Wednesday 24 August

2 Chronicles 21:4-23:21

There was only ever one Queen of Israel, and she was utter rubbish.  But then again her husband Jehoram was even worse and her son, Ahaziah, was a puny excuse for a monarch so let’s not make this into a gender thing.  What I find depressing about this whole episode though is that the gang who sorted the whole stuff out - Jehosheba, Jehoiada and co. - seem to have matched their zeal for the temple with a hostility to people.  They smashed the altars to Baal in a commendable and necessary commitment to Yahweh.  But they “stationed doorkeepers at the gates of the Lord’s temple so that no-one who was in any way unclean might enter” (23:19).  Sure, the law did not permit the unclean to enter the temple, but David’s doorkeepers were not charged with this as their primary task - they were there to watch over the treasuries.  The tone of Jehoiada’s charge to the gatekeepers - in focusing exclusively on exclusion - is what worries me, it sounds like he thought his calling was to police access to the Presence.  Now maybe Jehoiada was acting entirely right - I don’t want to read too much into the meaning of a single sentence but I’m conscious that so often a regard for God is matched with a rejection of people.  So often our joy in God is coupled with a judementalism towards others; with a desire to exclude them or disqualify them from the treasures of the kingdom.  So often we think this blessing is for us, but it sure ain’t for them.  But Jesus was not like that.  Jesus did not look to exclude people - he welcomed them in.  He sought out the lost, he walked up to the sick.  He called the sinners down from trees and held banquets with the deprived.  This is our God, this is our call.  He who welcomes any old loser and lavishes them with grace.  That’s what he did with me.  Will I do it for others?  Or will I just police the Presence and turn others from his door?

1 Corinthians 15:50-16:4

This is the Now and the Not Yet.  It’s a phrase I’ve used a lot but have never really bothered to ground in the scriptures.  But here it is.  Christ has been raised (15:20), we are no longer in our sins (15:17), the Spirit works among us giving us gifts (12:11), we have been bought at a price (7:23), our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (6:19),  we were washed, we were sanctified, we were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God (6:11).  From a Jewish perspective none of these things should have happened yet.  All of these things should have come on the one final day of this Age, on the Day of Resurrection, on the Day of the Lord when the world would finally be righted in every possible way.  But we have these treasures now, we enjoy them now, even though that Day has not yet come.  The Day of the Lord has been split in two - Jesus has brought its dawn but the sun has not yet risen.  So we still look forward to everything being made right, to everything being made new.  We look forward to the sound of the trumpet, to the twinkling of an eye when the full promise of the kingdom, the full promise of resurrection will be achieved in us.  Then this body - this temple of the Spirit - will be clothed with immortality.  This heart - washed and sanctified and yet still stung by sin - will finally be victorious over all the powers that attack it.  Our dead relatives, and maybe even ourselves, will be brought out of our tombs, not to pick up life where we left off but to live something much stronger, something much purer something never-ending.  We will live in the new Eden, in a perfect place where the horrific consequences of Adam’s sin can longer be seen.  So what do we do now?  How should we live?  We should look at what is Now, we should look at the Spirit and the cross and the resurrection and rejoice in what we have, be convinced of what we have.  And then we should not let ourselves be moved.  We should give ourselves fully to the work of the Lord, we should spend ourselves in advance of that day, dragging as many people with us into the gates of that Kingdom.  For we know that it is coming, and we know its going to be ace.

Proverbs 20:25-21:4

I believe in the original language 21:2 read something like “All a man’s ways seem right to him but not to his wife”.