Saturday 31 December

Nehemiah 13:1-31

The pulling out of hair and the beating I am not so sure about.  But the rest of it seems bang on.  These Old Testament readings for the year end in an interesting place with the leaders of the community actively holding the others to a certain standard of holiness.  And I don’t think anything in the New Testament ever negates this requirement.  As ambassadors of God and as reverential worshippers of the Lord it is only appropriate for us to act and speak and make decisions in a way that pleases Jesus.  It should only be expected of us that we would seek to do all we can with all we can to try to help everyone we can to honour God as much as they can.  The Old Testament has provided us with example after example of people who have manifestly failed to do this.  Solomon is only one name of many that could be cited as a warning.  And it only makes sense for us to heed these warnings, to learn from other’s mistakes and to equip ourselves with all biblical and godly wisdom.  For if we do this, and if we manage to achieve a higher level of purity for ourselves and for those around us then the Lord will remember us and He will show us mercy according to His great love.  Not because we will have earned it (we never could!) but because He will see our efforts and be pleased with them.  He will  be pleased that his work in us is bearing rich fruit.

Revelation 22:1-21

The Fall is overcome.  The river of life raises The City and its inhabitants way up above even the lofty heights of Eden.  For now there is a throne.  Now there is no night.  And they will reign for ever and ever without a pesky snake coming and wrecking it all up.  So unspeakably brilliant is this vision, so nostril-flaringly outstanding is this sight that John - even John who saw the transfigured Jesus and who ate the broiled fish with the risen Christ - even John can’t help himself but fling his whole being down onto the dust and physically express his utter unworthiness to be around it.  I can’t remember the last time I felt such a depth of astonishment and conviction.  I end this journey with a similar sense of trepidation to that with which I started it, except now I feel more aware of the sheer inadequacy of my knowledge, the meagre extent of my faith.  This Jesus who I love, this Jesus who in my worst moment I feel I fully know - this Jesus is the same one who gave this vision to John.  This Jesus is the same one who is called the Root, the Offspring of David and the Bright Morning Star.  This Jesus has shown me Himself - he really, truly has - and so far all I’ve been able to look at is the nail of his little toe.  What I’ve seen has been amazing.  What I’ve seen nearly brings me to tears right now in this seat and yet it is just a whiff.  It is just a tiny fragment of gold compared to all of Fort Knox.  But there will be a day when I see it all.  I pray I will keep seeing more and more until that day comes.  But there will be a day when Jesus will come, where Jesus will come and claim his own and will reward for what’s been done.  And then I will see him as he is.  Then his whole phenomenal, beyond-ordinary, beyond-temporary, beyond-constraint body will be unveiled before me.  And I will fall face down and I will eat the dust.  I can’t wait for that day.  Please come, Lord Jesus.

Psalm 150:1-6

What a way to finish; “let everything that has breath praise the Lord”.

Friday 30 December

Nehemiah 11:22-12:47

Make time for thanksgiving.  That is what the energetic new community in Jerusalem were doing by going back to the Mosaic laws about allocating some Levites as singers. And it led them into joy.  The more we thank God for what he has done the more joy we will feel sloshing around in our life.  So I think we should intentionally allocate a portion of each of our resources to pure unadulterated thanksgiving.  Maybe the resource we most need to allocate is time - making time to get in worship on a Sunday and at housegroup and on our own as well.  Maybe we need to sett an alarm or configure our screen-saver or get together with a friend or buy some worship albums or start keeping a journal.  These could all be ways that we develop and strengthen mental patterns of thankfulness to God.  For he really has done amazing things for us.  Tiny things and huge things, temporary things and everlasting things.  And the more we deliberately remember those things and the more we deliberately thank him for them the more joy we will feel.  And the more joy He will feel too.

Revelation 21:1-27

This is our great hope.  This is what we cry out for like our own bed and shower after a long week of camping.  And so it is worth us really thinking on it.  Because the bed is super-comfy and the shower will really ease our aching back.  The shower is not just a dribble.  The hope is not in vain.  I think the biggest attack on this hope is to make it seem like a super-spiritual, out-of-body floaty-sunny fantasy land that is so far from our experience that we cannot accept it at all.  So here is the antidote to that poisonous thought - the hope of Revelation is not for us to go to heaven.  The hope of Revelation is not that we will float out of our bodies and out of this earth to some hovering utopia in the skies.  No.  The hope of Revelation comes down out of heaven.  It doesn’t stay there and we certainly don’t go there.  God comes down to live with his people.  The New Jerusalem comes down to the earth.  Now the earth will have been transformed - it will have been made new and perfect and fully redeemed in every way - but it will still be something that we could only describe as ‘earth’.  I appreciate that we cannot possibly grasp the staggering beauty or awesome detail of what the earth will look like once the old order has passed away but it seems like it will have nations and kings and people who can make and bring things of splendour to the Lamb.  Because ultimately our faith is one that started in Eden and started with God saying the universe was good.  We believe in a creator God who made all things and who will re-make all things.  He will re-make them so they look similar but different, the same but renewed.  Like a populated, thriving, swirling, life-infested Eden but better.  So if you start to feel sick of camping and bored of feeling half-washed then do not despair.  The hope is coming.  The hope is real.  And the hope is good.

