Jeremiah 40:7-42:22
Don’t be a Johanan; don’t second-guess God. It is something we all have a propensity to do and I am foremost among us. We come to God and say “whether it is favourable or unfavourable, we will obey the LORD our God... so that it will go well with us”. And we really mean it. But then the LORD says “remain in this land” and it just doesn’t sound like the ‘radical’ call to obedience that we had started to set our hearts upon. And if we truly examine our hearts we will realise that we had started to believe that what we really needed was not obedience to God but a change in circumstances - not pressing in but moving on. I have found this to be a huge hindrance in my faith. This has been a major sin of mine that I deeply mourn. It is, at root, a doubting of the goodness and the power of God. It makes us think that what we really need (and therefore what God must be really calling us to) is a move of church, a new home group, a new house, a different job, to get married or to get divorced or a hundred other things like that. And most of the time they are us second-guessing God, us putting words into the mouth of God that we want Him to repeat back to us. But he doesn’t do that. He is not like that. And that is why community is so important. The bible makes it clear that we can find Jeremiahs in every church today. The Spirit pours out expressions of the grace of God to equip and build up the church, and one of these expressions is prophecy. Prophecy - the direct voice of God into our situation - is crucial for us if we are going to stop second-guessing God. And prophecy is only really found in community. So let’s press into community and let’s eagerly desire the gift of prophecy. Because we don’t want to end up like Johanan.
1 Timothy 4:1-16
There are some verses in here that are so good you could put them in red pants and a cape and people would call them a super-hero. 4:4 is enormous in its scope. 4:8 could inspire a life-time of value. Verses 9 and 10 are obviously important because they are flagged up in Paul’s little way “here is a trustworthy saying...”. And there are many others. But I want to focus on 4:13 because I think it has something prophetic to speak into the broader church today and, possibly, into SWLV. “Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of scripture, to preaching and to teaching”. I fear that preaching and teaching and the bible in general is in danger of being maligned today. I fear that we have begun to think that being Spirit-led will walk us away from sermons and that being Spirit-filled will lead us to worship rather than the word. I believe that Paul and Timothy and - yes even Jesus himself - would doggedly stand against that. Right alongside a reference to a ministry time that seems to have changed the life of Timothy, Paul commands him before any other corporate activity to read the bible and to preach. And so while we must follow the call of the bible and continue to make space for the giving of prophecies and the laying on of hands and sung worship we must take especial care to keep the bible foremost and teaching primary. Is that what we do in our house group? Is that what we do in our Vineyard Kid room? Is that what we do in our life? The bible is what leaders are called to promote. Because it is the Spirit-inspired, Spirit-filled book of life.
Proverbs 25:11-20
Am I missing something or would you actually want an apple of gold? Surely you’d just break your teeth on it?
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