Abigail—Wisdom: 1 Samuel 25

                                  

This story of David, Abigail, and Nabal feels like an interruption in the larger story of David and King Saul. This story comes between two stories of King Saul going after David and David showing King Saul mercy after having opportunities to kill the king. David’s mercy and grace in both these instances are important to remember as we reflect on our passage this morning.

The prophet Samuel has died and David is no longer able to lean on Samuel’s wisdom and guidance. David takes his 600 men and moves into the wilderness south of Jerusalem, away from the danger of King Saul. While David and his men live in the wilderness, they come across the flocks of a clansman of David called Nabal and they keep an eye over Nabal’s flocks and men, protecting them from thieves and wild animals. This is what you do for a person from your same tribe of Judah, especially when he’s as wealthy as Nabal is. There’s an unspoken relationship here of “you scratch my back and I will scratch yours.”

Now the time comes to shear the sheep, a huge task that always ends with a celebration, “David tells ten young men, “Go up to Nabal at Carmel and greet him in my name. Say to him: ‘Long life to you! Good health to you and your household! And good health to all that is yours! Now I hear that it is sheep-shearing time. When your shepherds were with us, we did not mistreat them, and the whole time they were at Carmel nothing of theirs was missing. Ask your own servants and they will tell you. Therefore, be favorable toward my men, since we come at a festive time. Please give your servants and your son David whatever you can find for them.’”

David’s asking for Nabal to be generous to him and his men and offer them a few sheep for themselves out of gratitude for protecting Nabal’s flocks and men. Nabal nastily and rudely mocks David and his protection, refusing to offer them anything, insulting David as mere ruffian. David’s angry! He tells his men to put on their swords and he’s going to teach this miserable, mean cheapskate a lesson. Now Abigail, Nabal’s wife enters the story, the only woman in the Bible describes as being both intelligent and beautiful. One of the family servants comes to Abigail and tells her what her husband has done, insulting David after David and his men had protected them and their flocks and then asked for a gift of food to celebrate a successful shearing season. The servants realize that they’re in danger of losing their protection due to Nabal’s foolish stubbornness. The servant tells Abigail, “He is such a wicked man that no one can talk to him.”

David vows, in very crude language that our English translations translate much more politely, “May God deal with David, be it ever so severely, if by morning I leave alive one male of all who belong to him!” David’s desire for vengeance after being insulted by Nabal stands in a stark contrast to how David responds to King Saul’s attempts to kill him both just before and right after this story. We get a glimpse of David’s not so godly impulses here. Most commentaries connect David’s reaction in this story to David’s impulsive act with Bathsheba later on; neither act honoring God, both putting God’s plans at risk.

The Jewish Women Archive writes, “Abigail’s intervention prevents a bloodbath. She quickly assembles an elaborate feast, which is loaded up on donkeys and sent in advance. She then intercepts David to persuade him against fulfilling his violent oath…. Before we are struck by the full force of the oath, we anticipate its undoing.” Abigail shows up with an extra-generous gift for David and his men and she does so in a spirit of humbleness, realizing only humility will sooth David’s pride. When Abigail sees David, she quickly gets off her donkey and bows down before David. ^“Pardon your servant, my lord, and let me speak to you; hear what your servant has to say. Please pay no attention, my lord, to that wicked man Nabal. He is just like his name—his name means Fool, and folly goes with him. And as for me, your servant, I did not see the men my lord sent. And now, my lord, as surely as the Lord your God lives and as you live, since the Lord has kept you from bloodshed and from avenging yourself with your own hands, may your enemies and all who are intent on harming my lord be like Nabal.”

 Before, Samuel would have been around to advise David against seeking vengeance, but now God brings Abigail, an intelligent and wise woman, to offer David godly guidance. Abigail recognizes that God has plans for David and those plans likely include the throne of Israel. If that’s the case, then a blood feud with the family of Nabal would create division in the tribe of Judah and make it difficult for David to gain the throne. Abigail goes against her husband and takes the side of David, calling David “lord” and herself his “maidservant.” She tells David that if he turns back from his vow to kill Nabal, that God will “make a lasting dynasty” of David’s family line, and “the lives of your enemies he will hurl away as from the pocket of a sling,” an echo back to David’s defeat of the giant Goliath. Abigail recognizes that David’s vow of vengeance doesn’t fit with the character the king of Israel needs to have, or the kind of character that David normally shows. We need people like Abigail in our lives, reminding us of who Jesus calls us to be as his children and followers.

David turns from his vow to kill Nabal, acknowledging Abigail’s wisdom keeping him from bloodshed and vengeance. David’s decision to follow Abigail’s advice shows his worthiness to be king over Israel, and reveals how God often uses those around us to offer us guidance in life, turning us back to his ways when we are tempted to follow the darker impulses in our hearts. James reminds in his letter that “each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed,” while Paul tells us in his first letter to the Corinthians that, ^“No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”

God uses the wisdom of Abigail to keep David from seeking vengeance and remind David of his true character shaped by the mercy and grace David showed Saul. God provides us with ways to endure and get through temptation, often using wise people already in our lives, parents, mentors, friends, teachers, counsellors, and others. Jesus goes to the cross and returns to heaven in order to send us “the Holy Spirit to be with us forever, the Spirit of truth… who will teach us all things and remind us of everything Jesus told us;” as John reminds us in his Gospel. It’s important that we surround ourselves with people who continually call us to godly character, but also that we gently call each other to godly character in all the areas of our lives.

