February 22

EXODUS 5 Pharaoh: Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor will I let Israel go! Moses: Since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has done evil to this people; neither have You delivered Your people at all. Sometimes the glory of the Lord cannot be seen until evil has been allowed to show its worst. Sometimes even God’s own people do not recognize that He is working when evil is doing its worst. Does Pharaoh’s ignorance of the glory of the Lord lessen the glory any? Not in the least. It only reveals his ignorance of God. Does my ignorance of the name of the quarterback who led the New Orleans Saints to the Super Bowl lessen his glory any? Not in the least. It only reveals my ignorance of the quarterback. If I remain ignorant of His name, it is my fault, and I am the loser. Pharaoh remained ignorant, indeed insisted on remaining ignorant, of the glory of the name of the Lord. He lost. Does Moses’ momentary despair in the midst of this darkness diminish the glory of the Lord? I watched the first quarter of the Super Bowl this year (2010). Leaving at the beginning of the second quarter to run an errand, I was certain the game was going to be a blow out. I was certain New Orleans was going to be overrun by Indianapolis. I did come back to watch the second half. Boy was I wrong! I am glad I didn’t let my despair turn my back on the game. It was worth watching. What if Moses had given up on the Lord’s glory at this point? Sometimes we just have to hang in there. The Lord will eventually show His glory. Indeed we serve a glorious King. Speak His glory to someone today! --Pastor john * * Job 22 You know, I can’t get my mind around how large the earth is. Last summer (2011) I flew over the polar icecap to Mongolia. It took slightly less than 12 hours of non-stop flight from Beijing to Chicago. Since it is a 12 hour time zone difference, I actually arrived a few minutes earlier in Chicago time than it was when I left in Beijing time. As we flew, we were at an altitude that was so high that very few land masses were distinguishable to me. Were it not for the computerized map on the screen in front of me, I would have had no idea where I was or how large the earth was beneath me. It really makes one feel insignificant to realize how small one is in comparison to the earth. Yet the earth is just a sub-microscopic particle in relation to the universe. Consider the largest found structures in the universe. They are “giant, three-dimensional filaments of galaxies extending across 200 million light-years of space. . . They are the largest found structures to date. . . They are studded with more than 30 large concentrations of gas, each up to ten times as massive as our own galaxy.” http://www.universetoday.com/399/the-largest-structure-in-the-universe/ (accessed 2/22/2011). Does that make you feel small? I don’t know; I still can’t get my mind around how big the earth is. That description just kind of buries me. Consider how many stars are in the Universe. Think about this information that I collected from http://www.universetoday.com/24328/how-many-stars/ (2/22/2011): Almost all the stars in the Universe are collected together into galaxies. They can be small dwarf galaxies, with just 10 million or so stars, or they can be monstrous irregular galaxies with 10 trillion stars or more. Our own Milky Way galaxy seems to contain about 200 billion stars; and we’re actually about average number of stars. So an average galaxy contains between 1011 and 1012 stars. In other words, galaxies, on average have between 100 billion and 1 trillion numbers of stars. Now, how many galaxies are there? Astronomers estimate that there are approximately 100 billion to 1 trillion galaxies in the Universe. So if you multiply those two numbers together, you get between 1022 and 1024 stars in the Universe. How many stars? There are between 10 sextillion and 1 septillion stars in the Universe. That’s a large number of stars. I think I have some kind of concept of one million. I used to live in Portland, Oregon which had a metro area population of roughly one million. I can kind of get my mind around that number; although, it is a big enough number that I don’t really want to. So when you tell me that a dwarf galaxy has just 10 million stars, I kind of lose it. Then to find out that just the number of galaxies is between 100 billion and 1 trillion, I cannot fathom it. Then to tell me that the number of stars in the Universe is a number that has about 24 zeroes following it, I am lost. Eliphaz responds to Job: 12 God is so great—higher than the heavens, higher than the farthest stars. 13 But you reply, ‘That’s why God can’t see what I am doing! How can he judge through the thick darkness? 14 For thick clouds swirl about him, and he cannot see us. He is way up there, walking on the vault of heaven.” In the vastnesss of time and space, it is easy to think that God cannot see through the darkness to my little world. Eliphaz is correct. God is higher than the heavens—higher than the farthest stars. Could He possibly see me? The answer is an unequivocal, “Yes! He can!” As I think on the vastness of the universe, I remember that God created it. If He created it then He must be greater than it! He did not create something out of nothing that He cannot control! In order to control it, He must be able to come down to the tiniest microscopic unit. (Hmm. . . Do tachyons exist? Well now, there is a big can of worms.) Anyway, Jesus upholds all things by the word of His power. The doctrine of the omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience of God requires that He can and does actively see me, and yet at the same time, He sees every point in the universe with equal clarity! Lord God, how awesome You are! So why is Eliphaz wrong? Eliphaz assumed that he could see even as the infinite God could see. He assumed that since this infinite God could see all that Job was and had done, then Job must have done some specific sin, which this infinite God had seen and for which He was now punishing Job. Eliphaz assumed too much. He thought too little of God and too much of Himself. Lord, keep me from that presumptuous sin! Indeed we serve a glorious King! Speak His glory to someone today! --Pastor john * * Psalm 53 Comedian Jeff Allan said in the date night challenge produced by Focus on the Family, “I know why God created teenagers. He wanted us to experience what it was like to create someone in our image, who denies our existence.” The Psalmist says that “God looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God.” What did this glorious God find when He looked? There is no one who seeks God. Paul quotes these verses in Romans 3:10-12 in order to demonstrate that all have sinned. So how is it that this glorious God could create us in His own image, and we refuse to acknowledge His existence? What should a righteous God do with this enigma? Here is what the righteous God did. He said that sin required the death of the sinner. If we fail to acknowledge God’s existence and claim upon our lives, how will that affect our relationships with each other? If we are made in the image of God, and we are, then every time we see another human, we see the image of God. We are then faced with a subconscious choice. We must either acknowledge God’s existence in them or deny it. If we deny it, if we view them simply as a big bag of chemical electrical reactions, what is wrong with killing them, if leads to my survival? After all, if there is no god, then the ruling force is survival of the fittest. Naturally such a mindset would lead to much killing, or as the Psalmist puts it in verse 4, “Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge, Who eat up my people as they eat bread, And do not call upon God?” So when I desire the demise of another is not part of the reason because I have failed to acknowledge the image of God in them? So what do I do with this knowledge, for I know that I have desired the demise of others and others have desired my demise? And the problem stems from my failure to acknowledge God’s existence and claims upon my life. What should or will this Holy God do? He should kill us, but His holiness extends beyond His justice to His mercy. Because of His great mercy, He brings us salvation, so we can call out with David, “O that salvation would come out of Zion!” He provides salvation for us. So, when we continually receive that salvation and gaze upon His image, it changes us. He delivers us out of our captivity to sin. He restores us to right relationship with Him. He causes us to rejoice and be glad. It is a gladness that is not dependent upon circumstance. It just flows from him. Wow! Instead of death, we receive joy and gladness. What an amazing God! ? Indeed we serve a glorious King! Speak His glory to someone today! --Pastor john * * Mark 3:20-35 Have you ever been publicly accused of being something less than what you actually were? If you have, then you know a little bit about the pain of Jesus in this story. The scribes were obviously reasoning: 1. Only God and Satan are more powerful than demons. 2. Jesus overpowers demons. 3. Jesus cannot be using God’s power. 4. Therefore Jesus must do this by Satan’s power. Wow! Talk about missing the mark! Talk about something less! Even Jesus’ family thought He had lost His mind. His own mother and siblings came to collect Him and quietly put Him away somewhere. Did Jesus rail against the accusations? No. But He did show the logical inconsistency of their reasoning, and He did reveal His love for anyone who would yield to His will. It is interesting to note that Matthew’s Gospel, where the theme is Jesus is the King of the Kingdom of God, has Jesus’ statement, “If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God surely the kingdom of God has come upon you!” But Mark whose theme is Jesus is the Servant of God leaves the statement out. It matters not who the servant is, but what matters is whose servant He is. So Jesus gives a warning not about rejecting or blaspheming Him but about blaspheming the One by Whom He worked the power, the Holy Spirit. Don’t miss the point about His glory here! Jesus, the Man, is the Powerful One because He does all that He does by the power of the Powerful One, God the Holy Spirit. This world was lying in the power of a strong man. Ever since Adam and Eve sinned, Satan had made planet earth his house. Over the centuries and millennia, Satan and his hosts have enslaved men and women by enticing them into sin according to their own lusts. Satan has made this world to be his goods. He is a strong foe. We are unable to overcome Him. However, Jesus, the God-Man, came, and by His death and resurrection, He bound Satan, the strong man. Jesus is the Powerful One. Now, to His glory, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can plunder the house of Satan! What would we want from the house of Satan? People! People who are enslaved by the bondage of sin. People for whom Jesus died. It is for His glory that we proclaim liberty to them that they might be taken from the house of Satan to the house of the Father! Indeed we serve a glorious King! Speak His glory to someone today! --Pastor John