Homework assignment...The best homework EVER @ RTS Orlando!

Jesus doesn’t just demand right actions in line with the law. These are certainly required but only out of the genuine faith given by grace because of the mercy of God. This summary is clearly stated in 2 Samuel 15:22 “Behold to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than to the fat of rams” (ESV). This was true in OT times just as NT and ours. Sacrifice is only meaningful given our posture to God. If we are prideful or boastful in his presence he will knock us down. If we are humble and penitent he will hear us.

In this humble posture we may pray and ask God for those riches of the spirit he has promised. We have faith that believes the impossible, i.e. casting down a mountain into the sea, or a man being raised from the dead. We will have hope in the return of the Christ and the promise of the kingdom filled and perfected in glory.

There is also a warning in the summary. We should constantly seek to lean on Christ during this life so as not to go astray from the faith. In John 15 Jesus teaches “¹"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. ² Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. ³Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. ⁴ Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. ⁵I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” (ESV) John using the words of Jesus to teach the Jews and the gentiles shows that real ‘fruit’ or life can be ‘produced’ or lived in real faith or abidance in Jesus as Lord.

Weightless in a Vaccum Through a Glass Darkly...

David wells writes

“It is one of the defining marks of Our Time that God is now weightless. I do not mean by this that is ethereal but rather that he has become unimportant. He rests upon the world so inconsequentially as not to be noticeable. He has lost his saliency for human life. Those who assure the pollsters of their belief in God's existence may nonetheless consider him less interesting than television, his commands less authoritative than their appetites for affluence and influence, his judgment no more awe-inspiring than the evening news, and his truth less compelling than the advertisers' sweet fog of flattery and lies. That is weightlessness. It is a condition we have assigned him after having nudged him out to the periphery of our secularized life. His truth is no longer welcome in our public discourse. The engine of modernity rumbles on, and he is but a speck in its path.” Quote http://members.aol.com/augusteen/Weightless.html

God's distance from us at times seems to be a great deal of perspective. I would argue that perspective has to do with our view of the scripture. God is never more real than through the illumined truth of the Bible, Old and New Testaments. This is His revelation to His people for all time.
We live in not just a period of time (the 21st c) but in a place that is at it's core dark and bleak. The hope however is in the washing of this earth in the blood of a savior that has come to heal and make glad his creation and people! We would do well to consider this as we go through the ins and outs of our daily routine and consider the immensity and intimacy of our God.

Amen.