9 January 2011

9 January 2011

Psalm 146, 147; Isa. 40:1-11; Heb. 1:1-12; John 1:1-7,19-20,29-34

As we live in a land of plenty and a time of peace within our borders it is hard to imagine a devastated land, ravaged by war, rejected by God and the balm these words would be to a people who are either in exile or returning from exile. We are truly blessed in many ways to live in places of beauty and security where our needs are more or less cared for and all we have left to concern ourselves with are our desires. Sometimes that blessing becomes a problem as we focus on the present and our desire is not the longing for the coming of God’s kingdom. We are satisfied to a greater extent than we care to admit with the present situation and we pray the Lord’s prayer without the desperate desire to see His kingdom come. How can we live in the midst of plenty and yet have a longing for what the prophet promises here?

John the Baptist chose to separate himself from “polite society,” the society into which he was born. John’s father was a priest and he could have been a priest as well. His birth, foretold by an angel to his father in the service of the temple, born to older parents, fulfillment of the prophetic word, coming into a 400 year prophetic silence, would have made him a celebrity yet John chose a different path. He chose to keep himself from the pleasures of the world and to stand apart and ultimately that decision and perseverance paid off, he was the first to testify to Jesus, even then being willing to step aside as Jesus came onto the scene. Denial of selfish desires was John’s way of life and that led to a dependence on and a closeness to God. In this season of resolution, maybe we should consider that denial of self might be a good way to move in His direction.

Jesus is superior to all else. The writer of Hebrews makes the case through the first several chapters of his epistle that there is nothing that can compare to Jesus. Here we see Him compared to angels and He is demonstrated by the Word to be superior to them. The writer begins his argument by saying that in the past we had prophets but Jesus is superior to the prophets in that they spoke words of God, Jesus was the Word of God, there is no possibility of miscommunication in Jesus. We can have supreme confidence in Jesus as He is the exact imprint of the nature of God, whatever God is, Jesus is as well so His words are God’s words. If denial of self is the first step on the road to abiding in the Lord, the second step is fixing our eyes on Jesus as the fulfillment of every longing we might have.

Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, O my soul! I will praise the LORD as long as I live;

I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.

Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,

whose hope is in the LORD his God,

who made heaven and earth,

the sea, and all that is in them,

who keeps faith forever;

who executes justice for the oppressed,

who gives food to the hungry.