Monday 7 February

Job 40:3-42:17

I don’t have a clue what this behemoth/leviathon thing is that the Lord was describing to Job.  It sounds a bit like my father-in-law but why on earth would God be speaking about him to a Hebrew man nearly 3000 years ago?  What I do know is that God uses this creature-thing as a worked example of his rule of the world.  God saw Job’s questioning as a direct challenge to his Lordship and He responded to it by asserting that his Lordship is both a fact and that it works.  He shows that he both created everything and that he sustains it, restraining even the most vicious forces in nature to ensure that, in the end, His justice prevails.  The book of Job’s answer to the problem of suffering is therefore utterly brilliant.  Far from ducking the issue, it reaches the dynamic and provocative conclusion; that the only way to understand suffering is to develop an deep appreciation of the Lordship of God.  Suffering and violence exist in this universe as part of the way of things (the Fall and the Curse are not referred to here but sit behind the drama as an essential, context-providing back-drop).  God both restrains them and can take sovereignty over them to achieve his desires.  While he would, no doubt, have preferred sin and suffering never to have existed, he can still bring good out of them as he uses them to draw people into a deeper experience of himself.  The book of Job issues a resounding call to all who would listen - seek God!  Press through the superficial and the temporary and really seek his presence.  Real faith, the faith that is will survive the furnace of suffering, is not one that is based on hear-say or echo but is grounded in a deep and undeniable beholding of the Lord of the earth.

Matthew 25:14-46

The blood drains from my face when I read the parable of the Sheep and the Goats.  It fills me with utter dread, partly for me, but mostly for the Christian church in the West at this time.  Here we have a totally unambiguous teaching of Jesus given right at the climax of the gospel and it seems like a lot of our brothers and sisters in Christ are bearing it very little regard at all.  This is absolutely not a finger-pointing piece of judgementalism but rather a heart-wrenching conviction that this piece of scripture does not seem to be lived out in today’s church.  I pray and long that our Vineyard church can, in absolute love, lay down such an authentic demonstration of sheepiness that saints from all denominations take note and are inspired to follow suit.  I pray and long that we would gamble our 5 or 3 or 1 talents on projects of compassion, willing to lose everything for the sake of those who have nothing.  I know we already do so much of this but can’t help feeling that we, and particularly I, could do so much more.  Everything is at stake here; the chips are all in.  Will we follow the corrupt temple-protectors who fixed their minds on their own survival or will we follow the example of Jesus, laying down our lives for the sake of those outside of our camp?  One way leads to death and one way leads to life and it is not the way round that rational minds would expect.

Psalm 18:43-50

OK so the cringing foreigners is a bit non-P.C. (the only cringing foreigners I’ve seen were those who heard my Dad’s French accent) but we do see here the clear belief that a descendent of David would rule on the throne of Israel for ever.  If we were running a “find Jesus in the Old Testament” treasure-hunt I think that would be another big clue.