Sunday 25 September

Isaiah 60:1-62:12

Does Zion equate to the church?  I think it does.  Paul pretty clearly spells that out in the forgotten chapters of Romans (9-11).  So we see here a vision for the church when it is everything that God wants it to be.  The church has the LORD rising upon it and the glory of the LORD appearing over it.  This is a pretty vivid pointer back to Mount Sinai and to the Tent of Meeting that had the thick cloud thundering and flashing above it.  We should expect and pray for that level of manifestation of God in our midst.  And Isaiah sees the church with all assembled and coming to it - we should expect and pray that all kinds of people will come all kinds of distances to come and be part of our number.  Isaiah also see the church’s heart throbbing and swelling with joy as it looks and is radiant and the wealth of the seas is brought to it.  The church is not a small, struggling organisation that has had its day - it is a potent stronghold of life and resources.  And, as we see in this incredible passage in Isaiah 61, the church is a place of preaching good news and binding up and proclaiming freedom and bringing release and enjoying the favour of God.  The church will comfort and provide and bestow and display his splendour.  The church is not a small thing.  The church is The Thing.  The church is God’s glorious and strong and good provision for the world.  The church is the hope for the nations as it gives away and welcomes in and swells and laughs and points to its Maker.  Let’s believe again in the local church.  Let’s pray again for the local church.  Let’s expect to see rejoicing and redemption in the local church.

Ephesians 4:1-16

I can’t remember the last time I urged someone to do something.  Maybe it was when I urged Lesley to buy me more chocolate.  We don’t tend to go in for ‘urging’ other people to do things - let alone something as potentially guilt-inducing as urging someone to live a life worthy of their calling - so what could have possessed Paul to do it?  I think that there are two main pillars undergirding this urge.  The first pillar is a real desire for God to be given glory.  Paul seems to have been far more obsessed with that than any person I have ever met.  Paul was constantly driven forward by a desire to see Jesus acknowledged as the boss and he pursued this over and above any human sensitivities or norms.  I so much desire to emulate him in this.  The second pillar undergirding Paul’s urging is a near-unlimited expectation of what God can do through people.  His litmus test of success in the Christian life was not about just about clinging on to it until the day you die.  Paul didn’t think the management of a bit of sin and the giving of a bit of time and money was the highest peak of the Christian’s walk.  He actually believed - nay expected - the rank and file would be filled with the whole measure of the fulness of Jesus.  Paul operated on the assumption that every half-wit and rogue who came to his churches would one day be living their lives as if they were Jesus.  Paul saw the fully mature, beautifully holy, staggeringly powerful, overwhelmingly loving, city-changingly effective person that lay inside each and every one of his acquaintances, and he called that person out of them.  Paul’s vision for people was immense.  If we could only get half way towards emulating Paul in this it would have catastrophic consequences for the mundane and ordinary and boring existence that many of us call Christianity.  If we could emulate Paul in his zeal for God’s glory and in his vision for people then we would really see what it is like to live in unity and live well.  I’m making that my prayer for our church.

Proverbs 23:19-28

Buy the truth and do not sell it.