31 December 2013

Psalm 46, 48; 1 Kings 3:5-14; 2 Cor. 5:16-6:2; John 8:12-19

What would be your response if God spoke to you and offered to grant your heart's desire?  Solomon already pretty much had everything you could want to have as far as material things are concerned and he was also king so power wasn't an issue either.  If you take those off the table what could he want?  He could want more of both things and power, that is actually what most people would want.  His kingdom could be bigger and he could have palaces all over the place, and he would have those things.  He was feeling overwhelmed by responsibility.  Listen to him, "I am but a little child. I do not know how to go out or come in.  And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too many to be numbered or counted for multitude."  He knew he needed wisdom, the same thing Moses needed when he tried to lead God's people.  Moses had the tent of meeting to meet with God and talk, Solomon asked for something else when he asked for wisdom, something like taking my mind and infusing it with the ability to think clearly and to know intuitively the right thing to do.  You have that wisdom by the power of the indwelling Spirit.  He desires to give that to you today and you're not even a king.  You're his precious child.

Jesus is the light of the world and if you are following Him you will be walking in light and not darkness, you will have true wisdom.  Is it any wonder the Pharisees question that statement?  Their response is more or less, who do you think you are, we are going to need a bit better testimony than just your say-so to accept that as true.  Jesus makes it basic for them, they have no idea where He came from or where He is going and He knows those things, they judge by the flesh.  All this sounds like the conversation He had with Nicodemus back in John 3 that left that Pharisee befuddled.  Nicodemus, however, kept his eye on Jesus and in the end, after His crucifixion, went to claim the body with Joseph of Arimathea, he knew not to judge by the flesh and his reward was great.  The wisdom the world has to offer is limited in a way God's wisdom is not. 

What had all of Paul's learning gotten him?  "Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer."  He made a mistake concerning Jesus of cosmic and eternal significance and if Jesus hadn't chosen to reveal Himself to Him on the road to Damascus he would have died in his sin and ignorance.  He had learning but that learning didn't help him know the truth, the real truth about all things.  Paul thought Jesus a heretic and blasphemer who got his rightful reward for leading the people astray when He died on the cross until that day he heard the voice from heaven say, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting."  Now, He knows that in that death Jesus was reconciling sinners to Himself, he has the right perspective on both Jesus and the cross.  Pray for those who persecute or oppose you, they need wisdom.  Thank Him for revealing truth to you and giving you wisdom.

30 December 2013

Psalm 20, 21; 1 Kings 17:17-24; Rev. 1:9-20; John 7:53-8:11

Just what is the sin that the widow says Elijah has come to expose?  When she first appears to Elijah she is scrounging for a few sticks with which to light a fire so that she can cook a little cake with what is left of her food stocks and then lie down and die with this same son.  Her hospitality extended to Elijah in the midst of her own despair is rewarded with constant provision.  Now, she has grown accustomed to God's provision and this disaster, she believes, is brought upon her as punishment for some sin in her past.  All around her there is suffering from this famine and drought from which she has gained relief but the son she was prepared to lose only recently has died and she concludes that it is because of this sin.  Why had God blessed her only to punish her now?  Sometimes our logic isn't good.  Now she has to decide why God would raise her son from the dead.  The answer in all these things is God's sovereignty and love.  What kind of God do you believe in when painful things happen in your life?

Was the woman committing adultery all by herself?  Where is the man with whom she was surely consorting?  How did this crowd happen to find them together?  It seems like a set-up to me.  Jesus is teaching in the temple and suddenly a woman caught in the midst of adultery is brought before Him in order that He might opine on what to do with her.  The penalty in the law is indeed stoning but there are few, if any, records of such penalty being carried out.  Everyone wants to know what Jesus wrote in the dirt (did you notice that he writes twice).  He poses a simple test, if you are pure then get the party started.  He could have done so and once He had begun the stoning they could have joined in.  Instead, as He wrote the second time they heard it (whatever it is) and walked away, beginning with the older ones until only Jesus and this woman were left.  The only one who could condemn her does not, He extends grace and mercy but truth is there, go and sin no more.  This is one more sin He will die for.

John meets the resurrected and glorified Jesus in the spirit and the vision is incredibly real to him.  His reaction is to fall at the feet of Jesus as though dead so holy and awesome is this vision.  He is aware of his own sinfulness just as Isaiah was in the temple when he saw the Lord high and lifted up and heard the cherubim and seraphim crying "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord."  John might not have survived this encounter if God were not loving, merciful, gracious, and forgiving.  Sin should not keep us from Him, it should take us to Him for cleansing and pardon through Jesus' sacrifice.  He already knows your sin and died for it.  Don't let sin keep you in hiding.

