Lent 24 post 22

 Genesis 50.15-21

 

This is a beautiful ending, don’t you think? This moment of brotherly reconciliation. Especially when you remember the jagged turbulence of the early chapters of Genesis following the beautiful beginning in chapters 1-2.

Broken relationships at every level saturate Genesis 3-11. Shame and domination poison marriage. Jealousy and anger lead to a brother’s murder. Corruption and violence blight the whole human race. And nations are scattered in confusion. It’s not just that every individual is a sinner. By the time we reach Genesis 11, sin has brought God’s curse on the earth, pervaded culture, escalated through generations and divided the nations. How can such brokenness be healed, such enmities be reconciled?

So along comes God’s answer in Genesis 12, Abraham and his family, through whom God is going to enable all nations to find blessing like his. But as we read the long chapters that follow, episodes of blessing seem like sporadic relief from the long catalogue of hatred and violence. Can you imagine any more dysfunctional family than Abraham’s, through four generations? Squabbling wives, abused women, lying men, sibling rivalry, trickery and deception, sexual violence, slaughter, murderous hatred, on and on it goes.

The miracle of Genesis is that God keeps going too, repeating his promise to each generation, ‘All nations will be blessed through you, trust me.’ And so the book comes to this gentle conclusion that is movingly beautiful and theologically rich. This is what God truly longs for, it seems to say, reconciliation, healing and peace.

Mind you, it all begins very dubiously, more lies! Out of fear of vengeance (in spite of 45.4-11), Joseph’s brothers invent their dead father’s for Joseph to forgive the wrongs they had done. Twice they admit their sin, twice they ask for forgiveness. That’s a start, I suppose.

Joseph’s response is the message of the whole book in a nutshell. Here are the radical truths on which reconciliation could be based, then, now or at any time.

1, the sovereignty of God (.19). ‘If you want forgiveness, ‘ Joseph is saying, ‘you need to take it up with a higher court.  I may be top guy in Egypt, but I’m not God. Forgiveness is for God to dispense. So don’t be afraid. I’m not the one to be afraid of here.’

2, the providence of God (.20). No excuses. No ‘You didn’t really mean it, did you?’ Just plain truth. ‘You planned evil against me.’ Absolutely. But then comes the redemptive power of God to make evil accomplish his good plans. ‘But God planned it for good.’ And God’s plan, overriding evil to accomplish good, resulted in the saving of lives.

3, the refusal of vengeance (.21). So, if that was God’s plan,  how could Joseph reverse it back into the evil of an endless unforgiving feud between brothers? No, let God’s plan stand.  ‘So, to repeat, don’t be afraid, not only will I not take revenge, I will positively care for you and your children.’

Those last three words, ‘and your children’, were what convinced some Arabic-speaking tribesmen in Chad, when they first listened to the book of Genesis translated into their own language, that Joseph and his brothers were truly reconciled. The translators asked them how they could be sure. It was not so much Joseph’s grand theology, but his promise to care for their children. ‘That’s what brothers do,’ they exclaimed. ‘Of course they are reconciled!’

Joseph’s words and example point us to the cross. Can you see the same fundamental dynamic in the way Peter describes the cross in Acts 2.23-24? That too was planned as deliberate evil, the worst that human wickedness could hurl at the Son of God. But God in his sovereign providence and foreknowledge turned that evil to its own destruction, and brought about the infinite good of the saving of lives, eternally. Radical reconciliation is God’s good triumphing over humankind’s evil.

Lent 24 John Stott quote 5

 In the last days

the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established

    as the highest of the mountains;

it will be exalted above the hills,

    and peoples will stream to it.

Many nations will come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,

    to the temple of the God of Jacob.

He will teach us his ways,

    so that we may walk in his paths.”

The law will go out from Zion,

    the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

He will judge between many peoples

    and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide.

They will beat their swords into plowshares

    and their spears into pruning hooks.

Nation will not take up sword against nation,

    nor will they train for war anymore.

Everyone will sit under their own vine

    and under their own fig tree,

and no one will make them afraid,

    for the LORD Almighty has spoken.

All the nations may walk

    in the name of their gods,

but we will walk in the name of the LORD

    our God for ever and ever.

(Micah 4.1-5)

The cross not only elicits our worship. . .but it also directs our conduct in relation to others, including our enemies. . .We are to exhibit in our relationships that combination of love and justice which characterised the wisdom of God in the cross. 

But how, in practice, we are to combine love and justice, mercy and severity, and so walk in the way of the cross, is often hard to decide and harder still to do. Take ‘conciliation’ or ‘peace-making’ as an example. Christian people are called to be peacemakers (Mt. 5.9) and to ‘seek peace and pursue it’ (1 Pet. 3.11). . .In pronouncing peacemakers ‘blessed’, Jesus added that ‘they will be called sons (or daughters) of God’. He must have meant that peace-making is such a characteristically divine activity that those who engage in it thereby disclose their identity and demonstrate their authenticity as God’s children. 

