31 December 2012

Psalm 46, 48; Isa. 26:1-9; 2 Cor. 5:16-6:2; John 8:12-19

Isaiah suggests that there is a relationship between righteousness and peace.  We are encouraged to seek after righteousness, to set Him and the pursuit of righteousness above all other things.  We are to look for the kingdom of God, to long for it to be established, in order that we may know true peace from our enemies.  He says that when this day comes, evil will be trampled on by the poor and needy.  True strength comes from righteousness.  Do we understand and believe that truth?  If we are guilty of sin, unconfessed and unrepented of sin, then we lack the power of God in our lives, we block that power, we stand without assurance, we are fearful and doubtful.  Jesus is the only righteous man who ever lived and His power came from that righteousness.  He had no fear of man because He had no fear of God.  He needed not fear judgment.  Isaiah connects judgment and the pursuit of righteousness.  The more we fear God's judgments the more we seek after righteousness, the way to avoid that judgment.  The perfect righteousness required to avoid judgment is imputed to us, it is an alien righteousness, the righteousness of Jesus.  The preaching of the Gospel is not complete unless the need for grace, the judgment of God, is not in view so that people may seek Jesus rightly.

Could anyone actually believe that Jesus is the light of the world, that if you follow Him you will not walk in darkness?  Is that not a truly amazing thing for anyone to say?  We have to give the Pharisees a bit of a break for not believing, if we didn't have the Holy Spirit we couldn't believe it either.  It is, however, true and it would have been wrong for Jesus not to state it thus.  They argue that they need further evidence, someone else to give such testimony if they are to believe it.  He offers a second witness, His Father.  Their response is to ask where His Father is and Jesus uses what would seem to be circular logic, you can't know the Father because you don't know me.  In order to know the Father you have to believe in the Son and disbelief in the Son proves you don't know the Father.  We understand this to be not circular logic, but the logic of the Trinity, the three are One and to deny one is to deny both the particulars and the whole.

Paul says that he isn't going to repeat the same mistake over and again.  When he regarded Jesus according to the flesh he was wrong, he needed a spiritual revelation of the truth in order to make a right judgment.  Now, he says, he isn't going to judge anyone according to the flesh, according to what he sees because it has already been proven to him that such judgment is faulty.  In Christ we are new creations, new beings, not to be judged by the flesh, our standing in society.  We are to be judged spiritually.  As Jesus' ministry was reconciliation so is ours.  We are called to be reconciled to God and that is a two step process, recognizing we are at odds with God, and then pursuing His given means of reconciliation.  If we are at odds with one another because we did something to another that caused that division we no longer control the means of reconciliation, that prerogative lies with the one who was sinned against doesn't it?  Jesus, then, is the only way given by God to bring about reconciliation.  Again, Trinitarian logic, the Holy Spirit is given that we may discern truth and that truth is Jesus, the only way to the Father, a closed loop.

30 December 2012

Psalm 93, 96; Isa. 62:6-7,10-12; Heb 2: 10-18; Matt. 1:18-25

What does it mean to put watchmen on the walls?  They have a dual role, watching inside the city and outside the city.  They are to keep watch over what goes on inside the city, detecting and decrying the threats from within and to keep watch outside for threats coming from without.  We are to give the Lord no rest until He establishes Jerusalem as a praise, but we are looking for the new Jerusalem to come down from heaven and be established as the eternal city of God.  Our prayer is that His kingdom will come and in this we should not weary ourselves in prayer but continually seek it and ask Him to come.  We are not only to pray, however, we are to clear the highway leading to that kingdom of stones and build it up to make it plain and passable for others, we have an active role in preparing the way. 

Jesus' coming was the fulfillment of the promise of the ages but also the fulfillment of the promise to Mary and Joseph.  They had to wait a much shorter time than Abraham and Sarah!  The Name of Jesus is the Lord saves, exactly what he came to do and in fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah that He would be their salvation.  Joseph here is told that His Name is also Immanuel, God with us, and so it is true in a way no one could have imagined and even now cannot believe without the work of the Holy Spirit to testify.  How could the God who created everything from nothing by commanding it be born a child in manger and then dwell among us as a man? 

How could He possibly call us brothers? He has done so and then made us so by making a way for us to be adopted into God's family, God's children.  All this seems too good to be true, that God came to earth, took on the form of a man, died on a cross for my forgiveness and then incorporates me into His family as a child of the living God so that I can live with Him forever.  Is it any wonder people don't believe it?  It is the greatest truth of all time.  He knows our difficulties and our pain in this life and has overcome death for us, death that is the result of sin.  We are now to work to prepare a people for Him, bringing others into the family of God to share our inheritance and our joy.

