Wednesday 13 July

2 Kings 24:8-25:30

Game over.  God had promised the land to Abraham.  The land was one of the big three blessings from God.  And it pretty much carried with it the other two; the blessing of relationship with God relied upon the temple in Jerusalem to make it happen and the blessing of many descendants needed the territories for them to inhabit and cultivate.  So the fall of Jerusalem really is game over.  Over the last six months we’ve followed the rollercoaster ride of human decline and then divine regeneration and then human decline and then divine regeneration.  But now that is over.  And it has ended in a deeply depressing way.  Israel was just not up to it.  Israel just could not, or would not, keep the covenant.  So the Lord thrust them from his presence.  The promise to Abraham is effectively dead.  Israel is effectively dead.  The curses of Deuteronomy 29 are all that stand over her now.  Like a movie shut down by a studio before it is finished, God’s redemption narrative has had its plug pulled.  Surely there is no hope for this broken world now.  Let’s zip up the body bag and wait for rigor mortis to set in.  I’d like to say it was fun while it lasted but I’m not sure Leviticus could really be described as fun.  The only thing I’m wondering is what on earth they’ll have us read tomorrow.  Surely there can’t be anything more to say can there?  Surely the corpse of this promise couldn’t start to twitch?  Surely life couldn’t come out of this grave?  Could it...?

Romans 1:18-32

Wrath.  Why would anyone start a letter by talking about wrath?  It’s like Paul has hacked up a huge ball of phlegm and spat it on our feet.  We just want to find a towel as quickly as possible and wipe ourselves down.  But in our dash toward cleanliness, perhaps we miss something significant.  In our rush to make things more pleasant maybe we miss something important.  After all, why would anyone start a letter by talking about wrath?  There must be an answer to this, and one that would still permit Paul to describe his letter as good news.  Maybe the answer lies in the word wrath itself.  God’s wrath is not about an aggressive, vindictive mood swing.  God’s wrath is his lack of ambivalence.  God’s wrath is his commitment to breaking down injustice.  Across his letters Paul describes 3 different aspects of God’s wrath - 1) God’s righteous judgement on the last day when God gives to everyone what they deserve for what they have done, 2) God’s punishment of criminals and law-breakers through the government, the police and the law courts and 3) God’s punishment of people by letting them face the full weight of the consequences of their actions. In this passage we mainly get an explanation of aspect 3) of wrath.  [Incidentally all the stuff that is happening to the News of the World at the moment is quite a clear revelation of aspects 2) and 3) of God’s wrath.  Hopefully they will sort themselves out and deeply repent before they have to face aspect 1)!].  So Paul starts his letter by talking about wrath because he is giving his readers an interpretation of what they are ALREADY seeing.  This isn’t a ‘turn or burn’ warning about some future event (although Paul does use that technique in Ch2) but rather an advocation of the gospel based on the fact that evidence for it can already be seen in the world.  Evidence for God is all over the place - the depth of people’s depravity points, in a perverse way, to God.  It points towards a God who is highlighting the foolishness of rejecting him.  It points to a God who just won't let bad things go on unchecked.  It points to a God who is good and just and right and who is working a plan to bring people into his love.

Psalm 84:8-12

I just love seeing God’s presence at work in his church.  I’ll happily be his door-keeper any day.