The Great Wall

UV 1106/10,000 The Great Wall of Jesus
By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.

Hebrew 13 v 15

Christ is the channel that makes the praise and worship of sinful mankind acceptable and pleasing to God. He gives us access, reason and spirit to worship God. The Jews have a Wailing Wall in Jerusalem where they present their petitions. Our wall is not the ruins of a city left behind by invaders but it is Jesus. Our wall is not like the Great Wall of China that was inspired by fear of Mongol invasions. Our wall is not like the thick walls of Jericho that fell after Joshua and his God-picked troops went around it seven times. Jesus is a wall of support, protection, perfection, salvation, realization, fulfilment, upliftment. Like Rahab the social outcast and prostitute built her house on the city wall of Jericho, making it the means of escape for the Jewish spies and the very means of salvation for Rahab and her family, we too should build our homes and lives on the great Wall of Jesus. We become the means for the salvation of many others. Jesus is not a Wailing Wall where we can wallow in the shallows of our sorrows. Jesus is the Praising Wall for us to offer our sacrifice of praise. He has absolved us of all our guilt and helps us solve our other life challenges both here and now and in the hereafter. He has obviated the need for sacrifices to be made with the one sacrifice He made of His own body and life. Now what remains for us to offer is the sacrifice of praise to God.

God has let us keep the fruit of our hands and labour and we need to give only a small portion of it to Him. God has blessed the fruit of our bodies-our children. God has multiplied the fruit of our minds- ideas and thoughts, plans and decisions, emotions and desires. But the fruit of our lips –our faculty of speech needs to be used to give continual praise and thanksgiving to the Lord for all His gifts to us, given to us by grace. Like Rahab, we have no righteousness of our own to claim any blessing or privilege before God. All that we have is by the grace of Jesus. That we have believed to receive grace, we offer thanks and praise at and through our Wall of Salvation. He is the bulwark of our lives that no invader can spoil, neither time nor fortune can ravage. Nothing can shake or move this wall.

The privilege of continually worshipping the Creator, our Maker and the Maker of the entire universe and all people is what makes us a holy priesthood. The sacrifices we are making are spiritual sacrifices. We are killing our own egos and lifting the Name of God in our lives, acknowledging that by ourselves we are nothing, that we owe everything to Him. As we offer the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving at the Wall of Jesus, the fruit of our Spirit, the fruit of our hands, the fruit of our bodies, the fruit of our minds will all be blessed to abound.


Prateep V Philip