The Messiah as Lord

Jesus as high priest, king, servant, son of God and now.....

LORD!

But what does that really mean?
We started out our night by talking about the things we are loyal to.  Using stickers, we placed anywhere from 0-3 stickers on signs around the room of things or people we might be loyal to: your school, the country, the President, your family, your state, your friends, your parents, your favorite sports team, and your extracurricular group.  We found that we are most loyal to our friends, family and parents...but with some interesting things not too far behind like our favorite sports team.  We decided that being loyal to something or someone means we have faith in them and that we would make sacrifices for them.

So what does loyalty have to do with Jesus as Lord?  Well if we look at the Middle Ages in Europe, we can find the feudal political system that was in place.  In that system a Lord owned a large area of land along with everything in that land.  Knights were warriors who pledged their loyalty or faithfulness to the Lord in exchange for some property and freedom.  This loyalty meant that the knight would go to battle at any time the Lord called him and would risk his life to defend the Lord's property and kingdom.

So if we think about this system in light of Jesus being called Lord, we get a better understanding of who Jesus is.  Jesus as Lord asks us to be faithful and loyal to him, even to the point of giving up our own life!  Jesus is called Lord throughout Scripture, but especially in the gospel of Matthew.  People called Jesus Lord knowing that Jesus could heal, that Jesus had power, that Jesus had a higher authority than even the centurions because that authority comes from God!  Jesus calls us to have a genuine faith that understand that Jesus is not only Lord, but servant, high priest, king, son of God, and much more!

We took time to read Matthew 7:21-27 which is Jesus' parable about a house built on sand and a house built on a solid foundation.  If we have genuine faith that has a solid foundation on Jesus Christ, hard times and struggles that come up in life will not sweep away our faith!  To help us understand this even better, we went outside to stand on a solid foundation: cement.  We grabbed some chalk and wrote down what it means to have faith in Jesus based on this parable.  Before going back inside we each grabbed a small rock which we wrote "LORD" on to remind us that Jesus is Lord and our solid foundation.  What does it mean to you to have faith in Jesus?  Comment on this post with your responses.