31 May 2012

Psalm 37:1-18; Prov. 21:30-22:6; 1 Tim. 4:1-16; Matt. 13:24-30

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”  I certainly know parents who cling to that sentence as their children wander from the Lord.  I know people who believed it for and about me for some years.  It is important that we teach our children the ways of the Lord as early as possible in order that they know Him.  One of my favorite preacher/teachers speaks truth when he says, “Everything you do teaches.”  It isn’t only our words that need to bespeak our love of the Lord, it is also our lives.  Training includes modeling our own discipleship for our children.  The way we should go is more than words.

The parable of the wheat and tares is a way of understanding the reality of the church as both visible and invisible kingdom.  Within the church we have both the elect and those who are not truly elect and we can only know the difference between the two by the production of fruit.  The tares do not produce fruit while the wheat does.  The question we must leave to God and the end of time because we don’t know the timing of the harvest.  Sometimes it takes a long season before fruit is seen and we have to be patient and allow Him to sort it out.

Paul is certain that there will come a time and is even happening as he writes, when people will be deceived even in the church and even by those who teach.  Pleasure, any pleasure, will become something that must be avoided, marriage or food not being excepted.  These prohibitions presume that there is a dualism in the world where pleasure is not of God.  We believe in a good creator God who creates for pleasure when things are enjoyed as intended.  The abuse of a thing does not negate its proper use.  Further, he urges Timothy to set an example for the believers in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity.  Timothy is to set the standard for the wheat, that there may be evidence of fruitfulness in righteousness.

All laud we would render; O help us to see
’Tis only the splendor of light hideth Thee,
And so let Thy glory, Almighty, impart,
Through Christ in His story, Thy Christ to the heart.

Tune

30 May 2012

Psalm 38; Prov. 17:1-20; 1 Tim. 3:1-16; Matt. 12:43-50

“A servant who deals wisely will rule over a son who acts shamefully and will share the inheritance as one of the brothers.”  That is surely an unthinkable idea but Solomon says it is so.  Do we understand what the Lord has done for us?  In the old covenant it was easier in some ways because they were all one family and traced their lineage and their share of the Land to which brother’s line begat them.  Even in the Land they were to live as family or tribes and it was clear, no one needed to be reminded of relationships.  Jesus says that we find unity in Him, we are all family through Him in faith.  All the Israelite tribes ultimately were children of Abraham.  We have been granted entry into the family of faith and will share in the inheritance as one of the brothers.  What a concept!

Jesus re-interprets the family structure.  In our particular liturgy, the Kenyan liturgy, we say, “We await the coming of our brother, Jesus Christ…” the first time I read that phrase it made me incredibly uncomfortable even though it is true.  I know others who cringe every time I read it.  What Jesus has done is incredible when we truly realize that we are adopted children and share in the inheritance that only He truly deserves.  It feels too familiar, however, to think of Jesus as brother.  Even those who can think of Him as friend find “brother” a bit intimate.  He says here, however, that those who do the will of God are indeed like family to Him.  It is sin that keeps us from that intimacy, there is a healthy respect for the differences between us, but He bids us seek righteousness to become more like Him, bear the family resemblance.

Paul says that there are measurables to qualify for leadership in the church and those relate to righteousness of life.  He isn’t saying they have to be perfect but their lives must be such that they are above reproach and worthy of emulating.  The community needs role models and leaders should be role models, their lives should reveal godliness.  Jesus should be manifested in our flesh, the world should know something of Jesus based on the witness of our lives.  Priorities and values reflect themselves in our lives, what does yours say?

Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
Thine angels adore Thee, all veiling their sight;
But of all Thy rich graces this grace, Lord, impart
Take the veil from our faces, the vile from our heart.

Tune

29 May 2012

Psalm 26, 28; Prov. 15:16-33; 1 Tim. 1:18-2:8; Matt. 12:33-42

The fear of the Lord is the most important thing in pursuing righteousness.  The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, He is Almighty, holy, and judge.  He is also merciful and loving and desires to forgive those created in His image.  Those two things must be held always in tension, we should never forget that He is judge and He is holy and sin is a violation of the covenant and of His holiness as we are His image bearers.  Humility is the product of keeping those things in tension, we walk humbly before our God and before men in some ways as we are His representatives and all we do should reveal Him, His righteousness and His wisdom.

Righteousness is not only justification but also sanctification.  Jesus says that by our words we will either be justified or condemned.  That is a high and scary standard.  Does that mean that it is more than faith by which we will be justified?  It means that what we truly believe should be evident by our words and actions, not just our ability to articulate a belief that Jesus died on the cross for my sins and so I should get into heaven.  If I truly believe Jesus was God incarnate and that grace is given to me and I accept that in faith which is itself a gift, then my life should show two basic things, an awareness that sin matters and I am therefore pursuing righteousness in my life, and thankfulness which shows itself in righteous living.  Who we are should be radically changed by that belief.  We have been given the sign of Jonah to certify Him.

