guarding the gallery -- part 1

The Word for today:
Numbers 20

As an artist, God is in a class by Himself.

Certainly he is an artist as Creator -- of the sunset, of the flower, of the blue in the sky and a pretty girl’s eye.  But he is also an unparalleled artist in the regular sense: he paints a picture like no one else can.

His pictures convey great spiritual truths that words are unable to express. And his favorite subject, by far, is His Son.

He has conveyed the beauty and power and bravery of His Son by painting him as a Lamb, as a Lion, as Light, as Bread, as a Star and as a Ladder to the Stars, as a Door and as a Door Knocker, as a Shepherd, as an Ark, as a rainbow, as a sword, as a burning bush, as an Angel, and even as a serpent!  You get the picture.

But Of all God’s illustrations of Jesus, none is more completely developed than “the Rock.” Like a skipping stone, we can follow this Rock from one cover of the Bible to the other--

starting with the rock that was smitten, from which life-giving water flowed (Exodus);

to the stone the builders rejected which became the capstone of the arch (Psalms);

to the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands, which crushed the prideful institutions of man (Daniel);

to the stone of stumbling and a rock of offense for unbelievers (Isaiah/Romans/1 Peter);

which same stone is the foundation of the church, upon which the wise man builds his house (1 Corinthians/Matthew).

The Rock skips across the pages, touching down here, then there, then there, then there…

Tomorrow, we will watch it skip from Exodus to Numbers, from the past to the present, from the cross to the heavenly throne of grace.

As we do, we will not only view the Artist’s subject, but we will get a glimpse of how carefully He paints and how fiercely he guards His gallery.

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