Thursday 17 March

Numbers 5:11-6:27

I don’t know about you but I think I’m going to let this “test for an unfaithful wife” slip down the side of my bible-study-sofa and remain there, never to be thought of again.  This Nazirite stuff though, for me, is one of the best bits of the whole old testament.  I just love the idea of these half-crazed radicals mooching around Israel, wafting their long, unkempt locks here, there and everywhere.  You’d have to be close to crazy to even consider being a Nazirite - looking like a maniac, giving up booze, giving up grapes and raisins, giving up spending time around dead bodies.  This last bit in particular is interesting as it places devotion to God even above the cultural obligation to bury close relatives and thereby brings into stark relief the Nazirites single-minded pursuit of holiness over and above all other ties.  I think the church and the Vineyard has had its fair share of Nazirites in recent years.  People who have given up good and enjoyable things in their frenzied search for holiness.  I deeply appreciate such people, people who push me to treasure holiness more, to be more willing to sacrifice all for the single greatest prize of intimacy with Christ.  They help me continually re-adjust my perspective on the world.  I pray that we will see more and more Chritians with the spirit of the Nazirite emerging across our church.

Luke 2:1-20

We see in the angels’ song the twin goals of the birth of God on earth.  These two things are so deeply entwined that it is impossible to separate them no matter how determined you are.  The first is the glorification of God.  This is glorification, not in the literal sense of deposits of glory actually being passed to God such that his stock of glory is increased.  He already has all glory that has ever existed wrapped up in the cloak of his being and the glory that we humans give is woefully insignificant by comparison with that.  No, we can never make God bigger or more famous or enhance his being in any way at all.  This glorification is rather a recognition among the created that the creator is, and always has been, the highest, the most brilliant and the most powerful being that could ever have existed.  Glorification is people and angels and all living things coming to their senses to acknowledge what has always been the truth about God.  But embedded within this glorification and, which makes the glorification all the greater, is the fact that wherever the truth of God is acknowledged, peace will reign.  God’s character is so endowed with goodness, it is soaked so richly in generosity that to realise who he is to benefit yourself.  To spend time acknowledging God is to spend time bringing favour upon yourself.  This is not the crass form of favour that focusses on health, wealth and happiness but a truly divine favour that imparts knowledge and instills hope.  Where this is true in every place that truth is revealed, it is brought to a monstrous and climactic pinnacle in the birth of Jesus, the direct revelation of truth on earth.  As people who have seen and who can testify to the reality of Jesus in our life, our days are now defined by the twin goals of glory to God and peace to humanity.  To focus on one in the absense of the other would be to step away from the biblical witness and the nature of this good news of great joy.

Proverbs 7:6-20

As fun as this sex-fest would have been, the writer of the proverbs is clear (although, a bit like an episode of 24, we have to wait 4 days to find this out); indulging your sexual desires with someone other than your spouse is like a deer choosing to step into a noose or a bird choosing to dart into a snare

Wednesday 16 March

Numbers 4:1-5:10

God bless those sea cows!  Who would have imagined that such an undignified looking animal would end up being used in so sacred a place?  The thrust of this section is the holiness of God and a further reminder of the great lengths that humans must go to to make this impossible relationship work.  Like trying to store molten lava in a piece of tupperware, there are layers upon layers of precautions and protections that need to be in place to even begin to make this interaction work.  Indeed 8,580 people spend their whole lives trying to maintain the precipitous state of God living among his people.  It is really quite amazing to compare the size of the industry that was essential for facilitating indirect relationship with God under the old covenant and the complete, unbridled, direct relationship that each and every person can have with God under the new covenant.  When Paul talks about the riches of God’s grace, you can really see that riches doesn’t even get the half of it!  Oh that we in the church could grasp the sheer reckless superabundance of what God has made available to us.

