The Cost of Sin and theReward for Faithfulness

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows
His finger work.1 With just the words from His mouth and the tips of
His fingers He created the entire universe. Who in their right mind
could possibly believe all that we know and see just happened? Now
to redeem mankind God rolled up His sleeve and used His entire arm
to overcome sin so that it was a greater expenditure of power to
overcome the wiles of Satan than it was to create the entire universe.
There is a great importance attached to the redemption of sinners and
the cost was significant.

The price that Christ paid on the cross has never been understood
by man. God literally separated from Himself, Father and Son pulled
apart from all of eternity. It gave our heavenly Father pleasure to
bruise Him as He suffered under the cover of noonday darkness.
Three times in Isaiah we are told that God smote and afflicted Him as
He hung halfway between heaven and hell. Absorbing the sins of
mankind into His battered soul He cried, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?
that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”2 No
Gospel recorded the crucifixion, so man has no idea this side of
heaven the suffering that Christ endured for us.

As Paul sat by candlelight in the Mamertine prison in Rome he
penned these words: “That I may know Him, and the power of His
resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made
conformable unto his death; If by any means I might attain unto the
resurrection of the dead.”3 The prison was a hole of darkness. It was
damp, dirty, and in the lowest dungeon Paul sat, writing to the
followers of Philippi. The natural man received not the things of the
Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know
them, because they are spiritually discerned. For the preaching of the
cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it
is the power of God.4

He healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, gave life to the dead
yet no one believed in Him just like the profit Isaiah said some six
hundred years before, “Who has believed our report and to whom is
the arm of the Lord revealed?”5 We have the story of the Ethiopian
eunuch riding across the desert reading Isaiah 53 and Philip, guided
by the Holy Spirit, was led to join him. The Ethiopian read, “He was
led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his
shearer, so opened he not his mouth. In his humiliation his judgment
was taken away, and who shall declare his generation? For his life is
taken from the earth.” And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, “I
pray thee, of whom speaks the prophet this, of himself, or of some
other man?” Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same
scripture, and preached unto him Jesus. And as they went on their
way, they came unto a certain water and the eunuch said, “See, here is
water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?” And Philip said, “If thou
believe with all thine heart, thou mayest.” And he answered and said,
“I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” And he commanded
the chariot to stand still and they went down both into the water, both
Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him.6

Christ was quite possibly the most common looking man there
was. He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him,
there is no beauty that we should desire him.7 So, we can throw out all
the pictures we have seen of Him, remove them from our mind
because they are wrong. As many were astonished at thee; his visage
was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of
men.8 His facial features were disfigured and deformed by the beating
He took, and He hung from the cross paying for the hell you and I are
responsible for. People gasped in horror as they filed by the
crucifixion area staring at His mutilated flesh with all the sins of the
world hanging on His back.

Here we see the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, and
when we look in the book of Revelation John gives us this
description: And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and
of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a
Lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes,
which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth.9 For no
man took His life from Him, but He laid it down of Himself. For He
has the power to lay it down, and to take it back up again. Looking
unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that
was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has
sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.10

The cross was not His only obligation to God, for He spent time in
the center of the earth sharing His testimony with those on the
paradise side of Hades. For as Jonah was three days and three nights
in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and
three nights in the heart of the earth.11 And those who believed on His
name were taken to heaven and received eternal life. Therefore, my
heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; My flesh also will rest in
hope. For You will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will You allow
Your Holy One to see corruption. You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures
forevermore.12

He fulfills His commitment to the lost who live on and under the
earth and He retakes His position on high on the right side of our
heavenly Father. Fifty days later we begin the dispensation of the
church where many stood and declared from the distance that the
kingdom was at hand. They looked across the mountain peaks as they
stand out together on the horizon, missing all the valleys, hills, and
rivers betwixt the two. Restricted from their sight is the two-thousand
year expanse of the church age, below, which will continue until we
meet Christ in the air.

Then some years later we come to the fall of Jerusalem to Titus,
the Roman general who laid siege on all that was holy, demolishing
and burning everything in sight to the point that there was not one
stone left upon another. When you look at the Wailing Wall today it is
constructed of different stones from different ages. They are made
from different materials because after AD 70 none of them stood on
top of each other any longer. This is the beginning of the Gentile rule
over Judah and will continue until the end of the tribulation period
when Jesus Christ sets foot onto the Mount of Olives.

1.) Psalms 19:1
2.) Matthew 27:46
3.) Philippians 3:10-11
4.) 1 Corinthians 1:18
5.) Isaiah 53:1
6.) Acts 8:32-38
7.) Isaiah 53:2 KJV
8.) Isaiah 52:14 KJV
9.) Revelation 5:6
10.) Hebrews 12:2
11.) Matthew 12:40
12.) Psalm 16:10