Saturday 17 September

Isaiah 41:1-42:25

He will take hold of our hand and keep us and will make us a covenant for the people; a light for the gentiles.  That is what he said shortly after calling Israel a worm (41:14).  I like the impossible nature of that image.  Worms don’t have arms.  Israel had no hold on God.  Worms just grub around in dirt.  Israel just squirmed around in darkness.  But the LORD stepped in to confound the impossible.  The LORD took the hand of the worm and made the grubby wriggler into a shining light of hope to the nations.  That is what he has done with us.  We had no intention of reaching out to him, we had no capacity to reach out to him and yet he came and reached out to us.  And he didn’t just reach out to us so that we could do a job for him that he really didn’t fancy doing himself.  No, he reached out to us and keeps hold of it, desiring intimacy and relationship with us.  He holds our hand forever, offering strength and support and protection and love.  He doesn’t give us a to do list and kick us out of the door to get on with it but rather he trains us and empower us and cajoles us and encourages us to be all that we have dreamed of and more.  He makes us useful and valuable and life-giving and significant.  He makes us a saving force for good in a world of bitterness and pain.  He stands with us and together we do things we never could have believed were possible.  We were worms but now we are beloved and nurtured children.  We grubbed around in darkness but now we are co-labourers and co-heirs with Christ, bringing hope and peace and grace and transformation to the world.

Galatians 3:10-25

When someone says “brothers, let me take an example from everyday life” my soul is lifted.  My heart beats a little faster in anticipation of an illustration that will shed new light on an issue.  I wait in hope that God’s word will be packaged up for me ready to be applied in my world today.  So verses 16 to 22 are a bitter disappointment.  What the heck is he talking about?  And where on earth is his example from everyday life??  All in all these verses read like Paul has been smoking some ganja and is just spouting random phrases one after the next.  We could spend ages drilling into this passage and working out the exact meaning of every word - and there would be immense benefit in doing so - but for now I’d rather just grab the big picture and press on.  And I think the big picture is provided in verse 23 - showing the shocking extent of God’s work for us.  All of us, no matter how good or devout or brilliant are prisoners in a cage.  We can decorate our cage wonderfully and arrange a great sense of community but we will still be in the cage.  We will still be trapped.  And so God, in his amazing goodness, not only arranges for Jesus to jimmy the lock but also for the law - or for our sense of conscience - to usher us towards the open door.  This is a valuable insight.  It shows that humanity is so debased that it wouldn’t even recognise the cage it is in if it wasn’t for the gracious work of God.  Satan has blinded our eyes so much that we think we are doing OK, we think there is no major issue that can’t be sorted out by a healthy dose of good will.  It is his major ploy to suggest the cage ain’t there.  So we shouldn’t be surprised when people tell us this or when we are tempted to think it ourselves.  In those times we just go back to our conscience, to the accusing finger of the law and we recognise again that things are broken, that we really are trapped and we really do need escape.  And then we see the immensity of what Jesus offers - the huge exhilaration of walking out of that prison door and into the fullness of freedom of eternal life.

Proverbs 22:28-23:9

Do not wear yourself out to get rich

Friday 16 September

Isaiah 38:1-40:31

Here is your God!  But he is not really here.  He is too great to be summed up in a few words, no matter how poetic and glorious.  To whom can you compare God?  How can you fashion a way of speaking about him that is not woefully under-representative of his eternal existence?  We are all men (and women) too poor to present such an offering.  We all furnish ourselves with thrones but only his is above the circle of the earth.  We all form ourselves some sort of space but only he formed the heavens, only he stretched out all visible matter like a canopy.  We all exert some sort of influence on others but only he sweeps away prime ministers like chaff.  He has never learnt from anyone or even learnt anything at all - he has always held all knowledge and understanding within himself.  He has never been enlightened or grown in any way - he has always defined impeccable perfection from everlasting to everlasting.  The great cacophony of cultures and places that we love to visit on this earth amount to just the tiniest drop in his bucket.  Every headland and continent is just like a tiny piece of dust so insignificant that he doesn’t even bother recalibrating his scales when they land on them.  None of us even gets close to being equal with him.  He is completely unaffected by our existence - he is neither greater or less or richer or poorer for us being around.  Every single star adds not a single jot to his being or his immensity.  And yet he carries us like lambs close to his heart, he gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.  Here is our God, speaking tenderly to his people.

