Thursday 8 December

Zechariah 5:1-8:23

Never mind about the flying scroll, the woman in a basket or the four chariots.  I will leave it to others to muse upon those.  What reaches out of this passage and slaps me round the chops is the call to administer true justice, to show mercy and not oppress the marginalised.  We saw yesterday how Zechariah had given us pieces of a jigsaw that gather together into Jesus.  We now see that justice is the ink.  Justice for the poor and mercy to the marginalised must be the currency of the kingdom.  That is what God wants from his people.  That is what he is asking of the church.  In the Vineyard we have a rich heritage in this.  The early Vineyard churches shipped tonnes of food to the hungry.  Current Vineyard churches stretch out their hands to their communities.  If we want to be real about our faith we can’t leave this to others.  If we want to give God what he is asking for then we need to push ourselves to care for the poor among us.  It might be food, it might be friendship, it might be a prayer for healing or advocating for the oppressed.  But whatever it is, it is done for the glory of Jesus, for the sake of Jesus, in response to the request of Jesus.  And if we do it and when we do it we should not be surprised if 10 people cling to our coats and say “let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you”.

Jude 1-25

False teachers.  Unfortunately we can’t deny their existence.  There is too much warning about them for us to pay them no heed.  This letter from Judas (the poor bloke must have loved his name until the awful actions of his namesake in Gethsemane.  I guess its a bit like the bearers of the name “Britney” nowadays) seems to have been written purely to speak into this topic.  False teachers came with a range of messages and a range of intentions but all of them had the same effect - they pulled people away from the most holy faith.  They stopped people praying in the Spirit.  They drained out of people an awareness of the love of God and they distracted people from waiting for the eternal life that Jesus is going to bring.  So Jude spoke against them.  He called people to contend against them.  And that is what we should do.  We can’t just ‘let go and let God’ when it comes to this stuff.  We need to fight for it.  Because as we do so we can be merciful to those who doubt and can snatch others from the fire.  And because it will bring glory to the only God our Saviour. And it will mean we can present ourselves and others before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy.

Psalm 139:17-24

“How precious to me are your thoughts O God”.  I wonder what God is thinking right now.