Wednesday 29 May 2013

Wednesday Reading: Revelation 7:13-14

Key Verse: Revelation 7:14
14  And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Devotion:
When God opened up the revelations to John it was a record of all that was still to come and one of those things was the washing of our sins away by the blood of the Lamb. John saw God’s mercy and forgiveness is a way that we do not see every day because we are locked into the world, here and now. Instead, God showed John that God’s forgiveness extends throughout the Old Testament, to all the righteous people that upheld God alone. This means that every person who turned their backs on the ways of the world and uplifted God’s ways instead of their own would see the forgiveness of God.

Jesus came at one point in time to pay for the sin debt of the past, the present and the future. He could not come every year or every generation to do the same again and again otherwise it would be to no effect. Christ died once for our sins. He paid for that sin debt with His life and with His blood. All the people that came before Him would see great tribulations as they tried to uphold God’s ways. People that followed Christ would have to endure tribulations as the world rejected them. These same people who were able to endure tribulation and to continue trusting God are the ones who will have their sins washed clean away.

If we were able to live a righteous life after having our sins forgiven then we may not have to face tribulation; but that is not to say that we face tribulation just because we have believed in Jesus. It is the world that rejects Christ and the world that imposes those tribulations upon us. It is the sin of the world that brings on the tribulation and not God!

Let us never forget that it is the blood that Jesus shed for us that has paid for the sin that we have committed. Those horrible and despicable things that we have done are washed clean away just because Christ wished it so and freely gave His life for us. It was the blood of the lambs before Christ that appeased God, but only the true blood of our perfect Lamb, Jesus Christ that actually washed away the sins once and for all.

Points to Ponder:
Do you feel like your garments are stained with sin?

Will you trust Christ fully to wash them away?