30 April 2014

Psalm 119:1-24; Exod. 15:22-16:10; 1 Pet. 2:1-10; John 15:1-11

Three days later, after the water problem of the Red Sea, now there is no water.  We can't survive long without water so the lack thereof here is a real problem.  That dilemma is doubled when they find water but it is bitter.  Their grumbling against Moses is actually legitimate, he isn't a good leader if he can't find potable water.  The Lord, however, gives a faith-based solution, throwing a log into the water to make it sweet.  That is a log with some magical properties if it can sweeten a water supply large enough to provide for this multitude!  It becomes an occasion for a further promise to the people.  If they will obey his commands and statutes they will not suffer the diseases of the Egyptians, He will be their healer as He has healed this water.  The next occasion for grumbling was lack of food and here they begin "remembering" how good they had it in Egypt.  When we are tested as we follow Him there is always a tendency to look back to that place from which we were delivered and romanticize it isn’t there?  The Lord announces His provision to come it is as a command and as a test of obedience.  How will He provide?

Jesus, too, makes a commandment and a promise contingent on obedience to the commandment.  The commandment is to abide in Him as a branch abides in a vine but how can this be done?  It must initially mean something like abide in my teaching, don't forget it but more than that, obey it.  They don't yet understand about the indwelling of the Spirit, so they don't have the full picture.  There are two contingent promises based on abiding.  The first is, "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you."  Who wouldn't want that?  The second promise is, "If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love."  Clearly active obedience is the key to abiding. 

Peter's words here are full of Scripture, quoting God's charge to His people in Exodus and applying that charge, to be a holy priesthood, a royal nation, to the church.  He also quotes from the Psalms concerning living stones and finally from Hosea concerning the work of God in transforming them from those who were not a people to being His people and those who had not received mercy to those who had received mercy.  What they received became a responsibility to proclaim the excellencies of the One who called them out of darkness into marvelous light.  The responsibility to make Him known is now given to the church because it has the fuller revelation of God in Jesus.  That doesn't mean we have replaced Israel in His heart, it means that we are grafted in, the revelation in Jesus is the completion of the revelation given to the Jews in the law and the prophets.  Receiving revelation and enjoying the promises of God are always contingent on obedience.

29 April 2014

Psalm 5, 6; Exod. 15:1-21; 1 Pet. 1:13-25; John 14:18-31

Here we have the world's first praise song.  Moses and the people spontaneously praise the Lord for what they have just seen and experienced.  The song recounts the events at the Red Sea, extolling the Lord for who He is and what He has done but it is more than that.  It also looks forward, extending this work into the future and to all those who stand between the nation and the possession of the Land, the people of Philistia, Edom, Moab and all the inhabitants of Canaan, all those "ites" who they were to drive from the Land the Lord was giving them.  They are a nation united in their praise and their faith for the future.  They see clearly that this is going to be a walk in the park from here to possessing the Land.  All the nation is filled with faith and hope, a glorious moment in her history.

"Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”  Do you see that connection between having the commandments and keeping them as proof that you love Jesus?  Faith and belief reveal themselves to God by actions and if faith is revealed by obedience, Jesus will manifest or reveal Himself to that person.  Jesus leaves the disciples with a great gift, His peace. Not the world's peace, dependent on circumstances of peace, but a peace that passes anything that the world can do to us.  We have that peace through the Holy Spirit, the Helper abiding in the believer.  The Israelites faith was shakeable because it was dependent on miracles, they needed faith like Job that believed that even though things didn't go his way, there was a redeemer who would plead his case ultimately and God would acquit him.  Sometimes faith waits until the seas are parted to step out, sometimes the step of faith precedes the sign.

Peter calls his readers to holiness of life, not just holiness or right belief.  He quotes, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”  Jesus also said, in the Sermon on the Mount, that we are to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.  It is proper to say that Jesus believed, had faith, and that faith led Him to go to the cross and die, to suffer the agony of the flesh and the spirit, the indignities that were heaped on Him, knowing that the end would be resurrection.  We know He believed that because He told them in advance about both His death and resurrection.  We know equally well that Peter and the rest didn't believe that He was right.  They didn't rush to the tomb on Easter Sunday expecting it to be empty and Him raised.  Peter knows because He did see the resurrected Jesus and he expects that we, because of the outpouring of the Spirit, can have exactly the same faith as they who saw Him.  We can have the faith that endures and perseveres to the end, no matter what the future holds, He is our peace.

28 April 2014

Psalm 1, 2, 3; Exod. 14:21-31; 1 Pet. 1:1-12; John 14:1-17

Can you imagine the feeling of walking between two walls of water on, not muddy river bottom, but dry ground when you saw with your own eyes that there was water there only a few hours before?  They knew that what they saw was a miracle and the water stood up in those heaps while the entire nation passed through.  They saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore after having drowned when the sea returned to its normal course when Moses stretched out his staff over it.  They saw, they believed and they feared the Lord and they believed in Moses as the servant of the Lord.  None of that would really last very long would it?  We are a people of short memories when it comes to faith.

