Devotional

The Arrival

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It is interesting to compare and contrast the accounts of the arrival of the Ark in Jerusalem, recorded for us in 2 Samuel 6 and the arrival of The Messiah in Luke 19.38-40.

Occasion

Both were highly anticipated occasions. The Messiah’s triumphal arrival was perhaps the mostly hotly awaited event in the nation’s history. It is difficult to not overstate the significance and importance of this symbolic fulfilment. And likewise the Ark’s arrival had been a long time coming. The ark initially came, carried on a new cart and that didn’t turn out well. A reading of scripture would have made it clear that there was a right way for the ark to be brought in (Num. 4:15, 1 Chr. 15.2, 15). Scripture also dictated how Christ would be brought in and needless to say He made no mistake in its fulfilment. He came riding on a colt, just as Zechariah had prophesied (Zech. 9:9). It is intriguing to ponder that unlike the oxen that stumbled, this colt carried The Saviour without hiccup, despite it being an animal ‘on which no one had ever sat’ (Lk. 19.30, cf. John 19:41).

Celebration

Both events are accompanied with great noise and celebration. David composed a Psalm which was handed over to Asaph for the occasion. It was quite something. One can imagine the streets and footpaths being lined with the faithful and the curious. They all would have wanted to be in on the thing if for no other reason than David was handing out bread and cake, on-the-house so to speak. But for the faithful this was about more than the freebies. It was about God dwelling with His people and it was about re-instating true worship.
The celebrations for the Messiah’s procession were not as elaborate or organised. Christ made do with cloaks as there was no saddle. And He made do with garments as there was no red carpet. Whilst this and the waving of palm branches were spontaneous acts, they were not absent-minded. Forming a covered path had a precedent, with Jehu’s coronation (2 Kings 9:13).

In the case of the ark, we might speculate that it came from the West, Kereath-Jerim being that side of Jerusalem. Whereas the Lord clearly came from the East, descending the Mount of Olives (Lk. 19.37).

Dissension

Alas, not all onlookers shared in the celebratory spirit of the day. In David’s case, his wife scorned him for engaging with the common people. She felt it was beneath him to do such a thing. The Pharisees thought the same about The Lord of course but their beef on this day was different. They felt the praise and adulation was undue, perhaps even irreverent.
In both cases, the morbid onlookers are rebuked. David reassured Michal that he fully intended to go on praising The Lord, with or without his wife’s approval.

Michal’s comments leave us with one final comparison. Evidently what David did in laying aside his kingly garments was very much an act of humility. He would gladly associate with the commoner in his worship of Jehovah. He was not plagued with the insecurities of his predecessor. And like him, Christ, The Son of David very much celebrated in humility. For the animal he road upon was no war horse. Riding on a colt signalled very clearly that He came in peace (Zech. 9:9).

It all makes for a fascinating comparison. History repeating itself, centuries apart. One is but a feint shadow, the other the True. Yet as with all such comparisons, they all come to an end in Christ. For Christ knew that His arrival marked the awful beginning, of His journey to the cross. How glad we are, on account of the effectiveness of that journey that history will yet repeat itself once more. He will arrive again.

This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go…

Acts 1:11

Devotional

Not so Lord!

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There were several moments in The Lord’s experience where He was confronted with a ‘not so’. His actions and words were so extraordinary, so unexpected, so improper (to those around Him). We can join them in wondering at the pathway He took. A pathway of extraordinary obedience.

One such occasion took place early on in His public ministry.

Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him. But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?

Matthew 3.13-14

Like John, we would hardly believe The Lord’s choosing here. What mixed messages it sends for the holy one to be baptised at all. And as worthy as John was to be baptising others, what place did he have baptising the Son of God? Theologians have their musings about all this but when all is said and done we are left amazed at the grace of The Saviour. He would start as He meant to carry on – ever doing whatever was necessary to satisfy divine intentions.

Then there was Nathaniel.

Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?

John 1.46

For Nathaniel, Nazareth was beneath the Messiah. It was the last place a devout Jew expected the Christ to have come from. It was a typical ‘not so’ moment, followed by its equally predictable riposte. For none of these ‘not so’s’ ever stopped or stalled The Saviour. Nothing ever would, and praise God for that!

Then there was Simon Peter. Ah Simon. How The Saviour perplexed him. How He baffled him. How contrary ran the Saviour’s thoughts to his. If John hindered Christ, Peter would rebuke Him.

Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.

Matthew 16.22

Would the Son of the Living God suffer many things, really? Killed – really? No. Suffering and dying were not on Peter’s agenda. Nor are they on ours. No wonder he rebuked the Lord. But if he was baffled before, how startled he must have been at The Lord’s response.

Again in John 13, in the upper room, Peter is found once more, tracking behind the Saviour’s thoughts and actions.

and Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet? Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter. Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet.

John 13.6b-8b

And it was Peter once more, in Joppa, on the housetop, who said:

Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean.

Acts 10.14

Like Peter, we often trace the pathway of the Saviour in reverent disbelief. We wonder at the course laid out for Him by divine persons. Had we been at the manger, we would probably have said ‘not so’. We would have organised a welcome home committee in Nazareth and got the DIY SOS team over for a makeover. We’d have taken him on exotic holidays and given him extravagant birthday parties. And in His public ministry, we would have sought to prevent The Lord time and time again, choreographing quite a different path for Him. A path more befitting The Son of God, more becoming, ‘The Christ’.

And each time, he would quietly explain that none of these things were consistent with His Father’s will. Each time we would slowly learn that our ways were not His ways, and our thoughts not his thoughts. And perhaps eventually, we would lay down our ‘not so Lord’ and choose Christ’s more suitable alternative, ‘not my will but thine be done’.

Devotional

Only bread and only wine – no sop.

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Materially speaking, there is a sparseness of things when we gather to remember The Lord. Only bread and only wine. It is a most helpful sparseness, for it helps us focus on the plenty present in The Saviour.

By contrast, the table from which The Lord took bread and wine from was adorned with all the normal trimmings that accompanied the passover lamb. Vegetables, charoset (a sweet, nutty relish), bitter herbs and unleavened bread. It was probably into the Charoset that The Lord dipped a morsel of bread, referred to as a ‘sop’ in the King James.

But there is no sop in our remembrance. That would remind us of Judas of course, not a happy character to be preoccupied with. We are certainly not gathered to remember him. Yet perhaps that is what we should find at the table. If it were not for the grace of God, there would be no bread or wine for us. A soggy morsel, as a token of us having abandoned trust in God’s Anointed one. A ticket to leave the gathered company of believers and get on with our betrayal of God’s life, light and love. That is what we deserve for that is who we would be, but for grace.

Grace removes the sop from the table. Grace calls us to feast on Christ and Him alone. No other garnishes needed.

As an interesting aside, the Oxford defines the sop as, “a piece of bread dipped in gravy, soup, or sauce.”. But the first definition reads like this:

noun: a thing of no great value given or done as a concession to appease someone whose main concerns or demands are not being met: my agent telephones as a sop but never finds me work.

The Oxford English Dictionary

How intriguing this is, for Judas was just such a man. As far as he was concerned at least, his concerns or demands were not being met. I doubt he was appeased by the morsel, but morsel he received. How different to what receive – something that speaks of infinite and unparalleled value – the very Bread of Life Himself!

Journal

The Fallacy of, ‘I’m the only one’

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This fallacy strikes a feeling of loneliness, victimhood and myopia into our souls.

Myopia – short-sightedness – is a common consequence of the flesh’s work within us. It wants us to focus and obsess on those things which will sabotage our proper functioning for God. When we can no longer see the wood for the trees, the flesh has got us right where it wants us.

Elijah fell with this fallacy and it’s fascinating to see that it was active well before his depression (recorded for us in 1 Kings 19). At what we might call his highest point, standing on mount Carmel, having thrown down the gauntlet to the people of Israel, he betrays his otherwise spiritual prowess by announcing:

“I, even I only, am left a prophet of the LORD, but Baal’s prophets are 450 men.”

1 Kings 18.22

He was already acting on this shaky basis when at his high point. Let that point sink in.

The contrast (between the overwhelming majority of godless men vs. the solitary, stand-out character of Elijah), makes for great rhetoric when you’re trying to make your point in a contest. So fine, go ahead Elijah. The problem was, it wasn’t just rhetoric. Elijah believed it to be true – and he was wrong. Operating from such a fallacious foundation, it doesn’t take much for our whole world to collapse in on us. And all it took for Elijah was a threat – and that self-imposed loneliness suddenly made him feel completely vulnerable. The realisation came crashing down on Elijah that whilst he had pulled off an amazing publicity stunt for his God, he had not and could not, change the hearts of the people of Israel. And when that realisation dawned on him, the same ‘I’m the only one’ mentality that fueled him to the top of mount Carmel, drove him into morbid obscurity on mount Horeb.

