EPIPHANY
ANGEL VISITION: SECRETS REVEALED
DR. JIM DIXON
LUKE 1:26-35
DECEMBER 12, 2010
In the year 431, at the council of Ephesus, one of the great Ecclesiastical Councils, Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ was given a new title. The title was Theotokos, which means Mother of God. She was not given this title in an effort to exalt her. The title was given in an effort to exalt her child. It was a response to the Nestorians, who denied the deity of Christ. This title was given, Theotokos, Mother of God, because the child born of Mary is God. This title, Mother of God, was used throughout the Christian world. It was used by Christian Catholics, and later by Orthodox Christians, and later by Protestant Christians, so that the whole Christian world—Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox—all called Mary Theotokos, Mother of God.
But most recently, many Protestants backed off the title because Protestants are, understandably, concerned about Mariolatry—the worship of Mary. In the year 787, at the Second Council of Nicaea, Mary was declared an icon. The use of images of Mary, as an icon, the use of Mary images in worship, was now permitted. So, people were not to worship Mary, but in worshiping God they could use images of Mary. Then in the year 1854, Pope Pius IX declared the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, that Mary was born without the taint of original sin, that Mary was born holy, that Mary, in a sense, was born the same way her son was born. Both were holy, born without sin. This doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, with regard to Mary, is not found in the Bible and in fact is contrary to the implicit and explicit teachings of Scripture.
In 1950, Pope Pius XII came up with a doctrine that declared the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary—that Mary did not die as other people do, that Mary went straight from earth to heaven, she was assumed, she was raptured. Mary did not taste death. In fairness, as we look at the Christian world today, there is no portion or part of the Christian world that approves of Mariolatry. Officially, in the Roman Catholic Church what you have is dulia, hyperdulia, and latria. Dulia is the reverence of the court of the saints. hyperdulia is the special reverence given to Mary. The latria, worship, is reserved for God alone, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The problem is people get confused. The problem is lines are crossed; the problem is lines are blurred. It is a small thing to move from hyperdulia, from high veneration. to worship. So, who is Mary? How should we view her? How should we respect her? How should we regard her? What does the Bible tell us about Mary? I want to say, Mary is Mary because of an act of God. Mary is who she is because of an act of God.
Last week, my wife and I were in California. All over the news and in the newspaper’s front page was this traffic jam that had taken place in Southern California on I-10. I-10 in the trip from Palm Springs to Los Angeles became clogged down last week so badly that for seven hours cars did not move. On Interstate 110 there were three different traffic accidents, some of them so massive that everything completely stopped. They could not clear up. For seven hours thousands and thousands of cars did not move. It went from day into night. People just panicked, people just lost it, sitting for seven hours in their car, not knowing when they were going to move. People having to go to the bathroom. What would you do? People just went in the car. Literally hundreds and hundreds of people soiled themselves as they were trapped on a California freeway. Some people began to feel claustrophobic; some people began to develop anxiety and there were many accounts of anxiety attacks that took place on I-10 during that seven-hour stretch. It was interesting to see the different kinds of people and their different reactions to the situation. Some people decided to have a little fun; they got out of their cars and walked around, chatted with other cars. Some people had Frisbees and they got out and started throwing Frisbees around, playing games.
In that seven-hour stagnation, the announcer for the Los Angeles Lakers was there, and he was trapped in his car and he was trying to get to L.A. from Palm Springs so he could announce the Lakers game. He couldn’t make it because he was trapped in his car. He never did make it. They interviewed him afterwards and they said, “How did you handle this?” He said, “You know, it didn’t bother me at all. I just considered it an act of God.” Again, and again and again this is what he said. “It didn’t bother me, believe me. I just considered it an act of God.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but I marvel sometimes what people will attribute to God. I marvel sometimes what people will call an act of God. The traffic jam, an act of God. The three accidents, tragic accidents on I-10, were they acts of God? You talk to people and tsunamis are acts of God, hurricanes, tornadoes, acts of God, devastating, massive earthquakes, acts of God. I’ve talked to people that say cancer is an act of God. Certain people who have viewed their cancer or the cancer of a loved one as an act of God.
Some years ago, I was doing a wedding at a church in Kansas City; it was Colonial Presbyterian Church, a wonderful church. This church has just recently, this past year, entered the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Ted Nissan used to be the pastor at Colonial Presbyterian and is a friend and I did the wedding with Ted. When I got back there, Ted was in deep grief because his wife had left him, she had an affair with a guy in the church and she now had divorced him. He was just devastated. He knew that I had grown up in the same home church as his wife, Joy, so he wanted to talk to me about it. So, we went into his office and he just started to cry. He told me the only reason he is able to handle it at all is because he views it as an act of God, that somehow this was an act of God, and that all things are the will of God, whatever happens. I didn’t agree with him, but I didn’t think it was the right time to have a theological discussion about it. But we live in a world, don’t we, where people will attribute all kinds of things as acts of God?
Certainly, God is omnipotent. Certainly, God can cause earthquakes, and I don’t question, historically or biblically, that God has caused earthquakes, but I think that is relatively rare. I think we live in a fallen world; both angels and men are fallen. God has given us the incredible gift of freedom and we have abused it. The angels have abused it. The fall of the angels, there is no way to know how that has impacted the creation, but they are fallen. Human beings are fallen. Many times, things happen that are consequences of our own mistakes. We can’t attribute everything to God.
I will tell you this: Mary, the virgin birth we are talking about, clearly, was an act of God. There is no doubt about this. There is no other way to explain it. Mary said to the angel, “How can this be since I have no husband? Since I am a virgin? Since I have never had sexual relations? Since I am a good Jewish teenage girl? Since I am betrothed and I am not fully married and we are celibate, how can this be?” The angel said to her, “The power of the Most High shall overshadow you, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity shall come upon you.” This is an act of God. We cannot fathom, we cannot fully comprehend, we cannot fully understand how that zygote appeared in Mary’s womb. We cannot fully fathom or comprehend how her egg was fertilized, but we know that it was God, that God made it happen supernaturally, that the Holy Spirit, the power of the Most High, that God intervened. We have an act of God in the birth of Christ and the coming of Jesus into the world, the virgin birth.
This was necessary that that child born would not only be human, so that that child could represent us on the cross and represent humanity on the cross, but that that child was divine, Immanuel, God with us, so that child could represent the Father to us and we could see the Father in him. Jesus, Godman, born by an act of God. So, Mary is Mary because of an act of God. Her epiphany is as the angel makes his announcement, “You will conceive in your womb, you will bear a son, you will call his name Jesus, he will be great, he will be called the son of the Most High. The child to be born shall be called holy the Son of God. The Lord will give him the throne of his father David and he shall rule over the house of Jacob forever. Of his kingdom there shall never ever, ever be an end.” This epiphany, this amazing “aha” moment, was, “my goodness, I am giving birth to the Son of God. I am giving birth to the one whose kingdom will never, ever, ever end. I am giving birth to the Holy One, the Messiah, the Christ.” What an amazing manifestation to her!
I am sure that that epiphany was wondrous, but also very worrisome. Wondrous because by God’s grace she would be the vessel through which the Son of God would become incarnate in this world, but very worrisome because she would be socially stigmatized in a Jewish culture where out-of-wedlock births were considered matters of great shame. Remember, in the Jewish world in the time of Christ, when a woman had a child out of wedlock, they were put to public shame. The Jewish culture viewed that as loving. They viewed it as loving because they felt like it would prevent the slide of society into moral depravity. The Jews practiced public shame to keep society itself from sliding further and further into sin.
It was expected that Joseph, as fiancé, would put Mary to public shame. He refused to do it. Matthew, chapter one, he resolved to divorce her quietly. He loved her; he did not want her to be publicly shamed. Eventually the angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and he had his epiphany, his “aha” moment. He came to understand that Mary was pregnant by the power of God and it was a miracle and there was no shame. In that culture, Deuteronomy 22, Mary knew that for such a sin she could be stoned—a scary event for this teenaged girl and yet her response is incredible. “Behold I am the handmaiden of the Lord.”
The Greek word for handmaiden is the feminine form of doulas. Do you know what the word doulas means? It means slave. In the Roman world, there were perhaps 60,000,000 slaves. The entire Roman economic system was predicated on the reality and function of slavery. It was a term of derision to be doulas, to be a slave. Yet, for Mary, it was a great pride. That is the cool thing in the Bible and in the early church. They took words that were despised words in the Roman and Hellenized world and turned them on their head and gave them glory. In the early church to call yourself a slave of Christ, to call yourself a servant of God, was a beautiful thing. Mary said, “Behold I am the handmaiden of the Lord. Be it done to me in accordance of your Word.”
I would suggest to you that you need to wake up every day, I need to wake up every day, and if we have had that epiphany where we really believe that Jesus is the Christ, that he is the Holy One, that he will reign forever and ever that he is Son of God, Son of Man, if we believe this, we should wake up every day saying, “Be it done to me in accordance to your Word.” We should wake up every day and say, “Behold I am the slave of the Lord.” This should be the attitude with which we live our lives and miracles happen. If we wake up every day and say, “Lord, I am your servant. Lord, show me your Word that I might do it. Let your word be done to me.” If we lived each day with that kind of approach to life and attitude, we would see miracles happen.
I want to take a brief glimpse at Mary in John chapter two. There we see the first miracle of Christ. It is celebrated at the epiphany. When you look at the Christian world today, the event of epiphany, in the earliest centuries of the Christian world—first, second, third century—referred to the birth of Christ. But, by the time you get to the fourth century, throughout the Christian world, this title of epiphany referred to two events: the visit of the magi and the manifestation of Jesus to the Gentiles in the form of a magi and then the first miracle of Christ at the Cana of Galilee when he manifested his glory. From the fourth century on, epiphany began to be celebrated January sixth.
When you come to John chapter two and you read about Cana of Galilee, at the very conclusion of the first miracle of Jesus, it says, “Thus he manifested his glory.” The Greek word there is epiphaneia, so it is the epiphany. We have this marriage at Cana of Galilee, and I love what you see in Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary has some official function at the marriage. We don’t know what it is; it may be a relative of Mary’s who is getting married, or it may be a friend, but she has an official role. The wine runs out at this wedding at Cana and Mary is concerned. She has some responsibility to see this problem solved. She comes up to Jesus and she says, “The wine has run out.” Jesus’ response in the Greek, and probably reflects the Aramaic, means something like this: “Your concerns and my concerns are not the same.” The wine has run out, your concerns and my concerns are not the same.
But I love what Mary does. She turns to the servants and says, “Listen, whatever he tells you to do, make sure you do it,” and she walks away. So, Jesus instructs the servants to fill six stone jars that are there for the Jewish purification rights, each jar capable of holding 20 to 30 gallons, collectively capable of holding 120 to 180 gallons. Jesus instructs that these jars be filled with water. By the power that is his, he performs his first miracle—at the molecular level, an incomprehensible act. He transforms water to wine. When the steward of the feast tastes it, when the steward of the feast tastes this water become wine, he marvels. He says, “This is not two-buck-chuck, this is good stuff. This is really good stuff.” Most people serve the good wine first and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. “You have saved the best for last.”
What is the intent of Jesus in this epiphany? It is not that people get drunk; that is never the intent of Jesus. In the Jewish culture drunkenness was shameful and despised, and biblically, drunkenness is condemned. That was not his purpose. The purpose was to manifest himself and his glory: an epiphany that people would see him and have an “aha” moment. They would see who he is. They would marvel at who he is and they would see that he is the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God. This was his purpose. Also, wine in the Jewish culture and sub-culture represent life and the joy of life and Jesus would have us know that he has come that we might have life and that we might have it abundantly and that his joy might be full in us.
You have this kind of epiphany. I love the comment of Mary. “Whatever he tells you to do, do it.” This was his first miracle. He had never done public miracles before. We don’t know what he did at home. Maybe he did stuff. Somehow Mary knew. “Whatever he tells you to do, do it.” It just almost reminds me of the way she responded to the angel Gabriel. “Be it done to me in accordance with your word. I am the servant of the Lord.” I think she woke up every day and sensed her son was her Savior and her son was her Lord. I think there is a sense in which every day she thought, “Whatever he tells you to do, do it,” particularly as he reached the fullness of his maturity and ministry. This is a powerful epiphany, and very unique in all the earth, that Mary had as the angel Gabriel appeared to her and told her she would give birth to the Son of God.
Finally, taking a moment to look at the woman at the well. John chapter four is one of my favorite chapters in the whole of the Bible. Jesus and his disciples are traveling from Judah to Galilee and they pass through Samaria. They pass through Samaria and they are hungry, they have been long on the road and they are hungry and they are thirsty. So, they are approaching this village called Sychar, and about a half mile out of town there is a well, which, in the Old Testament, is Jacob’s Well.
Jesus tells the disciples, go into Sychar, get some groceries. That is an amazing thing. You can read commentary after commentary and most scholars marvel at this because if you know Jewish history, you know Jewish travelers often times went around Samaria. If they would go through Samaria, they would not go in and grocery shop in a Samaritan village. Jesus sent the disciples, and they were willing to do it. Already the disciples were beginning to view people a little differently.
They go into the village to grocery shop and Jesus is there at Jacob’s Well and there is a woman there. We don’t know how many are there drawing water, but the woman is there, it is a Samaritan woman and Jesus approaches her. Jesus makes a request of her that she might draw water for him that he might have a drink. She marvels. You have got to understand what is going on in terms of ethnicity and culture. She marvels because he is a Jew and she is a Samaritan. She said, “How can it be that you, a Jew, would ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink of water?” Then the comment which she may have made or John might simply be making a comment or a commentary, but contextually we don’t know for sure, then the comment, “The Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” “How is it that you, a Jew, would ask me, a Samaritan for a drink of water? For the Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” The Jews did have some dealings with Samaritans out of necessity, but they had no friendship with Samaritans.
Jews hated Samaritans, Samaritans hated Jews and it was racism, pure and simple racism. It went back centuries to 720 AD; 720 AD the Assyrians come and they attack Samaria, they defeat, they conquer Samaria, they export Jews out of Samaria to Media. At the same time the Assyrians import Assyrians from Babylon into the region of Samaria. The thing was, that they didn’t export all the Jews; they only exported a little over half of the Jews, so a little less than half of the Jews remained in Samaria and now their number is diminished, but they have living in their midst, now, Assyrians from Babylon. The generations pass and they begin to intermarry, Jew and Assyrian, they begin to intermarry and have children together. Then their children and their children intermarry and pretty soon you have mixed race. What the Jews considered half-bloods or half breeds, and the Jews hated the Samaritans for tainting Jewish blood and for becoming racially impure.
Understand that later the Babylonians conquered Judah, exported Jews in Judah and Jerusalem into Babylon but those Jews did not intermarry, so those Jews remained pure-blooded Jews. When they were given permission by Cyrus the Great to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple and reestablish the walls, those Jews returned. When they returned to rebuild Jerusalem, the Samaritans who were now half-breed Jews came down to Jerusalem and said, “Let us help.” The pure-blood Jews said, “No, we don’t want your help. You are half-breeds, you are Samaritan dogs. Your hands are tainted, your blood is evil. We don’t want you touching the temple mount; we don’t want you touching the Holy City. We don’t want any of your help.”
So, the Samaritans went back to Samaria. They built their own temple on Mount Gerizim, they established their own religion, their own culture. They accepted the Pentateuch, the first five books of Torah, as inspired. They rejected the prophets, they rejected the Psalms, they rejected so much of the Jewish scriptures. You had not just racial but now this huge religious divide.
It really got ugly. In 128 BC, the Jews, under the leadership of John Hyrcanus, led an assault on Gerizim and Samaria and destroyed the Samaritan temple. Just before the birth of Christ, the Samaritans came with military forces and desecrated the Jerusalem temple.
So, the time Jesus is in Samaria, near Sychar, and having his drink of water, Jews and Samaritans, they just didn’t talk. So, she marveled. I hope you have a bit of an epiphany here, to understand that God loves all people. God loves Jew and Gentile, red, yellow, black, and white. God loves people and if you are going to be a follower of Christ you have got to learn to love people as God loves people. There is no room for racism. Racism is such a hideous sin in the heart and darkens the soul.
I love the person of Booker T. Washington, an African-American civil rights leader. Today, it is not that en vogue to honor Booker T. Washington because many current African-American civil rights leaders view Booker T. Washington as a guy who compromised too much, who made too many concessions. I love Booker T. Washington, and I feel like he was a bridge-builder and his heart was so Christ-centered and so Christlike. Booker T. Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute. He was the president of it for 30 years and he was the primary racial advisor to Theodore Roosevelt.
There is this story that one day, he took a walk. Being president of the Tuskegee Institute, he didn’t like sitting at his desk all day. One day he took a longer walk, just felt like walking further. He went to a neighborhood he had never been to before. It was very affluent, all white. He ventures into this affluent neighborhood and he is looking at these incredible homes. This woman comes out of house, a white lady, and she sees this black guy walking down the street. She calls to him, “Hey mister, hey, I have got some wood in the backyard I need chopped. It is wintertime. It is cold. I will pay you for it.” Booker T. Washington stops and he says, “Sure, I will help.”
So, he goes in the backyard and he starts to chop the wood and he starts to stack the wood and he starts to bring the stacks into the house and he builds a fire for her. She offers him some money and he turns it down. He leaves the house. So, Booker T. Washington is leaving the house as this woman’s daughter is coming into the house. As soon as Booker T. Washington is gone the daughter says, “Mom, do you know who that was?” She says, “No, dear.” The daughter says, “Mom, that is Booker T. Washington. He is the advisor to Theodore Roosevelt. He is the President of the Tuskegee Institute and you just had him chop our wood.”
She felt horrible. So, she goes the next day to the Tuskegee Institute, seeking the president and she finds Booker T. Washington in his office and she comes in and she starts to apologize profusely. He says, “No, you don’t need to apologize.” He said, “I was in desperately in need of exercise. Thank you. It is just a pleasure to do a favor for a friend.”
Now you can see why some people today, in the civil rights movement, might think that is a little too much concession. But I see the heart of Christ there in Booker T. Washington, the heart of Christ. I think Christ wants us to live as bridge builders to each other racially, that we might learn to love each other. I think this is the will of God in Christ and certainly for the people of Christ who call themselves by his name, that we would be bridge-builders, that we would love people as God loves people and as our Lord Jesus Christ loves people and it would be regardless of race.
There is something else going on here with the woman at the well because she is a woman and Jesus is a man, and he is not just a man but he is a rabbi. Rabbis did not talk to women in public. So, when the disciples come back from grocery shopping, they see Jesus talking to this Samaritan and to this woman and they are like, “Wow! What is going on here?” I love the way Jesus just shatters walls, he challenges culture, challenges the powers that be. He is King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, Son of God, Lord God Almighty. I love the way that the world looks at him in amazement. The way he treated women was unique.
Throughout his earthly ministry, no one ever saw a rabbi like this. Look at Luke chapter eight. Luke chapter eight you see Jesus on a journey with the twelve and then there is the comment made, and it is awesome! Jesus is on this journey with the twelve and with him are a group of women disciples. It mentions them—Joanna, Susanna, Mary of Magdala and many, many, many more—traveling with Jesus. Then the observation that they were traveling with Jesus and with the twelve and were providing out of their funds the money that fuels the ministry. We know that some of those women were women of means, particularly Joanna, and they may have had some affluence by which they were able to provide to Jesus and the ministry. But, many of them had skills and abilities in areas of art and craft and were able to create products and sell those products.
So, we have this comment in Luke eight that Jesus was travelling with the twelve and with a band of women, a company of women, Joanna, Susanna and Mary of Magdala and many, many, many more. No rabbi did this. If you research this, rabbis just didn’t do this. He was so radical. Look at the way he loved Mary and Martha, look at the friendship with Mary and Martha and Mary of Magdala. Jesus was shockingly revolutionary. There should be some kind of epiphany here, some kind of “aha” moment where we realize we are supposed to love people regardless of gender. We are supposed to realize that God loves men and women equally, that God values them equally, that both are equal in the Imago Dei, in the image of God.
Next February Barb and I have made reservations for a flight to Fresno, California. I can promise you I have no desire to go to Fresno, California. I don’t mean to offend, and I am sure I have somebody. I have been to Fresno. As a kid in college I used to go to Fresno in track and field because I threw the javelin and we competed in the Fresno Relays, which was a wonderful track and field event. Barb and I when we were married would sometimes drive through Fresno on our way to Yosemite National Park and Fresno was a great place to drive through.
We are going back, flying there in February because the Presbytery of the Evangelical Presbyterian church is meeting there in Fresno in February and there is going to be a vote on the ordination of women and whether or not in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church churches should be free to ordain women. I co-chaired the national committee on this issue, we made our presentation to the general assembly in June and it was approved, but now it has to be ratified by three-fourths of the Presbyteries, and each Presbytery needs an advocate, so I am going to be there.