Galatians 2:11-3:9

As always with Paul, the question he is answering is not so much “how can I be saved?” as “who are we?”.  If we approach this passage looking only for an answer to the first question then we miss out on some exquisite treats.  Paul starts by saying that we are justified by putting our faith in Jesus Christ.  That is pretty incredible.  That talks about how the verdict over us is changed from guilty to innocent.  But what is next?  What do we do now?  That is what seems to have got the Galatians, and even Peter, in a pickle.  They knew they had been justified but they didn’t quite know what that meant about how they should live.  I think the vast majority of Christians live in that place - mildly grateful that they have been forgiven of their sin but shuffling their feet in slight bemusement about what they are ‘meant to do’ next.  Paul can get our shuffling feet leaping and advancing with this dynamite, crack-a-jack phrase - “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me”.  Paul is saying that the gospel is not just about something that has been done for us but is about something that has been done to us.  We have been killed off.  A new us has been formed within.  And the captain of this new us is not us but Christ.  We have been completely and utterly changed.  So our question is not “what am I meant to be doing?” but rather “what does this new me act like?”.  Paul calls for us to really know who we are, to go back to all the questions we asked ourselves and came to conclusions upon while we were growing up and to ask them again and to come to new conclusions on them.  Our lives have been completely redefined by the death of Jesus and by the presence of Jesus in us.  If we grasp that, then our lives will be filled with goodness.

Psalm 107:33-43

...consider the great love of the Lord

Thursday 15 September

Isaiah 36:1-37:38

It seems that the Lord can read the scrawlings of Assyrians.  Hezekiah spread out before God the Assyrian King’s letter and it was as good as read by the Lord.  I suspect that the Lord knew exactly what it said even before Sennacherib wrote it, let alone before Hezekiah spread it out, but the point is that he chose to act once Hezekiah took it to him in prayer.  This is the towering mercy of our God.  He made heaven and earth, he is the LORD Almighty - the omnipotent one who can do any thing, any time, to any one in any way that He wants.  And he chose to act on behalf of Israel, to send the Assyrians packing and then to slaughter 185,000 of the ones who were supposedly going to attack and destroy his land.  I think He did that just to prove His point.  No matter how strong or determined the forces against us seem to be, they barely even begin to cause a hint of trouble to our God.  A few scratches of a king’s quill upon a papyrus scroll may have us quivering in our boots but it hardly has the Lord flustered.  Nothing can rival his power.  Nothing can put his control in jeopardy.  The most ferocious assault on us is, before God, just like a paper aeroplane thrown at the sun.  He can burn it up without even thinking about it.  He proved that at Calvary.  He vanquished the final enemy of death.  He bound Satan and he will throw him into the eternal fire.  Our God is flipping awesome.  We need to get him bigger in our eyes.  We need to know that we can just lay our most troubling problems before him in prayer and he will act with ferocious power and mercy.  God has the universe in his hands (and there is still space for 10,000 more universes alongside it).  And God has got our backs.

Galatians 2:1-10

Paul seems to betray a lack of regard for the other apostles.  He describes them as “those who seemed to be important” and “reputed pillars” and says they “added nothing to my message”.  And, in truth, Paul did not have much respect for the other apostles, not compared to his respect for Jesus. That was his whole point.  In this passage Paul is continuing the argument that he begun yesterday - that his gospel is not something to be messed with by people because it came from One God.  Paul doesn’t care a fig whether people like or dislike what he says, whether they abuse him or love him for it - he is never going to change his message because it is a message he has been given by one far more lofty than he will ever be.  Anyone who comes along and preaches a modified gospel or an ‘updated’ message must be false because they are denying the superiority of the One who gave the message.  And so we come back to that theme which seems to be all over the place at the moment - that God is dreadfully massive.  That God is several hundred leagues above even the most brilliant of people.  All of us are just humble beggars before him with nothing of substance to offer except what he has given to us.  And so we turn to poor - fellow beggars before the immense and matchless Prince of All Ages.  We regard ourselves as superior or inferior to no other human but regard all humans as unspeakably inferior to Him.  This is His story, we just tell it on His behalf.