If our peace-making is to be modelled on our heavenly Father’s, however, we shall conclude at once that it is quite different from appeasement. For the peace which God secures is never cheap peace, but always costly. He is indeed the world’s pre-eminent peacemaker, but when he determined on reconciliation with us, his ‘enemies’, who had rebelled against him, he ‘made peace’ through the blood of Christ’s cross (Col. 1.20). To reconcile himself to us, and us to himself, and Jews, Gentiles and other hostile groups to one another, cost him nothing less than the painful shame of the cross. We have no right to expect, therefore, that we shall be able to engage in conciliation work at no cost to ourselves, whether our involvement in the dispute is as the offending or offended party, or as a third party anxious to help enemies to become friends again. . .

The incentive to peace-making is love, but it degenerates into appeasement whenever justice is ignored. To forgive and to ask for forgiveness are both costly exercises. All authentic Christian peace-making exhibits the love and justice, and so the pain, of the cross. 

John Stott, The Cross of Christ, p341–343

Lent 24 post 21

 1 John 1.5-2.2

‘So that we might die to sins'

Remember this from yesterday (1 Peter 2.24)? But do we? Can we?

It is wonderful to know that when I come to the cross as a repentant sinner, I receive God’s gifts of forgiveness, justification, new birth and eternal life. But what about the rest of my life as a Christian? On the one hand, I am told that I should ‘die to sin' and ‘go and sin no more'. On the other hand, I slip and fall into sin all too easily. Isn’t that your experience too? How are we to cope with this tension? John exposes two opposite dangers, and insists that the atoning death of Christ provides the ongoing answer to both.

Two opposite dangers

1, The danger of trivialising sin. In the community John was writing to, some were making boastful claims. They claimed to be in fellowship with God who is light, yet their actual behaviour (‘walking in darkness') belied that claim (.6). Worse, they claimed to ‘be without sin' (verses 8, 10). This probably does not mean they claimed to have reached a state of sinless perfection. Rather, either they were saying that any sins they might commit after becoming Christian ‘didn’t count', they incurred no further guilt or condemnation (possibly using a text like Romans 8.1). So they felt they could now sin with happy abandon (in spite of Paul’s strong rejection of that implication in Romans 6). Or they were simply denying that some dubious behaviour was actually ‘sin’, they found ways to excuse or redefine it with other harmless words. Whenever we trifle with sin in such ways (and there are plenty more, we know), we deceive ourselves, make God a liar and reject the empathic teaching of his Word. Don’t do it!

John gives us the right response with two ‘ifs’ and two almost identical promises. ‘If we walk in the light' (.7, which is to live with transparent honesty in the light of God’s presence), and ‘if we confess our sins' (.9, as a reality, not a triviality), then not only do we remain within the true fellowship of believers, but we experience the continuing power of the cross. ‘The blood of Jesus', as I’m sure you know, means the sacrificial death of Christ, as it does throughout the New Testament (e.g. Acts 20.28, Colossians 1.20, 1 Peter 1.18-19, Revelation 5.9). So John means that all of our sins, including those committed after conversion, are ‘covered’ by the atonement of the cross.

And here’s another thing. Confession leads to cleansing. It is wonderful that God, in his covenant faithfulness and justice (.9, Deuteronomy 32.4), forgives our sin. But sin defines and virtues us like sticky, clinging filth. Proverbs' question, ‘Who can say, ‘I have kept my heart pure, I am clean and without sin'?’ (Proverbs 20.9) generates the psalmist’s prayer (Psalm 51.7), and receives God's promise (Jeremiah 33.8, Ezekiel 36.25). Have a glance at those texts, and then see how John turns that promise into an ongoing present experience, ‘The blood of Jesus goes on cleansing us from all sin.’ I have soaked in the warm soapy bath of that verse many, many times. Isn’t it delicious to be clean again?

2, The danger of being terrified by sin. Does John fear that the wonderful truth of verse 9 might lead his readers to feel just a little too casual about sin? (‘Well, I can always confess it and get forgiven again.’) If so, he correct such an inference immediately in 2.1. His whole purpose in writing is to strengthen them in resisting sin altogether, ‘so that you will not sin'! Isn’t that your longing, like every believer, going back to Psalm 119.9-11? ‘But if anybody does sin. . .’, that is the reality for every believer too. What then? Do I stand condemned before God, tormented by Satan the accuser? No! says John. I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus my Advocate and Defender. His righteousness and atoning sacrifice (2.2) drive out the accuser, and will eternally destroy his works (1 John 3.8).

Lent 24 post 20

 1 Peter 2.19-25

‘Your sins are forgiven'

It’s all very well to say the words, but how can it be true? Did Exodus not tell us, ‘God does not leave the guilty unpunished' (Exodus 34.7)? Did God himself not say, ‘I will not acquit the guilty' (Exodus 23.7)? How, then, is forgiveness possible?

