June 2, 2019 - Gleanings from A Year in the Bible
Do you have a favourite TV show? Movie? Book? What’s a favourite of yours?
My wife Barbara and I have a a number of shows that we like to watch, Usually we enjoy comedies that are character driven.
Or dramas with strong relationships between the characters. I personally enjoy quirky characters like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, which has just completed its 12 year run.
Together we enjoy films and shows about couples with strong relationships, in part maybe because Barbara and I have a strong relationship.
Couples go through lots of ups and downs. Watching other couples go through their own ups and downs with humour and understanding, and with their own unique and quirky personalities, is enjoyable and sometimes offers us insight.
Most of us have enjoyed our favourite characters in books or maybe comic books...any comic book fans here? Or movies or television.
There’s one biography, one story about a true person, a real character that I love the most and return to the most often is...anyone want to guess?
Ok. It’s the Bible. Big surprise. I like to spend as much time as possible reading or listening to the Bible. I find the accounts of the people of God in the Bible to be fascinating, and honestly, it never gets old. Not even a little. It’s by far my favourite book.
I’m just finishing reading through the Bible in a year now, and I thought that I would share some impressions some gleanings after being immersed for a year..
I’ve had 2 big impressions this year:
1. God is deeply emotional and full of love
2. God loves us AND calls us into His purpose of loving the world to Jesus
God is deeply emotional and full of love
Now sometimes when people read the Old Testament, they struggle with what they see. Do you?
Sometimes it’s the conduct of humans that we find hard to take. Cain killing his brother Abel.
Joseph's brothers abandoning him to the wolves out of jealousy. The cruelty of the ancient Egyptians enslaving the entire Hebrew people.
The conduct of ancient peoples who regularly sacrificed their own children to appease their idea of a god.
Sexual depravity depicted in shrine prostitution and orgies in some ancient religious cults. Human betrayals. That can be difficult to read about.
But it’s really not all that strange because we kind of know and expect bad behaviour from people.
It’s not rocket science to say that there’s evil in the world. We see that today. We get that human history has this ugly trail of blood and violence, of evil acts.
But what’s harder for some is when they see portrayals of God in the Old Testament where He is angry. Not maybe angry. Not a little miffed. But outright angry.
And it’s hard for us, on this side of the New Testament where we’ve been introduced to God in and through Jesus Christ, to wrap our brains around God’s anger.
In fact in general, anger is hard to deal with. Anyone here like to be around angry people?
Anger is hard to deal with in people. It’s really hard to understand in God.
Why is anger so hard to cope with, in others AND in our selves, AND in God?
I learned something from the mission’s Hjead of Counselling, Elaine Paz this past spring as we co-led the Trauma and Transformation course together that some of you attended.
What I learned, or was reminded of, is that anger, as strong an emotion as it is, is actually a secondary emotion.
It is more of a surface eruption of something deeper. It’s the tip of the iceberg. It’s the stuff that spews out of a volcano.
When a person blows their top - have you ever seen someone really lose it?
When anger surfaces, it’s a culmination of other emotions. It’s an explosion of frustration, among other things. (Pause)
In the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, there are numerous times when God is pleased.
After He makes each stage of creation, He says it is good. Then He makes humans and He says it is very good.
The narrative of the Old Testament shows that God is pleased when justice prevails, when mercy is shown.
Perhaps Micah 6:8 puts it the most succinctly: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God”.
Why does God require these things of us? It’s because God loves justice. He loves mercy. And He loves being in relationship with us. (Pause)
But we can see early on in the Bible, in Genesis 6:5-6, when the problem really emerges: “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled”.
The Hebrew word there that’s translated “deeply troubled”, means hurt, pained, grieved.
And this gives us insight that can perhaps help us understand what can behind human anger - there is often hurt and pain and grief.
But it also gives us insight into what we can see as the anger of God in the Old Testament.
When humanity is awful to each other, when humanity is awful to God - when relationships are brutalized - this angers God.
It angers God because it troubles Him deeply. It causes Him pain. It grieves Him.
And as much as God in the Old Testament displays anger towards people’s terrible conduct in general, and he really does, the worse they are to each other.
As much as we see God’s anger toward humanity’s sin in general, we really see this much more intensely when it comes to how God feels about His own people, the Hebrews.
The big picture of the Bible can be explained as the history of Creation, The Fall, Redemption and Restoration: How God made the world really, really good.
How humans messed it up royally. And then how God worked to restore creation to God’s original plan.
The great struggle of the story is how God worked to create for himself a people for himself, through whom He would bless all the nations.
But the problem He found, the problem God found was that the nation that He chosen, that had entered into a covenant of love with through Moses, the nation of Israel, continually violated their relationship with God.
