Suppose someone places a blank piece of paper in front of you. How would you feel about it? What thoughts come to mind? It all depends upon the circumstances, doesn’t it?
If you are in a classroom on the day of final exams and that piece of paper is meant for your answers to half a dozen essay questions, it might raise your blood pressure a little. If you were prepared for that test, maybe it would not rise quite as high.
If that blank paper were a signed blank check, your excitement might know no bounds, unless, of course, it was a check drawn on your own meager bank account. That could be disappointing.
A blank sheet might signify good news—no demerits, no criminal record, no symptoms. What a relief!
A blank piece of paper might mean writer’s block if it has been sitting there awhile. I know from experience that frustration usually accompanies that problem. It could also mean great potential if inspiration has suddenly struck. When that happens I am eager to get to work, usually stopping whatever else I am doing immediately to do so.
Even with God that blank piece of paper could mean different things. It might mean a lack of authority. Jesus said in Matt 21:25 that there are two places from which to receive authority—from Heaven or from men. Either God authorized the action or men did, and the people he spoke to, who neither liked nor respected him, didn’t bother to argue because the point was axiomatic. God expects every aspect of our lives to be lived according to His authority. Whatever you do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus…Col 3:17.
He expects us to respect that authority, doing exactly what it gives us permission to do, but, in the case of a blank piece of paper, doing nothing. When God told the Israelites that the priests were to come from the tribe of Levi, he did not have to list all the tribes they could NOT come from. That is the Hebrew writer’s precise point when he says of Jesus, For it is evident that our Lord has sprung out of Judah, as to which tribe Moses spoke nothing concerning priests, Heb 7:14. The very fact that God said in the Law of Moses, “Levi,” meant Judah was excluded, and that in turn means that for Jesus to be our new High Priest the law itself had to change. We could go on and on with this point, but suffice it to say that when God gives you a blank piece of paper, He does not expect you to fill it in with your own choices.
But He does give us a blank piece of paper that is amazing and wonderful—a paper wiped clean of its list of sins, so clean there are not even any erasure smudges on it. When God forgives it is as if He crumpled the old list and destroyed it, pulling out a fresh new clean sheet from an endless supply.
Start today with that blank piece of paper. Fill it with as much good as you can because, you see, a blank piece of paper is one thing God will never accept from us.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Cease to do evil; learn to do well: seek justice, relieve the oppressed, bring justice to the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now and let us reason together, says Jehovah. Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow; though they be red, they shall be as wool, Isa 1:16-18. Dene Ward
If you are in a classroom on the day of final exams and that piece of paper is meant for your answers to half a dozen essay questions, it might raise your blood pressure a little. If you were prepared for that test, maybe it would not rise quite as high.
If that blank paper were a signed blank check, your excitement might know no bounds, unless, of course, it was a check drawn on your own meager bank account. That could be disappointing.
A blank sheet might signify good news—no demerits, no criminal record, no symptoms. What a relief!
A blank piece of paper might mean writer’s block if it has been sitting there awhile. I know from experience that frustration usually accompanies that problem. It could also mean great potential if inspiration has suddenly struck. When that happens I am eager to get to work, usually stopping whatever else I am doing immediately to do so.
Even with God that blank piece of paper could mean different things. It might mean a lack of authority. Jesus said in Matt 21:25 that there are two places from which to receive authority—from Heaven or from men. Either God authorized the action or men did, and the people he spoke to, who neither liked nor respected him, didn’t bother to argue because the point was axiomatic. God expects every aspect of our lives to be lived according to His authority. Whatever you do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus…Col 3:17.
He expects us to respect that authority, doing exactly what it gives us permission to do, but, in the case of a blank piece of paper, doing nothing. When God told the Israelites that the priests were to come from the tribe of Levi, he did not have to list all the tribes they could NOT come from. That is the Hebrew writer’s precise point when he says of Jesus, For it is evident that our Lord has sprung out of Judah, as to which tribe Moses spoke nothing concerning priests, Heb 7:14. The very fact that God said in the Law of Moses, “Levi,” meant Judah was excluded, and that in turn means that for Jesus to be our new High Priest the law itself had to change. We could go on and on with this point, but suffice it to say that when God gives you a blank piece of paper, He does not expect you to fill it in with your own choices.
But He does give us a blank piece of paper that is amazing and wonderful—a paper wiped clean of its list of sins, so clean there are not even any erasure smudges on it. When God forgives it is as if He crumpled the old list and destroyed it, pulling out a fresh new clean sheet from an endless supply.
Start today with that blank piece of paper. Fill it with as much good as you can because, you see, a blank piece of paper is one thing God will never accept from us.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Cease to do evil; learn to do well: seek justice, relieve the oppressed, bring justice to the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now and let us reason together, says Jehovah. Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow; though they be red, they shall be as wool, Isa 1:16-18. Dene Ward
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