31 July 2015

Psalm 69; 2 Samuel 5:1-12; Acts 17:1-15; Mark 7:24-37

The remainder of the people of Israel, the family of Jacob, come to David at Hebron and bow to him as the true king.  In their oath, they confess that even when Saul was king David was truly the leader, “when Saul was king over us, it was you who led out and brought in Israel.”  They confess that the Lord had anointed David king and shepherd of the nation from long before this time.  What was David’s reaction?  Graciousness, he accepted their confession and made a covenant with them as their king.  His first act was to go up to Jerusalem, which was still ruled by the Jebusites, who had a little saying that the lame and blind would be able to keep David from conquest.  Apparently David didn’t take kindly to the smack talk of the Jebusites, he hated  them in his soul.  The Lord gave the victory into David’s hand and thereafter the city was called the city of David in spite of the fact that he was from Bethlehem. Jerusalem was his first conquest as the king and the place he chose for his dwelling and therefore the capital.  David’s reign was long and prosperous for both him and the nation, the Lord established him.

Jesus’ fame is such that even in a place like Tyre and Sidon, pagan cities, provided incomplete refuge.  When Jesus arrived He entered a house and didn’t want anyone to know and yet this Gentile, a Syrophoenician woman, had heard of this Jewish healer and came into the house in search of Him, begging Him to heal her daughter.  On what basis did she make her appeal?  None, other than her need.  She made no pretense to deserving anything from Jesus at all.  You can see that same pattern throughout the Gospels, the Gentiles who came to Him for something never commended themselves as worthy of His attention or action.  Her willingness to humble herself was the key to receiving what she asked of Him.  I am guilty of sometimes attempting to get the Lord to do what I want based on something I have done, not done, or am doing, as though I have created an obligation for Him.  The cross should destroy that idea but it hasn’t I am sorry to say.  I always find it amusing that Jesus tells people not to speak of His healing work. How could they keep quiet?

So who started this uproar?  Some Jews who were jealous.  What was their charge?  “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.”  They knew they couldn’t make it about religious matters, it had to be a civil charge if they were going to get support from the citizenry.  It worked.  It always works.  The issues facing our country today are religious issues but they have been made civil issues to build the support necessary to do what the real agenda is.  It is amazing that there was a church in Thessalonica but indeed the work there led to something that lasted.  Sadly, it wasn’t enough to oppose the work in Thessalonica, when they heard it was bearing fruit in Berea they had to come there and stir up the locals too.  If, however, the Lord establishes something it will be established so long as He desires.

30 July 2015

Psalm 71; 2 Samuel 4:1-12; Acts 16:25-40; Mark 7:1-23

Apparently, Rechab and Baanah had not heard the story of what happened to the man who chose to tell David he had killed Saul.  Either that or they thought that this time would be different since Ish-bosheth hadn’t been the Lord’s anointed.  David, however, had a covenant with Jonathan and this was his brother they had killed, usurper and pretender to the throne or not.  They surely thought their treachery would stand them in good stead with the new king, perhaps winning them favor and places of honor in his kingdom.  Instead, it cost them their lives.  It was not a good idea to underestimate David’s loyalty.  David was trying to do things the right way, trusting the Lord, while everyone else was trying to do things the old way, the way of the world, taking matters into their own hands.  It is always a temptation to do things the old way.

Why did the Pharisees practice such elaborate rituals concerning washings?  Their understanding of the world was dualistic.  The world, everything out there, defiled a person who was, otherwise, clean.  The world was defiled and defiling so whatever contact there was with the world needed to be cleansed properly.  They found it unconscionable that Jesus and the disciples didn’t follow these same rituals.  Jesus accused them of missing the point entirely, they strained at gnats and swallowed camels.  The focus on what was a fairly insignificant part of the Law, and a misunderstanding of it and its implications generally, caused them to obviate the greater parts of the Law.  Jesus’ response referred specifically to the Ten Commandments, honor your father and mother.  We need that same perspective in our time, when we have concluded the opposite of the Pharisees, that all sin is the same or equal.  Clearly the law never makes such an assertion, there are varying punishments and sacrifices depending on the sin.  All sin is sin but all is not equal.  The real issue isn’t defilement from without, it is from the heart itself.  The real discipline isn’t washing hands, that starts with the presumption I am clean, Jesus rebuts the presumption, you aren’t clean at all, look at your heart.  Jesus’ immersion in the physical world of sin and death and defilement tells us how to live.

As I write this, the Supreme Court decision making gay marriage the law of the land in the United States has just been announced and Christians are reacting all over the internet to the news with hand wringing and loud denunciations and fear of having our religious liberties taken away from us.  Paul and Silas were beaten with rods and thrown into prison for exercising their religious liberties.  What was their reaction?  “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken.”  Who could ever have imagined that the man of Macedonia would turn out to be the jailer?  He was prepared to run himself through rather than let his employers do so more cruelly when suddenly he learned that God was up to something more, something to give him life rather than death.  Paul and Silas didn’t hatch a plan, they worshiped and trusted God that He had a plan.

29 July 2015

Psalm 72; 2 Samuel 3:22-39; Acts 16:16-24; Mark 6:47-56

There are many ethical considerations in this passage.  Abner has come to promise David that the people will all accept him as their king but it sets up Abner as kingmaker in much the same way he had done with Ish-bosheth.  Joab, the commander of David’s armies while Abner, recall, was the commander of Saul’s armies, distrusts Abner’s intentions vis a vis David.  Perhaps, however, we could suggest that two other motives might be at play in this matter, one is jealousy for his own position and the second, that Joab had put Abner’s brother to death in battle.  Joab’s murder of Abner is ostensibly for the second reason, to avenge his brother’s death in battle but that won’t fly under the Law, there is a distinction between killing someone in battle and the murder which Joab has committed.  David mourns Abner and commands Joab to mourn as well, thus averting the potentially disastrous perception that David himself was responsible for the murder of Abner.  Not only did he command Joab to mourn, David also cursed his family, “may the house of Joab never be without one who has a discharge or who is leprous or who holds a spindle or who falls by the sword or who lacks bread!” The holding of the spindle implies blindness, the leaning on a staff. I don’t suggest that David is cynical and calculating only in his actions, only that these things all served to pull the kingdom back together under his leadership.

Mark says that when He was walking on the water, “He meant to pass by them…”  Why?  Did Jesus not care, was He not coming to help them in their difficulty?  Jesus was giving them a revelation of Himself.  If you think of the creation, the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep, the chaos.  Now, we see Jesus as Lord over the sea as well, walking on the water.  It is a call to faith for the disciples, something they have to process about Him.  His purpose is to meet the deeper need they have, the need to understand and know who He is, but how Jesus’ heart must have leapt when they saw Him in the midst of that storm and cried out to Him.  We sometimes get overwhelmed by our own activity in the midst of struggles and forget we are not alone, now matter how impossible it seems that anyone could find us or help us.  In the midst of their storm, without Jesus, and no human possibility of Him being there, suddenly there He was, ready first to calm their fears and then to calm the seas.  The only ones who knew or cared how Jesus had gotten to the shore were the disciples, everyone else just saw the miracles of healing.

A girl with a spirit of divination tells the people that Paul and Silas are servants of the most high God.  Isn’t that a good thing?  Luke tells us she did this for many days before Paul did anything to stop her.  The spirit drew attention to itself as a prophetic spirit and I have certainly seen people who have prophetic gifts turning those gifts to their own glorification.  Paul finally rebukes the spirit, showing its true source and the power of the Holy Spirit over that spirit.  Her owners were damaged financially by this and, not surprisingly, weren’t happy about that reality.  Here we see what will become something of a trend in some places, Paul’s activity disrupts some commercial enterprise of the Gentiles and that cannot be tolerated so persecution has to be the answer in order to stop it.  Our kingdom is threatened by God’s kingdom and we won’t have it. How much better to bow the knee rather than kick against the goads.

