lamb

Nobody’s Perfect

Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

It is interesting, how we expect people to be perfect. Non-Christians despise Christians because of their imperfections. Christians leave churches because of other Christians’ weaknesses. We cannot seem to get past the fact that man, even Christian man, makes mistakes – sometimes horrible mistakes. Why? Where did we get this idea that Christians are perfect? That any man is even capable of perfection?

Look closely at well-known Bible stories and you quickly discover just how imperfect our heroes really were. Moses, my personal favorite, had such a temper that it caused him to first flee Egypt and then lose the right to enter the Promised Land. Abraham walked in fear where his wife was concerned and practiced deceit as a result. So did Isaac. Jacob deceived his own father. David gave in to base lust, then murdered a man. Solomon… Wow.

From our earliest days, man has been imperfect. This is exactly why we needed a Savior, the Perfect Lamb. Having accepted His sacrifice, His great love that takes me – imperfect as I am – and makes me His own, I do not have the right to hold other Christians’ imperfections again them.

As was true in the past, it is true today. Nobody’s perfect.

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C

The Passover Lamb

Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

It’s Passover, or will be at sundown.

Yes, we in Christian culture know it as Good Friday, and it is a VERY Good Friday. A few years back, however, I grew hungry for more knowledge of the Jewish Jesus. I had a desire to understand where Jesus and His disciples were coming from, so I began researching more about what it meant to be a Jew. As I learned, Good Friday became even more awesome than before.

Passover isn’t just a celebration of God delivering the children of Israel out of Egypt. It is so much more, and what happens during this feast lies not only at the roots of Jewish culture but that of Christianity as well. The Jews flocked to Jerusalem with their required sacrifices, those spotless lambs they had been keeping carefully for this, The Lord’s Feast. This was no mere offering up of the life of a perfect lamb to them; it was spiritual life and death. Only if they brought an acceptable sacrifice would their sins be covered for the following year – and only for the year.

Think on that a moment. They put forth a massive amount of effort to fulfill their responsibility in this. Whether they counted it labor or honor, it was WORK to preserve a spotless lamb and bring it to the Temple, to wait their turn to actually make their offering in the midst of a chaotic symphony of bleating and talking and prayers and…and the shedding of so much blood. They did all of this trusting God to cover their sins for a single year, planning to return the following year to do the same.

There is much more to Passover, but this is the point to which I wished to bring us. On THAT Passover, THE Perfect Lamb offered Himself up instead. From that moment on, these annual sacrifices became unnecessary because His blood didn’t simply cover our sins for a single year; rather, it washed them away forever.

Oh, how He loved us!

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C