"The Four Questions"

(a repeat from 2013)

"The Four Questions"

     

        "His name shall be called wonderful" (Isaiah 9:6).

    The Lord Jesus Christ fulfills this blessed prophecy as the One full of wonder.  He perfectly fits His name as His person and work provide to our hearts the singular fascination of our existence in both time and eternity.  "Great is the mystery of godliness, God was manifest in the flesh" (I Timothy 3:16).

    Four questions help us to keep this fascination and mystery fresh in our hearts concerning God's truth:

       1.  Who is the Lord Jesus?

       2.  What has He already done for His Father, and for us?

       3.  What is He presently doing?

       4.  What will He do forevermore?

    The Bible continually speaks to these questions, whether in the prophecies and foreshadowings of Christ in the Old Testament, or the history and teaching of the New.  "Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life.  And they are they which testify of Me" (John 5:39).  Thus, the degree to which we establish and maintain our quest for knowing the Person and work of Christ corresponds to the degree we truly live, as God defines life.  "To live is Christ" (Philippians 1:21).

    The Apostle Paul, a man once caught up to Heaven for the direct vision of spiritual reality, determined that the knowledge of his Savior transcended any and everything.  "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord" (II Corinthians 12:1-4; Philippians 3:8).  The four questions ruled Paul's heart and life, as evidenced throughout his Christ-saturated epistles, penned under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (who is Himself devoted to the centrality of the Lord Jesus): "When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me" (John 15:26).  Both eternal God and enlightened humanity thus gaze with enraptured wonder upon the Son of God, including the Father who proclaims His holy accolade: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well l pleased" (Matthew 3:17).

    In both Heaven and earth, there is no one like the Lord Jesus.  In our hearts, there must be no one like Him.  They were made for Him, even as Scripture declares of believers, "God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father" (Galatians 4:6).  The four questions help stoke the warm flame of devotion to the Lord Jesus that must continually burn upon the hearth of our spirits.  We do well to consider them often, particularly as we open God's Word, and then as we face the challenges of life that press us to seek four answers.  Again, who is the Lord Jesus?  What has He done?  What is He doing?  What does He promise to do forevermore?  These are the central questions of Christ's existence, and of our life and being in Him.

"All things were created by Him, and for Him.  And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist.  And He is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the preeminence."

(Colossians 1:16-18)

"My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus."

(Philippians 4:19)

Weekly Memory Verse

    Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.

(Galatians 5:16)