"Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.
Noah walked with God." I wonder how
many minutes in my entire life that could be true. Just consider for a minute what it means to
say these things. He was righteous,
blameless and walked with God. At the
end of the day, only Noah and his family were saved from the flood but only because
Noah was obedient to God's command to build an ark according to God's
specifications in the middle of nowhere, not next to an ocean. An ark that would barely fit into a football
stadium taller than a four story building was to be built by this man. Then he was also to take all those animals on
board with him as God destroyed all other flesh on earth. His wife and kids must have thought the old
man had lost his mind when he shared this with them. Today, they would get him some psychiatric
help. Righteousness isn't always a
quality that endears you to people.
Who does Jesus think He is?
He has hardly begun His ministry and then He comes into the temple and throws
out the moneychangers and sellers of sacrificial animals. Who has given Him permission to do these
things? What sign will He give to show
He has authority in the temple? He isn't
from a priestly line, and He isn't from Jerusalem, this isn't done. What does He mean calling the temple His
Father's house? The sign He offers is to
destroy the temple and He will raise it up in three days. The only way they could have understood those
words was to refer to the enormous
structure that took forty-six years to construct and so He seems like a
madman. Righteousness confuses the
world.
It seems incredibly counter-intuitive when there is so much
work to be done to rest from work. Before
man was given to work he was given rest.
We were created on the sixth day and our first full day was a day
off. God invited us to share in His day
of rest from work. We first got to sit
and contemplate what wonderful things He had done and then we could work in the
garden. We can't be useful until we take
the measure of things, see what a glorious thing He has done. He invites us to rest from our labors, to
give up our works to just sit with Him on the porch and marvel at His
handiwork. Rest is important, it is in
resting in Him, ceasing our work, that we see that the work is already done and
we can move to worship Him for righteousness.
You can't appreciate real righteousness as long as you're trying to do
it on your own.
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