28 July 2015

Psalm 61, 62; 2 Samuel 3:6-21; Acts 16:6-15; Mark 6:30-46

Ish-bosheth accuses Abner of having relations with Saul’s concubine and it doesn’t go well.  Abner has set up Ish-bosheth as essentially a puppet regime while he retains the power behind the throne.  We don’t know whether Ish-bosheth’s charge was true or false, it ultimately doesn’t matter because he lacks the real authority to do anything about it one way or another.  Abner’s threats to give the kingdom to David and Ish-bosheth’s subsequent actions prove who the true power is in the land.  David is willing to receive the kingdom from Abner but not without receiving all that is rightfully his, including Michal, the daughter of Saul who is his according to her father’s promise.  David is consolidating power however he may do so, as was also the promise at his anointing, that he would rule over the entire land.  Does the end always justify the means if we know something to be God’s will?  The answer is clearly no and this won’t happen without bloodshed.

Twice we are told that the destination was “a desolate place.”  Jesus intentionally chose such a place to get away from the crowds and yet when the people saw where they were going, Mark says they ran from the towns to get there ahead of the little band of the teacher and his disciples.  Their hunger for Jesus, what He had to offer, was so great they neglected everything else in order to be around Him.  The Samaritan woman in John 4 was drawing water when she met Jesus and yet when she left to go tell her friends she left her water jar behind.  These people react in the same way and so Jesus has compassion on them and provides bounteously for their needs because their real hunger drove them to Him. They obeyed the command to seek first the kingdom of God and all else was given them.  What does your life say about the hunger that drives you?

Who is the “man of Macedonia” whom Paul saw in his dream?  The mission team had plans for where they would go but were prevented by the Spirit of Jesus from carrying out their plans. (I wish the Spirit of Jesus always prevented my missteps, perhaps I am not always open to having my plans changed and less intent on following than going my own way.)  When they (including Luke you’ll notice) arrive in Philippi they hang around a few days and on the Sabbath go to the river where they suppose there to be a place of prayer.  There were apparently not ten Jewish men in the city as that is the number required for a synagogue.  When they get to the place of prayer, a place where ablutions, ritual washings, could be performed easily, they find no man, only a group of women, chief of whom is Lydia, who was a worshiper of God, likely a Gentile, who was urged by the Spirit to hear Paul’s message and accept baptism.  She was looking for the kingdom and became a person of peace to the group.  So long as our goal is the kingdom and we are sensitive and obedient to the Spirit, we will should find ourselves either with our needs met or meeting the needs of others as Lydia does here.

27 July 2015

Psalm 56, 57; 2 Samuel 2:1-11; Acts 15:36-16:5; Mark 6:14-29

It didn’t take long to create an utter mess.  David had been anointed by Samuel, the man chosen by God to anoint the first kings of Israel.  When Saul had died, David inquired of the Lord where to go and was told to go to Hebron where his tribe, Judah, accepted him as their king.  David reached out to the people of Jabesh-Gilead who had buried Saul (remember that his body and that of Jonathan were affixed to the wall of Beth-shan).  Saul’s mother would likely have been a woman of Jabesh-Gilead, so they would have been kinsmen of his.  Abner, the head of Saul’s army, took it upon himself to set up Saul’s other son, Ish-bosheth, as king and the rest of the tribes accept him as their new king for a period of two years.  Doesn’t it sometimes frustrate you that God allows such things?  We are required to accept things as they are in the belief that He is sovereign and that there is a purpose for all things.

There are echoes of the story of Esther in the story of John the Baptist.  The king, Herod here, has a bit too much merriment at a banquet and then makes rash decisions that end up not being what he would wish at all.  In Esther’s case, it all worked out in the end.  In John’s case, it certainly appeared not to work out well.  Herod was a Jew and he had broken the law concerning marriage to your brother’s wife.  Herodias divorced her first husband, Herod Antipas’ half-brother, in order to marry Antipas who had also divorced his wife.  John’s commitment to the righteousness of God wouldn’t allow him to remain silent in the matter as, apparently other Jewish leaders had done, so Herod had him arrested and imprisoned.  Herod’s attitude towards John however, was complex, “When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he heard him gladly.”  He knew the truth apparently but it spoke against him.  When we are perplexed it often means we aren’t hearing because of sin in our lives that we don’t want to deal with as sin.

Paul was not prepared to restore John Mark to the mission team since he had left them once before in Pamphylia.  We have no details of this incident, only that we are told in chapter 13 that when the original missionary journey from Antioch was undertaken someone named John began to be with the team early on and then left to go back to Jerusalem.  Barnabas was for restoration while Paul opposed it and apparently the disagreement was strong enough that the two men chose to part ways.  Barnabas was the man who brought Paul into the church, he seems to have had a heart for restoration and raising up those who were outcasts.  We need people like that in the church and here we can see this not as a church split but multiplication of ministries.  Paul raised up this man Silas to be his new companion and it seems that he too chose well in the matter.  We first hear of Timothy here as well and it is odd that as the work now is to deliver the good word that the Jerusalem council has not required Gentile believers to be circumcised that Paul would circumcise Timothy but sometimes we have to take away objections to hearing the message and that is what Paul has done.  God is sovereign and purposeful in all things, even when we are at odds it is sometimes the case that He uses this for His glory. 

26 July 2015

Psalm 24, 29; 2 Samuel 1:17-27; Rom. 12:9-21; Matt. 25:31-46

David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan speaks of his character and it speaks well.  Not only did he write the lament, he said it should be taught all the people of Judah.  Why Judah, Saul’s line was Benjamin?  It would have been easy to forget Saul, he turned out badly, but David knew it was important not to forget this first king and the things he had done for the nation.  In spite of Saul’s hatred of David and his desire for his own son, Jonathan, to take over as king, David respected Saul as king.  As he refused to take Saul’s life when he had opportunity, so he refuses to exult in Saul’s death which will mean that he is the new king.  The people of Judah must also respect that and not defile the memory of Saul.  The most beautiful words on friendship in the entire Bible are found in this passage: “Jonathan lies slain on your high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women.”

Are we saved by faith or works?  As children of the Reformation and of the Bible, we know that we are saved by faith alone, in Christ alone, through grace alone to the glory  of God alone.  That being said, all that should deeply influence who we are as people.  If we are indeed saved, we should be people of gratitude and of compassion, we should be like Jesus who came in the flesh not as a hermit dispensing wisdom but as one who lived among people and met them in their times of need.  We are called to emulate Jesus in being present to people, comforting and caring for them in ways that require us to do more than pray for them, but to extend ourselves to them, to bring the comfort of Christ to them in their need.  When Paul wrote the Ephesians he told them, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”  We can’t have faith without works, works reveal faith.

Paul calls the Romans to an active love of one another.  They are to hold fast what is good, show brotherly affection for one another, show honor, contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.  Even with respect to outsiders, even enemies, they have ethical responsibilities unique to the kingdom of God, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”  Evil is to be overcome by good.  Good is an active display of righteousness.  Just as David sought to do good to Saul, to bless Him in spite of Saul’s persecution and actively seeking David’s life, so we are to bless those who persecute us and love those who hate us.  They, too, are created in the image of God and are potentially those for whom Jesus died, ones we may one day call brother, just as Paul himself became a brother to those he formerly persecuted.

25 July 2015

Psalm 55; 2 Samuel 1:1-16; Acts 15:22-35; Mark 6:1-13

Did you notice who David had been “striking down” in that first verse?  The Amalekites, the very people Saul was intended to destroy but who were still occupying the attention of Israel.  David was finishing the work Saul failed to complete.  Who is the man who comes to David with Saul’s crown and armlet, claiming to have killed Saul, whom he assumes is David’s enemy and therefore expects to receive praise and honor for having done?  An Amalekite.  David asks who this man is and he says, “I am the son of a sojourner, an Amalekite.” Sojourners in the land were to be treated like natives, they had the same rights and they were subject to the same law.  David sizes up the situation and executes capital punishment against the man for murder.  Saul’s failure to utterly destroy the Amalekites comes around to David’s responsibility to finish the work.

