{"id":61558,"date":"2023-01-08T07:46:19","date_gmt":"2023-01-08T07:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=61558"},"modified":"2023-01-08T07:46:19","modified_gmt":"2023-01-08T07:46:19","slug":"discerning-messiahs-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=61558","title":{"rendered":"Discerning Messiahs 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

From: The Preacher<\/strong><\/p>\n

This Moses whom they refused, saying, “Who made thee a ruler and a judge?” the same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush. Acts 7:35<\/p>\n

*1.\u00a0 Messiahs Refused<\/b>*<\/p>\n

Not always do an oppressed people recognise and receive their messiah, because messiahs don\u2019t often look like it.\u00a0 A people\u2019s reception or refusal of their messiah, however, does not dismiss his mandate, although it can diminish his mission to them.\u00a0 Reception often determines delivery.\u00a0 In other words, how well one receives a messenger often determines how much of the message, or of the benefits of the message, one gets (Matthew 10:41; Mark 6:11).\u00a0 It may also be said that reception begets reception.\u00a0 That is, the reception that one gives to a message or messenger often influences how much of the related benefits one can receive.<\/p>\n

Of Jesus, it was reported that although He \u201ccame unto his own,\u201d to the very people He was sent to save, to the right people at the right time, \u201chis own received him not.\u201d Consequently, the Power of His coming was not accessible to everyone but only to \u201cas many as received him\u201d (John 1:11-12).\u00a0 That they did not receive Him did not dismiss His mission; it only limited how much from Him they got.<\/p>\n

Jesus did many \u201cmighty works\u201d that were attested to by Himself and even by unfriendly kings (Matthew 11:20; Mark 6:14); \u201cmighty works\u201d that left \u201cmany\u201d people \u201castonished\u201d (Mark 6:2), moved great cities (Luke 10:13), and made multitudes to \u201crejoice and praise God\u201d with loud voices that would not be suppressed (Luke 19:37).\u00a0 Yet \u201cin his own country,\u201d among His own kinsfolks that commonised and dismissed Him as \u201cthis man,\u201d the same Doer of \u201cmighty works\u201d seemed restricted.\u00a0 \u201cAnd he did NOT MANY mighty works there because of their unbelief\u201d (Matthew 13:54, 58).\u00a0 Their unbelief did not make Him less the Christ, but it affected how much from Him they could get.\u00a0 How they received Him, how large or small a room they had offered Him, affected how much heavenly download they could got through His channel.<\/p>\n

St Mark\u2019s Gospel reports the sorry reception of Jesus\u2019 kinsfolks even more worrisomely.\u00a0 They queried the source of His power, were \u201coffended at him,\u201d forced Jesus to marvel at their unbelief, until, finally, \u201che could THERE do NO MIGHTY WORK\u201d(Mark 6:1-6).\u00a0 No mighty works, except that He laid hands on a few sick people.<\/p>\n

Not every time will a people receive, or cheerfully receive, whom God sends to them, especially when they feel they know that person too much for them to be anything special.\u00a0 None is much blessed by whom they refuse. That (the) someone is verily on a mission from God does not usually make their acceptance automatic and unanimous (Ezekiel 2:3-7).\u00a0 On the other hand, that their mission is doubted and their acceptance not universal does not mean that they were no messiahs.\u00a0 In other words, a people\u2019s unanimous endorsement or disapproval could sometimes be at variance with the Divine, which makes Prophet Elisha\u2019s prayer for the fretful clergy during a national invasion very crucial: \u201cLORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see\u201d (2 Kings 6:17).<\/p>\n

It is reported of Moses that his own people \u201crefused\u201d him, not realising that God had sent him to them, to end centuries of enslavement in Egypt.\u00a0 God had not consulted them before He had sent that deliverer.\u00a0 None of their respected spiritual leaders had been briefed by the Heavenly Council.\u00a0 There had been no notable prophecy or vision about the coming of an Egyptian-Hebrew messiah.\u00a0 They could not tell his political party or his backers.\u00a0 They could not fathom how a person of such claimed millennial eminence could just emerge, so they demanded sternly, \u201cWHO made thee?\u201d They seemed to have been seeking human credentials from a heavenly messenger.<\/p>\n

