And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them.
And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Mark 10:1-9)
I absolutely LOVE God’s word on creation. No apologies. No explaining things away. No denying real science. Just knowing that what the Creator teaches about himself and his creation is like coming home to reality.
When I read how Jesus was again surrounded by crowds who had gathered to hear him, and how “again, as was his custom, he taught them”, I felt like he was doing that exact thing for me this morning. He was attaching to me in my time with him even while he was also meeting with his disciples all over the world who were coming to him as I was.
When I then read through these familiar words, one thing stood out more strongly than ever: Jesus is “the Word” of God giving us the final word on “the word of God”.
The apostle John began his gospel account with, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” Jesus is here called “the Word” to communicate (in the most beautiful way, I should add) how personal God is in speaking to us. But what is really important for us is to see that Jesus is “the Word”, he was “WITH God”, he “WAS God” and he created everything.
The scriptures we have in the Bible are constantly called “the word of God”. As God speaks to us through his Son, the scriptures begin to be called “the word of Christ”, God speaking through his Son.
When Jesus’ religious opponents kept trying to test him and trap him, it was to make him say something contrary to the scriptures, the word of God, because that would prove he could not be the Messiah. No matter how many times they failed, and no matter how often Jesus embarrassed them and exposed their hypocrisy, they hated him so much that they could not stop trying to destroy him (narcissists that they were!).
However, what Jesus did here was what he did all the time, he held up the word of God as the plumbline of truth and let his opponents show everyone how far away their hearts were from God’s word.
The warning in this is how Jesus identifies the Pharisees’ problem as “your hardness of heart”. Many people are just as heart-hardened against God’s word as those religious hypocrites were back then. To mention creation even in churches is becoming a source of contention when God’s word is so clear on the matter.
This morning, I simply testify to the glory of Jesus Christ as “the Word” giving us the final word on creation by magnifying “the word of God” in what it reveals. God’s word is God’s word, so it tells us the truth about where we came from, who we are, why we are here, what’s wrong with us, and what God has done to make things right between us and him. I have never found one claim against Jesus Christ and creation that has a leg to stand on, as they say. But God’s word is continually proven true, not only in creation, but in its description of the human condition.
Jesus defeated Satan in the wilderness by declaring scripture, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4). And we defeat Satan’s lies by continuing to live by the words that come from God’s mouth as given to us in the scriptures we have in the Bible.
This morning was just one more way “the Word” declared the final word on “the word”, and I happily go into my day walking with my Creator in “the obedience of faith”.
© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
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