31 January 2015

Psalm 55; Isa. 51:1-8; Gal. 3:23-29; Mark 7:1-23

This word of comfort is addressed to a very specific group of people.  “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord…” and ““Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord…”  The promised comfort is intended to reach the ears and then the hearts of those who seek righteousness because what is promised is righteousness, “a law will go out from me, and I will set my justice for a light to the peoples.”  Those who will fully receive the comfort the Lord offers know that the real comfort is not the Land or its possession and enjoyment, it is found in the comforter Himself, the restoration not of the nation but of a covenant people worshipping and enjoying Him.  We tend to get that wrong.  When we look for restoration of some wrong we set that thing first and not the one who restores.  Possession of the Land was something that was to benefit the people and the Land because the people lived according to the Law and life was as it should be.  The command was, “Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will die in like manner; but my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will never be dismayed.”

Tradition, Jesus says, is a secondary matter.  “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”  It isn’t that tradition is a bad thing but when it becomes more important than the commandment of God then we have a problem.  The commandments Jesus gave were simply love God and love your neighbor.  When tradition gets in the way of those two, we need to re-evaluate the tradition.  Sometimes we value traditions over people.  In our worship we certainly value the tradition and other churches don’t in favor of reaching seekers in worship.  Our choice of traditional worship means that we need to be more active and involved in personal evangelism than other people since we have at least half our service that is inaccessible to seekers, communion, which is only intended for believers.  The remainder of the worship can also be inaccessible as we demand a high reading level to fully participate.  If we aren’t engaged in personal evangelism, I would say that Jesus’ criticism of tradition is validly applicable to us.  Let’s make sure it isn’t.

The Law was simply given as a pedagogue, a teacher to lead us to Christ.  It was an intermediate step that awaited the proper time for its fulfillment.  Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law in perfection, as only the Lawgiver can be.  Righteousness isn’t its own reward, it can’t be reached and it isn’t a competitive game whereby we measure ourselves against others.  If we are truly pursuing righteousness, then we have a picture of it in our heads and yet when perfect righteousness came, we see that those who were said and thought to be pursuing it had a wrong picture of what it looked like.  Jesus came to show us what real righteousness looks like, so our picture can be accurate and we can pursue true righteousness.  We stand in His righteousness when we believe in faith that He is the perfect sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.  The tradition of faith, the tradition that traces back to Abraham, is the only tradition that truly matters.

30 January 2015

Psalm 40, 54; Isa. 50:1-11; Gal. 3:15-22; Mark 6:47-56

The Lord speaks of Israel as a bride or wife and asks about the certificate of divorce or the sale to someone else by way of saying that if he had done these things Israel could not be redeemed but it was because of her sins that she was put away and therefore forgiveness is the redemption price.  Repentance is called for and instead of the nation repenting, a servant, one lone voice, is the answer.  That answer is the answer of the righteous servant, the one who hears and obeys the voice of the Lord.  The servant, however, pays a price for righteousness, He is not rewarded by people for His standing with the Lord but he receives this with aplomb and with faith in the Lord that no matter what men may do, ultimately the Lord will avenge it all.  In the final couple of verses we hear, “Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches! Walk by the light of your fire, and by the torches that you have kindled!”  How often do we do the same rather than by walking by the light of the Word?

Of the disciples we are told, they were utterly astounded and their hearts were hardened.  This because they were terrified when they saw Jesus walking on the water and thought He was a ghost.  Mark tells us that they did not understand about the loaves, it hadn’t occurred to them who Jesus was in this sign. Walking on water still wouldn’t be expected next would it?  Who could imagine such a thing?  Had it ever been done before?  Their hearts weren’t prepared for such things even though they had just seen something miraculous.  Have you seen a miracle in your life?  I have but unfortunately we don’t expect such things even if we have seen them, our hearts become hardened against such expectations.  Sometimes familiarity inures us against such things as well.  The people on the other shore, however, were expecting great things from Jesus.  Maybe we ought to pray and ask Him to soften our hearts and we will see more of His work around us.

Paul’s argument is that the Law isn’t the basis of the covenant.  The covenant existed for over four hundred years prior to the enactment of the Law at Sinai.  The Law simply gave the people the knowledge of the shape and boundaries God intended human society to have, the owner’s manual from the manufacturer as it were.  All human society is ordered by some set of laws and these particular laws were handed down by God, the only One in the universe who knows for certain what is “Good.”  We can speculate and know some things by inference from experience but God knows in a very different way, as only a creator can know.  The covenant was not based in the Law, however, it was based in faith alone.  The Law was given so that we don’t have to burn torches and light our own fires, it was given as the source of light that would suffice until the incarnation of Jesus and the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost.  We are called to walk by the Spirit not as a replacement for the Law but so that we will know the Law and how to interpret and embody it in the same way as the Law Giver.

29 January 2015

Psalm 50; Isa. 49:13-23; Gal. 3:1-14; Mark 6:30-46

The announcement is made, the heavens and the earth are commanded to sing and rejoice for the Lord has comforted His people.  The heavens and the earth were created at the word and command of the Lord and now they are called to rejoice.  Think of Paul’s words to the Roman church, “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” When the true children of God are revealed they will be those who properly and lovingly care for creation.  In this instance, creation is commanded to rejoice ahead of the work of God in redemption of His people and so Zion says, “The Lord has forgotten and forsaken me.”  That redemption is not yet seen and so through Isaiah the Lord tells them what this will look like.  The Land will not be sufficient to hold the inhabitants and other nations will come bearing the children of the people, kings and other leaders will bow before her.  At some level this picture is most fully seen in the ingathering of the nations to Israel’s God in Jesus.  There is an application for this particular people in being restored but the fullness of the revelation awaits the vision of Revelation 5 with every tribe and nation and people and then again in the end when the kings of the earth bring their glory into the new Jerusalem.

The feeding of the five thousand is a sign pointing to the fulfillment of the kingdom.  Remember back in Genesis 3 when God spoke to Adam after they sinned in the garden that He said, “cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread…”  Well, in the Exodus God provided their daily bread for the people, all the people, without pain or sweat in toil and here we see the Lord Jesus providing not only daily bread but abundance with leftovers from so little as to be inconsequential.  Only God can do such things, and it is a sign that the kingdom of God is breaking in, reversing the curse from so long ago.  A clue to the identity of this controversial man for this crowd who is seeking to know Him.

Paul is dealing with the issue that confronts us all.  We know that we were/are saved by grace but somehow, along the way, we begin to believe at some level that performance, our performance, has become an important part of the equation, that mercy was great in the beginning but now we have to earn the present enjoyment of salvation.  In Galatia it was being taught and sometimes we all either teach or hear such a message because we all default to do it yourself spirituality.  Grace is always necessary but that doesn’t mean we should neglect the pursuit of righteousness.  Paul’s reminder is that it the act of Abraham that was righteousness was simply believing the promises of God.  Believing wasn’t just intellectual assent though, he went where he was told and didn’t try to take things into his own hands (well, once he did and made a mess of things then and now).  Even after he had a failure of faith, however, the promises remained because they were based on the Lord, not on Abraham.  You, too have the promise of God of eternal life, live in that truth today.  

28 January 2015

Psalm 119:49-72; Isa. 49:1-12; Gal. 2:11-21; Mark 6:13-29

The servant of the Lord glories in the fact that He has been hidden away for just the right moment in history to be revealed and in whom the Lord shall be glorified and then says it was all wasted, it has come to nothing.  In Jesus, it looked like this very thing happened at the crucifixion.  The disciples believed Him to be Messiah and yet if it were true, it certainly came crashing to an ignominious end that Friday on Golgotha.  How could Messiah fail to be Messiah unless He wasn’t Messiah after all?  The passage doesn’t end there though.  In response to His despair at what seemed like failure the Lord announces that the mission is even larger than the apparent failure, it is to save the world, not just the nation.  Have you ever experienced what looked like failure and defeat in a ministry or mission you felt/knew you were called to?  Perhaps that failure isn’t final and that the ultimate outcome is greater success than you imagined.

The opinions about Jesus’ identity were varied enough to include the possibility that He was John the Baptist raised from the dead.  John did no signs when he was alive.  He only proclaimed and baptized for repentance of sin, pointed forward to the coming of another.  Why, then, did anyone come to the conclusion that after his death he was raised and his spirit inhabited Jesus?  John clearly pointed to one greater than himself.  Why did all not see that Jesus was that one?  Herod’s mistake is understandable.  He had a guilty conscience, not only about John’s death but about the sin he was living in by having married his brother’s wife.  Others, like John’s disciples, perhaps hoped that this was true, but John would have been horribly disappointed in this.  His disciples probably thought that his ministry had failed but they would see that his ministry, nothing more than a voice in the wilderness, was no failure at all, he was the harbinger of Messiah and the first to correctly identify Jesus. 

Paul says that not only did he not seek the approval and acceptance of his apostleship from the Jerusalem party he also openly rebuked one of them, Peter of all people, over his own hypocrisy.  Peter apparently had been eating with Gentiles (forbidden under the Law) until some others from Jerusalem, some of James’ people, came out and then Peter ceased this practice.  James, the brother of Jesus, was clearly the leader of the group at this time.  Paul says there is no righteousness under the Law.  He was born a Jew, into the covenant, under the Law, unlike Gentile sinners and yet when he saw righteousness in Jesus he realized that he offered justification in a way the Law could never do, there was always guilt.  The Law offered temporary justification so long as sacrifice could be made but it was always likely that sin would still happen.  In Jesus, Paul saw true grace, that what looked like failure, the cross, was amazingly redeemed unto success in the resurrection.  My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.

27 January 2015

Psalm 45; Isa. 48:12-21; Gal. 1:18-2:10; Mark 6:1-13

Isaiah announces the deliverance of the nation from its exile in Babylon.  The “him” of verses 14 and 15 would appear to be Cyrus, the one the Lord will use to accomplish this deliverance and return them to the Land.  It would be a surprising turn of events to use a foreign ruler to provide the way back to the future as opposed to a deliverer like Moses.  The expectation of a messianic figure would certainly have been someone who was committed to the nation and a part of the covenant community.  In verse 16 the speaker seems to change with the announcement, “Draw near to me, hear this: from the beginning I have not spoken in secret, from the time it came to be I have been there. And now the Lord God has sent me, and his Spirit.”  That speaker would be Jesus, the true deliverer and redeemer.  In the short term, the agency would be Cyrus as the time had not yet come for the incarnation, but ultimately the redeemer is only Jesus, inaugurating a new messianic age.  The call is to return to the ancient ways, the ways of the commandments and the teachings in righteousness.  It always is.

Sometimes our unbelief comes from allowing what we think we know to get in the way of new information.  The people in Nazareth thought they knew everything there was to know about Jesus, who were his mother, brothers, sisters, that he was a carpenter.  (Odd that His father wasn’t mentioned)  They are amazed at what He has done and how He has taught but their familiarity with Him caused them to doubt what they saw because of what they knew.  We have a difficult time with new information when it cuts against what we already know, that is why Paul wrote to the Romans that we have to be transformed by the renewal of our minds.  We don’t come with a blank slate, we come to faith with a good bit that we know about the world.  Much of that allows us to make sense of the sensory and scientific world around us and yet there is so much unexplained by those data inputs and so much of what we think we know isn’t true in an ultimate sense.  We have to allow Him to instruct us and lead us into all truth, just as Jesus promised the Spirit would do.

Paul’s argument is that he needed no affirmation from Jerusalem of his apostleship, it was given him directly from Jesus just as the original twelve were called and sent.  For this reason, Paul was secure enough in his own call that he made no overtures to Jerusalem for three years and then he only went to visit with Peter for a couple of weeks.  In fact, he says, the only other apostle he saw on that first trip was James, the Lord’s brother.  After another fourteen years passed he went back with Titus just to make sure he was on the same page, as far as his preaching to the Gentiles was concerned, with the others.  They, he says, added nothing at all to his preaching, his message was complete, he had left out nothing essential.  There were, however, some trouble-makers who tried to add Jewish practices to the message but these were ignored.  In all particulars, Paul’s ministry and message bore the imprimatur of the apostles in Jerusalem.  The old ways were to give way to the new Way of Jesus and His command was to baptize and teach all to obey His teaching, it did not include things like circumcision and the Law. Salvation was by faith and not works, the cross was sufficient. The covenant was through His blood not circumcision.

26 January 2015

Psalm 41, 52; Isa. 48:1-11; Gal. 1:1-17; Mark 5:21-43

The accusation the Lord lays against His people is that while they “swear by the name of the Lord and confess the God of Israel” they do so without knowledge, “not in truth or right.”  We can indeed get ourselves off course in our understanding of God.  We can make Him into the purveyor of health and wealth, we can believe in things like the “word-faith” movement where what we speak binds God.  We can be universalists, or any other vain imagining that exalts our preferred god to the exclusion of the God as revealed in the Bible and supremely in the Son.  Here, He says that not only has He revealed Himself in the past, He is going to reveal something completely new, something they aren’t prepared for and cannot say, “I knew that” when they see it.  We know that this prophecy is speaking ultimately about Jesus, something so new that no one believed it was of God.  We, too, need to check ourselves on what we think we know.  All of us, every one, need to re-appraise our understanding of Jesus on a regular basis.  We become like Peter, believing that we have it all figured out, too familiar with what we think we know to ever be challenged anew in our understanding until, suddenly, it is all blown apart and we have a time of exile in order to strip us down and humble us that we may truly exalt Him.

The crowd is gathered awaiting Jesus’ return from the other side of the lake, over in Gentile territory and I wonder if they knew how ritually unclean He was from the time in the tombs, the bloody demon-possessed and then, ultimately, the pigs.  The press of the crowd was great as the synagogue ruler implored Jesus to come heal his daughter was at the point of death and one woman, in faith, reached out to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment in her desperation to be healed and received what she sought.  More ritual impurity to be touched by this woman with the issue of blood and yet Jesus knew power had gone out and she took yet another risk, identifying herself and risking the disapprobation of the entire crowd, possibly even jeopardizing the healing of the man’s daughter if he chose to enforce the purity law, and she received even more when Jesus said her faith had made her whole.  Finally, Jesus overcomes death in this girl when everyone has lost hope.  A new thing indeed!

Paul begins the letter with a defense of his apostleship, “Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead..”  In Galatia Paul’s teaching was questioned more than elsewhere and this letter is to put down the teaching of those who would lead the Galatian church astray, towards law rather than Gospel.  Law and Gospel are not opposed in God, they are opposed in man.  We have a hard time holding these two in tension whereas God does not.  Paul says he has been there and done that, done it better than other people in fact but that it all turned for him when he learned of grace in Jesus.  He realized that he couldn’t keep the law perfectly and that the only true righteousness the world had ever known he had judged to be false.  His faith was in a revelation not a system of thought, that what he had done was the same God accused the people of in Isaiah’s time, swearing by the name of the Lord and confessing the God of Israel but not in truth or right.

25 January 2015

Psalm 63, 98; Isa. 47:1-15; Heb. 10:19-31; John 5:2-18

The Lord’s judgment against Babylon is explained in verse six, “I gave them into your hand; you showed them no mercy; on the aged you made your yoke exceedingly heavy.”  His judgment against Israel resulted in them being in Babylon for seventy years but the Babylonians mistreated them and now judgment was coming to that kingdom in the form of Cyrus the Persian king.  The Lord accuses Babylon of saying, ““I am, and there is no one besides me…”  Do you hear in that the words we heard nearly every day last week in the readings?  The first two words should startle us, they are the name of the Lord and He is the one who said these words, the only one who is able to say them.  Babylon’s pride was her downfall.  The Chaldeans were the magicians and diviners who we meet in the book of Daniel who are unable to tell and interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams.  The nation has relied on these men’s wisdom and yet Daniel proved that the wisdom of the Lord’s servants was far greater.  Through this passage the Lord speaks of charms, enchantments and sorceries, the things on which the king relied instead of the God who had proven Himself to Nebuchadnezzar.  His son was a man like the Pharaoh in Exodus, the one who remembered not Joseph.

As I wrote recently, the pool here was one that venerated by the Romans as a healing pool and dedicated to either the god of healing, Asclepius or possibly to the goddess of fortune, Fortuna.  The pool itself was a man-made thing, created by damming and re-directing water into the city in order to provide water for Jerusalem dating back eight hundred years or so before Jesus’ time.  John refers to the pool not as an asclepieion as the Romans would but simply the pool at Bethesda.  The man, an invalid for thirty-eight years, may or may not have believed that the pool’s healing powers were from an angel (as at least some Jews apparently thought) or from the god but his hope was in some magical force.  Jesus asks if he wants to be healed and the man’s response is to tell why he hasn’t been healed yet.  The order of things given by John is Jesus’ command, healing, response in obedience to the command.  It seems that the man knew that He had been healed and obeyed the command at the understanding.  He believed in healing, he had been like the Babylonians, however, putting faith for healing in the wrong thing.  Everyone seems to miss the point because of the carrying of the bed, no one was interested in the healing.  They had the witness but overlooked the testimony.

Faith in Jesus’ sacrifice is all we have and all we need to enter the throne of God without fear.  The finished work of Christ cannot be added to in any way and any attempt to do so makes a mockery of the cross by determining it has limited value, it isn’t fully efficacious.  Likewise, the writer says, if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving knowledge of truth there is no sacrifice for sins.  Here, the point is that righteousness matters, deliberate sin tells another story altogether and makes a similar mockery of the cross by denying Jesus’ righteousness was what made His sacrifice acceptable.  Our pursuit of righteousness in our own lives testifies that we actually believe that God values righteousness, and that we value Jesus’ righteousness.  Otherwise, we essentially are saying that righteousness isn’t particularly valuable to us and therefore Jesus, the righteousness of God, isn’t valuable except as a “Get out of jail free” card.

24 January 2015

Psalm 30, 32; Isa. 46:1-13; Eph. 6:10-24; Mark 5:1-20

Do you sometimes have to be reminded of things you know well?  All this week we have read these passages from Isaiah where the Lord is reminding the people that He is the creator, redeemer and sustainer.  He has reminded them that He is sovereign over all things, that there is no other like Him, none which may be compared to Him, no God but Him.  In all this He is reminding them that He is their God, that they need neither fear nor follow any foreign gods.  That this God is the God of Israel should be both comforting and encouraging.  He promises deliverance in spite of their sins because of His everlasting covenant with them.  When God makes covenants they don’t expire and they aren’t annulled by man.  The people surely needed to hear these things and to believe them as they were exiled in Babylon.  A foreign nation and their gods looked for all the world to be triumphant, invincible and invulnerable.  At that time, however, there was arising quickly the Persian empire to topple the Babylonian empire and yet, in the midst of this chaos was the nation in exile, at the mercy, it seemed, of its masters.  That this nation within a nation was vulnerable was simple to see and into the midst of all this vulnerability and uncertainty came the voice of the Lord through the prophet to reassure and comfort.  A wonderful thing and yet how can they believe against all the evidence to the contrary?

This man is a complete mystery.  Jesus goes to the country of the Gerasenes and no Gospel writer tells us why He went there, simply that they went.  This was a place where Jews didn’t go, it was completely pagan and one of the places where they believed the gates of hell were set up and Jesus went to the worst place and the worst man in that area.  He went to the tombs to a man even these pagans were afraid to approach.  Everything about this scene, from the country itself to the tombs, the demon possessed man, the cutting and therefore bleeding, to the pigs, screams unclean at a level we really can’t imagine and yet this is where Jesus went with the disciples.  He went among the Gentiles to reveal His power to them and left this man as a witness.  If you want a picture of grace, unmerited favor, God randomly choosing someone to bless, you couldn’t do any better than this man.

We forget this important lesson most of the time.  “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”  The problem is that we do wrestle against flesh and blood and we use fleshly tactics and when we do, we lose the ultimate battle, the spiritual one.  We fuss and fight amongst one another and when we do who wins?  If we do our best to remember and remind one another of this great truth we might actually gain some ground in this battle and the kingdom might truly advance.  As it is we waste our time fighting the wrong battle and we waste our assets and energies.  We tie up our intellectual and spiritual assets in futility.  Jesus didn’t go argue with the demoniac, He spoke to the real enemy and won the war.  Let us no longer fight silly skirmishes when there is a real battle to be fought and won!

23 January 2015

Psalm 31; Isa. 45:18-25; Eph. 6:1-9; Mark 4:35-41

How many times in the past few days have you read something like, “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.”  He has made the case again and again that as creator there is nowhere to turn in the universe except to Him, everything else is created.  Why would the Lord of all creation, of water earth and sky, appeal to His own creation to love Him?  On what basis does He care?  The basis is that we are created in the image of God and for that reason He does not despise us but, inexplicably, loves us as a parent loves a wayward child.  We abuse and reject His love, turn away and seek after other gods and yet He is always seeking us. We are not seekers of truth, we are seekers of fulfillment. 

This little episode in the life of Jesus and the disciples probably had an enormous impact on the men who had only recently joined themselves to Him as disciples.  They are fighting against a storm on the Sea of Galilee and Jesus is sound asleep, a la Jonah, and they wake Him with the question, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  Jesus’ response is to speak to the wind and waves, ““Peace! Be still!” with the result that the wind ceased and there was a great calm.  The disciples wanted Jesus’ help but they got far more than they bargained for.  Their own peace and calm lasted only briefly because now they knew Jesus was more than a teacher but how much more?  Their question is right, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”, and has only one real answer, the one the wind and sea have always obeyed.

Paul’s admonition to servants is simple, “obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ…”  Have we made Jesus so accessible that we no longer even think of Him with fear and trembling?  That day on the water He had to ask why they still had fear.  They, too, lost that sense of fear from time to time, Peter undertook to correct Jesus on theology when He told them He would soon suffer and die.  Fear and trembling isn’t something we ever think about when we think of Jesus yet when John saw Him in the revelation he says he fell at His feet as though dead.  He is one with the One who created heaven and earth as the disciples discovered that day.  He became like us in every respect as touches our humanity but now He rules at the Father’s side and He will come again in judgment.  Perhaps we need to have a more balanced view of Jesus.

22 January 2015

Psalm 37:1-18; Isa. 45:5-17; Eph. 5:15-33; Mark 4:21-34

Again today the Lord speaks into the issue of His sovereignty.  He says to the Israelites, “I equip you, though you do not know me, that people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me…”  He says that they, His people, don’t know Him and yet they are being equipped that others may know from the rising of the sun (the east) and from the west, to the ends of the earth, that there is none besides Him.  Again, He points to the past, the creation of the universe, and to the future, “Ask me of things to come…” in order to tell of that sovereignty over all things.  The curious response is that He is a God who hides Himself.  In what ways is God hidden?  His ways are hidden from us, we cannot perfectly know them.  His works, however, are always there on display, the creation of the world, the exodus, and exile and return of the nation, and for us, the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus.  Sometimes when we feel He is hidden it is best to remember what we know and what we can see. 

Jesus declares that one of the reasons God is hidden is that we fail to make Him known.  I would argue that this is the primary reason He is hidden from view.  We are commanded, commissioned and equipped to share the Good News and yet we spend most of our time thinking and talking about everything else in the world except the Good News.  When we fail to share it we fail to see fruit and when we do our joy fades.  The partnership with Him in building the kingdom is meant to be a primary source of continuously experiencing the joy of the hour we first believed.  Do we not believe Him?  The growth of the church as an expression of the kingdom is dependent on whether we believe God will use our work to do the work of growing the kingdom.  The church in the west in our day no longer scatters seed at all.  If we want the church to grow there must be a change in our own behavior.

Paul says we are to walk as wise, remembering that the days are evil.  In contrast, we are to be like Noah, who likewise lived in evil days, revealing righteousness, living differently from the world.  He sees that all we do, whether morally or ethically, but equally in our relationships, reveals the truth.  I know it is controversial, but Paul speaks of wives submitting to their husband who is the head of their wife as Christ is the head of the church.  In that truth, Paul expresses something about headship even before he gets to instructions for husbands.  The way to understand headship, he says, is to consider how Jesus is head of the church and he has certainly addressed that issue in his writings.  Love, Paul says, is the way Christ related to and relates to the church.  It is, however, a particular kind of love, self-sacrificial love, laying down His life for the church.  If husbands lived in that way towards their wives, we might see more wives not objecting to submission.  The two becoming one flesh goes back to Genesis and Paul says is a great mystery.  Mysteries take time and attention to de-mystify, not cursory thought .  Let us not be guilty of insufficient meditation on mysteries.

21 January 2015

Psalm 38; Isa. 44:24-45:7; Eph. 5:1-14; Mark 4:1-20

The good news here is that not only did God create the world, He is still active in it. The Lord begins by declaring, “I am the Lord, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself…”, all things in the past tense.  He continues that same sentence though with a tense shift to the present and finishes with the future tense.  Our faith is based not only in what He has done but what He is doing and will do.  The surprise announcement is that Cyrus, the Persian king who would be known as Cyrus the Great, in whose reign the empire embraced all the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East, expanded vastly and eventually conquered most of Southwest Asia and much of Central Asia and the Caucasus, was to be an instrument of the redemption of the nation.  As great as Cyrus was, ruling over the greatest empire in history to that time, he too was only a man who could be used by the Lord for His purposes and to benefit His people.  The sovereignty of God knows no bounds.

The parable of the sower seems to indicate that the sower isn’t discriminating, wastes seed.  He throws the seed in places where anyone could tell you wasn’t going to produce a crop.  God is constantly sowing seeds in places such as that in our lives and in the world.  We are called to do the same in His Name.  I believe that we never know what effect the sowing of seed produces, what is now unproductive soil can be made productive by the work of the only one who knows how and why things grow and produce.  Through all things, the Lord is at work emending the soil of our hearts and sometimes they suddenly are receptive to the seed but who knows truly whether the earlier sowing hasn’t had a role in preparing the soil for its present state.  When we come to Him in faith, we become partners with Him in preparing the ground of our hearts to receive more and produce more.  We are no longer like Cyrus, unwitting instruments, we are to be partners in His work.

There were those who taught that the body was meaningless in the grand scheme of things, that it would not last unto eternity so what was done with the body was similarly unimportant so long as the soul wasn’t harmed.  We, as Christians, aren’t dualists.  In that first lesson today the Lord speaks of having formed us in our mother’s womb and therefore we should recognize that God created me not as a spirit or soul in the accident of a body but as a unified whole and what is done with the body has an effect on the soul, it can’t be separated.  Paul’s admonition is that they are to discipline the body by keeping from sexual immorality or even crude talk because the tongue has such powerful control over the rest of the body.  Part of preparing the ground of our hearts is discipline of the body.  If we want to see God do greater things in and through us in the future we have to work with Him in the present to bring discipline into our lives, seeking righteousness not only in our hearts but in our lives.

20 January 2015

Psalm 26, 28; Isa. 44:9-20; Eph. 4:17-32; Mark 3:19b-35

When you explain it the way Isaiah does, it seems ludicrous to think there could ever be anything such as an idol.  A block of wood, some clay fired in an oven, all created by human hands cannot surely become an object of worship or something in which we put our trust.  I know that some worry themselves over fetishes and objects in places like other people’s homes and in restaurants, but at the end of the day it is nothing more than something someone has made from some material they didn’t create.  We could never be as silly as to invest our hopes and dreams in something as ridiculous as wood, brick, clay or even less tangible could we?  We certainly could and we certainly do.  Church planters count on money and people more than they count on the Lord.  If we don’t have those resources we don’t plant or we despair of ever being viable.  Every one of us puts our faith in something or someone that is unworthy of it and unable to fulfill whatever we want from it.  Money can’t buy love or happiness.  A new car, a better job, a bigger house, stuff of any sort has become our fetish and idol.  All these things will pass away but we feel like we can’t do without them or that if we have them we will have security or we’ll be the person we want to be or at least other people will think we’re that person.  Idols are idols, one way or another.

After perhaps thirty years of being a carpenter it would surely surprise even Jesus’ family to now see their brother followed by thousands of people from throughout the region who hung on His every word, whom He was healing, who were being delivered from demonic spirits, and who were so enamored of Him they wouldn’t allow Him to even eat!  His family thought He was out of His mind, which doesn’t explain the healings or the deliverance ministry.  The scribes from Jerusalem took those things into account and concluded that He wasn’t a charlatan, those things were real, but that the power to do them came from satan himself, whom they referred to as Beelzebul, the lord of the flies.  This one was a step too far.  The power of the Holy Spirit was not to be ascribed to demonic entities.  His logical response was unassailable, but the larger point was His defense of the Holy Spirit.  There is a little Trinitarian edginess here where Jesus won’t allow the Spirit to be blasphemed, a word ordinarily reserved for God.  Jesus redefines family here as those who know and do the will of God.  Our relationships include all humanity in that definition.

Paul suggests that the futility of our minds, darkened understanding, is traceable to the hardness of our hearts.  We know that don’t we?  There are many things we know we don’t judge properly in our minds because our hearts are otherwise invested.  Paul says that the Gentiles, those who don’t know Jesus, have their hearts hardened against the work of the Holy Spirit to convict them of sin.  We tend to have similar blind spots regarding sin in our own lives.  They may not be notorious sins, they may be things like gossip or simply being negative all the time, but they are sins nonetheless.  I have had people tell me not to be upset with someone because “that’s how he is.”  If you are a Christian you need to put on the new self, put away the old self.  So long as we make allowances for how someone is, even if it is us, we deny the work of the Spirit to change.  That’s the reason Paul can do more than recommend that they be kind, tenderhearted and forgiving and expect them to be that way.  Where are we frustrating the work of the Spirit in our lives? 

19 January 2015

Psalm 25; Isa. 44:6-8,21-23; Eph. 4:1-16; Mark 3:7-19a

It is easy to lose sight of the fact that our God is the only God.  He is the creator of all things in earth and the heavens.  From earth, we can look out 13.8 billion light years in each direction and it is estimated that there are something like 300 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, alone which is one of perhaps 100 billion galaxies in the universe.  We have a relationship with the God who created all that, who created the physics, biology, chemistry and mathematics that determines its shape, size, velocity, its fine tuning to support life on this little planet, and He came to this planet and took on the form of one of us in order that we might have a covenant relationship for life.  In all the universe, He looks round in this reading and sees if there is another god tell me about him, I have never run across him.  How incredible is it that we know Him as loving?  Indeed, if all this is in fact true, that He has blotted out our sins and redeemed us then, “Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done it;  shout, O depths of the earth; break forth into singing, O mountains, O forest, and every tree in it!”

The people following Jesus are from a large area, from all the way up north in coastal cities like Tyre and Sidon, roughly as far north as Damascus in Syria and south down to Idumea, south of Jerusalem quite a distance.  The entire region is represented in this crowd.  It was an overwhelming throng as Jesus had healed so many people and he was concerned about being crushed as they tried to push forward to touch or be touched so He ordered the disciples to get a boat that they might get out on the lake and avoid the potential for harm.  At this point, He had to choose twelve men to be His disciples, men in whom He could trust and to whom He could entrust the future.  We, too are chosen, not just for salvation, but to be His disciples.  What would your life look like if you realized that blessedness of being chosen as a disciple?  It was Jesus’ desire to pour into these men everything He had, all the teaching, but also the Holy Spirit.  Would you dedicate yourself to becoming a disciple if you realized what an honor has been bestowed on you by the God of the universe?  It’s time to get serious about commitment. 

Paul reminds the Ephesians that they weren’t called to be individuals they were called to be the body of Christ together.  We have so individualized the experience that we lose the importance of others in our journey and in the witness of the church.  When Jesus called the disciples He called them to be a group not discipling them one at a time separately from one another, as a group.  Among that group were fishermen, former tax collectors, and zealots.  There wasn’t unity of mind and purpose because Jesus chose a bunch of guys who were alike in their thinking and dispositions, there was unity because of Him, they wanted to receive what He offered them and they surely had to work out the issue of unity all the time.  We know they argued about who was the greatest and when James and John’s mother asked that they be exalted.  The church has to remember its call and purpose and also its unity in Jesus if it is to be an effective witness.  Remember who called you and then sort out your differences and your importance.

18 January 2015

Psalm 148, 149, 150; Isa. 43:14-44:5; Heb. 6:17-7:10; John 4:27-42

“I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King.”  I am not arguing for replacement theology.  When I read Romans 11 I see that we are not a replacement for the nation, the covenant with the nation is everlasting, I see that we are grafted into the nation but that isn’t the same as modern political Israel.  If, however, we replace Israel in that sentence from Isaiah with the word “church” we come face to face with the reality of our own situation.  In this passage, the Lord announces He is doing a new thing, restoring His people, shepherding them by providing water in the desert and wilderness.  The overriding question we could ask here is “Why?”  He says that it is not because they have sacrificed or become righteous people.  They have not fallen deeply in love with Him.  They have “burdened me with your sins…wearied me with your iniquities.”  He is forgiving them not for their repentance and righteousness, but for His own sake, because of His covenant love for the nation He created.  We take that love for granted, don’t reciprocate any better than they did.

The woman’s testimony to Jesus was simple, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”  What had Jesus told her that she did?  He had told her own sordid past, she had had five husbands and she was now living with a man who wasn’t her husband.  Samaritans had only the books of Moses but they made it clear that she was a notorious (in the sense of the word meaning  “well known”) sinner.  Jesus, as a Jewish man, not a Samaritan, couldn’t have been expected to know such things.  He was an outsider to the city.  They may have known all about her past but how could this stranger know?  It’s funny, isn’t it, that she simply describes Jesus as “a man” when she knows multiple things about Him.  He is Jewish but she doesn’t mention that, they wouldn’t come to give Him a hearing if she had told that.  He has claimed to be the prophet like Moses they are looking for but she doesn’t relay the claim, only her own tentative opinion. He has promised her things as well but those don’t come into play in her testimony.  I wonder what their initial reaction was on meeting this group of Jewish men.  There was such enmity between the two, the Samaritans believed themselves to be the true Israel, that was overcome in Jesus in just a couple of days.  They were truly the lost sheep of Israel and when, in Acts, the church flees Jerusalem, a deacon, Philip, goes to these people and gives them the rest of the story and reaps a great harvest.

The writer finds an enigmatic character from Genesis to whom to tie Jesus.  The king of Salem, both priest and king, Melchizedek, is a man about whom we know nothing except that Abraham recognized him as priest and to him gave tithes.  Why would Abraham tithe to any king?  The text in Genesis 14 tells us that Melchizedek was a priest of God Most High serving in Salem which later became Jerusalem.  The scene is after the five kings, including the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, fought the four kings and as they fled, the five kings captured Lot.  Abraham took men born in his house to retrieve Lot and as they rested from the successful mission, Melchizedek came out with bread and wine and blessed Abraham in the name of God Most High and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything.  If Abraham recognized him in this way, he was seen as superior and a genuine priest.  Jesus, neither from a Levitical or priestly line, was also a priest in this order, like this odd figure from Genesis, a priesthood from God Himself.  The other priests came from Abraham’s line so the argument is that for Jews, they must emulate their father, Abraham, and pay tribute to this older priesthood that is then superior to their own.  God has always had a witness and a priest.

17 January 2014

Psalm 20, 21; Isa. 43:1-13; Eph. 3:14-21; Mark 2:23-3:6

Long ago, in the time of Moses, in Deuteronomy 6 the Lord had said “The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”  He reiterates that here in the second half of verse 10, “Before me no god was formed,  nor shall there be any after me.”  The point in this chapter, however, is slightly different, that not only is there not another god, that He is also the savior of Israel.  He has always been the savior of the nation, again going back to the time of Moses, this time to Exodus 20 when He says that this action is the basis for the commandments, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”  Here, He announces that He is preparing to deliver them again from bondage and to remind them of the history of the relationship, “I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior.”  We, too, need to sometimes be reminded of this reality.  He may make use of human instrumentation to accomplish His purposes and the person He uses may not even recognize Him as Lord but however it is accomplished He is savior, not a person, not money, not anything.  Never overlook His work and never fail to give thanks for it.

Twice here Jesus does things on the Sabbath that seem like sin to the religious leaders.  First, His disciples take handfuls of grain from the stalks as they pass through a field, grind it in their palms and extract the edible portions to eat.  That is defined in the interpretation of the Law as work and so cannot be done if one is observing the Law of the Sabbath.  Jesus points to David when he was on the run from Saul and his men went into the temple and ate of the bread of the presence which is for priests only.  When He claims to be Lord of Sabbath it is offensive in the utmost to the leaders.  If the claim to forgive sins was presumptuous, this is truly out there.  Next, Jesus heals a man with a withered hand, and it is determined to be a trespass as well. Here we see Jesus looking at them with anger because of their hardness of heart.  It was lawful to do good on the Sabbath, if an animal was stuck in a ditch it was lawful to get it out.  They are failing to see that if that is lawful then doing good to a fellow man, a Jewish man no less, is even more good.  Their anger was such that the Pharisees were willing to make common cause with Herodians, those who had accommodated themselves most to Roman customs and made the least of the Law, in order to do something about Jesus.

Paul was a man who was fully converted in mind and spirit.  He exalted Jesus so highly because he knew that for all he had ever gained, whatever he thought he knew about God or righteousness, in the end he was simply wrong about everything.  He knew that he might have had knowledge but it had never crossed over to wisdom and understanding.  If Jesus hadn’t stopped him and spoken to him from heaven he would be a man without hope for all his knowledge and standing in Judaism.  His prayer for the Ephesians was simply that they would know Jesus the way He knew Jesus, that He is everything or there is no hope for them at all.  He is the Lord, besides Him there is no savior.  In Him there is no defect and in Him is all power and love.  Amen and Hallelujah!

16 January 2014

Psalm 16, 17; Isa. 42:1-17; Eph. 3:1-13; Mark 2:13-22

God announces the coming of His servant and, it seems to contradict what one would expect of such a servant.  This one will be quiet and gentle, not drawing attention to Himself by shouting but by simply being and doing.  If you read those first four verses again what you will notice is that the ministry of this servant is aimed at one thing, bringing forth justice.  Justice is a difficult term to define isn’t it?  The passage tells us of bruised reeds and faintly burning wicks and so we have some idea of what it refers to, those whose life hangs by a thread, whose hope is nearly gone.  Most of the things in my own life that I think of when I think of justice don’t qualify under such a definition, they are simply things that I wish were different, things that are unfair but my life and hope doesn’t, or at least shouldn’t, depend on them.  Sometimes our prisons are of our own making and we need to set ourselves free from the bondage of our disappointments by getting outside ourselves and recognizing how good our lives really are.  There are those who cannot do this for themselves and they are the ones for whom we are called to seek justice, the ones to whom Jesus was sent, the ones He healed, the ones truly without hope.  Look around you today and see all the reasons you have to rejoice and to have hope and let go of those things that hold you back from experiencing the joy of God’s lovingkindness to you.  Then, turn and see if you can bring hope and justice to those around you.

