How the mighty have fallen

With thanks to http://mytheoblogy.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/the-autumn-transition/

The Levites were set apart as God's Priests from Exodus 32 for standing for God over the issue of the golden calf.

But then, Ezekiel 44:10 - "And the Levites that are gone away far from me, when Israel went astray, which went astray away from me after their idols; they shall even bear their iniquity." - how the might have fallen.

There is no other way to be saved - not even being born into the priestly tribe - only through faith in Jesus, and this by grace.

The Face

With thanks to https://pixabay.com/en/birth-child-baby-newborn-hand-466140/

I remember, from a couple of years ago, watching a very interesting documentary that attempted to explain, among other things, the development of the face of the growing human embryo.

The perfectly pleasant presenter was predictably flannelling on about how various parts of our head and neck were vestigial remains of erstwhile gills (sadly, even in this day and age, too many scientists still unswervingly believe this utterly illogical explanation!), but he did highlight something fascinating: that the face develops from three different parts: the left hemisphere of the face, covering that side's forehead, eye socket, nose, cheek, etc. (or maxilla), the right hemisphere, and the jaw (or mandible).

These three parts, he went on, gradually grow towards each other and fuse together, leaving only the mouth. The last part to fuse, he explained, was the philtrum - the groove running vertically from the bottom of the nose to the middle of the upper lip.

That got me thinking. Why did God do it that way?

ALL of creation points to Jesus in some way - that's the great glory of all creation, that it proclaims truths about Christ to itself and to the rest of creation. So what does this tell us about the way of things?

Whenever I see three of anything, my first thoughts, clearly, are going to be about the trinity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. Here we have three parts of the face.

Speaking of the face itself, this is about intimacy: we, as God's children, are encouraged to 'seek his face'; on the other hand, the thought of God 'turning his face away' or 'hiding his face' is frightful to the writers of the Chronicles and Psalms; yet it is a great blessing to have God's face 'shine upon you'.

The thought of these three parts of the face coming together, yet leaving space for the mouth, makes me think of the tabernacle … bear with me!

The tabernacle was to be set up with the veiled mercy seat that kept the law and testimony in the west, the altar bearing the twelve loaves of bread in the north, the seven-branched, olive oil-burning, eternally-alight lamp in the south, and the bowl of incense in the middle of these three.

Symbolically (and this is all purely from hunting around the Bible - nowhere else), the “mercy seat” hidden behind the ‘veil’ represents the Father, the ‘table of shewbread’ represents the Son, the ‘menorah’ represents the Spirit, and the bowl of incense represents the prayers of the saints (that is, all of God's people) ... check out the table below.

	Tabernacle pattern	Cosmic reality
The Holiest Place (representing the Father)	Hidden from sight by a veil	“No-one has ever seen the Father …” (John 1:18)
	The veil is embroidered with cherubim	Cherubim stand guard over the way back to the tree of life (Genesis 3:24), where the Father is (Revelation 22:1-2)
	The veil is torn when Jesus “gives up the ghost”	Jesus granted us access to the Father when he died on the cross
The Table of Shewbread (representing the Son)	The table (bearing the bread) is made of wood, but the eye only sees the gold covering	The cross (bearing Jesus) is made of wood, but the eye reads the sign: “King of the Jews” (gold represents kingship)
	On the table are 12 loaves of bread	12 represents ‘governance’ (tribes / disciples in Israel, hours in day / night, months in year, etc.); … and there is much on bread representing Jesus, from “Bethlehem” meaning “home / house of bread” to Jesus’ words when he broke bread: “This is my body…”
	When transported, the table and its contents were cloaked in scarlet (representing ‘sin’) and ‘skin’	At the cross, Jesus – the one who ‘became flesh’ (Job 1:14) – “was made sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21)
The Menorah (representing the Spirit)	A seven-branched candle…	The sevenfold spirit (Revelation 1:4, 3:1, 4:5, 5:6)
	… burning olive oil …	Olive oil is used for ‘anointing’, representing anointing by the Spirit; fire represents ‘purification’, another work of the Spirit (our words ‘pure’ and ‘pyrotechnic’ have the same Greek root)
	… to give light to the whole room	God is Spirit (John 4:24) and light (1 John 1:5), as well as love (1 John 4:7), which ‘shines out’
The bowls of incense (representing the prayers of the saints	Rising up, a pleasing aroma to the Lord	Revelation 5:8 … ‘nuff said!

... And then check out the diagram below … symbolically, this reassures us that our prayers reach to, and lie at, the very heart of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!

Composite from http://www.bible-history.com/tabernacle/TAB4The_Ark_of_the_Covenant.htm, http://www.rawganique.com/Images/Swatches/HC1-040811-56.jpg, http://bibleabc.net/l_rev/images/bowl-70118.jpg, http://truthinmotion.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/bowl-of-incense-smaller.jpg, http://trivialdevotion.blogspot.co.uk/2011_06_26_archive.html, and http://www.thegalileeexperience.com/store/menorahs-candelabras-/menorah-tiberias-style-brass-regular-5-8-39-39-/prod_80.html - with thanks!

