31 January 2014

Psalm 40, 54; Gen. 17:15-27; Heb. 10:11-25; John 6:1-15

Abraham does not believe.  He doesn't believe that either he or Sarah are capable of having a child and why should he believe that?  He doesn't believe so much that he implores the Lord to bless Ishmael.  (It was probably a good thing Sarah didn't hear that exchange.)  The Lord says no to that particular request, He will bless Ishmael and make him a great nation but the covenant will not be through Ishmael it will be through a son whom Sarah will bear and his name is to be called Isaac, he laughs.  Abraham had laughed at the idea of this child and Isaac would be a reminder of this day but more than that he will be the one to bring laughter and joy to Abraham and Sarah.  That day Abraham took all the men in his company, and we were just told that there at least 318 of them, and circumcised them all in keeping with the covenant.  They all didn't, however, participate fully in the covenant did they?  Not if it was passed through Isaac.  Under the Law that would come through Moses we will see that there was always one law in the land for both Jews and foreigners dwelling among them.  That is the situation here with circumcision, if you want to live among covenant people, you must share in obedience to it. 

In contrast to the Pharisees and Sadducees we saw yesterday who would not believe, today there is a large multitude, apparently headed to Jerusalem for Passover, who are following Jesus because of the signs they saw Him doing on the sick.  They are believing because of what they see.  No one, however, not even the disciples, believes Jesus can do anything to feed this crowd.  All He does is take what they have, offer it to the Lord, and a miraculous sign happens, everyone is fed.  The people see the sign and interpret the sign to mean that the Prophet who is to come into the world is here.  Again, that Prophet was the one like Moses that Moses said would come and to whom they were to listen.  He has fed them just as Moses did in the wilderness, but they have seen signs in healing the sick that didn't fit completely with Moses, He is more than that Prophet.  Because they want to make Him king, Jesus slips away, His time has not come and He will not be king for this work.

In what way did Jesus' sacrifice take away sins that was not possible for animal sacrifice?  I think there are two ways possible, one of which we don't fully appreciate.  The writer points to Pentecost as one of the ways, we have been given a new heart through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, a heart on which is written God's law, not simply to prick our consciences when we transgress but also to direct and guide us to do the right things, to keep the law.  The second way is appreciated only if you understand the sacrificial system.  For a person to offer Himself as a sacrifice for sin is a shock to the system.  You can grow accustomed to offering animals, it is a relatively impersonal transaction, but human sacrifice is something quite different.  If the person who did so were known to you, a friend, who took your crimes and died in your place, it gets real in a hurry.  He is king, but His earthly throne is a cross and His crown is a crown of thorns.  He is what draws us together in faith, what He has done for us.  He has made our lives an offering and a sacrifice to God and we can lay them down in the sure and certain hope of eternal life because of His resurrection from the dead.

30 January 2014

Psalm 50; Gen. 16:15-17:14; Heb. 10:1-10; John 5:30-47

Did you notice that thirteen years elapse between the end of chapter 16 and the beginning of chapter 17?  Ishmael is now a thirteen year old boy.  The Lord says to Abram, "I will make you exceedingly fruitful."  We want to measure fruit in our ministry today, right now, but clearly the Lord has a longer term in mind when He says this to Abram.  He can be Abraham, "exalted father", now that he has a son, but exceedingly fruitful requires an understanding of fruitfulness that transcends time.  Now, God is ready to make a covenant which requires something of Abraham.  You can hear the tension building as God announces this to him, "As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you…" (drum roll please), " Every male among you shall be circumcised."  That's it, we circumcise the males.  You don't expect anything else from us, just that? That mark means that reproduction belongs to God, the covenant is with offspring so the means of reproduction belong to Him.  There will be more instructions later, but for now, that is all the Lord expected because the covenant was fruitfulness.

The accusation against Jesus sounds something like, "So you say."  He responds by pointing that He is not the sole witness to Himself.  He enumerates all the evidence and the witnesses they have to make an informed decision and it all points in one direction.  Those witnesses include John the Baptist, Jesus' works, the Father, the Scriptures, and Moses.  To these experts in the Law Jesus says, "You don't know what you think you know."  They don't know the Father, they search the Scriptures and don't find the truth, and while they set their hope on Moses they don't even believe what Moses believed.  What does it mean they have set their hopes on Moses?  It is the Law they are attached to, the Law given through Moses.  The covenant, however, isn't built in the Law and keeping it, it is based on the Lawgiver, the one who was already in covenant with them when the Law was given.  The God of Abraham.

