31 January 2012

Psalm 61, 62; Gen. 21:1-21; Heb. 11:13-22; John 6:41-51

The Lord visited as He said He would and did to Sarah what He promised.  After waiting 25 years for the fulfillment of the promise, the Lord delivered at the time He chose.  Surely they had thought that by now they would have several children but that was not God’s plan or promise.  We don’t know what Ishmael was doing but laughing is only one option here, making sport of is another.  Sarah perceived a threat and Abraham was forced to send both Hagar and his son away and God agreed.  It is amazing that this little family scene in the middle of the desert could have such implications for our world today several thousand years later. 

Jesus claims to be from God.  The people are pretty sure they know He is from Nazareth and that they know His parentage.  If they do, how do they explain what they have seen Him do?  Sometimes what we think know isn’t true.  Jesus promises that the one who believes has eternal life and that He is the bread of life.  They have proposed that He do as Moses had done in providing food and Jesus speaks into that by reminding them that manna isn’t eternal, those who ate it perished.  His final words in this passage are the deal breakers, “And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 

Our attitude in faith is that there is a better day and a better homeland awaiting us.  The biggest obstacle is that we are all, at heart, materialists.  We want what we see, not what we can’t see.  We can set goals but we need to be able to visualize the goal, what does it look like.  We know what it means to be thinner, to be muscular, to be wealthy, to have perfect spouses and perfect kids, but we have a hard time visualizing something better than the world we know.  We can only see and know that world by eyes of faith. Faith calls us out of that materialistic mindset, enables us to take great risks through trust in Him who created and upholds all things.  Faith sometimes looks irrational, wreckless.  Faith should mean that we make different choices than the world would make in a given circumstance, it should mark us out and differentiate us from the world.  It is people of faith who truly make a kingdom difference.

For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,
   for my hope is from him.
He only is my rock and my salvation,
   my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
On God rests my salvation and my glory;
   my mighty rock, my refuge is God.

30 January 2012

Psalm 56, 57; Gen. 19:1-29; Heb. 11:1-12; John 6:27-40

Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom.  He is now a town elder, a respected citizen.  He invites the men to stay with him because he knows what kind of place and people are here but he is willing to live in the center of the town and have a prominent leadership position there.  Lot has compromised greatly and been seduced by the world.  The scene that evening in Sodom is incredibly bizarre, almost like a horror movie as the people, every last one, come to Lot’s house and demand that he send out these men so that they may “know” them which is to say, have sexual relations with them.  Lot offers his virgin daughters to appease the crowd but they will have none of that offer.  The men perform a miracle causing blindness in the people of Sodom but so great is their desire that we are told “they wore themselves out groping for the door.”  When the angels tell him to get out of Sodom they have to seize Lot because he lingered.  What is wrong with this man?  Ultimately the cities are destroyed but Lot is saved because of the prayers of Abraham. 

The people who have followed Jesus and who, the day before, were prepared to receive Him as prophet and king, prove that they are in some ways like the men of Sodom, only in it for gratification of their physical desires, in this case, nothing more than food.  Jesus promises greater sustenance and they initially respond as the woman at the well, “Sir, give us this bread always.”  They, unlike the woman, are unwilling to accept any substitute for material bread.  They formed their opinion of Jesus based on his providing for their material desires and now are prepared to reject Him based on His failure to provide according to their desires.  I am the bread of life begins to turn the conversation and He continues with the statement “everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” This too, is reminiscent of what Jesus has already said, this time to Nicodemus concerning the lifting up of the Son of Man as Moses lifted up the bronze serpent.  That episode (Numbers 21) was also based on the people’s rejection of God’s provision of what they called “worthless food.” 

