26 December 2012

Psalm 28, 30; 2 Chronicles 24:17-22; Acts 6:1-7

This is certainly a jarring start to the day after Christmas, the failure of the people to listen to the prophets, the story Jesus referenced as the nadir of the history of the people of God, Zechariah the prophet killed in the temple.  Everything about this story reeks.  The priest died and the people did homage to the king, they turned away from God to put their trust in the king, a man who had done right during the days of Jehoiada, father of Zechariah who had saved Joash from the murderous intentions of his grandmother.  Zechariah is trying to call the king to righteousness but there was apparently no longer anything to keep the king from reverting to type, acting just like his grandmother, Zechariah was likely a blood relative of the man, not only the son of the man who saved him as a child, raised him, and later set him on the throne.  Murder in the house of the Lord?  It can't get much worse, but we know it did in the crucifixion of the child whose birth we celebrated yesterday, the Messiah, more than a prophet.

In the epistle we see the choosing of the deacons to serve at table so that the apostles can be about the work of preaching and teaching, devoting themselves to the Word and to prayer.  There is a need for this in the church, a group set aside to be devoted to the Word and a group who handles the needs of those who cannot do for themselves and to tend to the pastoral care of a congregation. 

Today is the day we remember the stoning of Stephen, one of those seven men chosen as deacons in the early church.  Stephen wasn't stoned, however, for being a bad waiter or a bad administrator of relief programs for the poor, he was stoned to death as Zechariah was, for calling the people to account for their rejection of the truth.  In Stephen's case, the Truth was a person he proclaimed, Jesus.  It's funny, the first martyr was a deacon and the first true evangelist to take the Gospel out of Jerusalem intentionally was another deacon, Philip.  We are all called to be willing and able to give an accounting of the hope that is in us, not just those devoted to the Word.  The work of training up, catechizing, equipping the saints is preparation for the work of evangelism. 

25 December 2012

Psalm 2, 85; Zech. 2:10-13; 1 John 4:7-16; John 3:31-36

I will dwell in your midst.  Did anyone imagine that God meant that literally?  Could anyone have thought that He would condescend to be born into this world as an infant and subject Himself to the judgment of mankind?  All flesh, not just humankind, is commanded to keep silent as the Lord has roused Himself from His holy dwelling.  We see that silence in heaven in the book of the Revelation on several occasions prior to God's judgments being revealed and poured out.  In your mind's eye, think of a great king facing rebellion all around rousing himself from his throne with all his court and the attendants surrounding him, wondering what it means that the king has risen up.  What is the motivation, it could be anger at the rebellion against him or something else. Who would believe that it meant He was giving His life for the sake of the rebels?

How plausible is it really that Jesus was the only Son of God, co-eternal and co-extensive with Him?  Is that really something anyone could imagine, much less believe, that God lived among us for a season of time and allowed Himself to be killed by those whom He created?  Can we believe that the God who stretched out and continues to stretch out the universe, which is 46 billion light years across and continually growing.  There are somewhere between 100-500 billion galaxies in this universe and ours, not a particularly large one, has between 200-400 billion stars and billions of planets.  He loves us, oh how he loves us.  Jesus came from heaven, from above, wherever that is when we consider the size of the universe.  He offers us an opportunity to be born from above and the only requirement is to believe that the unimaginable is actually true, that Jesus is the only Son of God and He chose to die on a Roman cross over two thousand years ago for the love of something as insignificant as you.  The next step is to embrace your significance in light of the fact that the creator of the universe adores you enough to die for you, that He might be with you forever. 

John gives us the second step, loving one another because Jesus didn't just die for me, he died for you as well.  We first embrace His love for us but He calls us to love as He has loved and those whom He has loved.  We move outwards in concentric circles in love, first to those brothers and sisters in our local fellowships and then outwards to other Christians, then to those whom He loves and died for who do not know Him, even those who persecute us and do not believe.  We love because He loved us first and the more we share that love with others the more we experience of it from Him.  John Piper speaks about Christian hedonism, the pursuit of God as the pursuit of joy because He is the source of all joy, so we should seek that joy with all that we are.  If you have found some joy in Jesus that you have never known anywhere else, abandon all else to pursue that joy forever, just as He pursued you until He found you and took up His home in you so that He could be with you always.  Let Him once again take on flesh and dwell on earth through you.

24 December 2012

Psalm 45, 46; Isa. 35:1-10; Rev. 22:12-17,21; Luke 1:67-80

I love this, " It shall belong to those who walk on the way; even if they are fools, they shall not go astray.  I know that there is an alternate translation that says fools will not walk on this highway but I appreciate the fact that there is a highway that is so easily followed that even fools can't get lost.  As one who has spent a fair bit of my life wandering in the wilderness, both in reality and metaphorically, I need things to be so simple.  Isaiah sees a raised highway in the desert that is a straight-line to the city of God, no turns, no need for GPS or Mapquest, just follow the yellow brick road simple.  Jesus doesn't promise that the road will be easy, He talked about the journey as our own Via Dolorosa, the way of grief or suffering, along which we carry our own cross.  It is, however, the way of Christ, the way to the Father.  The road may be narrow but at the end lies glory everlasting.

