14/04/2017
A Good Friday 'Word for the Day'
"‘It’s what God had in mind all along.’
Isaiah 53:10 MSG
The psalmist wrote: ‘My God, why have You forsaken Me…I am…a reproach of men, and despised…All those who see Me ridicule Me…saying, “He trusted in the LORD…let Him deliver Him”…I am poured out like water…My bones are out of joint…My tongue clings to My jaws…They pierced My hands and…feet…and for My clothing they cast lots’ (Psalm 22:1-18 NKJV).
Think about it: David could be describing Jesus’ crucifixion in detail. Yet when he wrote these words crucifixion hadn’t been introduced as a form of ex*****on. It was initiated centuries later by the Phoenicians, and long after that before it was adopted by the Roman Empire. Dr Charles Augustus Briggs says: ‘You can take this psalm…lay it side-by-side with New Testament accounts of the crucifixion…and see how they dovetail perfectly.
It’s astonishing that someone could describe something so intimately and intricately a thousand years before it happened.’ Calvary wasn’t the result of happenstance. Long before Jesus came on the scene, God had a plan to reconcile us to Himself through Christ (see 2 Corinthians 5:18 NIV).
Historian Paul L. Maier says: ‘In Isaiah chapter 53 we have almost a running commentary on what happened on Good Friday…It would be mathematically impossible for anyone else to fulfil all these parameters of prophecy in the Old Testament better than Jesus.’
Bottom line: ‘It’s what God had in mind all along…that he give himself as an offering for sin.’ That means long before there was an Easter, God was thinking about you!"
Easter Sunday, there will be Church services across Ellon, Aberdeen and shire, if you've not been to Church for a while or have never been, take the step this weekend to discover what Jesus did for you and me. You might say, 'yeah but Church is full of hypocrisy', and maybe it is, but we're just humans no different to anyone else, we get it wrong and hurt people, but its not about what we do, its what God has done and continues to do for His people that counts. Please don't let people put you off from discovering a relationship with the living God.
