“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” – Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23
In the Gospel of Matthew, this verse from Isaiah is applied to our Lord Jesus. The name Immanuel means “God with us” and the name Jesus means “the Lord saves.” In these two names is a beautiful picture of salvation, which means a restoration to a life lived with God beginning imperfectly here on earth, but eventually perfectly in His paradise. Salvation and togetherness go together. What we are saved from is our inability to live with God because our sin and His justice were unreconciled until the cross.
Among Jesus’ last words on earth were His command to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). Included in this is bringing the hope to the world that He brought to us by being present. God did not leave us alone but bore the cost of our reconciliation on Himself.
Today, be among those who need the hope God provides through the salvation He bought. His desire is to live among the world through us, calling His current and future people to live with Him.
Jesus and the apostles spent a lot of their time preaching and ministering to Jews in synagogues. Some of us might think of the synagogue as similar to a modern church, just a place where believers meet, but in the Bible’s synagogues it’s amazing the type of people you’d find among the “believers.” Mark 1:23-24 gives us such an example:
“And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.””
Here, Mark points out that there are unclean spirits even in the synagogue, perhaps in hiding. There are probably unclean spirits even in our churches! Like in our times, Jewish people who did not go to synagogue probably rationalized that by saying the synagogue isn’t perfect, but terribly flawed. Why associate with those people? Mark’s gospel was targeted at Gentile readers, who were probably more likely to criticize those in the synagogue than the Jews. But, Mark then tells us in verses 25 and 26:
“But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice, came out of him.”
Who knows how many unclean spirits there were in the synagogue, how long they had been there, and how powerless the Jewish leaders were to do anything about them! But, if Mark’s Gentile audience knew the synagogue wasn’t perfect, Jesus was saying He has authority and power to make it perfect in ways nobody else could. Jesus wasn’t trying to draw people to the synagogue, but to Himself!
Coming back to the idea that our churches in some ways are the modern equivalent of synagogues, the world knows there are a lot of bad people going to church, from hypocrites pretending to follow Christ, to people who are just obviously bad. Jesus, however, knows perfectly who His people are and who are not, but regardless He isn’t trying to draw people to an imperfect church, but to His perfect self!
Every group of people has a mix of good and bad, and possibly even people with “an unclean spirit.”
Therefore, no institution can accurately reflect who Christ is, not even the visible global church, which is made up of a mix of people that can’t be neatly divided into “good” and “bad.” Everyone there is a sinner in need of forgiveness and salvation. But Jesus, who cast out the “unclean spirit” in Mark’s gospel, can also cast out all the evil in His people’s hearts to build the one institution that will last forever in eternity.
Jesus, “the Holy One of God,” has come to build a church full of holy people, and He will not fail. From within and without synagogues and churches with unclean spirits, God will find His people.
Do you ever feel disappointed by God? Does your experience of Him sometimes not match your expectations? We might wonder where God is in our everyday lives. We may wonder whether we can really trust Him, and we’re probably more likely to feel this way when bad things happen. The Bible tells us in Romans 8:28 –
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
Paul (author of Romans) says he knows this, but do we always? Do we trust that good comes from “all things”? And when we don’t see good come, how do we react?
We might think good things are not happening to us because we don’t “love God” enough, so we might blame ourselves. Maybe we think that some things “just happen” and have no purpose. Maybe over time we learn to think most things are like that? We might think Paul didn’t really mean what he wrote about God.
It’s natural to want “good” things. We may want more money, a better job, better relationships, more possessions, and think that when bad things happen, it’s just a matter of time before some corresponding blessing comes along, because God is supposed to work through “all things” for our good. But when it seems like He doesn’t we might feel disappointed. What are we missing?
Could it be that the problem is with our expectations of God, not with God Himself? For example, do we misunderstand what “good” “things work together for”? Is our definition of “good” the same as His?
Think about what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:26 “For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.”
It is not necessarily God’s intention to make us “good” by “worldly standards.” His standards are different, and He doesn’t want us to value the worldly wisdom, which tells us it is “good” to be “powerful” or to be “noble” or even “wise” in the world’s eyes. God has more important things in mind.
So, what is the “good” that everything works towards? Paul wrote in Romans 8:29, which comes right after the earlier verse about how “all things work together for good”:
“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” – Romans 8:29
The “good” that God works for is our conformity to the image of Christ. Not our pre-conceived definition of “good” based on our values, or the world’s. He won’t use “all things” to give us more of what the world thinks is important.
