“Thinking…thinking...”

      For my birthday, my granddaughter, Avery, drew a lovely 9x6” watercolor card. In the foreground the scene was a jumble of leaves, flowers, and stalks of shrubbery. In the middle distance was a cottage, and a garden by the sea. The farther distance was cliffs and rocky headlands reaching out to the horizon.

   I looked at the meticulous detail of the cottage windows and the doorway, and the chimney at each end of the roof. Avery had imagined all these shapes and colors, and placement of items in the scene. Then she executed every element of her plan. As I absorbed these features, I suddenly realized that I was going over thoughts that had already run through her mind— I was thinking her thoughts, after her!

    And this is a little picture of what the astronomer, Johannes Kepler, said about creation. When he looked at the earth and the stars above, he exclaimed, “O, Almighty God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee!”

       Yes, the Creator thought out every detail as He put the universe in place. When we look at the beauty of a mountain or a tree, a flower or a butterfly, we are “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.” How wonderful to know “God has been here before— I’m just following the track He blazed in creation.”

       But are there lines of thought down which He has gone, that we can never follow? Creation is a done deal, but where is it going? Specifically, where is humanity going? What are God’s thoughts about the future? It’s impossible to think God’s thoughts about that. We can’t take a microscope or a telescope to get them. If they are available, He must have given them to us somewhere in writing.

       This is where we come at last to the Bible. This, Christians believe, is where we find God’s plan for humanity. To put it simply, when creation was done, God said, “It’s good!” Then mankind rebelled against Him and wrecked all creation. Jesus died to redeem us. He rose again to prove His success, and now mankind has a simple choice—choose Him! That sequence carries our knowledge of God’s thoughts from creation (which we can read), into a future that is closed to us unless He speaks. The Bible gives His plan in one sentence: “The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.”

“A prophet does not come out of Galilee”

Oh? Says who?

Of all the foolish remarks made by the priests and the Pharisees, this may be the worst. Ordinary, common people look to “scholars” for authoritative, knowledgeable answers to questions. But this was the Pharisees’ response when the temple guards failed to arrest Jesus. They claimed that He couldn’t be a prophet because He was from Galilee, and they even claimed Scripture as proof. [1]

Going back in time a little bit, there had been discussion among the people on the feast day, as to whether Jesus could be “the Prophet” or “the Messiah”. At first, they too thought the Prophet or the Messiah couldn’t come from Galilee—he had to be from Bethlehem[2].

And what about Nathanael? About to be introduced to Jesus, even he had doubts: — “Nazareth! Can any good thing come from there?”[3]

But all of this wasn’t true—Jonah was a prophet—and he was from Galilee. In fact, he was from Gath Hepher, only 5 kilometers north of Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth.[4] And at Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the crowds seem to have figured it out: He was “the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee”.[5] Nathanael too, realized his error very quickly: “You are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”[6]

And that wasn’t all—Isaiah had prophesied that those living in the land of Zebulun and Naphtali (specifically “Galilee of the nations”) would have a great light dawn on them. This is the wonderful prophecy of “a child born…a son given” who is “Mighty God”.[7]

Going back to those priests and Pharisees—did they really not know this prophecy? Or did they lie? They shut down Nicodemus too, by suggesting that he too might be from Galilee![8] Did he not know the prophecy? Did he protest?

This whole incident could have been righted with a few quick references to Scripture. But the political elite pulled their strings and a "Good Man" went down![9]

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[1] John 7:52

[2] John 7:41

[3] John 1:46

[4] 2 Kings 14:25

[5] Mat.21:10,11

[6] John 1:49

[7] Isa.9:1, 2, 6. Also Matthew 4:13-16.

[8] John 7:50-52

[9] Further reference: “The Sigh of Jonah” in Volume 3, page 106.