Zechariah proclaims that the day Isaiah saw, the day of visitation and redemption has now come.  The Lord HAS visited and redeemed His people.  He proclaims this because of the fulfillment of the promise of a child.  When the angel told Zechariah in the temple that his wife, Elizabeth, would give birth, Zechariah couldn't believe it was true.  His lips were sealed until the naming of that child, John, as a sign of the truth.  Now, he has faith that messiah has come, he has learned something about faith.  His prophecy here, which we know from Morning Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer, is filled with hope.  Not only is there a child, it is a child with a mission to prepare the way of the Lord for Messiah.  Could he have imagined what that would look like, John the Baptist, the wild and wooly prophet? 

" I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.”  In Morning Prayer, Zechariah's song from the Gospel translates a portion of that hymn as: " And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest, for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; To give knowledge of salvation unto his people for the remission of their sins, Through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us…"  Jesus is the dayspring from on high.  He tells of the future here, a future where there is a place, a city, where the righteous shall live in peace and without fear because there is no sin.  Is that our dream come true or do we even imagine such a place?  Jesus promised it so let us allow Him to enliven our imaginations to see that which He has promised.

23 December 2012

Psalm 24, 29; Isa. 42:1-12; Eph. 6:10-20; John 3:16-21

The Lord makes a declaration of a messiah.  This is not only a Jewish national messiah but a messiah who will be a light for the nations.  All will praise the Lord for what He has done.  Into the midst of this declaration we hear Him proclaim, " I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other…"  It is not Messiah who will be worshipped but the Lord.  What if they are one and the same?  This promise is the most glorious one in all of scriptures.  The praise of the Lord will be declared in the desert, the mountains and the coastlands for the fulfillment of this promise.  Let the rocks be kept silent for one more day, let us be the praise of the Lord this day.

When Jesus said, "God so loved the world…"  it must have struck Nicodemus and the disciples as a bit strange.  Surely He meant to say, for God so loved His people that He gave His only-begotten Son, not the "world."  Does God truly love the world?  We, all human beings, are created in the image of God and He cannot do other than love His image can he?  We, those who have been redeemed, those who have seen in Jesus the perfect image of God, are to be the truer image of God, revealing to those who do not know Him that they do not even know themselves, that they are not true to their purpose and creation.  It is love for His image, love for the creation that He pronounced not only good, but very good, that impelled Him to send His Son, His perfect image, to save us from sin, from ourselves.  If God loves the world and has sent us as His messengers and evangelists, can we do the work we have been given to do if we do not share that love?

Too often we forget that we don't wrestle with flesh and blood and we waste time doing exactly that when we should be fighting a spiritual battle.  How do we fight that battle?  It is quite different from the way we fight the wrong battle.  We put on the full armor of God.  We put on the defensive armor of truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation.  We know these are ours because of Jesus.  He is the truth, He is our righteousness, through Him we have peace with God, we can have faith in Him because God resurrected Him from the dead, and we have eternal life because He is faithful to His promises.  Now that we have all these things, we take up the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, and it is " living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow…"  We have all we need because we have Jesus. Hallelujah what a Savior!

22 December 2012

Psalm 55; Isa. 10:20-27; Jude 17-25; Luke 3:1-9

Isaiah sees the return of the people but it will be only a remnant and they will lean not on their own understanding or some other nation that has saved them, they will lean on the Lord as their savior.  The picture is not a pretty one, however.  Though now they see a large nation, the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, when they return it will be only this remnant things will look very different at that time than they do now.  Have we any idea how this would affect the people who return, to recall how great was the nation at one time and now it is as nothing at all.  Rebuilding after such an event would be a daunting task, it would be easy to be discouraged, but if our trust is in the Lord we will be like Nehemiah.  They are assured, all who will listen, that ultimately the Lord will prevail but it will be a painful and difficult time for all concerned.

Luke tells us that John was not particularly welcoming and encouraging to the crowds, referring to them as a brood of vipers.  If this is simply a show, a crowd coming because it is the thing to do and no one wants to be left out or thought irreligious, then they need not come at all.  There is a command to bear fruits in keeping with repentance, prove that their religion is real, that they have true intentions to follow the Lord.  John's attitude is don't come here unless you mean it, you can't escape judgment simply by being baptized, your life is what truly matters.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer would say the same in his book Cost of Discipleship, that we have given out cheap grace by giving away the sacraments to those whose repentance is not real, whose only desire is to avoid judgment and we have given assurance that there is salvation by sacrament rather than by discipleship.  The road is narrow to life, not many will enter says Jesus. 

Sanctification matters, not only justification.  Is our justification dependent on our sanctification or are they two different things?  It is a matter of which came first, the chicken or the egg.  Our pursuit of righteousness, or sanctification would seem to indicate something about our justification.  Could one who is truly in Christ Jesus, justified, not pursue righteousness, not deny self, take up the cross and follow Him?  It would be impossible to say to Jesus that you accept His sacrifice but you didn't realize that it meant anything had to change in your own life, that you would be required to make sacrifices also.  He died for sin and only sinners need Him.  If He died for my sin there must be something that needs to change about my life, particularly that which is called sin.  Do we hate the garment stained by flesh?  Jude is talking about the garment closest to the flesh, realizing that the flesh is the problem but if we have the Spirit we can subdue the flesh by the power of the Spirit.  Not completely, but sanctification is the mortification of the desires of the flesh and awakening to the desires and demands of the Spirit.  Let us then bear fruit in keeping with repentance and thereby reveal our faith and our salvation.