28 February 2015

Psalm 55; Deut. 11:18-28; Heb. 5:1-10; John 4:1-26

Life in the Promised Land was to be filled with the word of God.  They were to have it in their hearts and souls, their hands and the frontlets between their eyes.  They were/are to teach their children and to discuss them at every point from rising up in the morning to lying down in the evening.  The point of talking about the Law was so that they would understand how to live according to the Law.  Obedience to the commandments was the key to enjoying the Land and the peace that God would provide against their enemies.  It was taken for granted that they would have enemies, peace would be theirs so long as they obeyed the Lord.  He would take care of maintaining the peace.  We should settle ourselves on the reality that the world isn’t our friend unless we become like it and when we do we lose what was intended to be our distinct aroma and light.  Peace isn’t established or maintained by becoming like the world but by obedience to the Lord.  Peace is a work of God.  Does the fact that obedience is the way to receive peace diminish that it is all based on believing Him?  The reason to obey is tied up with belief that if you do obey you will receive the promise.

 The Samaritan woman wants this living water, the water that permanently quenches thirst, the water that becomes a spring of water welling up to eternal life.  Who wouldn’t want that water?  First, she doubts Jesus’ ability to produce such water.  This well is pretty extraordinary, it has been producing water for her people since the time of Jacob, somewhere around 1500 years or more, can Jesus do better than that?  Why should she exchange this water for the water He is simply talking about?  Jesus promises more concerning this water each time she questions Him until finally she has no more questions, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”  He overcame her sales resistance but then proposed a condition, get your husband.  Every sales person knows that if you get the wife on board the hubby will follow along right?  That isn’t the issue here, Jesus might have blown it if the husband is required, she has none but, in the end, confession of the reality of her messy past is the true condition of receiving this water, not a husband.  Not only that, He knew it all anyway and still offered her the water. Amazing grace in action.  Now, all she has to do is believe Him at His word that He is Messiah.

The first high priest could hardly lord his righteousness over the people could he?  The story of the golden calf and the time Aaron and Miriam went to Moses to claim his right as leader both stand in the way of Aaron’s self-righteousness, not to mention the fate of his children, Nadab and Abihu who were killed by fire from the altar when they attempted to bring strange fire and mix it on the altar with the fire kindled by God.  The writer here says Jesus, the son, learned obedience through suffering.  He shows what it looks like for us to be obedient unto death.  Before that time He had never known suffering, only the love of the Father, perfect union and in suffering as we do He was perfected as not only the sacrifice for sin but the one who is our great high priest interceding for us.  We know the Father hears Him because of His perfection and we know that because of the resurrection.  Do you believe?

27 February 2015

Psalm 40, 54; Deut. 10:12-22; Heb. 4:11-16; John 3:22-36

“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good?”  Fear the Lord, love the Lord, serve the Lord.  Sounds perfectly parental doesn’t it?  When we are children we should have all these things in our hearts and minds.  If our parents are loving then we should fear them in the sense that they know things we clearly don’t know and we should be reluctant to disobey them in disrespect.  We should love them in return for their love and their lovingkindness, love in action and we should then serve them from that place of belovedness.  Moses finds the center of the argument not in the greatness of God as God of gods and Lord of lords but in what He has done for them.  Both are true, obedience is from love, not fear alone.

John wasn’t jealous of the fact that people were leaving off following him and going after Jesus.  He wasn’t jealous because he believed in Jesus as greater than himself.  John’s job was to point to and prepare a people for the coming of Messiah and he believed that Jesus was Messiah.  We have that same work and our joy should be not in making disciples for ourselves but for Him.  Our goal should be not to attach people to us but to Him alone.  John knew that the baptism of the Holy Spirit which he proclaimed but perhaps didn’t fully understand, was the greater work.  There was no reason to believe in John, only in John’s message but Messiah was one in whom faith should repose.  John saw the relationship of Father and Son between God and His chosen one and knew that relationship was different from his own relationship with God.  Eternal life was the promise and that is only realized in believing in the Son.

The writer of Hebrews says, “no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”  Worse yet, the Word of God exposes the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  The fear of God is bound up in these words and ideas in the same we we have probably all stood before a parent when we were young and felt that we were exposed for the disobedient children we were.  Shame, however, is not the primary reason to fall at the feet of God.  Jesus’ death on the cross bears away my shame.  His innocence exposes my own sin and yet not for my destruction did He do this thing but for my life.  Jesus is indeed our great high priest who intercedes for us in the same way the high priest did but the blood of His sacrifice is once and for all effective for the forgiveness of sin.  What He offers us is mercy and grace for those who confess their sins, not for those who hide them. 

26 February 2015

Psalm 50; Deut. 9:23-10:5; Heb: 4:1-10; John 3:16-21

Moses is a bit piqued at the people as he warns them not to be tempted to take credit for their own good fortune.  He continues recounting the events of the last forty years and his accusations against them.  Moses certainly put up with a great deal in those years and along the way he loved the people in spite of the difficulties they caused for him, interceding on their behalf on numerous occasions when he knew that ultimately they would never change.  I can’t imagine a pastor today retiring after a long season leading a congregation giving such a speech, but it is for their own good here.  Moses knows they are going to experience prosperity and blessing such that they have never seen before and his knowledge of human nature gained these last four decades teaches him that it won’t go well.  He is doing his best to remind them why they have been here all this time so that they will see how much grace they have already received.

Jesus could certainly have come to condemn the world.  Would anyone argue that God had or has no right to condemn the world?  We have taken the good creation and done our best to destroy it for our own benefit.  We have defaced the image of God and we have hated one another and Him.  Instead, Jesus came to reveal that in spite of all this the Father still loves us.  We respond to that message by accusing Him of not caring because there is suffering in the world and of all manner of evil when the Bible tells us that we are the cause of all the problems in the world, not Him.  If I were He and heard such things, I would end it all now as my name was besmirched by beings who are no more than dust and the span of whose life is so limited, but He sent His only Son to come and tell of God’s love and to die on a cross for sinners.  It isn’t just the Jews of Moses’ day who were stubborn and stiff-necked.  The church has been given  a mission, are we living in fear instead of faith?

Knowing the truth, passing a quiz on Bible knowledge, isn’t enough.  The writer here says that those in the wilderness had a problem and that problem was that they didn’t unite faith with knowledge and therefore failed to enter the rest the Lord promised.  All disobedience is, at some level, a lack of faith.  At the mountain when they demanded Aaron do something useful in making them gods, it was because they lacked faith that Moses would return. The sin in the garden was a lack of faith, God was keeping something good from them, therefore they lacked faith that He was truly good.  Faith demands obedience, complete trust in the One who created all things, including us, to know what is best for us.  If we truly believed, we would know the rest God promises.

25 February 2015

Psalm 119:49-72; Deut. 9:13-21; Heb. 3:12-19; John 2:23-3:15

Moses recounts the episode of the golden calf so that the people will recall that they have nothing to be proud of in their history.  Deuteronomy is his final address to the people and here he is attempting to put that history into the context of the future.  He has told them the importance of remembering this history so that they never forget that it is only by the grace of God that they have a land of their own, that they exist as a nation.  The story of God’s grace to them began in Genesis with grace extended to Abram for no apparent reason other than God knew the man would go.  That grace was also seen in Egypt when the Lord heard their prayers and delivered them from slavery and then, at the penultimate moment, when the covenant bargain was being struck on the mountain between Yahweh and the representative of the people, Moses, whom they had adjured to meet with God alone for they feared greatly, they sinned by forcing Aaron, who sinned gravely, to make the golden calf and say, “These are your gods that brought you up out of Egypt…”  Moses reminds them that only by the grace of God in response to Moses crying out in prayer for them do these people even live today.  We all deserve death because we have worshipped other gods, we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  We live because of grace.