Abigail acts as a mediator between Nabal and David, even though Nabal’s unaware of it at the time. Abigail turns David’s wrath aside by bringing David an offering to soothe his wrath and anger. In this way, Abigail is a foreshadowing of Jesus, our mediator to God, going to his Father to turn God’s wrath away from us and onto himself as a sin offering, even when we’re unaware of our sin. Paul writes to Timothy, “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people.” Isaac Ambrose, the English Puritan preacher, describes Jesus as our mediator, “Only Christ is that ladder between heaven and earth, the Mediator betwixt God and man; a mystery which the angels of heaven desire to pry into.” The Heidelberg Catechism reminds us in Q & A 49 that “Jesus pleads our cause in heaven in the presence of the Father.”

Abigail returns home ands finds her husband drunk from feasting. She waits until the morning to tell him what she has done and his heart turns to stone in fear and he dies ten days later, struck by the Lord. Abigail saves her household and at the same time makes an impression on David with her wisdom and courage. David takes Abigail as his wife, bringing her wisdom into his household. David’s marriage to Abigail also increases his standing in Judah, making him one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the tribe, setting him up for when God finally sets David on the throne in Jerusalem.

Abigail fades out of the Bible story, bearing David a son, standing by him at his inauguration, but we learn nothing more about this interesting woman. God places Abigail into David’s life to offer him wise guidance and to act as a mediator, pointing us to who Jesus is in our lives still today.

 

 

Rahab—On God’s Side: Joshua 2:1-24

This morning’s story is all about spies and intrigue, about a prostitute who becomes a traitor, and God using the most unlikely people to move his plan of redemption forward. Who says the Bible’s boring! Israel has been wandering through the wilderness for 40 years and it’s time for them to claim the land God has promised them. They’re no longer a gaggle of slaves trying to figure out what it means to be free; they’ve had 40 years to learn how to be God’s people through following the commandments and the way of living that God has given them. They’ve learned to trust in God, and how to be warriors able to conquer the land promised to them by God.

Joshua, before going up against Jericho, a powerful city guarding the way into the promised land, sends spies to scout out the land and the people, just like Moses did 40 years earlier. Unlike 40 years earlier, the spies come back with a positive report due to meeting with a prostitute named Rahab. Now these spies are noticed pretty quickly by people who tell the king, “Look, some of the Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land.” We can ask, “Why would they go to the house of a prostitute,” since the Israelites have many laws against prostitution and purity. Yet there’s wisdom in going to Rahab’s place as she would know what many of the men in the city were thinking and what they thought of the Israelites encroaching onto their land.

The Jewish website thetorah.com reminds us, “Again and again, God chooses unlikely human instruments, either flipping systems of social power or making it supremely clear that the true power belongs to God alone, or both. To be sure, Rahab represents such marginality in several ways: She is a woman – and a single, childless woman at that. She is not part of Israel, but one of the people of a city that is about to be conquered. And finally, of course, she is a prostitute.” We wouldn’t choose a foreign prostitute to be the hero of God’s story, but God often chooses the weak, the rejected, and the undesirable to accomplish his plans, or as examples of faith, or to remind us that this is all God’s doing. Rahab’s wise to the ways of the world and yet she’s attuned to God in a way that even many of the Israelites may not have been.

After hiding the spies and sending the king’s men on a wild goose chase, Rahab shows incredible insight into what’s really going on, “I know that the Lord has given you this land and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed.  When we heard of it, our hearts melted in fear and everyone’s courage failed because of you, for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.”

Rahab recognizes that Israel’s God is giving his people the land of Canaan, and nothing that the Canaanites do can stop Israel or Israel’s God. Rahab, in her line of work, has heard what her own people are saying about the Israelite people; they’re terrified of them. This fear has been building up for years, and we know from Deuteronomy 2:25 that this is because God began working in the Canaanite’s hearts 40 years earlier, “This very day I will begin to put the terror and fear of you on all the nations under heaven. They will hear reports of you and will tremble and be in anguish because of you.”

Fear weakens people, nations, and even churches. John talks about that in his first letter, 1 John 4:18, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” When we come to that place where we finally understand the depth and power of Jesus’ love for us, a love expressed on the cross where Jesus takes away our sin by taking it on himself, we fully experience the Father’s love and our fear is driven out. The Canaanites follow gods they’ve created for themselves, and so they find themselves against God and Rahab knows that’s a losing game as she sees the fear in her own people, a fear that weakens them.

Rahab recognizes that God is the one who has protected the Israelites during the past 40 years from the kings and nations that went up against Israel. Kings like Sihon and Og found out just how powerful God is, and when they’re defeated by Israel, the Canaanite’s “hearts melted in fear and everyone’s courage failed.” God’s been working behind the scenes for a long time now and the spies are just discovering this. The fear and trembling that lead to the Israelites doubting God 40 years before is now deep in the hearts of the Canaanites. God has turned everything upside down. God’s reminding Israel that they’re not going to conquer the land in their own strength, that the land comes from God and he’s giving it to them. They simply need to be faithful to him.

Then comes the most astonishing words from Rahab, “for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.” She acknowledges that Israel’s God is the Lord of the universe; that God is over everything, even other gods bow down to Israel’s God. This is extraordinary and completely unexpected. Rahab makes the switch in her allegiance from her people and gods to God and the people of Israel, “Now then, please swear to me by the Lord that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign that you will spare the lives of my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them—and that you will save us from death.” The spies agree to her request, giving her a scarlet cord to tie in her window to keep her and her family with her in her house safe. This echoes to the blood spread on the doorframes of the Israelites when the angel of death spared their lives when they left Egypt.