Sin has consequences that have to be borne. Guilt cries out for justice to be done. Deliberate evil demands some kind of punishment. Wrongdoing needs to be put right in some way. If those are among our deepest human instincts, how can God’s holiness hold lesser standards?

Yet Exodus also showed us God’s compassion, while Psalm 103 rejoiced in God’s reigning love and forgiveness. We must hold both holiness and love together, for they are both definitive of our God, and they are not in competition with each other.

This vision of God’s holy love will deliver us from caricatures of him. We must picture him neither as an indulgent God who compromises his holiness in order to spare and spoil us, nor as a harsh, vindictive God who suppresses his love in order to crush and destroy us. How then can God express his holiness without consuming us, and his love without condoning our sins?

(John Stott, The Cross of Christ, p155)

Answer, by bearing the consequences of our sin himself. As we saw, Moses asked God to ‘carry’ (i.e. forgive) the sins of Israel, and God agreed to do so. What Moses could not have imagined then was the ultimate cost to God not only of bearing the sin of Israel, but of ‘tak(ing) away the sin of the world.’ He would find out, however, in the conversation on the Mount of Transfiguration, when Moses, Elijah and Jesus would speak of the ‘exodus’ that Jesus would ‘bring to fulfilment at Jerusalem' (Luke 9.31), that greater ‘exodus' redemption accomplished when Jesus ‘(would bear) our sins in his body on the cross' (1 Peter 2.24).

Suffering for Christ and like Christ

Peter is talking here to Christian slaves of unbelieving masters. And he points out that if the slaves get beaten for some wrongdoing, there is nothing Christianly commendable about that. That’s simple, if brutal, justice. You get what you deserve. But if you suffer unjustly while doing good, ah, that is pleasing to God. Why? Not because God takes sadistic pleasure in your suffering, but because such suffering is like Christ's.

But Peter cannot talk about the suffering and death of Christ merely as an example (though it certainly is that). Jesus did not die merely to model how somebody could endure injustice and cruelty without fighting back. No, he suffered ‘for you' (.21). And in those two words, Peter condenses a profound atonement theology that he then expands through several quotations from Isaiah 53. ‘Christ cannot be an example of suffering for us to follow unless he is first of all the Saviour who’s sufferings were endured on our behalf' (I. Howard Marshall, 1 Peter, p91).

To say that Christ bore our sins means that he bore their consequences and guilt, doing so in our place, for us. But who is this Christ? This is the Lord God himself, incarnate. The One who told Moses that he would ‘carry’ sin is the One who now does exactly that in the person of the Son of God. God the just Judge submits to being the unjustly judged. And, in bearing his own sentence, God accomplishes ultimate justice, for himself and for us. Holy love poured out in saving fullness and atoning power, amazing and wonderful.

Lent 24 post 19

 Luke 7.29-50

‘Friend of sinners' indeed! It might sound nice to you, but to me as a Pharisee (Simon by name), no worse accusation could be made against a rabbi, if Jesus could even be called that. But I’d been to hear John the Baptist, and I’d listened to Jesus from the back of the crowd, and they had certainly challenged my thinking. So I invited Jesus along with some of my Pharisee friends for a meal at my house.

So there we are, reclining and enjoying my wife’s food and just getting ready to spring some hard questions on Jesus, when in walks this woman! Or rather, that woman. We all knew who she was and what she was in our village. She walks up behind where Jesus was reclining, and breaks into great heaving sobs, with her tears splashing on to his bare feet. Then (the shock!) she lets her hair down, as loose as she is herself, and kneels down and wipes his feet and kisses them. And then she snaps open the neck of a jar of perfume and pours it all over his feet, and the voluptuous sexy scent fills my pure house. And Jesus? He just smiles, turns slightly, pats her on the shoulder, as if he’d met her before. I mean, surely not.

Well, we’re all frozen into silence. I’m so embarrassed and I’m thinking, ‘Whatever they say, this man is not a prophet and I’ll tell you why. First, if he were a prophet, he’d know what kind of woman this creature is, even if he’s never met her. Second, if he knew, he wouldn’t dare let her touch him like that, she’s a dirty sinner!’ I am about to announce this when Jesus looks over at me, as if to say, ‘I can answer that for you, Simon', as if he'd read my thoughts. And he starts telling a story.

‘There were these two men who owed money to a money lender. One owed about this much,’ and Jesus picks up a rather large melon in one hand. ‘The other owed about this much,’ and he picks up an olive in the other. ‘But the money lender was a kind man' (yeah right), ‘so he said, ‘I know you boys can’t pay me back, so I forgive both of you your debts.’’ And I’m thinking, ‘What has this got to do with the situation here?’ Then Jesus goes on, ‘Which one of the two do you think will love the money lender more?’

See, that’s the annoying thing about Jesus. You come with a bunch of questions to ask him and he asks one single question, and you’re stumped. I wanted to give a clever answer, but in the end, I just mumbled, ‘I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.’ ‘Good answer!’ says Jesus with a smile. Then he swivels round a bit to look at the woman, but he’s still talking to me over his shoulder. ‘Do you see this woman?’ Well, of course, I could see her! Right here, uninvited, in my house. . .’Your house, yes,’ says Jesus. ‘When I came in, you gave me none of the customary tokens of welcome. But she has not stopped treating me like her honoured guest.’