Nicodemus has no particular interest in being born again.  He won life’s lottery the first time around by being born a Jew.  He isn’t depending on that good fortune though to assure his participation in the covenant, he is a Pharisee who takes the Law seriously.  He is, however, a genuine seeker.  He comes to Jesus perhaps as a representative of the Pharisees as he uses the first person plural pronoun to begin his conversation with Jesus, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God…”  He honors Jesus by calling Him rabbi as Jesus hasn’t come up through their schools and has no rabbinic credentials.  Jesus proves that indeed He is a teacher come from God as He speaks of things of which Nicodemus knows nothing and leaves him stammering and confused but we also know that Nicodemus continued to follow Jesus’ “career” and, in the end, risked everything by asking for the body of Jesus.  He was the first man to truly identify with Jesus in His death. 

“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.”  I believe in the perseverance of the saints but does that mean I fail to do what the writer says to do here, exhort one another every day? How much of my conversation is Godly exhortation as opposed to simply talking?  When we allow our fellowship to be simply worldly fellowship we fail to exhort one another.  We are meant to be speaking to one another about the Lord lest we fall into the same trap as the Israelites on the mountain.  Moses was away for forty days with the Lord and Aaron apparently failed to exhort the people and they all forgot that no golden calf had led them out, there was indeed a God who had done so but they quickly forgot and replaced Him.  Let us never allow our fellowship to become so sloppy and forgetful.

24 February 2015

Psalm 45; Deut. 9:4-12; Heb. 3:1-11; John 2:13-22

Moses is quick and clear in disabusing the people of any notion that the years in the wilderness have been the reason for the Lord giving them the land.  They have accumulated no merit in their time there.  They are getting the land for two reasons, the wickedness of the nations who currently possess the land and because the Lord had made a promise to the fathers of the nation, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to do this very thing.  It is a mistake that is certainly tempting to make, to believe you have paid the price and now deserve something good to happen because you have persevered.  Moses reminds them who they are and what they have done, they are a stiff-necked people who have failed time and again.  The man had some tough times leading them all these years, it is no surprise that he hasn’t forgotten all the pain they have caused him and the Lord.  We don’t deserve anything good in this life or the next, it is all about grace, unmerited favor.

We need this lesson to remind us that Jesus wasn’t the milquetoast man of peace and teaching many have in mind.  He took a whip of cords to drive out the moneychangers and sellers of sacrificial animals, poured out the coins of the moneychangers and turned over their tables.  It was a scene to say the least as he drove out not only the men but also the sheep and oxen from the courts of the temple.  Jesus was an angry man with a whip, it would have been a melee when He did this.  The leaders ask, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?”  Why do they ask such a question?  They have allowed this to occur, in direct contravention of the words of the prophets who have scored the nation for centuries regarding this very thing, worship with the wrong motives.  They believe themselves to be righteous although they countenance great injustice right in the temple courts.  Though they do not understand Jesus (no one did at the time), the sign he offers is resurrection.

The contrast between Moses and Jesus is the contrast between a servant in the house and the son and heir of the house.  Moses was chosen by God for the task of leading the people out of Egypt and leading them in the wilderness, holding the people together, for forty years.  His job was an incredibly difficult job under trying circumstances, to say the least.  The young Moses who killed the slavemaster in the desert wasn’t prepared for such a job, it required him to question himself in a way he never had, to lead his father-in-law’s sheep in the wilderness forty years first.  He had to come to grips with himself.  He knew his story of being saved by Pharaoh’s daughter, of growing up as a son in Pharaoh’s house, and believed he was someone special and he was right but for the wrong reasons.  That part of his life mattered but it didn’t complete his preparation for the role.  Jesus knew His role before creation even and His glory, unlike Moses’, never faded.  He is different in kind.  This life, for us, is preparation for the next.  We should be practicing and setting our hearts on Him now.

23 February 2015

Psalm 41, 52; Deut. 8:11-20; Heb. 2:11-18; John 2:1-12

The great danger to God’s people is always prosperity and yet it is preached all over the world as that which God promises.  Moses is deeply concerned, and rightly so, about the effect prosperity will have on the people when they are in the land.  He sees the danger in forgetting all the Lord has done for them to get them safely through the trials of the wilderness, and here he mentions all those things I noted yesterday.  The danger is that they will take credit for all they have in safety, security and health and wealth.  They may remember what He has done for them in some way, perhaps the way of Cain, stingily acknowledging that they have worked hard for their money and that the Lord surely had some hand in it through providing opportunity.  Our attitude towards our stuff, particularly the giving of the tithe, much less more than that, is incredibly telling about the truth of the state of our soul.  Generosity is the mark of a person who knows that truly, all things come of Thee O Lord and of Thine own have I given Thee.  It is easy to say man doesn’t live by bread alone and a harder thing indeed to live it.

When Jesus provides the wine he does so abundantly.  If all the water in the jars were turned into wine, there would be over 120 gallons of wine and not just wine, the best wine yet!  It may be that the water turned to wine as it was dipped from the jars, used for the purposes of drinking not for ceremonial washing.  Like the question yesterday about fasting, the old order of things is being overturned in the new era of Jesus presence.  Something remarkable is happening, something not magic but pointing to who He is, overcoming the natural order of things to provide the best in abundance.  What pointed to piety now points to presence.  Can you imagine the surprise of the servant when the master of the feast drank and praised the contents of the dipper as the best wine?  He had to have thought this wasn’t going to end well and instead got the shock of his life. 

The writer argues that we are brothers of Jesus, the one who sanctifies is made like the ones He sanctified.  Does that make you uncomfortable to think of Him as brother?  It is awkward and we must always remember that He has a dual identity, fully God and fully man and not presume on our relationship with Him but also not shrink away in fear.  We live in a time when suffering is no longer thought to be Christian, we should be blessed and not suffer unless there is sin in our lives.  In Hebrews, a common theme is the suffering of Jesus makes Him the perfect savior for the very reason that there is suffering here in this life.  We know we have not only an advocate but a sympathetic brother who knows temptation and suffering because he endured it.  He could have had it all, it was offered by satan, but turned it down for our sake and for the sake of love for the Father.  We need such a savior who kept the main thing the main thing, no matter how tempting the alternative may have been.

22 February 2015

Psalm 63, 98; Deut. 8:1-10; 1 Cor. 1:17-31; Mark 2:18-22

After forty years in the wilderness, often on the move, eating primarily manna and with an entire generation now dead and gone, Moses tells them not to forget these years.  The Lord was doing a work, humbling them but also keeping them safe.  There were many miraculous events in those years but Moses points to the provision of manna, that their feet did not swell and their clothing did not wear out as what they should recall when they enter the land.  What about things like the Red Sea, water from the rock, the defeat of the Amalekites when they held his arms in the air throughout the day, the fiery serpents, and so many other remarkable events?  The blessing of the land corresponds to the privations and yet miraculous work of God in the wilderness to preserve the people.  The change is from difficulties and hardships to a land flowing with milk and honey and it will be tempting to forget those years and the presence of the Lord in providing for the nation for four decades in the wilderness. 

