Psalm 124

A short one today. 

It's another in the series of "Songs of Ascents".  As I mentioned before, these are traditionally believed to have been sung as pilgrims made the annual journey to Temple Mountain.

This one is talking about the writer's gratitude and recognition for the protection of God.  And it's worth thinking about for a little bit.

I wonder how many times the average Christian has made that little bribe that you KNOW you shouldn't make? 

You know the one - "Lord, if you [blah blah blah], I'll [blah blah]!"

Yeah, we've all done it.  It's common.  But more than that, can you think of what came next?

If you're like me, probably when you got out of the situation, at least sometimes, you've given yourself the credit for whatever it was.  The situation was resolved by your cleverness, by your planning, by your strength, whatever.

The trouble is that you prayed about it.  Or at other times, you didn't pray; maybe God just did something because He saw that you needed it.

In Psalm 124, David demonstrates his awareness that God is always there, always read to intervene on behalf of His people.  David also attributes Israel's survival to God.

At one level we know life comes from God.  But He works through circumstances too, and it's very important that we remember this.  When we pray, God LOVES to answer us! 

Most of all, David recognises that even when something happens through the natural order of life, his survival, at base, primarily is God's doing.

Psalm 122

Many Christians are very into praying for the safety of Jerusalem, and it's because of passages like Psalm 122. 

This is a song of ascents.  Now, I haven't studied this in detail; but my understanding is that the songs of ascents were sung during a Jew's annual pilgrimage to the Temple (which, by the time of Christ, was usually happening around Passover time, but could theoretically be at the time of one of the other festivals, or even when there was no particular festival). 

In verse 1 we get that intriguing line: "I rejoiced with those who said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the Lord.'"

Okay, we'll stop there for a moment.  I envy the psalmist (David in this case) for his evident joy  at visiting the House of the Lord (which at this time would have been the Tabernacle, the portable temple the Jews had carried through the wilderness). 

As a leader in the Church, I seldom have that joy when it's time for church[1] (though thankfully, being a member of a really strong and really close-knit church, I'm always glad that I've been there).  My mind is often elsewhere - conversations I have to make, equipment I have to set up, sermons I have to preach, that sort of thing.  All good things, but things which can detract from your ability to be present. 

David had no such drama. He knew exactly why he was there.  It's a good lesson for us - we need to remember what we're there for when we gather together to worship!  My Sunday sermon spoke of the Gruen transfer, when we forget the reason for our visit (typically to a shopping centre).  Don't let things we do FOR Church blind us to the reasons we are involved in a Church!

A second thought: This passage after that is largely a love poem to Jerusalem.  Many Christians are really into Jerusalem.  There is almost an idea that whatever Jerusalem does, it's okay -they're the Chosen people, right?

I'm not so sure.  I definitely pray for the peace of Jerusalem, but . .

. . . Well, what if the leadership of Jerusalem decide to do something that is wrong?

A Christian should support righteousness and oppose evil in all its forms.  And that includes if the people we love - the Jews, the original Holy people of God - have chosen to do what is wrong.

[1] And yes, I'm well aware that the experience of visiting the Jerusalem Temple was not the same as going to Church each week.  But in the above scenario, the way we think about each is most likely similar.

John 4: Tempting God to Sin

Hi everyone (especially first time readers of Johno's Commentary)!

Usually when I'm preaching, I put my notes up on the commentary for perusal.  Now note once again - I'm a well-read layman, not a professional preacher!  So it's quite possible that some details here could be (gasp!) incorrect!

Feel free to discuss it in the comments section below, but please be nice to each other.

-Johno

Sermon Begins
--

Luke chapter 4 has a lot going on, and it’s a tough passage to preach on.  Often when I first read the text I have been asked to preach on, the sermon just falls into place.  I love obscure texts, and I really enjoy preaching on passages that can be linked to either of my twin interests of Science and History.

Luke 4 is neither; and the sermon didn’t.  It’s a well-known passage, and preaching it is a bit like going fishing in Berowra Waters – most of the big ones have already been caught! 

