The Flaming Sword Extinguished

My personal devotional journal today: 

Saturday 1-3-15 (The Dalles, OR)  Scripture reading: Gen 3-5 and Luke 3

S.  Gen 3:22-24  What if they eat the fruit of the tree of life? Then they will live forever!" So the LORD God banished Adam and his wife from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made. After banishing them from the garden, the LORD God stationed mighty angelic beings to the east of Eden. And a flaming sword flashed back and forth, guarding the way to the tree of life.  NLT

O.  God placed a flaming sword before the Tree of Life, lest man, now as sinners, should approach this tree, eat of its fruit and live forever in their sins.  In reading this… I recalled a sermon preached by my pastor, William Booth-Clibborn, when I was a child.  He likened that flaming sword, that darted this way and that, to the perfect justice of God.  Then he likened Jesus as approaching this Tree of Life… not as the pure Son of God, but now having taken upon Himself the sins of every evil person of the world… and He marches right into certain death.  The flaming sword of God’s justice, responding to the sin and the sinners with whom Jesus had identified Himself, now plunged down upon Him… instead of upon us.  God’s justice at Calvary brought about His death… but at that very moment it destroyed the power and extinguished the flame of that sword!  And when the smoke cleared away, it seems to me that the huge sword was left stabbed into the soil in the form of a cross, stained with the blood of our Savior.  And suddenly God’s great love for us had opened the path to the Tree of Life offering grace and mercy in place of fierce judgment.  The price had been paid. 

To the Israelites the Old Testament must have seemed to them as presenting an unapproachable God which included a great curtain in the temple that for centuries had separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies.  God’s “mercy seat” on the ark behind the curtain could only be approached once per year by the chief priest and that with great fear and trembling and with the blood of a perfect lamb to sprinkle upon the mercy seat and plead for forgiveness of the sins of the nation. 

But when the dying Jesus from the cross cried out, “It is finished!” at that moment the curtain in the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.  (Matt 27:51) NLT

A.  What does this mean for you and me?  The flaming sword of God’s justice is now satisfied and extinguished.  The torn curtain gives unworthy sinners access to a holy God.  The door to God is now open.  And now He beckons us to come boldly, without fear.  Heb 4:16 “So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it.”  Heb 10:19-22 And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven's Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus.  This is the new, life-giving way that Christ has opened up for us through the sacred curtain, by means of his death for us.   And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God's people, let us go right into the presence of God, with true hearts fully trusting him.  For our evil consciences have been sprinkled with Christ's blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.  NLT

P.  Thank You, Father, for the great gift of Your Son.  You sent Him as a perfect sacrifice in our place.  And so I cry out to a troubled people as did John the Baptizer (John 1:29) Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world!  Help me to proclaim it with such divine passion and anointing that men and women, youth and children… may believe and with repentant hearts step through that torn curtain, that open door and humbly bow before you… there in Your throne room.  Amen. 

Ralph