Jesus and His disciples apparently didn’t keep the fasts that other religious people kept.  Here we are in the first Sunday of Lent, our season of fasting, and the question is on the table concerning the issue of religious seasons of fasting.  We celebrate on Sundays during Lent and many people feast this day because of the resurrection day should be a day of rejoicing.  Jesus says there are proper times to fast, it is an appropriate thing but when He was here there was not a reason to fast, it was a time to celebrate the goodness of God.  Feasting and fasting should be part of our lives as Christians.  Just as it was good for the people to recall by fasting the time in the wilderness, so it is good for us to recall ourselves to a life without Him in it in order that we can remember how glorious grace truly is.  Even in our own wilderness years, we were recipients of grace though we didn’t recognize it at the time.

Paul reminds the church in Corinth that they were nothing special when God called them.  “For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.”  Sometimes we forget who we were and in doing so we forget who we are.  We forget that it is only by grace we are saved, not by merit either past or present, and we get too high an opinion of ourselves.  Such was the problem at Corinth, they were proud of their “knowledge” and not proud of the cross.  We were all nothing at all, doomed to destruction, dead in sin to God, and He took us and gave us life and true wisdom although to the world it looks like utter folly that a man perishing on a cross could be God Himself.  Today is a good day to remember who you were and that who you are is completely dependent on grace, amazing grace indeed.

21 February 2015

Psalm 30, 32; Deut. 7:17-26; Titus 3:1-15; John 1:43-51

Moses is surely remembering the episode with the spies that cost him the chance to enter the Promised Land when he says, “If you say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I. How can I dispossess them?’ you shall not be afraid of them but you shall remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt…”  They must not make same mistake again and fail to enter the Land because of fear.  Egypt was the greatest nation on earth at the time, no nation was more powerful and yet God delivered His people without a single arrow or blow being struck in battle.  The kingdom of God advances because of His mighty hand and His outstretched arm, not because of anything we do in our own cleverness or power.  Do we dare believe that or do we depend on our own devices and strategies?  Two things need to be conquered in us, fear and dependence on anything other than Him.

Nathanael is another who fell in love with the idea of Jesus as Messiah at the smallest provocation.  Initially, he is skeptical of the claims of his countryman, Philip, because of the description, “Jesus of Nazareth.”  Can anything good come from Nazareth?  Does it really matter that Jesus wasn’t from Nazareth?  The reality is that we make judgments based on all the wrong things, we allow our prejudices to control our thoughts and we sometimes fail miserably to see things aright because of our presuppositions.  Nathanael’s initial impression concerning Jesus, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” was right.  The most important thing we can do is to keep that in the center, never lose sight of our first love of Him.

Paul says the basis of Christian ethical conduct toward other people is to remember, exactly what Moses told the people in his day, remember what the Lord has done for you.  Paul says to show “perfect courtesy” towards non-Christians because you were once there, you once didn’t know the truth and you lived based on a lie.  The compassion God showed to us in our ignorance is to be the model for our conduct but also our attitudes towards those who do not know the truth, who are still trapped in servitude to the lie, whose hopes are not in things eternal.  Every conversation we have, every Facebook post by an atheist who hates the very idea of Christianity should arouse in us two things, praise for the One who saved us and compassion for that person.

20 February 2015

Psalm 31; Deut. 7:12-16; Titus 2:1-15; John 1:35-42

Moses said that if the people “listen to these rules and keep and do them” they will enjoy the covenant blessings of peace and prosperity in all things.  Does that mean that as soon as they fail to do these rules they will lose the covenant blessing?  In Genesis, Adam and Eve were told that if they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would surely die and they did, just not immediately after eating it.  The law had provision for transgression, it was the sacrificial system, they could atone for sin by making the proper sacrifice but the system wasn’t designed to be a way out of sin.  The Lord didn’t give them the system in order that, as Paul said, sin might abound to the extent you were able to afford the sacrifice.  The Lord speaks through the prophets about that idea.  What was intended was that they would trust Him that this way of life was best and would itself protect them from much pain and suffering.  The law was itself a loving act of a loving Father.  The blessings promised were simply icing on the cake.

Were these men really seeking to know where Jesus was staying?  It seems likely that was the best they could come up with at the moment He asked them what they were seeking.  They went with Him and spent the day there, listening to Him, and at the end of that first day were convinced He was Messiah.  As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, sometimes what happens in our walk with Jesus is that we take Him for granted.  We lose sight of what it means that He is Messiah and we fail to exalt Him as we should.  We do that in nearly all aspects of our lives, we become so accustomed to people, jobs and things that once completely delighted us that we fail to appreciate them as they deserve.  Some things disappoint us and we become disenchanted with them and others lose their luster because we like shiny new things.  We are fickle that way, not faithful.

Perseverance in what we know and how we are to be is called for.  Another word for that could be faithfulness, not allowing ourselves to be seduced by the world or other things.  Self-control, which Paul commends here several times, is largely a matter of direction of passion and its easiest exercise is to control what we allow into our lives to begin with.  I cannot be enticed by something I don’t allow into my life.  It is easier to say no to temptation if it never comes up, if we don’t allow ourselves to be led to the place we may be tempted.  It all begins with being satisfied, infatuated even, with the Lord.  Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all other good things will be added.  It was the message of Moses, the message of Jesus and the message of Paul.

19 February 2015

Psalm 37:1-18; Deut. 7:6-11; Titus 1:1-16; John 1:29-34

The mystery of the election of the Jews as the chosen people of God is eclipsed only by the fact that we are chosen.  As Moses points out, there was no particular virtue in the nation that they were chosen by God as His people, the vehicle through which He would make Himself known in the world.  There weren’t many of them, they had no power, they weren’t pursuing Him, they simply had been chosen for the faith that proved itself in obedience in their forefather Abraham.  The perseverance of the nation for the last several thousand years is proof that God chose them.  There is no reason a tiny nation like Israel should even exist today as the fact that the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites no longer exist ably testifies.  It is all down to the love and faithfulness of God.  Today would be a good day to thank Him for His election of you.

John says the entire purpose of his ministry of baptism was that Jesus might be revealed to Israel.  He had been promised that he would, like Simeon, see the Messiah and was given the sign that when he baptized Messiah a dove would come and rest upon that one and it happened in Jesus.  From that point forward, John began proclaiming a different message, he began pointing to Jesus.  He refers to Him as the Lamb of God and I wonder if John had any idea what he meant by that appellation.  Did he know that Jesus would be the sacrifice for the sins of the world and in His death on the cross Jesus would indeed take away the sins of the world?  At Yom Kippur it is a goat that bears away the sin of the people into the wilderness to Azazel, not a lamb.  Jesus, however, is the Lamb that John saw, looking like it was slain, appearing before the throne in Revelation 5 whose blood shed on the cross atones for our sins. 

Paul certainly sees things in black and white when he writes to Titus.  There are those who are fit for eternal life and those who are not.  There are observable patterns of behavior which allow him to determine which is which and he tells Titus to rebuke those who don’t display those characteristics that Christians should have.  Sin entangles us, destroys us and the community and needs to be dealt with in our lives.  We are to be an alternative community, led by the Holy Spirit.  The perseverance of the church down the ages is no less a work of the will of God than the perseverance of the nation.  We are both disobedient and filled with sin and yet He loves us, as individuals and the community, we are His own and He wants us to act like it.