Jesus tells the disciples, "Believe in God; believe also in me."  Would the disciples, having seen all the miracles Jesus had performed, believe when belief was really necessary?  We know the answer to that one don't we?  They were willing to believe when it was easy to believe, when the crowds came, when Jesus raised Lazarus, healed the blind, made the lame to walk and cleansed lepers, but when He was on trial they were fearful not of God but of the Jews.  Belief can falter when we need it most and when it does we tend to reach for something else to solve the problem rather than resting in that belief.  Fear should be reserved only for God.  Theological principles and dogma aren't enough of themselves, we need true faith, dependable faith.  That faith is possible only for those who have been tested and tried, there is no way to have that faith if everything goes according to plan.  Believing is the key to everything.

Peter knows that he too was born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus and the giving of the Spirit on Pentecost.  He also knows that those things were required for him to be the man he believed himself to be, the man he truly wanted to be.  Fear of death, suffering, and man had to be conquered by resurrection.  He knew death wasn’t the final word, eternal life was real and God was more to be feared than anything else.  Peter knows also that genuineness of faith is revealed only in testing.  Do you?

27 April 2014

Psalm 146, 147; Exod. 14:5-22; 1 John 1:1-7; John 14:1-7

Most of us have a romantic idea of what it means to follow God or to heed His call that is completely unwarranted by all of Scripture.  We think that if we follow Him, if we obey His call to us, that life will now make sense and move smoothly towards the goal.  Where would we get that idea?  It was twenty five years after God's promise to Abraham that even one small piece of the promise was realized and he died without seeing anything more than that one piece.  Here, the people have left Egypt "defiantly" according to verse eight and yet three verses later they are asking Moses why he brought them out of Egypt at all.  The expectation was surely that they would now move with alacrity towards the Land where, probably, all the inhabitants would have abandoned it.  It isn't going to be that easy, it never is.  The same God who says, "Follow me", is the same God who says, "Fear not!"  Following Him means we will have opposition and hardship and it means that things get done His way rather than our own.  Red Sea moments are inevitable in our lives.

Thomas asks the question we all want to ask, the way to where Jesus is leading.  Follow me is a call to trust.  We chose knowledge over trust in the garden.  Why did we want to know evil when all we knew to that point was good.  If the categories are good or evil why do you want to know evil?  Thomas wants to know the way and Jesus' response is that He is the way, the truth and the life.  The way to the Father is the Son, if we follow Him, we will arrive safely at the place He has gone to prepare for us.  All we need to know to navigate this life is follow me.  We will know the way as we follow, in relationship.  We are to be in constant communication with Him in prayer and like He led the Israelites in a pillar of cloud and fire, so will He lead us to our destination.

John's writing of the epistle is to make Jesus as the way known to all.  He proclaims Him to be the light, that there is no darkness in God, and calls us to walk in the light.  It is in the agreement of these truths about the way that we also find life.  John's purpose is that his readers might agree with him concerning these matters that they might have fellowship with him and the other apostles who have fellowship with the Father and the Son and in that fellowship his joy may be complete.  We tend to take the fellowship of believers for granted and fail to receive the benefits of life together that we are intended to have.  The way is not meant for a solitary journey, it is meant to be shared and there we find fullness of joy.  We have others to help us when we are weak and suffering and to share our joys, and we are sometimes the ones who help the weak.  Jesus is the way but He invites us all on the journey together.  Fear not, He is with us to the end of the age.

26 April 2014

Psalm 145; Exod. 13:17-14:4; 2 Cor. 4:16-5:10; Mark 12:18-27

The Lord tells Moses which route to take to leave Egypt, beginning with avoiding the land of the Philistines to avoid seeing war and get discouraged and turn back.  Then we are told that the people are ready for battle.  That seems strange, they were slaves in Egypt, how could they be ready for battle?  Then, suddenly we are simply told that there is a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night ahead of the people, God showing not only Moses but all of Israel that He was with them night and day.  All they had to do was follow.  Next, the Lord tells Moses ahead of time to lead the people back in the sight of Pharaoh in order to entice him to come after them, believing they are confused and stuck in the wilderness.  It is God's plan to make the people vulnerable to the Egyptian army in order to get glory over the Egyptians.  This leaving is looking more strange all the time.  As an Israelite you would have to wonder if either God or Moses had any idea what they were doing.

This episode always leaves me shaking my head at the utter vacuity of some religious people.  Sometimes we impose human logic and human analogues on spiritual matters and there we find ourselves in what looks to us like a place to stand firmly and we look like complete fools in the end.  The Sadducees believe they have worked out the folly of resurrection via marriage.  If a woman has more than one husband in this life, whose is she in the next?  The whole matter turns on believing that the next world is like this one but in that life there is no reproduction so there is no marriage in the same way there is in this life, one of the primary purposes of marriage.  Further, Yahweh is, in the common formula throughout the Old Testament, "the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob", then they must be living if He is their God.  The verb tense gives us all we need to know.

Paul points to both our problem and its solution.  We lose hop when we do what Peter did when he left the boat to walk on water, we look to those things we can see and we find impossibility and hopelessness.  Paul says in a wonderful paradox that we need to look instead to those things which are unseen for sustenance of hope.  The paradox is that we think of what we see as real and Paul says they are instead transient, not eternal, while those unseen things are realities and eternalities.  We have a vision problem, we are too much like the Sadducees, materialists at heart, just like Eve who believed knowledge was to be had in the material fruit as opposed to the unseen God.  The solution is to walk by faith in what we know from God's Word as opposed to sight.  It may look like God has no plan for our lives but if we know Him, we know that He has a plan.