard. He didn’t want even the littlest of “tripping up” to send one of His followers away from Him forever. He wanted an easier way, but because He is God-He is pure, holy, miraculous, and cannot except anything less than PERFECT in Heaven- He couldn’t accept those that even turned from Him for a second into Heaven at His side.
So the entire duration of the Old Testament and the entire time before Jesus is born in a manger in Jerusalem God is devising a plan. A plan that will allow for every single person who ever walks this earth to be with Him in His heavenly residence. Forever. To get to walk through the gates of heaven blameless and flawless and untouched by the ways of this world. A plan that He created because of Adam and Eve’s initial invitation of sin into the world due to the lies they believed from the serpent and what happened in the garden of Eden.
HOW WOULD HE DO THAT? He would prepare a way for His Son to be sacrificed on a cross, badly beaten to the point where he would be unrecognizable, wrongly accused, cheered on by sinners themselves while He bled with a nail in each hand, and one in both feet, for the sins of ALL mankind. The sins of all those that walked before His feet (the feet of Jesus) touched the earth and long after His feet no longer tread would now have been covered.
I KNOW what you’re thinking. WHY would that be the gateway to heaven for us? WHY wouldn’t God provide an easier way? How do I even believe that?
You believe it because at the beginning of time it’s a scientific fact that someone or something had to SPEAK the earth into being. That a FIRST sound wave had to have been created to bring about the initial process of creating the world but before that there had to have been a galaxy for these sounds to go off in. That the very first thing the bible says is “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” and then it goes on to say, “God said.” He spoke all these initial things into being and regardless if you don’t believe it He spoke us into being before we were even placed in our mother’s womb too. Obviously Adam and Eve are to blame but I don’t doubt God knew His beloved created beings (us) would disappoint Him. You and me, we don’t know a life WITHOUT sin. He would change the course for us BECAUSE OF this remarkable and astonishing sacrifice of His son.
Back to Jesus. He had to hang bloody and beaten on the cross for our inequities because NEVER would we have been worthy enough to enter into Heaven. God is such a DISTINGUISHED being that we have no right (as sinners) to even be near Him, but He wanted us to be at His side for eternity so He sent Jesus on a 33 year mission. TO be born to a virgin mother (a miracle in itself,) to grow up knowing the scriptures in His heart, to do 3 years of miracles and ministry JUST to be betrayed by the very men He loved and walked with and provide a bridge for us to God. Now when we die IF WE ACCEPT what Jesus did for us we are clothed in His blood when the Lord sees us after death. The blood of God’s ONLY begotten Son was a sacrifice on our behalf and therefore BEFORE God in Heaven we look like Jesus, we are covered and we get to spend eternity in Heaven WITH the very being that made us. God was with us through the challenges, pain, joy, tribulations, and times on earth and the unraveling of purpose, experiences, seasons, moments, and devastations let alone what we were able to do FOR HIM becomes apparent along with things we cannot even begin to understand now.
Jesus hasn’t fallen off His throne and He never will. Just because YOU don’t believe or you don’t have time to believe does not mean He has had His title stripped from Him. The enemy would have won a long time ago if that was the case, but God Himself remains victorious. Jesus remains at the right hand of the Father in Heaven cheering for YOU and waiting for you to say YES to Him and what He did for you.
A simple illustration because we are broken people and need things explained to us through means of ways we understand.
Imagine a small child during the Holocaust, a little girl of 5 years old that is malnourished, incapable of doing what is being asked of her by the Nazi soldiers and she must carry 7 loads of wood from one side of the camp to the other by herself. That is her impossible task. The child’s mother sees her daughter struggling, the pair of them separated with a big metal fence between them, the mother already freed. Crying out to her small girl, the mother demands success because she know it leads to life with HER after the child’s enslavement is over while failure leads down the road of death and darkness and separation. Success leads to mother and daughter being reunited again. The mother attempts to help the girl, shouting to the soldiers that she’s only a child, lessen the load, please help her, crying out in frustration but at the same time in ultimate love. She knows the little girl will never be able to do it on her own because she’s incapable of hauling all of that wood. She begins to create a new plan. During the night she sends her younger son out of a final act of love, who is small enough to squeeze under the fence to help his sister. While the little girl is exhausted, asleep and slowing accepting her fate her brother is working through the night in silence. He is taking on her burden, acting on a mission to bridge the gap between his sister and their mother. As the little girl is crying herself to sleep, the mother is encouraging the son on from the other side of the fence reassuring him that the three of them will be together soon enough. The soldiers see someone small working at the impossible task and proceed to beat the brother. They whip him, they provoke him, they kick the wood aside and taunt him that the brother is weak, he’s broken, he’s unworthy, and he will die but he COMPLETES the job. Completing what he knew his sister could not; he pulls himself-bloody and maliciously treated- into freedom with his mother and waits the dawn when his sister will arise. In the morning the little 5 year old sees plainly what has been completed on her behalf. As the Nazi asks her “Did you do this?” and while the truth is that she didn’t she ACCEPTS what her brother has done for her. She says, “it is finished.” That is the moment that she is set free, she is able to have a door in the metal fence opened FOR her and she crosses between slavery and bondage and pain to freedom and love and falls into an embrace with her mom all the while crying saying to her brother, “thank you. Thank you for what you did for me.”
This is what Jesus did for us. He is the brother that was sent by the mother who resembles God. He came like a thief in the night to rescue us on the behalf of getting to spend eternity with us and with His Father in Heaven. He knew what He had signed up for in the rescue and was the ticket to the door to be opened for us to step into a forever of freedom. He did what we were unable to do, He was beaten down and crucified in the process. He never once complained but instead rose again with a smile and all it took was acceptance as to what He did FOR US.