18 February 2015 – Ash Wednesday

Psalm 32, 143; Jonah 3:1-4:11; Heb. 12:1-14; Luke 18:9-14

Jonah preaches the smallest message possible, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”  What was the reaction?  The people believed God and had a public fast for forty days.  Jonah had to have been stunned at the reaction of the people.  There are reasons to believe that this actually happened.  The nation was losing its hegemony in the region, having recently lost in battle and lost territory, there had recently been an earthquake and a solar eclipse, both of which would have said to the people that something was going on in the spiritual realm.  Jonah decides to take up a watch outside the city and the Lord provides shade against not only the sun but also against the sirocco winds of the area but the plant is not permanent and withers and dies, causing Jonah a bitterness in his soul because God hasn’t treated him well.  Who is the only person in the picture who doesn’t repent?  Jonah.  I believe Jonah wrote this story about himself ultimately because no one else could have unless it is nothing more than a fairy tale.  It is interesting that Jonah’s tomb was recently desecrated but it is more interesting that it was in Iraq, in the city of Mosul, which stands across the Tigris River from Nineveh and was a shrine at which Muslims paid homage.  Perhaps Jonah finally understood what it meant to love others.

The tax collector went home justified.  That is the point of repentance, to be justified.  We can’t justify ourselves, it requires an act of God to do that.  At the end of confession in worship I pronounce the absolution but it is based on God’s declaration that those who confess their sins with an attitude of repentance, not only agreeing with God on what constitutes sin but also with the desire to never do such things again, are forgiven.  If we fail to confess our sins with such an attitude, we are not forgiven and we aren’t justified by comparative righteousness, being better than other sinful people.  We are justified only by Him and only because we have made our confession.  Jonah was certainly a better man than those who don’t know God like the Ninevites, but they proved themselves willing to listen to God where Jonah’s heart was hardened.

What sin clings closely to you?  The writer calls for us to lay such things aside in order that we might run the race without hindrance.  We get so accustomed to such things in our lives that we no longer have a sense that we are running with a weight attached to us that slows us down, makes the race harder and less winnable.  Perhaps the sin is obvious to you, intemperance in something like food or alcohol, pornography, or other sexual sin but perhaps the sin is such a part of you that you no longer even notice it.  Maybe you have a problem with gossip or a negative and critical spirit or even that you are not thankful for what you have because you don’t have what you want.  All these rob us of strength, vitality and joy in Him.  Let this be the year you allow Him to show you what needs to go and then confess, repent, and leave it behind.

17 February 2015

Psalm 26, 28; Deut. 6:16-25; Heb 2:1-10; John 1:19-28

I worked under a priest whose constant refrain was, “Everything you do teaches.”  Moses would have agreed.  On multiple occasions he wrote things like, “When your son asks why…”  The expectation for God’s people, then and now, is that they will be different in significant ways from other people and their children will notice this and ask such questions.  Here, he anticipates such a question, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you?’  Meaning is a big question and you wouldn’t expect the answer to begin with a history lesson.  Moses says the meaning of the testimonies, statutes and rules is embedded in the work of God in the Exodus from Egypt.  The meaning of the Law comes from the way in which the Lord became the covenant partner of the nation.  His authority is based in His lovingkindness in action.

Remember way back at the burning bush Moses asked the Lord, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”  When the Lord promised to be with Moses he asked the name of the Lord and the response was the enigmatic, “Yahweh” or “I will be who I will be” or “I AM.”  Here, the leaders demand to know of John the Baptist who he thinks he is to take up the mantle of prophet in this way.  He could have pointed back to his father, Zechariah’s experience with the archangel when his birth was announced but instead he gives his own enigmatic answer, pointing back to Isaiah, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.”  Like Moses, John saw his work as secondary to the work of God.  Moses looked back to God’s deliverance in Egypt and John pointed forward to the coming of Messiah.  Neither man thought of his own role as important in salvation history, it was all about God.

The writer of Hebrews points back to faithfulness and obedience to what was once heard, “first proclaimed by the Lord, attested by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.”  The giving of the law was, by traditional teaching, attended by angels, hence the cherubim over the mercy seat, guarding the ark of the covenant in the holy of holies.  Jesus, in earthly form, was, for a time lower than the angels but now, crowned with glory and honor.  Until we understand two things, that God is the author and perfecter of our salvation and that all glory and honor and praise belongs to Him alone, we will never make progress in the faith.  We must have the mind of both Moses and John the Baptist, that it is all about Him.

16 February 2015

Psalm 25; Deut. 6:10-15; Heb 1:1-14; John 1:1-18

Can you imagine what Moses says here, a group of people being given a land “with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant.”  That is a very strange idea to think we could walk into some place like Black Mountain and take up whatever house we wanted and take over the businesses there and run them as our own.  It happened in Rwanda in the memory of some folks I know, but it wasn’t a God thing.  People began killing their neighbors in the 1960s and others then decided to flee the country over the next 30 years, walking away from their lives, homes and businesses and others then simply took them over.  The Lord gave the Land and everything in it to the people of the covenant but it wasn’t empty to begin with, it was filled with Canaanites, who go back to Genesis 9.  I get a bit squeamish about such an idea but I also have to balance that with the reality that God created all things and that we were created in His image and for His glory and that we are rebellious.  It is His and He is a jealous God, not only for those with whom He is in covenant but also for all of us.  We have responsibility for our own actions.  CS Lewis wrote, “The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man, the roles are quite reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge; if God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the bench and God is in the dock.”

How does the fact that the Word, that existed in beginning with God, in other words, before there was anything at all in the universe, and through whom all things came into being, became flesh and dwelt among us, change your ideas about accusing God of being a ruthless killer in that first lesson?  He loved His own image and His own creation enough to come to save those who would believe.  Not all believe, but those who do are given the right to become children of God.  Not all who live among us today will see eternal life and yet He has not left Himself without witness and those who do not believe reject the evidence of the witness of creation and the witness of the church.  Who knows what evidence the Canaanites rejected prior to their being thrown out of the land?  Paul’s argument in Romans is clear, neither Gentile nor Jew can proclaim ignorance or innocence.  We may deny creation ex nihilo by God but our denial doesn’t change the fact that it is a witness to Him.

The Father made much of the Son and the measure of our love of God is making much of the Son.  That glory is not shared because, while there may be more than one person of the Trinity, they are of the same being or substance while we are of another substance, the dust of the earth, the stuff left over from creation.  The nobility of man comes from His taking on flesh and dwelling among us and that fact alone changes everything about mankind’s self-understanding and our understanding of the distinction between us and the rest of creation.  The incarnation sets us apart, not scientifically, but ontologically, we are more than dust, we are image bearers and Jesus is the perfect image, the exact imprint.  That fact has huge implications, that we, all of us have great dignity and that we have great responsibility to the rest of creation as God’s chosen stewards.  We are in the dock because we were created in His image and given that responsibility.

15 February 2015

Psalm 148, 149, 150; Deut. 6:1-9; Heb. 12:18-29; John 12:24-32

Deuteronomy is Moses’ valedictory address or his retirement speech.  He sees that the single most important thing to know as the people enter the land to possess it is to know that God is one.  It is a wonderful thing to know there is only one God.  It makes our lives so much simpler to know that we don’t have competing claims and interests on our lives.  We don’t have to sort out those things because He is One.  Because there is one God there is only one Law, one who must be not only obeyed but loved, loved with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  Moses’ expectation is not a people who have God’s Word as one thing in their lives, it is to be “the” thing.  “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”  They are to be a God-obsessed people and so are we.  Let Lent be a time of weeding out things that distract you and allowing Him to be your one thing.

