DAILY DEVOTIONAL – September 26, 2019
“He Knows”
Prayer: Our loving God and Father, as You tell us in Your Word, You know every hair on our head. You also know every one of our days. Lord Jesus, in our times of trouble, remind us in Your Word that You know exactly where we are and what we are going through, and that You alone truly understand what it means to hurt and suffer and face trails. You suffered perfectly in our place and rose again so that You could be with us, especially in our times of need. We entrust ourselves to You alone. Amen.
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 1:3-4
3 All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. 4 He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.
Devotion: “He Knows”
Have you ever wondered why Christ had to die on the cross? Why did there have to be a sacrifice? Why couldn’t the all-powerful God of the universe just snapped His fingers and made everything right, or just simply chosen to forgive us and left it at that? If you have ever wondered about this, you’re not alone. I asked it several times in the early years of my faith and have since been asked to answer that question several times.
The long and short answer is that our God is both a loving and a righteous God. God is loving, and as such, He has promised to provide for our salvation and forgiveness since Adam and Eve’s first sin in the Garden of Eden – and God has stayed perfectly faithful to that promise in Christ. But in order for there to be forgiveness, sin had to be answered for. Our God is a righteous and holy God. A God of justice. If God were to have turned a blind eye to the fact that His holy word and commands had been disobeyed, if He would have simply pretended like sin never happened, He would not be a perfectly righteous God or worthy of our worship. God is loving, and God is a God of justice. Sin must be paid for and accountable, and God told Adam and Eve before they sinned that the consequence of disobedience and sin would be death. On the cross, Jesus bore the full weight of God’s wrath against sin. The sinless Son of God allowed Himself to be accountable for our sins and died in our place. The blood and life of an animal was not a sufficient substitute for human life. Neither could a righteous God exchange one sinful life for another. Only the perfect, sinless blood of God’s own Son could be accepted as a sufficient sacrifice for our sin. Faith in the blood of Christ is the only we can be saved.
You know friends, if that would have been where God left it, He would have been completely justified in doing so. God had no reason to save us other than the fact that as John tells us in his first letter in Scripture, “God is love.” – 1 John 4:7. After having paid the price for our sins on the cross and rising again from the dead, Christ would have been completely justified in saying, “I have done enough. I suffered and died for You and if you can be strong enough in your faith to believe in me to the end, then I’ll save you. In between now and then, I wish you all the best in this sinful world.” But Christ said no such thing. He promised the opposite. Jesus promised to be with us to the very end – to be with us and comfort us and strengthen us when we need it most.
And here we have the second reason why Christ had to live a real human life and suffer as we do and die as we do. God’s love doesn’t just forgive and forget. God’s love forgives us, pays for our sins on the cross, rises again from the dead to give us new life and Christ remains with us in the Spirit of God every moment of every day in order to guide us, strengthen us and comfort us in those times we need it most. Christ knows what it’s like to physically hurt – more than we will ever know. Christ knows what it’s like to be emotionally hurt, as He was betrayed by those He loved and who were closest to Him. Christ knows what it’s like to have nothing – even the clothes on His back, the only things He ever owned, were gambled away after His death. Christ knows what it’s like to be undervalued and underappreciated – He was sold for a pitiful 30 pieces of silver. Christ knows how to be perfectly obedient and faithful to God in all circumstances because He has literally walked in our shoes and then some – and done it perfectly.
In our passage from 2 Corinthians Scripture tells us that God in Christ is our only true comfort in times of trouble because only Christ truly understands what we are going through because He has been there, and remained perfectly faithful through it all. That is the same reason we can trust Christ and lean on Him with the full weight of our hurt and pain and troubles. Only He knows.
Our merciful Lord is so good to us and faithful to us! As our passage from 2 Corinthians also tells us, God is our comfort not only for our sake, but so that through comforting us we might be used by Him to comfort others in the same situation. When we are overcome by our troubles and don’t understand why all of this is happening, let us never forget that the God who is always with us and who knows what we’re going through and who comforts us, also plans to give us the incredible opportunity to be His instrument of mercy and comfort to someone else. As Paul says in verse 4 of our text, “He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.”
It is through God’s comfort to us in our times of pain and disappointment that God empowers us to empathize with the very people who most need it. Knowing that God knows first-hand what we and everyone else is going through not only comforts us but gives purpose to our hurt and our troubles as God calls us to comfort others with the same comfort He has given us.
Although I’m certainly not equating Yankees’ manager Joe Torres words with Scripture, they are words that reflect God’s words of comfort that He has given to us.
No matter what disappointments or troubles you face at the moment, know that “it’s another piece of experience” you can use to be a comfort to others. Know that “it has nothing to do with what you’re going to be or what’s going to happen in the future.” No matter what, by faith in Christ, you are a child of God and have the assurance of God’s forgiveness and salvation. No matter what, God “still thinks you’re special” because He made you that way and gave His Only Son Jesus to ensure He can always be and is with you.
So, my friends, take comfort in knowing that God knows, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