No one doubts what Jesus is doing and saying.  Their questions show us that.  Where did He get this wisdom and the power to do mighty works?  Their problem is that what they see doesn’t fit with what they know.  They know Jesus’ family, they know this man who had lived among them all these years, and now it makes no sense that He is doing and saying these things.  Sometimes what we know is a barrier to knowing.  Our preconceptions form a barrier against assimilating new information and properly understanding it.  our experience can do the same.  If I have never seen someone miraculously healed, I will either not believe it is possible or I will come up with an alternative explanation for healing when it happens.  The people who have “known” Jesus longest cannot come to grips with all they see and hear because it doesn’t fit with what they have known of Him before this time.  If we think of Jesus as a great moral and ethical teacher, we will not believe in the miraculous things He did nor His claims to equality with God.  The disciples believed that He had the power and authority to send them out to do great things and proclaim the kingdom.  They only knew what they had seen and heard and that was enough to believe and not be offended.

The Jerusalem leadership made a good decision to send Judas and Silas to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas.  These men represented the council and thus validated the contents of the missive sent with them.  Their presence meant that this was indeed the word of the leaders on the matter of the Gentile converts and the Law.  The authority of the letter couldn’t be questioned.  If they had not come to do so, the church at Antioch would have accepted the letter but there would have been a continuing controversy because those outside the church would have questioned the veracity of the letter.  Our authority always needs to be verified, teachers should teach according to the Word of God rather than their own teaching.  We always need to discern the Spirits.  

24 July 2015

Psalm 40, 54; 1 Samuel 31:1-13; Acts 15:12-21; Mark 5:21-43

No matter what you might think of Saul, what the Philistines do to his body and the bodies of his sons is gruesome.  At the same time, we must recall that David did almost the same thing after he had slain Goliath, taking his head for a trophy.  Saul’s armor bearer, like David, will not be responsible for killing the king, refusing Saul’s request to do so when the battle was going against him and he knew he was going to lose and thus, to die.  Saul’s suicide is sad but understandable, these Philistines were more violent and more willing to annihilate than Saul had been willing to do vis a vis the Amalekites.  In this we see, perhaps, why God ordered him to utterly destroy them, leaving nothing at all that was tainted by the blood lust and idolatry of this people.  His body is attached to the wall for the birds to eat and the people to see, but the men of Jabesh-Gilead, the region from which Saul’s mother hailed, came, took down the bodies and mourned the deaths of Saul and his sons.  The first kingship of Israel had ended.

This was a pretty incredible day wasn’t it?  Beginning with the encounter with the Gerasene demoniac and continuing through the healing of the woman who had an issue of blood for twelve years to the raising of the daughter of the synagogue ruler from the dead, I would say everyone had to be living in radical amazement at this Jesus.  By the time Jesus gets to the house of Jairus He would have been more ritually impure than was nearly possible, having been among Gentiles, in the tombs, with a demon-possessed man, pigs were there, and being touched by this woman.  Jairus, however, was desperate, desperate about his daughter, and willing to sacrifice anything, even the ability to go to synagogue or temple for a season, for her healing.  Even after they are told she is dead, Jairus is willing to believe if Jesus says so.  The emissaries from the house call Jesus, Teacher, but he has not come to trouble the Teacher, but the healer.  In all these hopeless cases, Jesus alone brings hope and healing.

James, the brother of Jesus, is the clear leader of the church in Jerusalem at the time.  It falls to him, therefore, to judge the matter of Gentile inclusion.  What he sees is that there has always been a plan for Gentiles to be part of the covenant community, Amos’ prophecy makes that much clear.  His proposal is that there be a few things Gentiles should observe in being part of this community.  These things would mark out the Gentile converts from their past and their own cultures.  They were to abstain from “things polluted by idols”, that which was dedicated to other gods, from eating meat from which the blood had not been drained, for life was in the blood, and from sexual immorality.  There were different ethical responsibilities in the kingdom of God than in Gentile society.  The other thing to remember here is that they honestly thought the end was coming any moment so teaching the entire Law was impracticable.  If the king is returning right away let’s keep it simple.

23 July 2015

Psalm 50; 1 Samuel 28:3-20; Acts 15:1-11; Mark 5:1-20

Saul’s fear of the Philistines and the Lord’s refusal to give him word concerning the matter through dreams, Urim or the prophets caused him to try and get word from a medium or witch.  We are told that Saul had done a good thing and put such people out of the land and yet now he needed to hear something and so he sought one out.  This woman reluctantly does what Saul, in disguise, has asked of her and summons Samuel.  Why Samuel?  Did Saul think he would now be favorably disposed towards him?  If he did, he was in for a rude awakening.  The woman immediately knew this was Saul and that what was coming next was going to be unpleasant.  Samuel gives the final prophetic word on Saul and his family, it is ending soon and David is the man who will fulfill the prophecy as the next king.  Where did the woman get the power to summon Samuel?  She had no power of her own, the Lord used this woman to do His will, completely independent of anything she did.

The people of the land of the Gerasenes were afraid of this man, he held them hostage even though they had put him in the tombs and chained him.  They lived in fear of him and all day and night we are told he cried out.  If you have ever lived somewhere with a dog next door or with roosters nearby, you know that there is no escape from the noise and when it is human, but demonic, how much more would it be more than nuisance, a terror.  What if he chose to leave the tombs and come back, what would happen?  Jesus seems to have gone there for this man’s benefit, to relieve his torment from this legion of demons.  Why did Jesus allow the demons to choose their next hosts, the pigs?  We aren’t told but we are told that they couldn’t do so without His permission, they were completely in His sway.  What we do know is that the people had seen a demonstration of power over evil, a power that they had feared and now they feared Him even more although Jesus had shown great compassion to this man and, vicariously, to the entire community.  They, however, want nothing to do with Him and this new power, begging Him to leave.  The man begs to come with Jesus but Jesus leaves Him behind as an enduring witness to all, they won’t be able to push this aside with him in their midst.

There had to be a controversy over the issue of circumcision.  That had always been the way you entered the covenant community, all the way back to Genesis 17 when it was first instituted.  In Exodus 4, as Moses is returning to Egypt, after being commissioned by the Lord to lead the people out of Egypt, either he is circumcised or his children are by his wife.  Jesus, himself had been circumcised.  Gentiles could only enter the covenant through this practice.  What had changed in Jesus?  Had He redefined the mode of entry as baptism when He commanded it?  Were both required?  It is an honest question.  Peter finds two things decisive in the final answer: his experience and the reality that the Law hadn’t ever saved anyone.  The Law was the yoke that circumcision placed on the neck, if you came into the community, you accepted the Law as binding on your life which obliged you to practice sacrifices.  Peter’s experience with Cornelius was that the Spirit was given without circumcision and, in truth, without baptism.  Was the grace of God in Jesus all that was required for salvation?  That is the question that had to be decided in Jerusalem. 

22 July 2015

Psalm 119:49-72; 1 Samuel 25:23-44; Acts 14:19-28; Mark 4:35-41

Abigail knows how to make a plea doesn’t she?  She makes a powerful argument for David to not do what he has in his heart to do, kill her husband.  The plea isn’t based in love for the man she calls worthless and foolish, it is based in what she believes is David’s destiny, to be king over Israel, and her desire is to turn him from this act which would be sin, seeking vengeance for the wrong her husband has done David but not in proportion to the sin against him.  Abigail is a prophetess in what she says about David’s future, it is absolutely certain in her mind.  She is an amazing woman.  She couldn’t have known about the episode with Saul in the cave but what she says is very similar to David’s own thinking on such matters and the Lord sent her to protect him from this sin. The Lord judges Nabal and his actions and when Abigail tells him what she has done, he dies.  David’s taking of her and Ahinoam as wives does not strictly violate Jewish law, there was no prohibition against polygamy until about 1000 AD.  The Bible, however, does not commend the practice. Like slavery, it allows for it but only under strict conditions, it was not to be practiced as other nations did, the relationships were to be of a different character.

