So, I woke up this morning and heard in my heart…”Tell someone the Good News!”
I wonder, do you know the Good News? Have you heard?
May I tell you that this Good News is nothing like what you may have heard before. While it is something that will benefit you, it’s not something that only provides temporary gladness.
It’s something that provides PERMANENT JOY! Something that can never be taken away from you! Something that you alone will experience and know that God is giving you (as a gift).
This Good News is ETERNAL LIFE! It is a promise that God made to His people thousands of years ago through the prophets Isaiah and Micah. A foretelling of the Messiah to come to this earth. The Messiah that God’s chosen people, the Israelites, were waiting for their whole lives!
So, who is this Messiah? And why were the Jews waiting for Him?
If we look back in time, we remember the bible tells us that the Jews were God’s chosen people. He freed them from hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt with plans to bring them to a land of their own, a land flowing with milk and honey. He wanted them to be His people and His promise was that He would be their God.
But back in the wilderness, they grumbled …and ended up spending 40 years in the desert with only the children of the original people who left Egypt going into the promised land. Everyone else died there.
Over the years, God showed His love toward His people but they kept turning from Him. While He remained faithful, His people did not. They kept sinning against Him – not doing what He asked of them and doing things He despised.
Through the years, God remained faithful to His people. He sent them Judges and then Kings. They wanted to have someone rule over them. But their sin remained and their hearts were hard.
We know from the Bible that back then God required sacrifices for sin – and the appointed High Priest was the only one who was allowed into the Holiest place in the temple to offer sacrifices for the sins of the people.
No matter what they did, they couldn’t get rid of their sin, they could only offer the blood of bulls and goats to God so He could forgive them. But this went on, year after year.
Now, a change is about to happen. We remember that long ago, God promised a Messiah, a King to rule over His people.
Matthew 1:21 says: “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
The people were constantly sinning against God, but now we hear that the Messiah, who is to come, will save His people from their sins! Now that is Good News!
No more striving, no more trying to keep the law, no more living in sin, no more sacrifices. Jesus, the Messiah, is coming!
God had planned this from the very beginning. He knew His people wouldn’t be able to keep the law (all 613 commandments). So, He sent His one and only Son into the world to be the sacrificial Lamb of God.
He lived out the law of God perfectly (without sinning) and became the perfect sacrifice, once for all.
Hebrews 10:5-7, 9b -10 says, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’
He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Hebrews 7:27
So you see, He came to do the Father’s will, to offer Himself as a living sacrifice.
The Bible says in Romans 3:23, “for all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God.”
We are not perfect, only Jesus is perfect. The one who was sacrificed on the tree, and it is only by the sacrifice and blood of Jesus that we can be reconciled to God.
His sacrifice made the way for us to be with God in heaven for Eternity! To have Eternal Life (now) and not death, which comes from sin, Romans 5:12.
When we turn from our sin, accept Jesus’ death on the cross (for us personally) and believe that He was buried and rose on the third day, we enter into a new and living way of life, Eternal Life! Hebrews 10:19-25
Now that is the Good News!
May He find you here.
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