DIG DEEP
Excavating the Depths of God and His Glorious Riches
August 15th, 2022
SKINFUL
Matthew 6:21, ‘”For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”’ (NIV)
We are learning that there is vast spiritual wealth available to each one of us who call ourselves Christians, who consider ourselves children of God. It is buried just under the surface of the Christian life, waiting to be discovered and drawn out. This month we are headed on a dig, so we can explore, excavate and extract the glorious riches God has for His children.
Even at our very best, we are sinful man.
Jesus, the one and only unique Son of a Holy God, put on our skin and came to this world so He could identify with us. He was promised for centuries so as Holy God He could deal with our wicked and wretched waywardness. It wasn’t just once that God became fed up with the humanity He dreamt into existence. It says in Scripture—one of the saddest verses I think—He regretted making mankind. (Genesis 6:5-6, ‘The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that He had made human beings on the earth, and His heart was deeply troubled’ – NIV). The Message Bible says, ‘It broke His heart.’
In order to cure the wide swept virus killing mankind spiritually, known as sin, God sent His only unique Son to earth to redeem us. He stepped down out of splendor, traveled through the ages to you and me. The promised Savior arrived not as anyone expected or what they imagined Almighty God predicted. The infinite infant appeared, to everyone’s surprise and amazement, holiness and glory birthed in a backroom of a barn, amidst the bleating of lambs and the crying of ewes. He wore our skin, faced our tragedies, fought our battles, and remained sinless. For three decades, no one would believe He was the Son of God, and just as the wages of sin cried out for atonement, He stepped onto the stage of our demise to rescue humanity.
Thirty-three years He walked among us, healing us, feeding us, guiding us, teaching us, freeing us, sending us, challenging us, loving us. Still today, the greatest riches known to mankind forever are handed personally to each one of us at the foot of the Cross. Like a leper’s skin sheds itself, so does our sin shuck off as we admit our sin, ask for forgiveness, and watch Him change our desires to match His. When He enters in, a plethora of wealth and wisdom replaces our spiritual destitution, and suddenly a journey of hope and promise begins. The skinful of sin I have lived with and refused to look at in mirrors and denied it even had power over me is at once cleansed, rejuvenated and reformed. He is the greatest Healer, the most honorable Friend, the Defender of my soul, the Lifter of my head.
You too can shed your skinful and begin again.
2 Corinthians 5:17, ‘Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold! all things have become new.’ (KJV)
2 Corinthians 2:10b: ‘The Spirit, not content to flit around on the surface, dives into the depths of God, and brings out what God had planned all along.’ (MSG)
