Welcome to Day 2204 of Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

What Does God Want – God Joined His Human Family – Daily Wisdom

Putnam Church Message – 02/12/2023

What Does God Want? -  God Joined His Human Family

Last week, we continued our series with the overall theme to answer the question: What does God want? The answer we discovered over this past month was that God wants you and everyone who will ever live. In other words, God wanted a human family. God wants co-workers to take care of His creation. God wants you to know who you are and why your life has value to him. He loves you and desires that you also love Him. Last week’s message was a high-level overview of the history of Israel, God’s chosen people from the Exodus out of Egypt through the return from exile in Babylon. We learned that even though God was betrayed by His family, he still loved them and pursued them. There was only one solution left. God would have to become one of us to have the human family he desired and loved. That is precisely what happened. Today, we will see that God Joined His Human Family. Christians know all about the coming of Jesus. They know he was miraculously birthed by Mary, a young girl who was a virgin (Matt 1:18-25). The broader culture is even familiar with the image of this baby. Jesus in the manger, especially in Christmas decorations and nativity sets. Several old but popular Christmas songs celebrate how Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecies about a messiah. There’s More to Jesus than the Nativity or the Cross The entire focus is typically on Jesus being born into the world to eventually die on the cross. He would be the means of forgiveness for our sins and, thus, our passage back into God’s family in John 3:16-17, “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.” In other words, when most Christians think about Jesus, they have the cross in mind. That misses something. The fact that God became a man in Jesus gets a little lost in focusing on the cross. Most Christians don’t realize that it was necessary for God to become a human for many reasons: to fulfill all the Old Testament covenants and overturn the results of the supernatural rebellions we discussed two weeks ago. The hope that human beings could still one day be with God forever was kept alive by God’s refusal to eliminate humanity or scrap His plan. He kept returning to humanity, offering them forgiveness and a relationship with him. God wanted them to believe and show they believed by living in harmony with him and each other. But God’s children rejected him at nearly every turn. It’s as though every time God said, “You can still be with me—believe that and then show me where your heart is,” the problem worsened. The Bible uses the analogy of wandering sheep with no shepherd to describe this propensity in the Old and New Testaments Isaiah 53:6, “All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.” Matthew  9:36 says, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” That’s pretty much on target. As I noted in last week’s message, God’s children needed new hearts and God’s presence to help them believe. They needed a means to be saved from themselves and from a destiny that didn’t include everlasting life with the God who loved them. There had to be a way for God to honor his covenant promises, reverse the curse of death, and help his people continue their faith. God’s solution to these problems was radical. He had to become a man. He had to join the human race. This is where Jesus enters the story. Jesus was God who became human (John 1:1-2, 14; Col 1:15-20; 2:6-9). In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He existed in the beginning with God…So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son. Jesus was the solution to every one of these obstacles. Only by dying on behalf of all humanity could the curse of death upon humanity be reversed. That meant such a death had to be followed by a resurrection, something only God could accomplish. Jesus was the solution for what happened in Eden. Remember God’s covenant with Abraham? God had supernaturally intervened to enable Abraham and Sarah to have a son. That was the beginning of the nation of Israel. God told Abraham that one of his descendants would bless the nations God had forsaken at Babel. But how could a mere man do that? Only God himself could be the loyal descendant of Abraham who would fulfill the promise of that covenant to bless the nations outside Israel. Jesus was that descendant of Abraham. Matthew 1:1 says, “This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham.” He was the promised offspring who would release people in the divorced nations (“Gentiles”) from other gods so they could rejoin God’s family. Galatians 3:16-18 God gave the promises to Abraham and his child. And notice that the Scripture doesn’t say “to his children,” as if it meant many descendants. Rather, it says “to his child”—and that, of course, means Christ. This is what I am trying to say: The agreement God made with Abraham could not be canceled 430 years later when God gave the law to Moses. God would be breaking his promise. For if the inheritance could be received by keeping the law, then it would not be the result of accepting God’s promise. But God graciously gave it to Abraham as a promise. Then, verses 26-29… For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.  