Depression hit him like a freight train.

Now here we have to be especially careful. Depression is a delicate subject and commenting on Elijah’s experience should be done with godly wisdom. Nothing negative should be inferred from the effort here, to observe the fallacy which Elijah bought into. He did buy into it, and at very least, it cannot have helped matters.

When he repeats his sincere belief to God on Sinai (1 Kin. 19.10), one can appreciate his conundrum. If the only remaining prophet of The Lord will have his life taken away, then what hope is there? He repeats his statement a third and final time (1 Kin. 19.14) and Jehovah’s reply is very poignant. He does not address Elijah’s mistaken belief directly, (more on that in a moment). Instead, He issues Elijah with three final assignments. The three assignments signal to Elijah that God’s plan is far grander than the endeavours of a solitary individual. And having issued the assignments, Jehovah then gently states the facts of the matter, contrary to Elijah’s persuasion. Elijah had no reason to be lonely. He had no reason to make himself a unique, isolated victim. He was one of 7000 others, who had not bowed the knee to Baal.

The flesh doesn’t take kindly however, to us pulling down its fallacious scaffold. So we might be tempted to push back and defend Elijah’s mindset. Ok so there were 7000 others. But where were they? Where was the evidence of their faithfulness? Why did they not join Elijah at Carmel? He was at least the only prophet of God to rally Gods people to the showdown, wasn’t he? Sort of. And that’s all it takes for mistaken beliefs to take hold within our souls. All they need to pass under our truth radar is the smallest amount of truth. All too easily we latch onto pea size bits of truth and shape our outlook on poorly balanced assessments of our circumstances. In which case, ‘I’m the only one’, ‘my circumstances are worse then yours’, and ‘nobody understands how hard it is for me’ will all stand.

To answer these objections which are sitting under the surface of Elijahs words back in 1 Kings 19.9, God choreographs a remarkable piece of theatre. It’s incredibly gracious of God to put this all on for an audience of one. But Elijah was loved and although he was finished with himself, God wasn’t. God had work for him to do.

Act 1, Scene 1: God commands the wind to tear into the face of the mountain, pulling rocks off its surface, no doubt creating quite an acoustic spectacle. Dramatic. Act 1, Scene 2: God orders an earthquake. Super dramatic. Act 1, Scene 3: Fire. All very Elijah. But God was not on stage during any of these scenes. Then Act 2: a still small voice. This time there is no special mention of the fact that God wasn’t in this scene. It begs the question, was He then? The scene also challenges Elijah to wrestle with the idea that God works in various ways, not always with the dramatic. Sometimes, the still small voice will do. And as if to make the point, Elijah’s successor – Elisha – would be just that. Perhaps the 6999 other faithful were just that too; quietly getting on with Gods business and doing so in community rather than in obscurity like Elijah.

Anyway, we’re digressing a little. The point of this is to show that Elijah’s beliefs about himself and his beliefs about Gods plans (or lack of) were misguided. Far from being the only one, he was one of thousands. And yet, as is the nature of fallacies, because he bought the notion that he was alone, he ended up being exactly that. Well almost. God never left him, and never would.

When you and I are tempted to overstate the extent of our circumstances, to presume with over confidence that the things that befall us are so overwhelmingly, exclusive to us, we need to turn ourselves over to God. We will likely be faced with the need to abandon our misguided ideas about the ways He is working His purposes out. We will need to concede that given the centuries of believers that have gone before us, we and our circumstances are not as special as we thought. And when we do that, we are not left feeling deprived of pity. Not deprived but relieved.