This is totally unfair and out of order.

Comparing me, Simon, with her, and her a sinner! A really big-time sinner, too. . . But Jesus interrupts my thoughts again. ‘Yes, she is indeed. Her sins are many. But here’s the thing. Her sins have been forgiven. That’s the difference. And that’s why she shows me such love and honour.’ Then he turns back, and looks straight at me across the table, ‘But I suppose,’ he adds quietly, ‘someone who thinks they have nothing to be forgiven for will not show much love.’

Was that true? Did I really think I had little or nothing to be forgiven for? I felt myself blushing. This woman might be the biggest sinner in the room, but was she the only sinner? I looked around at my guests. Their eyes were out on stalks, they'd never been so close to a woman like that, and her hair, and the perfume. ‘There is more sin going on right here in my house today than in hers,’ I found myself thinking.

Jesus had turned my question upside down. The point is not, ‘Who is the biggest sinner' but, ‘Which of us knows that our sins have been forgiven?’

Then Jesus turns round fully to the woman, gently lifts up her face and speaks directly to her. ‘They have been forgiven, you know, your sins, all of them, as I told you, remember? Trust me!’ That broke the silence! All round the table, ‘Who does he think he is? Forgiving sins? Only God can do that!’ Well, yes indeed. But Jesus just insists to the woman, ‘Your sins have been forgiven. Do you believe me?’ She nods a smile through her tears. ‘Then your faith has saved you. Go in peace.’

She stands up, and having crept in despised, she walks out with the dignity of the forgiven.

And my conscience-stricken heart is crying out, ‘Jesus, what would I give to have you say those words to me!’

Lent 24 post 18

 Psalm 103

Anger and forgiveness 

Yesterday we saw God punishing sinners in his anger, but also forgiving sinners in his mercy. And we know from our New Testament that only the cross resolves this tension. But how did Old Testament Israelites hold these two aspects of God together? Did they imagine their God as permanently angry (the caricature ‘God of the Old Testament')? Or did they think that God’s forgiveness was a kind of weakness, that he just caved in to Moses' persistent request? Psalm 103 shows that the answer to both is no.

On the other hand, God’s anger is utterly real and justified (Exodus 32.7-10), but limited. He is ‘slow to anger' (Psalm 103.8-9), and it does not last for ever, unlike his covenant love which will (.17). And, on the other hand, God’s forgiveness defines not only his character (.8), but also his universal kingdom (.19). God forgives not with reluctance, but as the exercise of his everlasting power. Since he is the ruler of the universe (did you notice this point at the end of Psalm 103?), he has the strength to ‘carry’ a nation's sin (see Numbers 14.17-20).

He can carry your sin and mine, then. Personal forgiveness flows from God’s throne.

Can you see how the author of Psalm 103 turns the Exodus story into his own personal testimony? God’s acts of righteousness and justice for the oppressed (.6) were modelled in the exodus itself, as Moses and Israel knew well (.7). The psalmist urges his own soul, just as Moses urged Israel, not to forget all that God had done (Deuteronomy 6.12, 8.11). God’s ‘benefits’ for him, as for Israel, included forgiveness (Exodus 34.9), healing (Exodus 15.26) and redemption from the pit of utter destruction (Exodus 32.10,14).

Feeling the heartbeat 

Sometimes it helps us to get at the central message of a psalm if we take note of its structure. This one is beautifully balanced. We can recognise this by the way the writer repeats, in the second half of the psalm, certain key words or concepts in reverse order from the first half. Look for the repeated words which I’ll underline and notice how they occur in both halves of the Psalm. 

Having begun with personal praise (.1-2), he ends by summoning praise from angels, cosmic powers and the whole created order, ending, as he began, with himself (.20-22). This is like an outer ‘envelope’ around the psalm. And then, within that outer circle, there are several inner concentric circles pointing inwards to the central heartbeat of the whole poem,

The saving righteousness of God that had rescued exodus Israel (.6) is the same everlasting love and righteousness that will sustain those who love and fear the Lord in every generation (.17-18).

The Moses of verse 7 is recalled in verses 14-16, where the dust and grass of human mortality echo the Psalm of Moses (Psalm 90.1-6). However, Psalm 103 links the theme to God’s fatherly compassion, whereas Psalm 90 links it to God’s wrath. Both perspectives, of course, are true and complementary.

The compassion of God is first quoted directly from Exodus 34.6 (.8), and then quickly returns, compared to the compassion of a father (.13).

And so we zoom in through these decreasing rings of matching words and phrases to the very centre of the psalm. And what is this core message, this beating heart of divine truth? Can you see it in all its heart-warming assurance in verses 9-12?

Read those wonderful words aloud with thankfulness in your heart!

