Great Decision

“I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.”
Exodus 6:6

Every year around the time of Easter Christian culture explodes with remembrance that Christ died on the cross. Drive by any church and you will see reader boards saying as much. Even our treasured Facebook is crowded with passages and images of Christ and His great sacrifice. However, at times I get the feeling that some of us (maybe even most of us) are just not getting it.

First let me point out that before the great sacrifice of Christ, there was the great decision of Christ. In no way did Jesus have to go through with the plan. In fact in the garden He asked for the cup to be passed (oh I am so tempted to teach on which cup this is, but another time shall we). In order to understand how this was a decision we must first understand the state of Christ.
Jesus was a man! I know it may seem hard to believe but He was wholly man. Now, He was also wholly God, which led to His great faith and accomplishments, but He was still a man. As such He was subject to human inadequacies and had to conquer them the same way we do today.
Stop and think on that for a moment.

If Christ was wholly man and faced our same struggles that means it was difficult for Him to lead that perfect life. That means He accomplished more than we ever thought. That means not only did He conquer death, but He also conquered the inadequacy of man.

But why?

The reason why is because he desires to free you from your burdens, so He bore them and conquered them just for you. He desires to set you free from the captors of this world, so He became captive and bore your punishment to set you free. He desires to redeem you with outstretched arm, so He got on a cross stretched BOTH arms out and redeemed you once and for all.

How great is our God? Not only did He cleanse you so that you may enter into the Kingdom (any god could have done that) but He also bore all of your troubles so that you would not have to. Praise Him, for He is worthy to be praised!

Let us leave with this. In Exodus 6:8 it states, “I will bring you into the land…” Let us not forget this point. That He has fulfilled the first three promises in Exodus, and one day He will fulfill the fourth; He will bring us into His land.