Anything we worship other than Yahweh is too small for
worship. He says, “Lift up your eyes on
high and see…” Look above all things to
the creator of all things and there find something or actually, someone, worth
worshipping. When we worship and are in
relationship with the One who is over all things, we can find the rest we need. So long as we look to lesser things, we will
always be subject to something greater, something unknowable, and we won’t find
peace because something else controls those.
The world looks chaotic until you get high enough to see from God’s view
that He has all things under His control.
We can’t know with specificity His plans but He gave us the general
outline of them so that we can find our rest in Him, not in our knowledge or
our end times charts and graphs but in the One who holds all things in His
hands because He is everlasting. Those
who wait upon Him alone will indeed renew their strength, run and not grow
weary, walk and not faint. He is
faithful and in Him all things cohere.
Jesus begins His ministry with the same message John had
given, repent. The change is that His
message is that the time is fulfilled, the kingdom is at hand and the step
after repentance is to “believe the Gospel.”
It would be a curious thing to be able to ask the people to whom this
message was preached what they understood the Gospel to be. Immediately, Jesus began to gather men to Himself
as disciples and then to teach in the synagogue in Capernaum. His teaching was astonishing in its power and
because it had authority, an authority that comes from knowing the Law and its
intent and interpretation perfectly. The
man with the demonic presence cries out in recognition of Jesus’ identity and
power and in the deliverance, Jesus commands it with the same authority to come
out without speaking. People were
beginning to wonder at the power of this man.
We are called in hope to Jesus but Paul’s prayer is that we
would know what that hope is, not be deceived into believing it is something
else. That hope is related to the
resurrection of Jesus from the dead, not the hope of everything working out well
in this life. From an earthly perspective
you will surely die, the hope to which you are called is the sure and certain
hope of resurrection from the dead to life.
There is no promise in the New Testament that you can have it all in
this life. There is only the promise of
something far more glorious that is ahead of us but that doesn’t mean this life
doesn’t matter. Paul worked with all his
might for the spread of the Gospel, the understanding of this hope, and the
understanding of what this life means now.
We have been freed from those littler hopes to a greater one that we
can’t work to secure, it is already secure.
His power is greater than anyone imagined.
No comments:
Post a Comment