Matthew 3:1&2
In those days there appeared John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness (Desert) of Judea and saying, repent (think differently; change your mind, regretting your sins and changing your conduct), for the Kingdom is at hand. When John the Baptist came on the scene, he was a prophetic forerunner to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. For years, I “knew” what the bible said about the Kingdom of God being at hand, but I didn’t “understand” what it really meant. My understanding of it came through the sport of boxing. When there is a title match announced, it is said “The title or championship belt is at hand or on the line!”
To the nation of Israel, this was a statement that was as an ax laid to the very root of who they were. They (Israel) had known for approximately 4,000 years that God Himself had chosen them to be the ones to reflect the Kingdom of God on the earth. Now they have this crazy prophetic dude out in the “desert” telling everyone including the Jews that there had been a gross misrepresentation about God and He was about to give it to people that would properly represent it. I believe that is only by the illumination of the Holy Spirit that we can understand exactly how this deeply stirred the indignation and wrath of the church.
Then, the next thing we see is a carpenters son saying that He is not only who “all” the past and present prophets had had prophesied about but that He is the Son of the Living God walking upon the earth. I think that we could all agree that Israel’s boat had not only sprung a leak but it was about to sink with only two choices and one of them would soon be the laughing stock of the nation. Either kill Jesus or repent. To them, repenting meant to count 4,000 years of their religious works as nothing but trash and then follow a thirty-year-old kid around town loving Gentiles. Therefore, there only option, which Jesus stomped on through His resurrection from the dead was to kill Him!
I have brought us through all of that to bring us to the point that we are in today. I believe that the church is in the same condition that it was 2,000 years ago. Israel was supposed to take the representation that God had given them and become one with the Gentiles. They refused and it was handed to us and we are at a prophetic point in history where God is asking us to count our works as nothing in order to move forward and know Him deeper than we ever imagined!!! We have come face to face with the same sin that Israel committed in misrepresenting the Kingdom. To some, this is Good News, but to others that same indignation is being kindled to kill the prophetic voice that is upon us. It is amazing to me that even for the Jew that could be baptized in the name of the One that they killed still found if difficult to not worship with but to even sit down at the table and eat with a Gentile. What they had religiously separated themselves from is what God was now saying to be passionate about. For us today, we have religiously separated ourselves from not only the world but from one another in the church and called it ok.
Johnny Reed
0 comments:
Post a Comment