Greetings! It's late Friday night and we leave Sunday afternoon for Jerusalem. Believe it or not we have done some major packing already. We both have a list of things going in the days before the trip so we had to use what time was available. Of course when you pack early, it usually means that just before the trip you will repack everything, trying to remember if you got this or that in.

However, the early packing also seems to reflect our excitement. We have been reading the books mentioned in the previous post and this has only added both to the intrigue about this "special place" as well as the desire to be with the people we have been conversing with through cyber space.

Perhaps our enthusiasm relates to the fact that this place, whether or not the authentic site of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, is nevertheless focused on the foundations of the gospel. We anticipate being focused every day on His death and resurrection. Of course that can be done here or anywhere. But I confess to countless distractions, most of them quite good and even necessary. There we will be "required", "forced", "permitted", "encouraged" to think of the cross of Jesus Christ and the confirmation of His person and work when He was "declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead" (Rom. 1:4).

Did it happen at "Gordon's Calvary" and the "Garden Tomb"? Ultimately that is not the point. The point is that it did happen somewhere! Near the city, at 'The Place of the Skull' (John 19:17-20). Near a garden, in which was a never-been-used tomb (John 19:41). Near other tombs (Isaiah 53:9).

On His cross, just a brief moment before He died, Jesus cried out those most comforting words, "It is finished!" (John 19:30) On that cross ...
* He fulfilled every requirement of the Law of Moses (Romans 8:3-4; 10:4)
* He fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies of His humiliation (e.g. the substitution of Isaiah 53).
*He completed the 'types' involving the "Lamb of God" (e.g. Gen. 22:13, Isaac's substitutionary ram caught in the thicket on Mt. Moriah).
*He finished the work the Father had given Him to do (John 4:34; 17:4).
*He paid in full the price of redemption (Heb. 9:12; Rom. 6:23).
*He satisfied divine justice (Isa. 53:4,10).

How glorious is our Lord Jesus Christ. He glorified the Father by finishing the Father's work (John 17:4). Thus the Father exalted Him highly, returning Him to the glory He had from eternity (John 17:5). And He has become the "hope of glory" for every man, woman and child who has bowed the knee to Him in simple faith (John 17:22; Col. 1:27).

"Oh Lord, may we set our affection on you now, and always. May we not depend on a place or a circumstance or an opening in the schedule. Thou art our Glorious and Magnificent Obsession! Amen!!"