30 September 2013

Psalm 89:1-18; 2 Kings 17:24-41; 1 Cor. 7:25-31; Matt. 6:25-34

The spiritual soup of the land simply continued after the Israelites were taken away.  The king resettled other peoples in Samaria (the capital of Israel) and they began immediately worshiping their gods but then lions devoured some of them so it was decided that they needed to bring back one of the Israelite priests to instruct them in the ways of the god of that area so that they would not too deeply offend him.  They gladly accepted the Lord into the mix of all the other gods as the territorial god but nothing more, several times we are told that they feared the Lord and also the other gods.  Syncretism is the word for this practice of taking a bit of this religion and a bit of that and making a do-it-yourself god and religion.  It is the primary religion in America today, even in the church.  We may not call these other things gods but we worship them nonetheless.  The prosperity Gospel is one manifestation of this, what is being worshipped is prosperity and "God" is simply the vehicle for realizing one's true hopes, materialism.   Relevance is another God, reducing God to man-sized to make Him palatable as a concept.  Fear of the Lord is necessary if we are going to have an accurate understanding of God, the fear Peter expressed in yesterday's Gospel in begging Jesus to go away from him, a sinful man.  Wisdom begins there.

Here in the Sermon on the Mount, right at the outset of His ministry, Jesus speaks about the problem of materialism.  He says that the Father knows our needs for food and clothing and such things as that and we are not to spend our energy and toil on these.  How much time does the world spend thinking about and working for material things and then they become their gods.  They are demanding gods, keeping up with the Joneses requires a great deal of our lives and keeps us always seeking more.  Jesus says that we are to simply trust Him to provide for us and concern ourselves with the kingdom of God and righteousness.  Do we trust enough for that?  GK Chesterton said, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."  Jesus challenges us here just as the prophet Malachi did when he said for the Lord, "Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need."

Paul gives a similar teaching and admonition to Jesus' in our Gospel lesson.  His basic point is to not worry about externals and those things that are temporal.  Be content where you are and how you are and spend your time and energy on those things that are internal and eternal.  He is making no rules regarding marriage for the community, simply suggesting that time is short, and they would be far better served seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness than things of the world which, he reminds them, is passing away.  Now that a couple thousand years have elapsed since Paul wrote these words, do we sense the urgency and truth of his admonition?  Have we lost that sense that time is short, hell is hot and the stakes are high?

29 September 2013

Psalm 66, 67; 2 Kings 17:1-18; Acts 9:36-43; Luke 5:1-11

The Lord was wearied by the apostasy of the nation of Israel and so allowed them to be taken into captivity in 722BC when Hoshea was king.  He had allowed himself to be a vassal king of the Assyrians and yet acted treacherously in seeking an alliance with the Egyptians who failed to come to his aid against the Assyrians.  The Lord's complaint against Israel was quite extensive and should not have been a surprise to them as He had sent prophets to them on many occasions as a warning but they would not repent of their wickedness.  They chased after other gods, worshiped them, practiced magic and other forms of attempting to gain wisdom from sources other than Yahweh and ultimately these tribes make up what are sometimes known as the "lost tribes" for they assimilated into the nations and lost their connection with their God. 

What an amazing thing to consider that the Lord was returning to His people in bodily form.  Crowds had begun following Jesus and the press was so great that He got into a boat and pushed out a bit from shore in order to gain some distance and speak to the multitude.  Peter was surely entranced by Jesus' teaching but when the Lord commanded him concerning fishing Peter was a bit put off as he, a fisherman, had fished all night and caught nothing and he must have felt a bit of a fool to go out and let down his nets but soon enough he was anything but a fool.  His obedience to Jesus' command literally netted him the biggest catch he had ever seen, one he never imagined when he let down the nets.  Now, he was not only impressed by the teaching, he was overawed by this miraculous sign as well.  He knew Jesus was something special and you can hear in his reaction a close similarity to Isaiah's in the temple can't you?  To be asked to follow Jesus was something remarkable indeed.