There are some interesting parallels between this story and the story of Jonah.  A great storm rages while Jesus sleeps, just like with Jonah.  Jesus has to be awoken with the question, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  The irony in that question is incredibly thick, the entire purpose of the incarnation is God’s loving care that we are perishing, Jesus’ entire life is answer to that particular question.  In Jonah, after the sailors have learned the storm is all because of Jonah, his guilt has imperiled them all and there is no hope of saving themselves, they cry to Jonah’s God, “O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.”  And then they throw his sorry carcass in the sea and the storm ceases.  Here, Jesus, the innocent man, speaks to the wind to cease, and it does.  The disciples know there is but one to whom the wind and sea are obedient, who is this man they are following that He, too, commands them? 

Again today we see Paul being persecuted, actually stoned nearly to death and not determining this to be sufficient to cause him to shake the dust from his feet.  After being strengthened, he re-entered the city.  He wasn’t done preaching and his act of courage was a part of the proclamation.  We are too quick to head for the hills when we face challenges, too willing to write off a city, I have seen it done here in Asheville by multiple people. Paul didn’t believe in walking away and rejecting places where the Gospel was challenged and unaccepted by all.  He persevered.  If we are to raise up true disciples, men and women who will persevere, we as leaders must also persevere in faith and love.  We know our destiny as certainly as Abigail knew David’s and it is with that end in mind that we work, not the short-term.

21 July 2015

Psalm 45; 1 Samuel 25:1-22; Acts 14:1-18; Mark 4:21-34

Can you imagine someone saying to you of your spouse, “he is such a worthless man that one cannot speak to him”?  That is what Nabal’s servant said of his master to Nabal’s wife and she didn’t bat an eye.  Apparently the man was a piece of work and she knew it.  David and his men have provided protection for Nabal’s shepherds and his sheep while they sojourned in the wilderness in hiding from Saul. Nabal, we are told, was a Calebite, which tells us two things, neither of which comport with his character.  Caleb was a faithful man of God who, along with Joshua, was one of the two spies to counsel the nation to enter the land in keeping with God’s commandment.  The other thing we know is that Caleb was of the tribe of Judah, the same tribe as David.  Nabal was certainly no read descendant of Caleb and he failed his own tribe by refusing to provide hospitality to David who had provided protection for his goods.  He was, however, equal to his name, which means fool or senseless.  The man was apparently quite rich and could easily have afforded to provide as Abigail’s lavish provision tells us.  She is acting to save not only her husband but also his wealth and his servants.

The kingdom of God and its growth are mysteries.  We may have biological understanding of how seeds grow in the ground but why this is so is not so simple.  The question of why this is so is the central question to which there are no answers found in science.  That things are the way they are is given but why they are this way is yet another problem.  Jesus tells three parables, all of which relate to the kingdom and all of which use very common symbols.  The lamp is surely intended to give light. Why bother with it if you hide the light?  You know what to do with the light.  The seeds grow because that is the way things work whether you know the science behind it or not.  You may not know that but you do know two things, how to plant and how and when to harvest.  Finally, the mustard seed is a tiny seed which, when planted, far exceeds any expectation you might have for it except that you know what it is capable of doing.  The kingdom of God is similar to these things because we have the knowledge we need, all that needs to happen is to act in accordance with what we know.

I love the way Luke phrases things sometimes. First, he tells us that Iconium the unbelieving Jews “stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers.”  Many Christians today would say that they would shake the dust from their feet because of such opposition but that wasn’t what Paul and Barnabas did.  Luke tells us their response to opposition was, “so they remained for a long time…”  They didn’t give up, they kept preaching and the Lord did signs among them.  Ultimately the only reason they left was because they learned of a plot to kill them.  Re the events at Lystra where Paul and Barnabas are mistaken for Zeus and Hermes, see this article on the myth of Baucis and Philemon.  The people there didn’t want to risk judgment from the gods for failing to provide hospitality and, because of the healing of the man, presumed that this was the sign that gods were among them rather than men filled with the Spirit of God.  Based on their beliefs, it is hard to fault them for acting as they did, it was risky business not to do so.  We need to also be looking for God to show up but we know Him and we should know what to do when He reveals Himself, and it isn’t to act like Nabal.

20 July 2015

Psalm 41, 52; 1 Samuel 24:1-22; Acts 13:44-52; Mark 4:1-20

David has his chance to end this madness of two kings, one on the throne and the other anointed as successor.  Saul goes into a cave to relieve himself and it happens that David and his men are hiding there from Saul and his army of three thousand men.  David’s men urge him to kill Saul but David only cuts off a corner of Saul’s robe.  David has surely acted well towards Saul and uses the occasion to tell Saul that he respects the fact that Saul was anointed by God and is the king until God chooses to change that situation.  Saul acknowledges David’s righteous actions and asks for a pledge that when David becomes king he will not forget Saul’s family, will do well to them as he has done this day and David acquiesces.  David will keep this pledge and if you search for the term David uses to describe himself here, “dead dog”, you will find it in the fulfillment of the pledge.

This parable seems to come up in our reading more often than any other.  The sower is completely indiscriminate in his work.  If an employer saw him doing his work so carelessly he would either instruct or fire him.  We aren’t told to be discriminating in sowing seed, only to do the work and leave the results to God.  The soil condition of my heart is ever-changing.  If you make a habit of studying the same Scriptures again and again, writing a journal like this one every day for several years, you will find that what you see in any given lesson changes.  My heart and mind are influenced by many things, people, experiences, etc, and these all will impact what I see and what I hear in my reading.  The ground of our hearts is improved simply by being in contact with seed.  We never get to perfection but we need always to be improving if our goal is real fruitfulness. 

Are we in a place in the west where we have to make the same decision Paul did?  If we substitute Christian for Jew here I think we really are in that same place.  Denominations like the AMiA and ACNA are a testimony to that reality.  We can no longer argue the truth of the Gospel, the validity of the Bible, and the exclusivity of the claims of Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life with those who call themselves Christians but who deny the truth claims the church has made for two thousand years.  We have to turn our attention to those who have not done as Saul did and harden their hearts against the truth.  Maybe if we walk away and begin simply to preach to the “Gentiles” of the world we will find our true joy and much fruit.

19 July 2015

Psalm 63, 98; 1 Samuel 23:7-18; Rom. 11:33-12:2; Matt. 25:14-30

David seems hemmed in in the city of Keilah and Saul believes that David is given into his hand.  David asks the remaining priest, Abiathar, to bring the ephod from the old tabernacle, the ephod behind which was stored the sword of Goliath when David went to Nob.  David uses the ephod as a talisman, a connection to the Lord from the place of worship that no longer exists, in order to inquire of the Lord concerning Saul’s intentions and the actions of the men of the city.  The Lord responds to David’s inquiry and David takes action based on that information to escape Saul once again.  Jonathan “rose and went to David at Horesh, and strengthened his hand in God.”  Jonathan strengthens David’s hand in God by affirming that the Lord’s will would be done in the matter of making David king and assures him that he will be beside him as friend, not rival.  Everything about Jonathan says he was truly a good man who loved others more than himself.

The parable of the talents reflects on our stewardship of what we have been given but also on the attitude we take towards the one who has given us the stewardship.  The first two servants were willing to risk what they were given in order to enrich their master while the third believed his master to be a “hard man” who reaped where he had not sown and therefore feared his master’s reaction if he had lost what was given to him.  What he did was prove that his master was wise in entrusting him with little.  The master invited both the first servants to enter his joy over his good fortune and to give them additional responsibilities.  Does that seem to indicate the master was a hard man?  The third servant is like the older brother in the story of the Prodigal, a man who doesn’t know his father at all.  When we think we deserve more than we have in life, when we think we have been overlooked, we tend to develop that attitude.  Jonathan could have gone in that direction but he didn’t, it wasn’t about him.

