10 April 2014 - ungrateful expectations

10 April 2014 - ungrateful expectations

What stands between the proimise...

I will make nations of you;
kings shall stem from you.
I will maintain my covenant with you
and your descendants after you
throughout the ages as an everlasting pact,
to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.

...and it's fulfillment?

Our human expectations are conditioned to expect less than God wants to give us.  We prefer to try broken human king after human king no matter what happens to society while we watch.  We prefer to reign on the thrones of our own lives no matter how imperfect the results.  We prefer to keep trying to keep the covenant on our own strength no matter how many times we fail.  All this we do because we don't want to take the risk of letting God in.  We don't want to take the risk of trusting that he has our best interests at heart.  We feel as though if we surrender to him we will, by virtue of our lost control, be even less happy.  But God is for us, he is God with us.  He wants to be intimately close to us.  He wants to unite us as family.  But we prefer to keep him in the waiting in the wings as a handy concept to tie up the loose ends of our world views.

The Jews can't recognize Jesus because they have such a rigid view of Abraham and the prophets.  They may imagine themselves to be pious in doubting the words which Jesus says as they ask, "Are you greater than our father Abraham"?  But it isn't not really piety that holds Jesus at a distance.  Just as we may use God as a concept and hinder his ability to affect our real day to day lives so to do the Jews use Abraham as a concept to keep Jesus at a safe distance. 

Jesus is the true king who stems from Abraham.  That kings will stem from Abraham is promised to Abraham himself.  The promise that starts with him is not finished.  It looks forward to fulfillment in Jesus.  This is because even though the "Lord remembers his covenant for ever" we find ourselves singularly unable to do so. We can't truly be his people and he our God if we keep rebelling like this. So we wait until Jesus arrives on the scene.  Only Jesus transforms us from within so that we ourselves are empowered to keep his "covenant throughout the ages."

It is precisely because only Jesus can affect this transformation that he can also say to each one of us:

“Amen, amen, I say to you,
whoever keeps my word will never see death.”

If we keep his word, the word of Jesus Christ, we are transformed so that we can experience what God really means by the promised land.  We experience what it truly means to be his people and he our God.  To be the people of the God who existed before Abraham liberates us from the bondage to time and decay.  Only in Jesus do we know this freedom because only he can say "before Abraham came to be, I AM."

So let us respond with our whole hearts!

Look to the LORD in his strength;
seek to serve him constantly.
Recall the wondrous deeds that he has wrought,
his portents, and the judgments he has uttered.