March 20, 2011
Scripture:
Scripture:
I’d like to connect two verses. I was struck by the words of our hymn earlier: “the Lamb’s high glory.” And just now, we sang about being in glory with Him. So I’d like to connect two well-known verses. The first is I Peter 1:19. “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (vv. 18 & 19). How precious: without blemish and without spot. Now, thinking about how we will be with Him, read Ephesians 5:25 - 27: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.” Just like Him, we will be without spot and without blemish, through His wonderful work of redeeming and cleansing.
Hymn 338 - I love My Saviour
Prayer
Genesis 37:4 -11
Love has been the theme for the last two weeks in children’s meeting. Jacob loved Joseph, and Jonathon loved David. But we’ve also seen hate, which we’re going to look at today.
When you ask a question usually there is a word at the beginning of the sentence that tells you its a question. These are words like Who, What, or Why. We know that Joseph’s brothers hated him. Let’s ask this question: why?
Verse four gives us the first reason why Joseph was hated. They hated him because their father loved him more than them. Another reason they hated him was his dreams, v. 5.
In v. 7, we can read Joseph’s first dream. He dreamed that he and his brothers were binding wheat in the field. His brothers’ sheaves of wheat bowed down and made obeisance to his sheaf. To make obeisance to someone is to bow down to them; it’s taking a low position. V. 8 tells us the third reason that they hated him was his words, or his telling them the dreams.
V.9: Joseph had another dream. This time he dreamed that the sun, moon and eleven stars bowed down to him. Joseph was saying that the sheaves were a picture of his brothers and the sun, moon, and stars were his family and that they would bow down to him one day. Because of this dream, Joseph’s father rebuked him and his brothers envied him, (vv. 10 & 11).
What is the difference between envy and jealousy? Well, envy is wanting something you don’t have; jealousy is fearing that something will be taken away from you. Envy could make a person do something to someone else, because you want what they have. As a comparison, we hear of envy in Matthew 27:16 - 18, where it tells us that the Jew had delivered Jesus to Pilate because of envy.
Joseph is a picture of Jesus, both of them were envied and hated.
Luke 3:8-22
John wasn’t worried about his popularity. He got frank and open with the people that came to be baptised about their condition. He called them a generation of vipers, and told them that they were on the road to God’s wrath. He was there to open the right way for them. They could be baptised; but there had to be evidence of it, visible behaviour changes, fruits worthy of repentance.
John also warned them that they couldn’t just rest in their family connections (as children of Abraham) to save them. Just as being born into a Christian family doesn’t make you a Christian; having Abraham as their father didn’t reconcile them to God. (If God wanted children from Abraham, He could make them from stone.) They needed to repent. God was going to deal with man. Men that didn’t bear good fruit were to be cut down. How many people were there producing good fruit? God was changing things; and it didn’t matter so much if you kept the Jewish customs. What mattered was that you repented and had new life.
So the people asked John, “What should we do?” Later on, during his ministry, Jesus said that He had a baptism to be baptised with - speaking of the cross - but that He was ‘straitened’ until it was accomplished. He couldn’t say all that He wanted to; because He hadn’t died yet, and the work wasn’t done. Until it was done, though, John gave the people something to do. These things didn’t save them, but it showed their repentance; and John gave different things to different people. Whoever had two coats, or food, was to give to those that had none. Our Old Man is naturally self-centered, but God wants us to give and to be selfless.
The publicans (or tax-collectors) also came and asked what they should do. They weren’t loved much. Israel was under Roman rule, and both Romans and Jews (like Matthew) could be tax-collectors. It seems that they were payed based on the amount that they collected, so there was probably a lot of dishonesty to collect more than they should have. John told them to take only the amount that they were told to take. In history, the people were often taxed heavily to pay the soldiers of a war-loving ruler. The Jews were probably already paying heavy taxes, so John told the publicans not to take any more than necessary.
Then the soldiers came and asked, “What shall we do?” John told them, “Do violence [‘oppress’ in Darby, and ‘put in fear’ in the margin] to no one, don’t accuse anyone falsely, and be content with your wages.” We can find this contentment in each of John’s answers. Contentment with one coat, and in the last two, contentment with your pay.
This was John’s message. He found the common sins of each person, and told them to do what was right. As we said before, “Repentance is being sorry enough to quit”. Grace could reach each one. Some of them had fallen low, but grace could still come to them. No sin repelled God’s grace; it came in spite of all sin. Nothing else would have worked.
Hymn 13 - Grace! ‘tis a charming sound
Prayer