6 January 2014 - Epiphany

Psalm 46, 97; Isa. 49:1-7; Rev. 21:22-27; Matt. 12:14-21

This conversation between God and the redeemer servant is a wonderful thing to hear and remarkably prophetic.  From the cross could you hear Jesus ask, "I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity…"?  If not Jesus then all of heaven was probably thinking this and yet three days later there was the answer, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”  The holy One will do more than anyone could have guessed at that cross. While all of creation looked on at what appeared to be a lost cause, a failed effort, something truly remarkable was actually happening, Jesus was dying for sin and giving life to sinners.  What seemed to be defeat was actually glorification and redemption on a cosmic scale.

The Pharisees were preparing to destroy Jesus.  The words seem utterly ridiculous in hindsight but it is easy to imagine it.  In our day we see the pope saying things that sound like heresy to evangelicals who have a knee-jerk reaction to anything Roman Catholic and anything that doesn’t sound formulaic and so he must be denounced without working out what he actually said.  We see people like John McArthur shredding anyone who believes in the gifts of the Spirit continue to be operative today in the belief that anyone who assents to that is under demonic deception.  There is always a strand of religiosity that demands purity on their own terms which cannot abide the flock listening to another teacher.  The Pharisees don't like the idea that the people are going out to hear Jesus and to be healed by Him when they have not given their seal of approval to Him.  You can't destroy that which is eternal though.

Jesus will always be the light of the world, always has been.  To "see" God always requires you to look at the Son.  That is the reason many if not most scholars believe that Moses, for instance, saw Jesus when he met with God in the tent of meeting face to face as a man looks at a friend.  Through all eternity we will have Jesus revealing the Father.  His rejection by the Jews, crucifixion and resurrection has made a way for those of us who were not loved to be brought into the covenant relationship He has eternally with the Jews, He has become the one in which the Gentiles glory, the purposes of God have been fulfilled!