29 December 2013

Psalm 93, 96; 1 Samuel 1:1-2,7b-28; Heb 2: 10-18; Matt. 1:18-25

Sometimes I make the same mistake Eli made.  I see with my eyes and hear with my hears when a person is speaking from the heart.  Hannah was sorely vexed by not only her rival but by God who had not allowed her to conceive a child during her marriage.  Jewish law at the time allowed a man to take another wife if the first had not born children within a certain time after their marriage in order that he fulfill the primary commandment of being fruitful and multiplying.  The only reason there was this second wife was a long period of barrenness for Hannah.  Her struggle had been going on for some time and this woman's fruitfulness only served to prove that it was Hannah who was the problem.  The fact that the other wife rubbed Hannah's nose in her situation was intolerable.  Barrenness was thought to reveal not only a physical defect but a spiritual one, God had commanded fruitfulness and the absence of it would indicate God's disfavor on the woman or the couple.  Hannah is praying here for her honor.  Eli sees Hannah and comes to a wrong conclusion about her.  Little could he imagine that he will be the mentor for her child. 

Joseph has the opposite problem from Elkanah and Hannah.  His wife to be is already, suddenly, and without any action on his part, pregnant.  He knows enough biology and the way of the world to know that he isn't responsible and someone must be.  He could have publicly shamed Mary but he was choosing to put her away privately, quietly, without defending his own honor.  Joseph was a good man who loved Mary but he clearly didn't believe her to be chaste or truthful in this particular matter.  He was going to move on when he got his own visit from an angel who "explained" to him "that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit."  Unlike Zechariah he didn't ask for a sign and even unlike Mary he didn't ask how such things could be, he took the word as truth and married the girl. 

Can you imagine the broken heart of a father watching his son being scourged with a cat-of-nine tails with glass embedded in it?  Can you also imagine watching him being beaten bloody and mocked and taunted by soldiers who were spitting in his son's face?  Can you see that bloody mess that is his child with a crown of thorns pressed into that head he had kissed and held so often, the thorns digging trenches into his scalp as it bore down on him?  Can you feel his pain as his son struggles to carry a heavy cross out to Golgotha while the crowds jeer and mock him?  Can you imagine his pain as the son dies with those same crowds calling him to come down and save himself when he is perfectly able to do so?  That is the pain of the Father, the One who sent His only Son to save us.  He sent Him into a world of suffering as a fellow sufferer who knew more physical and emotional pain than most of us will ever face, to let us know that He feels that same pain when we suffer, and that this is only for a while.  He sacrificed His honor to give it to us. 

28 December 2013

Psalm 2, 26; Isaiah 49:13-23; Matthew 18:1-14

The Lord announces His blessing and the restoration of His people and yet they respond, "Are you kidding me?"  They don't see what Isaiah sees.  The prophetic vision is powerful and wonderful and yet their present situation seems utterly hopeless.  Isaiah sees a time when there is no room for the people they are so fruitful.  The women who are bereaved, bereft and barren will be fruitful and so much so that they will wonder how such things could be.  Children have always had a special place in theology among God's people and that is one reason Christians should be pro-life, fruitfulness was once understood as a sign of God's blessing and obedience to the original commandment to be fruitful and multiply.  It is not, in my mind, disobedience to not have children but even those without children should delight in those kids among us in the church as we see here in this passage.  In our tradition, the baptism of infants places us all in responsible roles for the ensuring that they have everything they need to know the truth and come to faith. 

This is the day we remember those who are known as Holy Innocents, those Hebrew children Herod ordered killed when he learned from the Magi that the king of the Jews had been born.  He wanted to stop that child from growing up to fulfill that destiny but didn't know the child's name or his parents so he demanded that any who fit that description be murdered.  We cannot celebrate this day without also remembering those children who were aborted in their mother's womb out of selfishness or "compassion."  How can we not speak out for the most innocent after reading these teachings?

27 December 2013

Psalm 97, 98; Proverbs 8:22-30; John 13:20-35

The speaker here who begins with the phrase, The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work…" is wisdom.  A characteristic of the Lord, not another person.  Prior to the beginning of all things there was wisdom and in that wisdom the Lord is said to have taken delight.  In wisdom, then, was the world created.  He is not an "in-process" God who learns from creation or developments in creation, all the wisdom He needed was there prior to anything else coming into being.  What wisdom or other gain could He get from watching us who were created from the leftover stuff after His purposeful creation of the things mentioned in the passage?  We were indeed and are, as we are reminded on Ash Wednesday, nothing more than dust without the breath of life from Him.  We should delight and rejoice in the wisdom of God personified for us in Jesus.  The Word and wisdom of God became flesh and dwelt among us and now that same Word and wisdom dwell in us by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Amazing to consider.

As I have loved you, so are you to love one another.  Jesus, who had every reason to not love us rebellious sinners who rejected Him as savior on the cross, loved this collection of dust and DNA and died willingly for us that we might become like Him.  The first way to become more like Him is to love one another not according to human love analogues but according to the love He shows.  Too often we choose unwisely how to love because we don't ponder the way in which Christ loves us, self-sacrificially and without measure.  We have been given a new heart with which to love Him and one another, why do we then fail to love any but ourselves.  We are meant to show the world what real love looks like, real wisdom, not worldly wisdom.  Wisdom knows some things the world doesn't know, the beginning and the end for instance.