Judges 6:1-7:8a
“Peace! Don’t be afraid. You are not going to die.” Doesn’t that say it all? Well, maybe you’d also want to chuck in “the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon and he blew a trumpet”, but then you’d get pretty much the whole story. This is the measure of grace in which we stand. Gideon should be afraid. Gideon should be dead. He and his people have been noticed by the most significant being in the universe, they have been rescued by him and wooed by him. He has driven away their oppressors, He has redeemed them out of slavery. He has placed his hand on their shoulder and pointed them in the direction of life. And they have taken all of this and then looked the Lord in the face, elevated their middle finger and told him to swivel. And the Lord has eaten up this barefaced rejection and responded with peace. He has responded with more comfort, more hope and more assistance. But he has realised that a mere hand on the shoulder is not enough, a mere pointing of the direction will not get it done. So he puts some of his very own presence upon this weak and gibbering Gideon and turns him into a standard bearer and a warrior. That is where the trumpet comes in - it is a trumpet that rallies and a trumpet that inspires. It is a trumpet, blown by the lips of man but the breath of God. It is a trumpet that causes people to do the things of God. So for us, the lessons are the same as they were for Gideon. We should be dead but we have heard a welcome of peace. Now it’s time to get it done. It’s time to blow a trumpet.
John 5:16-30
John has exploded this extraordinary man into our consciousness. He has shown Jesus to be Lamb of God, to have power to perform mind-bending miracles, to be the one around whom all nations should form, to be the one who is above all. But, there is a problem with this. As any good Jewish boy would know, there is only one who is above all and His name is YAHWEH. John tackles that problem here but in a slightly roundabout way. John doesn’t provide a doctrine of the Trinity but rather quotes Jesus’ own words about how he relates to the Father and, crucially, what the Father has given him to do in the world. It’s a pretty cool example of how we can advocate for Jesus - just quote his words and talk about what he is doing in the world. Jesus says he trades in a commodity he calls “life” but he doesn’t sell it and he doesn’t just distribute it willy nilly. He bestows it on certain people, and it gives him great pleasure to do so. He also performs a task he calls “judgement” which, while he doesn’t go into detail, doesn’t sound too appealing. As the giver of life and the executor of judgement Jesus actually steps up one more notch in the Big Men stakes. He hasn’t just come for the religious in Israel or just to call back together the 12 tribes or even just to call people from all nations to come to him and receive life. No, rather he has come to determine the destiny of every person who has lived anywhere in this world at any point in the whole of history. At this point in John we can’t be left with any other conclusion - this Jesus stuff is great but this Jesus stuff is also serious.
Psalm 57:7-11
David so regularly relates to God through stuff that is ‘out there’ - love reaches to the heavens, faithfulness to the sky... let your glory be over all the earth. It seems a bit different from a lot of our intraspective stuff today.
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