Numbers 13:26-14:45
It’s a juicy passage this one. We get the depth of the rebellion of Israel right smack bang alongside the power and the intensity of God. The major errors that Israel make are called out by God as being contempt and presumption. Contempt is a strong word but I guess a spade is a spade and when people think they know better than God, they are indeed holding him in contempt. Presumption is another strong word but it does seem to be an accurate description of why people would think that their fate rests in their own hands. Perhaps this is a more vivid description of what lies behind that rather bland word “sin” - contempt and presumption. Combined, they give God too little credit for all that he has done in the past and give ourselves too much credit for what we can do in the future. I begin to ask myself how Israel could be so stupid just a year or so after seeing the 10 plagues of Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea and the pillar of cloud and fire but then I think of myself and I realise it is really not that hard to believe that the people became more focussed on themselves than on God.
But then the good news - even in Moses’ day - the Lord is strong, the Lord is slow to anger, the Lord forgives sins, the Lord has great love for his people, the Lord will listen to prayers of forgiveness and intercession and the Lord will work out his purposes for his people despite all the stuff that they bring. Now I find that really encouraging, and we haven’t even got onto Jesus yet.
Luke 4:14-37
The sermon on the mount gets a good press and quite rightly; it is a brilliant piece of work. But, I think that if we really want to understand what Jesus was about and what he thought he was doing on earth then this Nazareth sermon is the very best place for us to start. For one thing, this sermon gives us a very credible explanation for why people wanted Jesus dead. I’ve been thinking about that a bit recently - how many people do I know who people genuinely want to kill? How many people do I know who have said something so explosive that people have picked them up and tried to chuck them off a cliff? I can’t think of anyone... except Jesus. And this is not the bless-everyone-without-expecting-anything-back-in-return Jesus who is often spoken about in charismatic circles. Who would want to kill him? No, this is the Jesus who so radically and personally attacked the Jewish parochial worldview that he made people feel so completely lost and angry. By quoting Isaiah like he does here, Jesus cuts off the crucial final sentence that predicts destruction of the enemies of Israel, thereby declaring that God’s blessing is for all of the world, not just for a chosen few And then by referencing the widow of Zarephath (a non-Jew) and Naaman (a non-Jew) it is like Jesus is grabbing that teaching and screwing it into the brains of all of his listeners. They don’t like it! It hurts them! Jesus is completely undermining their identity and forcing them to take on a new identity that looks on others as partners and co-heirs of God. This fundamental message of Jesus - of God’s favour being for all the world - but be grasped and owned and acted upon by his church. We must look beyond our walls and invite the scum and the downtrodden and the pathetic to come on in.
Psalm 36:1-12
The creativity of this psalm is so astonishing and so energising. I long to see more of this divine creativity springing from the church today.
