December 2, 2007
Scripture:
Ministry:
With the thoughts that have been before us this morning, something came before me. Let’s look at I Kings 8; this is the dedication of the temple, and Solomon’s prayer. In v. 63, we see the number of animals sacrificed: “And Solomon offered a sacrifice of peace offerings, which he offered unto the Lord, two and twenty thousand oxen, and an hundred and twenty thousand sheep.” Can you imagine the magnitude of this sacrifice? But what struck me was something Solomon said in his prayer; read vv. 26 & 27: *“And now, O God of Israel, let thy word, I pray thee, be verified, which thou spakest unto thy servant David my father. But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?”* Solomon is conscience of the greatness of the God of Israel. He prays with the indication of that greatness, saying that “the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee.” To God they offered these thousands and thousands of sacrifices. But there was one thing they were not conscience of: that this God would come in the form of a man to be a sacrifice and perfect forever them that are sanctified. This is the sacrifice we rest on; how great a sacrifice!
EG Hymn 248 – O happy day that fixed my choice
Prayer
There are many stories in the Bible; you know many of them. But sometimes we’re not told the whole story. That’s the case with the story I want to tell today; the Bible only gives us the last half of the story. I’m going to tell you what I think happened first, and then we’ll look at what the Bible tells us.
Our hymn talked about a happy day; our story starts on a happy day, probably around the time that Jesus was born. Probably not too far from where Jesus was born, another little girl was born. And she grew up, until she came to another happy day: she got married. And then, there was another happy day in her life; she had a son! But then, she had an unhappy day, because her husband died. I don’t know, but I imagine things got rather hard for her after that, as she tried to provide for herself and her son. Yet a few years later, her son died. Let’s pick up the story now in Luke 7. Read vv. 11 & 12. Now you can see how I got my story. We find here that they are having the funeral for this widow’s son, and many people are there. Read vv. 13 –15. How many only sons do we have in this story? One? Two? There are two only sons here: the widow’s son, and God’s son. And God would know how this widow felt, having given His own Son to die.
But let’s get back to the story: it was not just a coincidence that the Lord arrived at Nain when He did. His life was scheduled for a divine purpose. Other times when people were going to die, a message was sent to the Lord. When Lazarus was sick, Mary and Martha sent a message to the Lord. When Jairus’ daughter was dying, He came to the Lord and asked him to come. But nobody had come to the Lord to tell him about this poor widow whose only son was dying. She had buried her husband and now she was going to bury her son; she would be all alone. But then the Lord came into the procession and put his hand on the coffin to stop them. Why did He do that? He had compassion on her, v. 13 tells us; what is compassion? It is more than simply feeling sorry for someone; it is feeling their pain enough to want to help. Ten times in the book of Luke we read that the Lord had compassion. He saw her tears and wanted to do something; but what could He do? He said to the young man, “Arise.” What did the young man do? He sat up and started to speak. What did he say? That’s a good question; let’s look at it for a moment. This is a picture of how the Lord finds us before we are saved. We are born into this world, but God sees us as spiritually dead. We need a second birth; we need to be born of the Spirit. It was a happy day when the Lord brought that widow’s son back to life. When we are saved, what do you think we should want to talk about? The Lord Jesus and how he saved us; what if this young man, when the Lord called him, said, “Aw, not yet”? When there is life, there needs to be evidence of life. This young man is a good example of this.
I Peter 3:8–12
These next few verse are written to everyone; Peter has exhorted many individuals, but now he address his entire audience. And he exhorts us to be all of one mind. How precious it is when it can be so! Some may say that if everyone agrees, they are in unity; that’s unity of spirit, but not unity of the Spirit. The Lord’s people should be characterized by unity, but throughout history, it has not been that way. How can we be “of one mind”? We find the answer in Philippians 2; it should not be my mind, or your mind; if we both have His mind, we will agree. We can see this unity in Song of Solomon 1:9. We should be like a team of horses, all pulling together. We have a common Instructor; we must all do what pleases Him. If the horses are all pulling in different directions, things won’t go smoothly. They all need to follow the driver. Also, horses are not born to pull; they need to be broken. We should seek to be led, after being broken at salvation. And when all the horses follow the driver, there will not only be peace and harmony, but they will also accomplish a task. It will be this way for us when we are in unity, all of one mind. The mind is Satan’s main battleground, and should be guarded carefully; we should let the Holy Spirit run our lives. We can see two pictures of this in the Bible. The first is of the high priest, when he was anointed with the holy oil. The oil ran down to the base of his garments; for us, the Holy Spirit comes from out head, the Lord, and goes to the whole body of Christ. Individually, the Holy Spirit should affect our whole lives; what we see, what we do, where we go, and more. Secondly, we can see the dew of Hermon. Mount Hermon is the tallest mountain in Palestine; it is snow covered all year, and there is a constant flow of melting snow—or dew—to the surrounding cities. The closer they were to Mt. Hermon, the more they were refreshed.
The next phrase is “having compassion one of another.” We know what that means. Also in Luke, we hear of compassion in the story of the Good Samaritan. The priest and Levite who went by before him passed by on the other side; but the Samaritan stopped and treated the man with oil and wine. Someone said that the priest and Levite were probably too busy to stop and help. That’s an assumption, but with the pace people live at today, it is definitely true for us: the world is going too fast to stop, to show care, to lend a helping hand—to feel the hurt enough to do something about it. We see many problems today, and often we are quick to criticize, but maybe instead we should ask ourselves, What can I do to help?
“Love as brethren”; love is the first fruit of the Spirit. We are exhorted to love each other as a family: “Sweet bonds that unite all the children of peace.” Notice that all these characteristics are displayed so beautifully in the Lord Jesus Christ. He, too, was pitiful, or tender-hearted as Darby says. He was a perfect example. As we’ll see in the next verse, He didn’t revile when He was reviled. He rendered good for evil. This is quite the opposite of man, who offers evil for good. We shouldn’t be that way; we should follow His example. We have been blessed; we should be a blessing to others.
EG Hymn 290 – Praise the Saviour, ye who know Him,
Prayer