He will not always accuse,

Nor will he harbour his anger forever,

He does not treat us as our sins deserve

Or repay us according to our iniquities.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth,

So great is his love for those who fear him,

As far as the east is from the west,

So far has he removed our transgressions from us.

Lent 24 post 17

Exodus 32.30-33.6, 33.12-34.9

 

Why doesn't God just forgive us?

These chapters in Exodus expose the sheer depth of ungrateful rebellious depravity in human sin. And although we hear, with Moses, God own resounding affirmation of his forgiving character (34.6-7), we also know, with Israel, that God cannot ‘just forgive’. Indeed, as we agonise through the suspense of the ‘negotiation’ between Moses and God (is that a fair word for these verses? It certainly sounds like it), we sense that forgiveness is a deep problem for God himself, a problem that only he can and ultimately will resolve. Forgiveness is not something casually dished out on demand, like sweets to a child.

Yesterday, the Lord had simply relented (32.14). Today, Moses specifically asks God to forgive, that is (in Hebrew), ‘to carry', their ‘great sin' (32.32). Somebody has to bear this sin. If the people do, it spells destruction. But if God will carry it himself, then they can be spared. That's the meaning of forgiveness, the offended party carrying the offence rather than inflicting its consequences on the offender.

‘But if not. . .’

Most likely, Moses means that if God intended not to forgive (and so intended to destroy) the people, then he (Moses) has no wish to carry on. Not so much offering to die for the people, as asking to perish with them, if that's what was to happen. Moses intercedes in a way that identifies himself completely with those he is praying for. Do our prayers ever reach that kind of depth?

God gives an enigmatic answer, which goes part way. He will keep one element of the promise to Abraham. Let Moses lead the people up into the land, with an angel to help. But God himself will not be in their midst,  for their own protection (33.1–3). This is catastrophic! Without the presence of God in their midst, Israel would lose all their distinctiveness among the nations. That distinctiveness included the presence of God and holiness of life (Deuteronomy 4.5–8). All of that is now threatened. This won’t do, will it? You might as well cancel chapters 25 – 31. No tabernacle, no ark of the covenant, no atoning sacrifices, no priests, no holy God dwelling in the Most Holy Place. A bleak prospect, if you’d been an Israelite. No wonder they stripped off their ornaments in repentant grief.

Moses wrestles on until God promises unambiguously that his presence will go with his people (33.12–17). Not just an angel up at the front, but God himself at the centre. They will travel together, God, Moses and the people. (Did you notice again in verse 16 how inseparably Moses unites himself with the people he prays for?) Forgiven sinners are sinful still, however, they are ‘stiff-necked’ indeed, as Moses acknowledges in 34.9. That’s why he asks God to go on carrying/forgiving them. God will have a lot more ‘carrying’ to do before this story is over. God must either bear our sin himself, or destroy us. And we will praise God for eternity that he chose the former.

Glory and goodness

But Moses hasn’t finished yet. ‘Now show me your glory,’ he asks (.18). Wouldn’t you think he would have had enough of the glory of God up that mountain for the past month? But Moses wants an even more intimate understanding of his God. God says he will cause all his goodness to pass in front of Moses. God’s glory is his goodness. Or God’s goodness is his glory. Either way, hallelujah!

This good and glorious God then defines himself in classic words that echo through Scripture,

the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving [carrying] wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished . . . (34.6–7)

 

If you want to hear those echoes, feel free to check out, Numbers 14.18, Nehemiah 9.17, Psalms 78.38, 86.5,15, 99.8, 103.8, 145.8-9, Joel 2.13, Jonah 4.2, Micah 7.18-19.

Lent 24 post 16

 Exodus 32.1-14

A brutal shock

If you'd been reading the book of Exodus up to this point, at 32.1-6 you'd feel that the story crashes to earth right here. Here are people who have experienced God's greatest act of redemption in human history (chapters 1-18), until the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ will take place. Here are people who, in the midst of earth-shaking events at Mount Sinai, have received from God their identity and mission to be God's priestly and holy people among all the nations in the whole earth (19.3-6). Here are people who have received God's gifts of grace for a redeemed community, God's law and covenant, to which they have responded by promising three times to obey all that God commanded (chapters 20-24). Here are people in whose midst the living God wants to dwell, and to whom he has given detailed instructions for the tent in which he will do so (chapters 25-31).

In these last seven chapters, you'll have been in the glorious presence of God with Moses on the mountaintop, just trying to visualise the sumptuous beauty, the intricacies of white, blue and scarlet embroidery, the glinting of gold and silver and bronze, the warm glow of oil lamps and the fragrance of incense, all to adorn the place where God wished to dwell.

The fall of Israel 

But in six verses of blatant disobedience and idolatry with a ridiculous calf made of melted gold earrings, Aaron and the people break the first three of the Ten Commandments. They explicitly reject the God who had brought them up out of Egypt (20.2-3, 32.4). They make an idol. And they abuse the name of Yahweh in a blasphemous parody of the covenant ceremony (32.5-6, 24.5,11). It's like committing adultery on your wedding night. It's like the story of the story of the fall in Genesis 3, after the beauty of Genesis 1-2. This is the fall of Israel. 