Every time I preach, I always pray first that God would help me to communicate from His word well, and this week I particularly need that help; so without further ado, I’ll do just that.

[pray]

It wouldn’t surprise me if most of the people in this congregation (or even those listening on line) could quote large slabs of Luke 4 verbatim.  Even if you can’t do so, the familiarity of the words can lull you into not really listening to what it says. 

It’s a narrative passage – it tells a portion of Christ’s story.  Recapping from last week’s chapter, we have just had Jesus’ baptism and His genealogy.  Both of these were important for His credibility among the Jews who would be the targets of His early ministry. But now He is ready to begin His public ministry.

Or is He?

There is one more thing that has to happen before Jesus can begin His ministry, and that’s his temptation.  The story of the Temptation is told in verses 1 - 13.  Why is this necessary?  Why the showdown with the Devil?

Then we have the real beginning of Jesus’ ministry, at least the intentional part of it (not counting a certain incident involving water and wine at a wedding in Cana).  Verses 14 – 30 tell us of Jesus speaking at a synagogue in His home town of Nazareth, telling them that the words he reads from Isaiah are being fulfilled right there and then.  It goes about as well as you might expect.

Then verses 31 – 37 give us Jesus’ first encounter with the demonic, which would be best described as a “Curb-stomp battle”.    Finally, verses 38 – 44 tell us of some of Jesus’ early healings, beginning with Peter’s mother in law. 

All familiar parts of the story.  All probably tales you’ve read before.  But they’re in the Bible for a reason.  Why are all these here? And just as importantly, do they have anything in particular to say to us today as we look at them?

I believe they do.  And I believe that this passage has a lot to say about Jesus' personality and mission. 

The key is the temptation.  But why did Jesus have to be tempted? 

I have often heard people say that Jesus was tempted here so that the Bible could honestly say, in Hebrews 4:15, that we have a High Priest  “who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin”. This is a very reasonable idea, and it’s certainly true that Jesus WAS tempted in every way like us.  However, very few of us have the Devil himself turn up personally to our temptation, so if that’s the answer it’s not the whole answer.  And some of the temptations present here are very different to those we face; I doubt very greatly that Satan would approach me and offer me dominion over the world if I would just worship him!  So something else is going on here.

More than that, at least the first temptation (“Turn these stones into bread”) is a little strange.  Sure, we don’t have the power to do that, but even if we could, would it be wrong to demand that silicates rearrange themselves into carbon compounds for our convenience?  Why is this wrong for Jesus to do?

I was reading last night in a commentary about this passage, and I came across an idea which has intrigued me. 

Firstly, the word “Tempted” can also mean “tested”.  Whilst Jesus was exposed to the constant temptation we all face, this incident was over and above that.  In the wilderness, Satan was allowed by God – note that there, Satan is under God’s authority, so this is with His permission – to spend time with Jesus and determine if He was going to follow His mission.

The interesting idea then follows – each of the temptations represents a version of the Messiah’s priorities that Jesus could have chosen to have!

The first temptation was “Turn these stones into bread.”  Obviously, this was dealing with Jesus’ immediate hunger, but there’s more to it than that.  Satan was suggesting that perhaps, just perhaps, Jesus might be the sort of Messiah whose main priority is the physical needs of others. 

A while back someone sent me an image on facebook.  It shows smiling missionaries handing impoverished Haitians the Bible, and some person has captioned it “Thank you, this looks delicious.”

The obvious source of the humour here is actually a common assumption – that peoples’ physical needs are paramount.  Most people outside of the Christian world would see this as obvious.  Of course a person in Haiti who is starving wouldn’t be interested in a Bible, right?  OF COURSE it’s more important to take care of their hunger first!

Now, my first response to this is that you don’t see what comes first – I have no doubt that Churches supporting the missionary efforts in Haiti, just like all sorts of other places around the world, also supply the physical needs of their people (often, but not always, before they attempt to supply spiritual needs).

