If you are on Facebook, have you seen this sign before? “What I If Told You You Read the Top Line Wrong”?
How many of you read the sign wrong the first time? I did. Our brains think that we already know what the line is supposed to read, so our brains read the line correctly – except they didn’t. We think we see what is there but when we look closely, we do not.
When it comes to Christianity, it is easy for us to look at the churches in the Yellow Pages and think that what we are looking at is Christianity. Except when we look more closely we see some serious differences.
The elders have asked me to do a series of studies on the characteristics of the NT church, especially as the church is distinguished from the Yellow Pages churches. We began two weeks ago with the most fundamental study of all: the need for each of us to study. We each have an obligation before God to study His word, know His word, live His word, and teach His word.
Today’s devotional is also very foundational to this whole discussion: We must respect the authority of Jesus Christ.
We all recognize the concept of a “chain of command.” It is also known as a “pecking order.” Let me give just two examples. When I was in college, getting trained to be a teacher, I had to do my student teaching. As a student teacher, I answered to my immediate supervisor who was an experienced teacher. She, in turn, answered to the principal, who answered to the local school superintendent, who answered to the state school superintendent, who (in some ways but not all), answers to the Secretary of Education, who answers to the President of the United States.
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Perhaps we think of the military most often when we think of a “chain of command.” We have soldiers, then squads, platoons, companies, battalions, brigades, divisions — all the way up to the Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States who is the Commander in Chief.
There is also a “chain of command” in the Bible and we begin at the top – God.
GOD IS THE “AUTHOR” IN THE WORD “AUTHORITY:”
This is God’s right as the Creator of all things. Didn’t you all make something out of clay when you were in school? You probably made a small pitcher or an ash tray. Maybe you made something into an animal. You could make anything you wanted out of that clay because you were in control of that clay. To a certain extent, you were “sovereign” over that clay. When the time came, you may have even thrown that clay away. It no longer fit your broader aims and goals in life so you did not think it was worth keeping any more.
In the same way, God is sovereign over this whole world; in a way that you were not sovereign over that lump of clay. That is, God made the whole world and God is not accountable to anyone or anything relative to how He uses this world. In Romans 9, Paul pictures God as a potter, in an image that reflects the prophet Jeremiah’s teachings. The potter has right over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use (9:21).
Everyone is accountable to God. Even Jesus Christ is accountable to God, which we’ll point out in just a moment.