After eleven chapters (in our reckoning) of heavy theology, Paul moves to doxology.  He knows much and is teaching much but at the end of it all, he can only break into praise for the one about whom he is teaching.  He can’t contain himself any longer, such knowledge is too wonderful for me as the Psalmist has said.  Is that your reaction to knowledge about God?  Paul’s prescription for those who believe his teaching is that we present our bodies in trust to this God as living sacrifices as an act of worship.  The world causes us to conform, little by little, to its expectations and ways, this offering brings about something greater and more powerful, transformation, complete change by the renewing of the mind, not just the spirit or soul, the mind leads the way.  What we think and believe has great power but we must allow Him to give us insight and wisdom into all things in order to see that transformation.  Laying down your life for your friends isn’t a natural thing to do.

18 July 2015

Psalm 30, 32; 1 Samuel 22:1-23; Acts 13:26-43; Mark 3:19b-35

“Everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul, gathered to him.”  Does that sound like the raw material most church planters are looking for when they start their church?  Does it sound like a group of people who anyone would want hanging around them? Saul is surrounded by his men too.  He asks them a question, “will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards, will he make you all commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds, that all of you have conspired against me?”  Saul sees that he has something to offer that David doesn’t, wealth and power.  David’s folks were desperate, they weren’t comfortable, fat and happy, they wanted change, and Saul’s words point to why, he had enriched the men who followed him, bought their loyalty, at the expense of others.  Sound familiar to our situation in America today?  We have become a nation of cronyism.  Doeg the Edomite, an outsider to the nation, a descendant not of Jacob/Israel but of Esau, has no compunctions about killing these priests.  He is willing to slaughter them all while the men of Israel are unwilling.  They aren’t his priests.  David recognizes the guilt he incurs from having lied to these men, our sins always have some repercussion.

On Trinity Sunday I preached on the relationships in the Trinity and this passage was the one I used to illustrate something about the Holy Spirit as included in that loving circle.  Jesus allows people to say whatever they like about Him but when they speak against the Spirit He will not hear it, just as I will dismiss whatever someone says about me but if they speak against someone I love it is an entirely different matter.  In our first lesson, were the men who watched Doeg kill the priests guilty of murder?  Under Jewish law, they were indeed, they may not have been willing to slay these men but they were, it seems, perfectly willing to allow someone else to do so and in that they were showing they had no particular value other than a superstitious value, for the priests.  Here, Jesus speaks of eternal sin as blasphemy against the Holy Spirit through whom the healings and exorcisms are and were accomplished.  We must be careful what we say and how we think about these things in our day.  We must test the spirits.  At the end of the reading we come back to what we were told at the first of the reading, of the concern of Jesus’ family about Him. He redefines family here and I long for a community that embraces that re-definition fully.

Paul is preaching the Gospel to “brothers, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God…”  He blames those who were in Jerusalem at the time who crucified Jesus for his death, not these folks in Pisidian Antioch.  His preaching is geared to a Jewish audience, citing their texts and their expectations, seeing in Jesus the fulfillment of the messianic promise of one from David’s line.  The reaction here is unlike what we will see later in Paul’s ministry, they are hearing it afresh, while in the future when Paul preaches there will already be those among the brethren who are prepared to oppose him.  These receive it with gladness and encourage Paul to come and tell more the next week.  Ultimately, it will again be brothers, sons of the family of Abraham who will turn on Paul and insist that he be stopped. 

17 July 2015

Psalm 31; 1 Samuel 21:1-15, Acts 13:13-25; Mark 3:7-19a

David and his men come to Nob, which was about two miles from Jerusalem and had, at this time, become a city of priests who had fled from Shiloh after the Philistines attacked that place.  We are not told that the tabernacle was here but the sacerdotal functions of the priestly worship were being maintained so we assume this is where the tabernacle was located.  David lies and says he is on a mission from the king to induce the priests to provide for the needs of he and his men and further assures the priest that they are ritually pure.  He is given the sword of Goliath, which he had captured after he killed the Philistine champion, an interesting little irony.  We see a man, Doeg the Edomite, Saul’s chief herdsman, lurking here, hearing and observing all these things, an ominous note.  David’s deception continues at Gath, Goliath’s hometown, when he hears the chatter that he is king of Israel based on the little verse that makes him greater than Saul and determines it best to pretend to be a madman so as to relieve yet another king of any fears that David is a threat to him.  David is willing to be a pragmatist with respect to truth when needs be.

The ministry is becoming more regional, more well-known and the crush of the crowds following Jesus is becoming greater by the day it seems.  They come to hear and to be healed, to see this man of whom they have heard great things and He can go nowhere without being followed.  Demons fall before Him, crying out His identity but with a word He silences them, their testimony is unwanted and unwelcome, their desire is to press the issue, force the time to come ahead of God’s timing, they do not know the end of God’s plan, they are hoping to create their own. 

The leaders of the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch couldn’t have been prepared for Paul when they asked, “Brothers, if you have any word of encouragement for the people, say it.”  No one would have imagined that Paul was going to preach Messiah had come and was crucified.  As He began His presentation they probably settled in and listened as he remarkably quickly skipped through a couple thousand years of Israel’s history and then suddenly proclaimed that God had sent Jesus, a descendant of Jesse’s son, David, as savior.  All the other history, the time in Egypt, the wilderness, the giving of the Law, the conquest of the land, the periods of the judges and kings, the exile from the land, all of it, was nothing more than prelude to something God was doing in Jesus.  Nothing anyone did brought it about, John proclaimed it and prepared people for it, but God did it on His own.  Do we ever trust in God’s sovereignty in real time or only after the fact when we see it clearly?  What is going on in your life today that makes you uneasy about the future?  What are you doing about that, resting in Him or grasping to make something happen?

16 July 2015

Psalm 37:1-18; 1 Samuel 20:24-42; Acts 13:1-12; Mark 2:23-3:6

Someone should have kept the spears away from Saul or everyone should have refused to be in his presence if he had one.  Here, he becomes angry with Jonathan and treats him as though he and David were indeed the same person.  His anger with David is transferred to his own son since Jonathan pleads for David’s life to what Saul perceives is his own detriment, his kingdom will not be established so long as David lives.  In reality, the Lord has already told Saul the kingdom has been torn from his hands and will be given to another.  Saul is trying to circumvent the Lord and establish the kingdom anyway.  Isn’t this a beautiful sentence, “And they kissed one another and wept with one another, David weeping the most”?  Heretofore we have seen Jonathan’s love for David on display but here we see David’s love for Jonathan.  He knows he will no longer be able to be in the household of Saul or among his people.  He knows this is farewell and David weeps the most. 

“The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.”  What a shocking statement to read here in the third chapter of the Gospel.  It is truly surprising in the context of plucking grain and healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath.  Both these stories in the Gospel reading today take place on the Sabbath and in both the Pharisees challenge Jesus for what they perceive to be violations of the prohibition against work on the Sabbath.  He responds in the first instance by pointing to what David did when he and his men were running from Saul and ate the bread of the presence because they were famished.  This was part of the lore of Israel and because it was David and the bread was given him by the priest it was deemed acceptable.  In the second instance there was a relaxation of the law if your animal were in distress and Jesus applies that to the situation with this man.  Why would these minor skirmishes result in a desire to destroy Him?

