Handcrafted by the Master // You Are To Die For, Part 2

If God’s as busy as perhaps you and I are, well then maybe Easter is just another long weekend – time for a rest. But if God knows us personally, then Easter takes on a whole new meaning.

It's so easy to think of Easter as just another long weekend, you know a chance for a bit of a breather from work, I mean it's a busy world we live in, rushing around as we mostly do. God must be busy too, he's got so much on his mind, there's global warming, there's terrorism, there’s famine and starvation, there’s poverty, there are wars, God’s one busy guy.

So what does Easter have to do with you and me? If everyone is so busy, God included, maybe it's just another retail event, maybe God is too busy for us, well for Easter to be personal but what if it is personal? What if God knows us intimately, better than even we know ourselves? Then Easter becomes something entirely different. But does He, does He know us that well and is He that interested in you and me? They're very good questions.

As we think about this Easter over the coming few weeks it's a good time for us to think about what God was up to. I mean Christmas seems just a few weeks away, it's the time we celebrate Jesus becoming a man and the whole 'baby in a manger' thing, but Easter for Jesus, wasn't just a few months after Christmas, Easter was about 33 years later.

It was at a time called the Passover celebration and the Passover is a time when Israel celebrated their release from slavery in Egypt centuries before. Israel were slaves in Egypt and God sent a number of plagues on the Egyptians and the last plague was the death of the first born in every family.

The Israelites were told to take a lamb and to kill it and to take the blood and paint it on the top of the door and then the angel of death that was bringing this plague would pass over their homes which is what happened.

And so this time, Easter, was a time when Israel was celebrating the Passover celebration, the time that we now remember that Jesus not only came to earth as a man, He not only walked through all the trials and all the temptations that you and I do, He not only healed the sick and cast out demons, He not only preached with power but He laid down his life for you and me on that cross.

Now, we'll look at the how and why of that over the next few weeks but for me, Easter begins long, long before that. You look at God and say, "God, what were you doing at Easter? Why do you go to that extreme? What's that all about? Why do you send your Son, who never made a mistake, who never sinned, why do you send your Son and then let him be beaten and crucified on a cross?"

There’s a bit of SMS shorthand called, "To Die For", you know when the kids use their mobile phones and they send text messages to one another, they often use the term "to die for", the number 2, the letters DI and the number 4; to die for. It's shorthand for something that you just have to have, maybe it's a new mobile phone and that new mobile phone is "to die for", or maybe a girl sends a text message about a boy she's just seen and he is "to die for". That's what Easter's about, God was prepared to send his Son “to die for” you and me. We, in God's sight are "to die for", in his eyes, in his heart, he would die to get us back.

Let's unpack this idea for a little bit and go and have a look at what was going on inside the Father’s great and mighty heart, what was He thinking about when it came to you and me when he hatched this Easter plan? If you've got a Bible, grab it, we're going to have look at Psalm 139. Easter's a hard thing to get our hearts and minds around but this Psalm is a place to start, it talks about what drove God towards this amazing plan that we now call Easter, have a listen:

Lord God, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit down, you know when I rise up; you know my thoughts from far off. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word’s are on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. You hem me in, behind me and before me; you've laid your hands upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to heaven you're there, if I make my bed in hell, you're there, if I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the farthest side of the sea, even there your right hand will guide me, you'll hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely darkness will hide me and the light will become night around me,’ God, even darkness will not be dark to you, the night will shine like day for the darkness is like a light to you.

A beautiful passage and it tells us three things. Firstly, God knows us intimately, "Lord you've searched me you know me. You know when I get up or sit down, you know my thoughts from far away, You know everything about me." God’s on the journey with us; "You hem me in; in front of me, behind me. You've laid your hand upon me, such knowledge is just too wonderful for me," and God is there even in the dark places. "Even when the darkness hides us and the light around us becomes night, the darkness won't be dark to him; the night will shine like the day" because God is in that dark place with us.

You see the reason that this Psalm, for me, lays the foundations for Easter is that it tells me about a God who knows me intimately, not some far off, distant God, not some unmoved mover who pulls strings and has like a marionette playing; no! A God with a close and intimate knowledge. It's hard for us to fathom, I mean billions of people have lived on this earth down through the ages yet he knows each one of us so intimately, so perfectly.

I have a friend who has a large family, he has 11 children, you know he has no less love for his 11 that I have for my 3 and that’s how God is. God knows each one of his children intimately and it's such an awesome thing to think about, the fact that God knows you and me intimately, every hair on our heads, every thought, every hope, every dream, every disappointment and hurt, every step of every day, every breath that we take.

I wonder whether you mightn't just grab a pen right now and just jot down the areas of your life where you feel alone, maybe it's in a relationship or in work or maybe its issues with your finances. You know those parts of your life right now, where it feels like there’s a darkness, a heaviness, a loneliness and then contemplate these beautiful words from Psalm 139:

If I say surely the darkness will hide me and the light will become night around me, God even the darkness won't be dark to you. The night will shine like the day for the darkness is as light to you.

That's one of the things behind Easter, he knows us so well, we're so much his children he wants to shine light into our darkness and as we head towards Easter, I'd encourage you to search him out, not just in those parts of your life that might be going well, but in those dark patches.

Psalm 139 is so beautiful because it talks about God’s great love for us, His incredible love that he lavishes on us through Jesus Christ. If God didn't know us personally, if he was such a busy God that he couldn't take the time to know us, Easter wouldn't mean that much but he does, he knows every hair, every wrinkle, every blemish, every mistake – everything about us and that’s why he sent his Son at Easter, that's why he sent Jesus, to pay for our mistakes at Easter because he loves us so much.