Jesus says, “whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”  In Luke 14.26 we have, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters--yes, even their own life--such a person cannot be my disciple.”  We were given this life as a gift and we are to honor our father and mother, spouse and children, and our brothers and sisters.  In fact we are commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves by Jesus and if anyone qualifies as a neighbor it surely includes those kin.  We are not only commanded to love our neighbor we are commanded to love them as we love ourselves.  What then can Jesus mean by telling us to hate our lives and our kin?  Those sayings must be balanced by the command to love God with all our heart, soul and might.  He must be so primary that all else feels like hate in comparison.  In this way we stay on the right path, not allowing anything or anyone to cause us to deviate from it.

What was the word Abel’s blood spoke?  In Genesis 4 the Lord tells Cain, “What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.”  The Lord cared about the man who was slain.  Cain hadn’t committed the perfect crime, he had been seen.  While Abel’s blood cried out for vengeance, the blood of Jesus cries out for mercy for sinners, the very ones who put Him on the cross.  Paul connects worship with what Jesus has done as the appropriate response, “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”  Let us not be guilty of coming to worship unprepared for encounter, and unaware that while He is the lover of our souls, He is also a jealous God, a consuming fire.  Let us ask Him to consume all those things in our lives that are of no lasting value.

14 February 2015

Psalm 87, 90; Isa. 61:10-62:5; 2 Tim. 4:1-8; Mark 10:46-52

“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness…”  That is a good morning resolve for every day of the year.  If I began the day greatly rejoicing and exulting in Him for what Jesus has done for me perhaps I would find other things through the day less irritating and find more in which to rejoice as I pass through the day.  What if you received these words: “You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.  You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married” as true for you and for the church, not just your particular church but the church that proclaims Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life and began to pray for the Lord to beautify both you and the church for His glory to be worthy of what He has done for you.

Bartimaeus knew he had a chance to get what he wanted, restoration of sight, and he wouldn’t allow anyone to tell him he was making a spectacle of himself in order to get it.  Can you just see this blind man hearing the hubbub as Jesus was passing near on His way to Jerusalem for Passover and asking someone who this was everyone was buzzing about and then being told it was Jesus of Nazareth and then beginning to cry out above all the other noise, begging, as always, but Bartimaeus wasn’t looking for alms this time around, he wanted more from this man.  He had faith in what he had heard about Jesus and the rebuke of the crowd didn’t deter him from seeking to gain His attention.  He was rewarded for faith and perseverance, they weren’t rebuking him now.  He would never again be old blind Bartimaeus, he would now be the man Jesus healed.

Paul sees that his day is ending and Timothy is part of his legacy and he urges him to carry on, fight the good fight, preach whether people listen or whether it seems to return void, persevere as Paul has done.  This young man will carry on where Paul left off.  As we get older, it surely becomes natural to look to younger men and women in whom we can invest and encourage in the way of Christ.  It is important to pass on wisdom and encouragement in this way, both to our children and to those who will carry on the faith in their own day.  It should be our great delight to invest in the lives of younger people, at whatever age and stage of life we may find ourselves in, whether we are 25 or 85.  Someone in your life needs you to encourage them and remind them they are deeply and dearly loved by you and, more importantly, the Lord.  Rivers of living water are intended to flow from us to others, not simply be dammed up as a private reservoir.  If it does, it ceases to be living water and becomes stagnant pools.

13 February 2015

Psalm 88; Isa. 61:1-9; 2 Tim. 3:1-17; Mark 10:32-45

After His baptism and the temptations in the wilderness, Jesus went back to His hometown of Nazareth and on the Sabbath went to the synagogue where he read aloud from the scroll of Isaiah a portion of this passage, said, today this is fulfilled in your hearing and then sat down.  This, He said, was the year of the Lord’s favor.  This passage also declares that in addition to being the year of the Lord’s favor it was to be “the day of vengeance of our God.”  Isaiah sees that the nations will bow before the Lord and they will serve the chosen people rather than oppressing them.  It is a beautiful passage of restoration but not a “one for one” restoration.  That which was lost will not simply be restored, they will have a double portion of the Lord’s blessing.  In Jesus, we have more than a double portion of blessing, more than simply the restoration of loss, we have eternal life.  If you could choose today whether to have earthly riches or eternal life where there was no pain or suffering, in the presence of Go, which would you choose? Maybe it is a good day to rejoice in what you have.

As Jesus goes up to Jerusalem He foretells the cross.  What was the attitude of those who traveled with him?  They (I presume the disciples) were amazed, and those who followed were afraid.  When was the last time you experienced either of these things in your Christian walk?  We can get too comfortable with Jesus in a way the disciples and those around Him rarely seemed to have done.  When they did, Jesus challenged them and called them out like here with James and John.  They believe perhaps that Jesus doesn’t quite understand what it means to be Messiah and ignore His prophecy and ask that they be allowed to sit at His right and left in His glory.  They want to be co-regents but they don’t know what they’re asking.  What that entails is the same sort of suffering He will endure, getting to glory isn’t pretty like a Roman coronation of an emperor, it isn’t majestic and awe-inspiring, it is awful.  We have made it something else in our day, we have reduced the eternal blessing of Isaiah’s vision to a temporal prosperity.  Let us always remember that this is not our home and His kingdom is yet to come.

Paul tells Timothy to avoid people like this: “lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.”  Who would be left in your life if you avoided such people?  Would anyone avoid you?  Paul may have converted from Judaism but he maintained high standards for righteousness in this life.  Jesus’ righteousness was all that mattered eternally but Paul never used that as an excuse to sin or not pursue righteousness.  Doing so is the definition of “having the appearance of godliness but denying its power” and it is presumption and taking the name of the Lord in vain, for the sake of vanity and nothing more.  The pursuit of righteousness in our confession of His righteousness and our love of it.  The time is drawing nigh to get out of that comfort zone and be challenged.

12 February 2015

Psalm 146, 147; Isa. 60:1-17; 2 Tim. 2:14-26; Mark 10:17-31

As I read this beautiful passage of the nations coming to Israel and bringing glory into her, serving her and blessing her I can’t help but think of today’s situation in the nation.  Indeed, nations like the United States, ostensibly the most powerful nation on earth have provided funds and protection for Israel, we played the starring role in re-establishing the nation after World War II and have been her protector since then.  People from all over the world travel there because it is the city of God, the place where Jesus ministered and was the place where He was crucified, died, was buried and rose again.  We, Christians all over the world, in places no one in that time could have imagined, read the word hungrily, read Isaiah to seek to know the meaning, ultimately, of His prophetic visions.  The vision is being fulfilled in our own day as we read this passage, as we make what is for some a pilgrimage to the “Holy Land” and as we work for peace in the Middle East.  It is odd and amazing that this nation has persevered and even exists after all these centuries.  If it were not for the covenant there would be no Israel.  What does it all mean?

The mystery of the Gospel is that you can’t do it yourself and what you think you know you don’t.  The rich young man was aware that there was something missing in his life.  He had money and he had, by his own account, kept the commandments but he asked Jesus what he had to “do” to inherit eternal life.  He had no security in spite of all he had and all he did.  Did you notice what the commands Jesus listed did not include?  They didn’t include the commandment to have no other gods before the Lord and his duty vis a vis the Lord.  Jesus’ command to sell everything he owned exposed that he didn’t love the Lord enough to give up his earthly inheritance.  Jesus’ words concerning the difficulty of the rich to enter the kingdom causes despair in the disciples, they too are looking for thrones and earthly evidence of blessedness.  No one went away that day satisfied with the answers they were given, they weren’t yet looking for the real kingdom, they didn’t know yet what all this means.