Luke 1:57-80

I don’t think I’ve ever bothered reading Zechariah’s song before.  I don’t know why the editors call it a song as the text actually says it was a prophecy.  Maybe it was a prophetic song? If so, I’d love to know how Zechariah sung it.  I’m sure there must have been some guitars in there somewhere, and a nice syncopated rhythm.  But, now I come to think of it, as Zechariah hadn’t spoken for nigh on 12 months, maybe it just came out like a tiny little squeak that he embarrassingly had to write down later.  I fear it’s one of those mysteries of the kingdom that will not be disclosed until we know fully even as we are fully known.  This song is fascinating as it shows how John’s ministry was not only disclosed to his father in advance but was also accepted by him as being a thoroughly Jewish ministry in continuation of God’s promises to Abraham.  This is significant as it shows that Luke affirms the call and promises of the Old Testament and builds an understanding of John from those Hebrew scriptures.  This is why bible in a year is so helpful - it begins to construct for us the beginnings of an understanding of what people like Zechariah were expecting from God so that, when we see Jesus appearing, we can understand him in his own context and be less likely to impose upon him our own Western, 21st Century opinions.  The two themes that define Zechariah’s understanding of God - salvation and mercy.  Salvation and mercy have always been God’s business and they always will be.  Let’s step up and ensure they are absolutely the church’s business as well.

Psalm 34:11-22

Even under the old covenant people saw that “no one will be condemned who take refuge in (God)”.  What a wonderful thing.  I want to continue to grasp for myself and convey to others this complete lack of condemnation that is found in Him.  It really is an astonishingly refreshing thing to get hold of.

Tuesday 15 March

Numbers 2:10-3:51

Lots of skim reading today and some super-crazy arithmetic switchy-swatchying the Levites for the first-borns.  I find that a fascinating idea, although the inspiration is not hitting and my tired brain is struggling to grapple with it properly. I suspect it should be crying out to me about God’s willingness to redeem people from death by providing something of his own as a substitute for them.  I should probably also be amazed by the generosity of God that he would allow the redemption money paid to him to be enjoyed by the Levites rather than burnt up or destroyed in some particular way.  It does seem to be quite an interesting picture of God working out the tension between his demand for justice and his desire to generously bestow his riches upon his people.  Even when God is placing exacting requests upon his people he is finding a way to turn those obligations into a blessing for others.  It seems that this is the economy of God; as we give what we owe others richly benefit.  How much more must God spread the love when we choose to go beyond our obligations and give simply out of the gratitude of our hearts.

Luke 1:39-56

I love the way Mary breaks into a Glee-style musical number in the midst of a ante-natal conversation with Elizabeth.  I suspect this is another one of those things that makes us feel that Mary’s experience is grossly detached from our own.  But, as we said yesterday, that would be a terrible shame.  This time round of reading Luke I’m really striving to ground every single verse in my everyday life.  I want to imagine myself meeting a friend or a relative and seeing all that God is doing in them and calling it out and celebrating it.  I want to think of myself spontaneously thanking God for how good he has been to me and reveling in the gloriousness of his character.  And, most of all, I want to recognise and drub into the core of my soul the deep conviction that God is close, that God is working out his purposes, that God is ambushing person after person to capture them up into his will and that he is doing that in me and through me, morning after morning, lunch-break after lunch-break, KFC after KFC...

Psalm 34:1-10

I think this is the only time I have ever seen “when he pretended to be insane” in the credits to a worship song.  I just can’t believe the sheer audacity of David, that he would dare to claim “those who seek the Lord are radiant, their faces are never covered with shame” while, at that very moment, he is gibbering around pretending to have less sense than a chimp dressed in underpants.  Maybe he has a different definition of shame from us?  

Monday 14 March

Numbers 1:1-2:9

I don’t think I’ve ever envied anyone less than Moses on this first day of the second month of the second year after they came out of Egypt.  I can imagine his joy when the Lord called him into the tent of meeting and his utter dejection when he was told he had to count by name every single male Israelite who was over the age of 20.  Scholars have long wondered how it could have taken Israel 40 years to cross the Sinai wilderness but now that mystery is solved - 32 of those 40 years were spent sitting around while Moses called out 603,550 names from a clipboard.  I don’t think there is anything significant about how many there are in each tribe other than to note that Judah, who received Jacob’s blessing of the first-born, now has the bragging rights and that God’s is giving Abraham as many offspring as stars in the sky.  We have so far seen God’s redemption narrative ebbing and flowing, we’ve seen it going through triumph and tedium but there can be no mistaking it - God’s story is being written, his purposes are being accomplished and he is coming good on every promise that he has ever made to his people.

