The Book of Hebrews takes us into the stratosphere of knowing God. But it astonishes us with the pure simplicity of God’s revelation of Himself—it is not stratospheric!
We don’t climb up into heaven in order to find God; He descends down to where we are! That’s how He reveals Himself to us:
“We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death” (2:9): that means that Jesus as a boy growing up realized something that we don’t think of when we are children: He was born to die! We are born to live—that’s the difference.
When He was 12 Joseph and Mary took Him to His first Passover; He doubtless asked each one, “What does this mean?” They could not tell Him except that “Moses told us to do it, so we do!”
But the Holy Spirit told Him, for He told them there at that Passover, “I must be about My Father’s business” (Luke 2:46-50).
What was the “Father’s business”?
Die for the sins of the world.
But not just die as we die—go quietly to sleep; no, He must die on the cross, the most awful death known to man. It wasn’t enduring physical pain, then a weekend of deep sleep: no, it was the world’s “second death” (hell itself) that He died. And He gave Himself to it at the tender age of 12.
A boy of 12 can understand a tremendous lot, even we; but He, the Son of God, understood as we can’t the “breadth, and length, and depth, and height” of love (agape). That Boy of 12 knew that He must “taste death [the real thing!] for every man” (Heb. 2:9).
“Behold the Lamb of God”! Look; ponder; think; and appreciate. Let your shriveled up little heart be “enlarged” (read Psalm 119:32) to “comprehend” those grand dimensions of His love.
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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