Speaker: Rev. James Duckett

It’s so easy to sympathize with Joshua in this story. When he hears about this, he runs to Moses and says, “My lord, make them stop!” Why should they get the glory and the attention? They wouldn’t cooperate with the group. They wanted to do their own thing. They weren’t following the rules. They weren’t part of the party—by their choice! So, why didn’t God just skip them?

All of us who ticked the box that said, “yes, we do love Jesus” are in a bit of a bind. We love Jesus so we follow his commandments? All of them? All the time? But wait, logically (and these formulas depend heavily on logic), does that mean that if we don’t keep Jesus’ commandments that we don’t love him?

Imagine with me: We were on that road to Emmaus with Cleopas that Easter afternoon. Those things happened to us. Those questions are questions we had, both before and after this encounter. How do we make sense of them? What do we do with them, now?