JANUARY 15, 2022

  “Yet as I read the birth stories about Jesus I cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog.” 

― Philip Yancey

GENESIS 36-37

10When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?” 11His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.(37:10-11)

MATTHEW 12:1-21

1At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. 2When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”

3He answered, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. 5Or haven’t you read in the Law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent? 6I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. 7If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’^a you would not have condemned the innocent. 8For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

JOURNAL 

I love that Jesus is a rebel. I love that he is constantly confounding the Pharisees. I can only imagine their pious judgement of him as they scoff and look down their nose...searching for ways to discredit him. 

The Bible is full of examples of those, whom God has given inspiration, being rejected and minimized because of their passion and belief. Yet in the end...they are proved righteous. I love that God loves the rejects and chooses to build his Kingdom through them. From Moses to Jacob to Joseph to David and ultimately through Jesus. All of them were rejected in one way or another. All of them clung to God and his love for them as they navigated the waters of shame and ridicule. 

One of the first movies I ever remember going to see was Rocky. I vividly remember people standing up in the movie and cheering. Thinking back it seems silly but as I think deeper I think it is because movies and stories capture the longing in our hearts. We desperately want to know that the shame of our past and present is not the final word on us. We want to believe and hope that better days are ahead and that somehow some way, we will finally get it right and be redeemed. 

The miracle of the gospel is that we in fact do have that hope. We can take comfort in knowing that God is here to redeem us and we are part of the greatest underdog story of all time. 

 13For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

COLOSSIANS 1:13-14