In the moment, when we are thinking ‘I’m the only one’ we have decided that the best way to dull the pain of our circumstances is to extend sympathy to ourselves. And it is true, or it appears at first to be true at least, that this is the best way of providing some therapy for it all. But this is not actually what is happening. They very pity that we engage in isolates us and injures us, compounding our already difficult circumstances and possibly injuring others around us at the same time. Whereas when we adopt a biblical perspective the opposite occurs. Thinking biblically about suffering and difficulty will help us to see that far from being alone, our suffering has brought us completely into line with the many myriads of other believers, who have gone before. We are now in community with them and their plight, and we share in their hope that there is more to life than this veil of tears. There is more to our existence than this mortality, this corruptible, this finality. More than that, the circumstances that prevail against us bring us into line with God Himself who endured the cross, despising the shame and is now set down at the majesty on high. Self-pity traps us, enslaves us, cripples us. Faith frees us, not from the circumstances, but from the fallacious lies that bait us with a way out only to switch in a deadly poison that is anything but helpful. The flesh wants us to brood and pout. To forsake the assembling of Gods people, to live out physically what our souls feel emotionally. But The Spirit calls us to do the exact opposite: draw near, hold fast and show love. Such things are a wonderful prescription for spiritual myopia. May God help us, by His marvellous grace to run with endurance the race that is set before us. To believe that we are not alone m, but are are joined with a veritable cloud of witnesses to look to The One who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that [we] may not grow weary or fainthearted.

Pastoral

Fallacies of the Flesh

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Throughout God’s Word we find people making choices about what to believe. So for instance, Adam and Even in the garden of Eden: they have a choice. On the one hand they can believe God. God tells them that if they eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and good and evil that they will die. On the other hand, they can believe the serpent who contradicts God and says, you won’t die. They chose, mistakenly, to believe the serpent. As a result, they died, just as God had said. God was right, the serpent was wrong.

As Christians we face similar choices every day. We have God’s Word on the one hand. We have the beliefs and ideas that come our flesh on the other. And we often choose to believe ourselves rather than believe God. The bible calls these choices sin. First because we are choosing something other than God. And second, because by default, the something other’s run contrary to God’s Will. But like Adam and Eve, we always discover that sin never delivers what it promises. And as a result, one common feature of sin is that it comes about through misplaced belief in a lie. Such beliefs are therefore fallacies.

fallacy (n.)

a mistaken belief, especially one based on unsound arguments: the notion that the camera never lies is a fallacy.

Oxford Dictionary of English

Despite the fact that God has been shown to be always right, it doesn’t stop us making choices to believe in other things. To listen to other voices. To buy into other ideas. To fall for fallacies of the flesh.

In the next few posts, we’ll be looking at many of the fallacies that are served to our minds and hearts, by our internal enemy the flesh. For more background on what Scripture is referring to by ‘the flesh’, I have written a short post laying out the basic truth here.

In the rest of this series we will explore just how prevalent the flesh is, especially in more subtle ways. It spawns horrific thoughts and cleverly cuts us off at the pass from being the people that God wants us to be. Our objective will be to pull back the curtain on some of its strategies and make us more shrewd, more discerning, and with The Spirits help, more capable at preventing its advances.

Pastoral

The Flesh: an Overview

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In this post, we will endeavour to lay out what the Spirit of God has left on record in Scripture, concerning what it calls, ‘the flesh’. We’ll take a survey approach rather than try and be exhaustive.

In Galatians 5.17 The Spirit of God and The Flesh are said to be contrary to one another. Once saved we will find soon enough, that the Christian engages in a daily struggle with these two things. Failure to understand that this struggle is inevitable and in fact normal, can be a significant stumbling block for young and old.

Imagine you’re a Royal Marine engaged in a campaign against a foreign enemy. You are fiercely trained, notoriously capable and yet, after an initial series of successful offensives, you now find yourself plagued with enemy advances. Amidst the various possible explanations for this, one would have to allow for the fact that you may have a traitor in your midst. A collaborator, a defector, a Judas. To pretend that this might not be the case is simply to be naive and will put you and your team at further risk. You must weed them out. So it is with the flesh. If we want to have any victory over our internal enemy, we shall have to be forewarned and forearmed. It is imperative that we familiarise ourselves with what The Spirit of God has said about it all.

The Existence of the Flesh

The new testament refers to ‘flesh’ in two different ways. One refers to our physical body, the other a spiritual instinct. Our spiritual being is occupied with a rebellious bias away from God. It is this rebellious instinct which causes us to sin. The bible calls this, ‘the flesh’.

We know that the flesh exists because the bible tells us it does.

The human mind is more deceitful than anything else. It is incurably bad. Who can understand it?

