Luke 21

In Luke 21 Jesus sits down his disciples and tells them about their future.  Their painful future.

(paraphrased) "The temple will be destroyed; earthquakes, famine, and disease will ravage you, people will hate you, you will terrified and beaten, and your own family is going to turn you in to be imprisoned and killed.  Others will be stabbed and led into captivity.  All of creation will seem to be working against mankind - the wind, the ocean, the sun, moon, and stars.  People will feel small and endangered.  The horror will be so great that there will be 'people fainting with fear.' "

Yet, in the middle of this daunting prophecy, Jesus ensures them that, even when life is its darkest, God is working for their good.

"This will be your opportunity to witness." (verse 13)
"I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict." (verse 15)
"By your endurance you will gain your lives." (verse 18)

With this confidence, Jesus calls them to "straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near" (verse 28) and to "watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with... cares of this life." (verse 34)

We too can raise our heads in the middle of relentless pain.

 

Temple Gatekeepers

I'm reading through the Bible this year, using the daily ESV Study Bible plan.  One of today's chapters was 1 Chronicles 26.  In this chapter, the author gives an account of David's appointing of gatekeepers for the sanctuary of God (known previously as the "tabernacle" and later in 2 Chronicles as the "temple").  The sanctuary is where the glory and presence of God would come down to meet with his people.

Most people worshipped outside the sanctuary as God was very specific about who could go in, and what could be done inside.  The gatekeepers were men responsible for safeguarding the sanctuary from unauthorized worshippers and defiling practices.

Today, God's powerful presence is not restricted to a temple in Jerusalem.  Rather, God's presence now dwells within every believer.  Christians under the New Covenant enjoy God's presence continuously and can commune with him without geographical limitations because "[we] are God's temple and God's Spirit dwells in [us]" (1 Corinthians 3:16). 

Assuming that God is still zealous for the purity of his temple, gatekeeping must not be discarded as an isolated need under the Old Covenant.  While its form will be different. God's temple (his people) can still be defiled and gatekeepers are still necessary.


Who or what is gatekeeping the temple today?

"Sin is Cosmic Treason" by R.C. Sproul

While preparing for the Respectable Sins sermon series, I came across this from R.C. Sproul's "The Holiness of God:"

“Is the death penalty for sin unjust? By no means. Remember that God voluntarily created us. He gave us the highest privilege of being His image bearers. He made us but a little lower than the angels. He freely gave us dominion over all the earth. We are not turtles. We are not fireflies. We are not caterpillars or coyotes. We are people. We are the image bearers of the holy and majestic King of the cosmos.

We have not used the gift of life for the purpose God intended. Life on this planet has become the arena in which we daily carry out the work of cosmic treason. Our crime is far more serious, far more destructive than that of Benedict Arnold. No traitor to any king or nation has even approached the wickedness of our treason before God.

Sin is cosmic treason. Sin is treason against a perfectly pure Sovereign. It is an act of supreme ingratitude toward the One to whom we owe everything, to the One who has given us life itself. Have you ever considered the deeper implications of the slightest sin, of the most minute peccadillo? What are we saying to our Creator when we disobey Him at the slightest point? We are saying no to the righteousness of God. We are saying, ‘God, Your law is not good. My judgment is better than Yours. Your authority does not apply to me. I am above and beyond Your jurisdiction. I have the right to do what I want to do, not what You command me to do.’

The slightest sin is an act of defiance against cosmic authority. It is a revolutionary act, a rebellious act in which we are setting ourselves in opposition to the One to whom we owe everything. It is an insult to His holiness. We become false witnesses to God.

When we sin as the image bearers of God, we are saying to the whole creation, to all of nature under our dominion, to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field: ‘This is how God is. This is how your Creator behaves. Look in his mirror; look at us, and you will see the character of the Almighty.’

We say to the world, ‘God is covetous; God is ruthless; God is bitter; God is a murderer, a thief, a slanderer, an adulterer. God is all of these things that we are doing.’”

–R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1985), 115-16.