Who is the King of Glory?

Context, Context, Context!

Whenever we read the Bible, we have to keep in mind the context of what we are reading. That means that we need to look at the author, the approximate date, the events that may have been taking place at the time of the writing. But it also means that we have to look at how the text fits in the larger story. Whenever we read a Biblical text, we MUST see how it points to Jesus. THIS is the purpose of the book, after all. Everything in the Scriptures point to the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and we need to keep that in mind whenever we read from it.

Kintsugi

This idea of Kintsugi, the Orientation, Disorientation, and New Orientation is the story of our lives - AND it is the story of the Gospel.

All of us can relate to this idea. Just think of a time in your life when you had a specific plan for how things were going to work out. You knew exactly what you were going to do, and what was going to happen when you did those things, and how things were ultimately going to end up. EXCEPT, things started out all right, you did the things that you had planned to do, but what was supposed to happen didn’t happen. Things somehow went sideways and you weren’t quite sure what to do next because this wasn’t part of your master plan. You found yourself in a place of significant disorientation. But then something happened. It wasn’t part of your original plan, but it wasn’t bad either. Things started to work themselves out in a new way that you hadn’t expected, maybe even BETTER than you had originally planned. Most of us have at least one story like this, many of us have multiple stories like this. It’s that story where you tell your friends, I had no idea why things weren’t working out the way I had planned, and then when everything did work out, it was even better than what I thought it could be!

The Gospel according to Kintsugi

This is not just our story - it is also the Gospel story! God had a plan for us when He created the world, we read about it in Genesis 1 and 2 - this is the period of Orientation. It didn’t take long for us to make a mess of that. In Genesis 3, Sin enters in and immediately we find ourselves in a significant time of Disorientation. This period of disorientation lasts for a long time. In fact, it occupies the vast majority of the Bible, from Genesis 3 through the end of the Old Testament. And then in the New Testament we have New Orientation. God sent Jesus to put the pieces back together.

Disorientation is the Vast Majority of the Bible

The vast majority of the Scriptures fall in this middle section that we are calling Disorientation. It tells us of humanity’s fall from grace and we begin to understand our sinful nature. It is also important to understand that this large portion of our Bible instructs us about the Law. And here is where many people go off track and get confused about what the Bible is teaching. The Bible does NOT teach us about the Law as a way for us to be reconciled to God. It teaches us about the Law as PROOF that we are utterly incapable of reconciliation in our own power.

The Earth is the Lord’s

It’s not ours...

Who is Worthy?

no one, really.

Who is the King of Glory?

Jesus, of course!