Paul asks that prayers be made for rulers in order that Christians be allowed to live godly lives in peace and dignity.  In all things he gives thanks to God for what He has done.  Paul was a man who never lost sight of how he was saved or how precious that salvation was and is, he never took it for granted, it was the thing which marked his life forever.  For all his life he had been trying to be good, to be righteous, but in that end that effort availed nothing at all, he missed the truth.  The worst sin Paul could imagine, as we see here, is blasphemy, his God was all-consuming and holy and to blaspheme the one who loved him and saved him was too much for him to bear.  He knew what it was to blaspheme and he knew the grief it caused but he knew also the depth of God’s love and mercy in forgiving him and calling him to His service.  Paul was truly an amazing man.

To all, life Thou givest, to both great and small;
In all life Thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
And wither and perish—but naught changeth Thee.

Tune

28 May 2012

Psalm 25; Prov. 10:1-12; 1 Tim. 1:1-17; Matt. 12:22-32

The writer speaks of the blessedness of the righteous as against the trouble of the unrighteous.  What is righteousness?  Jesus raised the bar on righteousness in His teaching and His life.  The Pharisees thought they knew the definition and worked hard at living up to that standard but Jesus said that if your righteousness does not exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.  Only Jesus could live up to that standard and by faith we are accounted as righteous but does that mean we are the righteousness of God in reality.  We have positional righteousness, we are clothed with Christ in the eyes of God and He sees that righteousness and passes over us in judgment but we are also to commit our lives to the pursuit of righteousness.  We are to confess our sins and to make every effort to overcome sin in our lives with the help of the Holy Spirit.  We are not passive in our sanctification, it is not something done to us as is justification.

The Pharisees essentially argue that Jesus is a great deceiver, that what He does is by the power of satan, whom they call Beelzebul, the prince of demons.  Of course His power is complete over these lesser demons, and it all is done to deceive the people to believe He is Messiah.  If they truly believe that, why are they not fearful?  Jesus, however, says this is no joking matter, in fact it is the single most serious thing they will ever say.  If you attribute the power of God to satan, you have committed the worst blasphemy imaginable.

Righteousness, Paul says, is found in Jesus alone.  Paul was a Pharisee, pursuing righteousness as he understood it according to their interpretation of the law.  He didn’t recognize true righteousness when it was revealed in and by Jesus because he was the foremost of sinners.  What he found was grace, mercy and forgiveness through faith in Jesus’ righteousness.  That does not mean, however, that righteousness no longer has content or context in his life, sin is still sin and those who practice sin as a settled matter are unrighteous, outside the covenant community.  Our righteousness is in Christ Jesus but our lives bear testimony to His abiding in us and vice versa.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, Thou rulest in might;
Thy justice, like mountains, high soaring above
Thy clouds, which are fountains of goodness and love.

Tune

27 May 2012

Psalm 118; Deut. 16:9-12; Acts 4:18-21, 23-33; John 4:19-26

The Feast of Weeks, otherwise known as Pentecost, was a celebration of the goodness of God in the fulfillment of His promise to provide abundantly for them in the Land.  It came at the end of the harvests and remembered their bitter situation in Egypt in order to make the harvest and God’s goodness even sweeter.  Over time it had also come to be a celebration of the giving of the Law at Sinai.  Interesting that Paul will reflect on the Law as a particular kind of slavery, pointing to the reality that sin is our master and we know that to be true because of the Law. 

Jesus maintains that truth matters, “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.”  The woman is not entitled to her own truth and the Samaritans have it wrong.  That being said, she now has a decision to make about Jesus as the truth and the one for whom they are looking, the prophet like Moses from Deuteronomy 18 (the Samaritans had only the first five books we know as the Old Testament so they weren’t looking for the same kind of Messiah the Jews were).  Jesus speaks though of a coming day when true worshippers would be those who worshipped in spirit and in truth, wherever they were, location was immaterial.  In spite of the reality that she worshipped what she did not know and that she was an immoral woman, Jesus entrusted her with His own testimony concerning Himself in a way we rarely see in the Gospels at this early stage in His ministry.

Peter always thought of himself as bold but the night of the trial he learned that fear could overcome boldness and make him a coward.  His boldness had limits.  After the resurrection and particularly after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, Peter was a different man, a fearless man, a truly bold man.  He knew that death wasn’t final, that Jesus was a conqueror and that if he, Peter, was faithful, he would also triumph over the grave, he would no longer fear what man could do to him.  His life, all of that life, would now be a celebration of Pentecost, he was a new man because Jesus had set him free from sin and fear and death.  Are you?

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessèd, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, Thy great Name we praise.

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