31 March 2013

Psalm 148, 149, 150; Exod. 12:1-14; John 1:1-18

(I don't know why there is no epistle.) 

The Passover feast eaten in Egypt would certainly have been a solemn and expectant one.  Was the Lord truly going to strike down the first born of Egypt in one night?  Think of a world with no electric lights, so much less ambient noise we can hardly imagine it, and the realization in every household that the first born males were dying.  The wailing and weeping would be heard everywhere and yet this one group of slaves living in Goshen were simply eating a meal together of roasted lamb.  They had to so some ritual acts with the blood of that lamb, put the blood on the lintels and doorposts of their houses, but other than that they were just having a meal.  The rest of the world was melting down and these people, the slaves, were quietly dining.  The Lord asked very little of them in the way of obedience and faith, just add that little ritual to your meal, and yet that little act of obedience made all the difference in the world.

All who believe in Jesus' Name, meaning, the Lord saves, are given the right to become children of God, born of God.  How can that be possible that I don't have to do anything in order to become a child of God?  Even the faith to believe is a gift.  We, believers, will see a time like unto this Passover in Egypt, when we will live and others will die for the simple reason they didn't believe in Jesus' Name.  It is an amazing thing to believe that Jesus came down into darkness, opened my eyes, let me see.  He who existed from eternity took on humanity and lived among us as one of us in order that rebels might be turned into worshippers as AW Tozer wrote.  We have seen that God is indeed merciful and gracious and now we know the extent of that mercy and grace is everlasting, the gift that indeed keeps on giving.

30 March 2013

Psalm 88;  Job 19:21-27a; Heb. 4:1-16; Rom. 8:1-11

Job was an innocent man, a righteous man, and his friends didn't just desert him in his hour of need, they became his accusers.  What a misery when those who are supposed to be your advocates become your prosecutor.  He cries out at the injustice done him by God and by these associates.  He knows, or believes at least, that there is one who will plead his case, his redeemer, because he believes in justice, that God will not allow him to be condemned without a fair trial.  He believes that ultimately this will not stand, he takes the long view of justice.  It is a hard thing to do but we need to believe like Job.  We know for a fact that our redeemer lives but we know that we aren't innocent or righteous, our redeemer doesn't plead our case but His own blood, not our righteousness but His own, He already took the fall for us.  We don't cry out for justice, we can't bear justice, we need what Job cries out for here, mercy.

There is no Gospel today, the light of the world was extinguished yesterday, there is no good news.  We are invited to enter the rest God calls us to and promises.  We are called to rest in Jesus and the finished work of the cross.  The only thing we can do is believe that as He cried out, "It is finished."  Our "work" is nothing more or less than belief that the work has been done by Him.  We recognize that our sins caused His death and His righteousness is credited to us.  We are to live in that alien righteousness and thereby to rest from our labors because we do them not under compulsion or some vague hope that they will merit eternal life but in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection.  Our great high priest does not offer our sacrifices, He offered Himself and the resurrection is proof that His sacrifice is acceptable to God.

The life in us is the life of the Spirit, otherwise we are dead men walking.  The life of the flesh, that is, the gratification of our desires, life lived according to those desires rather than the desire of the spirit, the glorification of God, is none other than death.  If we live at that level, we will surely die.  If, however, we have accepted the grand bargain, our sins for His righteousness, then He lives within us and we are able to live at a higher level.  Do we see that in ourselves or are we anxious about all the same things, seeking those things rather than the kingdom?  We should be so much more than we are. 

29 March 2013

Psalm 22; Gen. 22:1-14; 1 Peter 1:10-20; John 13:36-38

Remember when God first called Abraham it was to a land God would show him.  Now, he is to take the child of that same promise to "one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”  The Lord had a very specific place in mind both times and we believe that mountain to be the same place where the crucifixion occurred on Good Friday.  This was a foreshadowing of those events.  The promise of the entire enterprise, the covenant, depended on this child being the hope of the future.  Abraham, without hesitation in action, goes forward.  We don't know anything about what Sarah knew or thought, but there is an interesting midrash on that you can read here.  Abraham was a faithful man and this test shows his faith in the Lord more profoundly than anything in scripture.  He trusted the Lord that God would provide the lamb for sacrifice.  Abraham was willing to do whatever the Lord required because he knew that the Lord had promised that Isaac was the child of the promise and that no matter what happened here that would not change, so we see him reach out his hand and take the knife and then the angel of the Lord calls out to him to stop.  What a remarkable man of faith!

Jesus tells the disciples they cannot follow now where He goes.  Peter, God bless him, wants to be the kind of man who will be faithful to the end but Jesus knows better, this will be a lonely time for Him, made more so by Peter's betrayal.  Jesus' prophetic words concerning the rooster crowing must have seemed like a knife stab in Peter's heart at the time and even worse when he heard that sound and knew that he had betrayed Jesus as surely as Judas had done.  In the movie Braveheart, Robert the Bruce reveals his admiration for William Wallace to his father and how deeply his betrayal of Wallace affected him.  The father replies, "All men betray. All lose heart." Robert responds, "I don't want to lose heart. I want to believe as he does."  Peter's faith lacked something that would be provided by two things to come, the resurrection and the giving of the Holy Spirit.  In the end, that other prophecy of Jesus', "you will follow afterward" will reveal that faith as Peter goes to his own death.

