Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Hebrews 10:5-6 Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me ... Then I said "Here I am -- it is written about me in the scroll -- I have come to do your will, O God."
THE STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN -- CONSTRUCTION
Blueprints can be accurately drawn and properly approved, but without actual construction they remain pieces of paper, nothing more. Like promises unkept. But God keeps His promises. The blueprint He revealed in Jacob's dream -- that stairway to heaven -- God built.
The Lord alone could make a way, a stairway, between Himself and us. Every attempt by human beings was doomed to failure, for our approach has always been man-centered. Every religion of man's design is built on human effort to gain God's favor, to climb into his presence on a rickety stairway of seemingly good works and good intentions. Such stairways fall far short of providing access to the righteous God. Any stairway to heaven that actually bridges the chasm between sinful humans and the holy God must be built by God from the ground up.
That's how stairways are always constructed, isn't it? The steps are built from the bottom to the top. God's construction of the stairway to heaven also began at the bottom, on this earth, in a little Judean village in the first century. In Hebrews 10 the inspired writer quotes the Messiah in Psalm 40: "a body you prepared for me." The village where the construction of the Stairway to Heaven began was Bethlehem. When Jesus was born, the Son of God received the body prepared for Him, the one spoken of in the Psalm. God was made man.
Without a human body, Jesus would not have been truly human. And without a human body, Jesus could not have redeemed us. He had to be born under the law in order to keep the law in our place. And when Christ offered His perfect life as a sacrifice for our sakes, He offered His BODY on the cross. " ... there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus ..." (1 Timothy 2:5).
"Men at Work" the signs used to say in construction zones. The construction of the Stairway to Heaven is marked by a sign that says, "Man at Work." -- the Man Christ Jesus.
God's own Son from heaven draws near, Takes our human nature;
Mary, by the Lord's decree, Is become a mother.
God Himself, from heaven above, Came to be our Brother!
Were this Child for us not born,
We should all be lost, forlorn, No true hope possessing.
Dear Lord Jesus, thanks to Thee For this grace and blessing!
(The Lutheran Hymnal, 78)
