Ezekiel 28:1-29:21
It’s the worst sin. It is an unspeakable monstrosity. And yet it won’t get you any jail time. In fact, people may even celebrate you doing it. But it is absolutely, undeniably evil. So what is it? It is the sin of Tyre. It is saying in your heart “I am a god”. It is so heinous because, more than any other sin, it draws attention away from the One True God and puts it on yourself. It is so ruddy awful because it puts everyone around you in a major state of peril. It is like placing a diversion sign just before a chasm, turning all the HGVs and passenger vehicles towards a spindly little twig rather than the steel girdered bridge. Thinking you are a god and acting like you are a god will kill more people than a suicide bomb or a machine gun. Pride is the devil’s most potent weapon. And that is why God hates it. That is why God wants to bring it to a horrible end. So while God’s words about Tyre are undeniably harsh they are, in fact, spiritually beautiful. They are wonderful to read. I really mean that. Because they expose God’s ardent, rampant desire for the good of his world. They twitch and writhe with God’s commitment to his world, to cut out evil and to set up pathways back to hope. He could just blow us all up or leave us to crash into the chasm but his yearning for us is too strong, his desire for our wellbeing is too great. He wants us all to know that He is the LORD our God because in that knowledge is hope. In that knowledge is life.
Hebrews 12:14-29
I think it is really interesting how the writer of Hebrews approaches lifestyle issues. With Paul, everything is pushed back to our identity in Christ - he continually assures us that we are in Christ, that we are a new creation and therefore should live in the new creation kind of way. This writer doesn’t do that. This writer looks at the problems and struggles in this life and then compares them with the problems of the past. This writer always shows how now, under the new covenant, we are so much better off than our forefathers and therefore can’t really complain or make excuses about not living right. And having done that this writer then turns our attention to God. Not so much God in us and who we are in God but who God is in Himself. This writer paints a continually expanding, glorious fresco of the Almighty God of All Ages. You get the idea that this bloke is still so completely overcome by the wonder of it all. You get the idea that this writer bounces up and down on his chair and then flings himself face-down, awestruck like the thousands upon thousands of angels in his vision. You get the idea that this writer sees himself continually standing in bold trepidation upon the most holy ground of the City of the Living God, always edging closer to the judge of all men, hearing the cry of welcome and yet daring only edge forward all the same. You get the idea that this writer is continually putting down his pen to weep and to spread-eagle himself again at the wonder of it all. He knows his God is a consuming fire. He knows his God spoke and the whole earth shook. And, as he sees that, as he thinks on that, he knows with joy and certainty that all he wants to do is cling to his God and give himself to his God and worship his God. It is when we lose sight of God that the pain in our calling seems the biggest. I know what I want to be looking at today.
Psalm 126:1-6
He who goes out weeping... will return with songs of joy.
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