OUR LORD THE TEACHER

In the book of John , chapter 20 verse 15  - 16,  Mary Magdalene is described as being at the tomb where they had buried Jesus but as she looked, she could not find Him.

The narrative goes on to describe Her encounter with Jesus.  

Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing Him to be the gardener, she said to Him, “Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” (which means, Teacher).

When Mary Magdalene first encountered the resurrected Jesus, she did not recognize Him at first but when she did, her immediate reaction was to call Him "Teacher".

Similarly, when the men on the road to Emaus (a small town outside Jerusalem), encountered the resurrected Jesus as they walked, they did not recognize Him.  He simply started walking with then and He asked them what they were speaking about.  They told Him that they were discussing  the recent perplexing events of the death of the man they had hoped would redeem Israel.  Jesus, in response, expounded the scriptures to them explaining why the events that occurred had to unfold as they did. Later, after the encounter,  they spoke among themselves saying that His words caused their hearts to burn within them. 

Anyone who has had a great teacher in their lives will recognized this sensation of a burning heart when the teacher engages us.

During His ministry,  after His ressurection and before His ascension to heaven, the Lord Jesus spent a lot of time teaching His followers about  the kingdom of God. 

Even after He ascended into heaven Jesus sent the promised helper of whom He said, “These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. "  - John 14 verse 25 - 26.

The Lord our God prioritized teaching to bring us into the knowledge of the things of God and we should prioritize learning to acquire knowledge so that it will not be said of us that God's people perish for lack of knowledge. 

The Lord is an awesome teacher and may our hearts burn as we learn from him.

Amen.

OUR LORD THE DELIVERER

When the children of Israel were in Egypt, they had absolutely no hope of escaping the bonds of slavery. 

The Egyptians held the power of life and death over them and in fact carried out programs of infanticide to keep the Israelite population under control.

The children of Israel, in their powerlessness and misery, called out to God to save them. 

 "During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God." 

                  - Exodus 2 verse 23.

The Lord heard their cry and began unfurling an elaborate plan to bring about the redemption of the children of Israel.

This entailed the preparation of Moses  and the direct action of God on the Egyptians to bring about the freeing of the slaves so they could leave and return to the land promised to them.

In our time, we find ourselves in the same predicament where we are in bondage to sin and suffer under the laws of sin and death.  We have no way to save ourselves but with contrite hearts, we cry out to God and He hears us and carries out the plan for deliverance that was gained for us through the death of Jesus our Lord  on the cross. As it says in the book of Romans chapter 2,

 "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,  so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." - Romans 2 verse 2 - 4 

We are freed from the law of sin and death and brought into the marvelous light of freedom in the Spirit. 

Amen.

THE LORD IS THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE

On the night leading up to Jesus' crucifixion, His disciples were asking Jesus about the things they did not understand about what their next steps should be. His disciples were concerned because Jesus was talking about leaving them. Thomas asked the following question in John 14 verse 5 and Jesus' reply in John 14 verse 6 - 7 with some phrases for the ages.

"Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

In this statement, Jesus encapsulated the great mystery of the ages in a succinct identification of God Almighty. 

The great God of Israel who had created the whole universe and all the living creatures in it, was this man who had just finished supper with them.

The eternal Lord of heaven and earth who had promised the patriarch  Abraham that He would make Him a great nation of  countless souls was this man who had just finished washing and drying  their feet to set an example of servanthood.

This man, humble to the natural eye, was in fact the staggeringly powerful absolute monarch by whom all existence came into being.

This moment of revelation came just before the Lord of heaven and earth, was about to give his life up unto death  on the cross to fulfill His solemn oath to Abraham to make Him a great nation. 

What Abraham did not know at the time, was that this great nation would be populated by the billions of people  from all over the earth who would be saved and adopted into the family of God by their faith in the Lord Jesus. 

The very same faith that Abraham had pioneered in His walk with God.

The same faith we have when we believe in the Lord Jesus and accept His power to save us by the blood He shed for us.

Amen.

OUR LORD IS RESPLENDENT IN GLORY AND LIGHT

The prophet Ezekiel, while by the banks of the Kebar River in Babylon, saw a vision of God.  He first described a wind swirling in the distance and then he saw an immense cloud approaching from which lightening flashed. A brilliant light shone around it while its center was like glowing metal. 

He then described four living creatures that had bodies like humans but had four faces and four wings. These astonishing beings moved to and fro with their wings rising and lowering. 

Ezekiel then described the Lord elevated above the living creatures as follows:

"Then there came a voice from above the vault over their heads as they stood with lowered wings. Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him.

This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking."

This vision of the Lord on the throne gives a vivid image of the Lord our God in His majestic array. His glory was so intense that Ezekiel fell face down at the sight of Him.

Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.  - Psalm 28 verse 10.

This is our God whom we worship and adore.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO LEADS US

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He makes me to lie down in green pastures;

He leads me beside the still waters.

He restores my soul;

He leads me in the paths of righteousness

For His name’s sake." - Psalms 23 verse 1 - 3

The Lord our God is the Prince of Peace and His Kingdom is founded on righteousness.  It is from these two spiritual offices that He can lead us beside "still waters" and that He can lead us in "paths of righteousness". 

The Lord leads  those who know His voice by calling us by name and by ordering our steps so that we can arrive at the places that we are called to.

Amen.

OUR LORD IN WHOM WE HAVE OUR BEING

The Apostle Paul, when he was in Athens, was amazed by the multitude of idols the people of Athens had set up for themselves. 

As he went around preaching about Jesus, the people became curious about what he was saying and he was given an opportunity to stand  and give an explanation of his faith. Following, is the text of his speech where he described the shrine to the "unknown" god that the Athenians had set up as the groping of mankind towards the one  true God. This text is from from the book of Acts chapter 17 verse 22 - 31.

“Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.

"The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things;

and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ “Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.

 “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”

This  summation of the spiritual state of all the gentile people is an exceptional example of a proposition of multiple axiomatic truths.

"In Him we live and move and have our being" is the centerpiece of this proposition because it is from this understanding of mankind's extraction and dependence on the Most High God that we can derive the correct meaning and proper practice of 'humanness' and our desperate need for salvation.

Amen. 

OUR LORD DWELLS IN UNAPROACHABLE LIGHT

1 Timothy 6 verse 15 - 16 says, "He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen.

Our Lord is the one and only sovereign God. He is the Most High and eternal God. He has absolute control over who can draw near to Him and when. His place of dwelling is beyond a veil of light that no human or spirit or any other creature can even approach. 

That the Lord is even knowable is strictly  a function of His allowance of a sliver of perception. Unless our God permitted it, there is no possible way we would have been able to gain knowledge of the God who made us.

 In Jesus, we have an exact representation of the Father whom we can see and experience. Some people  witnessed Jesus directly when He walked the land of Israel and their testimony informs the rest of us of their experience with God.

God is absolutely unapproachable but through His dear Son Jesus and His sacrifice of His life on the cross for us, we have access to the Father who is the Father of all spirits and who loves us.

Amen.