I wonder why Peter felt that this was a situation that called for bringing this woman Tabitha/Dorcas back from the dead?  I wonder how she felt about that?  There are certainly similarities in the lives of the prophets like Elijah and Elisha and most assuredly in the life of Jesus in raising the widow's son as well as Lazarus and the synagogue ruler's daughter.  When Peter met Jesus that day on the lake and was so captivated by the miracle of the catch of fish was there any possibility he could have conceived himself later commanding a woman to rise from the dead?  We have only to be faithful and obedient and we will see things we could never imagine.  Israel had everything given to it, it had seen so many incredible things from the Lord and yet bowed down to golden calves.  Do we want to see the Lord do such things in our day or have we lost our sense of expectation because we are trusting in something else?

28 September 2013

Psalm 87, 90; 2 Kings 11:1-20a; 1 Cor. 7:10-24; Matt. 6:19-24

When Ahaziah dies, his mother Athaliah put the entire royal household to death.  These would be her family.  She does this in order that she might reign but one child, Joash, is secreted away by his aunt and kept secretly, like Moses had been. For six years he was secretly kept alive until the priest, Jehoiada, saw the timing was right to make this child king.  Apparently Athaliah was quite unpopular, the entire army comes to the aid of the boy king to protect him from his grandmother's murderous intentions.  The crown is set on his head and he is anointed and accepted as king by the people.  Jehoiada, however, is the power at this time, instructing the men to kill Athaliah and then renewing the covenant between the people and Yahweh and the people and the king.  Their response is to tear down the altars of Baal and begin to restore the nation not only in word but in reality to the covenant.

Where is your treasure?  Where we expend our effort, energy and passions provides the answer to that question.  If we examine our lives to see how we spend our time, talent and treasure we will know the truth.  Subjectively we can say one thing but our lives tell the real story, they reveal the truth about what we treasure.  Mastery is important.  Cain was told that sin was crouching at the door and he must master it but he failed and it mastered him.  John tells us that the light is shining in the darkness and the darkness has never mastered it, never completely extinguished the light.  Sometimes it seems that the light is almost gone but we know that it never will be.  Let us live today in such a way that our lives display that light, even if we are the only one shining in the darkness.

Relationships have primacy in our lives.  Paul is speaking to those who have been converted to the faith.  That conversion makes us new creations and yet we already have lives.  What to do then about them?  Paul says that even if our spouses are unconverted with us we are to remain married because God only knows the future.  He speaks the same way about other things like circumcision or status.  All of our lives are meant to be used to glorify Him.  He was not unaware of our situations when He called us.  Perhaps we are where He wants us to be already but the more important thing is not where we are but who we are.  Who we are can be the catalyst for change in everything and everyone else around us.  It is just possible that He has you right where He wants you not because it suits your interests but His.  The only way to know is to ask Him how you can glorify Him today right where you are.  Who knows what a difference you can make if God shines through you.  Even a six year old king who had been hidden away his entire life changed everything in the nation.

27 September 2013

Psalm 88; 2 Kings 9:17-37; 1 Cor. 7:1-9; Matt. 6:7-15

Naboth is avenged.  Remember Naboth?  He was the man who owned the property next to the king, Ahab, and Ahab pitched a fit because Naboth would sell him his ancestral lands.  Jezebel had him killed by wicked men on trumped up charges and then took his property.  How fitting then that her son, Joram, now the king, goes out and the confrontation between he and Jehu is on this very plot of ground and that Joram meets his end here.  Certainly there was no mistaking Jehu's antipathy towards Jezebel, speaking of her many whorings and sorceries.  Joram, a coward like his father, ends up shot in the back while he was in flight.  It is also in Jezreel, the ancestral home of Naboth that Jezebel meets her end as prophesied.  She should have been in mourning for her husband and son but instead she made herself up like the queen to confront Jehu.  Her arrogance knew no bounds and ultimately it is her own servants who willingly toss her out the window to her death and the prophecy concerning the dogs picking clean her bones is fulfilled.  An ignominious end to an ungodly life.

