Remembering the Lord, rejoicing in Him and looking forward to His return
‘O Lord, You are my God; I will exalt You and praise Your Name... You have done marvellous things’ (Isaiah 25:1).
We remember what God has done for us. He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to be our Saviour.
We rejoice in Jesus Christ who died for us. We rejoice in Jesus Christ who rose again for us.
We look forward to the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. We look forward to the Day when ‘He will swallow up death for ever’.
On that Day, ‘the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces’.
On that Day, we will look back and say, ‘Surely this is our God; we trusted in Him, and He saved us’.
On that Day, we will ‘rejoice and be glad in His salvation’ (Isaiah 25:8-9).
Here and now, let us learn to ‘trust in the Lord’. We can trust in Him
‘for ever’. He is ‘the everlasting Rock’- ‘the Rock of our salvation’
(Isaiah 26:4; Psalm 95:1).
Remembering the Lord’s greatness: the greatness of His power and His love
‘The
Lord is high above all nations... Who is like the Lord our God, who is
seated on high?... Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, who
turns the hard rock into springs of water’ (Psalms 113:4-5; 114:7-8).
The Lord is greater than we could ever imagine. There is no greatness
like the greatness of the Lord. All human greatness cannot even begin to
compare with the greatness of God. His greatness is not only the
greatness of His power. It is also the greatness of His love.
When
we sing, ‘How great Thou art’, we sing not only of His power - ‘Thy
power throughout the universe displayed’. We sing also of His love -
‘And when I think that God His Son not sparing, sent Him to die - I
scarce can take it in, that on the Cross my burden gladly bearing, He
bled and died to take away my sin...’(Mission Praise, 506).
Rejoicing in the Lord: He has been sacrificed for us. We are saved by Him.
‘Your
boasting is not good’- May we never become so taken up with ourselves
that we forget Jesus Christ and all that He has done for us: ‘Christ,
our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us’, ‘you were washed...
sanctified... justified in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the
Spirit of our God’ (1 Corinthians 5:6-7; 6:11).
There were problems
among God’s people - ‘sexual immorality’, ‘lawsuits’ (1 Corinthians 5:1;
6:7). In all of this, Christ was being forgotten.
There are no
depths to which we cannot sink when we take our eyes off Christ. There
are no heights to which we will not be raised as we look away from
ourselves to Him. Christ is able to lift from the guttermost and ‘save
to the uttermost all those who come to God through Him’ (Hebrews 7:25).
Let it be more of Christ and less of self!
Looking forward to the Lord’s return, let us live as His faithful witnesses.
‘In
all the Scriptures’, Jesus teaches ‘the things concerning Himself’
(Luke 24:27). Do ‘our hearts burn within us... while He opens to us the
Scriptures?’ (Luke 24:32).
He calls us to be His ‘witnesses’, to preach His message of salvation ‘to all nations’ (Luke 24:47-48).
Before we can preach, we must listen to Him.
Before we can proclaim His resurrection, we must consider His suffering
for us: ‘See my hands and my feet’ (Luke 24:39) - even after His
resurrection, they still bear ‘the mark of the nails’ (John 20:25).
Listen to Christ. Consider His suffering for you. Be ‘clothed with power from on high.
Let the Lord ‘bless’ you, strengthening your worship and filling you
‘with great joy’. With all this going on in your lives, we will consider
it not only our responsibility but our joyful privilege to be His
‘witnesses’ (Luke 24:48-53)!
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