Rahab commits herself to Yahweh, choosing God by helping the spies escape with the knowledge they need, only asking that she and her family be spared. The unspoken request is that they will take care of her and her family by accepting them among the people of Israel despite her past. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1, “Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.” 

Matthew 1 tells us that Rahab marries into the Jewish people and becomes part of the family line of Jesus through King David, “Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David.” God’s ways are definitely not our ways and he knows our hearts better than we do ourselves. God can, and often does use people we believe are unworthy and have nothing to offer us or God. We underestimate the grace of Jesus. Jesus is at work in our community, there are many who are afraid, there is so much stress in many people’s life because of inflation, we hear of the increase in domestic abuse in the past few years, and yet we have seen God has been at work in the lives of people in our community, leading to the rise of the Broomtree ministry, new programs by FCSS, new commitments by churches to reach into the community with the hope of Jesus. Jesus is working in our hearts way before we realize it, preparing us for his work here. Jesus is able to accomplish great things through our openness to the Holy Spirit and our obedience. Faith is about responding to the movement of God, Hebrews 11:31, “By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.”

Rahab chooses God and God welcomes her into his family. John tells us that all those who believe in Jesus will not perish but have eternal life; this is why he went to the cross, to wash away all our sin, to offer grace to all those who come to him to find hope, grace, and forgiveness, no matter what our past looks like. Jesus calls us to believe in him, and to repent and love God with everything we are, and to love our neighbours. We’re not saved in our own strength, but only through faith in Jesus.  

Teaching Our Children to Love God: Deuteronomy 6:4-9

           

How many of you remember the Andy Griffith show? In one of the episodes, a hobo told Andy he should just let his son Opie "decide for himself" how he wanted to live, Andy had these words of wisdom. "No, I'm afraid it don't work that way. You can't let a young’n decide for himself. He'll grab at the first flashy thing with shiny ribbons on it. Then, when he finds out there's a hook in it, it's too late. Wrong ideas come packaged with so much glitter that it's hard to convince ‘em that other things might be better in the long run. All a parent can do is say 'wait' and 'trust me' and try to keep temptation away." Many parents today are more worried about being their child’s friend than in being their parent. What is the parent’s responsibility to their children? This is at the heart of today’s passage that Evan and Dawn chose for their children’s baptism.

I love that you chose this text for Theodore and Oskar’s baptism as it shows that you understand the importance of your responsibility to raise your children to know and love God, to understand who Jesus is and what he accomplished for us on the cross, and the forgiveness we find in Jesus’ loving sacrifice there. Parents have the most influence on their children’s lives; never under estimate how your beliefs and faith will shape your children’s faith. Ultimately, your children will look to you for guidance and values. The more we get to know God, the more that love for God grows in us.

It all begins with the Shema, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Shema comes from the word “listen;” basically Moses is telling the Israelites to listen to the Lord and his call on their lives, reminding them who God is. The Israelites are camping at the foot of Mount Sinai after being rescued by God from slavery and the power of Egypt. They’ve been in Egypt for 400 years. But over those 400 years, the Israelites have also embraced an Egyptian way of seeing gods, believing that there are many gods who all need to be appeased and feared. You never knew what these gods really wanted, so sacrifices were made to keep them in a good mood.

Moses is reminding the Israelites who their God is, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of creation, the one and only God who is one and not many. Their worship and obedience are rooted in their confession that, “The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” God asks for their love, not their fear; a deep love that comes from their heart and soul with all their strength. Moses goes on, “These commandments that I give to you today are to be on your hearts.” I appreciate how Evan and Dawn recognise that these commandments are given to the Israelites as a gift to help shape their love for God by being on their hearts, and on our hearts.

One of the key ways we show our love to God is through obedience; taking his commandments seriously, trusting that God knows and wants what’s best for us. God gives Israel his laws to create a holy people whose character, both as individuals and as a community, is built on the foundation of worshipping and following God in every area of their lives. Jesus later on tells his followers that their obedience is how they show him that they love him, “If you love me, you will keep my commands,” Jesus said. Jesus summarizes all his Father’s commandments by first repeating Moses, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength,” which is the point of the first five of the Ten Commandments, and then Jesus adds, “and love your neighbour as yourself,” as the point of the last five commandments. The Ten Commandments protect God’s honour by telling us how to relate to God, and they protect our neighbour from our selfishness and greed.

This is where the parenting comes in, “Impress these commandments on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” This is every day, going through the day faith growing in your kids. This is intentional faith training in your children. As parents, your main task is to show them who God is, help them see God all around them, the book of creation that the Belgic Confession talks about, and to shape how they live as the children of God, shaped by his values and centered on his commandments. It’s a parent’s task to show how the commandments reveal to us who God is, what the heart of God is and what our hearts are to be like. We teach our children to obey by obeying God’s commands ourselves.

Talk about God while you’re at home, sitting at the dinner table, or while doing chores around the house, or while simply being together. Today Moses might have said, talk about these things while on your tablet or watching television, talk about them on the way to volleyball, badminton, or hockey practices, and share with your children at bedtime how you’ve seen God at work during the day as you pray with them and sing them the Shema song. When you get up in the morning together, begin by thanking God for his grace and ask for his guidance in the day ahead. This is how you make faith a day long part of your lives as a family and as individuals; teaching yourselves and your children to see God at work everywhere you go and every place you end up. When this becomes a regular part of your children’s life from an early age, it creates habits of faith that remain with them through their entire life.

