Barriers to coming to God

All photos courtesy of Unsplash 

Many things in life are barriers; we might find that our lack of skills or qualifications can be a barrier to work progression. Maybe an incident has happened in life that makes it difficult to be friends with someone; a barrier exists.

After God gave the 10 commandments to Moses, the people agreed to keep them; however, before Moses could return from Mount Sinai's summit, the Israelites had broken at least one of the commandments by worshipping a golden calf instead of the true God. Their sin became a barrier between them and God.

They failed to live up to God’s standards, so He stated that they should bring a sacrifice to Him when they sinned.

In the time that Jesus was on the earth, God’s temple was in Jerusalem. This was where the people were to offer their sacrifices. Yet if you visited the temple, you would have seen that there were money changers there; these men insisted that you had to change your currency into Temple money, and they charged you exorbitant amounts to do so. You also had to buy their animals for sacrifices; these were also ridiculously expensive.

These were barriers that God had not put in place. In fact, God ensured that even the poorest could afford to bring a sacrifice. Returning to God reflected repentant obedience and not the size of the person's money bag.

When the Lord Jesus encountered the money changers, He was filled with righteous anger at seeing the ‘House of prayer’ become a ‘den of thieves.’  It is an amazing fact that this was predicted by the prophet Jeremiah over 600 years before.

The Lord Jesus would not allow there to be a barrier between man and God, so he would not allow these men to stay to continue their sinful extortion. He drove them out, overturning their tables and scattering their false currency on the floor of the Temple courtyard. At that point, it is interesting to see who the Lord Jesus brought into the temple, the poorest people, those that were blind and lame. The Lord Jesus healed them; they had access to God and all His healing power.

There is still, for each one today, a great barrier that we need to get passed. It is the barrier of sin. The Lord Jesus came to earth to break down that barrier. He came to die on a cross suffering for sin.

1 Peter chapter 3 verse 18 puts it like this, ‘Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God’. The perfect Son of God took the price of sin, took our place so that we might be free!

When the Lord Jesus was on the cross, He chose the moment of His death. There was a curtain back in the Temple; it was huge and as thick as a man’s fist. The Bible tells us that at the moment of His death, this huge curtain that stopped people from going into the holiest part of the Temple was torn in two from the top all the way to the bottom.

A man was incapable of tearing this curtain, and it was torn from the top showing that the one who had torn it was God. It signified that the barrier of sin had been overcome, the way to God had been made.

Have you come to God in repentant obedience? Have you turned from your sin and come God’s way by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ and all He did at Calvary? The only barrier that exists between you and God is your willingness to place your trust in Him. Will you come?

Messages with Meaning (10/03/21)

Written by Stuart Scammell for Your542Day