Devotional Guide For the week of March 9, 2008
STARVED FOR HOPE
About seeing Jesus
To read the Bible in one year, today read Nehemiah 12,13
To Know:
³Now among those who went up to wor****p at the feast were some Greeks. So
these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him,
ŒSir we wish to see Jesus.¹² (Jn. 12:20,21)
One preacher of my acquaintance placed these words on the back wall of the
meetinghouse, ³Sir, we wish to see Jesus.² This pastor intended to remind
himself every time he entered the pulpit that before him sat those whose
only hope was the man whose name means ³Jehovah saves.² Many New England
pulpits have been hijacked. From these pulpits, another Jesus is
proclaimed.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the Park Street Church was the only
Boston Congregational Church that was not Unitarian. Also in Boston, is
the
mother church of the Christian Science movement that attacks the biblical
teaching that Jesus is not merely a man but the God-Man. Theological
liberalism that reduces Christ to a humanist teacher came to dominate many
great New England institutions of higher learning. The result is that for
three generations Jesus was hardly seen in this part of the world.
When certain Greeks came to Philip saying, ³Sir, we wish to see Jesus,²
Jesus himself told them what to expect to see in him. Jesus came into the
world to sacrifice himself for sin. Christ described himself as a kernel
of
wheat that in the ground would produce a bumper crop of human beings like
himself. Jesus came to glorify God and his glory was the cross. Like that
dying grain of wheat, the crucified and risen Christ would bring forth an
abundant crop of eternal human beings.
To Do:
Every Christian is not called to preach, but each Christian is called to
bear witness to what Jesus did by his death. Let us testify to the world
that the Jesus revealed in the pages of the Bible is God the Savior. Just
as
my preacher friend wrote, ³Sir, we wish to see Jesus,² where he would
always
be able to see it let us write those same words in our spirit.
03138$-03138
<{{{[><
|
