Habakkuk 2:6-20

We began looking at the prophet Habakkuk last week, a man whose heart was aching and whose mind was confused. His trouble centred on the fact that God’s people were living as anything but – the land was filled with violence and shame. What would God about it?

The answer was that he would judge his people by raising up the Babylonians to conquer them. But to Habakkuk that was simply making the matter worse; they were even more evil than the people of Judah. Where was the justice in that?

And, perhaps even more distressing, where would this leave God’s plans to save a fallen world through the nation of Israel, as he had promised to do? No wonder Habakkuk prayed with such feeling.

The answer in 2:1-5 was that God remains in control of the situation and, knowing that, the righteous must live by faith. Habakkuk and others must rest in the character of God and take the long view. What follows in 2:6-20 elaborates the point that the Lord will judge those he had sovereignly used to judge his people.

1. The Justice of God
The first substantial point made here is that the God of the Bible, the living and true God, is not indifferent to sin, whether committed by individuals or nations. Nothing goes unseen by him; he has no blind-eye to turn toward it but takes it all in hand to deal with one day.

And deal with it he will. Sometimes people say, “There’ll be hell to pay” when something’s gone wrong; in this case, it is literally true. Five times, woe is pronounced over those guilty of the crimes listed here. One writer has aptly said that “This series of woes is designed to show that ultimately sin, evil, crime, greed, oppression, debauchery and idolatry are doomed to destruction.”

The simple fact is, as God tells us over and again in the Bible, you reap what you sow. He may use Babylon for his own purposes but their own interest was in boosting their pride and lining their pockets. That kind of behaviour will inevitably have its consequences and so the woes are pronounced.

And so we see that, as each woe is elaborated, the justice in view is one of like-for-like – those who have killed will be killed; those who have plundered will be plundered; those who have ravaged and exposed others will themselves be ravaged.

This is a consistent biblical principle that God has built into the very fabric of creation – nature teaches us the point and time and again it is captured in the Bible for us to ponder. He stands up to the proud but gives grace to the humble.

The God revealed in the Bible is active in the affairs of nations. He cares what happens; although he can as Lord use wickedness to advance his own purposes, he never condones it; rather, as here, he condemns it.

But even as he condemns the evil, of individuals as well as nations, there is sadness in the tone of his voice. It has been noted by scholars that these woes are a parody of a funeral lament and could, therefore, be seen as a taunt. But there is also genuine sadness in the heart of God at the tragedy that befalls the impenitent.

Judgement is necessary and, because it sets things right, is a cause for joy. That is part of the biblical picture; but so too is the sight of the Saviour weeping over impenitent Jerusalem as he contemplates its fate at the hands of the Romans for its sin in rejecting him.

The situation may seem to be getting out of hand to Habakkuk but God remains in control, just as he was when Jesus was slaughtered, just as he is today when all seems so dark and distressing. His justice will prevail and his purposes will not be thwarted.

2. The Glory of God
And here we have, in a famous and thrilling verse, a description of what those purposes ultimately are. People can rage against God and commit the most awful crimes, filling the world with filth and seeming to destroy the last vestiges of its original goodness. Yet, in the face of that, we see asserted here that “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

Could there be any statement more daring or more encouraging against such a backdrop? The earth that is filled with violence and shame will one day be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God!

The term ‘knowledge’ speaks of an intimate and living relationship with God. Here the Lord says that the whole world will be bathed in the wonder of that relationship – to its fullest extent, “as the waters cover the sea”.

There was a time in the OT when the temple was completed and God’s glory filled that house. Here, we read of a time when his glory will fill the earth and his glory will be known and rejoiced in. Sin will not have the last word; God will be known. He will be all and in all.

And this promise and purpose were going to be accomplished through the one of whom it was said by those who knew him, “We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

God’s promises seemed to be hanging by a thread in the dark days of the OT as sin ran riot in Israel. But, in reality, the danger was only apparent – sin was never going to win; God would come in the person of his Son to deal with it through the unveiling of the truth and the grace of God.

God is involved in the affairs of nations, not simply to judge sin and then leave the field. He is involved in order to reclaim his world and to remake it in holiness and righteousness, having saved it through his own Son and his once-for-all death on the cross.

3. The Presence and the Reality of God
That statement was the first of two outstanding declarations about the living God contained in this passage. We close with the second in v.20: “The LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him.”

V.18f describe the utter futility, the nonsense, of idol worship. People make images, bow down to them, put their trust in them and hope to be taught by them.

