What Makes Us So Special? // The Price He Paid for You, Part 2

As we head towards Easter yet again, perhaps it’s time to think about – well, what makes us so special, that God would do this Easter thing for us?

 

An Intimate Knowledge

It’s always something special to me, that time of the year we call Easter. So we are going to carry it on a little longer this week in the Easter story. This is my 17th Easter since I became a Christian. And it just never ceases to amaze me what the Easter story is all about. It’s a good time for us to think about what God was up to. I mean, Christmas seems like it was just a few weeks ago. Hey, you know, that’s when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the whole baby in the manger thing; Jesus becoming a man.

But Easter for Jesus didn’t happen just a few months after Christmas. Easter for Jesus happened about 33 years later during the Passover celebration. It was the time when Israel celebrated the freedom that they had out of slavery. They’d been slaves in Egypt for a few centuries; God had sent Moses to tell Pharaoh to let His people go and God sent a whole bunch of plagues on the nation of Egypt. And the last plague, the most powerful plague, was the first born of every Egyptian family, their animals as well, the firstborn was killed by God and that ultimately convinced Pharaoh to let God’s people go.

But it didn’t happen to the Israelites. You see, they were slaves in Egypt and God said to them, ‘Look, you get a lamb and you slay that lamb, and you put that lamb’s blood on the top of your door frame and the angel of death will pass over your house and this plague upon Egypt won’t befall your house. And so the Passover celebration was the celebration of the freedom that Israel received from slavery by the shedding of the blood of the lamb. And that of course is what Easter is all about.

So here Jesus was in His early 30’s and it’s the Passover celebration and it’s the time that we remember Jesus not only came to earth as a man, He not only walked through every trial and temptation that you and I do, He not only healed the sick and cast out demons and preached with power, He laid down His life for you and for me. He died for us!

Now we will look at the how and why of that, but for me, Easter begins long, long before that. You look at God and you say, "Well, why did you go to such an extreme? What was this all about – you sending your Son, your only Son Jesus, your beloved and you let Him be spat upon and beaten and crucified?"

Easter is God saying to us that you and I are "to die for". Now the term ‘to die for’ is a contemporary term. If you’re not aware it’s SMS shorthand; you know, the kids as they send the SMS messages to one another often put the word "to die for" They don’t write it out in full, they write it as 2di4 and it’s shorthand for something that you just have to have. A girl might send an SMS to a girlfriend of hers and talk about a boy, say, "He was 2di4". A boy might look at a car or a motorbike and say, "That car or that motorbike is 2di4". Something that’s ‘to die for’ is something that you just have to have. And so that’s why we’re talking about it right now because that’s what Easter’s about. And this term "to die for" started me thinking, God was prepared to send His son "to die for" you and me. You and I, in His eyes, in His heart, we are "to die for".

There’s a beautiful Psalm. You may have heard me talk about this Psalm before. We’re going to spend today looking at this Psalm. If you have a Bible grab it, open it up at Psalm 139 because Psalm 139 is a Psalm that I guess lays the foundations of Easter for me. It lays the foundations of "to die for". We’re going to unpack this whole idea and have a look at what was going on in the Father’s great and mighty heart. What was He thinking? How was He thinking about you and Me when He hatched Easter.

Easter’s a ha