The Lord makes a declaration of a messiah. This is not only a Jewish national messiah
but a messiah who will be a light for the nations. All will praise the Lord for what He has
done. Into the midst of this declaration
we hear Him proclaim, " I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to
no other…" It is not Messiah who
will be worshipped but the Lord. What if
they are one and the same? This promise
is the most glorious one in all of scriptures.
The praise of the Lord will be declared in the desert, the mountains and
the coastlands for the fulfillment of this promise. Let the rocks be kept silent for one more
day, let us be the praise of the Lord this day.
When Jesus said, "God so loved the world…" it must have struck Nicodemus and the
disciples as a bit strange. Surely He
meant to say, for God so loved His people that He gave His only-begotten Son,
not the "world." Does God
truly love the world? We, all human
beings, are created in the image of God and He cannot do other than love His
image can he? We, those who have been
redeemed, those who have seen in Jesus the perfect image of God, are to be the
truer image of God, revealing to those who do not know Him that they do not
even know themselves, that they are not true to their purpose and
creation. It is love for His image, love
for the creation that He pronounced not only good, but very good, that impelled
Him to send His Son, His perfect image, to save us from sin, from
ourselves. If God loves the world and
has sent us as His messengers and evangelists, can we do the work we have been
given to do if we do not share that love?
Too often we forget that we don't wrestle with flesh and
blood and we waste time doing exactly that when we should be fighting a
spiritual battle. How do we fight that
battle? It is quite different from the
way we fight the wrong battle. We put on
the full armor of God. We put on the
defensive armor of truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation. We know these are ours because of Jesus. He is the truth, He is our righteousness,
through Him we have peace with God, we can have faith in Him because God
resurrected Him from the dead, and we have eternal life because He is faithful
to His promises. Now that we have all these
things, we take up the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, and it is "
living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to
dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow…" We have all we need because we have Jesus.
Hallelujah what a Savior!
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