We can laugh at such folly but it still happens today, as equally foolish and powerless gods are worshipped – gods of money and leisure, of pleasure and gain.

How sad and tragic to see people made in the image of God looking in every other direction for help and blessing. It won’t come; it can’t come. All other gods are idols – useless and lifeless.

But the LORD, the Almighty God, is in his holy temple. The one who made us and all things, the eternal God who existed before us and doesn’t in truth need us, this God is not under threat; he is in his holy temple. He is truly at the centre of the universe and all reality. This is the true picture.

And the call of this verse is for all the earth to be silent before him. The idols are silent because they’re dead and lifeless; this silence is of an altogether different kind – it’s the awe-filled worship of creatures standing before their Maker and gazing on his beauty and majesty, and gladly acknowledging his complete sovereignty and utter worthiness.

Do you stand with them today – in awe before the God who made you and all things, who is high over all, beyond the reach of sin and chaos, whose gracious and redeeming purposes are not under threat but are being steadily worked out?

This is why the righteous can – and must – live by faith.

Habakkuk 1:1 - 2:5

Some Bible books are a bit like acquaintances – they don’t rate as close friends but you do see them from time to time when you’re in the company of your close friends (NT quotations). When you happen to bump into them on their own (via a Bible reading programme?) you may find you don’t really know what to make of them, they seem to speak a different language and seem so different to your close friends. And so you make your apologies and offer to do lunch someday, being careful not to say when or where, and you run-off to find your more familiar friends.

The great shame about that kind of approach to the Bible – quite apart from what it says about our attitude to the one who gave us the Bible – is that we miss out so much. If we would only spend time with these acquaintances, we would find in them a depth we never realised was there, we would find them engaging and profound.

Habakkuk’s book may be one of those acquaintances. It gets at least 3 honourable mentions in the NT – at some very strategic points, no less – but in its own environment it looks less inviting. After all, very little indeed is known about its author and, whilst the historical situation it addresses is discernible, it isn’t dated as many of the prophets are. So we might feel the cards are stacked against us and it would be more prudent to make our visit brief.

I hope a slightly more extended visit over these next weeks will show us how mistaken that is.

1. Habakkuk’s complaint: ‘Lord, you don’t seem to care’
The situation that Habakkuk describes may be distant in time but should be familiar enough in terms of scripture: the people have turned away from God. Not all of them, certainly; there was always a righteous remnant. But sufficient have forsaken him to make the land full of violence and oppression (notice how Habakkuk piles up the adjectives here).

It is that situation which prompts Habakkuk to pray. Before we look at his prayer and the Lord’s response, I just want to suggest that the fact Habakkuk is concerned is worthy of our attention.

It reads as though he is complaining to the Lord, which in a sense he is. We might want to tut-tut but there is a challenge there for us: are we concerned enough about the state of the church and the world to wrestle before God over it? Or are we so wrapped up in the smaller details of our small lives that we are blinkered and have a blind spot in the very place where Habakkuk’s heart bled?

2. The cure is worse than the disease: Is God righteous or not?
So what is Habakkuk so worked up about? In 1:2-4 he lays the situation before the Lord: the land is full of violence and oppression; God’s people are living a lie – they are called by his name but they live as though he didn’t exist.

Given that they are his people and given that he is holy and righteous, Habakkuk wants to know why the Lord hasn’t done anything about it – “Why do you tolerate wrong?”

Maybe he was expecting the Lord to come in mighty reviving power to transform the nation but the answer he receives only leads to further anguish and confusion on his part. In 1:5-11 the Lord tells Habakkuk that he is going to deal with the situation in a way that was scarcely imaginable: he was going to raise up the Babylonians to chastise his people.

But this only intensifies Habakkuk’s sense of confusion. The problem he has is not that the people don’t deserve to be judged but that the cure seems to be worse than the disease. The Babylonians are utter pagans, notoriously violent and destructive; if God raises them up to world dominance then those who are more wicked than Israel will prosper even more (1:12-17).

How can this be right? How does this uphold God’s righteousness?

The Lord’s reply in 2:2-5 emphasises the fact that judgement will one day come. Yes, he will use the Babylonians to chasten his people but they will be responsible for their sins and will one day answer for them in judgement. No one is getting away with anything.

And Habakkuk’s response to this situation must be to rest and trust in the Lord’s sovereign and unsearchable wisdom (2:4).

