SamerAdra

Finally got to do a little street preaching last month. I hope I will have another chance sometime!

“Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (85th Psalm, verse 10).

There seems to be a contradiction. Everybody knows the Bible says God is love…but He’s also amazingly holy: “He cometh to judge the earth: he shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with his truth” (Psalm 96:13).

God has to be righteous and judge murderers, rapists, adulterers, thieves, and even liars. The Bible even says all liars shall have their part in the lake of fire (see Revelation 21:8). Have you ever told a lie? Stolen anything? Jesus said whoever looks on a woman with lust has committed adultery already with his heart, and the Bible says whoever hates is a murderer (God sees the heart). Already, that makes everybody liars, thieves, adulterers, and murderers at heart: and we have to stand before a holy God on judgment day.

God wants everybody to be in Heaven (1 Timothy 2:4 says so), and has no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11), but He is a good judge, and must punish sin. The only way righteousness and peace (God’s holiness and His love) can kiss each other is if somebody else takes the punishment for our sins, in our place, so that we can go to Heaven. To pay for all our sins against God, the Bible says we rightly deserve eternal separation from God in the fire of Hell. That’s why God sent His Son to pay the penalty. Jesus lived a perfect life, even His thoguhts, and was thus worthy of taking upon the sins of all mankind.

“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” -Isaiah 53:3-6

He then rose from the grave in victory over death, that we might follow Him, if we accept His sacrifice and receive His gift, trusting only in Him to save us.

That is why John 14:6 has so much meaning to me:

“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

The truth is, we have to face a holy God on judgment day, and will either have to face Him one-on-one about our sins, and receive the punishment of Hell, or, if we trust in Christ, God sees that all our penalty has already been paid when Jesus died and gave us His blood the cross.

I’ll take my gal when my school beats her school. :)