Lessons

They Don’t Get It – The Resurrection. They Don’t Get It. The lesson on April 12, 2009 celebrated the resurrection of Christ. But we learn, even though God sent Jesus to die on the cross for our sins and was raised for our benefit to have eternal life, the world is full of people who don’t get it. The word Easter is in scripture in Acts 12:4 (Easter = pascha) and there it is speaking about the Passover. The Passover in the life of the Jew involved a ceremony with a lamb that was slain. The Passover was started when Israel was in bondage in Egypt and God sent the angel of death to kill the firstborn in Egypt but was told to pass over the homes that had lambs blood spread around the door. This symbolized the shedding of innocent blood for the forgiveness of sins in the life of the Jew. The Passover is beginning of the Jewish religious year. The lamb had to be male, less than a year old and without blemish. The instruction was to keep the lamb four days within their house for testing. Imagine the impact on the family to have a young, unblemished lamb in the house for four days… don’t you think the kids grew close to the lamb in that time just like we do with our pets. Then at the appropriate time according to Passover, they take the lamb and put all their sins on the lamb and they kill it. Don’t you imagine how they identified with that! They loved that little lamb but it had to die because of their sins. What a picture of Christ and it is a picture for us who love Him. Hebrews 12:1-2 says “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” What is that “weight” in verse 1 for you? The Apostle Paul had this weight because he said three times he prayed about his thorn in the flesh. We don’t know what that thorn was but we all have the same problem. The Devil knows what your thorn is and has an angel assigned to buffet you so you might become a casualty in the war. Consider the story of Job. God had a hedge around Job and Satan was always arguing if God took the hedge away, Job would curse God. Does God have a hedge around you or is yours taken away so the attack is full force on you?