Tuesday, April 03, 2007

The World Before Easter

God was willing to annihilate those who rejected His perfect goodness in creation

but God spared our father Adam, and let him live to see another day, promising victory for his seed.

The life that He allowed our fathers to keep they used for wicked things, and God threatened to destroy the whole earth with a flood...
but God spared our father Noah and his offspring from this devastation, binding Himself in a covenant to never release the deserved deluge again.
The survivors soon sought to make a name for themselves united against God at Babel.
but He frustrated their self-destructive devices and spared them from ruin.
Our fathers forgot about God and made up their own ideas and gods to replace Him, leading to a degraded and immoral lifestyle.
but God stooped Himself low for our father Abraham and brought him near, promising to give him and his offspring a good inheritance no matter what.
The people became discouraged under the oppression of Egypt, and lost sight of God and His promises in all their work.
but God brought them out with a mighty hand wreaking fiery hail and darkness upon their captors, and yoked His Name with them forever, giving them His law. He made them His people, a treasured posession to God.
The children of Abraham grew into a mighty nation redeemed by God, but they did more than enough to warrant their utter doom at the hands of the God whom they spurned through the rejection of His good law and all that He was for them in it...
but God spared a remnant, and kept them alive through famine and captivity, vowing a day when they will reign over the world and have peace without fear in the presence of God forever.
And this remnant lost the law to wicked shepherds as the whole world suffocated them under under Roman rule, persisting in its wickedness toward the dusk of destruction...
but God sent His Son to show them the way and heal their afflictions, uprooting the proud with only His tongue and bestowing mercy to the sick in the forgiveness of sins.
Yet the world and God's people, our fathers, our blood, condemned His beautiful Son to the worst of deaths, and killed the Author of Life who showed all mercy to this point...
but God took our wrong and laid it on His Son, canceling our debt forever, making us His eternally beloved children, bringing us into the full and holy intimacy our souls were made for.

1 comment:

Mike said...

First, I think your banner looks very nice :)

Second, excellent post!

I think that BUT is one of my favorite words in the Bible, and perhaps one of the most important.

Topping my list comes out of Eph 2:

1And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience-- 3among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved-- 6and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.


I think your post captured this idea very well :)

-mike (garner)