For here also are the people whom God has created and called to be the means of blessing to the nations (Genesis 12.1-3). But Israel turns out to be just as sinful as the rest of humanity, rebellious, idolatrous, immoral. The people through whom God wills to bring healing to the nations are themselves infected by the virus of sin and rebellion. We should be shocked and depressed. 

What can God do? Well, he could wipe out this bunch of stiff-necked rebels and start again with Moses instead of Abraham (.10). But in the very act of suggesting that and warning Moses to stand aside, God mysteriously pauses for a moment (after all, God could have just acted without telling Moses at all, couldn't he?). God leaves space for grace, the grace of intercession. It almost seems, don't you think, that God wants Moses to speak up. And he does. Fast.

Urgent intercession 

Moses steps into the gap and boldly argues with God, objecting vigorously to the whole idea that God could utterly destroy this people (32.11-13). His intercession is split over two days, and today we see the first vital part, the beginnings of forgiveness. Moses makes three rapid but profound appeals.

1. God's relationship with Israel (.11). Look at verse 7, where God talked to Moses about ‘your people whom you brought up out of Egypt’. But Moses robustly objects. ‘Excuse me, Lord,’ he says,  ‘but they are your people, and you brought them out of Egypt. They belong to you by your own redemption.’ It is God who started this whole covenant relationship. 

2. God's name and reputation (.12). What will the Egyptians think of Yahweh God if he takes so much trouble getting his people out of slavery and then kills them anyway? What kind of malicious or incompetent god is that? Think again, God! 

3. God’s covenant promise (.13). ‘Remember . . . Abraham.’ God could not go back on the oath he had sworn on his own life. In appealing to God to change his mind at this terrifying moment, Moses was actually appealing to God to be consistent with his ancient promise and all it would mean for Israel, and indeed for the world.

Lent 24 John Stott quote 4

 If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? 

But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared

Psalm 130.3-4

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. 

Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. 

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. 

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. 

I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; 

I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

Psalm 32.1-5

The loud shout of victory is the single word tetelestai. Being in the perfect tense, it means ‘it has been and will forever remain finished'. We note the achievement Jesus claimed just before he died. It is not men who have finished their brutal deed, it is he who has accomplished what he came into the world to do. He has borne the sins of the world. Deliberately, freely and in perfect love he has endured the judgment in our place. He has procured salvation for us, established a new covenant between God and humankind, and made available the chief covenant blessing, the forgiveness of sins. 

In conclusion, the cross enforces three truths, about ourselves, about God and about Jesus Christ.

First, our sin must be extremely horrible. Nothing reveals the gravity of sin like the cross. For ultimately what sent Christ there was neither the greed of Judas, not the envy of the priests, not the vacillating cowardice of Pilate, but our own greed, envy, cowardice and other sins, and Christ's resolve in love and mercy to bear judgment and so put them away. It is impossible for us to face Christ’s cross with integrity and not to feel ashamed of ourselves. Apathy, selfishness and complacency blossom everywhere in the world except at the cross. There these noxious weeds shrivel and die. They are seen for the tatty, poisonous things they are. For if there was no way by which the righteous God could righteously forgive our unrighteousness, except that he should bear it himself in Christ, it must be serious indeed. It is only when we see this that, stripped of our self-righteousness and self-satisfaction, we are ready to put our trust in Jesus Christ as the Saviour we urgently need.

Secondly, God’s love must be wonderful beyond comprehension. God could quite justly have abandoned us to our fate. He could have left us alone to reap the fruit of our wrongdoing and to perish in our sins. It is what we deserved. But he did not. Because he loved us, he came after us in Christ. He pursued us even to the desolate anguish of the cross, where he bore our sin, guilt, judgment and death. It takes a hard and stony heart to remain unmoved by love like that. It is more than love. Its proper name is ‘grace’, which is love to the undeserving.

Thirdly, Christ's salvation must be a free gift. He ‘purchased' it for us at the high price of his own life-blood. So what is there left for us to pay? Nothing! Since he claimed that all was now ‘finished’, there is nothing for us to contribute. Not of course that we now have licence to sin and can always count on God’s forgiveness. On the contrary, the same cross of Christ, which is the ground of a free salvation, is also the most powerful incentive to a holy life. But this new life follows. First, we have to humble ourselves at the foot of the cross, confess that we have sinned and deserve nothing at his hand but judgment, thank him that he loved us and died for us, and receive from him a full and free forgiveness.

John Stott, The Cross of Christ, p97-99

Lent 24 post 15

 Romans 5.12-21

We go back full circle to where we began our week, with Ecclesiastes lamenting the crippling, life-blighting enigma of death. It’s all very well, you see, for Dylan Thomas to write his moving poem (much-loved at funerals) ‘And death shall have no dominion (borrowing the words from the Apostle Paul, of course, who was referring to Jesus, Romans 6.9). For the fact is, it does. Death reigns. Genesis 3 proves its truth for approximately two people every second on this planet.

