The Works of God

While away from Bethlehem visiting family this weekend, we were delighted by the sermon we heard that closed a series on the book of Ruth.

Pastor Rick returned several times to this thought:

Don’t just make this book of the Bible into a nice love story.  It is certainly about that, but so much more than that.  This is a story about redemption and about the coming Jesus.

I thought of how often we end with the focus on people rather than on the greater thing: God himself.  Let us keep pressing into the word to find our Lord!

• John 9 is not primarily about a man being healed – though it is certainly about that as well – but about a God who is sovereign over all things and a savior who works!
• Mark 2:1-12 is not primarily about one man being healed of his paralysis, or even of loyal friends who will stop at nothing to bring him to Jesus – though it is certainly about that as well –  “but that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”
• 2 Kings 5 is not primarily about one man being cleansed of his leprosy – though it is certainly about that as well – but about a sovereign God who gives victory to whomever he pleases in 2 Kings 5:1 and who leads a violent, sinful, proud pagan to one of the most glorious statements anyone can make: Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel (2 Kings 5:15).

We would fail to ultimately help anyone if we stop at the thing we think people most want to hear – that God can heal you or your child of disease or disability.  He can certainly do that if he pleases, but what would they have?  “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36).

Let us continue to press into these accounts of his extraordinary ability to do anything that he pleases and show people the best news of all: God wants to give us himself!