LORD, ONLY YOU CAN CHANGE ME – INTRO (week 1 of 10)

LORD, ONLY YOU CAN CHANGE ME – INTRO (week 1 of 10)
Submitted by Leah Page on Sat, 01/09/2010 - 12:18am LCM010

The first night of our new study launched this past Wednesday!

We got off to a good start, with an ice breaker forcing us to introduce each other – I think this gave us a lot of good opportunity to laugh together and learn some unique things about each of us. I hope this serves us well as we go through these next couple of months together and commit to pray for one another.

We began by reviewing some of the high points of our study in Malachi from last semester; primarily the pattern of the Lord’s [kind!] Rebuke which leads us to Repentance which is the posture that receives the Restoration of our fellowship with the Lord. ("The Lord opposes the proud, but gives grace (!) to the humble.")

Though the last word before the Lord goes silent for 400 years (between the old and new testaments of the Bible when there was no prophet in Israel) is "curse," nevertheless the last words are ultimately, collectively, the Lord’s PROMISE – that he would send a forerunner, "Elijah," who would prepare the way for the Lord’s coming and our salvation! One who would turn the hearts of the fathers to their children....

And we picked this up in Luke 1, then, where the priest Zechariah receives a visit from the angel, Gabriel, to tell him the good news that he and his wife Elizabeth are to have a son in their old age, an answer to their prayers, who would come "in the spirit and power of Elijah." And this son – John the baptizer – would be set apart, filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb (!), and his ministry would be to "turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous," and to "make ready a people prepared for the Lord."

And what was this ministry? What was this "red carpet" rolled out to lead up to the arrival of the Lord Jesus? Notice, John’s message was NOT – "I have come to bring you good news which shall be for all the people!" Rather, John’s message was "REPENT! The Kingdom of God is at hand! The Lord is coming, judgment is imminent! And you are sinners deserving of the wrath of God! Cry out for mercy!"

In effect, the red carpet that prepares the way for the GOOD news – of the salvation purchased by Jesus’ blood – is the message of the very BAD news about our sin and the fact we will never be able to achieve the righteousness that will earn God’s favor. (It must be a gift!) The fact that the BAD news is so very BAD is what then makes the GOOD news of God’s grace in Jesus so very very GOOD.

This set the stage to launch into our review of Jesus’ famous "sermon on the mount" toward the beginning of his earthly ministry. And in Matthew chapters 5-7, we see Jesus take the Old Testament "LAW" and raise the bar even higher. "You have heard it said…..but *I* tell you……" Always taking the requirement for righteousness deeper – through to the heart.

We read through all of Matthew 5-7 to end class by way of giving us a bit of a "jump start" into the first lesson – highlighting as we went any mention of the word "heaven" (which appears at least 21 times in these 3 chapters, depending on how you count to repetitions/synonyms, etc.).

It is clear, just in these verses, that Jesus starts with the heart (the character of those who are "blessed" – highly favored of God!), and then brings every thing that we "do" thereafter and lines it up alongside the heart, examining each area of life and whether it measures up to God’s standard of perfection. ("...the holiness without which no one will see God.")

To put it another way – there are the beginning hints, here, of the fact that what we DO springs from who (whose) we ARE. And we will get into this a bit more fully in the weeks to come, Lord willing!

For next week, we dive right in to chapter one – completing the overview of the whole "sermon on the mount," and particularly focusing on the nature of the "masks" we wear – The ways we hide and cover ourselves so we might appear to be more righteous (more praiseworthy) than we really are.

Jesus exposes our hypocrisy – and our study starts here, because only when we remove our self-made garments of fig leaves (and the trees behind which we like to hide) can we humbly admit we are weak and vulnerable and shameful, and we need Jesus’ righteousness, because our own best is "as filthy rags."

How fitting, then, the title of our little book: "LORD, only YOU can change me…."

Again, I challenge you - let us not be "battle weary" before we even begin. Let's "change our minds" and think of this study not as another activity which adds to our busyness, but rather think of this study and time in the Word of God as part of our REST before him.

We are looking forward to a truly blessed time in the next few weeks.

~Leah (Page)