Only Begotten

In the Bible, John 1:27 states that John the Baptist said this, (when referring to Jesus),

“He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”

Wow.

Yet here in Genesis 6:5-8, it says,

“The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.”

The HEART of GOD was DEEPLY troubled for having created us at one point. John the Baptist says he was not even worthy to touch the feet of Christ, but the HEART of God was troubled.

This is beyond serious!

We will think of the feet of Jesus for a moment. The feet that carried the one who is our salvation. Not “was” our salvation, but was, and is, and is to come. (And we had better be prepared, for the hour is coming quickly.) The feet of Jesus, the feet that delivered our savior’s miracles and messages to us. The feet that were speckled and then covered with his blood as he walked to his own cross across Jerusalem to Golgotha. These are the feet of Jesus.

John the Baptist, someone we revere as a great holy man, a leader in our faith, states that even he was not worthy to touch not only Jesus’ feet, but he says he wasn’t worthy to touch even the straps of his sandals!

We humans in Genesis were so bad that we troubled not the feet of God, but the heart of God.

We are a sleeping church.

So far gone are the days of the Old Testament that we have forgotten what it was like to offer up blood sacrifices to our Lord. We never had to. We have Jesus.

Friends, it’s time to remember. We do not need to make blood sacrifices, but one sacrifice we must make is that of our own comfort. We cannot possibly be the body of Christ, the feet of Christ, if we are only sitting in pews.

I am currently involved in a Bible study with my church on Wednesday nights, and the study we are doing is the Experiencing God study by Henry, Richard, and Mike Blackaby and Claude King. In day two of this study, we learn through several examples seen in the Bible that God is not always going to tell us where to go, but he will tell us to go nonetheless! He will reveal his instructions as we show obedience to him.

When are we going to go?

When was the last time we went?

Have we ever?

These are the questions that we must ask ourselves.

In Genesis, when we, (yes, we), troubled the heart of God, the Lord said,

“I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created- and with them the animals, the birds, and the creatures that move along the ground- for I regret that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.”- Gen.6:7-8

That’s it, y’all. Noah. And Noah-one else! (Ok, ok, sorry about that one.)

But really, only Noah out of all the human race found favor in the eyes of God.

If it so happened that once upon a time only one man and the family of said man found favor with God in all of the human race, why couldn’t that happen again? God promised to never flood earth again, but should we be any less concerned about the amount of people turning away from Him? They say that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.

We all go around saying “Oh, thank goodness!” or, “Thank God,” (which makes more sense), but you don’t hear people walking around saying, “Thank Noah I’m still alive!” Hah. Maybe we should. But, I digress.

The point is, God regretted his creation.

Wow.

Who are we to be thinking that it won’t happen again?

Sodom and Gomorrah, anyone? If you are unfamiliar with the story, I recommend you read Genesis chapter 19.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we sinners turned to the cross?

What if we, like Jesus, could be unafraid through the power of our Father God? What if we stopped caring about how “weird” we were, because souls saved matters more than personal reputation? What if we started acting like the body of Christ? What if WE are the feet?