That same Peter who betrayed Jesus now has the faith to persevere, faith in the very blood spilled on Good Friday when the flow of blood and water gushed from His side, flowed from His head when the crown of thorns was pressed into His skull, flowed from his feet and hands as the nails were driven into them.  He knows that that blood was precious, that it paid his ransom and that his eternity is secure.  Peter, however, has learned that it isn't about him and that this sacrifice is for all who will believe and they are to be changed by this as he has been changed into the man he so desperately wanted to be, a man of faith and action, a man who won't lose heart.

28 March 2013

Psalm 102;  Jer. 20:7-11; 1 Cor. 10:14-17, 11:27-32; John 17:1-26

Jeremiah wasn't prepared for the intensity of opposition his message has brought him.  When he was called as a prophet he likely had some idea that people would listen and heed his words as they come from the Lord and not from the man himself.  Instead he has experienced scorn and even his closest friends are watching for his downfall as he cries out for repentance and that judgment is coming.  He wants to no longer prophesy but the word of the Lord is a compulsion to Him, he cannot but prophesy no matter the consequences.  There have been times in my ministry when all I wanted to do was keep silent, not preach, especially not words that are hard, and yet I can do nothing about this call.  I am thankful for the season of Lent although as a preacher I long for it to end because this message of repentance and judgment is difficult for me.  I can't imagine how it must have been for Jeremiah to do this for such a long season and with so much opposition and no affirmation.

Jesus prays for the disciples, that the Father protect them from the evil one.  He asks that they be sanctified in the truth of the word.  It is interesting that He says particularly that He isn't praying for the world but for these only and then He prays for the recipients of their message but even then for only those who will believe in Him through their word.  He speaks of the one who is lost, the son of destruction.  All these things point to the reality that not all will believe and so His prayer is not for all but only for believers.  Does that mean we are to sow the seed only on fertile ground?  The parable of the sower tells us otherwise, as does the reality that Jesus allowed in Judas to the twelve.  His prayer is that believers would be one in the same way that He and the Father are one, an intimate oneness.  He relies on the love of the Father from before the foundation of the world, before creation, in this prayer and it is His one desire, no matter the cost, to glorify the Father, nothing else matters.  Is that your attitude?

What does participation in the Lord's body and blood mean?  It means we participate in His sufferings for the sake of the world as well as participating in His life, eternal life.  Right at the outset of Lent we see Jesus going from baptism to temptation in the wilderness.  In baptism He identified with us as sinners yet defeats the temptations of the evil one and in communion we identify with His death for us as sinners in order that we might take on that righteousness that persevered to the end.  In eating the bread and drinking the cup in an unworthy manner we bring judgment on ourselves, it is important that we believe rightly about Jesus, that He did indeed die as an innocent man.  It is equally important that we believe rightly about ourselves, that His death, His reproach, was on account of our sins, and He willingly took those on that we might have life.  In our liturgy we confess as a body our faith in the Nicene Creed and we confess our sins as well prior to receiving the body and blood in the form of bread and wine.  Worthy reception is full identification with Him and our sins, affirming that Jeremiah was right, we deserve judgment but that the cross is God's mercy.

27 March 2013

Psalm 55;  Jer. 17:5-10, 14-17; Phil. 4:1-13; John 12:27-36  

Can it be any clearer than, "Cursed is the man who trusts in man… Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord…"  We have a tendency to be incredibly short-term thinkers and this word gives us some long-term perspective.  Where a tree or shrub is planted can make all the difference in the world.  The imagery here is like Psalm 1, Ezekiel 47 and Revelation 21 of trees planted by streams of water that flourish because they are closely connected to the water of life.  The heart is desperately sick, deceitful above all things is certainly an affirmation of the need for a new one, we need a transplant, not just a stent or pacemaker, it is a clear diagnosis.  The only hope is for the perfect surgeon to heal the heart, to give us a new one.  Jeremiah knew about heart transplants before anyone else could have even imagined such a thing.

The people are mightily confused by Jesus' words.  He speaks of being lifted up and they clearly understood He meant His death on a cross but that didn't fit at all with what they knew about Messiah or the Son of Man, He must be speaking of a different Son of Man.  They "knew" the Christ remains forever and they equated the Son of Man with the Christ so who was Jesus talking about and were they wrong about what they believed about Him?  The Christ does remain forever, but in order for anyone else to remain forever He must die.  It made sense only to Jesus, no one could have known how this was all going to go down. 

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.  That is the life verse of many a person and often times we use it to encourage ourselves that better days lie ahead, we will conquer this adversity.  Paul, however, uses it to say that he is able to rise above adversity and prosperity alike, he is untouched by his situation, he abides in the Lord is able to rejoice and be content in all situations of life.  There is a blessing from the Lord in prosperity and adversity alike, as he wrote to the Romans, "all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose."  Confidence isn't about circumstances or even change in circumstances, it is about Him.  Jesus was glorified in His crucifixion, how are you bringing glory to Him in your circumstances today?  To really live into that idea of doing all things through Him who strengthens me we need to get that new heart, in the process we go from iron to steel.