The Israelites are told to tie the laws of God on their hands and on their foreheads to shape their work, thoughts, and beliefs so that they’re always working for God, honouring him with their thoughts and plans. They place specific texts from Exodus and Deuteronomy in these little boxes called phylacteries, or in Hebrew, tefillin. The two leather boxes contain hand written parchment scrolls of passages in the Torah from Exodus 13:2-10 and Exodus 13:11-16 about consecrating every first-born male to the Lord, and from Deuteronomy 6:1-8 and Deuteronomy 11:18-21 which are calls to teach our children to obey the Lord your God. Deuteronomy 11:18-21 echoes our passage about fixing these words on their hands and forehead and teaching them to the children, and then adds this promise “so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.” Here’s a glimpse that this is about placing eternity in the hearts of our children.

They’re told to “Write them, these commandments, on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates,” an echo of the blood of the lambs that was spread over their door frames to protect them from the angel of death. The people heard this as the law giving them life. Later on, God, through Jeremiah promises a new covenant, different than the one here at Sinai. Jeremiah 31:31–34, “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” This points to Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit into our hearts. The challenge to us is to listen to the Spirit’s guidance as we read Scripture together, as we make prayer a regular part of our life together as families and church, as we look to the Spirit to keep our head, heart, and hands Jesus oriented.

When our hearts are turned to God, obedience flows out of love rather than obligation. This is why Jesus sends us the Holy Spirit, to remind us of Jesus’ forgiveness and grace found on the cross. The Spirit works in our hearts to transform us into the people of God who are a blessing to the nations as we model Jesus and go make faithful disciples shaped by the Holy Spirit and live out Jesus’ command to love God with everything we have and are, and love our neighbours as ourselves.

Leah—I Will Praise the Lord: Genesis 29:31-35

 

This is a story of broken people hurting others. To understand what's happening here with Leah, we need to go back a moment and see why Leah's not loved. Her husband Jacob had moved away from home after deceiving his brother and father in order to gain the family blessing, and found himself at his uncle Laban’s home where he met Rachel and then Leah, daughters of Laban. Jacob fell in love with Rachel, the younger sister, and worked 7 years for his uncle in order to marry her, but Laban deceived Jacob and had Leah step into Rachel’s place during the wedding ceremony, and then, after Jacob discovered the betrayal, Laban offered Jacob Rachel as a second wife if he worked 7 more years for him, which Jacob does. In the mean time, Jacob marries Rachel a week after marrying Leah. Even though Jacob has married Leah, and Leah is his first wife, Jacob loves Rachel over Leah, creating a great deal of pain for Leah. Leah’s in a tough spot.

“When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless. Leah becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son. She names him Reuben, for she said, “It is because the Lord has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now.” Reuben’s name sounds like the Hebrew word “to see,” Leah confesses that the Lord has seen her troubled heart and marriage. Leah hopes that having a son will cause Jacob to finally love her. We hear in her words a deep desire for love. A number of Jewish commentaries mention that Leah likely loved Jacob, which is why she participates in her father’s plan, hoping that Jacob will come to love her. Now she’s hoping giving Jacob sons will turn his heart to her, but it doesn’t seem to happen.

The Lord gives Leah another son and she says, “Because the Lord heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too. So she named him Simeon.” Simeon’s name sounds like the Hebrew word “to hear,” Leah recognizes that the Lord sees her distress and broken heart and has blessed her with Simeon. But nothing changes in Jacob’s heart and Leah remains unloved by her husband. The Lord blesses Leah with another son and we see in his name that Leah’s still praying for Jacob’s heart to turn to her, naming her son Levi saying, “Now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.” How long can Leah keep holding onto hope, keep looking for Jacob’s love to heal her brokenness?

In Jacob, Leah, and Rachel’s marriage, there’s great brokenness, so much so, that later on when Israel is at Mount Sinai after being rescued from slavery by God, God gives them this command, Leviticus 18:18, “Do not take your wife’s sister as a rival wife and have sexual relations with her while your wife is living.” The original intent for marriage is for “a husband to leave his parents and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” Bringing others into the marriage relationship brings brokenness into the relationship and breaks God’s intent for oneness in marriage. Paul tells us in Ephesians to come into marriage with a spirit of mutual submission, while the wife is called to honour her husband, and the husband called to love his wife with a sacrificial love, a Christ-like love.

The story continues, when Leah gives birth to a fourth son she says, “This time I will praise the Lord.” Leah names her fourth son Judah, which comes from the Hebrew word ‘praise’ and says, “This time I will praise the Lord.” Leah finally sees that Jacob is never going to love her in the way he should and that only the Lord has shown her love by giving her four sons; a gift that gives her great honour among the other women and members of her community. Leah finally finds her identity and worth in the Lord, not Jacob. Leah finds some healing in the Lord who is compassionate and gracious to her.

Judah becomes the ancestor of Jesus, the promised Messiah who comes for all the unloved, the scorned and rejected, those living on the fringes who are hurting. Jesus understands their lives, having experienced scorn, rejection, hatred and more in his life time here on earth. The Lord, already in the Old Testament, time after time speaks of his compassion for the orphan, the widow, the oppressed, and even the foreigner among his people, constantly calling his people to live out of love, grace, justice, and mercy. God loves us because we are his children, created in his own image, given life through his breath.

