April 9, 2006
Scripture:
Can we go back to Psalm 69 for a moment; the verse our brother read, the end of verse four, says, “Then I restored that which I took not away.” We were reminded that there was a condition at the beginning of creation that was very precious, something God could look on and say was very good. All that God had done and had provided was to speak of His glory. Even the part of creation that man had not touched, what we now call space, spoke of His glory: “The heavens declare the glory of God.” Awesome is the word to describe it, the heavens are wondrous. But the loser, could we say, when man sinned, was not only man himself; God, too, lost something. Communion has two sides to it, and God lost communion with man. Everything God created was vibrant, speaking of life, but now it was blotted with sin and death. God’s glory, too, was marred. As we look at our verse in Psalm 69, we were reminded of the trespass offering, and how the fifth part, “that which I took now away”, was added. I think of the words of a writer: God has been infinitely glorified beyond the dishonour brought in by man’s sin. What man lost was a loss to God. But he was glorified at the cross, and it added more glory than what was taken away. How glorious is the work of Christ when we look at it through the trespass offering.
EG Hymn 282– What a friend we have in Jesus, Prayer • Although we could look at many more verses about seeing, we will now look at a very well-known Old Testament man—Joseph. Genesis 37:1–19 • One of the things we need to notice is that Joseph is a picture of the Lord. We see first of all that Jacob loved Joseph more than anyone else; so God the Father loved his only Son above any other. Jacob gave him a coat of many colours, which can signify all the different aspects of Jesus. Joseph’s brothers hated him because of this and when Jesus came to earth, all the Jews hated Him, too. Next we see that Joseph had two dreams: the first one was of his brothers sheaves of wheat bowing sown to his; this can show us that one day all the earth will bow down to the Lord. Dream two, when the sun, moon, and stars bowed to him, shows us that even the heavenly bodies will honour Jesus as Lord (Philippians 2:9 & 10). Joseph knew, before it all happened, that his family would bow to him. As we have been seeing in Hebrews, Jesus had a book written about the future. Sometime after these dreams, Joseph went to check on his brothers, who were out watching the sheep, to see how they were doing. But while he was still on his way, they saw him and planned to kill him. The Jews did this to Jesus as well. We can see in this passage that Joseph was a shepherd; in the New Testament it speaks of the Lord being our Good Shepherd, Great Shepherd, and Chief Shepherd. Lastly, if we look carefully at Joseph’s life in this passage, we see that he was not with his brothers, he lived a separated life. The Lord lived the same way here on earth. So we can see that Joseph is a good picture of the Lord; and yet it is amazing how many different people and things are used to picture Jesus!
Hebrews 10:24 & 25 • V. 24 tells us to provoke unto love and good works. Even though we do not have any special truths brought out in the Book of Hebrews, this is a very important exhortation; we can see very plainly that we are to be concerned for each other. If you look up provoke in the dictionary, you will find a number of meanings. One definition is to tempt to do wrong or be angry. When the children of Israel didn’t want to go into the Promised Land, they provoked God in this way (Hebrews 3:5). But in our verse, provoke has a different meaning, a good meaning. It means to stimulate, or stir up. In I Timothy 4:14, we are told not to neglect our gift; in II Timothy 1:6, we are told to stir up our gift. We can say this in regards to each other. It is important not to neglect each other, and stir each other up to good work. Not neglecting is like putting a log on the fire; stirring up is like getting out the poker and poking the fire. Now and then we need to give each other a poke. We are to provoke to love. Love is a two way thing; when we see Mary of Bethany, we can see that “we love Him because he first loved us.” When we see Jesus’ love on the cross we should be provoked to love Him and His people. And our love should not stop at His people, for “God so loved the world.” The best way to provoke someone to love is to do something for that person, to lavish your love upon him. It can be compared to a dry pump: to get water from it, you need to put some water in, priming it. If we look at Christendom down through the ages, we can see that some did not always follow this exhortation, even though they knew better. But where it was followed, where brothers and sisters provoked, encouraged, supported, and loved each other, there was, and will be, blessing. This chapter has taken us almost to Heaven and shown us how God planned the future in a past eternity, how the Lord was our offering, and how the Holy Spirit works. But now we are reminded that we are not alone in all this: we have others likeminded to provoke to love. We are also to provoke to good works. In this area, we don’t realize how much our example counts. As we noticed before, v. 22 has faith, v. 23 has hope, and v. 24, love. These three things come in that order in I Corinthians 13:13. Faith and hope are temporal, love is eternal. One day, when we are in Heaven, our faith will give way to sight, our hope will be realized, and all will be love. EG Hymn 369– I claim for my own a King on a throne, Prayer