4-19-2014

Good Morning All,

        John 20:30-31; “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book;  but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

       So do you ever wonder what the disciples did on Saturday?  It would have been the Sabbath and it would have been the Passover but what did they do?  Did they just sit and stare?  Did they plan for what was next?  Did they sit and remember and reminisce about the past three years?  What did they do?

    The answer: we don’t know.  Scriptures doesn’t tell us what the disciples did on Saturday.  Scriptures does that a lot to us.  We know very little about Jesus from after his birth until he begins his ministry when he is about thirty.  We only have one little snippet of his childhood.  Did he learn the trade of carpentry?  How much rabbinic training did he receive as a child?  Was he poor, rich, or what we would call middle-class?  We don’t know.

    This isn’t the only place where Scriptures is silent.  We don’t have a real good description of heaven or hell or what our glorified bodies will look like.  Even in the Old Testament there are places where Scriptures is silent.  For some, this is very disturbing.  When you point out what Scriptures actually says some get upset because it is different from what they have heard or were taught or want to believe.  So we wonder, we may even ponder, but we don’t know.

    Don’t let what Scriptures does not tell you undermine what it does tell you.  The Bible was written for a very specific reason and that reason is to reveal to you the truth about Jesus and how he gives you salvation.  All the stories in the Bible direct us to this truth.  Jesus died to pay for your sins and was raised to give you the victory over death.  That is what we are told and that is the greatest news that you can ever hear. 

    Through His Word, God reveals to us what we need to find our comfort in Him, to find our hope in Him, to recognize that our security is tightly wound up in His unfailing love.  He reveals his truth to us.  He reveals what we need to know but it is not all the truth that is God.  “God’s ways are higher than our ways” were are told.  God reveals himself to us in the manner that we need.

    So for the rest, we need to live in faith.  We know God’s love for us as he has revealed it.  We can thus trust that what is not revealed to us is based in his nature of love.  We don’t know everything but everything we know tells us we are saved.  Trust in God’s promises; he won’t let you down.

Father in heaven, you know all that there is.  Guide us by your Spirit to trust in you and your holy Word.  We know that your mercy has redeemed us and that your grace sustains us.  Lead us to be content in your loving arms.  Be with those who struggle with the demons of this life.  Send your Spirit of comfort to them and guide them to your Holy Scriptures that they may have peace.  In the precious name of Jesus our risen Savior, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret