28 November 2015

Psalm 137, 144; Micah 7:11-20; 1 Pet. 4:7-19; Matt. 20:29-34

In the midst of judgment the prophet sees that the Lord will deliver the nation not only from the nations around them but from their own iniquity.  The day has come to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and to see the Lord again shepherding His people.  Micah sees the lovingkindness of God in pasturing His people in places where there are enemies all around now but then there will only be Him and them as of old when they came out of Egypt.  Micah knew that the revelation given to Moses at Sinai, that the Lord was and is and always will be merciful and gracious, forgiving iniquity for those who confess their sins but not clearing those whose guilt remains unconfessed.  Micah knew that covenants are not revocable with God, that He is a God who keeps covenant forever with those who seek Him and who will return in confession and repentance, that there is always hope if we will only come to Him and ask for forgiveness.

In Mark’s Gospel this story focuses on one of the men, Bartimaeus, here Matthew tells us of two men.  Jesus is passing through Jericho on His way to Jerusalem for Passover.  There are great expectations among not only His disciples but also the crowd who are going to the festival as well.  They have heard of His works and His teaching and they are hoping that the Messiah has come.  These blind men are no exception.  They have clearly heard about Jesus’ miracles, the healing of other blind men, perhaps of the healing of the man born blind in John 9 and they have hope.  Their cry is for mercy from the Son of David, the Messianic King.  When asked what they want from Him they quickly reply with an audacious request, recovery of their sight and, moved by pity, Jesus grants their request.  The King is indeed coming, with healing in His wings.  Great things surely lie ahead.  This will be the great Passover when the Lord answers their prayers.

When Peter says that judgment begins at the household of God he is speaking the same language Paul used when he wrote the Corinthians that ultimately the work of all would be revealed by fire and that which was of the Lord, built on the foundation of Jesus, would remain.  Peter’s expectation was that the day of judgment was coming soon and the church should be prepared for that judgment.  He also expected persecution to happen to Christians and that the church should be prepared for testing and suffering and that there is a distinctly Christian way to suffer to the glory of God as compared to the suffering of those who have no hope in Christ.  That way is to recall always that this suffering, this world, is only temporary compared to the glory that lies ahead.  The King is coming indeed and we are to be prepared to greet that Day with great joy.

27 November 2015

Psalm 140, 142; Isa. 24:14-23; 1 Pet. 3:13-4:6; Matt. 20:17-28

Isaiah hears the nations, east and west, coastlands, from the ends of the earth, giving praise to the God of Israel and yet, in the midst of all this praise, he is troubled within at what he sees in the nation itself.  The prophet sees the truth, that while the earth may be filled with praise it is also filled with sin.  His day sounds a great deal like our own when there are songs galore praising God while at the same time there is little pursuit of righteousness, even among those singing God’s praises.  Isaiah saw judgment coming and he saw what looks like floods and earthquakes, the earth itself in paroxysms.  It sounds much like what John saw in the Revelation, the judgment not only of the inhabitants of earth, but of all the host of heaven, satan and the fallen angels. 

As Jesus speaks of His coming death yet again the disciples seem to either be in denial about what He is saying or they believe Jesus has lost His mind.  Matthew tells us that it is at this time, in fact, that the mother of James and John comes and asks Jesus to set her two boys on His right and left hand as He comes into His kingdom.  In Mark’s Gospel, it is the two disciples themselves who make this request.  Either way, it is certain that the request isn’t motivated by an understanding that Jesus will be taking over a very non-temporal kingdom.  The belief is that when they go to Jerusalem this time it will likely mean that He takes over the throne of David, as the messianic King of the nation, restoring its pre-eminence.  No one could imagine what was going to actually happen, it was beyond belief. 

We are called to be the righteousness of God.  Our lives are to be lived according to His commands.  Righteousness is always a rebuke to unrighteousness, it will provoke others to despise us for it makes them feel judged.  The only response unrighteousness has is to judge itself righteous and true righteousness as wrong.  That was what happened to Jesus.  His righteousness was determined to be blasphemy and not true by those who thought themselves to be both righteous and the arbiters of righteousness.  Peter’s appeal is to live according to the Spirit rather than the passions of the flesh.  We will be called to give an accounting of our lives.  How we live needs to align with what we say we believe. 

26 November 2015

Psalm 131, 132; Zeph. 3:1-13; 1 Pet. 2:11-25; Matt. 20:1-16

In addition to the judgment on the nations, Zephaniah says that there will also be judgment on Israel.  He sees that the priests and leaders of the nation are not godly in their conduct and leadership.  The nation will not hear His voice of correction, and has not learned from His judgments against the nations.  In other words, there is no fear of the Lord within her, no knowledge of Him.  He is, however, in the midst of her, and each day offers justice but they refuse to listen and accept the truth.  For this reason, judgment will also fall on the nation but in the end there will be a remnant and that remnant will include those from the nations who will also worship in truth.  The proud and haughty will be replaced by the humble and lowly, those who fear the Lord and bow their heads and knees to His majesty in love. 