Luke 1:26-38

What I love about Luke’s gospel is that he has just said how he is writing an orderly, almost scientific account of Jesus’ life and then he slips in the phrase “God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth” as if it were no more unusual than popping to the shops for some groceries.  His birth narrative continues with miraculous event after miraculous event and each time Luke’s brow seems remarkably unfurrowed by the supernatural explanations that are creeping into his account.  Indeed, you could be forgiven for suggesting that Luke’s account is not merely infiltrated by the occasional supernatural happening but that the entire edifice is constructed upon the slightly gullible conviction that supernatural events can and do occur.  And this is the bare-faced-cheek of our faith and the thing that we must doggedly cling to - that these angelic visitations and this miraculous stuff is not just an other-worldly religious hang-up but is the meat and drink of living in this desk-by-8am, gym-by-7pm, pinot grigiot-drinking, sushi-eating world that we see around us.  This is the message that we receive from Luke and that we pass on to those around us; that this is God’s world and that every single moment, every single breath is in itself a miracle of his grace to us.  And that God, if he is able to create and sustain such a world as this, can be relied upon to do absolutely anything he desires.  We are not bound by the limitations of the visible but we live in the knowledge that nothing is beyond the ability of God.

Psalm 33:12-22

So often I focus on me seeking God and trying to find him but the truth is that he spends his time watching me and keeping his eye on everything I do.  And that is a deeply reassuring thing.

Sunday 13 March

Leviticus 26:14-27:34

This final section of Leviticus (not that I’m delighting in the fact that it has finished, of course) starts to sound a little more like a book of prophecy than a book of law.  The reward for obedience outlined yesterday is diametrically opposed to the punishment for disobedience that is outlined today.  What is fascinating is that while God has regularly prescribed the death penalty for a ream of personal sins, he just doesn’t seem to have the same appetite when it comes to disobedience on a corporate level.  God layers five levels of disobedience on top of each other - “if you will not listen...if after this you will not listen...” and at each level you think that it surely must the end of the game but each time when the punishment is meted out, the covenant relationship is still left standing.  There is something significant in this.  God’s covenant and his mercies seem to be applied not at the individual level but to the people as a whole.  God seems perfectly willing to change the exact make-up of the people - with presumptuous individuals and stiff-necked generations being swapped out for humble aliens and God-seeking foreigners - but God is not so flexible when it comes to his people; the whole Israel project could never be abandoned (at least at this point in the story).  So here is the challenge for us.  How ingrained in us is the idea that it is the whole church that God is deeply impassioned for?  How much do we see ourselves relating to God as one of a people rather than just as an individual?  It is certainly true that God loves us and has wonderful plans for our lives but the biblical focus is on God’s love for Israel and his love for the church, on his plans to come into the midst of Israel and come into the midst of his church.  In our individualistic society I think it is crucial that we cling doggedly to the biblical teaching that we are in this together with others and God’s desire is to see us all, together, moving deeper into him.

Luke 1:1-25

It’s useful to remember that each of the gospel writers has organised the material about Jesus in a certain way to make certain points.  Matthew shows has Jesus embodying all that Israel was meant to be and then defining the new Israel as the followers of “the Way”.  Mark seems to me to be a missionary pamphlet possibly used by Paul to give a flavour of Jesus to the gentile churches - no nonsense in style and arresting in content.  Luke pretty much nails his colours to the mast at the kick off of his gospel.  He says that he assumes knowledge of Jesus and a seeking of God and is aiming to bring certainty and clarity to a developing faith.  We would therefore expect his gospel to be very carefully considered in tone and lay-out, alert to the various ideas that are flying around and tackling them by showing the true emphasis of Jesus.  I love the fact that each gospel brings its own slightly different slant to things.  Some people point to the slight discrepancies these slants inevitably bring but I think that is disingenuous.  We have a bible that is so rich in character and so diverse in approach that every personality type seems to be represented.  Praise God, and I mean really praise God that we don’t have a rigid, uniform, expression of the divine but a varied and liberating mishmash of thoughts and ideas and language and intentions all of which together somehow allude to the awesome majestic creative nature of our God.

Proverbs 7:1-5

If you ever worry that you are preaching at your children then take heart! If you haven’t elastic banded pages of the bible to their digits then you have not gone as proverbs suggests!