The lesson for us ought to be clear, too. There are many situations that grieve and confuse us. It is not wrong to take our grief to the Lord and to ask him why. But we must then be ready to allow his word to address us and humble ourselves before the greatness of his power and wisdom. Habakkuk had to do it and so must we.

3. The big picture: If the law is paralysed, what will save us?
But there is a deeper significance to the problem that Habakkuk is wrestling with. In fact, if there wasn’t a bigger picture, it would mean when Paul quotes 2:4 he was guilty of just scanning the OT for a text to make his point, which isn’t how he uses God’s Word.

The bigger picture is tied to the Lord’s purpose in choosing Israel to be his people. That purpose was to bless the world through them, for salvation to come into the world through this people.

For many in Israel, the means for that would be the law, the torah. But as Habakkuk looks at the nation, he sees that the sin of the people has paralysed the law (v.4). If that is so, how will the Lord’s saving righteousness be effected? Is sin going to finally stymie the living God? Is Satan going to win after all?

The point Habakkuk makes here about the law is also made by Paul in Rom. 8:3 when he says “the law was powerless” because “it was weakened by the flesh”. The mere giving of the law to sinful people could never effect their rescue. The law was always going to be powerless to rescue. It could highlight sin but it couldn’t deal with sin.

What answer does the Lord give Habakkuk here? He tells him there is a solution, his righteousness will be vindicated, sin won’t have the last laugh; but that time was then still future: “the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false.” Or as Paul so aptly put it, “When the time was fully come, God sent forth his Son…”; “at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly…” (Gal. 4:4; Rom. 5:6).

What the law could never do, God was going to accomplish in the most unexpected way (more remarkable than raising up the Babylonians) - sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering and through him to condemn sin in the flesh (Rom. 8:3).

But that was all future for Habakkuk; he wasn’t told how God would resolve this challenge to his righteousness, to his saving faithfulness. He was only told that one day it would be. What he is told is how he and others should respond: “the righteous will live by his faith”.

They must put their hope in the God of the covenant. Their trust is not to be in the law; if it was, they would be gravely disappointed because sin has paralysed the law and the law is powerless to do anything about it. No; their faith must be in God that he will one day act in person to deal with sin.

Paul’s point in quoting this verse in Rom. 1:17 and Gal. 3:11 is to emphasise that this has always been God’s way of saving; it never was through the law but was always a matter of faith; “The righteous will live by faith”. He, of course, is dealing not with anticipation but fulfilment; the time has come and God has acted to deal the death blow to sin through his own Son dying in place of sinful humanity.

So the righteous, those who put their trust in God, will live by faith. The verse in Habakkuk and as used by Paul is a little ambiguous: it could refer to faithfulness or to faith; it could have God in view or man. Where Paul quotes it in Rom 1:17 it’s very likely that he has both in view, for he speaks of salvation being “from faith, for faith” which many take to mean “from God’s faithfulness to man’s answering faith”.

Today still “the righteous will live by faith”. It is how we come to be united to the Lord Jesus Christ and share in his blessings. But it is also how we are to live our lives: with faith in God, in the dark days when we see no sign that Jesus will return, when we doubt our own salvation, when sin abounds and there seems to be no answer.

The emphasis must always be on trusting God, hoping in his faithfulness that was revealed in Jesus and sealed in the sending of his Spirit.

Is that where your trust is this morning – not just for yourself but for the church and, indeed, for the whole world? “We walk by faith, not by sight”; “The righteous will live by faith.”

A Hermeneutic Of Trust

In Shakespeare's Measure for Measure the self-righteous villain Angelo pronounces a death sentence on Claudio, who is guilty of committing fornication. Claudio's sister Isabella comes to Angelo to plead for the life of her brother, but Angelo, who is trying to manipulate Isabella into bed with him, spurns her suit, saying,

Your brother is a forfeit of the law,
And you but waste your words.

Isabella's reply alludes to the great theme of Romans and calls upon the hypocritical judge Angelo to see his life anew in light of God's judgment and grace:

Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy. How would you be
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? 0, think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made.

Isabella resists the oppressor by applying a hermeneutic of suspicion to his pose of righteousness and by appealing to a hermeneutic of trust in the biblical story of God's mercy. Isabella is a profound interpreter of Scripture. We should follow her example.