Proverbs 31:21-31

“When it snows she has no fear for her household; for all of them are clothed in scarlet”.  What??

Thursday 29 December

Nehemiah 9:38-11:21

These skim-read bits feel like a bonus so close to the end of the year.  But this oath in the middle of it all is interesting.  I suspect that today any such oath would be looked upon as legalistic.  And indeed it probably was the sort of foundation upon which the Pharisees built their hollow practices.  But that does not take away its value.  For this was not a commitment to dry activity but to serious lived-out worship of God.  It is not legalistic to try to obey the bible.  It is not legalistic to try to carefully organise your life to make it as pleasing to Jesus as possible.  This kind of commitment is to be commended.  This kind of commitment is what brings about holiness.  

Revelation 20:1-15

I don’t know what to say about the 1,000 years.  I know people have defined their faith by what they think about it.  That seems a little bizarre considering that it is just a stage history will pass through on the road to its final destination.  To define yourself as pre-millenial or post-millenial seems a bit like defining your house move by what time the removal company are arriving.  I guess you can do it if you want but it seems to be slightly missing the point.  It doesn’t seem like the main and the plain.  But what does seem so main and plain it is pretty much head-butting me in the nostrils is this phrase “the dead were judged according to what they had done”.  Now hold on a minute but don’t you think we need to call in the heresy squad?  Don’t you think the grace-police need to pay this passage a visit?  Doesn’t John know that we are saved by grace through faith and it is not down to works?  Doesn’t he realise that we can do what we bally-well please once we have been washed in the blood?  Oh.  He doesn’t.  And if he doesn’t then maybe I shouldn’t either.  For what has kept coming back time and time again through our voyage across the bible has been this idea that salvation actually means being made more holy.  What has become increasingly clear is that forgiveness for sin and healing from the things that cause us to sin are so intertwined that they can’t be separated.  The whole point is that Christians will do good things.  The whole point is that Christians will live blameless lives.  The whole point is that we will be holy as He is holy so that, upon judgement day, God will look at what we have actually done and will say “well done my good and faithful servant”.  And if you have gone to church week in week out and if you have sung some worship songs and if you have read the bible and even if you have asked Jesus to forgive you for things you have done wrong in the past - if you have done all of that and yet have not actually in any way submitted yourself to the Lordship of Jesus and sought to change your behaviour to honour him, and if you have not tried to give things up that you think he wouldn’t like and if you have not tried to start things that you think he would like well then I think you need to be scared about judgement day.  But there is still a chance to change.

Psalm 149:1-9

The Lord takes delight in his people.

Wednesday 28 December

Nehemiah 9:1-37

This could have saved us a whole heap of time.  I feel like the pupil who has spent hours reading the whole of A Passage to India only to find that everyone else has just watched the film.  If only I had known that the crib sheet for the history of the Old Testament was here in Nehemiah I could have skipped out that trudging through Jeremiah, that wading through 1 Chronicles and that slogging through Leviticus.  But then again using other people’s summaries is never a good way to go.  As my professor always used to tell me at university - you have got to read the primary text.  So, as we approach the end of the Old Testament, I feel like I need to start constructing my own potted history of God.  I need to start speaking with God about what He has done, and how my ancestors have responded, and how I now fit in.  There seems to be a huge amount of intimacy, and of reverence, in consciously placing my pin in the enormous atlas of redemption.  Praying in this way helps me personalise my faith and take ownership of my identity in Christ.  It helps me see I am just a drop of water in the torrent of history.  It helps me appreciate the aching grossness of my refusal to listen to Him.  He alone is the great God.  He alone is from everlasting to everlasting.  And to speak with Him is sensational.  To be forgiven by Him is sublime.  And to be saved by Him is indescribably good.  The more I read, the more I realise this.  It can sometimes feel like hard work.  But reading the Book really does beat the film.

