The imagery of the cross stands at the religious experience. We are beneficiaries of the blessings that flow form the cross of Christ and these songs of worship often tell the story of Christ's suffering and our redemption.
Maybe you have heard it said, "Apostasy is only one generation away." Our tendency to turn from God is well documented in history, and fully demonstrated in Judges.
Think of a young family man, a man with a pretty wife and beautiful children, a man with great promise and potential. He has a nagging pain in the back and, on going to the doctor, is informed that he has cancer. There are only weeks left of what should have been decades. Why do things like that happen?
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way . . .
Charles Dickens,
A Tale of Two Cities
Mankind has not always had the luxury of making transitions thoughtfully. Sometimes
we have been thrust rudely into the future with neither a "please" nor a "thank you."
On occasion, however, we can see these transitions coming. We have had the opportunity
to stand on the threshold of these transitions and think carefully about where we are going . . . and why . . . and what we hope to find when we get there.Listen Now
In 1961, J. B. Phillips wrote a small but excellent book entitled Your God Is Too Small. The idea behind this book is that we have many notions of God which are simply inadequate to describe our great Jehovah. Since our ideas about God are flawed, our behavior toward him is often equally flawed. If we see God as a benevolent grandfather, we tend to take his mercy for granted and overlook his judgment. If we think of God primarily as a stern and harsh disciplinarian, we are likely to emphasize his punishment and overlook his grace.
Perhaps the greatest problem Phillips addressed was man's tendency to make God into a bigger version of himself . . . we try to create God in our own image. We
make him think like us and react like us and feel like us. Too often, we become the yardstick against which the character of God is measured. Our worship of this kind of "god" quickly degenerates into a worship of ourselves.
Sometimes, being chosen isn't all it's cracked up to be.
I wonder if the Israelites were thinking along these lines when Moses stood before them and spoke the
words we now have in the form of Leviticus. God had chosen them to be His own people in the events recorded in Exodus. He had brought them out of Egypt, gathered them around Mt. Sinai, and then came down to be among them. He selected them as His
special nation and volunteered to be their God. What a privilege! What a joy! But what pressure! Along with being chosen by God came the requirements for living with Him.
Unfortunately, having a Bible is not the same as being hungry for what it says. The sad truth is that many of us do not read any of the Bibles in our possession. We open them on occasion. We read along when someone else is reading publicly. We can even recall vague snatches of scriptures learned in childhood. But as for a consistent, disciplined, sequenced pattern of personal Bible reading or study... we do not feel the need to dine on God's word.
Where we lack in our personal lives or in the church as a whole, Jesus has the power to make complete. This, the last sermon of the year, will be a call for us to cry out to Jesus to make us complete in Him. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end! The starter and the finisher! He means Completeness!
The ministry of Jesus was marked by its compassion for mankind. Whether it was the sick, the Gentile, or the slave, Jesus showed compassion. That Jesus is called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace is to indicate that his name means Compassion for us!
