Thursday 21 April

Deuteronomy 33:1-34:12

The final words of Moses, and pretty much of Deuteronomy, are fantastic.  The tribes are blessed in their diversity but it’s a diversity that is pinned firmly under a profound sense of worship.  It was the Lord who started this whole thing; he dawned from Seir and he shone forth from Mount Paran igniting the passions of Israel and bringing hope and warmth to a dribbling mish-mash of farmers.  It is the Lord who loves the people and who holds them in his hand.  He has provided direction for them and he will protect them with his everlasting arms.  Yes Israel is diverse, yes the church is diverse and that must be celebrated and maintained.  But it must be maintained under the watching eye of devotion and submission to the King.  In Vineyard we were birthed in worship and we’ve defined ourselves by worship.  Let us never lose that, let us never shift our eyes from our shield and our helper from the one who has let us live in safety and made our spring secure.

Luke 20:27-21:4

I think we see in Jesus, and then much more so in the early church and in Paul, a delight in what is experienced now and a hope and expectation for what has not yet come.  They talk about the coming age of the resurrection but they refuse to let go of the experience of God in the present.  This “now and the not yet” is a foundational Vineyard conviction - that time is not really defined by the moon or even split into before the birth of Jesus and after the birth of Jesus.  But rather, time is defined by two primary ages; one akin to Israel’s desert wanderings and one akin to life in the promised land.  This first age ran from the sin of Adam right through to sometime around that first Easter Sunday and, in a way still runs on today.  There is still the bitterness of death and illness, hunger and confusion.  People still depend on daily bread and a pillar of cloud and fire.  But with the coming of Jesus, with the coming of God to earth, the age of the promised land actually begun - God is dwelling with his people, bringing healing and hope and intimacy and truth right to their hearts through the work of His Spirit.  It’s crucial that we grasp that we live between these ages, knowing God with us but also experiencing him far away.  Like a picket fence we have the Kingdom here but not there and here and not there.  Jesus captured people’s imaginations into the glorious future age but then pulled them back to seeing that God is making some of that available here and now.  God is so keen to bless his people that he doesn’t want us to wait until we are dead before we receive it.

Psalm 49:1-20

“Hear this, all you peoples ... my mouth will speak words of wisdom”.  Phew! The psalmist could be accused of underselling...