SAYING #1
Luke 23:34
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
It is really natural right now to be worried about our finances; worried about our debt and ability to make ends meet. You may be checking your bank account or are secretly anxious about what is going to happen, especially if your creditors come calling.
This is the exact meaning of Jesus’ first saying on the cross: “Father forgiven them, for they know not what they do.”
Jesus was just illegally convicted, sentenced to death, stripped, beaten, spat upon, whipped and forced to carry his own cross to a hill outside the city to be horrifically murdered, which those he came to love screamed “Crucify Him.”
What would your reaction be to that? What is your reaction to even a little bit of unjust humiliation?
Jesus’ reaction to our infinite debt was love, grace and sacrifice. When I demand my own way and shove Jesus into the corner of my heart, I am participating with the crowds that shoved a crown of thorns on his head. And instead of rising up as my enemy, he is raised up on the cross as my savior.
In 1 Kings 8:63, when Solomon is building the magnificent Temple in which God will reside here on Earth, he “offered as peace offerings to the LORD 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep.” That’s seems outrageously excessive, but it actually reveals how much Jesus sacrifice counted. Those thousands of sacrificed animals were comparably a minor foretaste of the extreme and extraordinary True Sacrifice Jesus would make that would covered over every believer’s sins, past, present and future.
And for what? 1 Kings goes into amazing detail about how shockingly beautiful and glorifying the Temple was where God would reside. And that temple is but a minor foretaste of the current extreme and extraordinary temple of the Living God: every believer. God now dwells not just among us, but in us, because Jesus pleaded and paid for our forgiveness on the cross.