The blood of the sacrifices cannot take away sins.  Only that Jesus came to do the perfect will of the Father can take away sins.  Animals suffered and died for the sins of mankind prior to the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.  Jesus came in the form of a man and lived a sinless life and offered Himself as a sacrifice once and for all for the sins of the world.  In these three lessons we see three covenants: the covenant with Abraham, the covenant with Moses, and the covenant in Jesus.  Abraham believed God for what would be and the covenant required the people to practice circumcision to enter into the covenant of fruitfulness.  The covenant mediated through Moses was for the land and it required them to accept the Law.  The covenant mediated through Jesus is for eternal life and requires belief in His Name and His completed work at the cross.  Sin has been dealt with forever, we are free.

29 January 2014

Psalm 119:49-72; Gen. 16:1-14; Heb. 9:15-28; John 5:19-29

It is impossible to conceive of commenting on this entire story in 150 words or less.  Sarai essentially asks the question the serpent posed to Eve, "Did God really say…"  The Lord had not said directly that Sarai would be the mother of the nation, only that Abram would be the father.  Thus, Sarai gave her servant to her husband and this sin, Abram didn't ask the Lord, gives us further trouble into the world that afflicts us to this day in the offspring of Ishmael.  This perhaps could all have been averted if Abram had only prayed to  the Lord and not listened to the voice of his wife (Gen. 3.17).  As it is, Sarai's complaint against Hagar is similar to Hannah's bitterness against her rival wife in 1 Samuel 1, but here Sarai has power over her servant.  The angel of the Lord found Hagar as she was fleeing and sent her back to her mistress to submit to her with the promise that the Lord would multiply her offspring but that he would be a wild donkey of a man.  The blessing was quite different from that promised to Abram that all nations would find blessing in him and his offspring.  The name given to the child means the Lord hears but Hagar also knows that the Lord has seen her and refers to Him as the Lord who sees.  What does it say to us that the Lord looked with compassion on her and her child, not only this time but also in a story we will see in the next few days?  What does it tell us about Him and about what our attitude should be?

Jesus says the Son doesn't work independently of the Father.  He sees what the Father is doing and does likewise.  That requires two things, seeing and hearing.  He sees what the Father does but knows in conversation and perfect communion with the Father what He is doing.  He keeps His eyes and ears on the scene all the time.  We are to be looking and listening as well.  The judgment of the eyes was important with respect to who was Jesus.  He showed signs that indicated who He was.  He says also that there will come a time when those who have believed what they have seen will hear the voice of the Father.  Judgment is based in the Son, what we make of Him is what truly matters.  If we believe in the Son we will hear the Father calling us to life, the same life that is in the Son.  Let us tune our eyes and ears to that frequency, tuning out all else.

This better covenant required death as well as the first covenant required death.  In the Gospels we meet a man who asks the question, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"  Jesus tells him to sell all he has and give it to the poor then come and follow Him.  The writer of Hebrews gives the answer to the question, in order for a will to take effect, someone has to die.  For you to inherit anything requires the death of the one who is the owner, otherwise it is a gift.  Jesus' death opens His inheritance of life to us all.  It is a gift but it is His inheritance as well, we are the beneficiaries.  In Revelation 5 when Jesus comes before the throne it is in the form of a sacrifice, a lamb, looking like it had been slain.  That is the acceptable sacrifice for sin and when the judgments are handed over to Him, heaven erupts in worship, the end of sin is coming.  We must worship Him for His sacrifice as well, through His death we have life and the guarantee is His resurrection.

28 January 2014

Psalm 45; Gen. 15:1-11,17-21; Heb. 9:1-14; John 5:1-18

Abram is having a moment of doubt.  After all has done, all he has seen, all he has acquired since he started following God he still lacks the one thing that he wanted more than anything else, his own child.  God promises him much and yet, he says, if I died today this Eliezar of Damascus would inherit all of it and not a son of my own.  God promises him descendants beyond imagining and counting and now Abram asks, how can I know these things are true, talk is cheap.  The sign is more amazing than he could have imagined, God made a covenant with him and swore on His own life that it would be as promised.  Normally, both parties to the covenant would have passed through the animals, symbolically saying, let it be to me as it was to these animals, death,  if I fail to keep up my end of the bargain.  This was a one-sided covenant though, only dependent on God's faithfulness not Abram's.  He has God's solemn oath on it.