In the actual case in Exodus 2:14, it was one man who spoke \u2013 apparently for himself, and then for \u201cus,\u201d saying, \u201cWho made thee a prince and a judge over US? intendest thou to kill ME\u2026?\u201d\u00a0 Nobody had ordained him everybody\u2019s spokesman, but it turned out to be so, especially as no one had challenged his private proxy speech.\u00a0 About 1,300 years later in the New Testament report of that apparently isolated incidence, the whole nation is postured as having rejected Moses.\u00a0 Instead of stating that a singular aggressor had posed the query, the plural pronoun is adopted: \u201cwhom THEY refused\u201d (Acts 7:35).<\/p>\n

In this season, some private voices should not be ignored as if they were speaking just for themselves in some isolated conference corner or market square.\u00a0 In the realms of the spirit, at some future time of reckoning when the books are opened, the whole land could be implicated.<\/p>\n

O Lord, I dissociate myself, my household, my estates, and my land from the negative implications of every wrong voice speaking in this season.\u00a0 Like Solomon, O Lord, I pray, take away their guilt \u201cfrom me, and from the house of my father.\u201d May it return upon them and upon their seed for ever, \u201cbut upon David, and upon his seed, and upon his house, and upon his throne, shall there be peace for ever from the LORD.\u201d\u00a0 Amen (1 Kings 2:31, 33).
\nThe Israelites doubted Moses, but \u201cthe same did God send.\u201d\u00a0 That they could not receive him did not mean that God had not ordained him.\u00a0 That they so publicly doubted his credentials did not mean that God had not discreetly commissioned him.\u00a0 Therefore, judging divine messiahs by the size of their human approval could sometimes be very misleading.<\/p>\n

Who was wrong in the conflicts: the people?\u00a0 The man?\u00a0 The Lord? Or the timing?\u00a0 Could a query have reverberated so loud over centuries, yet it was not of God?<\/p>\n

Loud hosannas have not always marked the reception of those whom God sends.\u00a0 Those public chants of accolade and approbation often come later, sometimes tragically too late (Luke 19:41-44).\u00a0 Messiahs do not usually carry a star on their foreheads, announcing them as one.\u00a0 Ironically, sometimes, even residents of the Bethlehem over which a messianic star brightly shines are hostilely blind to what distant wise men earnestly seek to their own neglected humble mangers.\u00a0 It is strange that it should sometimes take seers from afar, who look up, to announce the fulfilment of ancient prophecies to down-looking resident high priests distracted by mundane traditions (Matthew 2:1-6).<\/p>\n

O Lord, deliver us from the Samaritan error of still seeking a Christ that is already so close as just a conversation away (John 4:25-26).\u00a0 Save us from the faulty vision that projects the resurrected Master as a mere gardener, thus needlessly prolonging our search (John 20:15).\u00a0 Speak clearly through the gloom and howling storms that fog our perception to the point of calling the Saviour by the opposite name of a ghost; a pitiable mistiness of night by which merciful deliverers sometimes seem to us as part of the sudden fears from which we row so earnestly to escape, on these deserted and tormented dark seas (Matthew 14:26).\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n

(To be continued)<\/p>\n

\u25aa\ufe0e The Preacher can be reached at +2348035115164; +2348035115025; info@thepreacher.info; http:\/\/thepreacherdiary.com\/; www.thepreacher.info\/<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From: The Preacher This Moses whom they refused, saying, “Who made thee a ruler and a judge?” the same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush. Acts 7:35 *1.\u00a0 Messiahs Refused* Not always do an oppressed people recognise and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":61560,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5772],"tags":[1015,5439,1998],"class_list":["post-61558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-faith","tag-jesus","tag-messiahs","tag-moses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/61560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}