But the second thing is that sometimes we forget about the spiritual needs of those we are serving, and can get lost in the needs that we’re meeting.  I can’t help wondering if the subtext in the first test for Christ is this: “Physical needs are most important.  Are you a messiah who will make the top priority the peoples’ physical needs?”

What is Jesus response?  Well, he goes straight to scripture.  And any time we face temptation or testing, that’s a good place for us to go too!  If the One who WROTE the Bible chooses to use it when He is tempted, why should we do any less?

And what scripture does Jesus use?  He uses Deuteronomy 8:3 “Man does not live by bread alone.”

THIS Messiah isn’t going to merely supply peoples’ physical needs.  There  were many people who were sick or hungry in Judea at this time, and it would have been easy for Christ to spend 24 hours a day 7 days a week on healing the sick and feeding the poor.  Now, Jesus does some of this, but as we’ll see at the end of the chapter, He doesn’t make Himself a slave to such activities.  On the contrary, Jesus does just enough of this kind of aid work to make His point, but His real reason for travelling through the towns and villages is to preach the coming kingdom of God!

The second test is a little less subtle.  The devil takes Jesus to a high place where he can see the “kingdoms of the world.”  He offers them to Jesus, saying that they’ll be given to Him if Jesus simply worships the devil!

What subtext is here?  It’s a simple whisper – “Power is everything.  I’ll turn that power over to you without a struggle.  You can be the political liberator of not just the Jews, but everyone else!  Are you the kind of Messiah who prizes power above all else?”

I’ve just been involved in a discussion on line during the week about the historical disputes between the Catholic Church and the Scientist Galileo.  It is definitely my belief that the Church did Galileo great wrong, but the main reasons for that wrong weren’t theological, nor were they scientific; rather, the reasons that the Church did so much wrong to this man were POLITICAL in nature. 

 

Architect Victor Gruen once identified a feature of shopping centres.  He pointed out that in many shops and shopping centres, it is easy to forget why you came there in the first place, get lost, and buy things you didn’t come to buy.  To this day, this moment of forgetting your purpose is called a “Gruen transfer”. 

The Catholic church of  Galileo’s day had gone through something of a Gruen Transfer.  It had acquired power, largely innocently, but in so doing it had forgotten that it was mainly there to do Christ’s work.  When we court the power that this world offers, that Gruen transfer is always a risk. 

Jesus’ response is once again to quote scripture.  This time He uses Deuteronomy 6:13 – “Worship the Lord Your God and serve Him only!”  THIS Messiah isn’t here to play politics.  He understands that the needs He is here to meet won’t be met by a government coup nor a popular revolution.  The needs He is here for are deeper than that.  Yes, people want to be free from the Romans – but ultimately they NEED to be free of Sin and Death, and only Jesus can deal with that need.

The final temptation is where the devil takes Jesus to a high point in the Temple.  This is probably the most publically visible place in the whole city of Jerusalem, which is perhaps why the devil’s next test takes Jesus there.  The devil HIMSELF quotes scripture this time!  He uses Psalm 91 –

“He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”

What on Earth could Jesus accomplish here? The first test would satisfy his immediate hunger; the second would secure power.  Both of those make sense; we can see why Jesus would want to do them.  But what about this third one?

“Wouldn’t it be amazing if you would throw yourself to the ground, only to stop a few inches up?” says the Devil.  “And you know that you could order the angels to do it!  What an impressive sign that would be! Are you the kind of messiah who does miracles so that people believe?”

It’s a beguiling idea.  Jesus could have been a showman, doing wonders so that people couldn’t possibly fail to believe.  Many Christians well-meaningly wish that God would do amazing miracles through them, so that people would not have an excuse for not believing in Him!

The problem with this idea is a simple one.  The ultimate sign is the raising of the dead to life – something that Jesus did several times, culminating with Himself!  Yet even this sign wasn’t enough for many people.  Even people who knew directly of Jesus’ resurrection, such as the Pharisees on the Sanhedrin (who even believed in resurrection in principle!) weren’t prepared to believe in Him.  Miracles and magic tricks aren’t enough.

