31 July 2013

Psalm 72; 2 Samuel 3:22-39; Acts 16:16-24; Mark 6:47-56

Joab hears that Abner, his opposite number on the side of the remainder of Israel as commander of the army, has been in the camp and David has let him go peaceably.  As a military man, Joab is quick to conclude it is a deceit and a trap to kill David as now the leader knows David's movements.  Additionally, Joab has a personal motive for hatred and distrust of Abner, he was responsible for the death of Joab's brother.  Little wonder then that he chose to work his own deception and murder.  For his part, David mourns after Abner, the man who until very recently had been his enemy and pays him homage, requiring even Joab to join the mourners for a great man.  This genuineness in David causes the hearts of the people to go out after him all the more, he is proving his greatness by his care for all, even his former enemies.

These were heady days for the disciples.  They had just been out on their own mission and seen people healed and other amazing things.  They had just seen Jesus feed five thousand men with what they knew to be no provision at all, and now they were fearing because the wind and waves were against them.  Even the fishermen on board were afraid and suddenly Jesus appears walking on the water and no one can believe it.  Who could?  When he gets into the boat, the storm ceases, exactly the opposite of which happened with Jonah.  Now, they are more amazed.  When they hit land the people converge on them bringing more and more who need healing.  It must have seemed truly that the whole world was going after Him, and they were right there with Him.  The future must have seemed bright and limitless.

Why is Paul so upset with the slave girl with the gift of divination?  It seems it would be good to have such a herald announcing the truth.  The problem is that the spirit wasn't from God and while it did draw attention to the men with the truth, it also drew attention to itself and rather than authenticating the message simply confused it.  Which spirit was the one to have here, the one Paul and Silas had telling the truth or the one the girl had that could discern truth about truth?  It is almost as though her gift was greater than theirs.  Paul's action in commanding this spirit, however, settled the matter and delivered the girl but infuriated her owners.  Their accusation against the men is spurious.  They cannot cite the truth because it is then a personal matter only and not enough for arrest.  They incite the crowds which is not all that difficult to do if you bring the right charge, and Paul and Silas are beaten with rods and arrested.  Jesus never promised following Him was going to be painless or easy, He promised it was taking up a cross.  We see Joab, the disciples and the crowd living by the spirit of the world, that doesn't understand eternity, and too often we live by that spirit rather than the Spirit which guided all that Jesus did.

30 July 2013

Psalm 61, 62; 2 Samuel 3:6-21; Acts 16:6-15; Mark 6:30-46

Ish-bosheth accuses Abner of lying with his father Saul's former concubine.  Such an action would be tantamount to a claim to the throne of Saul.  Absalom does the same with David's concubines in laying claim to the throne.  Whether Ish-bosheth is paranoid or had reason to accuse Abner isn't said but the result is that Abner's allegiance is swung to David.  Ish-bosheth, we are told, feared Abner, so it is certainly possible he was concerned that Abner would seize the throne.  David's one condition for accepting Abner as an ally was the return of Michal, Saul's daughter, David's wife, to him which he is able to do when David also makes demand to Ish-bosheth.  In this same period Abner is able to sway the leaders of all the families, even Saul's own family of Benjamin, to David and to promise David he will soon rule over the entire nation.

The disciples return to tell Jesus all they have seen and done on their mission trip.  The crowds following are so large now that there is no way to get apart together to discuss and celebrate the success of the mission.  Instead a few thousand people follow them to the desolate place where they go to rest and now they must be fed.  Even with all they had seen and done they were unprepared for Jesus to be able to feed this multitude, they didn't have enough faith to believe such things.  Healings yes but how do you make food out of nothing at all?  Amazingly, all these people have plenty to eat and twelve basketsful were taken up with leftovers.  They may not be able to do such things, but Jesus is more than able.

Paul is in some way prevented by the Holy Spirit from speaking the Gospel in Asia.  In a dream, however, he sees a man of Macedonia (what would have distinguished this man as from Macedonia I wonder?) beckoning him to come.  How odd it must have been, then, to arrive there and remain in the city of Philippi for some days and finding no believers, even Jews there.  There was no synagogue there (it requires ten Jewish men in a place to have a synagogue) so they went to the river on the Sabbath supposing there was a place of prayer there.  This would have been a place where the women might gather and, sure enough, they met some women, including Lydia who was not Jewish but a believer.  Instead of a man of Macedonia, they met a woman of Macedonia.  We must always be prepared to go where He sends us and accept whatever and whoever He sends to us.  As the poet William Cowper wrote, " God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform…"

29 July 2013

Psalm 56, 57; 2 Samuel 2:1-11; Acts 15:36-16:5; Mark 6:14-29

David certainly began well.  After Saul's death he asked the Lord if he should go up to Judah, his ancestral home.  Upon receiving a favorable response, he asked a second question, which particular city.  Hebron was the response, not his personal home.  David began not by presumption and doing what he wanted but by asking God where He wanted him to be.  While David praised the men of Jabesh-gilead who had cared for Saul in death and began to reign over Judah there was a rival king set up by the commander of Saul's army, Abner, Saul's other son, Ish-bosheth.  Abner was a man loyal to his leader, Saul.  David had only one tribe recognizing him as their king at the time, Ish-bosheth was king over the rest of the nation.  This, we are told, was not to last but two years. 

