Now that Deborah and Barak have received their praise, Jael
and the Lord come into the song. Jael receives
hearty praise for her actions on behalf of Israel and the story continues with
a supposed view of the death of Sisera from his family's perspective. As I mentioned yesterday it is interesting to
note the differences between this song and some of the other songs in
Scripture, the Psalms, the songs of Mary and Zechariah in Luke 1 which extol
the Lord rather than people. The end of
the song brings one small factoid, the land had peace for forty years, which
must have been a blessed relief after 18 years of serving a foreign king.
Matthew tells us nothing of what happened between the resurrection
and the ascension. He does tell his
immediate audience the origin of the story that was current among the Jews of his
day but not about any post-resurrection appearances. He does tell us that some doubted but when
they doubted is an open question. Matthew
compresses all the forty days between the resurrection and the ascension into
two sentences and therefore this could include the story of Thomas. He also doesn't tell us to whom Jesus
appeared so the reality is that he could be including many people as
"disciples" and therefore doesn't mean the twelve. We do know, however, what we are commanded to
do as believers. We have a new song of
Jesus to sing to the world.
Peter's sermon proclaims that the Lord raised up Jesus from the
dead but Peter does a wonderful job of raising up Jesus as well. Just as Jesus said in John 3 to Nicodemus,
the Son of Man has to be lifted up like the serpent in the wilderness in order
to save us from death. Peter, speaking
to a Jewish audience to whom David is the exemplar of God's man, raises Jesus
up beyond David as the new man of God, to whom they must all turn if they are
to be forgiven the sin of crucifying Him.
Jesus is both the problem and the solution at once. His crucifixion is the ultimate sign of man's
rebellion against God and also the way in which God reconciles us to
Himself. We are at war with Him but He
is not at war with us, He came to re-establish peace. We are guilty of a crime but the victim is
not our accuser but our acquitter and acquittal.
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