Psalm 107:23-32

“they were at their wits’ end...”  they're not the only ones...

Wednesday 14 September

Isaiah 33:1-35:10

We can’t keep on ignoring it.  Thus far there has always been something else significant to focus on but it comes to a point when we start to buy into heresy.  So, here we go with the reckless abandon of a bunji-jumper.  At the core of Israel’s understanding of the future coming of the Kingdom was the concept of vengeance, of divine retribution.  He is a mighty warrior who will burn people as if to lime and will soak mountains with blood. That sounds a bit ferocious really.  It sounds a little dangerous.  But that doesn’t mean we can deny it.  It is what God has chosen to say about himself.  However, it is important that we understand it properly, that we understand the context of it.  God’s retributive action is not just for the sake of it.  It is not just because he enjoys butchering helpless little mortals; it is because he wants to save his people.  He is not just ferocious, he is a ferocious rescuer.  I think many of our issues with swallowing this aspect of the teaching of the bible is that we have not properly digested previous aspects.  Have we really accepted that we are in a terrible calamity, that we are held hostage in a hostile and aggressive world with a powerful foe who is out to savage us and destroy us.  If we had digested that we would be delighted that Our God is going to descend in judgement on our accusers and abusers.  We would rejoice that he will stretch out the measuring line of chaos and the plumb-line of desolation.  Evil is real, it really does assault us.  We need to be rescued.  And that leads us on to Galatians...

Galatians 1:1-24

Jesus gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age.  Our world is still defined by evil.  We stand with both Isaiah and Paul on that one.  It doesn’t mean that there is not good in it or that the people around us are altogether wicked but rather that something dreadful and something ruthlessly sinister is in charge around here, corrupting all that is good and working with evil intent.  And in Galatians, Paul is at extreme pain to stress that there is only one true rescue route, there is only one true means of escape.  And that route is the gospel of Jesus Christ, who followed the will of our God and Father by sacrificing himself to free us from this present evil age.  The Galatians were making out that this wasn’t really the case.  They were suggesting that Jesus was not in fact the real escape route or at least, not the only one.  They were suggesting that Paul had been hood-winked by some of the other apostles or that he had changed his message about how to be rescued because he thought the ‘Jesus-story’ might hold more appeal to Greeks.  I read these exact same suggestions in a paper this week.  At their root they assume that the authority behind the bible and the teaching of Paul is human.  They assume that culture or expediency dictates our message.  But we must resist these suggestions.  Paul absolutely refutes any such claim.  He stresses that no man convinced him of this message and (as we saw in Corinthians) he does not change his tune just because people react badly.  No, Paul is utterly convinced that there is only one rescue route from evil because Jesus himself told him so.  If we mess with the teachings of the bible or try to re-draw the claims of Jesus then it is Jesus himself who we are denying, it is Jesus himself who we are usurping.  This stuff all comes from Jesus and this stuff all points to Jesus.  He alone can transform us and he alone can rescue us.  He alone gives us grace and peace.

Psalm 107:10-22

He has brought us out of darkness.  He has broken away our chains.

