Sunday, June 2, 2013 - 6:15 pm

Today, Pastor Todd began a series entitled 'Seeing Summer', since seer is another word for prophet, and over the summer he'll be speaking from several of the minor prophets - Micah, Nahum & Habakkuk. He explained that prophetic books were written for specific local audiences, so when we read them, we're not going to get the same understanding as they did, but ideally we should be open to hear what God would say to us personally through them. Prophetic books deal with sin and consequences, which must lead us right back to Christ, since He took the consequences of our sin. With that in mind, Pastor Todd spoke from Micah 1:1-5. What do we see here? First, that God speaks creatively and personally, that the same thing that made Micah special in his day, the Holy Spirit dwelling in him, is present in each of us as Christians. It's God who initiates, and we respond. We don't make things happen, but He is quite capable of initiating something through His Spirit in us. Next we find the context of a time of peace and prosperity where, just as it is with us today, the temptation is there to forget the Lord our God. The warnings against self-importance are warnings we should take heed of today as well. God, as judge, calls Himself as witness against His people, and we must remember that He is our ultimate authority. It seems as though we have focused on judging those outside the church, and avoiding judgment on one another, but scripturally the exact opposite is how we ought to respond. That's not to say we condemn one another, but since we all ought to have the same frame of reference, the truth that God exists and that He made everything that is, we have a basis to judge what is right, what is wrong, and what is best. We don't make up judgments, we refer to our judge's - God's - decision. We have no reason to be casual or flippant about our faith, our mission is to become more like Christ, and less self-important. Pastor Todd then tied this in to 2 Corinthians 5:14-21. Looking back to Christ having paid for the consequences of our sin, it was done so that we should not live from a point of view of self-importance, and it was done so that in Christ, we might become the righteousness of God. That's a huge source of joy for us, that everything bad about us was put on Jesus, and everything good about Jesus was put on us. That's why God no longer pours out His wrath on His people for their sin, because it was already poured out fully on Jesus. The main point of challenge to take away from today's message is that idolatry and self-importance can be a danger that we can easily fall into if we're not careful. In Christ, selflessness and righteousness are the antidote. The fact is, we're not the centre of the universe - Jesus is.