Jer 17.9-10 (NET)

When you get saved, you understand this.  You understand that you are separated from God because of the sins you have committed on the outside which themselves come from a sinful instinct on the inside. You know, like Jeremiah says, that this condition is incurable. The only one who can help you is God Himself. You put your faith solely and simply in the work which Christ did for you at Calvary in taking your sins punishment. So that despite what Jeremiah says about your rebellious self, you are now right with God and eternally saved.

So we know that the flesh exists because the bible tells us it does. But we also know that the flesh exists because of its effect on our thinking and behaviour. Even after we’re saved, we still have to deal with the presence of the flesh. 

The flesh is what:

  • makes you skip prayer time because you’re tired (like the disciples in Matthew 26:41 “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”)
  • Makes you praise yourself on a social network or in a social gathering when we should allow others to praise us (Prov. 27.2).
  • Makes you focus on other things instead of reading your bible.
  • Makes you obsessively worry about something instead of taking it to The Lord and leaving it with Him (Phil. 4.6).
  • Makes you feed an addiction for food, immorality or harmful practice, instead of exercising self-control (Rom. 6.12).
  • Makes us react in defensive ways to people who are offering constructive input, instead of of exercising humility and teachableness (Prov. 1.7, 15.31).

The Sentence on the Flesh

Before Christ, all were subject to the hold which the flesh had over us. By causing us to sin, it caused us to be condemned and thus separated from God. Romans 7 teaches us that even the law could not relinquish us from these circumstances. However, Christ has. Romans 8.3 teaches us that because of His work, sin in the flesh has now been condemned. Legally speaking then, as Romans 8 points out, ‘there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus’.

There is a similar thought in Romans 6.6, but there the emphasis is on how the sentence on our old man/self means that we are no longer slaves (cf. Gal 5.24). Here in Romans 8 the point is that we are beyond separation from God. On both accounts, notwithstanding the persistence of the flesh, we must – by faith – stand in the good of these truths. This is our position before God. We have to make it good in our practice by faith. Even when we fail, we must remember that the flesh is powerless to separate us from the love of God in any final or terminal way.

The Persistence of the Flesh

Despite the old man being crucified and despite sin in the flesh having its legal payload rendered powerless, the flesh still remains with us. Our passage in Galatians 5 makes that patently obvious.

Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

Gal 5.16-17

If there is a battle, that is a sign that you are alive, alive to God. But we can never be too harsh with the flesh. We owe it nothing (Rom 8.12) and we are to actively live in the good of the sentence that has been passed on it.

Why God leaves us with the flesh is somewhat of a mystery. It is not something that the apostles ever provided an explanation for. But if the flesh did not persist then it would make exercising faith somewhat theoretical – not unlike a garden of Eden without a tree of knowledge of good and evil. How would faith function in that setting? Instead we get to choose, out of love rather than circumstance, to love God and depend on Him.

Be under no illusion. The flesh persists. I have been saved 35 years. I am fighting more with the flesh now than I have ever been.

The Prevalence of the Flesh

Scripture describes the believer as having three main enemies, but which is most prevalent? If we are to make progress in the battle that rages daily in our experience we need to find our bearings on this.

The three enemies are the world, the flesh, and the devil (1 Jn 2.15). The believer is clearly pitted against the world in James 4:4:

friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

James 4:4

warned concerning the schemes of the devil in Ephesians 6:

Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

Ephesians 6.11

and the deeds of the flesh make for a particularly unsightly list in Galatians 5:

the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality…etc.

Galatians 5.19

Which of these three enemies is the most prevalent in our experience? Scripture seems to suggest that the devils interactions with a believer are infrequent, contrary to what you may perceive from those in charismatic circles. Consider for instance the following cases:

  • The Lord’s Temptation: this was an especially intense period of temptation by the devil; as far as we know, it was never repeated.
  • Job’s Suffering: again, an unusually distinct series of interventions from Satan (Job 1.6-2.7).
  • Peter’s Denial: a failure that was likely the direct result of Satan’s intervention (Lk 22.31).
  • Judas’s Possession: a distinct possession of a single individual for a distinct and finite purpose (Jn 13.27).

In various ways, Satan’s endeavours can be seen in more general ways in the New Testament and it is true of course, that he is the god of this age (2 Cor 4.4) and the prince of the power of the air (Eph 2.2). The above examples do not disprove this. We certainly should not underestimate his jurisdiction. But many believers attach all outworking of the evil exclusively to Satan which is something which will not stand up to biblical scrutiny. The above examples serve to show the jurisdictional limits of his influence. We have to look elsewhere for the cause of much of our downfall. It will not do to follow Adam’s example, to pin it all on someone outside of ourselves.