Tuesday 13 September

Isaiah 30:19-32:20

Several characteristics of the time that was ahead of Isaiah but is available to us (albeit not in its full consummated form) - a voice behind us will tell us “this is the way, walk in it” (30:21).  It would be easier if the voice was in front of us and attached to a face but that is not the way that it works.  We should expect to hear the voice though.  We will throw away our false fancies like.. well....ahem... dirty tampons (30:22).  I guess that is about as vivid an image as is necessary.  We should be in a time of purity and hatred of spiritual uncleanness.  The food of the land will be rich and plentiful (30:23).  We should expect to enjoy the bountiful blessings of the kingdom, and not feel guilty when we do.  There will be miraculous transformation of people - the blind will see, the deaf hear, the foolish will become wise and the ponderous will be authoritative (32:3-4).  And, perhaps most of all, the LORD will come from afar, his breath like a rushing torrent and he will shake the nations and we will sing with heats rejoicing (30:27-29).  We should expect to have our jaws on the floor and our knees aknocking - astonishment and trembling are natural responses to proximity to God.  He has a majestic voice.  His voice can shatter nations.  And yet it beckons us to come to him.  How gracious he has been.

2 Corinthians 13:1-14

The fundamental identity of a Christian is someone who has Christ Jesus in them.  We need to just pause on this a while.  We need to linger on this doctrine.  The defining thing about us is not that we go to church.  The defining thing about us is not that we try to live in step with the spirit or to obey the words of God.  The defining thing about us is not even that we believe Jesus Christ was God-made-flesh reconciling the world to himself through his death and resurrection.  The defining thing about is that Jesus - the one who touched the blind and they saw, the one who preached the best sermon ever given, the one who never sinned, the one who rose powerful and victorious from the grave, the one who is seated at the right hand of the Father, the one who will be crowned eternal King of every star and galaxy and planet in the universe - that He is in us.  I can’t do the maths for it.  I can barely begin to do the theology for it.  But I sure as heck need to believe it.  Believing it and knowing it would comprehensively change my who perspective on life.  It would radically overhaul what I think about myself, about what is possible for me, about what the future will hold, about what I can offer to others.  If Jesus is actually in me then surely he can use my lips and my fingers and my brain and my feet to do some pretty funky stuff.  If Jesus is in me then I’m in a fundamentally different and fundamentally better place than most of the people around me.  Wow.  I need to think on this some more...

Proverbs 22:17-27

The saying of the wise really do help us.  It will please us when we have them ready on our lips.  

Monday 12 September

Isaiah 29:1-30:18

He was the ‘LORD in Ariel’ but they kept on chip chip chipping away at Him until he just seemed ‘ORD in Ari’.  (Do you like that?? I’m feeling pretty immensely smug right now).  And isn’t that always our way?  We prefer our God to be ordinary.  Because the bulking truth of God is like a huge mountain that stands in our path.  He is the LORD.  He is the Holy One.  He claims absolute authority over us - and it is a bit of a pain.  I don’t like my daily activities to take me continually up and down the slopes of a mountain.  I don’t want to be stumbling and sweating my way around some immovable object.  So I blast a tunnel through this mountain.  I blast a tunnel through my image of God.  I say with Israel “Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions, leave this way, get off this path and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel”.  Often I convince myself that this is not what I am saying.  With my lips I claim that I am honouring God.  But my heart betrays my true voice.  My heart shows how I embrace and welcome the forgiveness of God but slap away the harder calls to obedience.  I love to sing and pray and be prayed for by others but tything, forgiving others, not gossiping, rebuking others and being rebuked myself - these are the calls that I like to ignore.  And I am not the only one.  A lot of the church today quote that “God is love” and misinterpret that to mean that he is their pliable, fawning buddy who just wants to see them happy.  But God is also a Consuming Fire and he will come with his terrible, swift sword to judge the living and the dead.  We don’t get to choose what God is like.  He was here first.  We don’t get to blast a tunnel through God to make him more palatable and more easy to deal with.  Taking dynamite to God is not a good move.  He is the LORD.  He is Holy One of Israel.  We are best advised to accept that and all the difficulties it brings.  Blessed are those who wait for him.