In Hebrews 12:3, God tells Abram who was to become Abraham that through him, through his seed, which would be the Hebrew people, the people of God, he would be in blessing to all nations.
God wanted the knowledge of his love, his holiness, his righteousness, to be made known to all peoples without exception.
God knew that the only thing that would complete us, give us true and lasting joy, would be for us to be in relationship with Him, our Creator. With Him, the Lover of our souls.
God wanted the knowledge that he is one, and not many gods, to be made known to all.
That all other gods were no gods at all; all idols were actually nothing, and therefore all the energy put into the worship of such false gods and idols was a complete waste of time.
Not only was this false worship of non-existent gods a waste of time, but as I said people, who did not know the one true God revealed through Abraham,
They tended to create perverse religious rituals, often resulting in human sacrifice, child sacrifice and other nasty practices that were truly offensive to God, truly an abomination to him.
And again, God wanted a people for Himself through whom He would bring blessing to the world.
But most of the story of the Old Testament is this mixture of, on the one-hand - God’s great mercy and faithfulness, His love and care and patience and comassion, His fidelity to His covenant. Which is beautiful.
But on the other hand, the story of the Old Testament is the story of the people of God’s unending unfaithfulness to God.
For instance God promised a land flowing with milk and honey as the possession of the people, or that the people were to be stewards, caretakers of on God’s behalf.
To do this, He sent in Israel’s armies to rout out the peoples who lived in those places - again people whose religious and social practices were despicable and unconscionable.
God would tell Israel to not intermarry with the peoples around them, specifically because if they did THEY would adopt the false practices of the other nations and would be corrupted to follow after those practices.
If they did that, they would become unfaithful, breaking their covenant with God.
God warned them to keep themselves holy - holy means separate, apart from, different than. If they didn’t keep themselves holy, they would end up rejecting Him. They would end up living a lie.
This mattered to God because God loved the people. He wanted the absolute best for each of them individually, and for them as a nation.
He created Jerusalem, which means City of Peace, for them.
It was to be a place where His name would dwell, the knowledge of His love and goodness would live there and go out from there to the blessing of the nations.
That’s much of the story of the Old Testament. It’s told in historical stories narratives, often in fairly blunt detail.
And much of the story centres on Jerusalem, the place that God established for His people, where His covenant would be lived out.
And again, the hearts of the people would most often turn cold, turn against God.
But then...but then God sent the prophets. The prophets were sent by God to bring the people back to God. And through the voice of the prophets we hear God’s lament.
We hear His woundedness. We hear His frustration. Let’s hear what the prophet Ezekiel wrote in chapter 16 of his book. He wrote in prose, using poetic imagery rather than just recounting the hard facts of the story.
Ezekiel 16 "The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, confront Jerusalem with her detestable practices 3 and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says to Jerusalem:...4 On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. 5 No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised.
6 “‘Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, “Live!” 7 I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew and developed and entered puberty. Your breasts had formed and your hair had grown, yet you were stark naked.
8 “‘Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your naked body. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine.
9 “‘I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you. 10 I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put sandals of fine leather on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments. 11 I adorned you with jewelry: I put bracelets on your arms and a necklace around your neck, 12 and I put a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your head.13 So you were adorned with gold and silver; your clothes were of fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth. Your food was honey, olive oil and the finest flour. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen. 14 And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign Lord".
That is how Ezekiel Expresses in very poetic and beautiful language the compassion and care with which God treated his people, the people of Israel.
Can you hear the love in this? Can you hear the heartfelt concern? Can you hear the language of covenant, the language of marriage?
Can you hear the Lover speaking to the beloved in the tender list of terms common in the most loving language?
This truly does express God’s heart toward humanity, and specifically, toward his people Israel. toward the people with whom he entered into a covenantal agreement.
God was to care for Israel as a husband is to care for his wife. This kind of tenderness, this kind of passion, this kind of favour.
I kind of wish Ezekiel had stopped there. When I first read this, I recall pausing for sometime to reflect on the beauty of this process, the loveliness of the poetry, the depth of affection that God expresses for his beloved.
But Ezekiel doesn’t stop there. He doesn’t stop there because the story doesn’t stop there. He continues:
15 “‘But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute. You lavished your favors on anyone who passed by and your beauty became his. 16 You took some of your garments to make gaudy high places, where you carried on your prostitution. You went to him, and he possessed your beauty. 17 You also took the fine jewelry I gave you, the jewelry made of my gold and silver, and you made for yourself male idols and engaged in prostitution with them. 18 And you took your embroidered clothes to put on them, and you offered my oil and incensebefore them. 19 Also the food I provided for you—the flour, olive oil and honey I gave you to eat—you offered as fragrant incense before them. That is what happened, declares the Sovereign Lord.
