The Last Week...

It is what we Christians call "Holy Week," or "Passion Week," or "Easter Week;" it's the week all of us celebrate the amazing love and mercy of the Almighty in sending His Son to exchange His life for ours, His righteousness for our sin, His love for our hatred, all His promises for all our incapacities.  We do well this week to meditate on the last couple of chapters of each of the Gospels, and also on Psalm 22, 69, 102, and then Isaiah 52:13-53:12.
One verse I especially love, and often meditate on, is Isaiah 53:8:
By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered That He was cut off out of the land of the living For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?

In this verse, the LORD tells Isaiah that the people of Jesus' day did not understand the purpose of His death, that they instead didn't even consider that He might have died because of them, that He willingly gave up His live to free them from their sins and give them everlasting life.  This is why in Acts, Peter says, "I know you did this ignorantly..."  

AND THEN,

"Repent and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped away, and times of refreshing come to you from the Lord..."

In other words, the very thing that should lead to the most awful judgment imaginable, the murder of God's own dear Son, is for you and me  the gateway to eternal blessing and harmony with God.  

We celebrate the death of the Lord Jesus on the Cross, not because we have some weird appreciation of His suffering and death, but because He did this for us, to free us from our horrible sins, from our pasts, from our brokenness. 

As the song says, 

"We were the reason He suffered and died..."

Study Jesus this week.

Turn to Him.

Love Him.

Serve Him.