Confrontation in Nazareth (14)

 

“Sacrifice and meal offering You have not desired; My ears You have opened; burnt offering and sin offering You have not required. Then I said, ‘Behold, I come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do Your will, O my God, Your Law is within my heart. I have proclaimed glad tidings of righteousness in the great congregation; behold, I will not retrain my lips, O LORD, You know’” (Psalm 40:6 – 9; see also Hebrews 10:5 – 10).

 

When Jesus says in Nazareth, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing (Luke 4:21), He is also fulfilling Psalm 40:6 – 9. We may hear five voices in Psalm 40: the voice of David, the Voice of Jesus Christ, the voice of the man or woman in Jesus Christ, the Voice of the Body of Christ, and the Voice of the whole Christ. In Christ, these voices are One, they are the Voice of many waters.

 

In Hebrews 10, Psalm 40 is quoted from the LXX, and here we have the notable, “Sacrifice and offering You have not desired, but a body You have prepared for me.” As with the “voice” of Psalm 40, so with the “body” of Psalm 40. We see the body of King Daivd, the body of Jesus Christ in the Incarnation, the body of the individual man or woman in Christ, the corporate Body which the Father prepared for the Son – that is the Body of Christ, and we may also see the Body of the whole Christ – Head and Body.

 

I expect it may take us time to meditate on these things and to begin to “see” them in Christ, but that is as it should be, they cannot be understood or “seen” in the natural (1 Corinthians Chapter 2).

 

Paul writes in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

 

We all have a purpose and destiny in this life, and it has many dimensions and unfolds in many ways...none of which we can fully understand, such is the mystery of it all in Christ. We all are called to say, “I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do” (John 17:4).

 

We are called to say this as individuals, as marriages and families, as local congregations, as the Body of Christ. As an individual I am called to not only say this for myself, but if I am married I have a calling within my marriage, if I have a family I have a calling as a member of my family, and I have a calling as a member of Christ’s Body, both locally and transcendently. I must not think solely in terms of myself, my calling and purpose and destiny is so much more than “Jesus and me,” it is about others, both those who know Jesus and those who have yet to meet Jesus.

 

Are we encouraging one another to discover and fulfill our callings in Christ Jesus?

 

Are we as husbands and wives seeking to discover and fulfill what has been written the book for us to fulfill?

 

Are our congregations viewing themselves as a people with a calling and destiny for their particular time and place that manifests itself in worship, the building up of the Body of Christ, and sacrificial mission to the world?

 

When our brothers and sisters venture out to discover their calling, do we, as the people of Nazareth say, “Who does she think she is?”

 

When someone in our midst speaks of the widow of Sidon or of Namaan the Syrian, do we respond with anger or with thanksgiving and compassion?

 

Should someone bring into our presence a Sidonian or Syrian will we embrace them, love them, care for them, and protect them?

 

Dear friends, in one sense until the Book becomes our book it is just a book. When Jesus reads Isaiah 61 in the synagogue in Nazareth He makes Isaiah His book. Yes, yes, for sure it has always been His Book, but in an incarnational sense He is consummating (or beginning the consummation) it when He reads it and then says, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

 

Now we know and believe that the words of the Bible are the words of God, the Word of God. We also acknowledge that this Word was delivered through human beings, and as such carries the flavor of the person just as wine carries the flavor of the cask in which it was aged. With this in mind, until the Word of God becomes your Word in Christ, until it ages within your heart and soul and mind and spirit, until it resides within you…you cannot call it yours, you can only call it something “out there.”

 

O dear, dear friends! The New Covenant is not “out there”! It is “in here.” “I will put my laws upon their heart, and on their mind I will write them” (Hebrews 10:16). Do we see that the Old Covenant is external, while the New Covenant is internal? Can we see that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit come to live within us in the New Covenant?

 

We are called to say, “This Word is mine in Christ. I will read this Word and live in this Word among my brothers and sisters. Together we will read this Word and live in this Word and manifest this Word to one another and to the world.”

 

I recall one morning in a small group about eight years ago. We were in John Chapter 14, the first few verses, about the Father’s House. There was much talk, much speculation, and the guys tended to talk over each other at times. As I listened I heard one of the men quietly say, “If it isn’t happening within you, if it isn’t real inside of you, then it doesn’t matter.”

 

I think I may have been the only one who heard what this brother said, and I have often wondered if I should have called a “timeout” and asked him to repeat himself. I wish I had done so.

 

Jesus invites us to know Him in the koinonia of His Word, to share His Life in His Word, to read Isaiah aloud, to read Psalms aloud, and to confess, “This day this Scripture is being fulfilled in my life, in our lives, in the Body of Christ; this day we are becoming one with the Word and the Word is becoming one with us.”

 

In the scroll of the book it is written of Christ Jesus, of you in Christ, of me in Christ, of us in Christ.