Richard B. Hays - The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel's Scriptures; Eerdmans 2005; p.200f

Loving and Hearing the Text

When I was an undergraduate at Yale University, students flocked to Professor Alvin Kernan's lecture courses on Shakespeare. Kernan's work predated the academy's current infatuation with ideological criticism. Even though it was the late 1960s and we were all living in an atmosphere charged with political suspicion and protest, none of this overtly impinged on Kernan's lectures. Kernan was not a flashy lecturer. What, then, was the draw?

He loved the texts. His teaching method - as I remember it - was simply to engage in reflective close readings of the Shakespeare tragedies and comedies, delineating their rich texture of image and metaphor and opening up their complex central themes - moral, philosophical, and religious. Often, Kernan would devote a significant part of his lecture time to reading the text aloud, not in any highly dramatic manner, but with sensitivity to the text's rhythms and semantic nuances. I would often sit in class thinking, "Oh! ... I hadn't heard that in the text before." And I would leave the class pondering the problems Shakespeare addressed: love, betrayal, fidelity, sacrifice, death, and hope.

Richard B. Hays - The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel's Scriptures; Eerdmans 2005; p.200

Loving the text so that others truly hear the text. That's a good aim for 2007.

Two thoughts

from John 19:

i) The correlation in v.7 & v.12 of the terms 'Son of God' and 'King' suggests that the Jewish leaders were not accusing Jesus of claiming divinity but of claiming to be the Messiah;

ii) The irony of the Jewish leaders' assertion, "We have no king but Caesar" being followed in the text by Pilate finally handing Jesus over to be crucified: the irony lies in the fact that to say they have no king but Caesar is the final capitulation.

voluntary gifts (Volf)

Since God gives freely, we should too. That's how the apostle Paul thought of gift giving; it should be voluntary. He praised believers from Macedonia for giving "voluntarily" to the poor of Jerusalem (2 Corinthians 8:3). Similarly, he urged that the Corinthians' gift be ready when he came to collect it "as a voluntary gift and not as an extortion" (2 Corinthians 9:5).

Why is freedom in giving so important? Because the gift consists more in the freely undertaken choice to give than in the things given. In this regard, the Apostle might well have agreed with Seneca, the great stoic writer on gift giving, who said: "For, since in the case of a benefit the chief pleasure of it comes from the intention of the bestower, he who by his very hesitation has shown that he made his bestowal unwillingly has not `given', but has failed to withstand the effort to extract it."' As for Seneca, for the Apostle the "eagerness" of the giver matters more than the magnitude of the gift. God loves "a cheerful giver" (2 Corinthians 8:12 and 9:7).

And yet we noted earlier that we are obliged to give. God's gifts themselves oblige us, and God's commands reinforce that obligation. Now we see that we are obliged to give freely - and there's the rub. How can we give freely if we are obliged to give? Inversely, how can we be obliged to give if we give freely? Is it possible to be obliged to give freely?

The apostle Paul thought so. True, he never commanded the Corinthians to give, and he underscored this for them (2 Corinthians 8:8). But he exerted enormous pressure on them using some potent rhetorical weapons. He played with their sense of shame: they would humiliate themselves if they didn't give (2 Corinthians 9:4). He had them compete with other donors: the Macedonians gave, so the Corinthians should stick to their promise and give (which is also what he said to the Macedonians in 2 Corinthians 9:2). He appealed to their debt to him: he would be humiliated if they didn't give (2 Corinthians 9:4). And he did all this in order to nudge them to give, as he put it, "not reluctantly or under compulsion", but voluntarily (2 Corinthians 9:7)!

Was the Apostle twisting their arm to be free? Some strange freedom this must be! But maybe our sense that to be free is to act under no constraint whatsoever is mistaken. We tend to think that we must be autonomous and spontaneous to act freely. Behind this identification of freedom with autonomous spontaneity lies the notion of a self-defined and free-floating person. Strip down all the influences of time and place, abstract from culture and nurture, and then you'll come to your authentic core. This core is who you truly are, the thinking goes - unique, unshaped, unconstrained.

But that's more like a caricature of a divine self than an accurate description of a human self. Using the image of the beast, Luther argued that human beings are always ridden by someone, either by God or by the Devil. That's a crude way of putting it, but it's basically right. The point is not that either God or the Devil compels us. In that case, our will would turn into, as Luther put it, "unwill". It's rather that, unlike God, we always exercise our will as beings constantly shaped by many factors - by language, parental rearing, culture, media, advertising, and peer pressure, and through all these, we are shaped either by God or by God's adversary. Often we don't perceive ourselves as shaped at all. If we are not visibly and palpably coerced, we think that we act autonomously, spontaneously, and authentically. Yet we are wrong.

