September 9, 2007
Scripture:
Psalm 22:1–22—The Lord does not say, “Oh, God”; even though He is forsaken, He says, “My God.” At v. 21, it all changes. He suffered alone; we praise together.
Genesis 22:1–18—Many years before the Lord died on the cross, God wanted to show Abraham what He would do. Although it was a trial for Abraham, we see a picture of what God has done for us.
Psalm 69:20—We sang, “Alone He bare the cross, alone it’s grief sustained.” We also mentioned the corn of wheat falling into the ground and dying. If we turn to Revelation 5, we find the fruit of his dying alone. What a difference! “Alone He bare the cross,” but around His throne are many thousands. The corn of wheat has born fruit.
Ministry—Gordon Burgess
Just a brief thought: in connection with what we have had before us this morning, our brother read Psalm 22. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (v. 1). When we hear these words and look at what was going on, it is impossible to imagine what it was like for the Son of God to take all our sin on Himself and be forsaken of God. We can’t enter into the depths of that; we are thankful to God that it happened, but we can’t penetrate the depths of it. In contrast, we read Revelation 5, where the redeemed are surrounding the same One, the One who hung there in poverty and disfigurement. Now there is a difference: He is in all His radiance. And just as we cannot enter into the depth of the death of the Lord, we cannot enter into the height of His glory. But we can meditate on it and let our hearts overflow in praise to Him. Think of the moment when we will be around that blessed One, our sin gone, our bodies changed, singing that new song. Let us ever be in the joy and delight of that glorious morning. What He has done we have remembered this morning; where he has brought us let us never forget!
Children’s Meeting—Norman Burgess
EG Hymn 290 – Praise the Saviour, ye who know Him,
Prayer
I want to read a story from John 5. I was somewhere yesterday and I saw people swimming; this story is about a pool, although it was not for swimming. Read vv. 1–9. Jesus was going to Jerusalem for a feast. In Jerusalem there was this pool named Bethesda. Around this pool was a great crowd of people, all of whom had something wrong with them—some had lost an ability, some were blind, some were lame, and some were withered. Why were they all sitting around this pool? They were waiting for the moving of the waters. Every so often, at an appointed time, an angel would come and stir up the water. Then, whoever got into the pool first would be healed. But these people were sick; it wasn’t easy for them to get to the pool. There was a man there who couldn’t walk; he had been like that for 38 years. When Jesus saw all these handicapped people, He saw this man and knew he had been like that for a long time. He asked the man, “Will you (or, would you like to) be healed?” The man gave the wrong answer. He answered, “I can’t.” He answered the question “can you be healed?” The Lord Jesus answered, “Go ahead!” The man could have said, “Don’t make fun of me.” But he was healed. He got up, rolled up his sleeping bag and walked away. This story is about an actual healing, but the same thing needs to be done for spiritual healing. Before we are saved, we can’t walk for the Lord. The Lord is asking us, “Will you be saved?” The answer isn’t “I can” or “I can’t”; it’s “I will” or “I won’t.” If we let Him, the Lord will save us. You might remember when Nana’s leg was bent out at a 40^o^ angle. The morning of the operation, I was speaking to the two doctors who would perform it and they said they would be able to straighten her leg. But what if it was just as bad after the operation? You wouldn’t think they were very good doctors, would you? When the Lord heals us from sin, He does a perfect job. Does our life honour the Doctor that healed us? Do we walk as partly healed Christians or as bright, faithful Christians?
Reading Meeting
I Peter 2:4–8
Peter is writing to Christians who had been Jews before they were saved; often he is writing in a way that the Jews would understand. We were reminded that as newborns we should desire the Word; we need to let the good of it reach our hearts and soul. We need to meditate on and study what is written in the Bible. We should enjoy it too: “ye have tasted that the Lord is good,” (v. 3, Darby).
Now that He has brought the Lord before them, Peter continues with Him in v. 4. The Lord—this One who is so good, who was most precious in heaven—was a cast away among his own people on earth. The metaphor Peter uses is that of a stone building. The builders got rid of the most important stone. Israel had rejected the Lord, whether willingly or unwittingly. This all reminds us of the temple. It was made of stone; all the stones were shaped in the quarry and hauled to the temple. There was no noise from chiselling or shaping on the building site; all the stones fit perfectly into place. You can read about this in I Kings, or in the book “Great Stones and Costly,” in which Charles Stanley compared Christians to those stones and other pieces of the temple; man needs to be rescued from the dark quarry of sin, saved, and made into something beautiful before he is fit for the kingdom of heaven.
In Ephesians 2:15–22, Paul talks about the body of Christ as a temple, comprised of both Jews and Gentiles. The amazing thing in this passage is that although people continue to add to the building, it is always seen as complete. It is the habitation of God, made of stones. This might not sound complimentary, but we are all stones; but what is a stone? It is a piece of a rock; we are pieces of the Lord, our Rock. There’s a story—probably not true—about a stone that the builders of the temple couldn’t fit in. Everything had been going well, all the stones falling into place, until this one stone arrived. They couldn’t figure out where it was supposed to go, so they just left it out. The project continued, but as more stones came, the workers kept tripping over this stone. Finally, they were so tired of it that they heaved it into a nearby river. Soon they sent the message to the quarry: “We’re ready for the corner stone.” The message came back: “We sent that to you a while ago.” It slowly dawned on them that the stone they had rejected was the most important one of all—and they had not recognized it.
But not all Jews have rejected Jesus. Mr. J. Pascoe was once seated next to a Jew during an airplane flight. This man was reading some material from the Association of Messianic Jews. Mr. Pascoe, having never heard about this association, asked the man about it. “We are Jews who believe that we have crucified our Messiah and that one day He will return and take us to Heaven,” the man explained. The Jews to whom Peter was writing had not rejected the Lord, and even today, there are Jews who realize who Jesus really was.
So we find that the Lord is chosen and precious to God; in Ephesians we read the same about ourselves. It is God’s delight to dwell among men, and the Lord Jesus made that possible. He paid much to have us as a body and house. Read Isaiah 28:16.
EG Hymn 226 – I once was a stranger to grace and to God,
Prayer