Tag Archives: Jesus

Behold Your God!

This light has been shining in the darkness of spiritual depravity and blindness since Christ’s coming, advancing according to Christ’s commission. His unstoppable gospel will advance, disciples will be made, his church will assemble, and he shall be praised to the ends of the earth. And then, the end shall come, and the glory of God will be revealed in the second coming of his Son and the redemption of his people. The kingdom of God will conquer all kingdoms in a Word, and “nations shall come to [the] light, and kings to the brightness of [the] rising” (Isa. 60:3). Unbelievers will be judged and condemned to eternal damnation and believers will be found standing only in the righteousness of Christ. The world will be filled with reverence and awe, as a loud voice is heard saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Rev. 21:3). And darkness will be no more, only the pure light of God’s radiance, and we will hear what our hearts’ desire: “Behold your God!” And so we shall, forever.

The Dwelling Place of God

Have you ever longed for something, with great anticipation, only to find that when that something arrived it fell far short of what you imagined? How often is our ideal contrary to reality? How often does this lead to frustration with our circumstances and discouragement in the moment? It is likely that all of us have experienced this to one degree or another. But what if your religion, family, home, nationality, your identity, were all connected and directed toward what was to come, and what if you had waited not three or four years but seventy? It sounds like a set-up for disappointment. Coming out of the Babylonian exile and returning to their homeland, the children of Israel were more than disappointed; they were despondent.

Who Made You Judge?

If there is an aphorism derived from Scripture best known and oft quoted in our day, surely it is, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”[2] Its use is typically meant to refute moral judgment on a particular sin, and its effect is typically the equivalent of “Mind your own business.” The source of the expression is our passage today, as well as Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. And while I am all for encouraging quotes of Jesus in our culture, I’m not for taking Scripture out of context, for whatever reason. As we will see in our passage today, Jesus was no more dismissing sin than encouraging it, but he was confronting it, a sin that often hides comfortably in the church.

God So Loved

Connecting God’s love to our love, John goes on to say, “God is love,” John tells, “and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16). Loving our enemies does not make us “sons of the Most High,” but it does reveal that we are. Doing good to those who hate us, blessing those who curse us, praying for those who mistreat us, expecting nothing in return, does not mean that they will love us in return, but God will reward us for it in conforming us more and more to the image of his Son, who in love laid down is life for us.

Blessings and Woes

In writing to the church, the Apostle John cautions, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world” (1 John 2:15-16).

Thy Kingdom Come

“In these days,” that is, when Jesus was still preaching and ministering throughout the Judean region, “he went out to the mountain to pray.” Luke’s succinct statement is easily read over, but its brevity does not negate its significance. This was one of those times when and one of those places where Jesus would get away to pray. But on this occasion, Luke tells us that “all night he continued in prayer to God.” Out of the four Gospels, Luke is the only one to record this detail, a glimpse into the devotional life of the Son of Man.

Call the Sabbath a Delight

Scripture tells us, in the second chapter of Genesis, that “on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation” (Gen. 2:2-3). He who has no need to rest, rested from his work in creation. He who created every day of the week purposefully blessed the seventh thereby making it holy, set apart, from the other days, establishing the precedent of the sabbath and the principle of one full day of rest in seven.

A Time for Every Matter

Reminding us that Luke’s orderly account to Theophilus was originally written as one, long narrative, our passage begins today with the words, “After this,” tying the passage to the previous. Before, Jesus was teaching, and the crowds grew larger and larger. Jesus witnessed the heroic efforts of a paralyzed man’s friends. Jesus witnessed faith and forgave sins. Jesus confronted the unbelief of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus healed the paralyzed man, commanding him, “rise, pick up your bed and go home,” and “amazement seized [the crowd] and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen extraordinary things today’” (Luke 5:17-26). All of this was before, but after this, Jesus went and found a tax collector named Levi and said, “Follow me.” And he did.

All for Jesus

Upon this seashore, Luke tells us, “the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God.” But it’s not the place or the people I want to draw your attention to. It’s this little phrase: “to hear the word of God.”