“So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.”  That is tough advice for a young man.  The process of maturity involves sorting out youthful passions and reigning them in.  the passions aren’t necessarily wrong in and of themselves but they need to be kept in their boundaries, not allowed to dominate our lives.  If we didn’t have those youthful passions we wouldn’t reproduce, we wouldn’t fight against wrong, but those same passions can become unbridled and rule our lives rather than us ruling over them.  Paul writes as though the kingdom were a mystery, the Lord knows who are His own but we may not actually know.  To understand the times, to understand the world and events around us is the work of revelation.  God is in charge, He knows what all things mean and if we would have wisdom, we must not only ask the right questions but ask the right person.

11 February 2015

Psalm 119:97-120; Isa. 59:15b-21; 2 Tim. 1:15-2:13; Mark 10:1-16

“Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.” Could these words be true in our day?  They are absolutely true.  Postmodernity denies truth as it is meant in the Bible is even possible.  We live in a world where truth is relative to a person and the idea of universal truth is thought laughable or dangerous.  To believe in the Bible as “the” truth is considered as not just objectionable but perhaps actionable at law.  It can be “a” truth or “my” truth but to speak as though it was “the” truth can be considered hate speech because it condemns some things that the world celebrates.  To depart from evil can be difficult and it can have not only societal but legal consequences as some have recently learned when they refused to bake cakes or work as photographers for gay weddings and then were penalized at law.  It is the world we live in and that world says there may be a price for pursuing righteousness as defined in the Bible.  The promise is that He is our redeemer.  Isaiah saw this redeemer and the redemption was in this life.  Jesus took on flesh and suffered for righteousness that we might have the ultimate vindication and redemption, eternal life.  Is that enough to encourage you to pursue and persevere in righteousness as He did?  It may be all you get, so you have to decide if it is enough.  Ask the early church.

The key question in this conversation is from Jesus, “What did Moses command you?”  Who gave the command concerning divorce that is at issue?  Moses.  When Jesus gives His answer He makes clear they are arguing from Moses while He is arguing from God, “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’  We, the church have failed on this one.  We have failed to uphold marriage the way God sees it and intends it.  At best, we heard that infidelity might be grounds for divorce and made it into a principle that said it was absolutely grounds for divorce.  We have become hard-hearted just like the Israelites when it comes to marriage.  Repentance and forgiveness are not even considered any longer.  How committed are we really to marriage?

Paul talks about being ashamed a good bit in the first part of the letter to Timothy.  His arrest and imprisonment caused many, it seems, to abandon him just as the disciples abandoned Jesus when He was arrested.  We have become accustomed to a certain ease in our Christianity that allowed us to give nodding understanding to the suffering of Christians down the centuries and in those difficult places in the world today.  Is the church in the west prepared to suffer and to stand with Jesus when we no longer have a comfortable place?  We have had so much freedom and prosperity that we have lost our first love and chased after so many secondary things that when we no longer have these or any hope of them we lose our faith.  What is the hope in you that your faith is built upon?

10 February 2015

Psalm 78:1-39; Isa. 59:1-15a; 2 Tim. 1:1-14; Mark 9:42-50

Can you tell Lent is just around the corner?  The lessons from Isaiah are telling us a central truth, “your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.”  The Good News is that the problem is fixable.  It is also an important thing that the Lord doesn’t just leave it at the nebulous idea of sin, He tells exactly what sins they are committing.  Verses 9-11 graphically depict the situation of God’s people, beginning with “we hope for light, and behold, darkness, and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.”  Today it might be preached that if you just speak against the darkness you will find it dissipates but the right prescription is to find the light, to leave the darkness of unrighteousness and walk in light of the Word of God. 

According to Jesus sin is a serious issue.  Serious enough that the cause of sin should be cut off.  He clearly doesn’t mean this literally but what He does mean is that we should be ruthless about sin.  As Christians we know that the problem of sin is deep down in our nature and that nature can only be dealt with by the Holy Spirit and thereafter we have an opportunity to deal with it by disciplining our hearts, heads and hands to the work of righteousness, cooperating with Him as CS Lewis wrote, “Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian home is good actions, or Faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on such a difficult question, but it does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary. A serious moral effort is the only thing that will bring you to the point where you throw up the sponge. Faith in Christ is the only thing to save you from despair at that point: and out of that Faith in Him good actions must inevitably come…”

Paul reminds Timothy of a great truth, “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”  When we are led by the Spirit and live by the Spirit these are true.  When we seek things of the flesh we lose these things.  That the spirit is a spirit of self-control is an interesting paradox isn’t it?  We think of self-control as something we have to exercise but Paul says it is a spiritual gift.  Maybe then, we can ask Him to give us more, make it operative in us, but we have to want it to possess it. Praying is an active thing in this regard.  Paul commands Timothy to guard the good deposit that has been entrusted to him but he is to do so by the power of the Holy Spirit.  If you haven’t read them, I commend both the Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster and the Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard.  Both are excellent resources for not only Lent but for all of life.

9 February 2015

Psalm 80; Isa. 58:1-12; Gal. 6:11-18; Mark 9:30-41

The most countercultural thing we do is obey the command, “Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression…”  Such a thing is not popular in a culture of self-esteem and it is not popular in a church culture that preaches only grace.  The reality is that grace is only amazing when we realize it is necessary for our relationship with God to be truly intimate.  Here, the Lord says that this people “seek me daily

and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God.”  We could compare that statement with today’s worship culture that fails to take seriously the holiness of the God we are attempting to draw near to.  So long as we fail to deal with sin in our lives there is a distance and a boundary to our relationship with Him.  If we think we are approaching intimacy with Him in worship, it is only because we are otherwise distant from Him and any attempt we make to think about Him feels like intimacy.  True repentance, amendment of life and a determination to walk henceforth in His holy ways are the paths to true intimacy, intimacy not only in corporate worship but the intimacy born of seeking the kingdom each moment, leaning on the Holy Spirit to keep us in His ways.  A true fast is one that recognizes that distance, admits it, and seeks true righteousness.  It is intimate because it is private.

We think too highly of ourselves.  That runs counter to the self-esteem culture but it is true.  Self-esteem is important but how we get there matters too.  Years ago now I was part of a wonderful group of people who studied the book, Search for Significance, together.  It was transformational for me.  I had been a successful person in business and I found my significance there.  My partner in the business committed fraud and we lost the business and with it I lost my significance.  I went to seminary and found significance as a seminarian who had left all behind and followed the call of Jesus.  This book re-established my significance in the right place, not in what I had done and accomplished or what I had, or what I had done for Jesus, but in what He had done for me in love.  Here, the disciples have to learn the same lesson and ultimately Jesus says your significance is found in being the least in the kingdom because then it is grounded in simply being not in being something.

One of the ways we find significance is getting other people to come round to our way of things.  In Galatia it was in getting the church there to agree to be circumcised and to accept the Law.  We don’t like to be different, we want to be comfortable in our place in the world and that isn’t possible if we are too different from others.  The Jews in Galatia were still pursuing significance outside of Jesus, they found it in performance and others’ opinions of them.  When we find our significance outside of those two things we become a challenge to those outside the church because they don’t control us but we sometimes become a challenge to those inside as well, those who are still not fully converted to the truths of the Gospel, that salvation is by grace alone, in faith alone, in Christ alone who is revealed in Scripture alone and all to the glory of God alone.  The transaction that established this is private but our lives and proclamation are meant to be anything but private.

