Pondering Week One - Jesus the One and Only

In this introductory section, Beth sets the stage for the birth of the Christ child. She describes the 400 year period in between the Old Testament and the New Testament as being a time where God was silent in His communication with the Jews. The hearts of the people were "hard as flint" and they would not listen. They commanded the prophets not to prophesy, they did not want to hear God's voice instructing them how to live.

How many times I have done just that... I did not want to hear God's voice because I knew He would convict me to stop some behavior that I did not want to stop. So I picked and chose what I wanted to listen to, or just stopped listening all together. How I must grieve (notice I am using present tense...) the heart of God.

Anyway, since they stopped listening, God stopped talking. For 400 years. And the silence was deafening for these people who defined themselves by their ability to hear the voice of God. The silence created an incredible insecurity in them, which gave birth to legalism... they needed some boundaries within which to conduct themselves, since the Lord, who had always guided them, was silent. I thought this perspective was very interesting, thinking of the hundreds of laws the Pharisees set forth to direct the Jews on how to live... contrast that with the 10 Commandments that God gave...

But though it appeared that God was silent and inactive, He continued to work for the fruition of His merciful plans for us...

The silence produced in the Jews a thirst, a hunger for the Word of God. God, in His wisdom, withheld that which was essential to their abundant life, to make them aware of how much they needed it, craved it...

This whole idea of creating a thirst in their hearts for the Truth, for the Word of God, reminds me of something I learned when I was in Israel a couple years ago.

Part of our tour was a trip to a biblical botanical garden, where they had all the plants mentioned in scripture. At one of our stops through the garden, our tour guide described the citron tree - which is like a large lemon - and requires lots of water. It is one of the symbols of the Feast of the Tabernacles, a festival which is centered around praying for rain. She reminded us that when God gave the Israelites the Promised Land, He told them, "The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden. But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven... So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today - to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul - then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and oil." (Deut. 11:10-11, 13-14) What the Lord is telling them is that when they were in Egypt, the fertile soil pretty much irrigated itself, yet in the Promised Land, they would be completely dependent upon Him for sending rain in its season. The Festival of the Tabernacles, or Succoth, takes place in October. It is a time where they celebrate the harvest. And it is a time where they pray for the autumn rains. Think about this - they have had no rain since the springtime. The water they are living on at this point has been sitting in the cisterns for several months. It is stale and still water. They need the autumn rains to fill up their cisterns with fresh water. Add this next bit to the equation: when Jesus first spoke about his living water, it was the last day of the Feast of the Tabernacles. Scripture says (John 7:37-38), "On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, 'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of LIVING WATER will flow from within him." This was certainly symbolism that the Jewish people, who were thirsty after months of summer, for fresh, clean water, would understand in a flash. Jesus was offering them fresh, pure, living water, of which, if they chose to believe, to drink, they would never be thirsty again (John 4:14).

Did that hit you like it hit me? It made me cry, it was symbolism that I felt in my gut. I really understood what Jesus was saying for the first time!

Don't you love getting the cultural perspective on the scripture? Doesn't it breathe freshness into your understanding of the Word? Doesn't it help you to understand a little better how much the Lord God, the Creator of the Universe, loves YOU?

So tying this back into our lessons this week... :-), God's silence, like the dearth of rain over the summer, created in the Israelites a hunger, a thirst for Him, for His Living Water, for His One and Only Son... Jesus.

Well, I guess this week's lessons certainly sent me down a few rabbit trails! But they all lead back to our Awesome, Amazing, Loving, Ever-faithful Savior! Amen!

Please let us know where the lesson or where this blog post led you... we would love to hear what you are thinking, where the Lord is leading you!

Praying that you are discovering that Jesus truly is the One and Only...