The same could be said of our enemy, the world. The New Testament commentary on the world is quite involved. John’s first epistle is particularly dense on the subject. Furthermore, John shows that all three enemies are entangled:

For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.

1 John 2.15

This is typical tactic of effective offence systems. They use several different strategies in order to overcome the target. During the Spanish Civil War, a nationalist general was moving four of his army columns (a narrow file of soldiers) on Madrid. One from the north, one from the south, one from the east and one from the west. He commented however that his fifth column was the column that would take the city. The fifth column was in the city already and had been quietly mustering support from the inside for some time 1.

So in this series on the flesh, we should be careful not to pretend that our battle with the flesh is all there is to it. We have three enemies for sure and they all interact in ways beyond us. But the fifth columnist within us is with us the moment we wake up, until the moment we lay ourselves down. Working contrary to The Holy Spirit, the flesh plagues us constantly and works in cahoots with our other enemies, to bring our downfall.

In the rest of this series we will explore just how prevalent the flesh is, especially in more subtle ways. It spawns horrific thoughts and cleverly cuts us off at the pass from being the people that God wants us to be. Our objective will be to pull back the curtain on some of its strategies and make us more shrewd, more discerning, and with The Spirits help, more adept in undoing its spiritual sabotage.

  1. cf. https://www.britannica.com/topic/fifth-column. ↩
Devotional

They Vehemently Accused Him

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And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused him.

Lk. 23.10

Sometimes the function of verses in our bible can isolate a thought, event or observation in such a way so as to make us stop and meditate. Whilst not inspired, the effect is very helpful.

Luke 23.10 is one such case. What an entirely extraordinary line. How utterly preposterous.

Chief Priests

Oversight of religious worship in 1st century Jerusalem had become full of bureaucracy and the chief priests were one of the chief by-products. Possessing oversight for a range of temple functions they acted as middle managers with all the air of importance that their title gave them. The Lord Jesus was a threat to their position and power. 

Scribes

Oversight of religious and civilian law on the other hand was the responsibility of the scribe. Whereas we might see a scribe as someone who sits at a desk with paper and quill, the 1st century scribe was often far more influential and essential to the rule of law. Like modern day lawyers, their responsibilities lay with knowing the law inside and out. This meant they must be thoroughly educated. There were two schools, with two extremes of interpretation. The one taught exact application of the letter of the law making the law a moralistic burden. The other taught inexact application of the letter and spirit of the law depriving the law of its intrinsic moral value. The Lord Jesus was not educated or discipled in either school. He neither perpetuated the traditions of the former group nor condoned the abuses of the latter. The Lord Jesus was a threat to both because He spoke with His own authority, the authority of the original law giver.

Vehemently Accused

These men stood and vehemently accused the Saviour. Verse 2 gives the background to their accusations. 

We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king.

What brazen hypocrisy. Apparently Christ was misleading the nation. The exact opposite was true. Apparently Christ was promoting tax evasion and civil disobedience. The exact opposite was true. Apparently Christ’s claim to be Messiah was unfounded. The exact opposite was true.

Their accusation was vehement. With vigour. They went in hard. It was now or never. Their way of life was in jeopardy, their power was in the balance, and this was after all, their hour and the power of darkness (Lk. 22.53). Wicked men. Wicked hearts. Preposterous behaviour. 

Him

They accused Him. Oh what is bound up in those three letters. The fullness of the Godhead bodily. The Lord of Hosts incarnate. The perfect co-equal Son. The Just. Surely He will speak, surely He will cause the ground to swallow them up, surely the right thing to do was to consign these men to eternal damnation. Oh the self-control of Christ in those moments. He permitted them breath to vent their bitter hatred, to verbalise their worst, to smear and vilify The Son of God. The glory and majesty of His manhood in those moments should cause us stand as well. To stand in worship and with similar fervour and passion, adore Him and praise Him.

His be the Victor’s name,
who fought the fight alone;
triumphant saints no honour claim;
His conquest was their own.

By weakness and defeat
He won a glorious crown,
trod all our foes beneath His feet
by being trodden down.