20 “‘And you took your sons and daughters whom you bore to me and sacrificed them as food to the idols. Was your prostitution not enough?21 You slaughtered my children and sacrificed them to the idols. 22 In all your detestable practices and your prostitution you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, kicking about in your blood.
23 “‘Woe! Woe to you, declares the Sovereign Lord. In addition to all your other wickedness, 24 you built a mound for yourself and made a lofty shrine in every public square. 25 At every street corner you built your lofty shrines and degraded your beauty, spreading your legs with increasing promiscuity to anyone who passed by".
As hard as that is to read or hear, it gets worse. Strangely, so much worse that it’s not really appropriate to read in church. imagine that.
So what we hear, what we feel, is the hurt, the grief, the deep sadness of God. That God is deeply grieved. We hear the woundedness in God’s voice.
There are other examples that develop this whole idea, particularly in the book of Hosea, which is actually all about this precise sadness of God.
His dearest beloved has betrayed her covenant with the One true God, and has wasted herself on random lovers.
And it is this woundedness that manifests itself, each time it does, as God’s anger in the Old Testament.
So that is the first gleaning that I spoke of, how deeply emotional and helpful us love us.
The second cleaning is to do with How He loves us and calls us into His purpose of loving the world to Jesus.
Many, many years ago the leadership team of the church spent a good 6 to 8 months coming up with a purpose statement for the church.
I recall after that process being quite unimpressed with the results.
A lot of good people put a lot of great energy into the purpose statement, but I really felt, particularly after actually preaching on it for a number of weeks, that it fell flat.
It fell flat, in my mind, especially compared to two very important passages of scripture that is truly and deeply speak to the purpose of the church in general, and specifically the purpose of our church.
The first passage is this One from John chapter 20: “As the father sent me, so I send you”.
Here, Jesus is speaking to the disciples before his ascension. Jesus is saying what are among his final words to these people who would become the leaders of the church, the very first church.
The church that would eventually spread literally all over the world.
And what he saying is that God the father sent him. He was there in front of them, and had conducted his ministry because God the father had sent him.
He was sent by the father, and as the father sent Jesus, Jesus is sending his disciples. As, for the same purpose, in the same way that the father sent Jesus, Jesus was sending his disciples.
Does Scripture give us a clue as to why the father sent Jesus? Definitely!
Jesus says in John 19: “10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.“.
That is brilliant, and is a great summary statement of why he came: to be the One who would bring about the salvation of all, because ALL are lost without God.
At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus gives quite a bit more detail as to why he was there, as to his purpose.
It happened after the testing of Jesus in the desert by Satan, where He was challenged as to his purpose.
After Jesus’ temptation He said this:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Then He said: 21 “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Here Jesus quotes from Isaiah 61. And what Jesus says here is specifically an exclamation of why he was sent by the father. What He was to do while on earth.
And the rest of the gospel story is about how Jesus specifically lived this out: through speaking the truth, through healings and miracles,
through revealing the Father heart of God to us, and ultimately through laying down His life on the cross in order to reconcile us to God.
That was the way that Jesus lived out His calling, His purpose. That was as/for what purpose God the Father called Him.
proclaim good news to the poor.
proclaim freedom for the prisoners
recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And Jesus says that as the Father sent Him, so He send us. So this is our purpose, this is our reason for being.
It is, specifically, an expression of our purpose as followers of Jesus, as the church of Christ, as Church at the Mission in Regent Park and cabbage town in downtown Toronto.
And since Jesus has sent us to do this, it is our joy, it is our calling, it is our challenge to fulfill this in our community. Can you believe it?
God didn’t only save us, redeem us by the blood of the Lamb. He did that…He does heal us, He takes all the broken and shattered pieces of our lives.
He gathers them in His mercy and mends us and makes us whole. He sets us free!
He didn’t only rescue you and I from the dominion of darkness so that we would truly live in Him, so that we would know Him and love Him and worship God forever.
He did all that, and for each of us, and that SHOULD be mind boggling. But on top of that God has called us to a purpose. His purpose.
This purpose of bringing hope to the hopeless, bringing good news and freedom and true sight and freedom from oppression through Jesus.
Through living for Him and through Him and in Him for the glory of God.
God wants us, He wants you to love the world to Jesus.
To be an agent of reconciliation, a person through whom God brings others to the knowledge of the goodness and love of God in Jesus.
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.
Turn to the person on your left and say: In Jesus, you are Christ’s ambassador!
Turn to the person on your right and say “God has given you the ministry of reconciliation!”
Let us stand and say together:
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors.
Amen. Ambassadors of God. Ministers of reconciliation. Let us now rejoice as we celebrate Holy Communion, remembering the life, and the self-giving love of Jesus expressed, proven, in His willing sacrifice for our sins.
