July 1, 2012
Scripture:
I would just like to turn to Ephesians 1. This morning we have been enjoying the love of God, our Saviour. It is a precious reminder that His love is boundless. Some Christians accept Christ and stop there: they just rejoice about being saved. But His love is boundless. Read Ephesians 1:3. We can’t really grasp this. We are not only supposed to draw near, but we are actually in Christ. We can enjoy all the spiritual blessings which are endless, like His love. Read v. 4a. Marvellous to realize that before we are saved we can read, ”Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” And we come and afterwards we find out that we were chosen in Christ before the world began. Jesus knew that He would have to come and be a man: that He would have to suffer for you and me. We do not know what it is like to suffer for sin. It was a great expression of love. A Man came and had His blood shed and we have all our sins washed away. Not only forgiven, but forgotten. We are all brought into a relationship in which we can called God, “Father”. There is so much love to love. Surely our love is feeble in comparison. Let us dwell on such a fact that we will one day be His bride. Oh, let this love occupy our thoughts, so we will praise and worship more and more.
369 - Wide as the Ocean
Prayer
John 9:18 - 41
Last time I spoke, we began the story about the blind man. We didn’t finish the whole story: we had just gotten to the part where Jesus had healed him. It’s interesting to note that nowadays, when a person is healed of blindness, it takes them a while (maybe years) to understand how what they see connects with what they have known. It seems that Jesus gave this man that ability as well!
This man received his sight, which is a picture of salvation. Then after he was healed, he had a testimony. Once we are saved we should have a testimony of what the Lord has done for us, to tell others.
When the Pharisees heard how this man said he was healed they didn’t believe it, so they called the man’s parents to hear their version of the story. When the parents were questioned by the Pharisees they were very careful of what they said, because they didn’t want to be put out of the synagogue. They told the Pharisees that he was blind and now could see. They also told them to ask him the questions, because he was of age.
The Pharisees then called in the man who was blind. They told him that they thought that Jesus was a sinner. His answer to that was really interesting. He told them that even though they thought Jesus was a sinner, He was the one who had healed him. The Pharisees started to get impatient and asked him to tell the story again. This man refused, asking if they would begin following the Lord. The Pharisees replied, “We are Moses disciples and we know God spoke to Moses; but we don’t know who this man is.” The man said to them, “This man healed me from being blind and you don’t know who He is?” He knew that only God could make someone born blind be able to see. This was too much for the Pharisees, and they cast this man out of the temple.
In the last part of this chapter, we see how the man found Jesus again, learned Who He was, and began to worship Him. Worship is when you see the worthiness of a person because of what they have done for you and you render thanks to them. This man was blind and Jesus healed him: he was filled with thankfulness and because of that, he worshipped him.
This story is so precious, because we see a picture of salvation. We can also see that there are two types of blindness, The man began being physically blind, but the Pharisees were spiritually blind: they could not see that Jesus was God.
Luke 13:6-22
We spoke briefly on the parable of the fig tree last week. The vineyard is Judaism, while the fig tree is Israel nationally. Now, the purpose of a fig tree is to produce fruit, and God was looking for the fruit of a people that honoured Him, worshipped Him, did His will, sacrificed, and kept the feasts. But what happened? Israel went after other gods, their sin piled all the way up to heaven, and they had even made the temple “a den of thieves” in Jesus’ day. Malachi tells us that there were only a few that thought upon the name of the Lord, and that was four hundred years before Jesus came. Israel had rejected God as a nation. There were only a few Jews that had returned from captivity in Babylon, and most of those had given up by the time that Jesus came. So, God was going to cut them down. They were producing no fruit and were only cumbering the ground, blocking the way for something more valuable.
Before, it was dependant on the fig tree whether or not it would produce fruit. Now things were going to change. Before cutting it down, God was going to do something for the tree. He was going to fertilize it; to dig it and dung it. That was the Lord coming down to Earth. He did the digging and dunging. However, the people of Israel didn’t respond to the digging and dunging, and eventually had to be cut down nationally. They were still around spiritually, but weren’t a nation again until 1948. They are back today in unbelief, but that is necessary for certain prophecies to come true, and for the Lord to return to them.
The Jews may have been unfaithful, but that didn’t stop Jesus from going to the synagogue. There he found a woman in a sad condition. Like humanity, she was bent over and not able to lift herself up to God. All she could see was herself. She didn’t ask to be healed, and yet Jesus saw her condition and called her to Himself. He saw her need, felt her pain, and told her, “Thou art loosed from thine infirmity.” Even though this woman was a child of faith (because she was a child of Abraham), yet Satan had bound her like he bound Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The Lord bound Satan when He started His ministry, but He loosed this woman and Lazarus. Loosing and binding can have different applications, but here we get them applied to the Lord. We were bound in sin, but Christ’s work has freed us.
Jesus didn’t just address this woman, He laid His hands on her. She had been bound for eighteen years, but she was immediately able to stand straight. She glorified God. Jesus had hardly done anything, and He certainly hadn’t asked for anything; yet the ruler of the synagogue was angry and started laying the letter of the law against the Lord concerning working on the Sabbath! The Lord rebuked him. He was able to deal with every situation. Grace was working, and had won the day.
Hymn 13 - Grace! ‘tis a charming sound
Prayer