29 December 2012

Psalm 18:1-20: Isa. 12:1-6; Rev. 1:1-8; John 7:37-52

What is the result of God's saving work on behalf of His people?  Worship.  When we pray the Lord's prayer we begin with, "Our Father, who is in heaven."  Those words should call us also to remember and praise Him for the reality that though He is in heaven, He is not aloof and distant, He also took on flesh and dwelt among us for the purpose of saving us from death, that we might have eternity in His presence.  There is a fourfold response to the goodness of God, "Give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples,
proclaim that his name is exalted."  We are to give thanks for what He has done, call upon Him in trouble, pray to Him, make known not only that He is but what He has done, His deeds, and worship, proclaim that His Name is exalted.  The simplest, most concise description of the Christian life you will see.

Believing in Jesus frees up the reservoir of living water from our hearts.  The water flows upward and outward.  It flows up to God in praise and worship and out to the world in proclamation of Him.  When we live without faith and without eternal hope, we keep all that within ourselves, we live either self-centered lives of materialism or outwardly directed lives of altruism that ultimately despises those who do not share our commitment.   If our first movement is not vertical then we love one another wrongly and badly.  Our reaching outward to others is in love that gives eternal hope, not simply charity to make it through this life.  We do all for the love of God.  Why not make that a New Year's resolution, to love God so much that you offer your life to simply praise and proclaim Him?

John says three things about Jesus.  He is the faithful witness, He is the firstborn from the dead and He is the ruler of all kings of earth.  The work He has done is to free us from sins by His blood.  The result of that work is to make us a kingdom of priests to His God.  He is coming again and all tribes of earth will wail in that day on account of Him.  We are to be a tribe of our own, a kingdom whose king is Jesus, and we are priests to the Lord God who was and is and is to come.  Let us take seriously our role as priests, proclaiming Him, worshipping Him and serving Him alone in 2013.  Let the world see us as different, let us commit ourselves to that call on each of us to be His priests this year.

28 December 2012

Psalm 2, 26; Isaiah 49:13-23; Matthew 18:1-14

In exile the nation cries out that they have been forgotten.  The Lord comforts His people with promises of restoration.  Those promises include the nations at their feet, the Land so filled there is no room for all the people, children everywhere.  It is a song of love for God's people.  It is more likely that a nursing mother will forget her child than the Lord will forget His people.  They/we are engraved on the palms of His hands, it is impossible that He should forget them.  The promises of God are for those who enter His covenant, they are for all who believe.  All do not enter that covenant and we long for the day when His kingdom is established and we see the fulfillment of all the promises of God.  Can there be any more powerful images than these, " Kings shall be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. With their faces to the ground they shall bow down to you, and lick the dust of your feet."

In God's sight we are all "little ones."  We see from our own perspective and we believe something about ourselves that needs to be set right.  We get too big for our britches and we need to be reminded on occasion that we are little children, insignificant in the grand scheme except for what He has made of us and makes of us.  Greatness is not something we should seek nor should we aspire to it.  We are children of God and we will always be children.  There is an incredibly comforting side to that (see above) and there is a humbling side to that.  At some level wouldn't you love to truly be someone's child forever?  You are!

27 December 2012

Psalm 97, 98; Proverbs 8:22-30; John 13:20-35

An ode to wisdom.  Before the creation of all that we know, there was something else, wisdom.  It is by wisdom that all things come to be.  We sought and seek wisdom in and from created things when it is readily available to us from the source.  We believe that Jesus is the wisdom of God revealed, the Truth, the righteousness of God, through whom and for whom all things were created.  We are told over and again that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.  In Jesus, we are invited to follow Him, to allow Him to take up His abode in us by the power of the Holy Spirit, to live in Him and for Him.  The pursuit of wisdom is the pursuit of Jesus.  Wisdom is two-fold, however, knowing and doing are inextricably bound up together.  Knowing and not doing is the opposite of wisdom and it is also called sin.

The wisdom of God is folly to the world.  Paul was clear about that in 1 Corinthians.  Jesus, knowing that Judas went to betray Him, knowing that the future was the cross, says that now the Son of Man is glorified and God glorified in Him.  He could have stopped Judas, He could have told them all what Judas intended and they would have made certain it didn't happen.  He didn't have to let this happen this way at least, but it was the Father's will and it was all according to plan.  To stop Judas would have been wise in the eyes of the world but not in the eyes of the Father.  The Father and the Son were to be glorified in a very strange way, by Jesus being crucified, cursed according to Leviticus.  If we would have wisdom we must seek it from Him and not from the world.  Wisdom is submitting to the will of God, no matter what it means for us.