Understanding faith begins with believing that the universe was created by the word of God.  Faith, the writer says, begins with Genesis 1.  If we don’t begin to read the Bible through eyes of faith, we will have a difficult time from start to finish.  If He is creator then we approach Him with the proper reverence and fear.  If He has the power to create then He has the power to destroy, to uncreate.  Creation by fiat is a show of greatness, the Bible begins with greatness and moves us towards an understanding of God that He is both great and, thankfully, good.  Because of sin, we are forced to know Him not by sight but by faith.  Prior to sin, God walked among us.  Sin created distance and now faith is key to walking with God.  Faith restores a sense of awe and wonder to life, keeps us from being satisfied with the mundane.  Faith calls us upwards, so that we can live as more than flesh, but by Spirit.  The people of Sodom, even Lot, and the folks that wanted more bread in the Gospel lesson, needed to get a bigger picture, they needed to know God as creator. 

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me,
   for in you my soul takes refuge;
in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge,
   till the storms of destruction pass by.
I cry out to God Most High,
   to God who fulfills his purpose for me.
He will send from heaven and save me;
   he will put to shame him who tramples on me.

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens!
   Let your glory be over all the earth!

29 January 2012

Psalm 24, 29; Gen. 18:16-33; Gal. 5:13-25; Mark 8:22-30

The men turned and went towards Sodom but Abraham still stood before the LORD.  What does that mean?  The three men were representatives of the Lord but they were not the Lord.  Only the one who stayed behind was the Lord, a “Christophany”, a pre-incarnational appearance of Jesus.  Abraham was such an important person that the Lord revealed to Him the plans He had for Sodom.  Abraham pleads for Sodom and finally bargains the Lord down to sparing the city if there are ten righteous men found there.  That is the basis for the establishment of a synagogue in a place, ten Jewish men, otherwise the city might be destroyed.  What, however, did righteous mean to Abraham in this era preceding the law? 

Again we see a man brought to Jesus by a group of people and His response is to take the person apart from everyone else to heal him.  Recently we had the case of a deaf/mute man in a similar circumstance and Jesus took away by himself for the healing and he spit that time as well but that was to indicate the healing of the man’s speech.  This one is strange because the first time Jesus acts it only effectuates a partial healing.  After the healing is complete, Jesus instructs the man to not even enter the village.  Can we assume there is some great evil there as there is nowhere else in the Gospels where Jesus gives such a command?  As the disciples pass through Caesarea Philippi Jesus asks what they hear other people saying about Him and then what they believe about Him so far.  Why would anyone believe that He was the reincarnation of either Elijah or John the Baptist?  Peter gets it right, “You are the Christ.”  What he didn’t know was that he only understood a portion of what that meant.

Paul sees a war within us, a war between the Spirit of God and the desires of the flesh.  We are born with a desire for self-gratification and yet the commandment of God is to love others as we love ourselves.  If we work out the implications of that tension, it means that we are to seek the best for others.  If, literally, everyone did that, we would all have gratification without seeking it for ourselves.  Christian community is meant to be that kind of selfless love and that was expressed in the early days of the church where everyone had everything in common.  The problem at Sodom is that there was none of this kind of love, it was all complete self-interest.  What we see in Jesus is true righteousness, loving others truly and completely, pouring out Himself, laying aside His own interests for others.  We need to be and have the kind of community where such love is practiced.  Let us seek the fruits of the Spirit in our lives by living according to the Spirit.

The earth is the LORD's and the fullness thereof,
   the world and those who dwell therein

 for he has founded it upon the seas
   and established it upon the rivers.

28 January 2012

Psalm 55; Gen. 18:1-16; Heb. 10:26-39; John 6:16-27

We know that Abraham began to walk in faith by circumcising the males of his household, including Ishmael and the servants but did he truly believe that a child would be born to he and Sarah?  He provides lavish hospitality to the three men but does he know who they are?  It isn’t clear that he knows this is God, interesting that He appears in the form of three men isn’t it?  We are told that the “way of women had ceased to be with Sarah.”  She no longer produces an egg which can be fertilized, she can’t get pregnant.  Her reaction to the announcement is doubt and laughter as she hides just inside the tent and eavesdrops on the conversation.  Had Abraham told her of the conversation we heard yesterday or did he keep it to himself rather than either getting Sarah’s hopes up or risking her scorn for what she might perceive as foolishness?  The words of the men to Sarah, “Is anything too hard for the LORD?” are remarkably similar to those spoken to Mary that I mentioned yesterday.

Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel is full of the wrong questions.  Philip tells Jesus that He asked the wrong question concerning the food for the crowd.  The question wasn’t where to get the food it was how to buy it.  Here the crowd asks when Jesus came across the lake and the real question, as the disciples know, is how he got across the lake.  They seem to have kept that detail to themselves, probably scarcely believing it had actually happened.  Where Jesus had compassion on them the day before He now is skeptical about them.  His words about not working for the food that perishes is drawn from Isaiah 55, as is His promise.  They have come for more food and were willing to work and sacrifice to get it but they are materialists, not seeing that yesterday’s miracle was actually a sign.  They wanted a king who would continually provide.  Think back to the temptation that satan posed first, that Jesus provide bread for Himself and He refused by quoting “Man does not live by bread alone…”  Here the temptation is the same but based in His compassion for others.  He loves them enough to say no and call them higher.

These people to whom the letter is addressed formerly “joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.”  It seems that now they have doubted and decided that since Jesus hadn’t returned it made some sense to return to the old system just in case they had been wrong about Jesus.  Is our confidence in Jesus strong enough to endure and persevere in seeking to live holy and righteous lives, to pursue our sanctification or do we have an opposite problem from these?  Can we believe so much in Jesus’ sacrifice and its efficacy that we no longer pursue righteousness in our lives?  We are called to pursue the promises of God that we might obtain them, not that we have already attained them.  Let us believe but in our believing let us pursue the promises now, not waiting until after the end of this life.

The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.

Tune

27 January 2012

Psalm 40, 54; Gen. 17:15-27; Heb. 10:11-25; John 6:1-15

Abraham no longer believes that God can do what He promised, not through weakness on the part of God but on the part of Abraham and Sarah.  The Lord announces that Sarai’s name is to be changed from my princess to princess because she is to be the princess of the nation, the matriarch.  That is now too much for Abraham to consider possible, based on the inability of a man and woman of their age to bring forth life so he laughs at the idea.  The child’s name is to be Isaac, or laughter.  The source of that laughter will be two-fold, based in the laughter of his parents when the announcement was made and their joy at the fulfillment of the promise.  Abraham’s reaction was to plead that Ishmael be acceptable as the son of promise but God said no.  The Lord appreciated Abraham’s prayer for Ishmael but he would not be the son of the covenant.  After the Lord departs why does Abraham have Ishmael circumcised in addition to all the other males?  If circumcision is the sign of the covenant and God has said no to Ishmael’s being the son through whom covenant was passed, why circumcise him? 

No one believes anything can be done about the dilemma of feeding this multitude.  Philip knows the real question isn’t where to buy food, it is that there are simply too many people there that even if there were a place to buy it the amount of money required to purchase such a supply would cost more than a half-year’s wages so it wouldn’t make any difference.  Jesus, however, is able to provide out of a very little that a boy had with him.  He has them sit in an area where John says there was much grass, thinking of “He makes me lie down in green pastures” perhaps?  Their belief is that this is the Prophet (like Moses) who was to come into the world based on providing food for multitudes, just like Moses.  Jesus’ response is to withdraw from the crowds, most of us would bask in the adulation.

The priest offering sacrifices does so in faith that they are acceptable for sin.  Jesus’ sacrifice comes with the seal of the resurrection as proof of acceptability.  We don’t hope our sins are forgiven, the resurrection tells us that they are if we repent.  Confession is the first step in the process of reconciliation with God that starts when we sin and breach the covenant.  True confession, however, leads to repentance, what we have done is so terrible to us that we can’t imagine going back to it.  It begins with seeing things God’s way.  We are in covenant with Him and yet the relationship is ruptured due to sin and the only way to heal the rupture is to go back to that place and deal with it.  We then move on together with a new desire to live differently.  Faith and hope go together in all things, for as the angel told Mary, all things are possible with God.

Even down to old age all My people shall prove
My sovereign, eternal, unchangeable love;
And when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn,
Like lambs they shall still in My bosom be borne.

Tune