And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes.  There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you. Jesus was the solution for fulfilling the covenant with Abraham. (For example, putting on new clothes – remember this quilted jacket with little squares.) Jesus was also a descendant of David, so he was the rightful king (Matt 1:1; Luke 1:32; Romans 1:3). The Good News is about his Son. In his earthly life he was born into King David’s family line. Jesus was also the solution for fulfilling the covenant with David. He had the right ancestry and was perfectly loyal to God. He never disobeyed God. He never committed any sin (2 Cor 5:21; Heb 4:15; 1 Pet 2:22). The fact that he never sinned also meant he was the perfect example of the purpose of God’s law and the covenant made at Sinai. Jesus was the solution for fulfilling the covenant with Moses. Jesus was the ultimate imager of God (2 Cor 4:4; Colossians 1:15 ). Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see—such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him. He illustrates how to image God; God wants us to conform to Jesus’s example (2 Cor 3:18; Colossians 3:10). Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. As we’ll see later in our series, that is also what being a disciple means (1 Peter 2:21). God becoming a man is a complex idea to grasp. God could become a man because he is more than one person. God is three persons who are entirely the same in their nature. The Bible uses the terms “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit” to distinguish these three persons. Christians call the result of that labeling the Trinity. “God the Son” became a man as Jesus (John 1:14). So the Word became human and made his home among us. Theologians call that the incarnation, which means God coming “in the flesh.” Jesus would be the only human God the Father could rely on to fulfill the covenants. You might recall that I mentioned earlier that God knew “from before the foundation of the world” that he would send the Son, Jesus, to bring people back into his family (Eph 1:1-14; 1 Pet 1:20). God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now, in these last days he has been revealed for your sake. Amazingly, the Son was willing to become a man, be tortured, and die so that God could have a human family. Here’s how one section of the New Testament describes the conversation: When Christ came into the world, he said to God the Father what is written in Hebrews 10:5-7. That is why, when Christ came into the world, he said to God, “You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings. But you have given me a body to offer.  You were not pleased with burnt offerings or other offerings for sin. Then I said, ‘Look, I have come to do your will, O God— as is written about me in the Scriptures.’” It’s good that God the Son was willing to be born as Jesus. Not only were the covenants at risk, but overcoming all the misery caused by supernatural rebellions was also at stake. We must understand that those rebellions required God to become a man—because God joining his human family set the stage for the coming of the Spirit. Fixing More than the Fall Because God became a man in Jesus, he could die. That was important because death could only be defeated by resurrection. You can’t have a resurrection without a prior death. Since Jesus was also God, he could bring himself back to life. John 10:17-18 says, “The Father loves me because I sacrifice my life so I may take it back again. No one can take my life from me. I sacrifice it voluntarily. For I have the authority to lay it down when I want to and also to take it up again. For this is what my Father has commanded.” Since the death of Jesus was God’s plan, God knew from before the foundation of the world that he would raise Jesus from the dead (Acts 2:23-24, 32; 3:15; 10:40; Gal 1:1). Because of the resurrection, our distance from God was bridged. (Bulletin) Death was overcome. Those were the effects of the rebellion in Eden. The Adam and Eve problems, caused by the temptation of the evil one (serpent, Satan), were solved. Everyone who believes that Jesus’ death and resurrection provided forgiveness of sin and everlasting life will be in God’s family forever (Rom 4:16-25; 8:10-11; 10:9-10; 1 Cor 6:14). Once Jesus rose from the dead, he had to return (“ascend”) to heaven. Jesus ascended to heaven and took his throne next to God the Father (Mark 16:19; John 20:17; Col 3:1; Heb 12:2). This was a precursor to sending the Holy Spirit, who would indwell believers (Acts 2:33; Rom 8:9-11). Jesus had to leave /so the Spirit could come (John 14:25-26; 15:26; 16:7; Luke 24:49).   