Take our preferences for one soft drink over another. I am thirsty, walk into a store, reach for a Pepsi, and walk away, never doubting that I acted autonomously and spontaneously. But why did I choose Pepsi over Coke or just plain water? I may like its taste better. But most likely it's because Pepsi's ads got to me the way Coke's didn't. I don't autonomously and spontaneously choose to be a Pepsi drinker; I'm made into a Pepsi drinker. Yet I freely chose that Pepsi can that is in my hand.

Recall what I said about the old and the new selves. Our old self died, and our new self was raised. It's a self in whom Christ dwells and through whom Christ acts, a self that has put on Christ and "learned" Christ. We are these new selves, and that's why we give (though non-Christians can give for many other reasons). We don't give mainly because God or God's messengers command us to. If we did, we would be giving under compulsion, and therefore, reluctantly. Instead, we give because we are givers, because Christ living in us is a giver. Informing every seemingly small act of Christian giving is a change in our very being, a transformation of a person from being one who either illicitly takes or merely legitimately acquires, into being one who beneficently gives. As I will explain in chapter 3, even as such transformed people, we still need to grow into the joy of giving. But the command to give is not compelling us to act against ourselves, even if it often feels like this.

That feeling that the command is against us, a sense of reluctance in giving, is not unfounded. When we have failed to put away our "former way of life", the new self becomes an obligation that butts against the ingrained habits of the old self. Yet as uncomfortable as it may feel, the pressure is not to our detriment, but in our favor. It pushes us to act true to who we most properly are. That's why we can be obliged to give freely: the obligation nudges us to do what the new self would do if the old one didn't stand in the way.

Imagine your life as a piece of music, a Bach cello suite. You've heard it played by a virtuoso. You love it and would like to play it well. But try as you might, you fail - not so much because you've had a bad teacher or haven't practiced enough, but because your left hand has a defect. You make music, but it's nothing like it's supposed to sound. Then you have surgery performed by a magician with a scalpel. Your hand heals. You return to your lessons with new vigor. And then one day, you play the piece nearly perfectly. Full of joy, you exclaim, "Yes! I love it! This is the way the music of my life should sound!" Constrained by the score because you have to follow its notation? Well, yes. But loving every moment of that constraint - and not feeling it as constraint at all - because the very constraint is what makes for the beauty and delight.

Something like this is what it means to be a free giver. God obliges us to give. But it is precisely when we act in accordance with the obligation that we have a sense of unspoiled authenticity and freedom. So in our best moments, we forget the command and just give the way we are supposed to give. We are like a motor-powered sailboat when it's "running", as sailors say: With the wind at the back of a powered boat, all resistance is gone; the boat is always where the wind would push it to be. The same is true of us when we give freely. Living out of our new selves, we are always already where the command would want us to be.

(Miroslav Volf, Free Of Charge, pp.64-67)

the psalms & us

The attempt to recover and renew psalmody in our time must not be undertaken merely as an embellishment of liturgical practice. Crucial possibilities for the theological, liturgical, and pastoral life of the church are involved. The liveliness and actuality of the language of the reign of God supply an organizing milieu for all the principal topics of the Christian faith. It constitutes the basis and medium of the three primary functions of our religion - praise, prayer, and the practice of piety. It provides a way of thinking and understanding that holds the individual and corporate relation to God together. Said and sung as Christian liturgy, the language of the psalms discloses the unity of the canon of scripture. It articulates a polemic against the polytheism and paganism that go unnoticed in our culture. It establishes a critical resistance to the domination of any human politics and the apotheosizing of any ideology, including democracy. The language of the psalms puts all who use them in the role of servants to the LORD God, and so lays a basis for an ethic of trust and obedience. It opens up a realm for existence in which the dying may take hope, the afflicted find strength, and the faithful encouragement.

Mere recitation of the psalms will lay hold on none of these possibilities. If, however, in the use of psalms as our praise and prayer and scripture we are led to feel and think and decide as those who live in the kingdom of God in hope of the kingdom of God, then we might begin to grasp some of them. We might be better able to trust ourselves to the One who comes saying, "The kingdom of God is at hand." That would be the right reason for the renewal of psalmody today.

