31 January 2011

31 January 2011

Psalm 56, 57; Isa. 51:17-23; Gal. 4:1-11; Mark 7:24-37

The Lord announces that the time has come for a new beginning. He affirms that what has happened is indeed attributable to His wrath against His people but that now He is coming to save. They need to know that this is not some random thing that has happened or that God has been defeated in this hour, this was His doing. It is important that they know this for two reasons, one is that they are accountable for it and two that they will know He is still on the throne. The sovereignty of God has not been challenged. The enemy who did this was used by the Lord as instruments of His wrath and He has seen the suffering of His people. Now they will see His salvation.

The Syrophoenician woman displays pluck, persistence and faith. She believes that Jesus can heal her daughter, it is only a question of whether or not He will. She has no claim to Him based in religion, her claim is based only in faith in Jesus to heal. She makes no pretense to worthiness, only to a need that Jesus is able to meet. She asks only for crumbs, acknowledging that He has plenty to spare. For this, she receives what she requests. The crowd at the Decapolis also sees an amazing thing, a man who was a deaf/mute is healed. The crowds are told not to tell anyone but they tell it all the more. Those who have experienced His touch cannot be deterred from telling it.

What does it mean to have been changed from slave to son? Can we truly imagine it in our society? The change in status is remarkable. It requires a complete change in attitude and outlook. Our understanding of the household in which we live is entirely different if we are a slave in the house instead of a child of the house. Paul uses that analogy in a way that should call the Galatians to the freedom available to them in Christ Jesus. Is the Spirit inside us crying “Abba, Father” or is legalism binding it and keeping it from knowing what it means to be Abba’s child?

When I am afraid,
I put my trust in you.
In God, whose word I praise,
in God I trust; I shall not be afraid.

30 January 2011

30 January 2011

Psalm 24, 29; Isa. 51:9-16; Heb. 11:8-16; John 7:14-31

The prophet begins by praying to the Lord to come and comfort His people. One of the marks of a true prophet is that he/she cares for the people of God. The prophet may announce God’s judgment on the people but they must also be willing and able to intercede on behalf of the people. They must care chiefly about God’s honor but also for the people who have gone astray. Isaiah asks the Lord to remember both who He is and who His people are. The Lord’s response is first to gently rebuke them for their fear and forgetting. They have fear of man because they have forgotten who their God is. He reminds them of both His power and His lovingkindness. The same One who established the heavens and laid down the foundations of the earth is the One who says to Israel, you are my people.

The people were confused about Jesus and for good reason. Where indeed did He get this learning? To teach in the temple courts was a privilege and honor and that was typically reserved for those who had studied under the best rabbis, at the Ivy league rabbi schools, and they knew that Jesus hadn’t studied under any of these rabbis, in fact He hadn’t studied under anyone at all. Jesus says they were to examine the teaching in light of truth and whose glory was being sought by the teaching. He then asks, “Why are you trying to kill me?” The question seems relatively out of the blue except that they were trying to kill him although no one had brought it up here. They continue to focus on the wrong thing, where does Jesus come from and they think they know the answer to that question. Not once does Jesus ever point to His origins, He always points to what He is doing.

Our lives tell the story of our desires. By faith Abraham left everything behind in search of what the Lord promised. By faith the disciples left behind everything to follow Jesus. Every time He calls anyone they are required to walk away from their life as it was to come follow Him. We tend to keep one eye on the world and one eye on God and the demands of the world are more immediate, more clamorous and the eye we have on God gets turned away. We have to be more concerned with where we are going, where He is leading than on anything else if we want to see Him.

Ascribe to the LORD, O heavenly beings,
ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.
Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;
worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness.

29 January 2011

29 January 2011

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

The Lord pleads with the people to look to Him, look to Abraham, give attention to Him for their deliverance is drawing nigh. The promise is temporal and eternal all at once. He promises to bless the land, making the wilderness like Eden and the desert like the garden of the Lord. He also promises that His righteousness and salvation is near and therefore the blessing will be permanent, eternal. Where is our attention? Does the Lord have to plead with us to get us to hear and see or are our eyes and ears always attuned to Him? With so much going on in the world it is tough to sort out everything and to see any hope. As Christians we must fix our lives on Him and our hope in Him always.

Jesus gives a lecture on what is truly important. The Pharisees are primarily interested in jots and tittles while leaving off the main things. It is always a temptation to major in the minors in religious life. What are those things that Jesus focused on in His life and ministry? Were they ritualistic or were they relationship oriented. Here, he says that worship and righteousness are more a matter of the heart than of the small things. We can be good rule keepers and miss it all. Benjamin Franklin set himself to improve in ten ways and tracked his progress in them. They were admirable things and certainly made him a better man in the eyes of the world but as they weren’t done for the love and glory of God, they didn’t matter ultimately. Have we set our lives to primarily love God and love our neighbors or on rules?

The epistle to the Galatians is all about faith v the law. Paul says that the law has been done away with in the sense that it is anyone’s ticket to eternal life. Jesus has fulfilled the law and that means He is righteous in the eyes of the Lord. Through faith in His blood we receive His righteousness, it is accounted to us as if we had been righteous. Our faith in Him should be complete, recognizing His perfection and love we have no need of anything else. Nothing we do could add to His righteousness or our hope of salvation. In faith we can rest in certainty, we need add nothing to faith, in fact anything we try to add to it diminishes it.

