Monday 2 May

Joshua 21:20-22:34

The soundbite for the morning papers should have nothing to do with the Reubenites monolith and everything to do with the fact that “not one of all the Lord’s good promises to the house of Israel failed”.  That is the money verse in the whole book of Joshua.  The argument over the snappily titled “A Witness Between Us that the Lord is God” may be ripe for an interesting sermon but it is verses 43-45 that really pack the punch.  All the talk of blood, guts and boundary markers has been building towards this life-defining conclusion. You can stake your house on the Lord.  In the roulette game of humanity you can scrape together every single penny, every last resource, pile it all up and risk it on the Lord.  If the Lord says ‘Red’ then ‘Red’ it will be.  If the Lord says black then it can be no other.  For us, there is little that could be more heart-warming.  No matter how things seem, you can trust the Lord.  All his promises are yes and Amen in Jesus.  He will build his church, he will raise us up on the last day, he is conforming us to the likeness of Christ, he will give his Spirit to those who ask Him, he is with us always to the end of the Age and on and on and on.  The phrases sound great but their real beauty is not in their poetry but in their bona fide reliability in every day reality.  We can hang our hat on these; we can hang every earthly possession on them.  The promises are there in black and white in the scriptures and they will be played out in flesh and blood in this earth.  There is a call for us to harken them - to seek them out and to trust them.  And then watch with joy and amazement as the Lord plays them out amongst us.

John 3:1-21

We’ve had the two shock scenes that have whet our appetite, now we slow the pace and lift the lid on the mission.  Who is this crazy man Jesus and what is his intention?  Well, prepare to choke on your popcorn because meek and mild it is not.  Jesus is holding covert meetings with the elite of the day, with the spiritually astute and the scripturally aware, and he is chopping off their legs at the knees.  His intention is this - to demonstrate and declare that God is doing a whole new thing.  Not since Genesis 1 has anyone really dared to suggest such a thing and certainly not since those first chaos-moulding times has it actually appeared that He might be.  Discernment of rabbis is not enough.  Appreciation of miraculous signs just will not cut it.  This Word-became-flesh actually seems to be suggesting that people need to climb back up the birth canal and hook themselves onto a whole new placenta.  Be born again.  Escape from the plague of venomous snakes, do not perish, free yourself from condemnation, quit this darkness.  Have eternal life, have eternal life, receive your salvation and walk into the light.  So there you have it.  In the first few scenes of the gospel the cat is already out of the bag; Jesus thinks people are lost and dying and he wants to save them and claim them for himself.  He wants you and he wants me and he wants the bloke next door and the woman across the street.  His method for getting us is not yet entirely clear but it seems to have something to do with believing in Him.  I’m fairly sure things will become clearer as the narrative unfolds.

Psalm 55:1-11

Either doves were WAY bigger back then or David is making a serious error in his escape plan.  Wouldn’t he have been better off choosing eagle’s wings?  Surely they would have a more realistic chance of carrying him??