I am going to begin this week’s devotional with a confession. Are you all ready? I am not fond of housework, especially dusting. Some mornings, I get up, sit down with my cup of tea, and think about all the dust in my house. I know I should get up and tackle it, but I don’t. Sometimes I spend the whole day sitting, either doodling away on my phone, reading a good book, or getting lost in creative writing. However, as the day draws to a close, I tend to feel dissatisfied, and I chide myself over everything I didn’t do. I know the following day will find me frazzled, because now I will have to tackle the previous days’ tasks on-top of my new ones. Either that, or the dusting won’t get done, and I’ll beat myself up. I’m good at that.
As I write this, I’m feeling more satisfied, because yesterday was a good day. I did the dusting, vacuumed the floors, and even made friends with my new Flash speed Mop! Last night when I sat down to relax, I could enjoy it more because my tasks had been completed. So much so that I knew today could be slower paced because everything necessary had been done.
Then this morning, I was listening to an online teaching about holiness, and one verse jumped out at me. it came from Hebrews chapter 10 verse 12, and it says, “But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of god.” I was immediately taken with the idea of Jesus sitting down. As Christians, we know that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy spirit are one, and that they are always at work. When we think of the number of things Jesus does for each of us in any given day, the idea of him having time to sit down is preposterous.
This coming weekend, we are considering the Cross – how our Saviour gave up his life to pay for our sin, and then rose from the dead three days later to conquer sin and death for all those who will put their faith and trust in him. His final words as he gave up his spirit were: “It is finished.” We will never be able to fully appreciate what Jesus must have gone through as he hung on that Cross. For me, one of the saddest parts of the account is when the sky went black because God the Father could no longer look upon his Son due to the fact that he was carrying your sin, my sin, and the sin of the whole world. For one moment in time there was separation in the holy trinity. Jesus had chosen to completely identify himself with sinful man, even to the point of taking the punishment that should have been ours. He’d never sinned – never said a bad word or thought a bad thought, and yet here he was, being punished in my place. That’s sobering.
It can be hard to think about Good Friday, but we all love Resurrection Sunday. That’s when we sing our hallelujahs and rejoice because Jesus is alive! Up from the grave he arose! He moved amongst his followers to reassure them that he truly had risen. Now the work truly was finished, because if Jesus had remained in the tomb, there would be no hope of resurrection to eternal life for you or me. Jesus was the first fruits of those who will rise into eternal life. He paved the way for us, and whenever we have doubts about what will happen to us when our earthly lives end, we can just consider the empty tomb and remind ourselves that he’s alive, and so am I! thanks to our Lord, the Christian will never truly die. When our lives here are over, we will go somewhere far better to a place specially prepared for us by none other than God himself.
When he had finished appearing to all those who needed to see him, Jesus ascended into heaven, and it’s what happened next that I find so comforting. As our verse from Hebrews told us, Jesus sat down at the right hand of God. In a much more holy sense, did Jesus feel as I did last night after my fulfilling day of hard work? It’s so comforting to think of him sitting because sitting is a posture of relaxation. Jesus could relax because his mission was complete. Mankind’s salvation was assured, and there was nothing more he could do.
As I look around me, I see many friends and family members who don’t know Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. That can be worrying. I know I must take every opportunity I can to share the message of hope and keep praying for them to believe and know the joy of salvation I have enjoyed for most of my life. Yet the plane truth is that there is nothing more Jesus himself can do for their greatest need than what he’s already done. His work was finished at the Cross. He holds out the wonderful gifts of salvation and the promise of eternal life, but mankind can either choose to accept or reject them. If they turn away, I’m sure Jesus’ heart breaks, because we know it’s his desire that none should perish. That’s why he went to such great lengths. However, there is still nothing more he can do than the work he completed at Calvary.
I hear many people grumbling and complaining over the state of the world. They say they can’t believe in a God who won’t fix things in Ukraine, or a God who allows elderly people to suffer shivering in their homes because of the rise in energy prices. Their inner cry is, “Why won’t he do something?” My answer would be, “He did.” We get so caught up in the temporal that we don’t think about the eternal. Jesus does regularly step into the here and now. he’s done so many times in my life, but dare I suggest that there is a greater need than bringing an end to war or poverty? There is the whole question of where you and I are going to spend eternity. Believe me, when we step outside of time, our years of earthly life are going to seem tiny and insignificant. All the good and the bad will seem like blips and dots compared to eternity stretched out before us.
This is why Jesus could sit down at the right hand of his Father in heaven – because he knew he’d completed the greatest work of all. I was amazed when I looked up verses about Jesus sitting down to find a website that claimed to have a hundred of them! At least three came from the book of Hebrews. In Hebrews 12 verse 2 we are told that Jesus is the founder and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him, endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 1:3B says: “After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.” You’d be amazed by how many such verses I read. In fact, the only time I found one about Jesus standing rather than sitting was during the account of the martyrdom of steven, where Steven saw a heavenly vision during his last moments of earthly pain in which Jesus stood at God’s side. I wonder if Jesus was standing to welcome his faithful servant home.
In our fast-paced world, sitting down can often get a negative press, and I’ll be the first to admit how easy it is to become lazy. Yet remember that on the seventh day God rested, and remember that when Jesus ascended into heaven, he sat down. Our individual missions will in no way equal that of Jesus, but when God gives us a task to do and we’ve done it to the best of the abilities he’s given us, it is okay to sit down and rest. Maybe soon he will call us to another task, but for now, take a pause. Or as we say in Wales, have a breather. Jesus might be sitting in heaven, but as our high priest, the Bible tells us he is constantly interceding on our behalf. I can imagine times when the finger of accusation is pointed at me by my enemy, and how Jesus might turn to the father and say, “My blood has covered that sin.”
In the Old Testament, God’s people were constantly making animal sacrifices to pay for their misdeeds. There were specific rules for what had to be done when, and having just recently studied Leviticus, I can tell you, it can all be pretty confusing. When Jesus sat down, he was signifying that the price had been paid in full. I no longer have to kill a bull or a goat when I sin. Rather, I can ask my eternal high priest for forgiveness, and he is able to offer it wholeheartedly because of his shed blood.
So this weekend as we celebrate our Lord’s death and resurrection, I’d like to encourage you to just take some time to ponder this image of Jesus sitting, and I pray it will bring you as much comfort as it has brought me. Jesus is resting assured in what he has done, so we should be too.