2 Corinthians 12:11-21

Paul reaches back over his shoulder, brushes his fingertips on his quiver and selects his final arrow.  He has been assaulting the posing, self-interested, fleshy manner of doing ministry... and he has nearly killed it off.  As he pulls back the bowstring he has whittled everything down to the simplest of choices.  Service or employment.  Employment is fine in many contexts but not as a mindset about ministry.  Employment is based on an exchange of services for goods - I do this and that for you and you give me something or other in return.  That is how the super-apostles saw their ministry.  But that is not the way of Jesus.  Jesus didn’t want bread and fish from the little boy; he wanted to use him to bless 5000.  Jesus didn’t want money from the rich young ruler; he wanted him to be freed from his superficial obsession.  Jesus didn’t want a boat trip from the fishermen; he wanted them to become fishers of men.  Jesus did not come to be employed by Israel but to serve it.  He did not come to build up a decent inheritance for himself but to give his life as a ransom.  And so the mark and mindset of ministry is service. It is finding people and really committing to them, to wedding ourselves to them.  It is saying that I will very gladly spend for you everything I have and expend myself as well. It is a dangerous way to live.  People let you down.  People you have wedded yourself to can hurt you and embarrass you and humble you.  But it is the way of Jesus and it is the most dynamic way to live out our Christian call.  Paul let’s his arrow fly to kill off the ‘super-apostles’ way of living.  Will his arrow reach our own hearts?

Psalm 107:1-9

He does wonderful deeds for us.

Sunday 11 September

Isaiah 27:1-28:29

This passage was not intended to be a lesson in agricultural history.  Although, I would be quite interested to hear more about why caraway couldn’t be threshed with a sledge but could be beaten with a rod.  The point, of course, is that Abraham’s descendants were making a proper hash of being a great nation.  And they were even worse at being a blessing to all the families of the earth.  God’s people had reeled from beer, had constructed rules on rules, had not listened and had made this weird-sounding covenant with death.  So it looked like God’s redemption narrative was in tatters.  The table of his covenant which had been laden with goodies ever since Abraham was now covered with vomit - there was not a spot without filth.  So what next?  How does the Lord Almighty respond to his kindness being puked on?  He brings punishment.  We can’t deny that.  It is clearly there in black and white.  But he also blows a trumpet.  And this trumpet will act like the most incredible hangover-cure to the perishing masses.  Staggering and befuddled people will find that the LORD Almighty is a glorious crown, and they will be saved.  And these people will not only be the descendants of Abraham but Egyptians and Assyrians will be included too.  What do we do with this?  We are called once again to deep repentance for our ingratitude towards God.  We bow and confess that we have made a lie our refuge.  But we are also aghast at the staggering grace of God to us, that he should consider us something worth his time and effort and forgiveness.  Doesn’t this just lead us to an overwhelming sense of privilege?  To think that the LORD Almighty, the One who is wonderful in counsel and magnificent in wisdom, should let us come and worship Him.  

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

I’ve heard people say Paul’s “Thorn in the flesh” was his secret wife.  How ridiculous!  Paul doesn’t say so how on earth could we know?  We could waste loads of time pondering on this conundrum, and on all the others like it, but they are distractions.  They are seized upon by people wishing to push their own agenda.  We would do better to focus on the main and plain meaning of the passages.  And this is the plain truth for us for today; our character is more important than our comfort.  We are better off in continual pain and humble before God than if we were lying on a beach in Bodrum, sipping cocktails and shoving Him away. If we think that sounds a bit crass and over-dramatic it probably just indicates how we have been infected by our culture.  Our culture thinks so little of character.  But in the bible, our character is greatly treasured indeed.  It is climatically important.  If we want to be used by God and do something significant with our lives then we, like Paul, must not become conceited.  We must prize our humility before God above everything.  We need to ‘delight’ in our weaknesses and the things that knock us back.  We must work hard to be humble.  Because God uses humble people.  His power is made perfect in weakness.

Psalm 106:40-48

“..out of his great love...”  Words just don’t get close to conveying the depth and breath and vibrant reality of God’s great, great love for us.