Thursday 10 November

Ezekiel 19:1-20:44

God acts for the sake of his name.  God shows mercy for the sake of his name.  God deals with Israel for the sake of his name.  Is he just a big head?  Is he just an ambitious self-promoter?  The very thought of it is completely preposterous.  How could God be ambitious? As soon as there was an idea of something great, He would already be it.  No, I think God is so bothered about the sake of his name because when God’s name is hallowed, his kingdom comes.  When God’s name is hallowed, his will is done. The peace of the world depends on God’s lordship being recognised.  When there is doubt over who is in charge, when all sorts of false and foolish idols are looked to for security and hope then the very foundations of the world begin to quiver.  Human hearts need to be anchored to the solid rock.  They need to know who is the boss.  Everything that has been created needs to know who created it and why - or else dischord and disharmony and discontent begin to reign.  There really is no hope for the world when the knowledge and fear of the Lord is not found.  So God acts for the sake of his name.  And it’s a name that is so worthy of respect.

Hebrews 10:1-18

This bit is crucial.  It is actually one of the few places in the whole New Testament where the impotence of the Old Covenant is clearly stated - Paul never says anything as strong as the blood of bull and goats being unable to take away sins (but that doesn’t mean he would have disagreed with it).  But that is the money note.  That is the bit that blows like a warm summer breeze into the crusty frame of dry religion.  We do not rely on our actions to make us clean.  We do not rely on ourselves at all for our salvation.  At the absolute, overly-generous best that would lead to us just scraping through by the seat of our pants.  That would lead to us going through rigid processes time and time again in the fleeting hope that they might just make us not-so-unacceptable.  No, we don’t just scrape through - we have been made perfect.  It is not through our sacrifices but through his one sacrifice.  It is not something that needs to happen time and time again but it has occurred once and for all.  And yet I think that so many of our problems stem from our doubting of this covenant.  So many of our problems stem from thinking about ourselves like bringers of atonement sacrifices and imperfect bumblers who are just trying to scrape by.  We need to listen to the song of the cross. We need to teach our soul to hum that tune.  Because that is where our atonement was achieved and we have been made perfect in His sight.

Psalm 122:1-9

“Jerusalem is built like a city that is closely compacted together”.  It is nice to get an architectural observation in a worship song - you don’t see that very often these days.