The coming of the Spirit fulfilled the new covenant described by Jeremiah and Ezekiel (Jer 31:31-34; Ezek 36:22-28). It would be the Spirit who would provide victory over depravity (Gal 5:16-17), and whose works would be “greater” than Jesus’s own (John 14:12). “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father.” Jesus knew his death and resurrection were vital to the new covenant coming to pass. This is why at the Last Supper, Jesus told the disciples that his blood was “the blood of the covenant” (promise) poured out for them (Matt 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20). Once Jesus ascended back to heaven, and the Spirit descended to earth, humanity was not helpless against depravity. The bottom line is that for God to clean up the problems with having a human family—the perpetual failures and rebellions—he had to become a man and fulfill all the terms of the covenants himself. Think about my original question in these messages: What does God want? He wants you. And he sent his unique (one and only) Son to earth as Jesus to fix the problem of death and sin, to fulfill his covenants with humanity so that he could bring you home forever. God joined the human family. There was no other way. There are many reasons why the gospel has nothing to do with our behavior—earning God’s love and salvation. This is the biggest of them. It’s insane to think our imperfect behavior could ever be adequate. The coming, death, and resurrection of Christ/ would never have been necessary if we could earn salvation. Satan and His Minions: Dumb and Dumber? There’s one more twist in this story that I don’t want you to miss. You may have wondered something. I know I did (more than once). Suppose the death and resurrection of Jesus overturned the effects of what the evil one (serpent/Satan) had done, impeded the wickedness that permeated the world, and amounted to taking away the authority of the defiant gods of the nations. Why would Satan and the other evil spirits ever kill Jesus? It seems blazingly stupid. Think about it. (The devil tempted Christ in the wilderness in the same manner as he did Adam and Eve, hoping to eradicate the human race) The key to God’s plan was Jesus’ death, because you have to have a death to have a resurrection that overcomes death. And Jesus could not have gone back to be with God the Father if his mission was not accomplished—which means the Spirit could not have come to deal with depravity. So, if Satan and all the other powers of darkness had just left Jesus alone, God’s plan would have failed. Are they supernatural idiots? I’ve studied a lot about this topic. It’s fascinating. The New Testament actually answers this question. In talking about the good news (“gospel”) of Jesus that he preached, the apostle Paul said: 1 Corinthians 2:7-8, “No, the wisdom we speak of is the mystery of God—his plan that was previously hidden, even though he made it for our ultimate glory before the world began. But the rulers of this world have not understood it; if they had, they would not have crucified our glorious Lord.” “Rulers” is a word Paul used elsewhere for evil members of the spirit world (Eph 3:10; 6:12; Col 1:16). The point is simple: Satan, demons, and the rival sons of God didn’t know God’s plan. (They saw pieces of the plan, but did not understand) For sure, they knew who Jesus was when he started his ministry. So the evil demons called Jesus the “son of God” and “son of the Most High” (Matt 4:1-11; 8:29; Mark 1:12-13, 21-24; 3:11; Luke 4:1-13, 31-37; 8:28). The Old Testament made it pretty clear that God still wanted a human family to rule with him, just like the original idea of Eden. Satan and his buddies could have guessed Jesus was here to get that ball rolling. But they had no idea how. The logical thing, in their view, was to kill him. But that was the key to everything. So God played them like fools. It’s easy to chuckle about how much more intelligent God was than any of his supernatural enemies who were part of God’s supernatural family until they chose to reject Him. But let’s not miss the point. God joined humanity not to make Satan or demons look silly. He did it because he wanted you in his family. He needed no other motive. You were enough. But there’s still more to the story. Jesus did his part. We need to take a closer look at the Spirit’s role for a simple but significant reason—it’s directly tied to our roles in helping God recruit as many people as possible back into his family. We are citizens of God’s kingdom and are to assist fellow immigrants to citizenship. Now that God Joined His Human Family, we will see how God pursues His family next. Please read John 14:26, 15:26, Luke 24:49, and Acts 2 in preparation. Thank you for joining me on this leg of our Wisdom-Trek. I hope these verses have inspired you to actively embrace wisdom’s call and make her a daily presence in your journey. As we continue our journey, may we navigate life’s challenges with wisdom and grace. If you found this podcast insightful, subscribe and leave us a review, then encourage your friends and family to join us and come along tomorrow for another day of our Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy. As we take this trek together, let us always:

1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
2. Love Unconditionally
3. Listen Intentionally
4. Learn Continuously
5. Lend to others Generously
6. Lead with Integrity
7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain reminding you to Keep Moving Forward, Enjoy Your Journey, and Create a Great Day Everyday! See you next time for more wisdom from God’s Word!

Welcome to Day: 2204

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

What Does God Want – God Joined His Human Family – Daily Wisdom

/: 2023

What Does God Want? -  God Joined His Human Family

Last week, we continued our series with the overall theme, which is to answer the question: What does God want? The answer we discovered over this past month was that God wants you and everyone who will ever live. In other words, God wanted a human family. God wants co-workers to take care of His creation. God wants you to know/ who you are/ and why your life has value to him. /He loves you /and desires that you also love Him. Last week’s message was a high-level overview of the history of Israel,/ God’s chosen people from the Exodus out of Egypt/ through the return from exile in Babylon. We learned that even though God was betrayed by His family, he still loved them and pursued them. There was only one solution left. God would have to become one of us to have the human family he desired and loved. That is precisely what happened. Today, we will see that God Joined His Human Family.

Christians know all about the coming of Jesus. They know he was miraculously birthed by Mary, a young girl who was a virgin (Matt 1:18-25). The broader culture is even familiar with the image of this baby.

Jesus in the manger, especially in Christmas decorations and nativity sets. Several old but popular Christmas songs celebrate how Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecies about a messiah.

 

There’s More To Jesus Than The Nativity or the Cross

The entire focus is typically on Jesus being born into the world to eventually die on the cross. He would be the means of forgiveness for our sins and, thus, our passage back into God’s family in John 3:16-17 16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave[a] his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him. In other words, when most Christians think about Jesus, they have the cross in mind. That misses something.

The fact that God became a man in Jesus gets a little lost in focusing on the cross. Most Christians don’t realize that it was necessary for God to become a human for many reasons: to fulfill all the Old Testament covenants and overturn the results of the supernatural rebellions we discussed two weeks ago.

The hope that human beings could still one day be with God forever was kept alive by God’s refusal to eliminate humanity or scrap His plan. He kept returning to humanity, offering them forgiveness and a relationship with him. God wanted them to believe/ and show they believed by living in harmony with him and each other. But God’s children rejected him at nearly every turn. It’s as though every time God said, “You can still be with me—believe that /and then show me where your heart is,” the problem worsened. The Bible uses the analogy of wandering sheep with no shepherd to describe this propensity in the Old and New Testaments Isaiah 53:6. All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.; Matthew  9:36, When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. That’s pretty much on target.

As I noted in last week’s message, God’s children needed new hearts and God’s presence to help them believe. They needed a means to be saved from themselves and from a destiny that didn’t include everlasting life with the God who loved them. There had to be a way for God to honor his covenant promises, reverse the curse of death, and help his people continue their faith.

God’s solution to these problems was radical. He had to become a man. He had to join the human race. This is where Jesus enters the story. Jesus was God who became human (John 1:1-2, 14; Col 1:15-20; 2:6-9). In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He existed in the beginning with God…So the Word became human[a] and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness.[b] And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son. Jesus was the solution to every one of these obstacles.