What IS enough?  A great friend of my father’s is Daniel Zelli.  He’s the pastor of a Charismatic church in Queensland.  One thing he says frequently is this: People have to see the FRUIT of the Spirit before they’ll believe or understand the GIFTS of the Spirit!

Yes, God can and will do the miraculous.  Nobody did as many miracles as Jesus when He was on earth!  But the biggest thing that Jesus did to demonstrate the existence of God was not miracles.  His greatest demonstration was LOVE.  All the other gifts of the Spirit are outworkings of  love!  And as 1 Cor 13 points out, we can have the ability to do all kinds of miracles and yet, if we don’t have love, we gain nothing. 

Again Jesus turns to Scripture.  Deuteronomy 6:16 says “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”  THIS Messiah isn’t about to be a magician.  He’ll do miracles when they’ll help, but they won’t be the focus of his ministry.

The essence of the tests the Devil gives Jesus can be summed up as “Will you take the easy way?”

The Cross is not mentioned directly here.  But it’s implied in all that Christ says and does.  By rejecting the easy options presented to Him, Jesus knowingly turns his face in the inevitable direction of Golgotha and crucifixion.  The devil leaves for now, but we know that he’ll be back.

But now that Jesus has made it clear that He knows His mission, the rest of the chapter makes sense.  As he goes into the Synagogue and preaches, he’s not stirring up the rabble or courting easy popularity; He’s proclaiming the more difficult message of the Kingdom of God.  And he doesn’t just heal everyone who is sick; though He heals a few, He makes it very clear that His mission is more than simple bodily healing.  Rather than accepting the spectacular evidence of the demon shrieking that He’s the son of God, Jesus tells the demon to be quiet.  For the rest of the chapter, and in fact the rest of ALL the Gospels, we see the actions of a man who is in complete control, who understands His mission totally.

So apart from the conventional message – when tempted, we should reach for scripture -  what can we learn from this passage?

Firstly: We need to ensure that our priorities are God’s priorities.  It’s all too easy to get caught up in other things.  And those things might even be good things!  Feeding the poor and sheltering the homeless; Fighting for social change and justice; doing spectacular things for God; well, they’re all good things.  Important things!  Things that God has commanded us to do, even. But we need to be sure that we understand that to God these are sidelines.  The main game is His mission to the world.  All these things are to serve that mission, which should be our priority too.

Secondly: Just as Christ’s actions after the testing reflect His priorities, so too we need to choose the things that we do so that we ALSO reflect Christ’s priorities.  If we believe that the most important thing is the mission, then why spend so much time doing other things?

And Finally: we recognise that sometimes the easy way of doing things is not God’s way.  Jesus knew that His path took him to the cross, and yet he took it willingly.  We also need to do the same.  When our path takes us to places where we face difficult choices, we need to take the narrow path.  We need to love when love seems difficult.  We need to trust when it’s hard to see what lies ahead.  We need to do what is right regardless of the cost. 

Our Lord and Saviour carried the Cross for us; how can we wimp out?

[pray]   

John 21

John 21

Note that the idea of picking one chapter out of the several that I'm covering each night is going to lead to some pretty weird sequences, especially when there are weekends and/or times away.  For that, I'm sorry.  But only in a limited sense.  In another sense, I love the fact that I get to pick whichever chapter really speaks to me!
Anyways. . .

Chapter 21 of John has always appealed to me.  I once read a dramatization of Jesus and His disciples, and when it came to this point, the disciples were all having a bit of a deep conversation.  Peter is deep in self-recrimination, and says "I'm going fishing" (with the implication that it's all he would ever be good for).

The other disciples join him (even the non-fishermen) because they can't think of anything better to do! 

Verse 4 tells us that Jesus started calling out to them.  I like Michael Card's song about this incident - "The Stranger on the Shore".  Now, we have a few incidents in the Gospels where Jesus came into contact with disciples after his death and resurrection, and in many of those cases he was somehow different enough that they didn't recognise him immediately.  Such was the case here. 

How did Jesus show Himself in a way that they'd immediately spot?  Very neat, and very simple. 

