Feast and Follow with Knollwood

Jacob's Ladder

How would you react to a portal to heaven? What if it was located in a particular room of your house or out in a certain field. Would you visit it often? Would you feel worthy of it? Would you be scared of it? I don’t ask these questions to be coy or hypothetical. Even though this is probably the first time you’ve had that kind of question posed to you, you already have the answer to all these questions. Believe it or not, you have encountered such a reality. No, it doesn’t look like a literal window into paradise, but when it, or I guess I should say “He,” is encountered, you will find the answer to all those questions I’ve just posed. It’ll be clearer what I mean as we go on.

In this passage we get a small glimpse into this portal that Jacob seems to stumble into, and what it does to a man like Jacob. There is some mystery surrounding this passage, but what is shown here is beautiful and ties in with our taking of the Lord’s Supper here today.

Our two points here are: God condescends to His people, and our only response is worship.

 

Characters, Circumstances, and Covenants

It has been wisely said that when at first you don’t succeed, just do it the way mom told you to do it the first time. We have the tendency as humans to think that we know best about life, especially our lives, and God, while usually having some good ideas, can be ignored without consequences. We saw last week the absolute disaster zone of Isaac passing on the blessing to Jacob. This week, we are going to see the beginning of God’s grace moving in Jacob’s life.

What we are going to cover today is seeing how Genesis is going to move to Jacob being the main character going forward, yes, that Jacob. The rest of Genesis, more or less, is going to be following Jacob finishing with his death at the end. Therefore, it will suit us to get our bearings about where we are going. We will do a little more than that as we will have the somewhat unexpected opportunity to talk about marriage.

Our main point today: God continues His blessings and God’s blessings in marriage come from His commands for marriage

Rightly Called Jacob

Do you have a perfect family? Everyone gets along, there’s no conflict, no hidden sin, no masks to have to wear this morning? Well of course not! We are all sinners and that includes even as a collection of people called a family. We all realize that and know that we are all in the same boat. Yet there are some of us that think our family is especially dysfunctional, or to use Biblical language, extra sinful. We wonder how God is able to do anything with or through in our family. If that’s you this morning, you may be thinking, “Oh, if you only knew.”

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Thus far in Genesis, families in such a condition may be feeling even more inadequate. Yes, Noah and Abraham have had their stumbles, but it isn’t like there’s a horror show at every turn.

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Well, let’s meet Isaac’s family. Before we begin, we must keep something in mind. We are not here to look at this example and walk away like the Pharisees and say, “Whew, glad my family isn’t as messed up as Isaac’s!” Maybe you don’t have sons plotting to kill each other, but we all have the seeds of the sins that we are going to look at here. We are meant to walk away saying, “Now what areas in my family need repentance?” As we will see, God is going to work redemption even through the very sins we see here committed. Yet we will also see that to sin makes everything harder on oneself. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Our two points are Fighting God beats yourself and God will use even sin to bring about His purposes.

For He Who Promised is Faithful

Putting away Christmas decorations can be a hazard. I saw a photo recently of a ladder leading up into a person's attic. Just to the left of the ladder, sticking through the ceiling's drywall, was a foot. The caption read that the person was warned not to step on the drywall, but they didn't admit to not knowing what drywall was until after stepping through it. If you, too, don't know what drywall is, it is a plaster that is held together between two sheets of paper. It is usually fastened to planks of wood to hold it up. When you are in the attic, you are to place your weight on the wood holding up the drywall, not the drywall itself. 

Now, maybe you are bit handier and wouldn't make such a mistake. You wouldn't place your trust in things that can't hold your physical weight. But are you as careful with your soul? The thing about the Lord is He gives wonderful gifts of financial resources, family, and even your local church, but the gifts are meant to be the pointer to Himself, the actual object of your trust. We don't trust the gifts; we trust the giver. 

Today, we jump back into Genesis to continue the story of redemption as it relates to Abraham so far. It began with the creation account showing us that God is very powerful. Once we got to Abraham's story, we see that God is faithful. He made promises to Abraham that He fulfilled and was faithful to Abraham even when Abraham wasn't always faithful to God.  

Today, we pick up with Abraham's son Isaac. What may be so surprising in this story is how little time we spend with him. Isaac's story only lasts about a chapter before moving quickly on to Jacob who will be the focus more or less through the end of the book. This doesn't mean that he is unimportant or that there isn't so much that we can learn from this chapter. 

Our main point today is that we are to Trust in the Giver, not the Gifts.

And Grace Will Lead Me Home

We find ourselves at the threshold of another year, and this is typically the time where we begin to review and renew. Reviewing what happened and renewing resolve for yet another year. If you’ve been listening to the radio this Christmas, I’m sure you’ve heard the guilt inducing lyrics from John Lennon, “So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, and a new one just begun.” Can you feel your chest tighten? Time’s running out! I can think of all the pounds I’ve added, the money I’ve overspent, and the time I’ve wasted! But, ooooh, not this year, this year is going to be different, because I am going to do xyz and prosperity will sure to follow!” Sound familiar? Have you noticed that this happens a lot?