James L. Mays, The LORD Reigns - A Theological Handbook to the Psalms, p.11

augustine & the psalms

In his Confessions, Augustine tells how he used the psalms in a period of retreat between his conversion and baptism. "What utterances sent I unto Thee, my God, when I read the Psalms of David, those faithful songs and sounds of devotion.... What utterances I used to send up unto Thee in those Psalms, and how was I inflamed toward Thee by them" (IX, 4).

For Augustine it was a time of preparation for a different life, of initiation into a new existence, a period in which habits of thought, customs of practice, and feelings about self and others and the world had to be reconstituted. As part of the transformation, he was learning a new language.

He spoke the psalms to and before the Christian God, who was now source and subject of his faith and life. He took their vocabulary and sentences as his own. He identified himself with the speaker of the psalms. He said the psalms as his words, let his feelings be evoked and led by their language, spoke the words that resonated in his own consciousness in concord with those of the psalms. He was acquiring a language world that went with his new identity as a Christian. It was the vocabulary of prayer and praise, the "first order" language that expressed the sense of self and world that comes with faith in the God to whom, of whom, and for whom the psalms speak.

James L. Mays, The LORD Reigns - A Theological Handbook to the Psalms, p.3

In a different light

It has always struck me as a great (and regrettable irony): Festus and Agrippa agree that Paul could have been set free (Acts 26:32) but because Paul has appealed to Caesar (Acts 25:11 ), to Caesar he must go. If only he'd held on a little while longer before making that last-ditch appeal, it could all have been so much simpler; still, I'm sure the Lord is able to use it for Paul's and the gospel's good. He is sovereign, after all.

But no; it's much more definite than that, in every sense. Paul has already been told that the Lord is taking him to Rome (Acts 23:11) - the only thing not specified was the how and why of the way in which that journey would come about. The purpose for going was as clear as day:

As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome (Acts 23:11)

So Paul's appeal to Caesar is neither impetuous nor desperate; it arises in the context of the Lord's clear direction and decision to send his apostle to the heart of the empire. And the forcing of Festus' hand is not a matter for regret; it is simply the Lord's time and place for enacting his plan to send Paul to Rome.

I'd never seen it that way before. I do now.

doctrine & competence

Doctrines, then, are profitable for celebrating, communicating, criticizing - and coping - provided they are used competently. The present work sets forth an account of theological competence, which involves more than academic expertise. Theological competence is ultimately a matter of being able to make judgements that display the mind of Christ. Individual Christians, and the church as a whole, have no more crucial task than achieving such theological competence. One of the chief means of doing so is by attending to doctrine - to its derivation from Scripture and its development in the believing community."

Kevin J. Vanhoozer, in the introduction to The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Liguistic Approach to Christian Theology, p. 2

final blessing

God bless you, Dad;
God bless you, Dad.

You've been
a wonderful father,
a good husband
and
a lovely grandad.

You've loved us all so much;
we all love you so much.

God bless you, Dad;
God bless you, Dad.

(the final words spoken to George Myerscough, early morning 30/11/05)

Closure

A year ago
I closed your eyes
after that last, long
gasp of life.
It was the hardest thing I've ever done.

You were there
when my eyes opened in life
and I was there to close yours in death;
your eyes brimmed with joy at the sight,
mine with savage pain.
The colour remained
but not the life.

A year ago
I closed your eyes;
the bruise remains.

resemblance

Some people say
I have my father's
eyes

but I've always known
I had his
heart.

the longest time

For the longest time
your voice has been
silent;
that voice which could boom
out, calling for tea,
while preserving
from sight
a thousand realities.

I've waited to see you
and to hear you
once more
but even the fullest dreams
are empty;

void.

I saw you last
in that morning light;

still and gone.

How John Mark Became Helpful

He was a deserter; a failure. And the cause of a sharp disagreement between two Christian ministers, one of them his uncle. So sharp in fact that they no longer worked together.

Later on, the one who had objected to John Mark's continued presence on the team speaks of him in very warm terms; he has proved himself to be a valuable colleague in gospel work.

So how did the change come about? How was this fallible young man recovered? Who mentored him into being a faithful gospel servant?

Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus. (Acts 15:39)

The one who didn't give up on him, presumably.

Strengthen your brothers

Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers. (Luke 22:31,32 TNIV)

Satan wants to sift the disciples like wheat - he wants to put them to the test, chew them up and spit them out. Jesus tells Simon about this. They are all in Satan's sights. But Jesus has prayed for...Peter, that his faith would not fail him. And those prayers are answered: in the event of Peter's testing, his faith doesn't fail him; in faith, he repents of his sin when Jesus looks at him.