It would have been impossible for John to have done anything but expose sin, no matter who the sinner no matter the consequences.  He called the leaders of the Jews hypocrites and a brood of vipers, and Herod was Jewish by birth so he was not immune to being convicted of sin.  He was married to his brother's ex-wife and it was sinful for him to have taken her under the circumstances.  It was sin under the Law and John spoke truth not only to power but to all who would take the Name of the Lord.  Herod knew what John said was true, that John was a righteous and holy man while he was living a lie.  His wife, however, had no such sensibilities, she knew what she wanted, to be married to the man in charge.  The barrier to her enjoying the position was this meddlesome man, John.  She contrived a way to get rid of him through her husband's rash vow.  There is a hint of the Esther story in this episode isn't there?  John loses his head because Herod first lost his own in merriment and then wasn't man enough to say no.

Paul and Barnabas quarrel and eventually separate because of John Mark.  Barnabas was always the one who was ready to reconcile and restore.  He was the one who stood for Paul and with Paul when everyone else didn't believe Paul's conversion was genuine.  Now, however, he wants to restore John Mark and Paul is not willing to let bygones be bygones as this young man betrayed him at Pamphylia and Paul would not abide one whose courage had failed.  It is hard to sort this out and determine who is right, I tend towards Barnabas because it too is my heart to reconcile and restore but that often is a mistake.  At any rate, the kingdom advanced now on two fronts, one led by Barnabas and one led by Paul.  Sometimes that is simply the way it works out best for the kingdom but it requires grace to separate well.

28 July 2013

Psalm 24, 29; 2 Samuel 1:17-27; Rom. 12:9-21; Matt. 25:31-46

In spite of the misery Saul had caused David for over a decade David eulogized Saul beautifully.  He required that the song he had written be taught throughout Judah as a memorial to the man who had sought to kill him most of his adult life.  It is thought that David was about eighteen years old when he killed Goliath and met Jonathan and we know that he was thirty when he began reigning as king.  We assume his stay at court as minstrel and military leader was relatively brief so we believe it was about eleven years that Saul pursued David on Jonathan's behalf.  David, however, respected the anointing of the man if not the man himself.  There is a point in the miniseries Band of Brothers when Captain Sobel walks past Major Winters and fails to salute the man who took over his job and surpassed him in rank and Winters responds, " We salute the rank, not the man."  That was David's attitude towards Saul, mingled with compassion and also his love for Saul's son Jonathan.  His statement that Jonathan's "love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women", again points us towards the reality of true love, brotherly love.  David loved both the man who was his enemy and also the man who loved him.

I thought salvation was about faith and grace not about works.  Does this passage say the opposite is true?  Faith without works is indeed no faith at all.  Paul encapsulates this nicely in Ephesians 2 - "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."  James said that faith without works is dead.  We are to become new people and that should have some tangible result in our lives.  Jesus came to earth to show us how to "be" not simply how to believe.  After faith comes we have a new life to live and that life should be a testimony to the indwelling of the Spirit that led Jesus to reach out and incarnate the Word to the world.  Loving God and loving your neighbor isn't simply feeling well disposed towards them, it is active service. 

We live in a culture that is at least haunted by Christian morality and ethics if not so in fact.  Because of the influence of Christian teaching over the past two thousand years and the dominance of that teaching in American culture for our entire history, we don’t see anything particularly extraordinary about the values Paul advocates here.  In his own culture and particularly in the pagan and Roman culture to which he writes, these were virtues and values that were antithetical to prevailing thought and practice.  The way to get ahead was not to associate with people of lower rank but higher, social climbing was expected.  Wisdom was to be prized not humility.  Being served was the goal, not serving.  Leaving vengeance to the Lord rather than avenging yourself was silly.  Loving your enemy not just in your heart but in practical ways was a ridiculous idea no one could possibly advocate.  Paul was espousing a countercultural set of principles on these people and expecting them to follow in spite of their impulses to do otherwise and in spite of the fact that the culture wouldn't applaud them for doing so.  Oh, wait, while our culture might know these values we don't seem to practice them, perhaps they convict us today as well.

27 July 2013

Psalm 55; 2 Samuel 1:1-16; Acts 15:22-35; Mark 6:1-13

This young man assumed David would be happy to hear of the death of Saul and was quite willing to take the credit for killing him, being careful to not take too much credit.  He says that Saul was as good as dead already and asked him to finish the job.  His report doesn't line up with the facts of Saul's death but he surely thought David would repay him for having killed the man who had made David his enemy.  David, however, never failed to recognize Saul as the anointed one of the Lord.  Ironically, the young man is an Amalekite, the race that Saul was to have destroyed from the face of the earth and failed to do.  David avenges Saul's death on this man who should perhaps never have lived at all if Saul had been obedient to the Lord's commandment.

Where does he get this wisdom and where do these mighty works come from?  Two good questions, questions we should ask always.  We don't want to get caught up in adoration of man or deception so it is right to ask such things.  How do they get the data to answer these questions?  They get it from what they know of Jesus' origins and his family.  It seems they would have sought a bit more information than what they already knew.  Sometimes what we know just isn’t so and sometimes it becomes a barrier to knowing at all.  We always need to examine our presuppositions when we reject new information.  The disciples were willing to go out on their own and do all that they had already seen Jesus do, they didn't question where the power came from, they knew where it came from. 

The word comes back to the Gentile believers from Jerusalem, don't worry about circumcision and all the other points of law, just take care with what you eat and with sexual immorality.  They are unable to live completely separate lives in their locales, but they need to be a witness to those around them that they serve a different God, the only God, and that He cares about life and they also will testify to a sexual ethic that is different from their past and their neighbors.  The apostles prove that they are still willing to learn what all this means with respect to the Gentiles.  They processed the outpouring of the Spirit at the home of Cornelius and worked their way through this new knowledge in order to sort out what it meant for the church.  They relied on the testimony of the Spirit to guide them.