Tuesday 6 December

Haggai 1:1-2:23

I had a kind of signet ring but I lost it.  I have a wedding ring but I have a bad rash on my fingers so I can’t wear it.  So the Lord’s promise to Zerubbabel doesn’t really do it for me.  But if I could just get over my issues then it really would.  It was a heck of a promise.  Zerubbabel still had exile hanging over his head.  Everywhere he looked he must have felt deeply inadequate.  He was sitting in the seat of David, he was standing in the place of Solomon and, by comparison, he was rubbish.  In his darker moments Zerubbabel must have looked at his efforts to repopulate Jerusalem and felt deeply ashamed.  On his bad days he must have looked at his puny little band of people and felt like they were just a bit of dirt on the hand of the big kingdoms in the world.  So God spoke to him a word of hope.  Whatever Zerubbabel feels like now, however things look, he can bank on this - that God can shake the nations.  And on the days when Zerubbabel feels insignificant compared to others he can pitch the tent of his identity on this - that God will one day polish him up and put him in pride of place on the finger of his hand.  He will be like God’s chosen signet ring.  And I think you will be too.

2 John 1-13

We don’t talk about truth too much today.  But, despite what Jack Nicholson claimed, it is not because we can’t handle it.  It is more because we don’t really care.  Postmodernism’s beef with truth is that it is slightly irrelevant because it doesn’t make a difference to how I actually feel.  And postmodernism might be right about modernism’s definition of truth (only stuff that can be grounded in material fact, discerned by logic and maybe even proved under a microscope).  But for John, truth was something that you could love people in (v1), that you have living in you (v2), that you can meet God in (v3) and that you can walk in (v4).  Truth in John’s mind is a felt and lived reality - it is not just sums written on a page.  Truth is the glue in relationships and the channels down which love can flow.  Truth is a force that works in you.  Truth is what brings you into the Father and the Son.  So, while we can applaud postmodernism’s rejection of the soulless ‘truth’ of much of the 19th and 20th centuries, we need to beware of jumping on its bandwagon.  We need to care passionately about truth.  We need to advocate for truth and press into truth.  Because only in truth do we find grace, mercy in peace.  Only be remaining in truth do we really remain in God.

Proverbs 29:19-27

“Many seek an audience with a ruler, but it is from the Lord that man gets justice”