Thursday 28 July

1 Chronicles 4:9-5:26

I assumed today’s reading would be pretty dull.  But I feel like I’ve stumbled upon something quite startling, and it’s nothing to do with Jabez.  In 5:2 it says that the first-born rights of Jacob were passed to Joseph.  I don’t think we’ve been told that before now (if we have please can you let me know).  On our long pilgrimage from Genesis 37 to now, I have not noticed any signs flagging up this truth.  You could say “so what” but I actually think it is quite exciting.  I knew that Reuben’s roaming eye had cost him his birth-right but I had rather assumed Simeon had been the beneficiary.  But God doesn’t follow human conventions.  God rides roughshod over our perception of our rights.  God pretty much chose the runt of the litter to bless as if he were the oldest and the boldest.  And God didn’t even do the Hollywood thing of choosing the really weedy, tiny one - he passed over Benjamin and went to Joseph instead.  I can’t think of any reason why he would have done it.  I can’t think of any reason why I would choose the 11th of the 12th to be the 1st.  But God did it this way.  He chooses his own way.  He asserts his rights as our boss.  We can’t get this thing through logic and good organisation.  We can’t work out God’s plan through the application of complex formulae.  God will often baffle us.  That is his prerogative.  Our role is to always look at what he is doing, always be open to the Spirit, always ready to submit our will to his.  His way will lead to life and peace, even if we can’t understand it.

Romans 11:11-32

There is a lot of controversy about this passage; over whether Paul uses the term Israel to refer to Jews (to put it crudely) or to the church (including Messianic Jews and Gentiles).  He definitely uses it in the latter sense at the end of Galatians (6:16) so I think he probably does here.  This sense also fits better with the run of Paul’s argument.  Paul is advocating on behalf of the faithfulness of God and, in doing so, turns the onus back on the Roman church, calling them to get on board with God’s desire to graft branches from all over the world into the Olive Tree of the Sons of Abraham.  But we must never let the debate over Israel to distract us from the fact that this is a missional passage.  God desires people to be saved - both Jews and non-Jews.  God deeply yearns for this to occur, and Paul mirrors him in that yearning.  Paul goes to great lengths to expose the full extent of God’s desperate longing for people as this is the driving rationale for all of chapters 12-16.  Paul will call the Romans to offer themselves as spiritual sacrifices so that people will see them and be convinced by them of the reality of Jesus’ reign.  Bringing new people to faith is Jesus is the unshakeable consequence of all that has been written to this point and it is the driving mandate for the organisation of church practices and of Christians’ lives.  God wants to have mercy on the world - and his chosen instrument for doing that is the church.  His chosen instrument for that is us.

Psalm 89:19-29

“No enemy will subject him to tribute; no wicked man will oppress him”.  Erm, that didn’t quite turn out like the Psalmist expected.