He repeated a miracle he'd done previously!  In Luke 5: 1-11, Jesus gave his disciples a miraculous haul of fish by getting them to shoot the nets to the opposite side.  Here he does the same!

I love the image here.  The disciples get told by a total stranger to shoot the net to starboard.  Most of them are just stunned at the presumption of the stranger, but John has a funny look in his eyes. 

"What are you gawking at?!" asks one of the others.

"Just do it," says John in a small voice.

Peter frowns.  "John?" he asks. 

"Peter, do you remember being told to do that once before?" John asks in turn.

A pause.

"Do it!" snaps Peter at the others.  "Shoot the net to starboard!"

The ropes and nets creak, and immediately the haul of fish is so great that they can't get it into the boat.

"It's the LORD!" shouts John, joyfully.  Peter dives into the water and swims to shore, unable to contain himself even enough to wait for the boat to get there!

It's a fun story, but why is it here?  Just a nice anecdote of Jesus?

Well, I think probably the main point is what comes later - Jesus reinstating Peter three times (after three denials).  But before we head off elsewhere, it's possibly worth while to consider this moment a little further.

Whilst the dramatization I was reading stated that Peter was heading back to his old career, the text here doesn't say as much. I think that is implied, though.  As such, going fishing wasn't what Jesus really wanted him to do. 

Yet when they bring the boat in, does Jesus rebuke him?  No, not even a gentle rebuke.  Far from it, in fact - "Bring some of the fish you have just caught!" says Jesus.  He's barbecuing fish on the shore!  And he adds the additional fish into the meal.

Now, you might see this next bit as drawing a long bow.  And you know, it might be.  But I think there's a little significance here too.

See, we humans, even if we're Spirit-indwelt, tend to make a dodgy decision here and there.  We're sent to wait on the shore, but we go fishing instead.  Note that this choice, in the disciples' case, wasn't wrong or sinful; but it wasn't what they were asked to do.

We have that capacity.  God doesn't give us a prescriptive list of instructions to follow; He gives us wisdom, and with that wisdom we are empowered to make our own choices.  And sometimes the choices we make, though morally acceptable, aren't quite what God has in mind.  And at times like that we can all wonder "Have I messed this up?  Have I lost the opportunity to be used by God?"

To which my answer is a straight "no".  And why do I say that?  Well, look here at the incident we've just covered.  Jesus wasn't particularly planning on them going fishing, but since they had, He was quite happy to blend their activity into His own! "Plonk a few fish on the fire!"

When our latest hairbrained schemes have gone haywire (again!), it can be very tempting to say to ourselves "Well, that's it.  Forget about God, He's not going to be able to use me from here."

But you may be surprised.  Not only will God take you back (we know that from parables like the lost sheep, the prodigal son and the lost coin), He will go one better - He will take those errors and turn them around.  He'll blend them into the story of your life in such an amazing way that years later you could even turn around and say to yourself that you're glad you made that mistake!

I can certainly say that myself.  I believe that my current career as a teacher is an excellent example of God turning my own unwise choices into something incredible.  And I'd be surprised if this was unusual among Christians.  I'll bet that if you've been living this crazy Christian life for any length of time, you have similar stories to tell!

John 9

There are quite a number of serious showdowns in the Gospels, and today's chapter is one of them.  Jesus is very definitely on a collision course with the religious leaders, curiously especially the Pharisees (we have previously discussed how this was largely due to the fact that, given that their theology was so similar to Christ's own, they should have been the first to recognise him; instead they're looking for a way to kill him!).

Yet strange that the battlefield should be one of the many beggars sitting by the road.

We know little about him; only that he was sitting by the road, and that what was presumably his usual spot was reasonably close to the Pool of Siloam, a fairly well-known landmark (which has been rediscovered over the last century or so).  That's really about it.

Jesus' actions seem a little odd here.  I actually came across something of an explanation for this when preparing for a sermon on another incident (perhaps the same one) in another gospel.  Why does he make mud with his saliva?