Revelation 19:11-21

Never again.  That was the refrain from yesterday.  Never again will Babylon be found.  Never again will a lamp shine in her.  Never again will she lead the nations astray.  It is worth lingering a while on that ‘never’.  We get so used to the ugly runt head of the devil popping up in our lives that it can be hard to believe that a time is coming when it will never happen again.  The Word of God is continuing relentlessly with the annihilation of evil.  The birds of the air will gorge on its flesh.  I say again that this is worth a linger; a sure and certain conviction that evil will be ravaged would be more than a little portion of our daily bread.  To know that evil’s days are numbered would inspire us, it would embolden us, it would help us stand firm.  And we can know that it is true because it is already happening.  This takes us back to what I said right at the start of Revelation - this is not so much a prophecy about the future as a revelation of the Now.  The word of God is already dressed in a robe that has been dipped in the blood.  The armies of heaven are at this moment white and clean.  KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS has already summoned the birds, he has already started treading out the winepress.  He started in on the cross.  He started it at Calvary.  Every time we see an addiction overcome, every time we see a healing occur, every time we see someone filled with the Spirit or forgiven of their sins or growing in love or standing firm in trial - every time we see these things we see the victory of Faithful and True, we see the two being thrown into the fiery lake.  Jesus is doing his thing.  Our world is being redeemed.  It is an awesome thing to behold.  It is an amazing thing to see.

Psalm 148:7-14

Let them praise the name of the Lord.

Tuesday 27 December

Nehemiah 7:4-8:18

Now that is how to preach.  Ezra starts his 4 hour marathon at dawn and doesn’t stop exegeting until the heat of the mid-day sun is scorching his brow.  And the people are rapt in attention.  They are weeping.  And they go off and change.  They go and do things different; they turn to repentance and then they turn to celebration and then they turn to obedience.  In a day when preaching is being questioned as an art-form, surely this passage speaks up in its defence.  Good, biblical, Spirit-filled preaching can arrest the senses.  It can grip hearts and expose sin.  It can also channel emotions to the glory of God.  It can steer us to reverence - real reverence, real joyful reverence.  And preaching can move a people-group.  Preaching can stir and inspire a community like very little else.  It can be like the word of God for the people, uniting them and encouraging them and leading them into very great joy.  

Revelation 18:17b-19:10

“For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.”  In our day the wedding is about the bride.  She is the star attraction.  Her dress is the thing that people talk about (or at least that is what I’m told people talk about - all the dresses look the same to me).  But here it is the groom that gets the plaudits.  It is the groom that everyone is raving about.  All the guests are kicking their chairs out the way and prostrating themselves before the groom.  And the bride hasn’t even walked down the aisle yet.  As the Pachelbel Cannon starts to play no-one can take their eyes off the groom.  No-one can stop raving about his awesomeness.  For he has just won the great, cosmic, epoch-defining victory (but more of that tomorrow).  But if you were to look closely at this dazzling groom you would see his eyes were fixed in one place.  You would see his smile was tweaked towards one thing - the whole church of Jesus.  The groom has given his bride a fine dress, the groom has helped his church live right.  He has saved us and he will wed himself to us - all of us from every age and country and denomination and language - because he loves us.  Glory to his name.

Psalm 148:1-6

That is some serious praise-megamix he has got in mind.

Monday 26 December

Nehemiah 5:1-7:3

They were charging 1% interest and Nehemiah was very angry.  I can’t imagine how he would react to the economic norms of our day.  I’m increasingly feeling that the Lord must find them disgusting.  The word of the Lord through Nehemiah (I think it is fair to say that it was the word of the Lord even though it doesn’t explicitly say it.  At the very least it surely must be seen as the standard for God-fearing people) commanded the nobles and officials to not only give people back the interest they had paid but also the land and property and people they had confiscated as well.  The conclusion is unambiguous - you take a loss rather than worsening the plight of the poor among you.  Throughout the whole bible this seems to be the stance; the Proverbs repeatedly speak of power needing to be used to benefit the marginalised rather than for personal gain.  And what does money bring if not power?  So I am more and more acutely convicted that I need to use my dosh to help the poor.  Or, perhaps more accurately and perhaps more difficultly, I must ensure that my use of my money does not trample the marginalised.  I feel this must have enormous consequences for what I purchase and where I invest, to say nothing of where I get my mortgage from and who I choose to work for.  I don’t think I can just shrug off this challenge and mosey along with my fellow-Londoners.  If I want the Lord to remember me with favour I probably need to give up some of my rights.  I probably need to forego good portions of my salary.  For the Lord loves ‘these people’ and he will remember everything I do for them.

