Event page on YouVersion for Sunday, March 1st
http://bible.com/events/49570642
Plus, here is the overall plan for the month:
March: An Empty Throne - Perhaps the greatest and clearest expression of this phenomenon is found in the model prayer in the phrase, “…Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” There is a sense in which God’s rightful rule has been usurped by His subjects in such a way that He has withdrawn Himself for a time and has left a power vacuum that gets filled by all kinds of spurious destructive influences.
3/1 - Dominion Squandered (Genesis 1-3) Hypothetically, if there had been no fall, would God have still sent His Son through an incarnation to dwell among us as one of us? Perhaps. Who can know? But whatever the case, He gave to Adam an authority which we know did end up being given to the second and last Adam; Christ. Christ will not squander this stewardship (if that’s an appropriate term for His reign). But the first Adam certainly did squander it. He yielded to Satan’s influence and thereby stepped down from a “throne” of sorts, vacating it and abdicating his right to own and subdue all of creation. The result has obviously been catastrophic.
3/8 - David’s Seat (2nd Samuel 7) In David’s zeal to build a house for the Lord, he inadvertently opened the door for a prophecy and promise that God would build David a house instead. Before we can talk about the empty throne of David, we have to understand the significance of the Davidic Covenant itself and the role that his throne plays in the great Messianic prophesies from both the Old and the New Testaments.
3/15 - Vacating Heaven (Philippians 2) One of the most commonly misunderstood realities of the gospel is the nature of the incarnation. God’s condescension is often either understated or overstated. Let us strive to be precise and say only what is revealed in Scripture about it. Good news was preached to the shepherds by the angels, and it wasn’t primarily the good news of personal redemption from sin or the good news of justification by grace through faith for the elect. It was the foundation of those realities; the good news that God had become a man (as proclaimed also in 1st Timothy 3:16).
3/22 - The Throne of Your Heart (Ephesians 3) God never dwells with us as a subservient companion. Christ was the suffering servant, to be sure, but He was the servant of the Most High, not the servant of men. He did serve men, but only in obedience to the Father. Even in laying down His life, He said to the powers present, “You could have no power over me if were not given to you from my Father.” (John 19:11). So, there is a throne; a steering wheel, so to speak, in the heart of each one of us, and that “driver’s seat” is rightfully God’s. If we refuse to walk in the Spirit then we do not drive so much as, the vehicle of our life goes driverless. We can’t reach the pedals or see over the dash! So, either we embrace His reign in us, or we crash. There is no such thing as doing a tolerably good job “sharing" sovereignty over our lives with our Maker, as if Jesus will settle for being our copilot.
3/29 - Satan’s Seat (Revelation 2) This message is likely to be heavier on interpretation and application than usual. One of Satan’s slickest tricks is to take the citizens of the Kingdom of God and persuade them that they should focus on earthly priorities and strategies in order to accomplish spiritual and eternal realities. There have literally been leaders in Christendom who have preached a “convert or die” gospel message. This is only an example (perhaps the most extreme expression of it) of how getting the church to focus on political power distracts and detracts from the spiritual mission to which we have truly been called. We can be guilty of overlooking the best things while settling for things that appear to be good. The mission of turning America into a Christian nation is a tremendous example of this. We are surely supposed to focus on turning Americans into Christians, but the conversion of a nation via legislation, persuasion, economic pressures, or strategies of democracy and political power will certainly fall pitifully short of the ideal we imagine. The Kingdom of God has never been and never will be dependent upon the cooperation of human government.