Saturday 12 March

Leviticus 25:1-26:13

Yet more on the Sabbath here - I really must think about that properly at some point - but more captivating is the concept of the Year of Jubilee.  If my hair was a little longer and my clothes a little baggier I may be tempted to say this concept is totally gnarly man (according to the urban dictionary gnarly is when you have gone like so totally beyond radical).  At it’s root the Year of Jubilee seems to codify and smash down into economic reality the idea that were are but tenants on God’s land.  I know it is a long way from our current economic experience and seems more than a little alien but, coming as it does as the culmination of the legislation of Leviticus, I think we can consider the concept of the Year of Jubilee to be pretty majorly important to the Lord.  His desire is plainly laid out here - he wants his people to organise their buying and selling in such a way that it is simultaneously an act of compassion towards others and an act of worship towards him.  It’s another example of the enthralling and terrifying freedom that he has given to us as his people.  It’s awe inspiring and reassuring that God wants “no man to be left behind” in our economic progress but is is discomforting verging on haunting that he holds us responsible for making sure this is so.

Mark 16:1-20

I love the idea that Mark’s gospel originally ended at verse 8.  The descriptions of Jesus’ followers in the run up to this finale are “alarmed”, “trembling and bewildered” and “afraid”.  Isn’t that how we should feel when we realise what we are actually dealing with in Jesus?  I don’t think we should expect to be able to glide smoothly through a faith that confounds everything that we know about life and which calls us to chuck a hunk of wood on our back and freely walk towards a hill where we can be nailed to it.  I think I need a bit more fear and trembling in my faith. Fear that I am dealing with a power so great that even the slightest drop of it could scatter me to the ends of the earth and trembling that the my miserable contribution is being regarded as valuable for the cause.  Having made my way to that state of mind, I’ve no doubt that verses 9-20 are also authentic even though they slightly change the feel of the ending.  They have more triumph in them, more of a guide as to what the empowered church is meant to be doing and what the result of their activity will be.  We need to the feel of both endings in tension with one another.  We must always be focused on mission, on empowered speaking and dynamic praying, but at the same time we must cling to trembling reverence and fearful focus on Jesus.  He is the one who reassures us.  He is the one who soothes us and comforts us.  He is the only one of us who holds all this stuff together.  But he does all of this not just for our sake, but for the sake of our world.

Psalm 33:1-11

I’m sure it is down to my huge level of ignorance but I just can’t seem to imagine someone plucking tranquilly at their harp and then breaking at every coda to summon-up a mighty roar to the Lord.  They just seem so incongruous. Maybe that is where the ten-stringed lyre came in.  Maybe that was the distorted electric guitar of David's day?

Friday 11 March

Leviticus 23:1-24:23

Aargh! I was all jacked up ready to talk about the Sabbath (which seems to be mentioned nearly every second page - an interesting indication of its importance) and then this grisly stoning episode comes in and hogs all the attention.  Well, let’s start on the easier bits; first of all, it is very reassuring that God wants there to be “the same law for the alien and the native-born”.  This is exactly the sort of thing I expect from God - exposing and challenging my tendency to have one rule for people who are like me and another for those who seem strange or unfamiliar.  Secondly, it is reassuring that stoning is a highly restricted practice, only being used in the case of the most heinous crimes and only in a corporate manner rather than through lynch mobs or the like. Thirdly, there would have been no prisons in this nomadic community so stoning, or some form of execution, would have been one of very few options for ensuring serious offenders didn’t pose a threat to the rest of the community.  Fourthly, and this may be something that starts to slide into the “more difficult” category, death was a punishment that had been prescribed by the Lord well in advance of this particular act and therefore could not be criticised as being an angry over-reaction or the result of a particular whim.  All of which has layed some positive context for tackling the question of “how can I worship a God who tells people to stone someone?”.  Well, I guess it is one to seriously chew on.  Another thing to chew on would be “how can I worship a God who lets people act however they want?”.  At the end of the day, there are spread across the whole of the Old Testament so many examples of God acting in grace that I feel I can relax, content in the knowledge that God is good.  But, even if that were not my conclusion it would not change the fact that God is God and he can do whatever he ruddy well wants.

Mark 15:33-47

I don’t know what to say about this.  It just seems really, really sad.  I remember seeing my grandfather’s body being carried out in a coffin at his funeral and that was fairly eyeball-scarring.  The thought of Jesus, the Lord of Life’s, body wrapped in cloth, being carried away and put in a cave is almost completely overwhelming.  I know it had to happen and I know that unbelievable amounts of goodness came out of it but it still just seems so throat-chokingly sad.

Psalm 32:1-11

This is a good, robust, sound-bitable psalm.  A really great one for coming back to and using in prayer times.