Sunday 15 May

Judges 20:1-21:25

I feel like someone has picked up last week’s bin bag and emptied it over my head. I honestly don’t know what to write.  Just when we thought it was starting to get back on track they go and hit a new low.  And Paul says in Romans that we are meant to rejoice at the privilege of being grafted into this crowd?  Rejoice? It’s like a national embarrassment.  And, what is worse, in 21:15 the Israelites try to pin the blame for all this mess on the Lord.  I know I’ve written the same thing for the last 3 days now but I just don’t know how the Lord could have put up with this horror-show.  If there was any doubt surely this confirms the fact that humanity has no hope on its own.  Even when the Lord is around we still make an utter pigs-ear of it all.  What is needed is a complete renewal.  A work that replaces the wicked core of these people with something tender and good.  As Ezekiel says many years later, what people need is for God to do an act of regeneration, to replace hearts of stone with hearts of flesh.

John 8:31-59

What can we get from this showdown with the Pharisees?  Well I guess one key thing is that it reveals Jesus’ understanding of the devil.  The devil is a bit of a background figure for the majority of the bible.  Where he came from is not really explained and his exact relationship to God is not disclosed.  But he has a massive impact on the whole redemption story.  Jesus confirms this when he speaks of the devil as being real, being active and being savagely opposed to the will of God.  Jesus said that the devil is waging war against God and, crucially, is doing so through people.  It is no wonder when some people react negatively to our love of Jesus and our advocacy for him.  It doesn’t necessarily mean we are being insensitive or arrogant or doing anything wrong (although we might be).  You se we don’t just live in a world that is fallen.  We don’t just have hearts that are tragically slanted towards sin.  We also have a being roaming around among us trying to do us harm, trying to destroy us and assault the truth the we received from Jesus.  This sounds alien and ridiculous to our ears but Jesus taught it and we would do well to think on it.  We need to remember that we live in the midst of a war-zone.

Psalm 61:1-8

This desire to see the king enthroned for ever crystallized into the hope for a glorious Messiah-king who would rule well over Israel.