Pastor's Blog - Easter 2016

In Psalm 27:9 the psalmist cries out to God saying, “Hide not your face from me. Turn not your servant away in anger, O you who have been my help. Cast me not off; forsake me not, O God of my salvation.” As we come up to Easter once again, it is such a wonderful comfort for every child of God’s to know that He will never turn His back on them! They will always see His face! The reason this is true is all because of the very first Easter. Easter time is special because it helps us remember that God’s own Son, the Lord Jesus, willingly went to the cross and there subjected Himself to the rejection of His Father. There, on the cross He was punished for all the sins of His people. He became their substitute! In so doing, God’s pure and perfect justice and love were both fully demonstrated.

His perfect justice was met in the fact that all the sin of God’s children was paid for. Justice had been done! Punishment for sin had been forthcoming but not on those who deserved it but on One who didn’t! Their sin had been credited to His account and He willingly accepted God’s just and righteous punishment so that they would never have to. It tells us in the Bible in John 3:16 that, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Jesus willingly looked at the back of God’s head so that all those who trust in Him will never look at anything but His face. The Bible makes it very clear that not everybody goes to heaven. Not everyone will see God’s face. It tells us there is only one way to get right with Him and that is through His Son, the Lord Jesus. It is recorded in John 14:6 that Jesus Himself said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

As men and women, we all want to see justice carried out. We shudder at the cruelty and wrongs we see perpetrated in the world each and every day. This yearning for justice is a God-given trait in each one of us because we are made in His image. We long to see all wrongs put right and are deeply disappointed when injustice seems to win the day. However, God’s Word, the Bible tells us that a day is coming when all wrongs will be put right and justice will be fairly and evenhandedly dispensed by God. God too, wants justice to be done and because He is perfect in all His ways, all sin needs to be punished. That means the sin that we commit too.

The wonderful truth of Easter is that if we have trusted in the Lord Jesus to make us right in God’s sight then our sin has already been punished, yes, even the sin we will commit in the future! It was all laid on Jesus and He took the punishment we deserve upon Himself on the cross. That means when the day of judgement arrives, and arrive it will, all those who have trusted in Jesus as their Saviour will be welcomed into God’s presence but all of those who have rejected Him will according to Jesus’s very own words in Matthew 25:46, “go away into eternal punishment.”

We know that God accepted what Jesus did for us who believe in Him because He raised Him to life on the first Easter Sunday. It is my prayer this Easter, that you too will seek God’s face by trusting in His Son, Jesus Christ, so that you will be blessed to have Him look on you with love and grace forever and ever.

Every blessing.