He Finished What He Started

Devotion for the Week...

I hope you had a wonderful Easter Sunday yesterday, even if it was not quite a normal one. Our pastors recorded Good Friday and Easter Sunday services to share on Facebook and while I certainly miss being in the same room together during the service, I find I quite enjoy attending church in my pajamas and doing some hand stitching while I listen 😊

Last week I was thinking about how the curtain in the temple tore from top to bottom when Jesus died. Matthew 27:51 says, "At that moment the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom." The curtain represented humanity's separation from God and only the high priest was allowed to go past the curtain and even he could only do it once a year. Then, when Jesus died, the curtain ripped and the Bible is very specific about it ripping from top to bottom, not bottom to top. This is important because the curtain was about 30 feet tall.

If it had been torn from the bottom up, then perhaps people would have claimed it was done by a follower of Jesus, but it was torn from the top down. No person could have been up there to have torn it. The tear in the curtain, which opened the way to the Holy of Holies, where God's presence resided, was done entirely by God.

Through His death on the cross, Jesus finished what He started when He came to this earth. When Jesus was born, God sent angels to invite the shepherds to meet Jesus. As I point out in my favourite of all the devotions I've written, shepherds at that time were considered to be the lowest of the low, the bottom rung of society. They were the people no one wanted to associate with, and yet God specifically invited them to meet Jesus. God welcomed those who were considered to be the least desirable to signal that no one would be unwelcome in Jesus' presence.

Then, at His death, God ripped apart the curtain that symbolized our separation from Him to show that Jesus' death opened the way for all of us to approach Him. Jesus paid the price for our sins with His death, which removes our separation from God. We can now approach Him boldly, as Hebrew 4:16 says: "So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most."

Background quilt is New Life

Everyone is welcome to come to Jesus and our sins are all covered by the cross. His birth was the start of that mission and He finished it on the cross. Then, with His resurrection, God showed us the power He wields over death and the eternal life we, as believers, will have with Him.