The church at Antioch had others there besides Paul and Barnabas who were spiritual leaders.  Luke tells us that there were prophets and teachers that included three men besides the two missionaries sent by the Jerusalem church.  These together were fasting and praying and they discerned the Spirit saying to set apart Paul and Barnabas to go forth as missionaries.  We need more than one leader in the church who is hearing from God, we need teams of people fasting and praying together to seek God’s will.  One leader can make for a prideful situation or a situation where the others abandon the seeking of the Lord to that leader.  As painful as it must have been, the church sent these two out to preach the Gospel.  The power of God in the Holy Spirit that was with the apostles from Jerusalem manifests itself through Paul in striking the false prophet and magician Elymas, blind.  The demonstration of power brings about the conversion of the proconsul.  Allowing God to do what only He can do makes possible the kingdom breaking in and breaking out, but we have to realize our limitations and our need for more in order to see that power.

15 July 2015

Psalm 38; 1 Samuel 20:1-23; Acts 12:18-25; Mark 2:13-22

Jonathan has much to gain if his father kills David.  He will be the next king of Israel rather than David.  In spite of this, Jonathan is willing to risk not only the potential kingship but also his life to ensure David’s safety.  David knows what Saul has on his mind and knows also that Saul no longer trusts his son in the matter.  Jonathan does not know his father’s mind nor his distrust of him vis a vis David.  Jonathan sets David’s interests above his own from love for David.  We don’t see that often in our friendships any longer.  People have suggested that there is something romantic in this love between friends and I believe that has more to do with the devaluation of friendship than anything else.  In our society we substitute social media and quality time for the notion of real friendship.  I don’t think we even long for such friends, much less to be such a friend.  If the world saw Christians committed to one another in this way they might be more attracted to the church.  Jesus agrees, “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

When Jesus calls Matthew to be a part of the team He takes a great risk.  No one, especially Jews, wanted to hang out with tax collectors who were also Jews.  They were seen as collaborators with the enemy, they not only collected the tax for Rome, in order to make money they also had to overestimate the value of assets taxed.  They remitted Rome’s share to Rome and kept the rest.  To call Matthew as a disciple meant everyone else raised eyebrows and had to make a decision whether to remain in the group.  We are called to love others in the name of Jesus and to accept and welcome all who come into our churches.  It is always difficult to make room for new people when they aren’t like us but the reality is that we share a commonality in creation in the image of God and one whom Christ loves in spite of ourselves.  The church is constantly making room for new people who bring their own individuality into the mix.

Herod blamed the sentries for Peter’s escape and ordered them put to death, the same punishment he intended for Peter.  Do you see why the Philippian jailer, who we will meet very soon in our readings, was prepared to put himself to death when he saw the cell door open?  He knew what his punishment would be if the prisoners under his care escaped and decided the best thing to do was get it over with and perhaps spare his family some embarrassment, maybe make it look like the prisoners killed him.  Herod took leave and went to another part of his reign where the people were in need of grace from him so were willing to flatter him to gain his favor.  His reception of their praises as though he were in fact a God becomes the reason for his demise.  All kings have dominion from the Lord, good and bad.  If He does not allow it, they will not reign.

14 July 2015

Psalm 26, 28; 1 Samuel 19:1-18; Acts 12:1-17; Mark 2:1-12

In Saul’s mind, there were many factors at work in his drive to kill David.  His jealousy over the people’s love of David was certainly one of those factors.  Another serious consideration for him, even though it doesn’t seem that he knew Samuel had already anointed David as the next king, was that he did know that the Lord was going to take away the kingdom from him and give it to a better man and it seemed obvious that David was that man.  Saul’s desire was to pass the kingdom on to his son in the way that other nations passed the kingship from father to son, even though he knew it wasn’t his to give but the Lord’s.  Saul’s children, Jonathan and Michal, both assisted David in escaping their father’s murderous intentions in spite of the cost to themselves.  There are echoes in all this of Jacob and Esau, one a rightful claimant in the world’s way of doing things to an inheritance but God choosing another.  This goes to the most basic ideas of life and says that even those basic understandings are flawed and God’s ways are different.  Don’t you just hate it when He does that?

The healing of the paralytic seems straightforward, Jesus would heal other people and here it seems these four men who brought the paralytic believed quite completely that He could heal their friend.  Jesus sees their faith, and you would think the next words would have to do with the healing of the man but instead Jesus says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Had this man sinned against Jesus?  We can only give forgiveness to another based on offense against us.  Sin, is transgression against God and that required sacrifice. Who is this man who proclaims forgiveness without sacrifice, without that act of confession and contrition?  While we may not see the direct connection between the paralysis and sin, there must have been one, Jesus wouldn’t have done this simply to be provocative.  Sin must have been the cause of the paralysis in some way, directly or indirectly, and must have been something the man needed to hear, just as the leper in yesterday’s lesson needed Jesus to touch him.  These two encounters seem to present the truth about the nexus between body and spirit from each perspective.  Holistic healing sees the connection between spirit and body and reaches both.

As the church begins gathering momentum in its Gentile missions, persecution strikes at the heart of the movement, among the apostles in Jerusalem.  James, the brother of John, is put to death by Pilate and Peter is imprisoned and Herod intends to kill him as well.  Miraculously, Peter is freed from his bonds by an angel and brought to safety outside the prison.  He is between two guards, bound with not one but two chains, and sentries guarded the establishment and yet Peter is set free from his chains, the guards fail to awaken and the sentries don’t see it either.  Peter can’t believe it, thinking it is a vision, and the people gathered in prayer don’t believe it either.  How could anyone believe it, it is impossible to believe and yet there stands Peter, knocking, knocking and waiting.  Sometimes it takes faith a while to catch up with God.  His will is being done, who will believe.  

13 July 2015

Psalm 25; 1 Samuel 18:5-16,27b-30; Acts 11:19-30; Mark 1:29-45

Saul’s insecurities were actually readily apparent from the beginning weren’t they?  He had already been anointed by Samuel as the first king when the ceremony of choosing the king by lots was undertaken and yet when his name was called he was hiding among the baggage.  Now, David receives acclaim from the people as they return from the defeat of Goliath and the Philistines and, unsurprisingly, Saul is jealous.  What once calmed him, the playing of the lyre by David, now becomes an occasion to attempt to kill him when we are told yet once again that a harmful spirit from the Lord came upon Saul.  David evades the attacks and yet the next thing we are told is not that David was then afraid of Saul, but that, “Saul was afraid of David because the Lord was with him but had departed from Saul.”  David’s continued success and that Saul’s own daughter, Michal, loved David as his wife further caused Saul fear and awe.  If the Lord were not with David he would never have survived to become king.  Has God ever told you something about your life that isn’t coming to pass right away?  If so, take heart, He will fulfill what He has purposed for you.

As with David, the people hear about Jesus’ exploits, the miracles He began to work and come out in droves in praise of Him, seeking Him.  Already He is forced to go out to a desolate place to be apart and alone with the Father and even then the disciples come looking for Him to bring Him back.  This time alone in prayer allows Him to stay grounded in the work He has been given to do, to keep moving forward.  All over Galilee they go, from town to town, synagogue to synagogue, healing people and casting out demons.  Can you imagine being one of His disciples during these heady days of triumph?  When the leper comes on the road every convention and religious prohibition is in play.  The leper should have kept his distance, announcing his leprosy so that Jewish travelers could keep away from the religious and disease contamination but he runs up to Jesus, risking Jesus’ disapprobation, and instead, Jesus does something he need not have done, he reaches out his hand and touches him.  There was no need, he could have healed at a word but the touch would have been true balm for the soul who had not been touched so long as he had this disease.  Jesus does more than heal the body.

The Jewish believers from Jerusalem fled after the stoning of Stephen resulted in persecution of the church.  Luke tells us that they spoke to no one about Jesus except other Jews.  You would assume that they thought preaching the Gospel required the predicate of the Old Testament and without it might be incomprehensible, which is ironic since today many Christians believe that the Old Testament is incomprehensible or at least dispensable if you have the Gospel.  Some people from outside Jerusalem, people from Cyprus and Cyrene, decided to tell the Greeks about Jesus and, shockingly, they believed!  Are they learning, finally, that belief is itself a work of the Holy Spirit?  The Jerusalem party sends out Barnabas, who had originally vouched for Paul there, to Antioch to investigate this phenomenon and lo and behold, it was true so he brought Paul off the bench to come and lead.  Barnabas, unlike Saul, chose to lift up the people God was lifting up rather than lifting up himself, he wasn’t jealous over someone else’s success.  The more we lift up others, the more we are lifted up.