He Satan’s pow’r laid low;
made sin, He sin o’erthrew;
bowed to the grave, destroyed it so,
and death, by dying, slew.

Samuel Whitelock Gandy
Devotional

Exceptional

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There are many statements in scripture which pass scathing comment upon ALL of us and our condition. Statements for which there is no apparent exception.

These statements from scripture are properly brutal. Fantastically honest, scathing and comprehensive. All men are sinners, there is none that does good and all men are mortal. We may forget these scathing statements of truth, sitting around the bread and wine on a Lord’s Day morning.

How properly offensive scripture is to our human tendency which has us segment humankind into a hundred and one different levels and categories. It takes the rug from underneath of all of it. We are in fact, all in the same boat. 

The Word of God is clear. There are no exceptions, all have sinned, all flesh is as grass and there is not one that does good. Not even, one.

How glorious it is that in the face of these frightfully brutal statements about humanity there is in fact, just one exception. 

The man Christ Jesus.

Christ is exceptional.

The Exception to Falling Short

When it comes to all men having sinned and come short of the glory of God – Christ is the exception. Perhaps some men were more off course than others. But ultimately, as we scan the field for the arrow shafts of righteousness we find that they have all fallen short of the target. None of them have attained God’s standard. All have sinned. All, but Christ – Praise God!

But was he not born of a women (Gal. 4.4) – most assuredly He was – yet conceived of The Holy Spirit in a virgin womb! (Lk. 1.27). But was He not tempted in all points as we are – for sure He was – yet without sin (Heb. 4.15). Even the prince of this world had no hold over the Saviour (John 14.30). Happy exception this is – that though ‘by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous’ (emphasis mine).

The Exception to Not Doing Good

Here in Psalm 14 The Spirit of God inspired David to characterise the whole of humanity as basically, unable to do good. ‘They are all gone aside, they are altogether become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one’. Because we are all born sinners, all that we do is marred by sin. What with our confused motives and pride fuelled endeavours, even the best of men doing the best of things, can all be characterised in this way.

Except, The best man.

Hallelujah brother and sister. He went about doing good (Acts 10.38). Anointed by God, empowered by the Spirit, He went about doing, properly good things. Unimpeded by a sinful nature that complicated His pursuit of His Fathers will He well pleased Him and invoked praise to that effect, ‘Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased’ (Lk. 3.22). There is one that has done good. Exceptional indeed.

The Exception to Being like Grass

When it comes to all flesh being like grass, we hardly need the Word of God to spell this out. The glory of man is certainly as the flower of the grass. The grass withers and the flower falls away. Miserable reality. ‘Vanity’ says the Preacher. ‘Brief’ says the Psalmist (Ps. 90,10). Every time.

Well almost.

In fact, every time we read these brutal statements, our souls run to the exceptional man, the Saviour of our souls. Did He wither, did his glory fall away? If this meditation is anything to go by dear saint then quite patently the answer is no! His glory shall never fall. The vigour of life in Christ is remarkable – even as He cried ‘it is Finished’ it was with a loud voice. In the very same Psalm where Moses meditates on the mortality of man He comments on the everlasting God. That is our Saviour. He was no grass, His flower did not fall away.

So in a very real sense, we can be glad of Scripture’s scathing verdict. It draws us to worship the one who is without exception, The exception.

To quote the children’s chorus

I know a man, Different to other men
Unmarked by sin, Untouched by Adam’s fall
Holy and pure, Spotless humanity,
His name is Jesus The Lord

Devotional

Pain Relief for the Soul

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Psalm 77 guides us through the thought processes of a believer who settles on the act of remembering – to find relief for his soul. Note how he begins looking up, gives in to looking in, but ultimately resorts to looking back.

Looking Up

(vs. 1-3)

The Psalmist begins by looking up. He’s having a tough day (.2) but faith has taught him and trained him to look up. He cries to His God, he seeks God and brings God into his consciousness. He will not find comfort in temporal things around him, he wants only for God.

What a good habit this is, in whatever circumstances, to look up. (Luke 18.1). After all, as we shall see, looking around or looking within really will not help matters.

Looking up involves recognising the reality of God’s existence. And yes, God’s existence makes suffering more, not less perplexing (.3). How easy it is at this point, to end up retreating into ourselves. The flesh feeds us the lie that the two realities of God’s existence and suffering are incompatible. Faith looks to the suffering Saviour on the cross and begs to differ.

