30 September 2011

Psalm 102; 2 Kings 19:1-20; 1 Cor. 9:16-27; Matt. 8:1-17

The king of Assyria continues to mock the Jews and their God. He promises yet again that he will destroy Jerusalem and the people with the city. Hezekiah is dismayed when he first hears of this threat and sends his counselors to see Isaiah the prophet. Isaiah speaks peace, the Lord has heard and spoken to Isaiah concerning this matter. When the second threat comes, Hezekiah goes himself to pray before the Lord, affirming that He alone is the Lord, the gods of the other nations the Assyrians have overrun are not gods at all, and implores the Lord to act for the glory of His Name. The Lord acts in accordance with Hezekiah’s prayer so that the nations who have been destroyed will know that Israel’s God is the only true God, capable of turning back this fierce nation.

Jesus heals many, beginning with a leper. The story of the leper is brief but incredibly tender. As Jesus finishes teaching He comes down to find crowds following Him and a leper comes before Jesus and kneels. This man would have risked contaminating everyone, he was required to shout, “Unclean, unclean” as he approached people in order that they might avoid any possibility of contact with him lest they become ritually unclean and disallowed from the temple and, more than that, contract leprosy from him. In the next story, Jesus heals the centurion’s servant without ever seeing the servant so we know that Jesus can speak healing and it will be as He speaks. Here, with this leper, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the man to heal him. Human contact was the one thing this man had not enjoyed during the entirety of his affliction and Jesus touched the man. He didn’t have to do that but He surely knew how important it would be for this particular man. Even this would have been not only a tender moment but a teaching moment as well, no one but God alone could transmit cleanliness to an unclean person or thing, it was non-transferable. Hmmm.

Paul says that he is free to make choices about how he exercises his apostleship because it is not from men that he has received it but from the Lord. He is, therefore, free to be and do whatever he needs to do in order to share the Gospel. He is beholden to no one other than the Lord. He looks to no man for approval, only the Lord. His only goal is to share in the blessing of the Gospel, the salvation of those who receive it. Paul is concerned with one thing only, pleasing the Lord in his life. Paul knows the secret, that we are not to be people-pleasers, we do what we do for an audience of one, the one of whom Hezekiah says, (you are)” enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth.”

Praise Him for His grace and favor
To our fathers in distress.
Praise Him still the same as ever,
Slow to chide, and swift to bless.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Glorious in His faithfulness.

Tune

29 September 2011

Psalm 105:1-22; 2 Kings 18:28-37; 1 Cor. 9:1-15; Matt. 7:22-29

The situation looked grim enough to the people, having seen the Assyrians take away their brothers in Israel to captivity and then to have the fortified cities of their own kingdom overrun by this powerful nation. Now, the emissary of the king of Assyria speaks words of extraordinary discouragement to the people of Jerusalem, they have no friends and allies capable of delivering them and the Lord cannot stop the Assyrians, offering as proof the failure of the gods of the other nations who have been defeated and destroyed by this mighty army. He promises what the Lord has promised, a land flowing with milk and honey, but not this land, another like this land. He offers them the same opportunity their brothers have had, captivity and exile. It is, however, an offer of life rather than destruction. Will they trust in the Lord or will they simply give in?

Jesus tells us that we need to be prepared for storms. The only way to do that is to build your house on a solid foundation. He doesn’t promise that life will be easy and care-free, he instead tells us to be prepared for the worst by building on the rock that is the Word of God, Jesus’ words. In the end, all we will have to stand on is His testimony concerning us. In the first part of the passage, we see Him turning away those who have called on His Name and who have done great things in that Name and He refers to them as workers of lawlessness. It seems that our lives matter, how we conduct ourselves always, not just in moments of ministry. The wise person in the parable is the one who hears His words and “does” them, not being only hearers of the Word but doers. Walking in grace and truth reveals our true beliefs.

Paul’s apostleship then and now has always been questioned by some. In Corinth it seems that it was questioned because he was not being paid by the church to proclaim the Gospel. It was “normal” for the leader to be paid for his work and Paul chose not to receive remuneration for his service. For this reason, it was questioned whether he were truly an apostle as he didn’t act like one. Today, his apostleship is questioned primarily because he speaks into situations that Jesus did not like sexual ethics and morality and since Jesus didn’t talk about those things Paul is supposed to have gone beyond Jesus. Jesus spoke primarily to Jews who had the law and Paul speaks primarily to communities of Gentiles who were ignorant of the law of God. We must always be prepared for attacks on our faith and we must, therefore, know the content of that faith.

Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven;
To His feet thy tribute bring.
Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,
Evermore His praises sing:
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Praise the everlasting King.

Tune

28 September 2011

Psalm 101, 109; 2 Kings 18:9-25; 1 Cor. 8:1-13; Matt. 7:13-21

Hezekiah has sought an alliance for protection with the king of Egypt against the king of Assyria with whom he already has an alliance. Sennacharib came against and destroyed the fortified cities of Judah and only Jerusalem remained. The king demanded payment from Hezekiah who went beyond the terms of payment and gave lavishly of the temple treasury in hopes of averting destruction. This gesture, however, overreached and only whetted the Assyrian king’s appetite for more, in the belief that if Hezekiah could afford this measure there was surely more. He sent emissaries to show the Judean king how weak was his position, that the Egyptians could do nothing to protect him and he had torn down the altars and high places so he had even weakened himself religiously by focusing his attention on this one God who was worshipped in Jerusalem. Hezekiah’s trust was in too little is the basic line of reasoning. The Assyrians had already proven their power and might, surely nothing in which Hezekiah trusted could avail much.