In Christ alone my hope is found
He is my light, my strength, my song
This Cornerstone, this solid ground
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm

What heights of love, what depths of peace
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease
My Comforter, my All in All
Here in the love of Christ I stand

28 January 2011

28 January 2011

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

Do we walk by fires we have kindled or by the light of our own torches or do we walk in the light of the Lord? The servant here is not Isaiah speaking for himself but rather the servant of the Lord, the one we know to be Jesus. The images are here of the lash on the back and spitting in the face, the suffering of Jesus before His accusers is literal not figurative. We also know that His entire trust was in the Father to vindicate Him. He had no one to stand beside Him and plead His case, no one to speak on His behalf and He refused to make His own defense. We are to follow His example of trusting in, fearing in the Lord. The fear of Him should keep us walking in faith, lest we displease Him and suffer judgment for our transgressions. This is not to suggest we can “lose” our salvation. If we are elect then we will persevere, but judgment for sins is the lot of all, it is not final judgment to damnation but we do suffer His rebuke in order that we might be treated as children, that we might grow in His likeness. Fear of the Lord continues to have a proper place in our lives even after we know His love.

What was the reaction of the disciples to seeing Jesus walking on the water? Fear. They knew enough not to be simply astonished by this and it was a demonstration of His power, His difference, and in this demonstration they knew to be afraid. The revelation of God as creator should properly inspire in us awe, wonder, amazement, love, and a great many other positive feelings but it should also inspire us to consider the incredible power of the one who spoke and all things came into being just as He intended. In that revelation we see something fearsome as well as awe-inspiring. Fear is a very human reaction to such power and yet Jesus says to them “Don’t be afraid.” Only the one who inspired the fear can calm the fear just as the one who created the wind has power to calm it. Healing wasn’t completely an act of Jesus’ will but, as those who touched the fringe of his garment experienced, a power that inhered in His very being.

Does the law cause sin or simply define it? Paul says the law was given because sin had multiplied. Not having been given the Spirit of God they needed to know the will of God but it was an external thing. They relied for interpretation on the wisdom of the rabbis and sometimes the rabbis gave contradictory answers. We see in the first generations of Abraham’s family that they were motivated not by the glory of God but by their own selfish desires. The law was given that the people of God might know what kind of God they served. The law however did not make anyone righteous, it only gave information on what was not righteous. The covenant with the people was the result of the promise made to Abraham, as Paul notes, 430 years before the law was given, so it did not establish the covenant. Jesus was the basis for the law and the covenant. Faith in God’s promise to forgive sins through sacrifice was always the hope and the perfect sacrifice, the fulfillment of the system, was Jesus. We need not fear because in the face of Jesus we know God’s love.

I waited patiently for the LORD;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
He drew me up from the pit of destruction,
out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure.
He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the LORD.

27 January 2011

27 January 2011

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

The Lord promises reversal of fortune for Israel, that she will throw off her bereavement and will enjoy the blessing of God. They are now enduring the judgment of God against them but His promise is that this is not final. The Lord compares Himself to a mother and asks is it possible for her to forget her children. The nation is even more dear to Him than this, they are engraved on the palms of His hands, it is impossible to forget them. When we read these words we should recall the cross, we are literally engraved on the palms of the hands of God. His love was so great that He chose to symbolize that love, reveal this prophecy was more than a nice image. Where is the mark in our flesh, in the circumcision of our hearts, we bear our love for Him in our hearts aflame with love for Him.

Bountiful provision is the promise in the Isaiah passage, and in the feeding of the 5000 we see in Jesus that is the rule of the day. The same Lord who provided for the nation in the wilderness for forty years is now here among them and providing for them in the same way. They were in “a desolate place” where no means of providing for the people existed and yet there was abundance. All had as much as they wanted and several basketfuls were left over. The disciples know that this is the Lord’s doing, much as the turning of water into wine at Cana in Galilee in John 2. We get a behind the scenes glimpse into the conversation and so we know that their faith was not adequate to the task, they were still looking to natural solutions. It was Jesus’ compassion on the people that ruled the day, now as always.

Faith is the key. Paul knows whereof he speaks. So long as he persecuted the church for the sake of the law he was fighting against God Himself. The Gospel has always been that the just shall live by faith. Abraham was the father of faith, the promises came through him not through the law. Abraham shows us how to walk in faith humbly before our God, following where He leads and trusting Him always. Legalism is always lurking at the door, enticing us to come follow it and have security because then we know we have done as we were told. We are called to walk by the Spirit of God, in freedom. Does that mean we will have license to do whatever we please? No, it means that He will set His Spirit within us to will and desire to do what His will, in perfect compliance with the law itself. We can know it is the Spirit leading us because we have the Word of God to tell us what His will for our lives is. When we learn to ride a bicycle we begin with training wheels and then as we develop that innate sense of balance we take those wheels off and ride without them but the principles remain the same.

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and perform your vows to the Most High,
and call upon me in the day of trouble;
I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.