It frustrates me sometimes, because I feel like there are some guys… I mean, we all want to be biblical, we believe in the full authority and inspiration of the Holy Scripture, the Bible is infallible, the inerrant Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice. You come to passages of Scripture and you want to look at them contextually, you want to look at them in the original languages, you want to understand what is going on culturally and I think Christians might disagree on how to interpret certain passages of the Bible. In our denomination we have egalitarians, who believe that the Bible teaches that men and women are equal before God, share the Imago Dei, equally gifted by God, equally called by God and if God calls a person, male or female, woe unto you if you get in the way of the call. We have those folks in the church. They have some passages in the Bible that they love to quote.
Then you have complementarians in our denomination, and they believe that God created man and woman as equal in the Imago Dei, but he has gifted us differently and called us differently and part of that difference has to do with authority. So, there is a peculiar authority that God has invested in men, in the context of the home and the church and we see that, not just in explicit teachings of the Bible, but implicitly in the order of creation and even the order of the fall. So, you have complementarians also in our denomination and you can find passages in the Bible that sound complementarian and you can find passages that sound kind of egalitarian, and I think it is overly simplistic, sometimes, the labels that we use.
I can tell you that as I go to the passages of Scripture on this subject, it is way too vast to deal with this morning, and you are thankful for that, I am sure. I have no doubt in my mind that there is room in the Old Testament and the New Testament, clearly, for women to exercise their gifts in leadership and service in the church of Jesus Christ. No doubt in my mind at all. I believe that as we are approaching the consummation, and as we are approaching the end of the age and as we are approaching the return of Christ, I think these are critical times and we need to harness all of our resources. We need to rally all of our troops, and God is pouring out and will pour out his spirit upon all flesh and our sons and daughters will prophesy and we need all the talents and resources in the body of Christ. I am wanting freedom on this issue in our denomination, and we are going to Fresno. I hope people realize Christ was unique and radical in the way that he treated women.
The woman at the well has this racial deal, this gender deal, then she has this prophetic epiphany where suddenly out of nowhere Jesus says, “Go get your husband.” It almost doesn’t even fit the context, but Jesus says to her, “Go get your husband.” She is like, “Well, I don’t have a husband.” Then Jesus looks at her and says, “You have spoken truly. You have spoken truly when you say you have no husband because you have had five husbands, and the man with whom you are now living is not your husband.” He is just a live-in guy.
Now this is an epiphany for the woman, an “aha” moment. So, she said, “Sir, I perceive you are a prophet.” There is an epiphany; he is a prophet. That is not a deep enough insight. She needs a deeper epiphany, so they go on in their discussion about the nature of worship, the role of the Jews and the Samaritans and finally she says to Jesus, “Well, when the Messiah comes, when the Christ comes, he will tell us all things.” Then the amazing claim of Jesus Christ to her, do you realize how rarely Jesus ever said anything like this? “I who speak to you am he.” “When the Christ comes, when the Messiah comes…” and then the response of Jesus, “I who speak to you am he.” The construct in the Greek, you have the “ego eimi” construct, and really the force of it is like “I am God the Messiah.” She goes to her village and tells everybody. “I met somebody that told me everything I ever did. It is the Christ.” The village invites Jesus to stay with them. They are Samaritans inviting a Jewish rabbi. He stays with them for two days and they convert. There is this village epiphany as they convert.
Epiphanies are powerful. I hope as we close, that from these two women, from Mary and the woman at the well, you would understand miracles happen when you are able to say, “I am the servant of the Lord. Be it done to me in accordance to your Word.” Miracles happen when you are able to say, “Whatever you tell me to do, I will do it.” We are not saved by obedience, we are saved by his grace, by his substitutionary atonement. We are saved by his obedience, not by ours. If you are saved and you have come to Christ and received him as your Savior and Lord, surely you want to obey. I promise you this: if you love him, you will see miracles in your life if you wake up every day and say, “Behold, I am the handmaiden of the Lord. Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Be it done to me in accordance to your word.”
I hope as you follow Christ that you have had enough of an epiphany that you know that we are to love equally, men and women, we are to love equally human beings regardless of race. This is the will of God in Christ for us. I hope you know that he is not just a prophet. That is a nice epiphany, but it is not enough. Not just a teacher. He is the Christ, he is the Messiah, he is the Son of God, he fulfills the prophetic office, he is the Word of God, he fulfills the priestly office, he is the Lamb of God. He fulfills the kingly office because he is Son of God, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is worthy of your life. He is worthy of my highest devotion. He seeks the commitment of our whole life. Let’s close with a word of prayer.