Good morning. For indeed Jews ask
for signs and Greeks search for wisdom. And so if God chooses to reveal Himself
in a way different from these, then they will not believe it. But we preach
Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness. To the
Jews, the Messiah was supposed to remain forever (in the book of John you even
had the public saying that to Jesus); and so saying that the Messiah was
crucified was heresy. The whole thing sounded ridiculous to the intellectuals.
Surely you had to seek God in some philosophical way, and by using your great
intellect find Him. But to those who are the called, Christ the power of God
and the wisdom of God (we will refer to this last phrase again at the end of
the chapter). The Jews wanted signs - Jesus rose from the dead. The Greeks
wanted wisdom - God‘s wisdom had the perfect way to bring about salvation, so
that it depended on Him and not man. Because the foolishness of God (simply
believing in what Jesus did for us and not having to do anything on our own is
certainly foolishness) is wiser than men, and the weakness of God (The Messiah
willingly allowing Himself to be crucified without any resistance is certainly
weakness) is stronger than men. Father thank You that You knew the best way to
bring everything about. Help us to share that with everyone around us.
Merry Christmas!
Good morning, and Merry Christmas! We are going to digress and look at the first Christmas. This was something that had been foretold centuries before; and yet people still did not understand what was going to happen. They were thinking that the Messiah was going to come as an adult and was going to re-establish the nation of Israel above all other nations. They were not expecting Him to come as a baby, supposedly born to a carpenter and placed in a manger. Many things had to happen at precisely the right time. You had to have the right person to be His mother and the right person to be His supposed father. You had to have a reason for them to be in Bethlehem on the night He was born – the census. It had to be when shepherds would be in the field near Bethlehem watching their flocks. And just at the right time – an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before the shepherds, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. And the angel said to them...
Comments
Post a Comment