It is easy to identify with the complaint of those who have worked all day and yet are paid the same wages as those who worked only an hour isn’t it?  I would have expected more as well, initially because I saw the generosity of the owner but then, after I received the same wages, because I thought I had earned more than those who had worked only a short while.  The original workers agreed to work for the wages given but now, that level of pay seemed unfair.  The money hadn’t diminished in actual value, only relative value had changed.  What had been worth the effort now seems less than enough.  The rewards of the kingdom of God are given equally would seem to be the point Jesus is making here, whether you come in early in life or at the very end of your life.  We also need to remember that it was He who earned it on our behalf.  From the beginning of our salvation to the end, it is all down to grace and mercy, the generosity of God that we have any work to do for the kingdom.

Peter’s admonition is to keep our conduct honorable among non-believers “so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.”  His expectation is that these others will indeed speak against God’s people.  He doesn’t have the illusion that people will think highly of Christians nor is it his goal to be spoken well of by them.  He does, however, believe that it is important that the witness of our lives be honorable.  His example in all this is, obviously, Jesus, whose life could not be criticized, He was perfectly righteous and, when men spoke against Him, beat Him and, ultimately, crucified Him, He made no defense.  You cannot defend yourself against unrighteousness, all you can do is live to please the real judge of all men.  Peter surely remembered Jesus’ teaching, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”  We are living in an unrighteous world, let us, with our lives, testify that He is righteous in all His ways by doing what I bid us to in the confession, true and earnest repentance of sins, love and charity towards our neighbors, and the intention of leading a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways.

25 November 2015

Psalm 119:145-176; Obadiah 15-21; 1 Pet. 2:1-10; Matt. 19:23-30

The day of judgment for the nations is coming.  Israel’s deliverance and pre-eminence will be the result of this judgment.  The nations will receive their recompense, Esau is particularly singled out in this judgment.  Remember that Esau sold his inheritance of birthright for a mess of pottage.  The inheritance was the promise of God to his grandfather Abraham, passed to his son, Esau’s father, Isaac.  Esau, however, had little value for that and God chose Jacob to receive what was, by birth, Esau’s.  In this judgment, even what Esau had was going to belong to Jacob, along with the land of the Canaanites, Noah’s grandchildren, who were cursed for the sin of their father.  Let us never despise what the Lord has promised to us as these men did.

The “prosperity gospel” has always existed.  When Jesus speaks of how difficult it will be for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven the disciples are dumbfounded.  They want to know, if this is true, who might be saved.  Their assumption is that men of wealth are blessed by God and this is a sign of their favor in his eyes.  Poverty would then be the sign that God has rejected someone.  If that theology is right, then rich people will also enjoy eternal favor.  Jesus, however, contradicts that theological position and the disciples are confused.  His teaching on the matter is at one with his command to the rich young ruler to leave all his earthly wealth behind to inherit eternal life, “everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.”  The relative importance we give to things of earth vs. eternal things speaks volumes about our value system.  Our birthright is the cross, let us not despise it in favor of anything else.  Let us consider all else as Paul did, as rubbish, in comparison with the reward that awaits.

Peter helps us understand that our value system is messed up.  He says of Jesus that He is, “a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious.”  If we can be so humanly wrong about something like Jesus, the only man resurrected from the dead by God, how can we trust our desires and insights in any other place?  In coming to Jesus we are called to re-examine all that we hold dear and value in light of Him.  We are called to live not for the things we see with our eyes but that which God has promised for those who believe in His Son, who share His estimate of value of the one on that cross.  We are a new people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, we are called to be like His Son and we tend to become like what we value.

24 November 2015

Psalm 121, 122, 123; Nahum 1:1-13; 1 Pet. 1:13-25; Matt. 19:13-22

Nahum got to deliver the prophetic word Jonah so desperately wanted to give, he got to announce God’s judgment on Nineveh.  Nahum’s prophecy was about 150 years after Jonah at the time Assyria fell in about 612BC.  In verses two and three of this reading Nahum takes God’s self-revelation at Sinai to Moses from Exodus 34 and says that while the Lord may be slow to anger, judgment and wrath are part of His character, He will by no means clear the guilty.  In the midst of the announcement of judgment and the fearsome prospect of the Lord’s anger being poured out on His enemies the prophet suddenly tells us also, “The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him.”  In our day, we need to be reminded that judgment and wrath are part of the package.

When Jesus says to keep the commandments if you would enter life, the young man asks, “Which ones?”  Are there commandments which we can ignore?  In response Jesus lists some of the commands given at Sinai, ending with the summary of the second section of the tablet, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  He leaves out two things in particular though, the first section of the tablets, the part about loving God, and the last commandment, don’t covet.  Those commandments He includes in the admonition to sell everything and give it to the poor.  The young man loves his possessions more than he loves God, his treasure is here on earth, he isn’t willing to part with this life in order to have eternal life.  He covets things of earth.  Jesus exposes him as a sinner, in spite of his protestations that he has kept the commandments Jesus listed initially.  What he lacked was a savior, someone truly righteous.

