Insightful Musings on theScriptures
by
Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67
Good morning, special ones.
I only set out two mouse traps last night. Checking the trap line this morning, I tallied 100% success. One was in our “mud room,” the other, would you believe, was in our car.
No jog this morning. I need to get busy and gear up for a small logging operation. I’ll drop two big cedars, limb and buck them into logs I may be able to use, then haul them home. I’ll use the track hoe machine on that job for the heavy lifting.
This devotional production from 2010 struck me as being so generally good…that I couldn’t believe I wrote it. Maybe that’s one of the fringe benefits of a bad memory.
Blessings. Love, Dad/Ray.
Taking into account the whole of Biblical revelation, I’d like to attempt a concise paraphrase of these words by Jesus: “He who joins with me participates in the solution. He who rejects me remains a part of the problem.” Of course, the universal problem is SIN. And the exclusive solution for this core problem is JESUS.
Jesus goes on to give a small but authoritative glimpse into how things work in the realm of evil spirits (vv. 24-26). It’s spooky. And it’s supposed to be. But Who else could present this kind of information with such authority and clarity? We can be sure He is not just putting forth a theory or opinion—which is all we finite humans can do. This brief disclosure helps to confirm the huge devastating consequences of rejecting Christ and His Lordship. So when one rejects the invitation influences of the Kingdom of God, he unwittingly and automatically (by default) makes himself open and vulnerable to the influences and controls of the enemy kingdom. Every person, therefore, faces the real option of either becoming a “house of God” or a “haunted house.” And the only way to be the former over the latter is to “SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS…” (Matthew 6:33). Why in the world does this make so much sense to me—but so little sense to “unbelievers?” Read again the last section of this reading for the fundamental answer (vv. 33-36). To be sure it has to do with internal enlightenment—the mystical, yet profound, work of the Spirit of God—the quintessential opposite to the work of evil spirits.
While Jesus was teaching along these lines, a woman in the crowd was distracted by a form of MARIOLOTRY (the deification and worship of Mary, the mother of Jesus) and called out, “Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.” Jesus forthrightly corrected her by replying, “Blessed rather are those who HEAR (hearing ears) the word of God and obey it” (Luke 11:27-28). Don’t let this get by you. This is not only a statement describing mankind’s solution in general, it is YOUR SOLUTION in particular!