 

Or maybe you are thinking differently about the future because things look brighter. Perhaps you see the early indications of the market pointing to a better year. We can think that our country has finally been reclaimed and only prosperity awaits!

 

Deuteronomy 8 points us to think differently about the new year and the best way to live in it. Both of these attitudes point back to ourselves as the masters of our fate, and what our passage is here to tell us is this is a very dangerous way to think about the New Year. Let’s find a better way to think and live in the new year.

 

 

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Christmas Eve: A Future Worth Celebrating

This is the message from our Christmas Eve service. 

Jesus: The Conquering King

It has been said that the best way to sum up the book of Revelation is to say, “Jesus wins.” Now, that is true as far as it goes, but this doesn’t go far enough. The book tells us more than just Jesus wins, because it tells us how Jesus wins. Details are important, because details give us a clearer picture of who Jesus is and always was.

 

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This scene is an important detail in our Portrait of Jesus series because it helps form the final word of the subtitle I stole from Beth McGrew for this series: Jesus, Meek and Wild. This is the wild part.

 

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Jesus isn’t a general leading from the rear. His garments have blood on them. He is getting personally involved. His eyes are described as flames, and His mouth wields a sword! This is a very different picture of a Lamb being led to slaughter, but I think a careful study of this passage will enhance your view of Jesus.

 

For one, this picture will help us appreciate how patient Jesus was. At any moment, He would have been justified to slaughter everyone there, especially at the cross. But He doesn’t.

 

I think that this also shows us where Christmas is ultimately going. We rightly talk about that Christmas begins in the manger and goes to the cross, but that isn’t all there is. The cross is the redemptive moment for us, but the ultimately victorious moment is here. It begins in the manger, and it ends on the Throne, all enemies and threats to it being decisively defeated.

Jesus: The God Man

We are going to take a look at one of the most complicated and comforting mysteries in the Bible. How is Jesus in one Person able to have a fully divine nature and a fully human nature? There is one sense in which that mystery is simply left at that: a mystery. As one theologian put it: “We are simply told what Jesus is, without any attempt to show how He became what He is…It has always recognized the incarnation as a mystery which defies explanation. And so it will remain, because it is the miracle of miracles” (Berkhof, 321).

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But just because we can’t explain how this mystery works, doesn’t mean we can’t be awed by viewing it. I can’t possibly explain how a star manages for most of its life not to be crushed by its own gravity or how a hunk of rock and gases emit light, but I can still be captured by its beauty in the night sky.

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Now, unlike a star, Jesus is more than someone to admire and ultimately worship and obey. He’s not less than that, but the angle that I want to take a look at today is the comforting aspect of knowing who our God is.

 

The last couple of weeks, we have been examining the Person of Jesus. The first week of Advent, we look at Jesus’ divinity, as clearly seen in

John 1:1-14

. Next, we saw the humanity of Jesus out of

Luke 2:52

Now, we are going to look at those two elements together and see what it means for Jesus to be the Godman. Again, how this works is a mystery beyond human mental capability, but what this means for us is well within our grasp to understand and worship.

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We will consider this chapter under a couple of broad headings. The first is Jesus is the King of all Kings. Second, Jesus is the reconciler of all things, and Third, Therefore, Jesus is your sole Hope

 

Jesus: Like Us In (Almost) Every Way

Interestingly, one of the harder things for the ancient peoples to believe about Jesus was that He was truly human. When a person rises from the dead, it isn’t too difficult to believe that they are truly divine, but the idea that Jesus was also truly human was a little much. Many at that time thought that Jesus only “appeared” to be human, walking around the earth like some sort of phantom. It was just too hard to imagine.

 

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It is hard for us to conceive as well. It is hard for us to express that God experienced limits in the person of Jesus. It is hard for us to believe that Jesus actually does understand where we are coming from. He doesn’t know our weaknesses in just an academic sense. He has actually experienced our troubles physically AND emotionally. All those things that we would say makes us human from a theological understanding to a popular understanding were true of Jesus.

Jesus: More Than a Teacher

When we think about Christmas, it is so easy to be distracted by all the wonderful things that happen in this time of year. We are reminded by literally all the Christmas movies that Christmas isn’t about the gifts, the lights, the trees, but when asked what Christmas is actually about  usually the answer is “the people that you are with.” Of course, as wonderful as family and friends are, that isn’t what Christmas is about.  

This might be the moment at which Charlie Brown’s Linus might be feeling a little smug in that he quotes from Luke 2 when asked what Christmas is about. And Linus is right! It is about the birth of Jesus! But what does that mean? We are so familiar with this passage that we can zip right by what that incredible sentence is saying in verse 11 of Luke 2. 

Who is Jesus, and how is He able to be that Savior and Lord? 

That is the question I would like for us to dwell on during this advent season. Jesus is more than a manger. What happens here in the Christmas story is something that has kept historians and theologians busy for the last 2000 years. More has been written and thought about concerning Jesus than any other figure, and this Christmas, we are going to meditate on why. 

I’m calling this series “A Portrait of Jesus” but if I could give a subtitle, I would steal it from an online author I follow, Bethel McGrew, and call it “Jesus: Meek and Wild.”