Sunday Worship Good Morning!!! Let your worship show forth your devotional love and heart felt gratitude… He is worthy! /
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Reveling
Before moving forward with chapter 6, we went back and revisited the “dream” of chapter 5 using David Guzik’s understanding of those verses. I did this not because I believe it to be the best interpretation of that segment, but because it added to our study something I found truly impactful and important which did not go beyond what was possible in the text.
As we progressed through chapter 6 we applied both our interpretations and brother Guzik’s of the “dream” in chapter 5 to see what truths it would address and uncover for us and I feel we were the better for it.
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Together Forever
It’s Easter Sunday – Our goal today in all the scriptures we examined was to learn how to participate in Christ’s death and resurrection with Him. How to obtain the prize of that process which is Christ in us. To examine the dangers of failing to devote our lives to that for which Christ laid hands on us. To, through communion, testify of our once-for-all decision to live unto God, share in Christ’s sufferings, conform to His life, death and resurrection and thereby assume His likeness within!
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Messianic Expectations
It’s Palm Sunday – and our series on ‘From Faith to Faith’ was a perfect fit for the day! As one looks back on Jesus’ ‘Triumphant Entry” into Jerusalem, the conclusion that it was anything but ‘Triumphant’ is hard to miss.
The Jewish people DID recognize their Messiah, primarily from 3 major clues…
Jesus entered Jerusalem on one of the most pivotal dates in the progression of Daniel’s prophecy of 70 weeks in Daniel 9:25-26. The date landed on Nisan the 10th, precisely 4 days before the offering of the Pascal lambs for Passover.
Jesus’ entering Jerusalem immediately followed His having raised Lazarus from the dead AFTER decay had already begun to set in – a miracle which was of great significance to the Jewish people of that day.
Additionally, Jesus entered the city just as Zechariah had predicted, riding on a donkey (Zech. 9:9).
So the Jewish people had great reason to see Jesus as the Messiah.
For the next 4 days, Jesus was under the scrutinizing gaze of all Jews in Jerusalem. Jesus’ actions and teaching that week laid an axe to all their unscriptural expectations of the Messiah which led to their rejection of Him by week’s end.
Little did they know that in their unjust judgment, they were actually judging Him worthy to be the Passover Lamb of God, sacrificed for all of Israel and the world itself.
How this fits our teachings on Faith, is that Israel had all the prophetic foretellings before them. That word was near them, in their mouths and hearts and yet they missed it due to their selective reading of these passages. Their desires dictated their understanding and their unscriptural understanding gave them expectations which were out of step with the divine order of God’s plan.
The cure? Reverence for God which is stronger than our natural desires and seeking God with all, NOT PART, of our hearts. It isn’t enough to know the scriptures – we need to know and respect the God of who inspired them.
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Dazzling & Unexpected
Song of Solomon 5 kicks off with a one verse depiction of the wedding night, followed by a fun-loving reimagining/retelling of the Shulamite’s dream from chapter 3. After this the Shulamite offers a descriptive Wasf, very much like that offered by Solomon in description of her beauty.
Our lesson concludes with connections made between the scenes in this chapter and the relationship we both have with Christ and that which we will experience in the future when we are joined with Him!
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