Glorious Christ

Glorious Christ

Psalm 106:24-31; Jeremiah 44; Hebrews 1:1-9

When you walk through you day to day life how much of a place does Jesus Christ have in it? I mean really, if you attend church on Sunday, do you leave Jesus Christ behind? The world fills our time and our minds with such great thoughts of what isn’t done or what needs to be done and it can seem that we truly give Jesus about one hour of our focus a week if even that. This isn’t an odd thought or an odd reality and is not truly new. We see it in the verses from Psalms and Jeremiah today. None of us truly mean to do this relegation of Jesus to that time we spend in church, but it is so easy. Exodus 20:1-17 gives us the Ten Commandments and what we find in the first verses is that God is jealous and wants our full devotion. The people of the Old and New Testaments faced much of the same distractions that we face that draw devotion away from the world and the two most common are the ideas of work and pleasure.
Work is what we all must do to provide for our families and ourselves. Work is what we are called to do and God is happy to provide for us within our labor. What happens with our work is it begins to define us and the ends of work which is to provide for ourselves and our family changes to a means of definition. In our work we become defined by what we do and draw us away from the focus to be defined by our Lord God and our family. This is not unusual and is nothing new. Jesus we knew was a carpenter, Matthew was a tax collector, Simon Peter – a fisherman, etc. These were how they were defined by the society, the culture from which they came. Jesus walked away from His vocation and followed the will of His Father – God – and called all the disciples away from their vocations. No longer were they defined by their vocation, but became followers of Jesus Christ. They became disciples and though they once were all the things that once defined them by vocation they died to the greater glory of being defined by God and Christ.
Pleasure draws our focus away from our families and God because it feeds of the desire of self-fulfillment. Simple pleasures that are truly harmless can become a trap. Such as the pleasure of eating or drinking are not dangerous unless they become a center of focus and lead you away from glorifying God. The same is true with sexual relations. God wishes for us to enjoy those things, but things like gluttony places the pleasure of tastes and fragrances put you in the center taking the place of God. That is also why things like pornography and sex outside of marriage are not healthy. What becomes central is not the true gift of sex which is the sharing of two in love, but the seeking of pleasure and the objectification of each partner. A man or a woman no longer is seen as a brother or sister in Christ, but as an object of desire for self-gratification and pleasure. Pleasure becomes god.
When you look at your life where is Christ present? Christ is not to be relegated to one hour on Sunday, but He wants to be involved in all aspects of your life. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 highlights the importance of a partnership and how a partnership joined together in God in Christ is strengthened. Christ is to be the center strand that holds all else together. In your work and in your life how is Christ lived out? Would anyone know you’re a Christian? What are the words that someone would use to describe you and your life? When you look at your life think of how you can witness this glorious Christ?