But what about the others? Did they not need Jesus' prayers too? Why tell Simon that they were all vulnerable but that he had prayed only for Simon? The pronouns are deliberate and deliberately disclose that distinction.

The answer is in the commission Jesus gives the soon-to-fall and soon-to-be-restored Peter: when he has turned, he is to strengthen his brothers. Jesus will help them in their vulnerability through Peter, their fallen and restored brother.

We need the community of such brothers and sisters. They are part of the Lord's means of strengthening us in the face of our vulnerability.

Exodus 17:8-16

1. Fightings Without
Israel has been delivered from the terrors of Egypt and has begun to self-destruct in the wilderness. It is often the case that when the heat is off in one direction, trouble looms in another. But they really have no time for grumbling and accusing Moses and testing the Lord - other battles await them and, in this scene, assault them. The Amalekties take the place of Pharaoh and come out to attack Israel at Rephidim.

Although it is early days for Israel, a pattern is being set here. The problem is not just Egypt; it is that "the whole world is under the control of the evil one" (1 John 5:19). The battles that Israel face are spiritual in nature; they arise from Satan's opposition to the Lord and his plans to reconcile all things to himself and to heal his fractured creation.

Here is the Christian's life and the life of the church - a life of battle; serious, costly and intense. Israel needs to awake to that reality; they are to engage in a true holy war, a war that will ultimately not be fought with worldly weapons but with the weapons of righteousness and prayer and the word of God.

We must be alert to the reality of our own situation - every day is another day of battle, of warfare. We must do all that we can to avoid internal divisions that inflict wounds within the body and take our place on the true field of battle.

2. Deliverance through human effort and God's help
When Israel was rescued from Egypt and brought through the Red Sea, they stood still and saw the salvation of the LORD. Now, they need to put to use the armour and weapons they left Egypt with. They need to join the Lord in fighting the battles of faith, the battle for the salvation of the cosmos.

And so Moses tells Joshua to take men and to fight the Amalekites on the plain; for his part, he will go and stand on the hill with "the staff of God" raised.

That action on Moses' part has been the subject of quite a lot of debate over the years. Is it a symbol of prayer? Or is Moses symbolising the Lord as he stands over the battle? Certainly, raised arms are often used in the OT as a posture that signifies prayer. And there can be little doubt but that the whole battle is bathed in prayer and is fought in dependence upon the Lord.

But the clearest aspect of this scene is the sheer effort expended by Moses in keeping his arms aloft and the connection between his raised arms and the progress of the battle. The Lord chooses to involve his people in his battles and that involvement takes courage and effort.

If it is right to see Moses' raised arms as signifying prayer, our own experience would no doubt bear out how tough that can be. How demanding it can be to wrestle in prayer! But this is our calling; we are enlisted as the Lord's servants and must engage in the battle with all our heart, with all our energies, for his glory.

3. Supporting leadership
But however we understand the raising of Moses' arms and the holding aloft of the staff, it is clear that he needs help to do so and Aaron and Hur step forward to give that help. In a sense, this is almost a preview of what transpires in the next chapter where Moses takes Jethro's advice and delegates some of the work to others.

I want to say two things in the light of what we see here.

i) Seeing Moses as a type of Christ - The NT is not shy to make connections between Jesus and Moses, seeing Moses as a shadow and Jesus as the reality. Moses here is seen to be a man of flesh, one who needs the support of others if Israel is to win the day.

In some ways, that picture is replicated in the life of Jesus - he grew tired and needed to sleep; he was hungry and thirsty; and, in the garden of Gethsemane, he asked 3 of his disciples to stay with him in his hour of need and he benefited from the ministry of angels at that time too. Jesus was a real man in all those ways and we should not be afraid to say so.

But, having said that, the NT emphasis is that Jesus won the battle alone; he is the great leader and champion of his people. He is all we need to know victory over sin and death. Moses was faithful as a servant in God's household; Jesus was faithful as a son set over that household (Heb. 3:5,6). Whilst we remember the lives of men like Moses and learn from them, it is Jesus we honour, it is Jesus we worship, it is Jesus we lean all our hopes on. And he will not fail us.

ii) Moses as a leader in need of support - The second thing I want to say about Moses and the help of Aaron and Hur is that it demonstrates to us the very real need of leaders in the church to be supported. All leaders are weak and fragile; however blessed a man's ministry might be, he remains fallen and fragile. Ben is a man called and equipped by God; that is clear and that is crucial. But he will need your support. How can you best give that to him?

