23 February 2013

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

The covenant itself is not contingent on the obedience and faithfulness of the people, it can't be, they will fail.  What is contingent is the receipt and enjoyment of the blessings and promises of the covenant.  Moses says, "if you will be careful to do all this commandment that I command you to do, loving the Lord your God, walking in all his ways, and holding fast to him, then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than you."  They are already in an everlasting covenant of grace with the living God, if they are to truly be His people and enjoy all He has prepared for them, they must be obedient to His Word but they must make His Word their chief delight and their chief occupation.  Read back through the first three verses thinking about what life would look like to be obedient to them and see that they are to be completely obsessed with the Word of the Lord.  Do you think those same promises are for the church?  Jesus said that the gates of hell would not prevail against it.  Are we obsessed with the Word, both written and in Jesus?

This is one of my favorite stories in the Gospels.  It shows Jesus is always about the Father's business, every moment of every day.  Something as simple as an encounter with a sinful Samaritan woman at a well can become an opportunity to share the Good News, an offer of living water for a weary soul.  She believed in something already, that she and her people had it right, that the Jews were apostate from true Yahwism.  She might be sinful but that didn't mean she wasn't a believer.  Jesus speaks into the deepest desire of her heart, living water that she might no longer have need to come to this place.  The most amazing thing in the story to me is that He revealed Himself to her, a sinful woman who had it all wrong about God.  Remember that the last thing John told us about Jesus' attitude towards people in Jerusalem, the place that had it right, was that He wouldn't entrust Himself to them because He knew what was in their hearts. 

Jesus, like the high priests of Judaism, can deal gently with sinners but not because He ever sinned.  He can deal gently with us because He knows how difficult obedience can be, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.  The writer tells us that Jesus learned obedience through suffering.  Are we willing to suffer to learn obedience?  The Lord always tells His people that He desires not only mercy more than sacrifice but obedience.  Knowing the Word of God in our heads isn't as important as living by it, obeying it, no matter what the cost.  Eternity is the reward but also, His Word is a word of life to us.  We are to walk in love as Christ loved us, an offering and a sacrifice to God.  We are His people, we are redeemed!

22 February 2013

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

"What does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord…"  Oh well, if that is all, this should be a piece of cake.  Fortunately, the continuation of the relationship is not dependent on the faithfulness of the people.  Moses reminds them that from the beginning of this relationship it was all about God's sovereign choice of them, not for any merits of their own, simply because He chose to love them and establish them as His covenant people.  Their attitude then towards others was to be to love the sojourner as He loved them as sojourners.  We are to be like Him in every respect, showing love and mercy and grace to others as we have received the same from Him.

John was a most gracious man.  He could be tough with people, particularly hypocrites and leaders whom he held to a higher standard, just as God does, but when it came to his ministry he knew it was a gift.  Whatever success he had was a gift from the Lord and his role was simply to be faithful to what he had been given.  When Jesus began His ministry, and the people who formerly followed John were going after Jesus, John didn't react with jealousy.  He knew who Jesus was and his job was always the same, pointing to Jesus.  Prior to Jesus' baptism John was pointing to one who was to come after but once he saw the dove light on Jesus and remain, he told everyone that this was the one they should follow.  Here, John tells us that the Baptizer knew a good bit about Jesus, that He had come from above, was sent from the Father, would be rejected, and that it was ultimately all about faith in the Son, nothing else.

It certainly is a paradox to urge us to strive to enter rest.  What is the means of striving, holding fast the confession.  That doesn't mean that we now rest from activity.  Paul wrote in Ephesians 2, "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."  There are "good works" we are called to do, works which God prepared for us to walk in.  We must never, however, believe that these save us or add in any way to our salvation.  They are important only as they demonstrate our faithful obedience to Him in thanks for the grace and mercy we have received.  It is first, last and always about grace and mercy.

21 February 2013

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

Is Moses recounting their sin and his intercession in order to make them feel guilty about themselves and exalt him?  It sounds a bit like that but at the same time we need to remember that this is his final address to the people before his death.  He knows he won't get to the promised land and they are on the edge of that moment.  His concern is that they not forget "twas grace that brought me safe thus far and grace 'twill lead me home."  His desire is that they never forget this time, never put lipstick on the pig, always remember the outpouring of grace that was required to get them to this point.  They did not deserve His love when He delivered them from Egypt and they have done nothing in the past forty years to make themselves more deserving.  They exist at all because He is merciful and loving and He has purposed to give them the Land.  Moses' concern is that they will forget these things and become proud and there is nothing to be proud of, nothing of themselves in which they can boast, their only hope, their only boast, can be in the Lord God.

In Christ alone, my hope is found, He is my light, my strength, my song.  If God had not loved us we would remain dead in sin, simple as that.  There would be no hope of glory, no possibility of resurrection to eternal life with Him, only judgment.  Our proclamation is that God loves the world enough to hold His judgment in abeyance for a time so that we have the opportunity to receive grace and mercy from Him in Jesus.  We who have received those things have now the joyful opportunity to proclaim Him to the world and yet we often keep these things to ourselves rather than risk rejection.  We, like the Israelites, have been a stubborn people who have loved our lives more than Him.  We have failed to glory in Him.  We are because He is says our liturgy.  Our existence is completely dependent on Him, both now in the life to come.