12 July 2015

Psalm 148, 149, 150; 1 Samuel 17:50-18:4; Rom. 10:4-17; Matt. 23:29-39

David finishes off Goliath and therefore qualifies for the prizes Saul offered, “the king will enrich the man who kills him with great riches and will give him his daughter and make his father's house free in Israel.”  Is it anachronistic that Saul asks whose son David might be?  That was actually established in chapter 16 when he asked someone to find him a good lyre player and someone suggested, “I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite…”  Perhaps this little inclusio points to Saul’s madness, that he can’t place this young man who has been in his service in his household.  At any rate, David has earned his reward by killing the Philistine champion and setting up the rout of the Philistine army.  His encounter with Saul, for some reason causes Saul’s son Jonathan to bind himself covenantally to David.  Jonathan’s actions, giving all his accoutrements to David, imply that they are one soul, Jonathan considers himself bound to David as though they were one person, in the same way Jesus took on flesh, binding Himself, His destiny and ours, and when He became sin who knew no sin at the cross, making that binding permanent. 

No one would have denied that they were the sons of those who murdered the prophets would they?  That they build and decorate the tombs of the prophets points to this as an act of repentance, an attempt to rectify the wrongs done by their forefathers.  Jesus, however, is using that phrase, “sons of those who murdered the prophets,” as a way of tying them to the acts of their fathers. He has also said they are not true sons of Abraham, but of their father the devil, in the same way.  Are we sons of God by the testimony of both our lips and lives? Jesus uses this phrase prophetically, pointing to the cross.  It is easier to honor a dead prophet who called someone else to repent than a living one who is calling you to repent.   Those referred to as hypocrites will have their opportunity to repent and honor one who died but who also rose again, whose empty tomb is the sign of the covenant, that Jesus’ death and resurrection are signs of the same for those who are truly God’s children.  He showed us how to live and how to die.

Paul says that salvific faith is through belief in the heart confession with the mouth, not in works of righteousness.  Jesus is the “end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”  Confession with the mouth is an important thing but confession isn’t a private matter for Paul, it is the public proclamation of our lives and our destinies being tied to Jesus.  In situ, Paul would never have meant some private transaction between the believer and Christ.  Jesus’ incarnation, baptism and death all are public declarations by God of His love for us, incredibly public declarations in fact.  He stayed faithful both to the Father and to the image bearers all the way to suffering and death and we are called to that same unwavering faithfulness to Him.  We are to be one flesh, one spirit, one soul with Christ, that was His intention and our faith must make the same commitment to Him that He made to us in spite of the fact that we will fail.  The cross means our failure is not final, His commitment isn’t based on our faithfulness, but His alone.  Belief and faith, however, require more than private commitment.  Jonathan’s actions toward David are the model we need to understand.

11 July 2015

Psalm 20, 21; 1 Samuel 17:31-49; Acts 11:1-18; Mark 1:14-28

David knows from experience that he can face down enemies that threaten him and that he should not be able to defeat.  He has protected his flocks from both lions and bears in dramatic ways but he knows something more important than self-confidence, “The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.”  He knows not to be self-reliant.  Saul doesn’t know that same thing does he?  He wants David to wear his armor.  As I have said before the sight would be comical, Saul was the tallest man in Israel and here we know that David is still a youth, Saul’s armor would be ill-fitting to put it mildly.  Ultimately David uses the tools that have proven themselves to be good weapons for him, a sling and some stones.  The other thing David knows how to do is trash talk, he is angry with righteous indignation, this is a challenge not between men. The Lord’s honor is at stake and David has no doubt how this will go does he?

Whereas John’s message was that the kingdom was coming soon, Jesus says the time is fulfilled, the kingdom is at hand.  It is now here and He begins calling disciples, beginning with the fishermen on the sea of Galilee.  The  inbreaking of the kingdom is heralded not only in proclamation but in setting a man free who had been harassed by an unclean spirit who began speaking out in the synagogue in Capernaum.  The authority of Jesus is shown in His authority both as a teacher and in the power He has over this unclean spirit.  We have been given His authority as the body of Christ.  Are we proclaiming that the kingdom is coming, in the final judgment, or that the kingdom is at hand, the time has been fulfilled?  We need to get that right if we are to see the power of God in our proclamation.

For the first time, we hear of a group called “the circumcision party” in the church.  I think we have a lot of circumcision parties in the church today, people who have the only handle on truth but only because they find the truth in secondary issues rather than in primary issues.  The thing I truly appreciate about Anglicanism is that it takes definitive and binding positions only on primary issues.  If you look at the Articles of Religion you will find that we are very focused on what we consider primary things.  In our worship, we focus on those primary things when we say the creed, the basic and fundamental statement of faith of the Christian church since the 4^th century.  This is not to suggest that secondary things don’t matter, but to follow St Augustine’s dictum, “in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity.”  Here, the nascent church faced its first crisis concerning what comprised essentials and Peter’s story is based in what God did at all turns, not a single decision of his own.  He acted in faith and obedience, no matter what he already thought, he let the Lord do what He wanted to do, just like David had done.  In doing so, he saw the power of the kingdom of God break in in a fresh new way among the Gentiles.  He didn’t have an opinion, he had an experience.

10 July 2015

Psalm 16, 17; 1 Samuel 17:17-30; Acts 10:34-48; Mark 1:1-13

Jesse certainly doesn’t seem impressed by his son David, the king, does he?  He sends David with provisions for his brothers, the soldiers and asks for some word concerning them.  This scene reminds me of Genesis 37 when Jacob sends Joseph, the man whose dreams prophesied he would be lord over his brothers, to see how they are as they tend flocks.  David’s brothers receive him as Joseph’s brothers received him, which is to say, with disdain.  The army is so afraid of this man, Goliath, that it cowers and refuses to come out.  David sees the truth, this man speaks not in taunting Israel’s army, they are not Saul’s men, they belong to the Lord, “who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?”  We forget that we are the people of the living God and we lose heart, cowering before our enemies.  We need to know two things better and believe them, the Bible and church history.  The church has persevered in spite of overwhelming odds and great enemies.  We have nothing to fear.

John, the man who was prophesied by an archangel to be the forerunner of Messiah, doesn’t look much like the man you would expect to hold that job.  He is separated from the world by dress and diet.  Does that make him a madman or a saint?  John’s life was a statement about worldliness and corruption and his call was for a people to come out of the way of life to which they had become accustomed and prepare themselves in holiness and righteousness for the coming of the kingdom of God and the Messiah.  After Jesus’ baptism the first thing that happened to the man who would be king is that the Spirit immediately (because it is Mark everything happened at once or immediately) drove Him into the wilderness to be tempted by satan.  He is also among the wild beasts, a place where fear or faith can flourish.  In our day we would expect that he immediately won the lottery or something, not that he would actually be separated from comfort and safety. 

Peter’s initial words are truly gracious for a man who has been taught to think all of his life in racial and ethnic terms, to think God loves Peter, his family and his nation to the exclusion of all others.  “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him”, is an amazing statement for a Jew to have made in that time.  At the same time, he could never have expected how completely true that statement was to prove even as he was speaking to these Gentiles.  The outpouring of the Spirit on these people, as evidenced by their speaking in tongues, was the first time the issue of circumcision and baptism were to be a crisis of some sort.  Cornelius and his family weren’t circumcised but Peter, realizing God had already done the work of giving the Spirit, decides the least he can do is baptize them.  I wonder if, after he left this place, he began to have second thoughts about what he had done.  The movement of the kingdom was incrementally going outward from the Samaritans, a tribe separated from the nation long before, to the Ethiopian eunuch who was also a seeker but who couldn’t be circumcised, to this God-fearer, a true Gentile, one who didn’t know anything about Yahweh, had to be the next step.

