The Return of the Blog

Well, I have been away for awhile from blogging. First, I went to New Zealand for three weeks and then I came back to more emails than I could imagine. Only now am I getting around to posting something in the blogosphere (I’ve always wanted to use that word. I sometimes think about using it randomly in sentences - “Hi Jim. Nice blogosphere you’ve got there.”)

After preaching this weekend, I was thinking about all the stuff that I would have liked to have said about the triumphal entry of Jesus, but just didn’t have time for. So, here are a couple of thoughts…

1. Isn’t it interesting that Jesus chose to ride in on a donkey’s colt? Considering the way most political leaders enter cities with limousines, police escorts, and wearing expensive clothes, I am often astounded at how the King of Kings chose to use the humblest of animals for his entrance into Jerusalem. For people like me who chase after success and sometime dream of the “good life” consisting of fame and fortune, Jesus is an oddity. He just didn’t have the same priorities as I do.

2. I have always been intrigued by the fact that Jesus went so quickly from being celebrated as Israel’s deliverer to being the object of scorn and ridicule on the cross. That whole series of events is evidence that people often only want God for what he can do for them. He is seen as a means to another end and not an end Himself. The Jews in Jerusalem were happy to follow Jesus and proclaim him their king as long as he was going to provide for them freedom from their Roman oppressors but the moment it became clear that he was not going to give them what they wanted, they quickly changed their song from “Hosanna!” to “Crucify!” All of this makes me wonder how much I really love God for God and not what he will give me. Jonathan Edwards, the great American revivalist, wrote in Religious Affections that one of the ways to be assured of your salvation is to love God and not just love the experience of God. Sam Storms, in his commentary-style book on Affections called Signs of the Spirit wrote it this way,

  “We must, therefore, be careful that our primary joy is in God, as he is in and of himself, and not in our experience of God. That we have been made recipients of his grace and are enabled to behold his beauty is a marvelous thing indeed. But it is secondary and consequential to a recognition of God’s inherent excellency. What brings you greatest and most immediate delight: your experience of a revelation of Christ , or Christ revealed?” (92)

That question is well worth pondering. If you are like me, you might find that you are far more motivated by the resultant experience of God and his grace than you are by God himself. This, of course, explains why so many of us love to worship, but feel let down if we don’t “feel” it on one particular occasion. God help us all to love God for who he is and not simply for what benefits he brings to us.