Leah keeps looking to God even as she kept trying to earn Jacob’s love. She discovers that, while people will fail you at times, sometimes all the time, God doesn’t fail us. Jesus doesn’t always change our circumstances or the situations and relationships that we’re in, but he is with us through his Spirit, who points us to Jesus’ faithfulness to us. Our hope lies in Jesus who came to take our sin and brokenness on himself to the cross to bring forgiveness, grace, and healing. Our call is to submit to Jesus and his will, to look for our hope to Jesus first. Jesus goes to the cross for our sin, but also to bring healing to those who are hurt and broken, to bring hope to the outcasts of society. God hears their cries and sees their pain.

If you’re like Leah, Jesus sees you and cares for you, inviting you to come to him, Matthew 11:28–30, ^“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” You don’t have to earn Jesus’ love, he’s loved us way before we ever fell in love with him. Jesus sees your hearts and he aches with you. Some of the most powerful verses in the Gospels are those that begin with, “And Jesus saw the people, and he had compassion on them.”

The wisdom writer in Ecclesiastics writes that there’s nothing new under the sun. There are many people today who live in loveless marriages, praying that by having children, by changing who they are to fit their spouse’s desires, they can earn their spouse’s love. They look for their worth through their spouse; they believe that their happiness depends on their spouse’s love, and will submit to all kinds of hurt in order to earn love and acceptance. For some marriages there is no happy ever after because of the sin and brokenness that fills our world. Too often I’ve had to tell people that their worth doesn’t come from their spouse, but from Jesus, from Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross that offers them new life. In the cross, we see Jesus’ deep love and commitment to us, a love that can fill the emptiness that comes from the rejection and hurt others we care about give us. You don’t have to earn Jesus’ love, he loves you unconditionally.

We bring our pain to the cross. Jesus understands our pain; he was also rejected, turned away from, abandoned in his time of deepest pain, yet never gave up on turning to his Father our God, he kept trusting in his Father. Jesus is concerned about how our hearts are shaped, calling us to turn to him for our meaning and purpose, to find our hope, our value, and our worth in him. Jesus keeps calling us to come to him, to trust him to never abandon us.

Paul writes in Romans 12:2, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Look to Jesus, to God for your worth, not someone else. When you take God and Jesus out of the picture, when we stop looking to Jesus, we become like Rachel, desperate for what this world offers, for love from fallible people; Rachel who took her father’s household gods because she couldn’t let go of them, Rachel who begged her sister for mandrake roots, looking to magical superstitious ways to become pregnant so she could also give Jacob a child.

The Jewish Virtual Library writes, “It is not written when Leah died, but only that she was buried in the Cave of Machpelah. Leah left as her legacy half of the 12 tribes, including Judah, father of the monarchy, and Levi, father of the priesthood.” While Jacob did not honour or love Leah because of the brokenness in his own heart and life, Jesus saw her and gave her honour. Jesus sees you, hears you, and loves you; calling you to come and find your hope in him.

Exodus 24 Worship—Sealing Our Relationship with God

 

We’ve been reflecting on worship since Easter, and this morning we’re ending our short, often interrupted series by entering this story of God meeting with Moses and the leaders of Israel on Mount Sinai. As part of this meeting, we discover an unexpected meal happens after a time of worship that includes a blood sacrifice. It’s important to understand what’s been happening to understand what’s happening. The people have been camped out at Mount Sinai for a short time now, God has given the people the Ten Commandments and reminds them that the reason for keeping the commands is because God has freed them from slavery and he is their God. God has placed his claim on them. The Israelites receive these commands as a gift; God’s setting out what his expectations are for them; there’s no need to guess what it means, or looks like, to be his people. The relationship between God and Israel is clear, something no other nation or people has with their gods. This is a huge source of comfort for the people.

God gives them 3 festivals a year where the men are to gather to celebrate to God and offer the sacrifices God commands of them, no one is to come empty handed before God. God then tells the people that he’s sending an angel to bring them to the place he has prepared; the Promised Land. God then gives them this command about the Promised Land, “Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods. Do not let them live in your land or they will cause you to sin against me, because the worship of their gods will certainly be a snare to you.” With this in mind, we get a better understanding of what God’s doing her; he’s confirming his covenant promises with Israel through Moses and the other leaders in Israel. God invites Moses to meet with him on the mountain, the holy sacred mountain that no one is supposed to set a foot on unless they’re invited by God.

Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and 70 other leaders are invited to come on the mountain with Moses. When Moses tells the people what God has said and all the laws he’s given, they reply, “Everything the Lord has said we will do,” confirming that they’ve accepted God’s gift of the law and have committed themselves to obedience. The next morning, before Moses and the others head up the mountain, Moses builds an altar and they all offer burnt and blood offerings as fellowship offerings to the Lord. Then Moses does something we find a bit disturbing; he takes half of the blood from the bulls that were sacrificed and he splashes it against the altar. This blood splashed on the altar is a symbol of God’s forgiveness of their sin and that he accepts their offering.

