As Christians how do we apply this prophetic word from
Isaiah. What do we do with
“Jerusalem”? We pray for the peace of
God’s city and we know that ultimately there will be a new Jerusalem where the
presence of God will be for eternity.
For today, we pray for the church, where the glory of the Lord is when
His people gather to worship. We work
for the prosperity of the church and we pray for it to be the pure, spotless
bride He deserves. We have watchmen who
guard the teaching of the church and who call it to account for its witness in
other ways as well. We are to give Him
no rest in building up the church for it is His promise to be with us until the
end of the age. It is also the body of
Christ, our redeemer, and as such it has a part to play in the salvation and
redemption of the world as the instrument of His continuing activity in the
world. The church is an integral and
indispensable part of the plan of redemption.
If you were Joseph wouldn’t it require an angelic visitation
to convince you that Mary was a virgin?
He knew enough basic biology to know that virgins don’t give birth. Even without researching Jewish customs
concerning betrothal and marriage, you should see something in the word
“divorce” in this situation, betrothal was more than an engagement in our
society. Children conceived during this
period were treated as legitimate if, in fact, that was the case. The other
options were a public and formal trial involving charges of adultery or the
“private” divorce proposed here by Joseph, dissolution of the contracted
marriage. Joseph is described here
as a just man and that justice is
demonstrated by what appears to be mercy in choosing the private option. The angelic visitation convinced him that the
story Mary surely told him was indeed the truth, implausible and impossible as
it seemed. He had to know that this
decision was going to make him the butt of humor and not enhance his personal
reputation if the story of the conception was made public. The virgin birth is an important part of our
faith, Jesus was either God’s only-begotten Son or God somehow adopted Him at
baptism but the loss is the very nature of Jesus, the God-man.
The writer points to the reason why Jesus’ humanity is
important, that we have a high priest who knows what it is to suffer. This life promises suffering to every single
person. Suffering is simply part of the
package of living in a world of sin and if Jesus did not share our humanity
then He did not suffer, only seemed to do so.
That is part of Docetism, an early heresy that is also a part of the
Islamic belief about Jesus. Docetism
means that Jesus seemed to be a human but really wasn’t, He was essentially
wearing a human suit. One way Docetism
gets around the cross is to say that when Simon of Cyrene took the cross, the
Jesus spirit entered the Simon body and vice versa and therefore it was the
spirit of Simon which suffered and died and Jesus, in the Simon body stood
apart laughing. It is important to the
understanding of the church as the body of Christ that it is, like Him, both
human and divine, made up of women and men empowered and animated by the Holy
Spirit. The church, the bride, is fit
for its groom in this way.
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