April 9, 2012
But we had hoped that
he was the one to redeem
The cross is past us now. The resurrection has occurred.
Jesus is alive! And we meet two of his followers on the road to a village named
Emmaus. Along the way they are talking about the events of the weekend in
The truth to which I speak is that our perspective needs to be aligned properly with God's perspective. God has an eternal perspective and we tend to think temporally. These two men on the road to Emmaus were disappointed because their temporal situation regarding Roman oppression remained unchanged despite someone they viewed as a powerful Prophet having just been with them for several years. You can hear the disappointment in their voices as they tell the events to Jesus (God had prevented them from recognizing Him). But realize that even if Jesus had delivered them from Roman oppression, all He would have done is provide them with some temporal comfort. They still would have had an eternal problem with their sin which was separating them from God! What Jesus did provide for them and for everyone is a permanent solution to an eternal problem! Likewise today, we too can be focusing on the wrong things. We too can begin to think that the role of Jesus is to somehow make our lives on this earth more pleasant or tolerable. But the primary thing that Jesus does for all of us, who put our faith in Him, is repair the broken relationship we have with God. He fixes our eternal separation problem with God! If he never did another thing for me in this life, I know that when my time is up here, I go on to spend eternity with my Creator. Yes, God does provide blessings and comfort for this life but if we tend to focus on those things then we lose the eternal perspective of everything He accomplished on that cross"just seven miles from Emmaus.
Along with this we can also lose our perspective as the body of Christ. Too much of modern American Christianity has lost its perspective. One side only deals with temporal pleasures and prosperity in this life. It purposefully and maliciously confuses people into thinking that the blessings of God are found in this current life. What God has done for us eternally is provided mere lip service. Another failing facet is we can tend to be too focused on the culture in which we live, as these two men were. We either think that it is our job to affect culture and prepare dominion for God or we think that it is our job to somehow change culture through the temporal mechanisms of man. Neither is accurate and both accomplish nothing but distracting the church from the true assignment, given by Christ Himself, to make disciples of all nations. God is coming back beloved and He will not be the least bit interested in how politically active we were or how successful we were at affecting this dying culture. It is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The ship is going down; it really doesn't matter what chair they are sitting in.
It is just one day removed from the resurrection. The ground
at
Rev. Anthony
