February 14, 2010

Genesis 47

7Then Joseph brought in his father Jacob and set him before Pharaoh; and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. 8Pharaoh said to Jacob, “How old are you?” 9And Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are one hundred and thirty years; few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.” 10So Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and went out from before Pharaoh. What kind of testimony is that? “Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life.” Well, Jacob is at least honest in this statement. Most of his days were evil. He spent them scheming to advance himself or his own agenda until he met the Lord at Peniel. In the next 11 years after wrestling with God Jacob’s Daughter would be raped by Shechem. Jacob’s sons would ruthlessly avenge their sister making him odious in the nostrils of the Canaanites. Jacob would lose his favorite wife in childbirth. Jacob would bury his father Isaac and finally his favorite son would be sold into slavery and reported dead to him. Yes, few and evil were the days of the years of his life. Yet, God was with him. How would he have known it?

Do you feel like Jacob, “Few and evil are the days of the years of my life?” If you truly know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, then He is with you. All feelings and circumstances aside, He is with you. What a promise. In the good times and the bad, He is with you. The Eternal God is with you. Now that is glory! Indeed we serve a glorious King. Speak His glory to someone today!

--Pastor john

Matthew 27:1-26

Every once in a while I do a dramatic monologue as a sermon. I'll take on the character of a person in the Bible and attempt to tell the story from their perspective. Usually I will don a costume with a beard to help the congregation get into the mindset of the story. I remember the first time Liam saw me dressed up as a character. I think He sort of recognized my voice but he certainly didn't recognize the weird clothes or the beard. He wouldn't have anything to do with me until I removed the beard and had "normal" clothes on. He didn't recognize me. But, I was still me. The outward stuff had only changed to enhance communication.

Sometimes the glory of the Lord is obscured because we have this outward picture of what He should be like. When the reality doesn't match up with our thoughts, we reject the reality. Consider these ways that Jesus was not recognized.

He is priceless but His subjects valued Him at only 30 pieces of silver. In Jesus' day that was about 30 days wages for a common laborer. That is definitely not a fortune, maybe $3,000? Thirty pieces of silver was also a common price of a slave in His day. Hey, you could put it on your Master Card. We pay more for our cars than that. Do we ever value Him so cheaply? Is walking with Him worth the price of a car? How can we put any value upon Him? Yet we do. I am afraid that at times we sell Him much cheaper than even $3,000.

He is the King but His subjects did not recognize Him. Pilate wanted to know, "Are you the King of the Jews?" He answered in the affirmative. Yet this King would not answer the charges of His subjects. He should have been giving them orders. They brought Him to trial. Before we condemn these people, ask the question, "Where is Christ in relation to the throne of my life?" Can we honestly say that we even hear His commands when He speaks them to our hearts? When we hear them, do we obey instantly? Full view of His glory would bring instant obedience to His slightest desire. After all He is our King, our great sovereign.

He is just, but His subjects deemed Him worthy of death. There is not injustice in God. Therefore, there is no injustice in Jesus, for He is God. But how often do we complain to Him that our situation is not fair. Like Sarah in the movie, Labyrinth, we continuously protest, "It's not fair!" I had a philosophy professor in college who stated in class as a response to my direct question, "It is never just that an innocent party, no matter how willing, could take the punishment in the place of a guilty party." It is no wonder that the professor couldn't believe the Gospel. He had a faulty understanding of justice. Is it not ironic that Pilate's wife & Pilate, heathens that they were, recognized the justice of Jesus, when Jesus' own people did not recognize His justice?

The problem with the glory of Jesus is that we often obscure it with our own concepts of what that glory should look like. The result is that we don't recognize Him when He is standing in full view in front of us. That is why we need to speak the glory to one another as the Scriptures declare it. Indeed we serve a glorious King! Speak His glory to someone today!

--Pastor John