Only by dying on behalf of all humanity could the curse of death upon humanity be reversed. That meant such a death had to be followed by a resurrection, something only God could accomplish. Jesus was the solution for what happened in Eden.

Remember God’s covenant with Abraham? God had supernaturally intervened to enable Abraham and Sarah to have a son. That was the beginning of the nation of Israel. God told Abraham that one of his descendants would bless the nations God had forsaken at Babel. But how could a mere man do that? Only God himself could be the loyal descendant of Abraham who would fulfill the promise of that covenant to bless the nations outside Israel. Jesus was that descendant of Abraham Matthew 1:1; This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham. He was the promised offspring who would release people in the divorced nations (“Gentiles”) from other gods so they could rejoin God’s family. Galatians 3:16-18: God gave the promises to Abraham and his child. And notice that the Scripture doesn’t say “to his children,” as if it meant many descendants. Rather, it says “to his child”—and that, of course, means Christ. 17 This is what I am trying to say: The agreement God made with Abraham could not be canceled 430 years later when God gave the law to Moses. God would be breaking his promise. 18 For if the inheritance could be received by keeping the law, then it would not be the result of accepting God’s promise. But God graciously gave it to Abraham as a promise. (Bulletin) Then, verses 26-29, For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 27 And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. 28 There is no longer Jew or Gentile,[c] slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children[d] of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you. Jesus was the solution for fulfilling the covenant with Abraham.

(For example, putting on new clothes – remember this quilted jacket with little squares.)

Jesus was also a descendant of David, so he was the rightful king (Matt 1:1; Luke 1:32; Romans 1:3). The Good News is about his Son. In his earthly life he was born into King David’s family line. Jesus was also the solution for fulfilling the covenant with David. He had the right ancestry and was perfectly loyal to God. He never disobeyed God. He never committed any sin (2 Cor 5:21; Heb 4:15; 1 Pet 2:22). The fact that he never sinned also meant he was the perfect example of the purpose of God’s law and the covenant made at Sinai. Jesus was the solution for fulfilling the covenant with Moses. Jesus was the ultimate imager of God (2 Cor 4:4; Colossians 1:15 ). Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth.

He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see—such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him. He illustrates how to image God; God wants us to conform to Jesus’s example (2 Cor 3:18; Colossians 3:10). Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. As we’ll see later in our series, that is also what being a disciple means (1 Peter 2:21). | God becoming a man is a complex idea to grasp. God could become a man because he is more than one person. God is three persons who are entirely the same in their nature. The Bible uses the terms “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit” to distinguish these three persons. Christians call the result of that labeling the Trinity. “God the Son” became a man as Jesus (John 1:14). So the Word became human[d] and made his home among us. Theologians call that the incarnation, which means God coming “in the flesh.” Jesus would be the only human God the Father could rely on to fulfill the covenants.

You might recall that I mentioned earlier that God knew “from before the foundation of the world” that he would send the Son, Jesus, to bring people back into his family (Eph 1:1-14; 1 Pet 1:20). 20 God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now, in these last days he has been revealed for your sake. Amazingly, the Son was willing to become a man, be tortured, and die so that God could have a human family. Here’s how one section of the New Testament describes the conversation: When Christ came into the world, he said to God the Father what is written in Hebrews 10:5-7. That is why, when Christ[a] came into the world, he said to God,

“You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings.

But you have given me a body to offer.

6 You were not pleased with burnt offerings

or other offerings for sin.

7 Then I said, ‘Look, I have come to do your will, O God—

as is written about me in the Scriptures.’”[b]

It’s good that God the Son was willing to be born as Jesus. Not only were the covenants at risk, but overcoming all the misery caused by supernatural rebellions was also at stake. We must understand that those rebellions required God to become a man—because God joining his human family set the stage for the coming of the Spirit.

