Good Morning Friends,
Today we seek to understand from the inside out about the nature of the church and the bride of Christ…about love of God and love of our neighbors. Today we look in the mirror and realize that though we think we are groomed and something of worth, the reality is that God will humble us. Humble us for a greater purpose of becoming holy. Friends, our wisdom and generosity pales in comparison to God. We cannot possibly out give God and be as Holy as God, but the question still remains. If We Come Clean, Are We Still All In Tilling The Soil Of The Garden?
Scripture: When the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon, (fame due to the name of the Lord), she came to test him with hard questions. She came to Jerusalem with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold, and precious stones; and when she came to Solomon, she told him all that was on her mind. Solomon answered all her questions; there was nothing hidden from the king that he could not explain to her. When the queen of Sheba had observed all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food of his table, the seating of his officials, and the attendance of his servants, their clothing, his valets, and his burnt offerings that he offered at the house of the Lord, there was no more spirit in her. So she said to the king, “The report was true that I heard in my own land of your accomplishments and of your wisdom, but I did not believe the reports until I came and my own eyes had seen it. Not even half had been told me; your wisdom and prosperity far surpass the report that I had heard. Happy are your wives! Happy are these your servants, who continually attend you and hear your wisdom! Blessed be the Lord your God, who has delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel! Because the Lord loved Israel forever, he has made you king to execute justice and righteousness.” Then she gave the king one hundred twenty talents of gold, a great quantity of spices, and precious stones; never again did spices come in such quantity as that which the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.
1 Kings 10:1-10 (NRSV)
Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. He said to them, “Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
Mark 7:14-23 (NRSV)
But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.
James 1:22-25 (NRSV)
These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
Genesis 2:4b-9, 15-17 (NRSV)
Message: God is to have a certain Wow Factor in our worship that blesses us with a banquet of spiritual food. The image is to remind us of today’s scripture about King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Our service is to reflect from inside out, like polished silver, how much we love God. The meat of the table is to be our communion with Christ, and we are to be cupbearers of life and standard bearers of love. Friends, the heart of God is to be reflected in the structure, witness, and consciousness of the body of believers as the Bride of Christ. Now Solomon was a type of Christ; he was the son of David; but there is a greater son of David – Jesus Christ. And in the story, the woman, the Queen of Sheba, can represent a lost person seeking Christ. What is interesting is that the Queen of Sheba went to great lengths to seek something very special. She gave the relationship her very best and we should learn from her commitment about what is really wise. But friends, our collective doing is more than a relationship of modelling the example of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. We must also look long and hard in the mirror and remember who we are to reflect and to whom we are to give glory. In a spiritual and religious sense, we must submit and receive love before we can reflect it. We really cannot become very good at loving others until we receive the love of God. The deception is us claiming credit when the glory must go to God. For God offers us the indwelling of the Holy Spirit so we might do and give in a way that allows the fruit of the Spirit’s lips to give a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. The message is that life is more about being someone that loves more than doing so we might be loved. Friends, we are to grow in civility through the joy and pleasure of imitating God in the planting of gardens while realizing that not everything is meant to be consumed and not everything brings a lasting joy. For here while our hands are covered in dirt, we learn that our Spirit might experience the great goodness of God but that we still need to get cleaned up. Of course, cleanliness and bathing have deep rooted history in Jewish Law and Tradition. Certainly, the aspect of hygienics played a very important role in Biblical times, as it has over the last couple of years with an increased relevance. But what we are reading, and I hope understanding is how the Pharisees had taken ceremonial tradition to the extreme of creating man-made laws and in so doing missed the joy of the Garden and fell in a way of missing the mark of joy in life. It would appear, that among their thinking was the element of control and dominance but the deeper message is not only about the distortions of culture in driving expected behavior but also in the realization that working the soil is not a point of defilement but part of the challenge of life. So today we put on our thinking caps in the hopes that our gardens of imagination grow productive in ways that not only bring satisfaction but also glorify God.
And So, since we all want our gardens to be fruitful, it makes one wonder about the relevance of today’s double-edged question for the church community. I have been washing and sanitizing my hands a lot since the Pandemic but still I garden. And God is still at work even when I am not. Of course, there are rules by which we must agree to abide by and receive the benefits of belonging to a group when it comes to dealing with dirt and tending a garden. Often in this regard there are things we have never read or understood but still are expected to follow. We make the mistake that it is always something external when the real challenge is internal. We confuse the law and tradition… privilege and peace while we emerge from a plague of darkness hopefully with a desire to not only forgive but forget. Still, regardless of what some people want you to think there are right and wrong things to do in this life…there is the Way of Christ and everything else. But it is more a matter of the heart than the mind in being truly wise.
Pray we are all in. Pray that precious revelations in the Bible renew our minds and help us to realize that life is not about us, but about valuing God and what God is doing. Pray therefore that we live for and lead others to seek a relationship with Christ. Pray we realize it is about surrendering all that we are and all that we have, and all that we want, so we might live in the consciousness of a marriage with God. Pray we realize that all our doing…all our churchiness…if it is to be of any value must start and end with a relationship of love in a dance with Jesus, the Spirit, and the Father…in a dance with the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sustainer. Pray therefore we manifest when we worship God a collective experience of the energy of life imparted one to another but emanating from a unity with God. Pray our worship be an inspiring state of prophecy that reflects the light of the Shekinah glory. Pray we realize that in our serenity, testimony, and character in Christ we will always receive more than we can possibly ever give in return. Pray we realize that our faith is to become refined as pure gold and that God owns all the gold. Pray we realize that in our submission to love we are saved by faith through the grace of God so we might act in a way that honors God. Pray we be humble, realizing God will make known the mysteries of life. Pray we differentiate between the law and tradition…between love and culture. Pray the gardens of our bodies be sanctified for a new creation and wisdom that honors God.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 