Then Moses takes the Book of the Covenant, reads it to the people and they respond as they did the day before, “We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey.” Then Moses takes the second half of the blood and sprinkles it all over the people! This blood is a symbol of the seriousness of the oath they have just made to God to obey his commands and to be his people. Moses, when he sprinkles it on the people says, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.” The blood is a visible sign of the covenant, the promises made between God and Israel, that they’ve just made. The people wear this blood on them until they wash again. Everyone can see the blood sprinkled on themselves, just as they can see it sprinkled on everyone else. It binds them together as God’s people. It echoes back to Egypt and the blood on their doorposts that protected them from God’s wrath and the angel of death; this blood represents forgiveness and protection from the punishment they deserve because of their sin.

Rev James Wharton of Princeton writes, “what kind of role do those ancient rituals play in the life of Israel.... Gerhard von Rad in Volume One of his theology…. says each one of these little strange and, to us, confusing yet obscure details, describes an area, a sphere, a part of life on which the right of God's claim is stamped. It's not so important that one understand why one does a certain thing as it is important to understand that in that sphere of life the Lord God has a claim and by responding affirmatively in that particular instance, even according to an old half-understood or forgotten rite or ritual, one is affirming the right of God over all of Life…. That enormous determination to try to order life in such a way that you say yes to God and God said don't do that and that's sufficient…. this ancient rite of the blood now becomes part of this affirmation that God has laid a claim on life and that claim is to be respected and honored at all costs.”

Now Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the 70 elders go up the mountain and they see God! Think about this! Moses writes, “But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites.” So, what do these leaders do while they are on the mountain with God? They see God and then they eat and drink; they have a meal. This is all in the context of the covenant promises that are tying God and Israel closer together. The giving of the gift of the Law, the time of worship and sacrifice, and now this meal are all connected together, acts that draw God and his people closer together. Our relationship with God is not simply based on believing in the right things about God, it’s a faith that’s lived out in our daily lives through worship, obedience, and offering our lives to Jesus to be used for his kingdom.

This is what our sacraments do, they draw us closer to God and each other in the act of eating in the Lord’s Supper, in the act of sprinkling water in baptism, all in the context of worship and recommitting ourselves to following Jesus. This meal on the mountain echoes ahead to Jesus’ meal with his disciples just before his crucifixion. In Matthew 26, we see Jesus giving us what we now call the Lord’s Supper, “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

Jesus ties this meal and his coming sacrifice to the covenants in the Old Testament, to the festivals God gave Israel in Leviticus, to the new covenant written on our hearts mentioned by Jeremiah, “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah…. “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

The Lord’s Supper and baptism are acts or sacraments given to us to help us grow deeper in our faith, to recommit ourselves to obedience to Jesus’ commands to us out of gratitude for what Jesus has done for us through the cross, washing away our sin, giving us life, new life. In giving us these sacraments, God seals our relationship to him through the working of the Holy Spirit who draws us closer to Jesus and his love expressed in these acts. It’s like the wedding ring in western cultures that couples give each other when they get married. Every time they see the ring on their finger, they’re reminded of the promises they’ve made to each other. The rings work as a seal in their relationships, showing the world that they’ve committed to love and honour each other through the good times and the hard times. In the sacraments we tell God and the world that we are committed to God and each other through good times and hard times.

The reality is that we will fail in our relationships with each other, especially in our relationship with God, but we are reassured in the meal and the water that God always holds up his side of the commitment through Jesus’ sacrifice and the Holy Spirit, drawing us back into relationship again and again. As the song writer tells us, “To this I hold, my hope is only Jesus. For my life is wholly bound to His. Oh, how strange and divine, I can sing, "All is mine," Yet not I, but through Christ in me.”

The Wind Blows and Fire Appears: Acts 2:1-39

 

Today it’s Pentecost, the day Jesus sent us the gift of his Spirit. We first hear about the Feast of Pentecost in Leviticus 23, where it’s also called the Feast of Weeks. Pentecost is a harvest festival held 50 days after the Feast of First Fruits when the first of the crops are presented to God, which is why it’s called Pentecost, which means 50. Pentecost is the big harvest festival after the wheat has been brought in, something like our Thanksgiving Day. In our passage this morning, the disciples have traveled down from Galilee back to Jerusalem as Jesus had told them to do 10 days earlier when he was taken back up to heaven, and now they’re waiting for the gift of the Spirit that Jesus had promised them. I wonder if they really knew what was coming?

The day of Pentecost arrives. I’m sure the disciples are getting ready to celebrate the feast, there’s excitement in the air since Pentecost was a fun and joy-filled feast. This was also one of the feasts where many of the Jews would travel to Jerusalem to celebrate it at the temple, meaning that there are Jews and believers in the Jewish God Yahweh filling the streets of the city. Now the disciples are all together in one place; since many of them were originally from Galilee in the north and there were so many others in town, there likely wasn’t a whole lot of room available. I love how Luke describes what happens next, “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”

In Hebrew, the word for wind, Spirit, and breath are the same, so the people first hearing this account from Luke would immediately have connected the sound of a violent wind with the Spirit of God or the breath of God. This is a God moment, God on the move, echoing back to the ripping of the curtain on the temple curtain from the Holy of Holies at Jesus’ death and a number of people rising of the death as God’s Spirit of life flowed into the world. It also reminds us that Jesus had breathed on the disciples just after he had appeared to them after rising from the dead, John 20:21–23, “Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” The Spirit is now connected to the strength and ability to forgive sins; a gift just as the Spirit is a gift. The Spirit is given to the disciples, and us today, because Jesus is sending them out into the world to continue his work of calling people to repent and believe because the kingdom of heaven is near. This is at the heart of what Pentecost is all about, it about equipping us for the harvest of people for the kingdom of heaven, it’s no coincident that the Spirit is given at the biggest harvest festival!