• pray for him, but also pray with him - make the prayer meeting a time when he knows that the church is at one in the great gospel battle.
• support by showing that you are seriously engaging with the word he ministers week by week. Talk to him about it; ask him to help you to apply it. Tell him how God's Word has helped you, how it has been relevant in your daily walk. He won't be looking for compliments at the door; it's real engagement with God's Word that truly encourages those whose responsibility is to minister that word.
• encourage him by bearing with one another in love;
• encourage him by being active witnesses to the grace of God in whatever way the Lord opens for you.

In all those ways and so many more you can show your support for Ben - and in showing that support, you demonstrate that your heart is for God and his glory.

4. The LORD is our banner
So the battle is fought and arms are raised to the Lord and the battle is won - the Lord delivers his people. And, just as much as a time of failure such as occurred at Massah and Meribah, a victory of this nature demands to be memorialised. Notice two things:

i) The Lord tells Moses to record this event on a scroll and to make sure that Joshua hears it "because I will completely blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven" (v.14). That isn't a vindictive gesture but rather the Lord's determination to rid this world of all that oppose his plans to rescue and to restore.

ii) An altar is constructed by Moses and called "The LORD is my Banner". The people of Israel are under his banner and therefore under his care.

The church belongs to the Lord and is his responsibility. He will give the victory and has done so in Jesus. That is to be the source of all our confidence and hope as we do battle in his name. We go out into the daily battles with the Lord as our banner – the God who enlists us into his army to do battle for righteousness, to hold out the word of life, the demonstrate the value and the power of redeeming love.

God grant us grace ever to do so. Amen.

Yahweh's mercy

let me fall into the hands of Yahweh,
for his mercy is very great;
and let me not fall into the hands of men
(1 Chron. 21:13)

David was offered 3 choices as punishment for numbering Israel: three years of famine; three months of war or three days of the Angel of Yahweh bringing death on the people. Three years seems a long time but they might just be able to eke things out; three months against military enemies for a seasoned warrior might not seem too long; but who knows how much damage the omnipotent God could do in just three days?

David opts for the three days, yet only on this basis: Yahweh's mercy is very great. Unlike fallen humanity, in wrath he remembers mercy. And his mercy is very great. It is indeed a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God but faced with the choice between Yahweh's merciful judgement and human cruelty, David chose the former.

Because Yahweh's mercy is very great.

The Holy Scriptures

1.
Oh Book! infinite sweetnesse! let my heart
Suck ev’ry letter, and a hony gain,
Precious for any grief in any part ;
To cleare the breast, to mollifie all pain.

Thou art all health, health thriving, till it make
A full eternitie: thou art a masse
Of strange delights, where we may wish and take.
Ladies, look here; this is the thankfull glasse,

That mends the lookers eyes: this is the well
That washes what it shows. Who can indeare
Thy praise too much? thou art heav’ns Lidger here,
Working against the states of death and hell.

Thou art joyes handsell: heav’n lies flat in thee,
Subject to ev’ry mounters bended knee.


2.
Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine,
And the configurations of their glorie!
Seeing not only how each verse doth shine,
But all the constellations of the storie.

This verse marks that, and both do make a motion
Unto a third, that ten leaves off doth lie:
Then as dispersed herbs do watch a potion,
These three make up some Christians destinie.

Such are thy secrets, which my life makes good,
And comments on thee: for in ev’ry thing
Thy words do finde me out, and parallels bring,
And in another make me understood.

Starres are poore books, and oftentimes do misse
This book of starres lights to eternall blisse.

(George Herbert)

Professional Daydreamer (Over The Rhine)

Part of me
You are a part of me
I never want to lose
Hard for me
This is too hard
Maybe I can't get through
What will I miss the most
Pray that I'm haunted by your ghost

Listening
You're always listening
I don't know what to say
Why don't you turn and run at break-neck speed
Just to get away
And when you catch your breath
Pray I said every word I meant

Alright it's alright now
Alright it's alright

Broken down
We're all so broken down
Bandages on our wings
I know I don't have to tell you
Only broken hearts can sing
I'm hoping for a sign
Pray that I'm anything but fine

Some things are never gonna change
You ought to know by now

*******

words: Bergquist/Detweiler
music: Bergquist