Jesus says that when the bridegroom is among his friends there is feasting and rejoicing.  That is why, even in Lent, worship is meant to be a joyous occasion, celebrating the goodness but also the presence of God among us.  It should be a time to sing His praises and to remember His promise to be with us when we gather in His Name.  When Jesus called Matthew/Levi as a disciple He created the possibility for tension in the group.  A tax collector as a disciple would certainly have raised eyebrows and here, at the dinner Matthew throws to celebrate his call, the scribes and Pharisees voice what was surely on the minds of the disciples themselves, “What are you doing eating with tax collectors and other scum?”  Jesus provides the answer the disciples likely could not have come up with, that these people are sinners but isn’t the goal to heal the sick rather than celebrate the well?  He is the great physician and it was necessary to go among the sick both in body and spirit if He were to heal.  The same is true with us yet we often expect them to come to us rather than going to them.

At one time Paul was confident of two things, his own righteousness and therefore right relationship with God, and that God didn’t care about the Gentiles unless they came to Him. What he found on the road to Damascus is that what he knew wasn’t exactly right, that he had missed true righteousness and in fact hated it to the point of persecuting it.  Then, he found that God’s love was for all those created in His image, and went to the Gentiles on mission.  Paul’s attitude towards the Gentiles would have been similar to the attitude we see in the Gospel lesson of the scribes and Pharisees towards the tax collectors.  For Paul to associate with the Gentiles and consider them fellow heirs of the kingdom required a complete change in worldview.  The church he formerly persecuted he now sees as the vehicle through which “the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”  Justice is now a concept for the whole world, not just those in the club.

15 January 2014

Psalm 18:1-20; Isa. 41:17-29; Eph. 2:11-22; Mark 2:1-12

The Lord promises wonderful things for His people.  To the poor and needy who seek water and find none there will be water everywhere.  “I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.”  The desert and wilderness will be lush with vegetation, everything will be changed.  Additionally, He mocks the “gods” who are pretenders, asking them to prove themselves, show us what you’ve got so that we can tremble in fear, and then says, you’re nothing at all.  The sarcasm drips from this passage concerning idols and false gods.  The diviners have failed to discern the Lord’s doing, the raising up of one from the north, only He has announced such things to His people.  Does that first part of the passage stir up longing in your heart for Him to do amazing things in your life and in your eyes?  You are longing for the kingdom to come, for the new heavens and the new earth.

What does it mean that Jesus saw the faith of the men who brought the paralytic?  He saw their perseverance and persistence in getting their friend before Him for healing.  In this Jesus saw that they believed enough to do whatever it took to get this man to Him because they knew He could heal.  To hear Him, then, say that his sins were forgiven was strange not only to the leaders but also, surely, to them.  They had brought him for healing of his paralytic state, did Jesus not understand?  I believe, as I have said before, that this man’s condition was related to some sin in his life otherwise Jesus would not have begun with forgiveness.  The test Jesus proposes, which is harder, to forgive sins or heal a paralytic, is one that demands proof.  It is easier to say your sins are forgiven because who can know for sure.  There is, however, no reason for Him to have said this if there were no forgiveness necessary. 

Paul writes to the Ephesians as brothers, an amazing thing for a Jewish man, trained in the best rabbinic schools, to write to Gentiles.  The work of Jesus has broken down the dividing wall of commandments and ordinances which separated Jews and Gentiles, not just the practice of ritual circumcision.  The fleshly division was incredibly important, witness the continuing battles Paul fought with the Judaizers over this very issue of circumcision and here he says that in Jesus’ flesh the real division was broken down.  He doesn’t deny the division existed, the Gentiles previously had no hope and were literally without God in the world.  He took this first passage seriously, that there are no other gods who can lay claim to competition with Yahweh but He Himself has done what no one or no god could do in the flesh of His Son.  Jesus could do not only physical things but also spiritual things as well, just as the leaders found that day in Capernaum.

14 January 2014

Psalm 119:1-24; Isa. 41:1-16; Eph. 2:1-10; Mark 1:29-45

The one from the east whom victory meets at every step is king Cyrus from Persia.  This is the same Cyrus whom the Lord will use to restore Jerusalem.  He will give an edict that allows for the rebuilding of the city by the exiles he allows to return.  The nations fear him, his conquests were swift and far reaching, establishing a new order in the middle East in his reign.  While the nations should fear him, the Lord tells His own not to fear, that He is all they need and He can be trusted with their protection.  As in the days of Joshua, they are admonished to be strong and not fear.  This nation, which at the moment, is not a nation but only a people in exile, can be in peace while the world around them is afraid because their God is protecting them and providing for them, even in this place and time when it seems they are nothing at all. 

Can you imagine the scene at the home of Peter’s mother-in-law?  She is healed on the Sabbath and begins to serve them, in contradiction to the laws of Sabbath.  As soon as the Sabbath ends, about dusk, people begin streaming to the house with their sick and others who have demonic possession, bringing them to Jesus, and they return healed, whole and well.  Mark tells us the whole city was gathered at the door.  After this, Jesus rose before dawn and went to pray.  He couldn’t have had more than a few hours rest and yet it was important after such a time of ministry to go away and be alone with the Father.  All are looking for Him but He says they must move on and so they do.  My favorite healing of Jesus’ is this one with the leper.  The man had to warn all and sundry to keep away for he was unclean and yet Jesus, in healing him, reaches out His hand and touches him.  He didn’t have to but He did and can you imagine what it was to be touched by Him?  The man won’t obey the command not to tell, how could he, he just was healed of leprosy!

Did you grasp those first four words, “And you were dead…”  You weren’t drowning, you had drowned.  There was no life in you at all.  You weren’t resuscitated, you were raised with Christ from the dead.  Your life is completely in His hands.  When we are in sin we are dead to true life, the life of the Spirit.  Our consciences aren’t the same as the Holy Spirit given to us in Christ.  A conscience is common to all humanity and without the Holy Spirit you are not a child of God, you were a child of wrath.  The mercy of God in Christ Jesus is the only reason you have life today.  Because of love, mercy, grace and kindness you have been saved through faith and even that was and is a gift.  Now, in Jesus, we are a new creation, prepared for good works.  Our works are “good” only as they spring from faith and glorify Him and without them there is no real evidence of His life within us.

13 January 2014

Psalm 5, 6; Isa. 40:25-31; Eph. 1:15-23; Mark 1:14-28

Anything we worship other than Yahweh is too small for worship.  He says, “Lift up your eyes on high and see…”  Look above all things to the creator of all things and there find something or actually, someone, worth worshipping.  When we worship and are in relationship with the One who is over all things, we can find the rest we need.  So long as we look to lesser things, we will always be subject to something greater, something unknowable, and we won’t find peace because something else controls those.  The world looks chaotic until you get high enough to see from God’s view that He has all things under His control.  We can’t know with specificity His plans but He gave us the general outline of them so that we can find our rest in Him, not in our knowledge or our end times charts and graphs but in the One who holds all things in His hands because He is everlasting.  Those who wait upon Him alone will indeed renew their strength, run and not grow weary, walk and not faint.  He is faithful and in Him all things cohere.