Revelation 18:1-17a

“Give her as much torture and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself.”  It is regularly said that God doesn’t care whether you are poor or rich as long as you are generous.  I agree.  But the description of Babylon, the defining feature of this sinful, arrogant power lies much closer to one of those states than the other.  I think it would be true to say that the rich live on the dangerous border-regions of the Christian faith.  I suspect there are few things more perilous than following Jesus and being rich.  For when you are rich it is so much easier to justify spending on yourself.  And when you are rich it is so much easier to think that your riches are due to your brilliance, your skill and your glory.  When you are rich there are so many more areas where you have to make a call on what to give and what to keep.  When you are rich there is so much more possibility to give yourself luxury.  When you are rich it is so much easier to start to look just like Babylon.  And - we should never doubt it - Babylon will be tortured.  Babylon will weep in torment.  For what brings smoke to God’s nostrils is when people that He has made take more than their fair share of the stuff He has made.  What God will not tolerate is people thinking they deserve more than God has allotted them and people claiming as their own the turf He has given to others.  God will consume those people with fire.  He will bring them to ruin in just one hour.  And I know I need to be careful about this because I know I am rich.  I know He has given me an abundance.  But very little of it is for me to keep.  And none of it is due to my greatness.

Proverbs 31:10-20

Goodness. For a minute there I thought I was listening to Beyonce.  Either that or something by the Spice Girls.  God seems to be a fan of Girl Power.

Sunday 25 December

Nehemiah 3:1-4:23

That dirty Sanaballat.  He was a baddies’ baddy.  He had obviously listened attentively at Evil School.  He knew well the first two tricks of opposition and he played them like trumps in a game of contract whist.  The first trick of Evil School is to make God’s people feel stupid.  You need to wait until they have played their ace, wait until they have built up a fragile sense of hopeful anticipation, and then you smash down your trump on it.  You add to that a look of utter contempt - or even pity if you can master it - and then add to that some attack on their identity.  Maybe you call them weak.  Or fat,  Or thick.  Or unpopular.  Or maybe you say a fox could knock their best efforts over.  It doesn’t matter quite what you say as long as it wracks the Christian with an overpowering sense of self-doubt.  And if that fails (which it rarely does) then you can pull out trick number two.  Trick number two is less subtle than trick number one but it is equally effective; plot an attack.  The attack is to overwhelm God’s people with fear.  Get in their face, cause them trouble, freak them out.  If God’s people prove resilient to self-doubt then you can often just scare them into inactivity.  It is amazing how often this will work.  But the thing baddies have to be scared of, the thing that will out-trump all of their trumps, the thing that will overcome all of the Evil School tricks is prayer.  Prayer to the great and awesome Lord.  Prayer that leads to hard work and boldness.  Evil School has no answer to that.  

Revelation 17:1-18

I’m sat in Starbucks (I’ve got ahead with my readings).  I’m listening to the lovely twinkly Christmas music and looking at all the delicious treats on offer and I’m finding it hard to equate what I see with what I have just read.  The passage tells me of great powers raging in this world.  It tells of a huge grotesque and adulterous force that is intoxicating us all with worship of false gods.  It says that this force is violently opposed to me and my faith.  It says that it wants my blood, and it has some pedigree.  But everything I see looks so jolly.  Christmas is just so jolly... isn’t it??  I think this is one of the areas of my faith that I struggle with more than anything else.  I think it is because I am middle-class.  I have grown so accustomed to presenting myself and having things presented to me in a way takes the edge of them.  Life is manicured around me.  It has been de-clawed.  It has been jollied-up.  I suppose there is nothing wrong with that except that it belies the truth.  It is fine, as long as I can see through the facade and perceive the truth.  I need to take my middle-class glasses off a bit more often and look with the eyes of faith.  I need to see that in their hearts - in their souls - people are haggard.  People are on the brink.  I need to look, and I mean properly look, at the cancer and the divorce and the loss and the loneliness and the people struck by trains and the slander against Jesus and grasp that this is the work of a disgusting and despicable force.  It is the work of THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES.  It is ultimately the work of the Beast.  And I need to hold its gaze.  I need to hold the gaze of this blinged-up force of fetid ugliness.  For when I do that I will see its days are numbered.  I will see its days will be ended by the Lamb.  For the Lamb will triumph.  The Lamb will overcome.  To live blind to this would be a tragedy.  To pretend to be jolly while not realising this truth would be a savage irony.  For we can overcome with Him.  We can overcome.  If we keep on looking.  We can overcome if we remain faithful.

Psalm 147:12-20

“He grants peace to your borders and satisfies you with the finest of wheat” (v14).

I will never look at my weetabix in the same way again.