The short answer is that there was a belief present at the time that the saliva from a firstborn son had healing properties.  By doing this, Jesus is giving a subtle but clear message to people on hand that He was who He was.

Anyway, predictably, the blind man is healed when he washes the mud off his eyes.  And people who knew him are obviously surprised!

But not as surprised as the Pharisees were, perhaps.  And once again, they have an opportunity to trap Jesus, because this healing was done on the Sabbath!

Think about that and let it sink in.  A man is healed from blindness[1] - that's being unable to see! - and all the Pharisees can think of is their opportunity to trap a political nuisance.

I look at this and scream "NO!"  How can they be so, well, blind?

The awkward thing is that we do this trick all the time.  God can and does work in people of all kinds (and here's a shock for us Christians - He can work through others if He is so inclined too!).  And yet when we see it, it's all too easy for us to ignore the work of God and focus on the weaknesses of others.  This is especially visible in the debates between conservative and charismatic evangelicals - we can often lose focus on what is really important and use perceived problems with our opponents as a way of discrediting them!  And we run the risk of ignoring God's work, which we really should be more aware of.  When we see God work through someone else, even if they don't have a similar theological stance to ourselves, we should be glorifying Him!

The [former!] blind man is not theologically educated.  But he knows one thing - he was blind, but now he's not.  So for him, it's all very simple - he follows the person who was able to do something only God could do.

His simple (and logical!) faith infuriates the Pharisees, who are looking for something more complex.  They throw him out of the Synagogue.  Not that this worries the man, who returns to Jesus and pledges to follow Him[2].

This is frightening to me, because I can see myself being a Pharisee.  What should I do?  Well, it is fairly straightforward; if I see God's work in someone, even if I don't think they've got their theology squared away fully, I need to recognise God for whom He is, and glorify Him!

Note that this doesn't mean we should ignore theological issues.  Obviously these are important to discuss. But we need to be careful to not let these debates blind us to the work of God, who - let's face it - is bigger than ANY difference we have with another believer.

[1] Even today, this is an amazing miracle - a person who was born blind would have to regrow nerves from their eyes to their brain, and since nerves grow at about the speed of hair growth, we can see that even if it were possible to do this trick it would be months before the patient would be able to see!  Not so here.  The man is healed instantly.

[2] It is possible that this man was well known to Christians at the tme of the writing, hence the amount of time spent on him.  We'll never truly know this.

Announcement: Johno's Commentary will return on Wednesday next week.

Announcement

*Enters User ID.*
*Enters password*
*blows dust off blog*

Hi all.  Sorry I've been away for so long, but will you take me back?

It's been a long time - since May 2012, in fact - since this blog was used.  Don't worry, I haven't stopped reading the Bible during that time.  But I did stop blogging about it.

Not that there's anything in the Bible saying "Thou shalt always blog, and if thou doest not do so, thou art very naught.  Selah."  But I have noticed that the time I spent creating Johno's Commentary seems to coincide with one of my better periods of spiritual growth in recent years. 

A time that isn't now, truth be told.  And I think I need to get back into the habit of writing on God's word.  As I write to explain a chapter to someone else, I learn more about what it says to me, so we both benefit.

And so, dear reader, I have decided to restart Johno's Commentary.

However, there will be a few differences.  Firstly, I will publish on a weekday schedule like I was doing in 2012, but when I am away from home I will simply declare a leave of absence rather than uploading a whole lot when I get back (unless I come up with some unusually good stuff.  Hey, you never know).

Secondly, I'm currently on a different Bible Reading schedule than before.  The one I'm on now sends me through a couple of chapters per day, plus a Psalm or a Proverb.  Rather than sending myself [more] insane by blogging on all of them, I'll pick a chapter and write on that.  The one rule I'll set for myself is that I won't blog on a chapter that I've already tackled previously, which means that when my current plan gets to Acts (which it will fairly soon), I'll be mainly looking at the Psalms/Proverbs that the plan takes me to.

In any case, we'll begin again tomorrow!

Let's see what's in God's word . . . .