Jesus begins His ministry with the same message John had given, repent.  The change is that His message is that the time is fulfilled, the kingdom is at hand and the step after repentance is to “believe the Gospel.”  It would be a curious thing to be able to ask the people to whom this message was preached what they understood the Gospel to be.  Immediately, Jesus began to gather men to Himself as disciples and then to teach in the synagogue in Capernaum.  His teaching was astonishing in its power and because it had authority, an authority that comes from knowing the Law and its intent and interpretation perfectly.  The man with the demonic presence cries out in recognition of Jesus’ identity and power and in the deliverance, Jesus commands it with the same authority to come out without speaking.  People were beginning to wonder at the power of this man.

We are called in hope to Jesus but Paul’s prayer is that we would know what that hope is, not be deceived into believing it is something else.  That hope is related to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, not the hope of everything working out well in this life.  From an earthly perspective you will surely die, the hope to which you are called is the sure and certain hope of resurrection from the dead to life.  There is no promise in the New Testament that you can have it all in this life.  There is only the promise of something far more glorious that is ahead of us but that doesn’t mean this life doesn’t matter.  Paul worked with all his might for the spread of the Gospel, the understanding of this hope, and the understanding of what this life means now.  We have been freed from those littler hopes to a greater one that we can’t work to secure, it is already secure.  His power is greater than anyone imagined.

12 January 2014

Psalm 1, 2, 3; Isa. 40:12-23; Eph. 1:1-14; Mark 1:1-13

Is your vision of God big enough?  Maybe it is better put as JB Phillips did in his little book, Your God is too Small.  We have an idea of God that needs sometimes to be stretched because we lose sight of Genesis 1.  Isaiah says that Genesis 1 is really just a beginning point.  Not only did Yahweh create all that is from nothing, there was a mind, an intelligence and a wisdom in all His works, not only at creation but every moment since that time.  The same wisdom and intellect that created also upholds and directs the course of the world.  We can rest assured not only of eternity, but also of today.  The world may look chaotic and moving inexorably towards the end of all things but, if there were no natural disasters or unforeseen circumstances, no “coincidences” that change the course of history, we would move in that direction a good deal more rapidly wouldn’t we?  While there may be terrible things in the world, we can also find a good many things that are serendipitous enough to smile and thank Him for still being engaged as sovereign.  Isaiah points us towards that idea lest we find ourselves believing we are alone and He is really only the God of the Deists, the one who began it all and then disengaged from us.  When all looks lost to us, remember it isn’t lost to the One who continues to hold all things in His hands.

The fact of the incarnation and that Jesus didn’t come to judge the world is an amazing reality.  I think too many of us take it for granted.  We focus on the work of Jesus and forget to consider how incredible it is that the Word which existed in beginning became flesh and dwelt among us, that God humbled Himself to subject Himself to His creation.  We need both the big God and the Jesus of the cross if we are to properly stand in awe of Him.  John was preparing a people for an encounter with a holy God coming in judgment.  It is easy to understand John’s reluctance to baptize the one he believed to be the Messiah.  It made no sense that Messiah would submit to baptism at all, baptism was for sin, to cleanse from sin and Messiah wasn’t sinful.  Did Jesus understand His own mission?  John had to wonder but was willing to do whatever Jesus said because he believed Him to be Messiah.

As I mentioned in my sermon a couple of weeks ago, Paul acted like predestination was a wonderful thing, not something to argue about.  One of the most incredible sentences in the Bible is found here, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.”  We were chosen in Jesus before the foundation of the world.  That means that God knew before He ever created the world that it would fall into sin and death and need Him to redeem it in Jesus’ death on the cross.  It also means that in spite of what He knew would happen, both to His creation and to His Son, He created anyway.  Which of us would have done the same?  His greatness and goodness are both revealed in that He created and redeemed a rebellious creation.  Today is a good day to rest in the omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence of a loving God and to praise Him.

11 January 2014

Psalm 146, 147; Isa. 40:1-11; Heb. 1:1-12; John 1:1-7,19-20,29-34

Isaiah was given the tasks of announcing both the Lord’s judgment against the nation and His favor.  For that reason, many scholars believe that there was more than one prophet who wrote as Isaiah.  Here,  the prophet has the blessing of announcing that the time judgment has finished  and that a new day is here, a day when the Lord Himself is coming to His people and His glory will be revealed to all.  The people must be prepared in righteousness to greet Him but when He comes all will be well again.  What a beautiful promise of restoration and yet, hidden in that picture is judgment for those who have oppressed His people.  We are called to be those who prepare not just the ones who have fallen or lapsed in faith but all people the Lord is calling to be part of the kingdom.  The Good News isn’t just for the church, it is for those not yet part of the church. 

John had only one message, the time has come for the Lord to return to His people.  His mission was given to his father, Zechariah, that day in the temple when Gabriel appeared to announce John’s birth, and it seems he never wavered in his devotion to that mission.  We know relatively little about John but he was in many ways the last Old Testament prophet and the first to preach the Gospel.  He knew his own role and even though it seems he attracted devoted disciples he always pointed away from himself.  He didn’t see himself as an important person, he was only looking for the one who was to fulfill God’s promise concerning a Messiah.  When asked, John said he wasn’t the Elijah promised in Malachi, but Jesus said he was and Gabriel, in describing John’s mission, used language that was unmistakably fulfillment of that prophecy.  John didn’t spend the time sorting all that out, his only business was first looking for the one promised and then, having received the sign, pointing all to Jesus.   He may not have understood the Good News about just how Jesus was the Lamb of God and would take away the sins of the world, he only knew it was so.

John, Paul, and the writer of Hebrews all tell us something important about Jesus.  The world was created through Him. He is the Word of God and the world was created by the Word of God, He spoke and it was so.  If Jesus was the agency through which God created, then isn’t the world then created in grace and love?  Our mission is to restore that to a world in sin and rebellion against Him?  The world of “dog eat dog” is a world we created.  The writer says Jesus is the exact imprint of the nature of God, whatever God is, Jesus is, nothing more, nothing less.  He is unique in history, not as a great teacher or a man with a higher God-consciousness, but as God incarnate.  If we would know the Father, we must know the Son and if we would make a single proclamation about God, it must be in light of what the Son has revealed about Him.  Our proclamation of Jesus stretches back to creation and all that has happened in the history of God’s dealings with humanity are interpreted through that filter.  He is full of grace and truth.

10 January 2015

Psalm 138, 139; Isa. 65:1-9; Rev. 3:1-6; John 6:1-14

Can you see the picture the prophet is painting here of God standing about with His hands outspread, begging to be found?  I was ready to be found by those not seeking, shouting “Here I am!”, making Himself available to not only those not searching, not only to those who ignore Him, but to those who provoke Him to His face continually.  The picture is Jesus.  All the things listed are things not only prohibited for Jews but are also religious practices of other nations.  They aren’t just ignoring Him and the Law, they are actively seeking connection with other gods.  For all these things, the Lord announces judgment on the nation but promises that there will be those who escape judgment and these will be rewarded and the nation rebuilt with them as leaders.  The pursuit of righteousness is the pursuit of God.

The Passover is at hand, commemorating the exodus, God’s judgment on Egypt and His deliverance of His people from bondage.  A huge crowd has followed Jesus out here to the wilderness and He asks Philip where they could purchase food for them.  Philip doesn’t bother answering the question, it is immaterial where it could be purchased, the real question is how they would purchase it.  Providing even a little bread would be cost prohibitive and yet, Jesus feeds them not only a little bread and fish, but enough that each disciple gathered a basketful of leftovers.  The response of the crowd is to proclaim Jesus as the Prophet who was to come into the world, the prophet like Moses from Deuteronomy 18.  That prophet will not speak prophetically, He will offer signs as Moses did to authenticate Himself.  One of those signs would surely be like the manna, provision of food miraculously.  Jesus exceeded expectations though by providing not manna but bread and fish and more than anyone could want, just like the abundance of wine at the wedding.