The man has excuses for why he isn't healed, no one is there to help him when the water is disturbed.  The pool was believed to have curative powers when the water was, from time to time, disturbed by some unknown cause and if you got into the water during these times, you could be healed.  Jesus didn't ask why he wasn't healed and didn't ask if He could help the man into the water, He only asked if He wanted to be healed.  If anyone got healed there it was always because God did something and here Jesus is the agent of healing, not the disturbed water.  He commands the man to break the Law after the healing, to carry his bed on Sabbath.  For this infraction, the Pharisees, who must have known the man had been there the last 38 years, call foul.  Jesus' response to the man, telling him to sin no more lest something worse happen, would seem to indicate that his problem was originally caused by sin.  Why the man went immediately and identified Jesus as the healer and Sabbath breaker is unimaginable.  His answer that His Father was still working so He could as well indeed is a claim to equality with God.  It is essentially, whatever God does I can do also.

The covenant with Abram required him to kill animals, to offer something to God.  The animal's blood, like the animals whose skins were loin cloths for Adam and Eve, sufficed for man's part of the bargain. In the case of Abram, they cost him something, he had to forego their productive use in order to comply with God's command.  For generations the people then sacrificed for their sins to maintain the covenant from their side though from God's side the covenant was eternal because He swore on oath and He is unable to break that oath and maintain His holiness.  In Jesus, the new covenant was made and His sacrifice was His life laid down for sin.  The thought here is Platonic, that the earthly temple is a copy of the perfect, heavenly temple, and so serves as an analog for Jesus entering the most holy place, the throne of God the Father.  He is one with the Father in sinless, holy perfection, He is of one being with the Father we affirm in the Creed, whatever the Father is, so the Son.  Ultimately, God was willing to lay down His life to extend the covenant, to guarantee it as a sign for all time.  And the resurrection proves it to be a covenant of life.

27 January 2014

Psalm 41, 52; Gen. 14:1-24; Heb. 8:1-13; John 4:43-54

The last time we saw Lot he had set up his tents "near Sodom".  In verse 12 of this passage we learn that Lot has moved from the suburbs to the city itself, he is said to be living in Sodom.  In the raid by the enemy that took possession of Sodom Lot is taken as well along with all his stuff.  When Abram gets word of this he takes his trained men, all who were born in his house, 318 of them, and goes on a rescue mission.  Did you see that?  There were 318 men in Abram's private army, all of whom were born in his house.  Now we can see how he had Lot had to separate.  This is just the men who are with Abram, not to mention wives and children.  He has become quite a wealthy man in his time of sojourn.  We meet the priest of God Most High, Melchizedek who comes out from Salem with bread and wine to meet Abram and the company as they return from battle.  Abram receives blessing from this priest and also pays tribute through him and we are told nothing more about this enigmatic figure.  Abram believes that they serve the same God, as he quotes verbatim from the blessing given to him by this priest when responding to the king of Sodom.  Abram is resolved to be enriched and blessed by no one other than this God Most High. 

After the mission trip to Samaria, Jesus and the disciples return to Capernaum, where it all began, where the first sign of water into wine was done.  All John tells us is that an official has a sick child, at the point of death, and implores Jesus to come and heal his child.  Jesus' response is strange isn't it?  “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.”  Wasn’t this request itself a sign of belief?  That he came to Jesus tells us that the man already had faith in Him to heal his child and yet Jesus wants more from him.  He has to go home on the word of Jesus alone that the child will be healed and his faith is rewarded.  We are always called onward and upward in faith, our faith can't always be dependent on a sign in advance, sometimes we have to walk in faith with boldness before we see the sign.  Abram waited twenty five years for his sign and during that time it would seem that his household was being very fruitful based on that first lesson, all but he and Sarai.

It seems simple to understand this idea of a better covenant.  Through Jeremiah the Lord had spoken of this new covenant and the failure of the old covenant to make a people who were faithful to that covenant.  The problem was sin, indwelling, deeply rooted sin.  The new covenant required a change in nature not of the covenant but of the people who were in covenant.  The problem was the heart of man and for the new covenant to be effective a new man was required, a man with a heart of flesh not of stone.  That covenant would also require a new priest, one who was himself pure, the first new man,  a priest who need make no offerings and sacrifices for his sin.  We have the Holy Spirit but are we the people God wants us to be?  Do we bespeak a better covenant and a better covenant people?  We have been blessed, like Abraham, to be a blessing.  Let us walk in faith.