May 26, 2010

Numbers 35

Life is precious to our Lord. Since it is precious, when a life is taken, it is a very serious thing. Something must happen, but what if it is inadvertent? The Lord makes provision for that. But what about willful shedding of blood?

So you shall not pollute the land where you are; for blood defiles the land, and no atonement can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it. 34‘Therefore do not defile the land which you inhabit, in the midst of which I dwell; for I the Lord dwell among the children of Israel

That is scary when we consider the words of Jesus that if we hate our brother, it is equivalent to murder. But He made provision for it. He took our murder upon Himself and His innocent blood was shed in our place. Thus the land no longer cries out concerning our guilt. His blood satisfies the wrath of God. That is indeed amazing. Indeed we serve a glorious King. Speak His glory to someone today!

--Pastor john

John 9:24-41

We continue today with this theme of the blind who see spiritually and the physically sighted being blind. There is a famous quote of C.S. Lewis that runs something like this:

Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about him being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.



In our day and age, there are a lot of people who want to talk about how good Jesus was but will refuse to call Him Lord. Here is one of those Gospel stories where His claim to Deity is extremely obvious. Jesus makes it obvious as to who He is. The blind man is called to question by the council. He asks a question that I believe is half-honest and half-filled with sarcasm, "Do you also want to become His disciples?"

The council replies, "We do not know where this man is from."

The formerly blind man is incredulous. One thing is clear; Jesus is from God. Otherwise, He could do nothing. The council couldn't deal with the simple logic. So, they had the formerly blind man excommunicated. When Jesus heard what they had done, He immediately went and found the man. (There always seems to be that special place in Jesus' heart for those who are persecuted for His sake. As Stephen was being stoned to death, he saw Jesus standing in heaven. Usually visions of the throne room of God describe Jesus sitting on His throne; for Stephen, He stood.) For the blind man, Jesus revealed Himself to him. The Son of God came into the world to make the blind sighted and the sighted blind. The spiritually sighted see their sin in the light of Jesus. They present it to Him and He burns it away with His light, His glory burns it away. The spiritually blind never see their sin. They never present it to Him. Their sin remains. Do you see your sin burn away in the light of His glory? Indeed we serve a glorious King! Speak His glory to someone today!

--Pastor John