Is Jesus saying we shouldn't ask for anything?  He says, "your Father knows what you need before you ask him" as a way of saying don't pray like the Pharisees.  In the prayer He teaches the disciples He keeps the petition part simple doesn't He?  "Give us this day our daily bread."  That's it, daily bread.  I have heard preachers who try and argue that it means tomorrow's bread but it is clear from the story of the manna being provided daily and the parable of the man who had huge crops and built bigger barns and encouraged his soul to rest in abundance that we can only pray for today because it is all we're given.  Our lives are meant to glorify Him today and our petition for the kingdom to come is immediate, come now, come quickly.  We are so accustomed to the stuff of earth that we don't always long for the coming of His kingdom until we have too many problems to love this life.  Let us clear all our accounts today in order that at the end of the day we can rest in anticipation and peace.

Paul speaks of proper sexual relationships and only relates these to marriage.  Sexual immorality includes all sex outside of marriage, period, end of sentence.  Sometimes I fear that we worry more about certain types of sexual immorality far more than we do other types.  Too often marriage is little more these days than the blessing by the church or state of an existing sexual relationship.  Sex has become the defining characteristic of humanity in our day as it has been throughout history.  Paul understood that the sexual drive was strong and the frustration of that drive leads to immorality but he confines it properly to marriage.  We need a stronger teaching and understanding of the physicality of life and the sacredness of sex between husband and wife in order to counter the societal belief in nothing more than instinctual satisfaction.  Jezebel still rules and reigns.

26 September 2013

Psalm 34; 2 Kings 9:1-16; 1 Cor. 6:12-20; Matt. 6:1-6,16-18

Elisha, as always it seems, sends someone else to do the work.  (I am not picking at Elisha, just pointing out a pattern.) Elisha, unlike his mentor, Elijah, worked with other prophets, seems to have had a company of prophets, he wasn't going to flame out like Elijah for want of support.  The time has come for the Lord to execute judgment on the house of Ahab now the king was dead.  He had promised to destroy his entire household, leaving no men of this line.  The man is sent to Ramoth-gilead to Jehu, the commander of the army, to anoint him as king and also to be the agent of the Lord's judgment.  The prophet takes Jehu into an inner chamber and does the anointing privately in accord with Elisha's instruction.  When Jehu returns and the others ask what this fellow wanted his answer is "You know how he is."  They press him for the word given, perhaps it is a strategic word for them but instead he admits that he was just anointed as king and, surprisingly, these men all acclaim him and confirm the word.  With boldness and alacrity, they move to carry out the Lord's will.

Why does Jesus continually urge us to keep a low profile for our good works?  In our public relations-driven world, as in His own day, the advice would be to give as publicly as possible, get your name on something in order to encourage others to give as well.  We are called to give unto the Lord, and allow Him to do as He wills with our obedience.  Our good works are not done for credit and they do us no good in the long run so far as God's judgment is concerned.  We, like the servant in Jesus' parable, must only confess that we are unworthy servants simply doing what we are told to do as opposed to taking the initiative and doing more.  Obedience is to be its own reward.  The same is true of the prophetic messenger in our first lesson, he is to flee when his work is done lest he be rewarded for it.

One thing we have to know is why were we created?  In real estate appraisals we often see the appraiser dealing with the issue of what is the "highest and best use" of a piece of property.  In other words, does the proposed use of the property to be developed maximize its value?  Once the highest and best use is determined the valuation can be made on the property independent of what an owner proposes to do with the property, does his or her proposal enhance the value or detract from it.  Paul says we have to know the highest and best use of our lives, including our bodies, and once we are clear the answer to that is to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever as the Westminster Catechism says, we can get about the business of doing that and not doing those things that detract from it like sexual immorality.  Obedience to His commands will yield the greatest return on His investment in our lives.