Friday 8 July

2 Kings 16:1-17:41

This is major news.  10 of the 12 tribes are no more.  For a God who claims to be faithful and strong, that could be quite a troubling statistic.  If my bank’s prospectus stated that 83% of their clients lost all their money last year I’m not sure I’d be feeling too secure about my savings.  So a huge chunk of this passage addresses that fear.  It stresses that this seemingly catastrophic performance by God was actually nothing of the sort.  Those 83% of clients did not in fact lose their money - they had it confiscated by the authorities for continual, extreme bad behaviour.  It was as if the 83% of clients were actually terrorists having their assets frozen.  So my bank did the right thing.  They showed their integrity by refusing to harbour terrorist’s assets and they showed their authority by actually being able to take action against their own clients.  The 10 tribes being thrown out of the land showed God’s integrity, not his infidelity.  It showed his power, not his puniness.  God will not tolerate an ever growing catalogue of sins.  And the major sins of the 10 tribes - the thing that made them terrorists in God’s eyes - are defined by the single thing that we saw yesterday God cannot stand.  The heinous sins of the 10 tribes were primarily sins of idolatry.  They were primarily giving allegiance to and placing hope in things other than God.  When the going gets tough (and in fact even when it is easy) we can so easily look to false gods for a promise of comfort, hope and a future.  If only we had more money, if only I had more qualifications, if only I was married to a rock star, if only I was a bit more buff... then I would be happy and well.  The Lord is jealous for our affections.  He wants all our hopes to be placed in him and he won’t stomach it being any other way.

Acts 26:24-27:12

It’s quite fashionable to say you’re not trying to convert people.  It’s what hip Christians say.  A while back I reached the point where I was so freaking fashionable that I never even thought about trying to convert people, let alone spoke about it.  Flip-mode that one in your area with respect to your mother.  Then I read Paul’s little interchange with Agrippa (he should have been a rapper or something with a name as cool as that).  Paul admits he is trying to convert Agrippa.  He even admits he is trying to convert the whole world.  I suddenly started to feel a bit sad.  And a bit silly.  Paul had a long list of people who were eternally grateful to him for showing them life and I didn’t really have anyone on my list.  Paul had people who wept and clung onto him on the beach because he said they would never see him again.  The only person who had wept because of me was my aunt who misunderstood when I said she was a woman who was totally wicked and totally phatt.  Paul had really, really helped people.  I just had a few people who thought I was quite a nice bloke.  Sure, a good number of people had tried to murder Paul or assassinate him or smash stones into his head but they were just the side-show.  The ones who had been set free by his preaching, who had been transformed by his God - they were the defining narrative in the story of Paul’s life.  If I really think that God is amazing and that knowing him is amazing then surely I should be more upfront about telling people I want them to share in that.  Surely that would be the loving thing to do, even if some people don’t think it is very cool.

Psalm 81:8-16

“If my people would but listen to me...”