8 February 2015

Psalm 93, 96; Isa. 57:14-21; Heb. 12:1-6; John 7:37-46

“I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”  That is exactly the kind of God we need.  We need a God who is big enough to oversee all things, who has no peer or rival but we also need a God who is not watching us from a distance, we need a God who is near to us and cares for us intimately.  The promise is for the one who is of a contrite and lowly spirit.  These are the ones to whom He will come and comfort and revive.  That has always been the promise, from the time of the covenant and from the time of the temple.  We have a role to play and that role is repentance and contrition.  We live in a time when the message of radical grace is preached that requires no contrition, in fact does not recognize the need for contrition in those who are saved.  If we would have God’s best, we must be a people who despise sin in our lives more than we hate it in others. 

Jesus makes a promise for those who believe in Him.  “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”  The immanence of God, the notion that He is with us and not watching from that distance of the heavenly throne, is no more fully expressed and realized in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  When John wrote his Gospel you can hear his amazement and wonder that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us but, better than that, the Word dwells within us by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Life in the Spirit is meant to be like this picture Jesus painted, rivers of living water flowing out of the heart of the believer.  The problem is that we dam up the flow of those rivers through sin and through our allowing the world and its cares and concerns to consume our thoughts and our hearts.  So long as we are seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, those rivers will flow.  As soon as we get distracted, the flow ceases.  Ask Him to show you what is damming up the rivers of living water in your life.

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. 

For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”  Does that sound like the early church believed the same things preached in some circles today?  The idea that God would discipline, reprove or chastise His children is repugnant to that message.  The Biblical witness is not that the Lord loves His children without standards, that there is no room for Him to discipline us is a monstrous distortion of the truth of the Word.  We are not saved by works but when we are saved there is a responsibility laid on our shoulders, to make known the ways of the Lord not only by teaching but by living according to His Spirit guiding us in all truth.  When we go astray, that path is dangerous to us and if He does not reprove us then He is not loving.  The Spirit is given for our comfort and guidance and for His glory.  Let us not grieve the Spirit by our failure to listen and respond to His correction when that is necessary.

7 February 2015

Psalm 75, 76; Isa. 57:3-13; Gal. 5:25-6:10; Mark 9:14-29

He is the God who sees me.  In Genesis 16 when Hagar fled from Sarai after she had conceived a child by Abram the Lord found her near a spring of water in the wilderness and told her to return and submit to her mistress with the promise that He would multiply her offspring so that they could not be numbered.  His words concerning her son and these offspring were not covenantal and they were not promising but her response was to give to Him the name El Roi, the God who sees me.  In this passage what He says to the people is that indeed He has seen them.  There is something less than comforting in that knowledge isn’t there?  There is, however, something that is comforting, that He cares enough to know about us.  In Psalm 139 we see David initially frustrated it seems that there is no place where he can escape from the Lord but in the end he finds great comfort in that same knowledge.  He is not watching that He might find fault in all we do, He watches His children like both parent and spouse but a long-suffering parent and spouse whose commitment to the relationship is permanent.  He disciplines those He loves, always remember that truth.

The man isn’t sure whether Jesus can do anything at all since His disciples weren’t able to help so he says, “if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”  I wonder how often people have rejected Jesus and failed to have faith in Him because of us.  The disciples couldn’t do anything and the man, on that account, doubts whether Jesus can help.  He wants to believe, crying, “Help my unbelief.”  The scene had to have been chaotic, the arguing between the disciples and the scribes and the people running towards the man and the boy as he spoke with Jesus, and then, in the midst of the chaos Jesus rebukes the “mute and deaf” spirit and commands it to come out and it cries out, the spirit itself wasn’t mute and deaf, and the symptom the father had described seems to manifest again, the people think the boy dead.  Fortunately, Jesus takes his hand and raises him up to new life, free from this oppression.  The reason that Jesus gives for the failure of the disciples is this kind only comes out with prayer.  Perhaps the disciples had lost sight of the reality that the power to do such things wasn’t inherent in themselves.

To keep in step with the spirit is to remember that there is neither health nor power in us other than Him.  If we remember this, we will not “become conceited, provoke one another, or envy one another.”  This is the same idea behind restoring those caught in transgressions gently and bearing one another’s burdens.  We need always be mindful of the words Rich Mullins wrote, “We are frail, we are fearfully and wonderfully made, forged in the fires of human passion, choking on the fumes of selfish rage. And with these our hells and our heavens so few inches apart, we must be awfully small and not as strong as we think we are.”  The key to perseverance is the knowledge that He is sovereign over all things and He sees me, we are not alone in the universe, no matter what my situation God knows and cares.  Only in His power can we stand.

6 February 2015

Psalm 69; Isa. 56:1-8; Gal. 5:16-24; Mark 9:2-13

“Keep justice and do righteousness.”  Those two things always go hand in hand or we become Pharisees.  Forgetting justice was and is the sin of the Pharisee, it is an inward curve of the heart towards self.  justice is something we do for others but justice must be done with righteousness in mind to define it.  The Law said that there was one law in the land for natives and foreigners alike which made it different from other nations at the time.  Here, the announcement is made that even eunuchs could be included in the covenant, those who have no remaining ability to carry the sign of the covenant of circumcision in their flesh.  They and foreigners who keep covenant in the Name of the Lord can and will be gathered into the covenant community.  For this reason, Israel and we in the church should be careful to keep justice not only for members of the community but for those who are potentially members of it, which includes every person.  Now, we have to determine the meaning of justice in a way that is true justice, it has to also be righteousness, the definition has to be found in the Word not in the world.  Some things the world calls justice are to be left alone by Christians and others demand our participation. 

Moses and Elijah represent the Law and the prophets and Jesus eclipses both these men.  The disciples see Jesus talking with them as He is transfigured and I wonder how they recognized the two.  At any rate, Peter suggests making three tents, one for each of the three men, a place apart from the world and when he does, the moment is over, a cloud descends and Jesus stands alone and the voice comes from heaven declaring Him to be the Son and the command is given to listen to Him.  Jesus always balanced justice and righteousness, the Law and the prophets.  He healed on the Sabbath, setting God’s people’s wholeness above the tradition of what it meant to keep Sabbath.  Justice, loving the image of God before you, was the higher form of righteousness.  He healed and hung out with Gentiles, tax collectors and sinners but never forgot righteousness, calling them to truth about both sin and a holy God. 

How can we keep justice and do righteousness?  Paul gives the answer, live by the Spirit and don’t gratify the desires of the flesh.  Sometimes what we think of as justice is nothing more than a way to gratify the desires of the flesh.  We want and when our  wants are frustrated they are so powerful that we think now that it is a matter of justice to gratify them. We can’t live without them therefore it must be wrong to deny them to ourselves or others.  Paul is clear that these must be dealt with in our own lives.  If we know what righteousness and experience the reality that the Spirit is given to allow us to live above the level of desire when desire conflicts with God’s way then we know that these things are not matters of justice to keep for others, they need the Spirit as well.  The Spirit is more than the power to quell our desires, self-control, however, the fruits of the Spirit aren’t to help us grit our teeth and win that battle, they set us free to love and live in peace and joy.  Jesus lived without sinning, but He showed us the way to live with joy as well.