Fixing More Than the Fall (Bulletin – read green)

ng himself back to life (John: 10:17

Because of the resurrection, our distance from God was bridged. (Bulletin) Death was overcome. Those were the effects of the rebellion in Eden. The Adam and Eve problems, caused by the temptation of the evil one (serpent, Satan), were solved. Everyone who believes that Jesus’ death and resurrection provided forgiveness of sin and everlasting life will be in God’s family forever (Rom 4:16-25; 8:10-11; 10:9-10; 1 Cor 6:14).

next to God the Father (Mark: 16:19

by Jeremiah and Ezekiel (Jer: 31:31

The bottom line is that for God to clean up the problems with having a human family—the perpetual failures and rebellions—he had to become a man and fulfill all the terms of the covenants himself.

Think about my original question in these messages: What does God want? He wants you. And he sent his unique (one and only) Son to earth as Jesus to fix the problem of death and sin, to fulfill his covenants with humanity so that he could bring you home forever. God joined the human family. There was no other way. There are many reasons why the gospel has nothing to do with our behavior —earning God’s love and salvation. This is the biggest of them. It’s insane to think our imperfect behavior could ever be adequate. The coming, /death, /and resurrection of Christ/ would never have been necessary if we could earn salvation.

 

Satan and His Minions: Dumb and Dumber?

There’s one more twist in this story that I don’t want you to miss. You may have wondered something. I know I did (more than once). Suppose the death and resurrection of Jesus overturned the effects of what the evil one (serpent/Satan) had done, impeded the wickedness that permeated the world, and amounted to taking away the authority of the defiant gods of the nations. Why would Satan and the other evil spirits ever kill Jesus? It seems blazingly stupid.

Think about it. (the devil tempted Christ in the wilderness in the same manner as he did Adam and Eve, hoping to eradicate the human race) The key to God’s plan was Jesus’ death, because you have to have a death to have a resurrection that overcomes death. And Jesus could not have gone back to be with God the Father if his mission was not accomplished—which means the Spirit could not have come to deal with depravity. So, if Satan and all the other powers of darkness had just left Jesus alone, God’s plan would have failed. Are they supernatural idiots?

I’ve studied a lot about this topic. It’s fascinating. The New Testament actually answers this question. In talking about the good news (“gospel”) of Jesus that he preached, the apostle Paul said: 1 Corinthians 2:7-8 7 No,/ the wisdom we speak of is the mystery of God—his plan that was previously hidden, even though he made it for our ultimate glory before the world began. 8 But the rulers of this world have not understood it; /if they had, /they would not have crucified our glorious Lord. (Pieces of a quilt – and the finished product)

“Rulers” is a word Paul used elsewhere for evil members of the spirit world (Eph 3:10; 6:12; Col 1:16). The point is simple: Satan, demons, and the rival sons of God didn’t know God’s plan. (They saw pieces of the plan, but did not understand) For sure, they knew who Jesus was when he started his ministry. So the evil demons called Jesus the “son of God” and “son of the Most High” (Matt 4:1-11; 8:29; Mark 1:12-13, 21-24; 3:11; Luke 4:1-13, 31-37; 8:28).

The Old Testament made it pretty clear that God still wanted a human family to rule with him, just like the original idea of Eden. Satan and his buddies could have guessed Jesus was here to get that ball rolling. But they had no idea how. The logical thing, in their view, was to kill him. But that was the key to everything. So God played them like fools.

It’s easy to chuckle about how much more intelligent God was than any of his supernatural enemies who were part of God’s supernatural family until they chose to reject Him. But let’s not miss the point. God joined humanity not to make Satan or demons look silly. He did it because he wanted you in his family. He needed no other motive. You were enough.

But there’s still more to the story. Jesus did his part. We need to take a closer look at the Spirit’s role for a simple but significant reason—it’s directly tied to our roles in helping God recruit as many people as possible back into his family. We are citizens of God’s kingdom and are to assist fellow immigrants to citizenship.

y next week. Please read John: 14:26