21 January 2014 - not by appearances

21 January 2014 - not by appearances

God does not ask us to become humble because he is selfish.  He doesn't need us to debase ourselves out of his pride.  He asks humility of us because it is the only way that he can bless us with all of the life and joy which he wants to pour out.  We are sometimes surprised to hear this.  We imagine that man is made for the sabbath. 

Then he said to them,
“The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.
That is why the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”

But man cannot add anything to God.  God has no need to create us.  He has no need to offer us the profound rest we can know on the sabbath.  He does it all out of love for us.  We imagine that by subjecting ourselves to some abstracted rules we are putting God first.  But we are actually being prideful, imagining that by our striving and precision we are offering God something which he would otherwise lack.

Not as man sees does God see,
because he sees the appearance
but the LORD looks into the heart.”

We need to try to learn to see as God sees.  We need to try to have empathy which looks into the heart and unites us with those around us.  Appearances can make us imagine holiness where in fact there is none.  They can make us miss holiness where it does exist.  If we judge by appearances we may miss the bonds and relationships into which the LORD wants us to enter.  When we are stuck on appearances we should look to the Son of Man as our reference and see what he does.  Is it shocking?  This is a sign that we are too attached to appearances. He is LORD even of the sabbath and can show us when we are getting hung up on external things.  He will let us know if we are "whitewashed tombs", beautiful on the outside, but unclean within (cf. Mat. 23:27).

Even someone as great as David is not anointed just for his own sake.  He is anointed because all of the people of Israel need someone in their midst upon whom the Spirit of the LORD rushes.
Then Samuel, with the horn of oil in hand,
anointed him in the midst of his brothers;
and from that day on, the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David.
It is not just Israel who needs this.  Which is why David points the way to one who is even greater than he.  The Holy Spirit rushing on David prefigures the way in which he rushes on Jesus when he is baptized by John in the Jordan.  The Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to us.  We see Jesus anointed with the Holy Spirit and realize that he is indeed the Son of God, LORD of the sabbath, LORD of all.  We realize that he is here out of love for us.  We are now open to let go of our imagined control and surrender our lives to Jesus.  And then as we surrender we in turn receive the Holy Spirit from Jesus.  We are changed from within and our eyes are open to look into the heart.  We gain the purity which clears our vision of planks.  We gain the purity of heart with which we see God.

God then says of us what he says of David.

“I have found David, my servant;
with my holy oil I have anointed him,
That my hand may be always with him,
and that my arm may make him strong.”

We even hear him say:

“He shall say of me, ‘You are my father,
my God, the Rock, my savior.’
And I will make him the first-born,
highest of the kings of the earth.”

Only in Jesus can we truly say to God, "You are my father".  Even David could only say this in a partial and prophetic way.  But the Spirit who rushes upon us changes us even more profoundly than it does David.  From whitewashed tombs the stones are rolled back and we awaken to new life.