Glorious Day (Dec 22, 2023)

Think about the best days of your life. What does your list look like? Mine includes my wedding day, the days my daughters Faith and Mercy were born, special times I have had hanging out with family and friends and people I love. Some pretty wonderful memories and pretty wonderful days. As great as those days have been however, they pale in comparison to the most glorious days of Human History or what lies ahead.

A)      Christmas

God initially created a perfect world without death, disease, suffering, etc. and then created the first two humans (Adam and Eve) and placed them into this perfect world. He came often to walk with them and talk with them face to face and show them how much he loved them. It was not however good enough to be in a perfect world and to be loved by God, they eventually decided that God must be holding out the real good stuff from them, and that they could be just as wise as God. They did not need Gods words and guidance to know right from wrong, they could determine right from wrong for themselves without any help or input from their creator. As a result, sin entered the world and with it came death. We see shortly after Adam and Eve fall, they begin to have children, and their oldest son Cain murdered his brother Abel and from this point forward, for thousands of years the world was filled with sinful humans that did what was right in their own eyes, each a god unto themselves. Although the world had good in it as all humans were created in the image of God and thus capable of good, the world was also fallen, and all humans were filled with sin. Murder, lies, slander, violence, envy, strife, gossip, sexual immorality, greed, pride, and extreme selfishness ruled the hearts of men, women, and children. Despite all the self-inflicted suffering sin had brought, still humans looked to themselves to fix the issue rather than to God. Humans placed their hope in various man-made religions where they could earn their way to heaven based on their own righteousness. Humans also looked to human kings, rulers, and governments to give them hope, but human kingdom after human kingdom ultimately crumbled and none of these human governments was ever able to overcome our slavery to sin and death. None of them gave any lasting hope to humanity.

Then one day, around 2,000 years ago, a people in a nation of Israel, the Jews, had been awaiting their promised Messiah / Savior from the Old Testament for thousands of years. They were under the rule of the Roman Empire, a brutal Kingdom. Most of the Jews were looking to this promised Messiah to free them from the current political rule of Rome and they thought this would be the best blessing that God could provide to them. God however had a better plan. God, as revealed in the bible, is three distinct and separate persons (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit) yet in such perfect unity of thought, purpose and abilities as to be so perfectly unified that to see one is to see the others and thus one God united. God had planned even before the creation of the world how to deal with our rebellion and sin and how to save us (the entire world, Jew and Gentile alike) from ourselves. God’s plan was a crazy one. God the Father willingly sent God the Son down from the Glory of Heaven to His enemies, the rebel humans. God the Son, co-creator of the universe, willingly left all His glory in Heaven to humble himself and come down to earth to be born of a virgin in a miraculous birth where God took on Human flesh.

Christmas was God’s signal to all of Humanity, that despite all the sins we had committed, and despite our open rebellion against God, He loved us anyway, and He took compassion on us in that our sin had led us to so much suffering, pain, and death and God wanted to free us from that. Christmas is one of the most glorious days Humanity has ever experienced, the day God became one of us to reveal to us what God is like, to communicate His overwhelming love for us, His desire to be with us, and to do everything possible in God’s power to mend the relationship we chose to break with Him.

It is a day when the angels sang, and the Shepherds came, and a day when God presented Himself to us not as an overwhelming warrior to terrify us into submission, but as a helpless baby we could choose to love, where the creator willingly allowed Himself to become dependent on His creation and took on our form so He could best reveal Himself to us. God with Us. The birth of Jesus, which we celebrate at Christmas, is truly one of the most glorious days in Human History.

B)      Good Friday and Easter

Jesus could have come and used his power to free Israel from the Political authority of Rome, and had he done so he would have been hailed by all the Jews. Jesus could have come with a message that only consisted of God loves you just as you are and no need to change from your sinful ways, and He likely would have then been no threat and would have been loved and celebrated by all the world. Instead, Jesus first sermon called on people to repent of their sins and turn to God as the cornerstone of the good news of the Gospel, that God was ready to forgive all who would repent and turn back to God.

Mark 1:15 “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

Jesus sent his disciples out also preaching repentance, for people to turn from their sin, from their insistence on being their own God, to believe that God had come to them as Jesus and was calling them out of the darkness and into the light.

Mark 6:12 They went out and preached that people should repent.

Jesus said if they truly loved Him they would change their minds and follow Him and submit to Him as the Son of God and their Lord, and obey His commandments which were given out of love for us, for our good because God loves us, is for us, and desires to see us walk the Holy Path He calls us to that leads to life and come off of the sinful path we are walking that leads to pain, suffering, and death:

John 14:15 If you love me, keep my commands.

There were some that saw the love Jesus had for them, and recognized the truth of His words and that truly repented of their sin and chose to follow Jesus. However, most of the religious leaders only saw their own power threatened and plotted against Jesus, and most of the common folk preferred their sin to the path of righteousness Jesus called them to.