Sin entered, death reigns

And that’s where Paul starts in our passage today, in the Garden of Eden. And with the ‘one man' through whom sin entered the world, bringing death to all because all sinned. Now Paul starts in verse 12 with ‘Just as', but never quite finishes his sentence. He'll do that when he gets to verses 18-21. But his immediate point is that because sin is the universal state of humankind, death is our universal destiny, at whatever point in history you may have lived. Now, by ‘death’, Paul (and God in Genesis 3) means more than merely physical death. It is the spiritual death of expulsion from God’s presence, ‘dead in sins', condemned. It is in that sense that Paul repeats himself, ‘death reigned' (.14, 17), ‘sin reigned in death' (.21).

Kingdom language 

That’s kingdom language, isn’t it? Paul portrays sin and death as twin tyrants, and doubtless he would include Satan as well, over a kingdom that enslaved humanity. But what was it Jesus said? ‘If I by the finger of God cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.’ And, for Paul, that is the kingdom of grace, God’s grace (.21). And so, as we have seen all week, the battle is joined, two kingdoms in mortal combat, one, the reign inaugurated by the ‘one man' whose disobedience brought sin and death, the other, the victorious reign of the ‘One’ whose obedience brings righteousness and eternal life. 

And where was this victory won?

Our whole week has focused on the death of death through the death of Christ, so you must know the answer! But you might wonder why Paul does not mention the cross in our passage. Well, of course, it is prominent in 5.6-11 and again in chapter 6. But Paul clearly has the cross in mind in the last part of verse 19, ‘So also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.’ Paul is echoing Isaiah 53.11, where the Servant of the Lord, in obedience to the will of his God, would by his vicarious death ‘justify many'. Likewise, Jesus, as the Servant, became ‘obedient to death, even death on a cross!’ (Philippians 2.7-8). Christ’s obedience here, then, means his willing acceptance of his Father’s will, even though the agonizing struggle of Gethsemane. Where Adam rebelled and disobeyed, Jesus the Son and Servant submitted and obeyed.

And where is this reign to be lived out?

Verse 17 is astonishing. We would expect the opposite to the reign of death in the first half of the verse to be that Christ would reign, and of course that is true. But Paul says that those who have received God’s gifts of grace and righteousness, we believers, are the ones who will ‘reign in life through. . . Jesus Christ'.

Lent 24 post 14

 Hebrews 2.9-18

It’s not that I’m afraid to die,’ said Woody Allen. ‘I just don’t want to be there when it happens.’ A lot of people would agree with the second half. We don’t want to go through the unpredictable and potentially painful process of actually dying. But is the first half of his claim sincere? I don’t know, but I doubt it. 

Fear of death 

Judging from the vast range of cultures and religions, the human race has a pretty universal fear of death. And why not? Life is such a precious thing, and death is such a mysterious intrusion from a realm that scares us simply because it is so unknowable, so beyond our customary control. Of course, there are many wonderfully brave people who overcome the fear of death for the sake of others, a country’s armed forces, police, firefighters, emergency and rescue services, medical personnel in lethal epidemics and war zones, bomb disposal officers, lifeboat crews . . . But being willing to face death is not the same as having no fear of death, is it? Good fear makes you careful. No fear at all is foolhardy. 

It’s a kind of slavery, says our text in Hebrews (.15). And we saw at the start of the week that Ecclesiastes would agree. In the midst of this good world and wonderful life, we are imprisoned in the fear of inevitable death. But here’s the thing. It’s an open prison now! We can walk out free! 

Why? Because ‘we see Jesus’ (.9). 

We see Jesus 

The writer to the Hebrews opens his letter with an overwhelming affirmation of the deity of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, exalting him above all the ranks of angels (Hebrews 1). But then we see Jesus as ‘lower than the angels for a little while’, that is, as a man. And why did the divine Son of God have to become fully human? The writer summarizes the point of his whole next section thus: ‘so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone’ (.9). And then he expands on that same reason at the end in verse 17: ‘in order that . . . he might make atonement for the sins of the people.’ In short, God became human in order to die a human death, and in that God–man death to deal with the problem of sin that brought death upon us. 

Flesh and blood 

Can you see, then, the two fundamental points that Hebrews makes in these verses? First of all, we must grasp the full truth of the incarnation. God became wholly one of us in Jesus Christ, subject to our sufferings, our temptations (.18) and our mortality. And this was both ‘fitting’ and necessary. Only God could save us. But God could not save us remotely, from heaven. Only God in flesh and blood (.14a) could take our fallen humanity upon himself and redeem us ‘from below’. 

Battle dress 

Then, second, we see Jesus in battle dress, paradoxically but precisely, in his death. Remember God the warrior last week (Exodus 15)? Remember Jesus overpowering the ‘strong man’ (Luke 11.21–22)? That’s the picture Hebrews has in mind, recalling perhaps the same imagery from Isaiah 49.24–25 and 59.15–20. Jesus in his death took on the worst that human and satanic power could inflict upon him, death itself, and won the victory by taking on himself the sin that gives death its sting and power. 