So long  as we continue to work for our salvation (as opposed to working out our salvation) we will never rest, we won't find the refreshing for our souls Jesus promised those who come to Him would receive.  We are contingent beings, that is what the words I spoke over you on Ash Wednesday are meant to remind you.  Remember the context when God spoke them over Adam, who had indeed been created from dust, to dust you shall return.  If we, who exist in time and space for a brief moment, fail to have faith in the One who existed before creation, before time began, who is pure being and existence, what fools we are.  We will never have rest so long as we depend on ourselves.

20 February 2013

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

In order to remind them who they really are, Moses goes back to the episode of the golden calf.  In some Jewish teaching this episode is actually as important as the sin in the Garden of Eden.  They refer to the Torah as the Tree of Life.  The tree that was forbidden to them after they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was opened to them in the giving of the Law.  The tree of life was truly the knowledge of God's will is the teaching.  When they broke the first commandment by making a golden calf and declaring it their god, they lost what would have been the blessing of life without death.  Death would have been destroyed for all who took on the yoke of Torah.  The sin of the golden calf then is far greater than most of us realize but the rabbis and sages so revere the Torah that this was and is their view of things.  In Jesus, we see the cross as the Tree of Life and our faith is in He whom we believe perfectly fulfilled the Word of God, embodied it, and we have life in Him.

Poor Nicodemus.  He is utterly confused by Jesus speaking of being born again, just as everyone had been when Jesus spoke of the sign of tearing down the temple and rebuilding it in three days.  Nicodemus was in the covenant community with God because of his birth, he was born into the kingdom by virtue of being Jewish but Jesus says he has to be born again in order to see the kingdom, born from above, of water and the Spirit.  Nicodemus, a teacher of Israel, is now shown to himself to have limited understanding of earthly and spiritual things in comparison to Jesus.  Jesus speaks truths because only He has ever been in heaven with the Father, there are things He alone knows and yet such a claim has to be validated somehow.  Nicodemus has already acknowledged that based on what he has seen God is with Jesus.  To his credit, Nicodemus will continue to seek truth.  He will stay on the periphery, perhaps, until the crucifixion, but in a true hour of need, he will step forward with Joseph of Arimathea and care for the body of this rabbi who intrigued him so.  He may have come at night this time but he will boldly come in that day.

We are admonished to hold our original confidence firm to the end.  Nicodemus had imperfect confidence and knowledge when he first came to Jesus, but in the end he identified with Jesus when almost no one else would do so, it probably cost him dearly among his fellow Pharisees, perhaps meaning he was no longer welcome among them as they had determined to de-synagogue those who identified themselves with Jesus.  If we are to have rest for our weary souls, we must come to Him and remain there, our trust and hope in Him alone.  Perseverance in faith and love is required.  Here, the writer couples unbelief and sin.  Life reveals faith and belief.  The golden calf revealed the lack of faith of the people in the God who had delivered them, the same one whose power was seen on the mountain.  What does your life reveal about your faith?  Does it show your ultimate trust and confidence in Him or does it show you trust in other things, both in this life and the one to come?

19 February 2013

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

If it is because of the wickedness of the nations that the Lord is driving them out of the Land and giving it to the Israelites, wouldn't it make sense that they were righteous?  Only in a relative sense, and relative righteousness is no righteousness at all.  The only righteousness is God's righteousness, everything else, as Paul said, is filthy rags.  He is driving out these nations not because He is capricious but because of their wickedness, the same reason the flood happened in Genesis and that Sodom was destroyed.  Moses is clear that the Lord has already shown mercy and grace to them, He was ready to destroy them for the sin of the golden calf.  Redemption and life have always been about God's grace and mercy, not the righteousness of any man or nation.  There is no righteousness under the law, only awareness of sin.  When we forget that we fall to pride.

John, unlike the other Gospels, places the cleansing of the temple very early in Jesus' ministry.  Does that imply that there is a mistake in the chronology or can we conclude that this effort didn't achieve the desired result?  It would seem unlikely that Jesus only once chastised the leadership over this issue.  Zeal for the Father's house would not have consumed Him only on one occasion would it?  At any rate, the upset here is that the profiteering is not only wrong but it has also made it impossible for Gentiles to approach the temple at all, they were set up in the area reserved for Gentiles so that they too might hear the Word.  It was to be a house of prayer for all nations and this was not possible.  The holy club had excluded anyone not already a member.  Jesus offers a sign but no one could have imagined that He meant the resurrection at the time.  What does it mean that Jesus compares His body to the temple?

"We are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.^"  When was the last time you boasted in your hope?  That is our boast, it is in Him, the Son.  If we boast in our hope we are His house.  In order to do that we have to do two things: first we have to hang our heads in shame and hopelessness over sin and then we have to put Jesus on the throne, we have to see Him as above all things and people.  All boasting is not wrong, boasting is proclamation if it is based in joy and a desire to share Him with others.  No praise is too extravagant for Jesus.  Remember, He alone of all in heaven, on earth or under the earth was worthy to take the scroll, open the seal and receive worship in heaven.