Peter is giving us a summary of the Law as well, love God, love your neighbor.  Loving God is not only something we do intellectually and emotionally.  Peter tells us that we also love God by being holy as a response to His mercy and grace and the hope of grace at the revelation of Jesus.  We are called to be holy as He is holy.  The image of God should reflect the one whose image it is intended to bear.  Our love for Him, the way we show that we value the sacrifice of His Son on the cross, is to pursue Godliness, to conduct ourselves in fear in this exile, to obey His commands.  Next, Peter says we are to “love one another earnestly from a pure heart.”  In all these things he reminds us that we have been redeemed from perishable to imperishable and we are then to set our minds on those imperishable things.  Let us not continue to be like the rich young man, looking to these perishable things, but like Jesus, who set His sights on those imperishable things, the eternal kingdom.

23 November 2015

Psalm 106:1-18; Joel 3:1-2,9-17; 1 Pet. 1:1-12; Matt. 19:1-12

Joel’s vision of the day of judgment is certainly similar to John’s vision in Revelation.  Joel says all the nations will gather for war in the “Valley of Jehoshaphat” which means the valley of decision and there He will come and judge the nations.  We speak of the battle of Armageddon from Revelation 20 where the Lord will intervene on behalf of his besieged and outnumbered people and judge the nations by destroying their army there on the plain.  Joel says that in that day, “The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining.”  John tells us the same.  We can have confidence in the prophetic words that in the end the Lord will judge the earth and He will be victorious.  If we are His people then we know that nothing can prevent His kingdom from coming, He alone is sovereign and that He will rule over all the universe as King of kings and Lord of lords.  We have nothing to fear.

At the time of Jesus’ earthly life there was a dispute between two great rabbis, Hillel and Shammai, over the issue of divorce based on Deuteronomy 24.1-4.  The Pharisees question is an attempt to determine Jesus’ interpretation of Scripture, whether he is more “liberal” in his interpretation.  Hillel allowed divorce for nearly any reason based on that passage, which states that a man may give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away if he find any indecency in her.  Jesus goes back, not to Deuteronomy but to Genesis to answer their question but He does something else.  Their question says that Moses “commanded” something concerning divorce but Jesus says that Moses “permitted” or “allowed” divorce but that was based on a failing not in the woman but in the man, hardness of heart.  If you want to know what God thinks of marriage, Jesus says, go back past Moses to Genesis. 

Peter begins the epistle, after telling to whom it is addressed, with praise, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!”  Then he tells us why he is blessing God: for His great mercy in causing us to be born again to a living hope, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for us, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.  In this, no matter how difficult the testing is at this time, we are to rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.  The reason for this is that this salvation of our souls is faith’s reward.  Faith is demonstrated by our worship, our rejoicing in loving Him and believing in Him.  We know what the prophets of old longed to know, they were serving us, even us Gentiles, in their work and we have the fullness of the knowledge of God’s plan.  We are to prepare ourselves through rejoicing now in that living hope, that, at the revelation of Jesus in His second coming we might join with heaven in praise and glory and honor.

22 November 2015

Psalm 118; Isa. 19:19-25; Rom. 15:5-13; Luke 19:11-27

When Isaiah wrote this prophetic word Israel was vulnerable to both the empires of Egypt and Assyria.  What he saw was that there would come a time when both these nations and empires would worship Yahweh.  The bumper sticker today is, “No Jesus, no peace.  Know Jesus, know peace.”  That is the vision Isaiah had here.  The only path to peaceful coexistence for Israel, Egypt and Assyria was common worship.  Isaiah saw that this was going to happen.  The focus is on Egypt and he uses language from the time of the Exodus.  They would cry to the Lord because of oppressors, just as the Israelites cried to the Lord when they were oppressed by the Egyptians.  The Lord would send them a savior and deliverer just as He had sent Moses.  The Egyptians would know the Lord in that day.  He had been making Himself known to them since the plagues but finally they would know Him and worship Him. The vision awaits the coming of the kingdom of God.

This parable was actually quite contemporary.  Herod and his sons received their kingdoms by going to Rome and, in recent memory, the people had actually sent a delegation to Rome opposing the giving of the kingdom that included Judea to the Herods.  Jesus says that working on behalf of the king is expected of his servants. The application may have looked like it applied to Herod but it also says something about our relationship to the King of kings.  He, too, would be opposed in receiving a kingdom.  He will come again to judge those who have both been stewardship and those who opposed His kingship.  Something is expected of us, we have been entrusted with great treasures in the Gospel.  How are we investing what we have been given and are we prepared to give an accounting of our stewardship?

Paul writes of the mission of Jesus and the mission of the church.  He encourages them to seek unity among themselves, making no distinctions between Jews and Gentiles.  His argument is that Jesus became a servant to the Jews, the circumcised, in order to fulfill the promise that the Gentiles would glorify God for His mercy.  Paul sees that the vision of Isaiah is partially fulfilled in the work of Jesus through the church’s faithfulness to go to all nations and preach the Gospel, baptizing and making disciples.  The fullness of that vision awaits His coming again in glory but now, we the church, have been given the commission to go.  It is for faithfulness to that commission that we will be held to account in the end.