A Majestic Invitation

6/29/2009

So, they overestimated Him by thinking He’d just be a rich, famous king, that would just make all their wildest dreams comes true. Instead, He was despised and rejected and the scriptures say that it even appeared that God the Father rejected Him. But that was part of God's plan. To see if we would stay with Him even when things didn’t look all that cool, when things didn’t look all that special, when things don’t look all that wonderful. Will we stay with Him? Because those are the only ones He wants. He only wants the ones that love Him. He doesn't want the ones that love themselves.

When He multiplied the loaves and the fishes and then they started following because of that, He tricked them. He said, "Go on. Get out of here." He said something intentionally weird in order to make them mad enough to leave. Because He didn't want anybody around that was only wanting something for themselves.

And so it was the Father's great genius again not only to make Himself flesh and come in His Son, fully God -- that's wild! That's the mystery of incarnation, which Paul said is great. This is an awesome mystery – unbelievable how God can fit in a human body and not explode it instantly. How could this happen? But God, who can do anything, chose to do that, right?

So they underestimated Him. He was created a little lower than the angels, you think. All things are not subject to Him yet. So He's not winning all these battles every moment of every day. So is He really the King? Well the scriptures say, "Yes." In fact, that's part of the mystery. That's part of God's genius is He sets us up to feel the pain. He sets us up to feel the tension of things not going our way and not going the way we want, not being part of some movement, some winning team, some super cool thing that makes all of our wildest dreams come true.

But instead the mystery of Isaiah 53 is that the same Messiah, fully God, appears to be rejected even by His own Father. That's the appearance. That’s what Isaiah prophesied – He would appear to be rejected even by His own Father.

So if His Father rejects Him, don't we have the right to? Doesn't it make sense that we would reject Him if even His own Father thought He was a failure? But that's the beauty of it! Is that His Genius found a way to carve back and to shred all the pretense. To take us out of the comfort zone and to just bring it all the way down to the issue of the heart where it's not about us. It's because of Him, only, purely, ever, end of story.

And then He writes that same story into each of our lives, where He seems to take everything away from us. He puts us in this place of feeling betrayed and rejected in order that we would turn our face fully towards Him without any fear of consequences, without any fear of loss, without any conditions. "I’ll follow You if ___. I can see it's probably a good deal to follow God." No! He takes that away from us. He doesn't want it to appear to be a good deal to us, because He wants our heart. He doesn't want our flesh. He wants our flesh to be left behind. He can't entice us by our flesh and then present to Himself a Bride that's like His Son. His Son didn't function by His flesh. His Son didn't make decisions based on what He’d get out of it or….that sort of thing.

So we do have this knowledge that God is faithful, underlying everything, regardless. We know that God is Good and He does Good. We know His character. But that doesn't mean all the evidence lines up with that every minute. All things are not subject to Him yet, but they shall be. Those who won’t obey Him, they want to just keep killing his prophets. They’d even crucify His heir, His Son – those will bend their knee also, but it won't be their choice. They’ll have their knees knocked out from under them. And that will be that.

But He wants to shred back, to peel back all the layers and to only have those people that truly want Him. He isn't begging anybody. He's not trying to make any deals with anybody. He is God. He created the galaxies. And the scriptures say it's all evident and any fool can see that God is good and God is powerful. And God is amazing and beautiful. The scriptures say any fool can see that. It's evident in all of creation and if we’re not paying attention, then that's a choice. We are deliberately forgetting as Peter said and Paul said as well. To deliberately forget is something we do because we're saturated with our own flesh, our own desires, and our own will.

But as you see the Hebrews writer laying all this out, he is just saying, "Consider the Majesty, the Power, the Perfection of the One who came to die for your sins and invites you. He is faithful. He's suffered in every way that we have. He’s faithful. He wants to present us to His Father, and He has paid the price to be willing and able to do so." And now the invitation is before us and it's a majestic invitation. It ain’t some little sissy religion. It's a Majestic Invitation from the Creator God of the universe who came up with a Genius Plan to shred us all the way down to whether we are doing this for Him or whether we are doing it for ourselves. That's very cool.