Unexplained pains and sickness can easily cause you concern. You wonder, “What is happening? How serious is this?” By turning to a doctor or specialist and finding out that he recognises all your symptoms, you realise you have found someone who knows what’s wrong, and can explain it, and hopefully treat your complaint.
The followers of Jesus had been faced with an awful situation they did not recognise. Their wonderful Companion and Teacher, whom they had known for just three years, was suddenly and ruthlessly taken from them and put to a horrible death. Why? What was happening?
Sometime later, when Paul, the great missionary, was explaining this to Jews living in Antioch, he pointed out that Jesus’ horrible death had been written about in detail hundreds of years before it happened! (verses 27,29, & 32.)
God’s in control; He had known all about the way His Son was to be killed - yet He had allowed it to happen, as the Jews in Jerusalem condemned Jesus and “fulfilled the words of the prophets”! (verse 27.) “When they had carried out all that was written about Him, they took Him down from the tree and laid Him in a tomb.” (verse 29.)
Would those horror-stricken followers of Jesus ever recover from this great injustice and loss? I wonder have you ever felt like that about what happened to Jesus, or about something that happened in life?
God alone was going to be able to turn that moment of tragedy into an eternity of blessing for many! (Isaiah 53:1-12. 1stPeter 3:18.)
You see, God’s Holiness and Justice demanded that your sin and mine could not go unpunished, yet He wanted to save us from the eternal destruction we each deserve. (Romans 6:23. Ezekiel 18:4.) God allowed His perfect Son to suffer the punishment of death for our sins. What a wonderful demonstration of His great love for condemned sinful mankind. (Romans 5:6-11. 2ndCorinthians 5:18-21.)
“By raising up Jesus” to life, God was providing for mankind His promised Saviour. (verses 30-32. Acts 2:30-39.) Jesus Christ is THE Saviour of the world. (Acts 5:30-32. 1stJohn 4:14.)
Seeing that God “did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all”, we can be sure that, if we trust and obey Him, it will be for our good. (Romans 8:31-32.) Have YOU turned from others, to the one and only Saviour whom God has provided for you? If you have, then you can enjoy the blessings of Salvation that God brought out of the tragedy of His Son’s death.
And surely you can go on to ask that wonderful God, who knows and understands all the tragedies and problems of your life, to use them to accomplish some good. (Romans 8:28. Genesis 50:15-21.) God can cause those sorrows and losses to eventually strengthen your life, and make them a source of blessing, if you will turn them over to Him in faith. (Deuteronomy 8:2-3. 1stPeter 5:6-7.) God’s in control. (Hebrews 12:10-11.)
Read Acts chapter 13, verses 27-32.
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