Penalty

In the Old Testament, those who worshiped God participated in animal sacrifice. The believer took their sacrifice to the temple, put the animal to death, and placed its body on the altar to be consumed in the fire. Because of their sin, the worshiper should have been the one who died. But God, in his great mercy, allowed the animal to die in place of the believer. culminated

Many people are confused about Jesus. Many people speak of him in different ways. In today’s passage, we are invited to a fresh start. We are asked to come and see for ourselves who Jesus really is.

When the Light arrived in the darkness, the heavenly Father sent his Son to the back of the line. The Light of the world, the eternal God in the flesh, received no breaks and no advantages. After an unseemly pregnancy and a hard journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the fullness of time had come. And…there was no room for Jesus.

The Christmas story seems so peaceful and silent night-ish. A baby is born and laid in a manger. But this was no ordinary birth and no ordinary baby. The old prophet Simeon noted that this child would cause the rise and fall of many.

To introduce this devotional, I wanted to show all the different decisions that make life complex. There are multiple choices for everything from washers and dryers to tires for your car. Since you may not be in the market for a washer or dryer, and your tires are just fine, I decided to see how many brands of jeans there are. I found a site that provided the complete list of jean brands listed in alphabetical order. I stopped counting at one hundred brands. I was only at “C”! I didn’t have it in me to count jean brands starting with “D” all the way to “Z.”

Repentance is a word that doesn’t get a lot of positive press these days. We would like to blame it on the times we live in, but honestly, people have had trouble with repentance since Genesis 3. Today, let’s consider why repentance gets such bad press.

As we enter a new year, remember that Jesus is our Savior. Let’s keep our focus on him. 

But Jesus came as the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world. On the cross, he paid sin’s penalty. He bought us back from sin’s slavery. He freed us from sin’s prison. 

A few days ago, we focused on Isaiah 9:6 in a general way. As we enter the week of Christmas and zero in on Jesus, let’s drill down on each name the prophet uses to describe Jesus. Let’s start with “Wonderful Counselor.”