What does it mean to be conformed to the image of Jesus? In Jesus we see the perfect image of the love of God, described in 1 Corinthians 13:4-5 like this:
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful”
So, God, through “all things,” works to make us more patient and kinder. Less envious, boastful, arrogant and rude. He makes us less insistent on our own way, and therefore less irritable and resentful.
Therefore, we might have to change what we value. We must modify our priorities. Anything that happens to us, whether we consider it “good” or not, God can use to make us more like Christ. More like the person we will be in heaven. More like the person we should want to be. Then God will not disappoint us.
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
The Old Testament book of Leviticus is probably the hardest book in the Bible for many to read. Much of it outlines, in detail, the duties of priests and Levites (the book’s name comes from this group) in worship, including the sacrificial system involving animals practiced in ancient times. However, there are many pictures of Christ embedded in these stories and rituals, one being the requirement that each individual lay their hands on any bull offered for their sin.
This is first described in Leviticus 1:3-5a – “If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without blemish. He shall bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted before the LORD. He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him. Then he shall kill the bull before the LORD” (emphasis mine)
Why is it so important that each person lay their hand on their sacrifice? I think there are at least 3 reasons:
First, the sacrifice is for each of us specifically and individually. Atonement is not a blanket covering everyone with no distinction – it focuses on each individual. God does not have a limited attention span, where time spent with one person takes away from time spent with another. He can, and does, focus on us all. Since He desires relationship with each person, He wants us to be aware of the need for sacrifice at individual level, as well as the connection created at an individual level.
Second, the sacrifice shows us the severity of our sin. Before a just God, no sin can go unpunished, or He would commit injustice. Only blood can atone for sin, and having each person make a personal connection with their sacrifice highlights the seriousness of our own sin, discouraging us from thinking other people’s sin is more serious than our own. Even the priests, as shown in Leviticus 8:14, had to lay their hands on their own sacrifice, showing even those who might be considered, or consider themselves, more spiritual are not exempt.
Third, nobody else can worship for us since the purpose of worship is to have a personal relationship with our Lord and Maker. It is the sacrifice that restores our relationship to God, not the priest that intermediates the sacrifice, which is highlighted by the fact that Jesus became both the sacrifice and the High Priest. Just as I can’t have a real relationship with someone only by hearing about them through someone else, I can’t have a real relationship with God through someone else’s worship. The faith of people you know – parents, friends, teachers, pastors – will do you no good. Each must have his own faith because what He wants is us.
In Leviticus we find a picture of Jesus, who lived a perfect life for us, not so that we don’t have to be perfect, but so that we can become perfect. He died for each of us, specifically, and needed to die because no other sacrifice could cover the severity of our sins before a just God. Through His sacrifice, we are adopted as members of His family, to live perfectly in Paradise for eternity.
Jesus lamented of the religious people of his day in Matthew 23:37 – “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” When He offered relationship, they insisted on religion, and missed being touched by their Maker’s hands.
One More Picture Much more recently than Leviticus was written, a similar point was made by Mel Gibson in his movie The Passion of the Christ[1]. During the scene where Jesus is being crucified, Gibson decided to film his own hands driving the spike into Christ’s hand. It is the only time Gibson appears in the film. The film’s website (since removed) said this was “symbolic of the fact that he holds himself accountable first and foremost for Christ’s death.” Gibson, in Leviticus terms, chose to “lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering.”
Yes, Jesus suffered terribly for the sin of each of us, but He willingly did it because it was needed to gather His people to Himself. “Lay your hand” on His sacrifice and thank Him that He wants to know you personally.
Amen.
[1] Gibson, Mel. The Passion of the Christ. (2004)
The apostle Paul begins 2 Corinthians with the usual greeting, followed by a section on the comfort God provides us when we suffer or are afflicted for Christ’s sake. 2 Corinthians 1:5 makes this statement: “For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.”
On that verse, Charles Spurgeon wrote this analogy: “The Ruler of Providence bears a pair of scales—in this side He puts His people’s trials, and in that He puts their consolations. When the scale of trial is nearly empty, you will always find the scale of consolation in nearly the same condition; and when the scale of trials is full, you will find the scale of consolation just as heavy.”[1]
Therefore, when living for Christ brings trouble and opposition, remember also that our Father is ruler of all and fully intends to share His comfort with us through Christ eternally.
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” – Romans 8:18
[1] From “February 12” of Spurgeon’s Morning by Morning commentary
Driving Toward the Morning Sun 