Tongues of fire also appear on each of their heads, fire that doesn’t burn, just as the bush that was burning when Moses came across it in the wilderness didn’t burn. Fire points to God’s presence, fire purifies and cleanses, the Spirit and fire show the disciples the kind of message they’re bringing, that the good news found in Jesus is a message of forgiveness and renewal, a message, that if you accept it and Jesus, brings a burning away of your sin and brings you new life.  

John Birch writes in his web page, “Note the mighty wind and what seemed like fire which entered that small room and the lives of those ordinary people. Did it leave them unaffected? I think not! The people are amazed at the transformation that takes place. Those men are empowered. Not only do they go out and preach the Good News, they do it in a way that all can understand, whatever their language. Peter recalls some verses of the Prophet Joel which seem so relevant to that situation, and hints that this power that the people are so amazed at is something that was promised many years previously.” As Birch mentions, the disciples are impacted and transformed by the coming of the Spirit. It drives them from the room into the streets to share with everyone, in their own language, the good news of Jesus! Now there are always doubters in every crowd and these folks mock the disciples, accusing them of being drunk because they’re talking about Jesus who was crucified, died, and rose from the dead, and now is in heaven, having gone to prepare our places for us. For unbelievers, it’s like crazy talk, but others stay to learn more.

In what’s happening, there’s an overturning of what happened at the tower of Babel in early Genesis when humanity was scattered throughout the earth and their language was changed into multiple languages so they could no longer understand each other. St Augustine writes, “That wind cleansed the disciples’ hearts, blowing away fleshly thoughts like so much chaff. The fire burnt up their unregenerate desires as if they were straw. The tongues in which they spoke as the Holy Spirit filled them were a foreshadowing of the Church’s preaching of the Gospel in the tongues of all nations. After the flood, in pride and defiance of the Lord, an impious generation erected a high tower and so brought about the division of the human race into many language groups, each with its own peculiar speech which was unintelligible to the rest of the world. At Pentecost, by contrast, the humble piety of believers brought all these diverse languages into the unity of the Church. What discord had scattered; love was to gather together. Like the limbs of a single body, the separated members of the human race would be restored to unity by being joined to Christ, their common head, and welded into the oneness of a holy body by the fire of love.”

The entire spring religious season of Israel, from Passover to Pentecost points to God’s plan to harvest a holy people for himself, to gather his people from the nations, and in Pentecost we see that God’s way of gathering his people in is through giving us the Holy Spirit to empower us to share the Gospel news of Jesus Christ; his birth, life, sacrifice on the cross for our sin so might experience the depth of God’s grace, forgiveness, and love. Pentecost is not just a day on the church calendar, it’s the way of life that Jesus’ Spirit has given us and equipped us to do.

Faith is more than just being saved from our sins, it’s also about our response to Jesus and this is where Pentecost comes in. Jesus gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit, but it’s not to make us more special than others, it gives us what we need to tell these others about who Jesus is and invite them to follow Jesus with us; to accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour who has taken their sin and brokenness on himself so they can experience forgiveness, grace, and new life. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives us the tools to do the ministry of reconciliation that Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 5:18–19, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 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.”

7 weeks after Jesus’ resurrection, comes the greater harvest. It’s during the feast of Pentecost that Jesus sends the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit brings many people to put their faith in Jesus. The Holy Spirit comes and those who hear the disciples talk about Jesus receive the good news of salvation through Jesus. There is a harvest of about 3,000 people for Jesus that Pentecost harvest festival. They take this gospel news home to their families and communities and the number of Jesus followers grows and grows including both Jew and Gentiles, insiders and outsiders. Just as the Holy Spirit comes as a wind into the room that Pentecost in Jerusalem, like the wind it begins to blow the Gospel news through Jerusalem, then into Judea, Samaria, and then into the rest of the world.

Pentecost needs to become a way of life for us, not simply a day to think about the Holy Spirit on those years we even bother to remember Pentecost. Today we’re called to embrace the Spirit once again and allow it to lead us to our neighbours, our friends, our co-workers, fellow students, and all the others God places in our lives to share with them the good news story of Jesus and invite them into a relationship with Jesus. What an exciting day, what an exciting call!

 

What Goes Up Must Come Down: Acts 1:1-11

This past Thursday was Ascension Day, the day when Jesus returned to heaven 40 days after his resurrection. Next week we celebrate Pentecost, which is a much more exciting and better-known church day. Yet Ascension Day is just as important a day because it reminds us of who Jesus is and who we are. The Heidelberg Catechism talks about Jesus’ return to heaven, asking, “How does Jesus’ ascension to heaven benefit us? The pastor and scholar tell us, “First, he pleads our cause in heaven in the presence of our Father, as Paul reminds us in Romans 8:34. Second, we have our own flesh in heaven—a guarantee that Christ our head will take us, his members, to himself in heaven, as John reminds us in John 14:2. Third, he sends his Spirit to us on earth as a further guarantee. By the Spirit’s power we make the goal of our lives, not earthly things, but the things above where Christ is, sitting at God’s right hand, as Paul reminds us in Colossians 3:1-4.