Looking In

(vs. 4-9)

Perhaps for lack of sleep (.4), now the writers’ thoughts turn inward. Difficult circumstances are doubly hard to cope with when we are exhausted. We cave more easily to the deceit that our flesh fills our minds with.

The outcome of this internal search is a series of questions about God’s goodness (6-9). Questions, not answers. Meanwhile the flesh has us wrapped around it’s little finger. The steadfast love of the Lord never fails (Lam. 3.22-23) but the Psalmist is now questioning even this (.8).

Mercifully, the stream of consciousness is interrupted with ‘Selah’, likely a musical instruction to stop and ponder. In like manner, we have a weekly Selah – on a Lord’s Day morning. Something that interrupts any inward looking and causes us to stop and ponder.

Looking Back

(vs. 10-20)

In the end, looking-in is futile. Other Psalms show us that looking around is no better. The Psalmist turns instead to look back. He occupies his mind with God’s past:

  • Works (11-12)
  • Wonders (11)
  • Care (20)

On a Lord’s Day morning we do the same. Not looking on our own things but looking to Christ, we look back. We look back to the greatest work of God, accomplished at Calvary. Calvary eclipses all man-made works. It is the power of God unto Salvation. Calvary fills us with wonder too – the horror of our hatred towards a perfect man, the mystery of God incarnate expressing His own dilemma of being forsaken. And we call to mind the care and love of God which prompted Him to send His Son into the world in the first place. God’s works and wonders are not for entertainment purposes. He gave His only begotten Son because He so loved the world.

The Psalm ends rather abruptly, almost in mid-flow. There is no ‘Selah’ to pause and reflect. Perhaps the writer wishes for us to remain in a state of perpetual looking back – ever bringing to our remembrance the work, wonder and care of God.

Sure enough – until He come – we perpetually look back, calling to remembrance. And what a blessing, what a relief it is, to our souls. Indeed, looking back aids us in moving forward.

Backward look we, drawn to Calv’ry,
Musing while we sing;
Forward haste we to Thy coming,
Lord and King!

Gathered round Thyself Lord Jesus (Douglas Russell)

Devotional

Magnify the Lord with Me

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Oh, magnify the  Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together!

Psalm 34.3

The way David’s expression comes across in english might raise a question in our minds – just how would we go about doing this? Just how would we magnify the Lord? Is he not beyond magnification?

Wishful thinking?

Where might we obtain theological lenses or devotional mirrors big enough to magnify Him? The Lord is an infinite being. Is the Psalmist engaging perhaps in hyperbole or wishful thinking? 

Actually the Psalmist is spot on. He realises more than most of us that The Lord’s person, character and works are intrinsically great things and there is nothing he can or would do that can make them any greater.

Altered thinking

The lenses and mirrors within a microscope or telescope do not enlarge the object of their focus in a material way. The size of the thing being magnified does not change, it is our perspective which changes. As the lenses and/or mirrors get to work, the true wonder of the object comes into our field of view. We behold things which otherwise we might not have seen. We observe characteristics which otherwise we might not have noticed. Our intellect and our hearts are stirred – not by an intrinsic change in the object – but in the perspective which enlargement affords us. The more we study the object, the more cause there is for wonder, the more cause there is for awe. The longer we stay, the more we see and the more we see, the more we are compelled to share our findings.

This is where the Psalmist finds himself. Enthused with his own findings which he goes on to speak of in the Psalm, he is compelled now to share these with others and encourage them to do the same.

Faith-full thinking

It is a happy thing to magnify the Lord; for as he becomes bigger in our heart’s appreciation, other things which had been in focus now are forced to the edges. Eventually all objects in our peripheral vision vanish and only he is in focus. This was Mary’s experience in Luke 1. Gone are the fears from the angels salutation, her soul did magnify the Lord. Her own hearts’ enjoyment spilled out into the world through song as she ‘made’ the Lord great.

Far from being wishful thinking then this is in fact, faith-full thinking. The truth is, the Lords name bears far more frequent scrutiny than it receives, far more space than it occupies, far more time than it fills. Exalt his name we should, magnify we must, until the earth [is] filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. (Habakkuk 2.1).

Readers will forgive any naiveté present within the writer’s comments about optics. Hopefully the gist of things is still clear.