Having watched on television this past weekend a not so happy football game in Knoxville, I wanted to pull up this old devotion that speaks of a happy time I did have in Knoxville years ago.
"As [David] went, he said: 'O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you--O Absalom, my son, my son!'" - 2 Samuel 18:33
When I was a senior in high school in east Tennessee (Kingsport), the World's Fair was in east Tennessee (Knoxville). One of the fun things at the World's Fair for groups of high school and college students was to make lines.
Lines to nowhere.
All ya did was stand in the middle of a plaza and form a line of 8-20 students or so as if you were in line for some World's Fair exhibit or show. The next thing ya know, there's a couple hundred people from all around the world who had joined the line because they wanted to see the "exhibit" or "show" too. Then the students would just walk away into the crowd, leaving the unwitting crowd to wait in a line for nothing, no exhibit, no show, nothing.
Whose line are you standing in?
According to his flesh, the incarnate Messiah, Jesus, came from the line of David. Of course, David needed a Savior for his sin too, but David is said to have had a "heart for God," which means that he did things as in today's verse, where he weeps over the death of his son, Absalom, the very son, who tried very hard to kill his father, David.
That the Messiah would come from the line of David means that the Messiah would display a perfect "heart for God" and a perfect love for people, even those who would kill him.
To stand in David's line means that we too have a heart for our enemies. For God desires not the death of sinners. God wants not the death of his enemies.
Instead God wants us sinners to be sorry for our sin, then repent, and then believe that God reconciles us to himself when we put our faith in His Son, who we crucified and killed on a cross.
May God lead us so that we do not become the butt of a World's Fair joke and join a line that's going nowhere.
Instead may we be part of a line like David's, that was perfected in Jesus the Christ, where the line is full of "hearts for God," full of loving prayers for enemies, and full of The Way to eternal and everlasting life.
Praise God!
Pastor Chris
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson
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