9 July 2015

Psalm 18:1-20; 1 Samuel 16:14-17:11; Acts 10:17-33; Luke 24:36-53

A harmful spirit from the Lord?  How can that be true?  Agency is the issue.  The Lord, it seems, removed His Spirit from Saul after his failure to do as commanded vis a vis the Amalekites.  Remember that Samuel prophesied to Saul, “Then the Spirit of the Lord will rush upon you, and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man.”  That man will no longer exist without the Spirit of the Lord, he will be “another man.”  Did the Lord send the harmful spirit or did the removal of His Spirit make it possible for this other one to enter Saul?  Jesse must have wondered why his “son with the sheep” was suddenly so popular but also perhaps wondered why the king would want this son, the one who was anointed as the next king, would be summoned by the man who held the title now.  When David played the lyre the harmful spirit departed from Saul.  Was that due to the Spirit of the Lord in David?  Apparently David wasn’t in Saul’s retinue always, he isn’t here at the beginning of the story of Goliath.  Why did the armies of Israel, whose own story involved the defeat, by the Lord, of Pharaoh’s army, a far greater force than the Philistines tremble in fear and dismay before this Goliath? For the same reason the spies sent by Moses counseled Israel against entering the land, they were relying on their own strength rather than His.

I can understand the disciples’ reaction to Jesus presence among them.  They were “startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit.”  They all believed in resurrection but they had never seen it, it was a theoretical belief.  What I can’t understand is why we too often live in fear rather than faith since we know it has happened and that means it will happen.  We know what we need to know about life, that, if we believe in Him we will have eternal life.  Why then do we act so often to preserve our lives here, acting like they are the end of all things, rather than risking boldly for the one who has been resurrected and who is our life?  We live too often like the disciples prior to this encounter, hiding in the upper room and too rarely like the disciples after this encounter, who “returned to Jerusalem (from Bethany whence they had gone with Jesus) with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God.” If you want to be a David, you have to remember what God has done, is doing, and will do.  Let your faith be in him not yourself.

Peter gets a piece of the puzzle at a time.  He is perplexed about his vison or dream concerning unclean animals when he hears some men asking for him downstairs when the Spirit says that he is to go with them without hesitation for the Spirit sent them.  When he arrives at Cornelius’ house the pieces fall into place, the vision is connected with this visit at a Gentile home, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.”  Now Cornelius may have been a Gentile but he was a God-fearer and when Peter stood before him, in fulfillment of his own vision, he worshipped the man, an extraordinary thing for a Roman centurion to do.  All he knows is that he saw an angel who told him about this Simon, also called Peter, and now this man is in his home.  He doesn’t know why he was to summon him but he gathered everyone he knew and now his expectation is that Peter has some message to share that is of vital importance.  Having the faith to act in accord with their respective visions has put these men in place for something special.

8 July 2015

Psalm 119:1-24; 1 Samuel 16:1-13; Acts 10:1-16; Luke 24:12-35

Even though Samuel was rightfully angry with Saul, even though he was a huge disappointment as king and Samuel knew the Lord had rejected the man, even though he had been angry at the idea of a king right from the start and knew what kind of king the Lord would give the nation, he still grieved over Saul.  The Lord has to call him out of this depression or grief and call him to anoint another as king in Saul’s stead.  The first one hadn’t gone well so I wonder what Samuel was thinking as he headed to Bethlehem in obedience to God’s call.  I wonder also did he assume that there would be a quick transition from Saul to this new king.  Would the Lord simply take Saul’s life away in battle and the new king ascend the throne in short order?  He couldn’t have imagined that the man who he would anoint would spend somewhere around fifteen years as the king in waiting for the Lord to remove Saul.  Sometimes we have to be incredibly patient in believing we have done what we were called to do before we see it fulfilled.

Sometimes you just have to wait three days!  These disciples were devastated and had no room left in their lives for joy.  Their entire way of understanding the world had been turned upside down twice; first by Jesus and then by the crucifixion.  They had come to believe that He was the Messiah and would rule over the nation as David’s heir and now, once all your hopes had been put in that belief, how do you recover from His death?  How do you trust yourself not to be led astray again?  The one thing they knew was that Jesus was gone, their grief, their knowledge of His death, and their understanding of death as final would certainly have been impediments to “seeing” Jesus with them along the road to Emmaus.  There seems to be, however, something more supernatural going on than this.  It is in the breaking of the bread that their eyes were opened to recognize Him.  Had they been there when He blessed, broke and gave bread to the five thousand and suddenly saw Him again in that action?  We’ll never know how it worked but once their eyes were open they were filled with joy.

Cornelius was a seeker in the most authentic sense of that term.  He was a man who feared God and prayed continually.  He hadn’t taken the decisive step of circumcision but he was a man who followed the commands of God.  Like everyone in Scripture who sees an angel, what was Cornelius’ reaction to seeing one in his vision?  Terror.  He will do anything he’s told to do after seeing this creature, and all he is asked to do is summon Simon called Peter from Joppa where he is staying with another man named Simon who is a tanner.  Nothing else, just that, whoever this Simon called Peter fellow may be and for whatever purpose.  Peter is given a vision of his own that is equally unintelligible.  They are preparing something for him to eat, perhaps this vision related to lunch.  He must surely have wondered what in the world that was all about, probably the same way David felt when Samuel anointed him king.  Sometimes we need to wait for understanding.

7 July 2015

Psalm 5, 6; 1 Samuel 15:24-35; Acts 9:32-43; Luke 23:56b-24:11

Saul, after denials and shifting blame multiple times when confronted by Samuel, finally gets it right.  “I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. Now therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me that I may bow before the Lord.”  Whether he feared the people is questionable and it is still a way of not taking full responsibility but he’s on the right road.  Samuel’s response is that he will not return with Saul. Saul grasps for Samuel because he knows that if the prophet will not return with him all is lost as far as his kingship is concerned and in doing so, tears Samuel’s garment which becomes the prophetic word that Saul is going to lose the kingdom.  In verses 11, 29, and 35 we see what looks like a contradiction in the use of the word regret.  We are told first the Lord regretted having made Saul king.  Then Samuel says, “the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that he should have regret.” Finally we are told the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel.  John Piper has written a really nice piece on this paradox here.  At the end of the day, Saul is still king but he knows he is rejected by God in that role.  Why does God leave him in place as king for about two decades?

“On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.”  Do you think they rested in any way we think of rest?  They rested “according to the commandment” which means that they didn’t do the work they were so longing to do, they were obedient to the commandment of God concerning the Sabbath even though they were completely broken in spirit.  Their act of obedience is a beautiful thing when you consider the pain they were suffering, the disappointment they must have felt with God, their hope was gone, all they believed seemed to have been a lie, and the people of that same God were the ones who had shouted “Crucify Him!”  The work of preparing the spices went for naught but no one cared, the work of God had resumed.

Peter’s healing of Aeneas is funny, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed.”  The man has been bed ridden for eight years and the first thing Peter does is command him to make his bed!  I guess he’s rested long enough, it’s time to get to work.  Jesus did that, telling the man at the pool of Bethesda to take up his mat and walk.  There is an atmosphere around the apostles at this time that looks like when Jesus was with them.  The disciples in Joppa hear that Peter is there and rush to him to raise their friend and mentor, Lydia, from the dead, attempting to impress him with the work she has done on his arrival at her house.  It seems very like the scene when the crowd implored Jesus to come and do something for the centurion’s child because of all he had done for the nation.  The apostles have inherited the mantle of leadership from Jesus and they are doing what He Himself would do if He were still among them.  The kingdom is breaking in through obedience.