It is popular today to believe that there are many ways to heaven or that there will be universal salvation because God so loved the world that He sent His Son, Jesus, and so, love wins. Jesus, however, speaks of a narrow gate where not many will enter and a broad gate through which many will pass to their destruction. Could He be any clearer? We need to be careful about the people we listen to, we need to be immersed in the Word of God for ourselves, not dependent on the words of men. I have a friend who constantly tells me what he hears from television preachers and never does he tell me what the Lord is saying to him apart from through these preachers. We have been given two great gifts, the Word of God written and the Holy Spirit to teach us truth, we need to rely on these rather than words spoken by powerful men and women lest we be led astray to our destruction.

There is but one God, all else is idolatry. Paul speaks to a culture which acknowledged and believed in many gods and where there were temples of worship for these gods. Food was offered by vendors and people alike to gods and Paul says that since these are not gods they should not deeply concern themselves over the eating of food with the one exception of if it causes another Christian to stumble in misunderstanding. There should never be the appearance that someone believes in multiple gods. Syncretism is a real danger and we must take care not to allow ourselves to be misunderstood in our devotion to the Lord. We cannot truly participate in joint prayer and worship services with others who do not recognize Yahweh as the only true God and it troubles me when Christians do this very thing. We must be willing to stand on truth always, never compromising on this conviction.

Lift high the cross of Christ!
Tread where His feet have trod.
As brothers of the Son of Man,
Rise up, O men of God!

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27 September 2011

Psalm 97, 99, 100; 2 Chron. 29:1-3,30:1-27; 1 Cor. 7:32-40; Matt. 7:1-12

Was the Passover about religion or religious activity? It seems here that the reality is that the Lord simply wanted a people yielded to Him, with their hearts turned to Him rather than those who did the right sacrifices. Hezekiah saw that many had come to this Passover festival and were not consecrating themselves with the proper sacrifices and so he, the king, prayed to the Lord for their forgiveness based on their having set their hearts to seek the Lord, “even though not according to the sanctuary’s rules of cleanness." The Lord heard this prayer and blessed the people, just like He had promised in 2 Chronicles 7 to Solomon after the dedication of the temple, He would hear, forgive, and heal if they would humble themselves, pray and seek His face and repent. Because of this, the festival continued for two solid weeks and at the end the priests and the Levites blessed the people, their voice was heard and their prayer came to God’s holy habitation in heaven. What a concept!

We spend an inordinate amount of time talking about the sins or flaws of others, it seems part of human nature. Imagine what it would have been like to be Jesus and have full knowledge of other people while being perfect yourself. In spite of that, we rarely see Him speaking these things to people except to point out their hypocrisy. If He didn’t conduct Himself that way when He had every right, should we not take a lesson from Him? It is far easier to deal with someone else’s sin rather than our own. Hezekiah decided that the best way to deal with the sins of others was to ask the Lord to see their hearts seeking after Him and forgive on that basis. He could have insisted that they refrain from participation in the feast but instead he asked the Lord to forgive, which is exactly what Jesus did. Love is the key.

Paul’s desire for the people is that they experience undivided devotion to the Lord. He has personally experienced this joy and knows that nothing on earth compares to that bliss. It is not that he believes there is not “good” in marriage, the Lord has ordained that to be a good thing but he believes there is something better even than marriage, undivided devotion to the Lord. In both this passage and yesterday’s Paul speaks also of self-control. He understands the difficulties of passion and says that those who cannot control those passions should indeed marry but he believes that it is better to remain free to love the Lord with all your being. Indeed, there is nothing like the devotion to the Lord and we do have divided hearts. Let us set ourselves, whatever our situation, to loving the Lord and seeking His face that we might know the blessing of His presence.

Rise up, O men of God!
The church for you doth wait,
Her strength unequal to her task;
Rise up and make her great!

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26 September 2011

Psalm 89:1-18; 2 Kings 17:24-41; 1 Cor. 7:25-31; Matt. 6:25-34

So they feared the Lord and… The most important words in Judaism were Deuteronomy 6.4-5, “"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” You can’t fear the Lord and worship something else as well, He won’t allow it. He is One and if I keep this command concerning loving him with “all” then where is the space in my heart, soul and might to love something else? Other things or even other people become gods to us when they keep us from Him, when they exert a claim on our lives that detracts from His claim on our lives. The people of Israel/Samaria tried to have it all and when you try to have it all you have nothing at all.

Jesus calls us to let go of our attachment to things of earth, to allow ourselves to trust the Lord for all these things and seek only His kingdom. That is so impractical! What would happen if we did what Jesus says here? Our lives would likely be simpler, our needs fewer and our hearts more satisfied in Him. This teaching begs the question, how much is enough? Certainly if we followed this admonition we would be required in most cases to settle for less, to think differently about everything in our lives. In the end, there would be more joy and thanksgiving for His provision and we would have better priorities in our lives, more of us would be available to Him. We would certainly be out of step with the world if we lived this way. Just like Jesus.

The present form of this world is passing away. Do we believe that? Do our lives show that we believe that all the stuff that is is passing away? We have real attachments to the things that are passing away, we work to get more of it and we work to keep what we have, all the while living with the knowledge that this is all illusory in the grand scheme of things. Jesus lived as though this were true, and Paul seems to have developed a level of detachment over things of earth as well. Throughout history men and women have decided that this is true and devoted themselves to the Lord and His kingdom and almost always they have found it necessary to detach themselves physically from the world in order to detach themselves spiritually, the allure of the world is great. Can we live within the world with that same level of detachment as a witness to the world? Are we willing to try?

Rise up, O men of God!
The kingdom tarries long.
Bring in the day of brotherhood
And end the night of wrong.

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