Isaiah 41:1-42:25
He will take hold of our hand and keep us and will make us a covenant for the people; a light for the gentiles. That is what he said shortly after calling Israel a worm (41:14). I like the impossible nature of that image. Worms don’t have arms. Israel had no hold on God. Worms just grub around in dirt. Israel just squirmed around in darkness. But the LORD stepped in to confound the impossible. The LORD took the hand of the worm and made the grubby wriggler into a shining light of hope to the nations. That is what he has done with us. We had no intention of reaching out to him, we had no capacity to reach out to him and yet he came and reached out to us. And he didn’t just reach out to us so that we could do a job for him that he really didn’t fancy doing himself. No, he reached out to us and keeps hold of it, desiring intimacy and relationship with us. He holds our hand forever, offering strength and support and protection and love. He doesn’t give us a to do list and kick us out of the door to get on with it but rather he trains us and empower us and cajoles us and encourages us to be all that we have dreamed of and more. He makes us useful and valuable and life-giving and significant. He makes us a saving force for good in a world of bitterness and pain. He stands with us and together we do things we never could have believed were possible. We were worms but now we are beloved and nurtured children. We grubbed around in darkness but now we are co-labourers and co-heirs with Christ, bringing hope and peace and grace and transformation to the world.
Galatians 3:10-25
When someone says “brothers, let me take an example from everyday life” my soul is lifted. My heart beats a little faster in anticipation of an illustration that will shed new light on an issue. I wait in hope that God’s word will be packaged up for me ready to be applied in my world today. So verses 16 to 22 are a bitter disappointment. What the heck is he talking about? And where on earth is his example from everyday life?? All in all these verses read like Paul has been smoking some ganja and is just spouting random phrases one after the next. We could spend ages drilling into this passage and working out the exact meaning of every word - and there would be immense benefit in doing so - but for now I’d rather just grab the big picture and press on. And I think the big picture is provided in verse 23 - showing the shocking extent of God’s work for us. All of us, no matter how good or devout or brilliant are prisoners in a cage. We can decorate our cage wonderfully and arrange a great sense of community but we will still be in the cage. We will still be trapped. And so God, in his amazing goodness, not only arranges for Jesus to jimmy the lock but also for the law - or for our sense of conscience - to usher us towards the open door. This is a valuable insight. It shows that humanity is so debased that it wouldn’t even recognise the cage it is in if it wasn’t for the gracious work of God. Satan has blinded our eyes so much that we think we are doing OK, we think there is no major issue that can’t be sorted out by a healthy dose of good will. It is his major ploy to suggest the cage ain’t there. So we shouldn’t be surprised when people tell us this or when we are tempted to think it ourselves. In those times we just go back to our conscience, to the accusing finger of the law and we recognise again that things are broken, that we really are trapped and we really do need escape. And then we see the immensity of what Jesus offers - the huge exhilaration of walking out of that prison door and into the fullness of freedom of eternal life.
Proverbs 22:28-23:9
Do not wear yourself out to get rich
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