The Lord tells the people that heaven is His throne and the earth
His footstool. His kingdom then includes
everything in between. The earth is
blessed by being the footstool, He has a special relationship with this one
planet out of the universe and those who He created in His image. They may believe that they have done
something special in building the temple and indeed He blessed it by filling it
with His glory but He isn't captive there.
His glory and His majesty are everywhere to be seen. He is omnipotent and omnipresent, we need
sometimes a bigger picture. Ultimately,
that bigger picture is what He gave to Job, and Job may have been a righteous
man but to be a true worshipper he needed to be a humble and contrite man. In God's appearance to and questioning of
Job, Job saw himself for who he truly was in light of God's greatness. In that
he also saw there was no room for pride in his righteousness and his
self-righteousness. Humility and contrition
are what keep us in right relationship to Him.
The blind man is amazing.
He is not aggrieved at his situation, he seems to have accepted it even
though Jesus acknowledges that this blindness has nothing to do with sin, it is
simply the will of God that the works of God might be displayed in him. He receives his sight through Jesus making
mud and covering his eyes and then washing in the pool of Siloam which required
him to walk some distance. Think of
Namaan's leprosy healed by Elisha which required him to wash in the Jordan. The man is humbly obedient to do as Jesus
says though surely there was a water source closer. He receives his sight, something he has never
known. He, unlike the man healed at the
pool of Bethesda, is grateful to Jesus and in the end receives an even greater
reward, knowledge of Jesus not only as healer, but as Messiah. The sign has been effective, even if only for
this one man.
Laodicea receives the harshest condemnation. They don't see rightly. They see themselves as having it all but when
the Lord sees them, they actually have nothing at all. The church from yesterday, the church at
Philadelphia, has little or no power but the Lord says that will soon
change. The Laodiceans seem to have much
but in reality, the Lord's reality, they have nothing at all, they have many
needs that He alone can fill but they refuse to come to Him. Their earthly possessions keep them from
recognizing the truth, keep them from seeking Him. I believe that the church in the west today
suffers this same malady and we need to be aware of that truth. We have built great houses of worship, we
have relied on our wealth and our power and yet we have squandered it, we are
not seeing the kingdom expand, we are seeing little or no spiritual power, the
nations are turning away from Him, not towards Him. When we experience powerlessness we will then
see true power. We are called to two
things, be zealous and repent. Do we
hear and do we see?
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