Wednesday 28 December

Nehemiah 9:1-37

This could have saved us a whole heap of time.  I feel like the pupil who has spent hours reading the whole of A Passage to India only to find that everyone else has just watched the film.  If only I had known that the crib sheet for the history of the Old Testament was here in Nehemiah I could have skipped out that trudging through Jeremiah, that wading through 1 Chronicles and that slogging through Leviticus.  But then again using other people’s summaries is never a good way to go.  As my professor always used to tell me at university - you have got to read the primary text.  So, as we approach the end of the Old Testament, I feel like I need to start constructing my own potted history of God.  I need to start speaking with God about what He has done, and how my ancestors have responded, and how I now fit in.  There seems to be a huge amount of intimacy, and of reverence, in consciously placing my pin in the enormous atlas of redemption.  Praying in this way helps me personalise my faith and take ownership of my identity in Christ.  It helps me see I am just a drop of water in the torrent of history.  It helps me appreciate the aching grossness of my refusal to listen to Him.  He alone is the great God.  He alone is from everlasting to everlasting.  And to speak with Him is sensational.  To be forgiven by Him is sublime.  And to be saved by Him is indescribably good.  The more I read, the more I realise this.  It can sometimes feel like hard work.  But reading the Book really does beat the film.

Revelation 19:11-21

Never again.  That was the refrain from yesterday.  Never again will Babylon be found.  Never again will a lamp shine in her.  Never again will she lead the nations astray.  It is worth lingering a while on that ‘never’.  We get so used to the ugly runt head of the devil popping up in our lives that it can be hard to believe that a time is coming when it will never happen again.  The Word of God is continuing relentlessly with the annihilation of evil.  The birds of the air will gorge on its flesh.  I say again that this is worth a linger; a sure and certain conviction that evil will be ravaged would be more than a little portion of our daily bread.  To know that evil’s days are numbered would inspire us, it would embolden us, it would help us stand firm.  And we can know that it is true because it is already happening.  This takes us back to what I said right at the start of Revelation - this is not so much a prophecy about the future as a revelation of the Now.  The word of God is already dressed in a robe that has been dipped in the blood.  The armies of heaven are at this moment white and clean.  KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS has already summoned the birds, he has already started treading out the winepress.  He started in on the cross.  He started it at Calvary.  Every time we see an addiction overcome, every time we see a healing occur, every time we see someone filled with the Spirit or forgiven of their sins or growing in love or standing firm in trial - every time we see these things we see the victory of Faithful and True, we see the two being thrown into the fiery lake.  Jesus is doing his thing.  Our world is being redeemed.  It is an awesome thing to behold.  It is an amazing thing to see.

Psalm 148:7-14

Let them praise the name of the Lord.