Jesus Wins! - April 6, 2011

Good Wednesday morning! Clouds in the morning, wind at night, will today bring a special fright? We don't know what the day may bring; we know even less of tomorrow. The problem is that we just don't know. We try to live in the moment like our children, "I'm hungry NOW!", but we often wonder and worry about the future. We envy our pets because they have no worries and Jesus told us to live that way. We claim to like our freedom, but we don't like the uncertainty that freedom brings. So who knows what is going on with tomorrow? Word has it that God knows everything, so he must know about the future too! That's the answer; the Word does have it. Tomorrow evening for our life group, we are going to begin our study of Revelation. The future, that big unknown we fear and worry about, is revealed in the Revelation of Christ given to John to write down for us. Paul expected the end times to begin in his lifetime, but it didn't. John might have expected that 'soon' would start when he finished the manuscript, but that didn't happen either. Many who read Revelation in the second century probably looked to the heavens to see the four horsemen coming down to start the carnage; they didn't see anything but the sky and stars. When a pastor first read Revelation to us, we may have looked around for the dreaded Antichrist. Quite a few movies over the years have tried to help us fear the Antichrist too. Why do we place our fear there? If you walked into the arena for your favorite sport and looked across the playing surface at your opponent, you might see a fearsome sight. Perhaps the opponent would be especially large or quick; you might recognize the reigning champion in your sport, one who had never suffered a loss in his entire career. In a team sport the other team might make all of your players look like little boys when compared to the physical size and speed of their players. But suppose that no matter what those opposing players looked like, you had some special foreknowledge that your side would win? Matters are different now; you might still look small and puny next to the other team, but you know that your side will win! Revelation is this revealing we long for. The other side appears to be winning the battle for much of history, ever since Adam and Eve took the forbidden fruit in fact. Suddenly, a champion appears on the scene near the end of time as we know it, and all of history is summed up quite simply: Jesus wins! 'nuff said, Bucky