John 3:19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.

As a result, when Jesus raised Lazarus back from the dead, the Religious leaders plotted to kill Lazarus again to try and hide this rather than believe on Jesus, and after they secretly plotted and arrested Jesus in the middle of the night, put him on trial and handed him over to the Romans, most of the people in the crowd that had one week prior cheered for Jesus on Palm Sunday as He entered into Jerusalem as they believed He would free them from Rome, now chanted with passionate contempt and hatred at the top of their lungs for Jesus to be crucified as they preferred the darkness of their sin to the Light Jesus offered. As it predicted in Isaiah, the Messiah would be despised and rejected by men.

Although Jesus had the power to destroy all that came against Him, He willingly submitted to allow sinful humans to arrest Him, put Him on trial, torture Him, strip him naked to shame Him, and crucify Him. The crowd watched and while a few mourned, most cursed Jesus and cackled in delight at His agony even while Jesus looked down and forgave them. On the cross, Jesus accomplished far more than anyone present could even imagine. He did not accomplish a low task of temporarily freeing Israel from Rome, but He paid the Eternal Price of all of our sin, so that anyone regardless of Age, Gender, Race, Nationality, or level of sin who like the thief on the cross who repented and called out to Jesus to save them could have their eternal sin debt cancelled, have eternal life, become adopted Sons and Daughters of God, and receive Jesus righteousness to be counted for them, instead of having to rely on their own.

Good Friday was thus one of the Most Significant days in Human History.

However, Good Friday initially left Jesus disciples in despair. Jesus, the one who they had placed all of their hopes on was now dead. To them, all Hope seemed lost and while we call it good Friday now looking back, to them it seemed the most terrible day in Human History. The reason though why we can call it good Friday is because of what followed on Easter. Jesus rose from the dead, not by the power of some prophet, but by His own power along with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. This had never occurred in all of Human History and proved Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God was true. Jesus’ resurrection was witnessed by over 500 people and was written about while those people were still alive and could attest to it. When Jesus rose from the dead, he shattered the chains that held us as slaves to sin and death, and Hope finally came into the world after thousands of years of waiting for this promise to be fulfilled.

Good Friday and Easter Sunday are thus two of the most glorious days ever in Human History and will be celebrated for all of eternity.

 3) The day Jesus will return again

As the world groaned before Jesus came the first time, it also groans awaiting His return. I rest firmly in the Hope I have that on the day I take my last breath in this world, I will then be with my Lord Jesus in Heaven and have eternal life thanks to what Jesus did on the cross. I have hope also that those I love that have also followed Jesus as Lord, I will see one day again in Heaven. I have the Hope before me that once in Heaven, I will never again be under the rule of sinful man that is not submitted to Jesus. Instead, I will be in Heaven, Jesus’ kingdom, where Jesus will rule as King of Kings and Lord of Lords forever, unchallenged. No more political campaigns to see if we can finally find a sinful human that can deliver hope. Those of us in Heaven will all rejoice that Jesus is in charge and we will not ever want to take God off His rightful throne but will rejoice our God reigns, that He loves us, guides us, and longs to remain with us for Eternity.

That being said, more than likely when I take that last breath, I will be in the current Heaven with Jesus, not the final Heaven that rests on the new Earth. In the current Heaven, there will still be pain, sorrow, and death on the current earth as we currently experience it. Sin will still be in its dying gasps bringing pain, sorrow and death to people on earth and I believe Heaven will care deeply about the suffering on earth then even as it does now.

This is why Jesus’ return to Earth will be so glorious. After thousands of years of God sitting back and allowing such wickedness to occur on the earth, granting His enemies chance and chance after chance to repent and come to Him, after God has allowed everyone that is willing to repent and turn back to God to do so, and now only those who I believe if given all of eternity will never repent are left, God will bring Justice to this world that honestly has never truly known it, and then God will wipe away every tear for His adopted Children and after Jesus reigns on earth for 1,000 years and a final rebellion is launched, Jesus will put it down, and then a new age will begin. God will wipe away every tear, and for those who have repented and become adopted Sons and Daughters of God, we will go forward into eternity with Jesus on the New Earth (Our Final Heavenly Home) with no more pain, no more sorrow and no more death. We will live in Joy and peace for all eternity with our God who loves us beyond measure.

So while the Day Jesus was born that we celebrate at Christmas, the Day Jesus died on the cross we celebrate on Good Friday, and the day that Jesus rose from the dead that we celebrate at Easter are all Glorious days that occurred in the past, this Day when Jesus comes back for His 2nd coming is in our future and will also go down as one of the most glorious days in Human History. I look forward with longing and hope to that day.

May you and your families be drawn to the God of Hope and as such may God richly pour out His blessings on you and your Families. May you experience the Joy that Jesus brings this Christmas and in the year 2024 that lies ahead. Love you all.