“Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.”
(Colossians 2:16-17)
The more we learn about God from the Scriptures, the more fascinating, compelling, and attractive He becomes. Yes, His wisdom, power, and authority are without limit and without equal, making Him awesome in the truest sense of the word. We must never forget, however, that our God is a Personal Agent. In fact, He is, was, and always will be, a multi-Personal Agent. The God we worship is one in being, but three in Person. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, eternally united in their divine nature and purpose. This God has sovereignly placed the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Second Person of the Trinity at the very center of cosmic history. Signs and symbols of Christ’s redemptive work are literally everywhere in the created order. As today’s verse passage reminds us, they appear in sacred history in the complex religious system God gave to His covenant nation at Sinai. God has also sewn signs and symbols of the Lord’s death and resurrection right into the created order itself. The wisdom, power, and heart of God is on display, and yet only those who take the time to contemplate God and His divine character, plan, and action in the world will appreciate these things. I look at my yard today and I see green trees; the whole area teems with life. A few short months ago it was all buried under a blanket of snow, the trees leafless and seemingly dead. For those with eyes to see, the procession of the seasons is a symbolic reenactment of Christ’s death and resurrection. Year after year, the burial shroud of snow is cast off and forgotten as newness of life saturates the land. The sun itself is an object lesson in this regard. It falls downward and disappears behind the horizon. Its light vanishes. The world becomes dark. In a few short hours we see its rays in the east. Suddenly and irresistibly it is shining in fullness of strength. Light has overcome the darkness. This too, is a God-ordained symbol of the Lord’s redemptive work (John 1:5). In our own church family, Sean and Greice are expecting their child, Elijah, to be born sometime near the end of September. This new life also reminds us of Christ’s victory over death. The Lord referred to the earth as a womb, from which the waters issued irresistibly (Job 38:8). Peter tells us that in similar fashion, the birth pangs of death could not keep Jesus from returning to the land of the living (Acts 2:24). The patriarch, Job, understood, as we do, that our lives are bound up with our Redeemer and His divine action in the world (Job 19:25). This is an amazing, undeserved blessing, the signs and symbols of which are everywhere, sovereignly and lovingly placed by God for His glory and for our encouragement.
God bless you all,
Pastor John
English