5 February 2015

Psalm 71; Isa. 55:1-13; Gal. 5:1-15; Mark 8:27-9:1

To a people in exile for their sins this passage has a particular beauty of its own.  Come, buy without price, take what you want, it’s all free, it is all gracefully and mercifully given.  After decades of life in Babylon as an exile community living precariously and in constant fear of what might happen next under rulers who have no respect for your people, to hear of pardon and restoration would be too good to be true.  I have seen that kind of people in Rwanda, the nation in exile from the very thing that finally exploded now over twenty years ago in genocide.  A people who believed the land of Rwanda, the land of a thousand hills, to be their promised land but a place to which they could not safely return and so they were not a people, only living among a people until it was possible, that moment made possible by the end of the genocide when they could return and rebuild and they did.  A cleansing of the land, its old hatreds and attitudes occurred and many lives were lost but now there is something beautiful there.  Israel was the same after their return, memories, some bad some difficult, the memory of many lives lost but hope saw that there was a future glory that they could build together.  The promise of a restored covenant carried them to that future, the belief that God was in control and working with them to re-establish the kingdom.

Doesn’t this reading make you think back to that first lesson?  Peter can’t hear Jesus saying that He will suffer, be rejected by the elders of the nation and be killed so the idea of rising again never made it into the picture.  Peter forgets, like we all do when things don’t look like we think they ought, “my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.”  We think we can make sense of the world and know good and evil when we see it but we can’t.  We need the attitude of Joseph who said, what you meant for evil, God meant for good.  It’s hard to blame Peter though, resurrection had never been done and no one thought Messiah would die, particularly at the hands of the elders.  For us, it is easy to understand the idea of taking up your cross and following but for Peter and the others who heard Jesus say this it would have been abominable.  Sometimes we are reminded of the difference between us and the God who created all things and that this life is necessarily a life of faith.

There is a play on words in the first part of this reading when Paul says that if you accept circumcision you are “severed” from Christ.  It is a graphic picture just like taking up the cross to follow Jesus.  The idea that we can work our way into heaven, be good, keep some law, appeals to us, particularly in our age and locale.  Rugged individualism, up by your bootstraps, the self-made man, all these are images with which we are intimately familiar and find them compelling but the Gospel tells us that isn’t possible with gaining the kingdom of God.  Grace compels us to admit we are failures that we have no hope, the bar is too high, like a high jumper standing before the pole vaulting pit looking up at the bar in despair.  There is no reason to try that height, it is only futile.  Jesus set the bar that high in the Sermon on the Mount and then leapt over it for us and bids us come under and share his accomplishment and its rewards with him as though we had done it ourselves or He couldn’t have done it without us.  Faith says, I accept your graciousness knowing I don’t deserve it and I will do my best not to tarnish your fame and accomplishment.  Faith accepts the gracious invitation to give up and receive the crown of the victor nonetheless.

4 February 2015

Psalm 72; Isa. 54:1-17; Gal. 4:21-31; Mark 8:11-26

What would it look like for you to enlarge the place of your tent and spread abroad right and left?  The point is to make room for the blessings God is going to give the people.  Now that His judgment is passed, the time for restoration has come and it is more than the proportion of one for one.  What they will receive is more than they have lost and that is a principle that sounds very good indeed to those who have lost something cherished or lost hope.  Does that always look like a monetary thing?  In our day there are many who preach such things but the great reward of God’s people has always been to have God Himself in abundance.  Children were the greatest material blessing of all, the knowledge that this would all be carried on in perpetuity.  Yes, the people were going to be back in the Land but that could never be simply as an economic blessing, the Land was to mean more than economics, it was a symbol and sign of the covenant relationship with Yahweh.  Their enjoyment of the Land was a sign of His favor and goodness towards them and a reminder of their identity as a holy nation, a kingdom of priests.  Living in the Land showed His covenant was secure and that He was on the throne, it was a sign to them and the nations.  The promise here is of a peaceful habitation and protection from their enemies. 

After the feeding of the four thousand can you imagine the Pharisees coming and asking for a sign?  Can’t you just see what Mark tells us, “He sighed deeply in his spirit and said, “Why does this generation seek a sign?”  Good grief, how many signs do they want?  Jesus says they won’t receive a sign but they do receive plenty of signs but a sign is only as good as your ability to read and interpret the sign.  When He speaks to the disciples about the leaven of the Pharisees and they begin discussing the lack of bread I don’t even want to imagine His exasperation.  The leaven of the Pharisees is addition of man-made laws and traditions to the commandments of God.  They expected some particular sign of their own knowledge that Messiah would do to prove Himself rather than believing simply.  Afterwards Jesus heals a blind man by degrees.  Like the disciples, the man is coming to see gradually.  We are always like this, revelation comes constantly if we are open to seeing it.  We are often, I fear, like the Pharisees, waiting for our own sign to be done before we fully believe and commit our lives to faith.

Paul makes a comparison he never would have considered if he had not met Jesus on the road to Damascus.  He compares Jerusalem and Judaism to Hagar and Ishmael.  They are, as they tell Jesus, children of their father Abraham, but Paul says that since Christ came they are more like children of the slave woman, Hagar, than of the free woman, Sarai, who was in fact their mother.  Now, the situation must be interpreted allegorically and this would have been a startlingly offensive comparison but Paul needs to get their attention.  His break with Judaism and its worldview was complete.  His understanding of Jesus was such that he could make such a comparison.  If I were to do the same it would be so offensive that people would walk out on me but Paul, who was a Jew, can do so.  His goal is to return them to the Gospel of faith not works and the only way to do so seems to be to shock them.  Sometimes it is the only way to get the message across.

3 February 2015

Psalm 61, 62; Isa. 52:1-12; Gal. 4:12-20; Mark 8:1-10

When the Lord announces His judgment against His people is over He says “for there shall no more come into you the uncircumcised and the unclean.”  Does that mean that literally these will no longer come into the city or does it refer to two things, that it will never be conquered by such and that those who come will do so as having been cleansed?  In Revelation 22 we hear, “Outside (the city) are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.”  Those who come into the city “are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.”  The “good news” that is announced is that the time of redemption is here, the Lord is restoring His people and all the world, the uncircumcised and unclean, will see this great salvation and they will know that it is Israel’s God who has done this and who is high above all gods.  He receives glory and they receive the benefit of being His people.

Some of these people have come from far away and they cannot return to their homes without fainting for they have no provisions for the journey they took to follow Jesus.  It is their faith and their panting after Him that has led them to this place and not a journey of their own design and for this reason Jesus has compassion on them.  The place is described by the disciples as a “desolate place” which must mean that they are far from any place to procure provisions for feeding them, there is no hope to feed such a crowd.  In the wilderness in the exodus was such a time and place and there God provided manna and meat for the people.  Here, Jesus takes the offering of the people, a few loaves and small fish, offers them in thanks to the Father, and then sets them before the crowd in what must have looked a ridiculous idea, and all are fed.  No one else may have had faith but Jesus did and that was enough.  As the writer of Hebrews said, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

Paul is perplexed about the Galatians.  They have abandoned the faith he preached to them and have now adopted a works mentality.  He knew how fortuitous it was that he preached the Gospel to them at all, it was because of an ailment that Paul was detained in Galatia rather than a plan he conceived.  At that time, the people were so delighted by the good news and the one who preached it that they would have done anything for him, even gouging out their own eyes, which leads us to believe that this must have been a problem with his eyes in the first place.  Since they received the news of justification by faith alone with such joy, why now have they received something else, works based, as the Gospel.  We all have a tendency to believe faith and live works and need to be reminded that one is good news, the other hopelessness.  Rejoice in the Gospel today!