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 4th 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.
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