The Passover

Many people think that the Old Testament is irrelevant to us as Christians. They say "Well, that was the old covenant, we are under the new covenant." Or "Those are only stories of the old days. We need to focus on the stories of Christ." The more that I get into the Old Testament though the more I see just how important it is. You see, the entire Bible is God's story of redemption to humanity. The Gospel can be seen even in the Old Testament! Here is something that I discovered yesterday in Exodus 12 with the passage about the Passover. The passage tells of God helping the people of Israel escape Egyptian slavery. The passage reads:

3 "Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household.4 If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat.5 The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats.6 Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight.7 Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs."

God then tells the people the specific way to go about cooking and preparing the lambs. Then he goes on to say: 

12 "On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord.13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt."

Now here are some key points to focus on: By having the blood of the lamb on their door frames the people were passed over so that their firstborn would not be slaughtered. This was the tenth plague that was sent to try to get Pharaoh to release the Israelites. 

Now think to what Christ did for us! God's judgement has passed over us because we are covered with the blood of the lamb, Jesus! How awesome is it that God was foreshadowing what was to come in the person of Jesus Christ. God's story of redemption runs throughout Scripture. He always intended to make a way to bring us back to Himself and what a testimony we have to His faithfulness in His Word!

The Gospel

Plain and simple, yet powerful enough to change your life:

When God created the world everything was in harmony with each other. He made human beings in His image and likeness and they had a perfect relationship with Him. (Gen. 1:27) Nothing else He created was given that kind of worth. But with the creation of Adam and Eve and through their one act of disobedience sin entered into all of humanity.(Gen 3) It is because of that one act of disobedience that every human being from that point on, even to this day, is separated from God. 


We are born sinners, it’s a part of our nature and because God is holy He demands the just punishment for sin. (Rom 3:10, 19) The only punishment for sin is death. In the Old Testament we see the establishment of the law and the sacrifice of animals by the people trying to make their way to a holy God. (Ex 19)Though blood was spilt, none of it could truly pay the price because the state of our being is sinful in itself. God saw that humanity could never pay their way and so in His love He sent His Son, Jesus, to earth. 


Now the fact that God would come to earth is humbling in itself. God didn’t have to send Christ, Jesus didn’t have to walk around in a human body dealing with jacked up people.  He could have left us on that continuous process of failing over and over again and paying for it in the end. But He didn’t. Christ came and fulfilled His calling by living a perfect and sinless life, fulfilling the law in full. Because of that He was the only one worthy enough to be our sacrifice. And so He was crucified and took our place on the cross, the place that was rightfully ours. (1Pet 3:18) 


Through that act He made a way for all of humanity to be brought back to God. He made a way for us to have a relationship with our Creator again as God always intended it to be. (Gal 1:4) And He defeated even death, as He rose three days later and now sits in heaven at the right hand (the place of honor) of God the Father.  It is only through repentance and faith in Christ that we can come to a holy God and be seen as perfect and forgiven. (Eph 2:8-9) 


But faith isn’t just saying you believe, going to church, and doing the “Christian” thing. (James 2:17) It’s a whole life surrender. (Mark 8:34-35) A surrender that doesn’t always make your life easier, one that will cause you to walk away from many people you call friends for a higher calling. A surrender that will call you to do things way out of your comfort zone and people’s understanding. But yet, a surrender that will leave you completely whole because you are doing what you were created to do. A surrender that restores you to your original purpose. A surrender that frees you from the grip of sin and gives you power over sin to rise above. 


Christ calls us to repent and believe. But repenting takes action and it takes you turning the other way and never looking back. (Rom 2:4)

It requires a decision, a surrender. The question is are you ready to let go?

A Look Back into my Growth Process

I was cleaning out my computer last week and I came across some funny stuff from the early months after giving my life to Christ. Among them I found this; an answer I gave a friend about the purpose of life. It amazes me that I wrote this at only 2 months, but what a God we serve! A God who truly can run after you, reach down, pick you up, and set you on a never ending race for His glory. So here you go, a look back into my growth process:

The Question:

What is the point of living through this life? Why do we have to suffer through all of this? What is the point?

My Answer:

The point of living life is ultimately to BRING GLORY TO GOD. Life isn’t about us, it’s about Him. God might not give you what you want or change what you’re going through, but He will give you the grace to endure. If we took out the crisis of our lives we would take out the fight, and without the fight there’s no victory, victory that would bring glory to Him. God has allowed hard things to happen in our lives so we can show the world how great our God is and that knowing Him brings peace and joy, even when life is hard. When we see troubles and problems coming our way we are quick to see the bad in the situation. Yes, every crisis in our lives brings danger; the danger of being judged, the danger of losing something we love, the danger of letting our emotions take over. But what we fail to recognize is that every crisis also brings opportunity; the opportunity to seek the glory of God through every setback in our lives. God’s not going to call off the fight, He’s not going to magically take away the problem, He’s going to step in the ring and start fighting for you. I think of it like this, there is two ways to deal with setbacks: 1. Crawl up in a corner and feel sorry for yourself and get nowhere or 2. Rely on God whole heartedly to fight for you and rejoice and give glory to Him when He comes through.

We also tend to forget God’s past faithfulness. We get too consumed about how this situation is going to affect my life, affect my dreams, affect my family. We tend to allow today’s challenges to over-ride the victories of our yesterdays. God will never take you through a situation that He hasn’t already planned your escape route to. You can get through any and every problem in your life with the power of Jesus Christ. That same power that got Jesus out of the tomb lives in you. Because when Christ rose from the dead, you did as well.

You can’t just go through life barely surviving the setbacks, you have to get up and fight! I always wondered, “Well uh how do I do that exactly??” God had given us all a great weapon, and that is His Word. Every time the devil opens his mouth, you open the Word of God and FIGHT BACK.  When the devil is all up in your face asking you why all of this is worth it, you open the Word of God to Jeremiah 29:11 and you tell the devil it’s worth it because God has a plan for my life, God has given me a purpose and I will do His will and bring glory to Him. You will find yourself in places throughout life wondering how you got there and why your there. You have been strategically placed at that specific location at that particular time for a reason. There is a situation that YOU are the solution to! We don’t know what situation that will be or when it will come, but if we seek God in every crisis we will be prepared to turn our tragedy into a gift, a solution to someone or something. We will be prepared to shine light on others, to bring glory to His name. Think about this: God turned what seemed to be the greatest tragedy ever, into the greatest gift of all time, that through the death of Jesus Christ we have been saved. He can do that with our tragedies as well.

The purpose of life isn’t of our own interest; it isn’t to be successful in the eyes of society. The purpose of life is exactly the same purpose of Jesus’ life; to teach the Word, help the poor, heal the sick, bless those who have done you wrong, but most of all to fulfill the purpose that God has called you to do. For Jesus that purpose was to save us from our sins, for me, “But you keep your head in all situations, endure hardships, do the work of an evangelist, and complete all the duties of a servant of God” (2 Tim 4:5). What is He calling you to do? Seeking the answer to this single questions will propel you forward and keep you hanging on when trials are raging.

Sometimes certain setbacks we are dealt in life seem like no good would come from them at all. I think I am a perfect example of that. I didn’t understand it, I couldn’t understand it, and sometimes I still don’t understand why all the crap in my life had to happen the way it did.  But God doesn’t ask “Do you understand?”, He asks “Do you believe?”. Most of the time when great things happen to people in the Bible, it’s not because they came to an understanding of how everything added up, it was because they believed. They believed that there is a greater purpose in life than themselves.

The best way I can sum it up is that the purpose of life is not just to get to heaven when you die, but to bring heaven to earth through your life while you’re here.