I think the NIV is right to translate verse 14 as ‘break the power of him who holds the power of death’, rather than ‘destroy’ (ESV). The word means to make ineffective, render impotent. Neither the devil nor death were destroyed at the cross, right there and then. But they will be, when God’s victory is completed at the end (1 Corinthians 15.24–26, 54–57). And, in the meantime, the devil’s power to imprison us in the fear of death is broken. Death has lost its sting for those liberated by the cross of Christ. The death of Christ spells the ultimate death of death itself. 

We should not think that ‘the power of death’ means that the devil can just kill whomever he wants. Satan is a created being whose power is subject to God’s permission and authority. ‘The power of death’ probably means the power that the fear of death holds over us, which the devil can certainly exploit. And that is what God has delivered us from through the death of Christ.

Lent 24 post 13

John 11.1-44

 

I mean, how long does it take to get from up there on the other side of the River Jordan down to Bethany here? A day or two’s walk at most. But he just didn’t come, did he? We sent him a message that our brother Lazarus was dangerous ill, but days passed and no sign of Jesus. And then Lazarus died, our precious brother, and a man still in his prime. Mary and I, we were beside ourselves with grief. It felt as if we’d been widowed. The whole village came round to mourn with us and the house was full of people, weeping and wailing.

And still no Jesus, four days later, and Lazarus’s body now wrapped and in the tomb. Surely he’d heard the news by now. Didn’t he remember how much we loved him, and how much he loved us and our little home? All those times he’d stayed with us and I’d cooked his favourite food. And, in fact,  I was in the kitchen again when a friend whispered through the little window that Jesus had reached the edge of the village. I rushed off to find him, leaving Mary with the mourners.

‘Lord,’ I wailed, ‘if only you’d come on time, my brother would not have died.’ I couldn’t help it. I was hurting so much. It wasn’t the first time I’d felt cross with him, but this was far, far worse. If only, if only.

‘Your brother will rise again,’ said Jesus, just like the mourners back home were saying again and again to Mary and me, trying to be comforting in the usual way.

‘Well, of course I know that, Lord,’ I said. ‘I know he will rise on the last day in the resurrection of all the dead.’ I mean, all of us Jews believe that (well, except those Sadducees). But that’s a long time to wait, and we’ll all be dead by then, and Jesus could have stopped him dying in the first place. My grief was tipping over into anger.

And then Jesus said words I can never forget, ‘I am the resurrection and the life (he stressed those first two words). The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?’

It was more than I could take in, but I did say I believed in him. I did and do believe he is the Messiah and the Son of God. But I thought, ‘Mary needs to hear this. It’ll make more sense to her than me; Jesus always did.’

So I hurried back to the house as fast as my skirts would allow and whispered in Mary’s ear that Jesus had arrived. She was sitting on the floor where once she’d sat at Jesus feet, but now she leapt up and hurried to where I’d met Jesus, and fell at those same feet right there. A whole crowd of us followed her, just in time to hear her say, ‘Lord, if only you’d come on time, my brother would not have died.’

‘Er, been there, said that, sister,’ I thought, though I had to wait until later to tell Mary what Jesus answered.

Mary was weeping. Everybody else was too. And then I saw Jesus. His chest was heaving with great sobs and his face was crumpling up in pain. But he managed to ask us where the body was, before bursting into tears himself. Did I tell you how much he loved Lazarus? Everybody could tell. But it actually looked as if he was angry, not just grieved, somehow angry at death for stealing Lazarus’s life.

We got to the tomb and Jesus went straight up to the entrance.

‘Take away the stone!’ he commanded. It looked as if he was going to march right in there and invade the world of the dead, like confronting death in its own realm, just as he confronted and overcame the evil spirits. But I was horrified. Didn’t he know what a body smells like after four days? Well, I told him, but it made no difference.

‘Trust me,’ he said, ‘and you will see the glory of God.’ So, I did and I did!

He looked up and prayed. Then he shouted at the top of his voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ And there he was, shuffling out of the darkness, standing right up straight in the sunlight . . . My brother! Alive!

Mary has helped me understand (she’s good at explaining things) what Jesus meant. You see, Lazarus is going to die again some day, isn’t he, and Mary and I too. But because Jesus is the resurrection, and we believe in him, that won’t be the end. We shall live! And because Jesus is the life, we know we have eternal life already now and will never truly die. Oh, and yes, we know all this because we were there when Jesus himself died on the cross, and we have seen him even more fully raised from the dead than my brother was (but that’s another story).

And that nice young John (whom Jesus loved a lot as well, apparently) says he’s going to put our story in the book he’s writing about Jesus, and end with the very same words that I said to Jesus! Isn’t that good of him? John wants you and everybody to believe, like me, that ‘Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name’.