The letter to the church at Sardis is the most scathing of all.  Sardis was the home of king Croesus, a place where metallurgists first learned to separate gold and silver, producing a purity of each metal unknown before, the place where modern currency was invented.  It was a place of great wealth, even to this day, 2500 years after his death, the saying continues that someone of great wealth is “rich as Croesus.”  Sometimes wealth can make something seem alive that is dead inside and such was the accusation against the church there.  As in the first reading, however, there were some who were still alive and pursuing righteousness and these would receive the reward of life.  When we depend on finances, a preacher, great music, whatever, rather than pursuing Him, we run the same risk as the church at Sardis.  Sometimes it is more important to keep it simple.  The blessing is for those who pursue, just as the five thousand not only ate but saw a glimpse of Jesus’ identity because they followed after Him.

9 January 2015

Psalm 121, 122, 123; Isa. 63:1-5; Rev. 2:18-29; John 5:1-15

The imagery here is certainly powerful.  In our day we would see a superhero coming in victory but a bloody victory not the sanitized version suitable for the kids.  His garments are stained with blood as though he had been in a winepress, completely covered in blood.  The victory was won through much bloodshed.  The work was His alone, no one was found to assist with the salvation.  Little did Isaiah know that the blood on the garment was His own blood, not the blood of the enemy and His great strength looked like complete helplessness and weakness at the time and only three days later did they see the might of His power and strength.  We are called to boldness in witness but also to lay down our lives against those who would take them to stop our proclamation.  The paradox is what we are called to sort out in our lives.

After a season of time spent up in Galilee, Jesus goes to Jerusalem.  He comes to the pool at Bethesda where people come for healing by going into the water when it is stirred up, based on the belief that angels have done this and that healing is then possible.  It is superstition not religion, but it is hope.  The Romans ascribed the healing power of the pool to one of the Greek gods, Asclepius, who was worshipped as savior for his healing power.  Like yesterday’s reading, Jesus poses a challenge to the expectations of the man who believes the water has the power of healing.  Jesus, again like yesterday, offers healing on the terms of proclamation only, not based in any curative powers the water may have.  His command to take up your bed and walk required the man to break the Sabbath restriction against work but he was willing to believe and acted on that faith.  Not only was this breaking the law, it was also even more amazing a healing because a man unable to walk for 38 years has now strength enough not only to walk but to carry his bed!  Why he later blamed Jesus for the “sin” is strange and Jesus’ words to him are a rebuke that seems to associate his former condition with sin.

Again, the problem at Thyatira is the same as at Pergamum.  At Pergamum, the sin was that of Balaam and the Nicolaitans and at Thyatira it is that they tolerate that woman Jezebel.  The sins, however, are the same, sexual immorality and food sacrificed to idols.  Clearly, these are important issues that the Jerusalem council got right at the beginning.  The promise is for those who overcome and the promise of judgment is for those who will not repent of these sins.  We live in a world gone crazy with sex, a world filled with internet pornography and a world where “hook-up” websites proliferate.  Do you think this word is for the church today?  We live in a world bound by sexual sin that is celebrated in all its varieties and churches join the celebration.  The church needs to talk about all sexual sin, not just homosexual sin.  If the man could be healed of his infirmity after 38 years, there is plenteous healing and deliverance in Jesus for those who want healing of these things as well.

8 January 2015

Psalm 117, 118; Isa. 59:15-21; Rev. 2:8-17; John 4:46-54

Three things are missing, truth, justice, and a man to intercede.  Just as with the lack of a good shepherd, the Lord is forced to take matters into His own hands in order to restore truth and justice.  Wrath and vengeance are part of the restoration of righteousness.  The way in which the Lord brings about righteousness is through some form of violence.  Does that seem a strange statement given the rest of what Isaiah wrote concerning the servant of the Lord?  Violence is required to defeat an enemy who has held the people in bondage.  In the case of Jesus, He came in righteousness to deliver us from the bondage of sin and suffered violence but what He did was complete the overthrow of satan’s kingdom on earth in those who believe.  The final battle will be indeed violent as the powers of satan and his servants array themselves for that skirmish.  We are called to be truthful and seekers of justice and sometimes that feels like violence to those who oppose the Lord.

Jesus comes back to Cana where the first sign was done and an official whose son is ill implores Him to come and heal the boy.  Why does Jesus suggest that the man won’t believe without a sign?  He has come to the one man he believes can actually do something, he already believes.  The greater sign is to heal simply by a word, not some gestures or actions.  A wonder-worker would come to the boy and do something and perhaps he would be healed but Jesus will not “do” such things, He is not a wonder-worker (an actual designation some gave Him, something like Simon Magus in the book of the Acts), his power is greater than this, the power that the Father created the world with, the power to speak healing.  The man indeed believes and his faith is rewarded in the healing of his son at the very hour Jesus spoke it.

The letter to the church at Smyrna is certainly not a prosperity Gospel is it? Some will be thrown into prison and the reward goes to those who are faithful unto death.  The Good News, however, is two-fold.  The letter is written from, “…the first and the last, who died and came to life” and the promise is “The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.”  This life is all we know and we cling to it as if it were all that will be when we know better because of the resurrection.  There are two things against the church at Pergamum.  The first has to do with holding to the teaching of Balaam and also it reflects on the prohibitions given in the Jerusalem council from Acts 15, against sexual immorality and the eating of food you know has been sacrificed to idols.  The second problem is apparently related to the first, the Nicolatians sin.  This sin seems to have been sexual in nature.  To those who repent and conquers this sin, the promise of life is made.  Some have to die for the faith while others simply have to commit to righteousness.  We don’t know what the price of that commitment will be. For Jesus, it was the cross, but the road to the cross begins with saying no to temptation.

7 January 2015

Psalm 103; Isa. 52:3-6; Rev. 2:1-7; John 2:1-11

In the season of Epiphany, we celebrate the earthly revelation of Jesus.  In both the case of Egypt and Assyria, the Israelites were indeed slaves but were not sold into slavery.  In Egypt, they simply became slaves which is amazing since the wealth of Egypt was in part due to the work of a Hebrew, Joseph.  In Assyria, they were simply relocated from Israel in an attempt to assimilate them as had been done with the northern kingdom.  Fortunately, there were some in Israel who refused to allow that to happen.  They synagogue movement has its roots in this exilic period.  Jeremiah was clear that this exile was not permanent and ultimately they would return to the Land.  If you believe that to be true you don’t lose your identity quite so easily.  The Lord announces here that as no price was paid for them as slaves, so no monetary price would be paid for redemption.  We know that redemption refers to more than physical slavery, the greater slavery is the slavery to sin and death.

John tells us very clearly what happened that day in Cana, “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.”  The water jars for ritual washing represent the Law.  Jewish people of this time had to be very careful about the issue of washing hands.  Coming into contact with things which were deemed to be unclean meant defilement by the world.  These jars would have been huge, holding twenty gallons or so.  Jesus simply tells the steward to fill them to the brim and then gives the command to dip some off and take it to the master of the feast.  What was the steward thinking as he obeyed this command?  Mary obviously had some authority here to direct the steward to listen to her son but the steward had to think the man had lost his mind and was setting him up for something when, amazingly, the master praised the wine he had just drunk.  The servant knew the truth, the disciples knew the truth, but no one else knew what had just happened.  It seems an insignificant thing in the grand scheme of things, but that day at a wedding in Cana the kingdom broke in for the first time.  Nothing has ever been the same.

The church at Ephesus comes in for much commendation.  They are enduring patiently in a tough place, they have stood for truth, they have not countenanced the sin of the Nicolatians, and they have worked and toiled.  All those are good things yet, in the end, they are threatened with having their lampstand, the Holy Spirit, removed, if they don’t return to their first love.  We can get so caught up in doing for the church and the Lord that we forget that this isn’t about works and doing things, it is about a love affair.  We are called and commanded to one thing, love, and everything is intended to flow from that love.  Paul was clear about that in 1 Corinthians 13 wasn’t he?  Jesus came for the sake of God’s love and we are sent on mission from that same starting point.