Jesus returns to heaven, and as he tells his disciples in Matthew’s account, “all authority in heaven and in earth has been given to him.” Jesus goes to sit at God’s right hand, a place of power and ruling. Jesus is crowned as our king as he returns home to his Father. Before Jesus heads back to heaven, he tells his followers to head back to Jerusalem to wait for the coming of his Spirit. This will be a Spirit of power since Jesus is king now of heaven and earth. This Spirit is going to equip them, and us today, to be Jesus’ witnesses in the world. Jesus gives his disciples their mission: to be witnesses for him as they go out into the world around them. The word for witness in the Greek is “martyres,’ where we get the word martyr in English, someone who is killed for their religious beliefs. Jesus is offering a warning that they may be killed for believing in him. It’s no light call on our lives that Jesus gives us here; our call is to be willing to give our lives and be martyrs, witnesses to the world of our King Jesus

This takes a deep belief and trust in Jesus. This is a trust and commitment to Jesus as our saviour and as our king, the one who commands us to go and be martyrs for him in the world today. This trust and commitment to Jesus as our king doesn’t always come easy for us today. Those of us who are older remember the 1960s and 1970s, a time of unrest, a time when people began to react against the governments and authority; it was a time of the Vietnam War, the Cold War with Russia, the Korean War.

It was a time when people began to focus on the self, on meditation, on spirituality, but especially on personal freedoms; it was the time of the sexual revolution, the civil rights movement, and a time when distrust grew of leaders, whether in government or the church. People began to question God and to interpret Scripture according to their own individual understanding of what it should say according to their view of the world and of Jesus. We saw this distrust of authority play out over the past couple of years as we walked through the pandemic.

We live in a time where it is hard to understand what it means to have Jesus as our king, and what the call to full obedience and loyalty this calls for us to have to Jesus means. It means fully accepting Jesus’ call to give us our lives for his mission and purposing and setting aside completely our own wants and desires for his. It means that our identity is found in Jesus and his Body instead of ourselves as individuals. It means we think in terms of being part of, and what’s best for Jesus’ kingdom rather than what we want. It’s about realizing that the one thing we need most is a king that cares more about us than we even care for ourselves, that Jesus as our king will protect and provide for us exactly what we need in order to flourish where we are. As our king, Jesus wants us to follow him, not because we are forced to, but because we’re reflecting his love for us back to him. This is why Jesus tells his followers, “If you love me, you will keep my commands.”

After giving the disciples their mission, Jesus is taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. Luke then tells us that the disciples were looking intently up into the sky as a cloud hid Jesus from their sight. St John Chrysostom writes in a homily on this passage, “It seems to me that they had not any clear notion of the nature of the kingdom, for the Spirit had not yet instructed them. Notice that they do not ask when it shall come but, “Will you at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel,” as if the Kingdom were still something that lay in the past. This question shows that they were still attracted by earthly things, though less than they had been.”

The apostles recognize Jesus is king, but they’re still thinking in terms of the nation of Israel, of national borders and a throne in Jerusalem. The Heidelberg Catechism affirms this, “Christ ascended to heaven, there to show that he is head of his church, and that the Father rules all things through him.” The Catechism focuses on the church first, while Paul in Ephesians 1 emphasizes that Jesus rules over all things first, “And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” In Paul’s way of thinking, Jesus is king over all creation, past, present, and future and the church is Jesus’ body placed here to witness to all creation who Jesus is and invite them into the kingdom by accepting Jesus as their saviour and king.

Back to the changes that the 60s and 70s brought to our society, our culture, and the church. It was also a time of great hope, a time when people believed we could solve the world’s problems through science, capitalism, and exporting the North American dream and ways. It was the time of the Peace Corps in the USA and Katimavik in Canada. It was a time of hope when people dreamed of a time when all people would be treated with honour and respect, a time when poverty and injustice would be wiped out, a time of peace and hope and grace. It was the beginnings of going on serve projects in our churches and investing in our youth, helping our youth see that Jesus has equipped them too, that serving Jesus is not limited by our age. Christians began recognizing that the good news of Jesus was at the heart of the change the world needed. Without realizing it, people were dreaming and hoping for the kingdom of heaven to come.

Ascension Day is a day of hope and excitement as Jesus takes his place at the right hand of God and commissions us to share the gospel news. The apostles didn’t understand yet what was exactly going on, but trusted Jesus. I love how the two men dressed in white who suddenly appear talk to them, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” This isn’t the end of Jesus’ story, but the beginning of the next chapter in the kingdom of heaven. It’s the climax of Jesus’ exaltation, crowned as the king of all creation. Revelation 19: 13 & 16 show us, “He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. . .. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.”

Jesus is engaged in a battle with Satan, a battle that Satan has no chance of winning. But Satan can still do a lot of harm, which is why Jesus promises the Holy Spirit as we engage in Jesus’ kingdom of heaven work here on earth as his witnesses to counter the work Satan is engaged in to discredit and twist all the Jesus is doing. We’re called to complete obedience to Jesus’ commands. Jesus is our king, we’re part of his kingdom, this is communal, community ways of thinking. This is about who we are, Jesus’ people and who our allegiance is to, Jesus, and where we get our identity from, Jesus.

This means focusing less on our allegiances to groups or philosophies rooted in this world, and focus on who Jesus, our king, is calling us to be. This total obedience is rooted in love as Jesus’ commands us to first love God with everything we’ve got, to love our neighbour, and to go make disciples, which all flows out of Jesus’ love for the world. This takes trust and faith in Jesus and making Jesus and his will first in our lives since he is our king.