And so, just briefly back to the face again: what do the three parts fuse around?  The mouth.

And what does the mouth do?  Speak, converse, talk, chat, communicate, ...

And what is prayer?  Speaking, conversing, talking, chatting, communicating with God!

... Awesome!

The Lamb - Part 1

(With thanks to http://www.foxfirefiber.com/newsletter.html - accessed 17.03.13)

Sermon for Kew Baptist, 17 March 2013 (with a grateful nod to Glen Scrivener!)

Steve Levy, of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Swansea, recently preached a sermon …on preaching! … In which he emphasised how the words of a good sermon will certainly sound foolish, as it is the power of God that saves, not the power of the preacher ... so I would like to start by praying!

[Pray]

I’d like to read what I think is an excellent example of words that sound foolish to us, but that come in the power of God!

Revelation 6:15-17 says:

Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”

… So, the kings of the earth, great leaders, war heroes, the rich, the famous, the powerful, the influential - everyone, in fact – will, it is prophesied, resort to talking to inanimate mountains and rocks (who, it must be remembered, don't have a long history of engaging Man in conversation!) in a desperate attempt to find protection from the terrible wrath of ... a small, bleating, wobbly-legged, bundle of wool!

If that didn't sound foolish enough, Revelation 5:13 adds:

...every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them (say) “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might for ever and ever!”

Again, I get the 'him who sits on the throne' bit – getting honour and glory ‘n’ all - but ... the LAMB?  What is this fixation with the young and ovine all about?

John the Baptist gives us the short answer in John 1:29-34:

...he saw Jesus ... and said, “Behold, the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!  This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’ … I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him … I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”

The slightly longer answer will take us through some of the history of God's interaction with his people.  We're going to follow this little study on the lamb, stopping off very briefly in Genesis 22, Exodus 11-12, Isaiah 53, and Mark 14-15, but focussing mainly on The Passover and The Cross.

So, first of all Genesis 22:1-8:

... God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!”

And he said, “Here am I.”

He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”

So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac.  And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.  On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.  Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.”  And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son.  And he took in his hand the fire and the knife.  So they went, both of them, together.

And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!”

And he said, “Here am I, my son.”

He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”

Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.

So, here, we have a father and his son; the son is called his 'only son' whom the father loves; it's early in the morning when the son is led out with two other men, the wood upon which the son is to be sacrificed placed on his own back; and, on the third day, the father confidently reports that his son will return after the sacrifice.

Sound familiar?!  If we needed any more help as to what this event was prophesying, Solomon provides it, in 2 Chronicles 3:1, as he starts "to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem (which is) on Mount Moriah"

Interestingly, here, Abraham prophesies that The Lord himself will provide a lamb for the sacrifice ... yet THIS time, in verse 13, a ram is provided.

But let's get back to lambs!

Next we're into Exodus 11-12 and The Passover.  To preserve you from my voice for the next quarter-hour, Katy’s going to read a slightly abridged version, just leaving out repetitions or points not related to the lamb specifically:

The Lord said to Moses, “Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt ... About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle.  There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again.

But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.

This month shall be for you the beginning of months … the first month of the year for you ... on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household ... according to what each can eat ... Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old ... and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.  Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.  They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs ... you shall eat it with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand and you shall eat it in haste.

For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgements: I am the Lord.  The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are ... when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.

Moses expands on the instructions a little:

Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood … and touch the lintel and the two doorposts.

None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning.  For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you.

Then, it happened:

At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock.  And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead.

So, again, as with Abraham’s story, it’s Firstborn Son vs. Lamb!

The gods of Egypt, representing all gods that are not the one, true, living God, are about to be judged by the one, true, living God, and every household who align themselves to, or worship, these false gods will live only at the cost of their firstborn son.

But the one, true, living God - being the God of love as he is - has offered an alternative: a lamb.  “There was not a house where someone was not dead” after The Lord had passed through … the question was, would that dead ‘someone’ be a son or a lamb?

As it represented Jesus, this lamb had to be without blemish (representing Jesus’ being without evil); it had to be male (representing Jesus being the self-sacrificing Bridegroom to his Bride); and it had to be a year old (representing Jesus’ having completed his appointed time of ministry before his own sacrificial death).

On the tenth day of the first month, the lamb was taken into the household for whose salvation it was to be sacrificed, and kept there, inside, until the fourteenth day of this month.  For five days, then, this farm animal lived in the house as ‘one of the family’.  This represents how Jesus came in our flesh to make his home amongst us (and, for those who like numerology, perhaps the five days represents Jesus’ showing, during that time, that he fulfilled The Law?)

The whole assembly of the congregation of Israel then kill their lambs “at twilight”, or – as an alternative translation puts it - “between the two evenings”, which is an odd phrase that possibly refers to the two evenings that occurred on the day Jesus died, as reported in Matthew 27, Mark 15, and Luke 23.  Here, night-time fell at around noon, and the light only reappeared at 3pm, at which time Jesus gave up his spirit.  The Israelites then eat the flesh of the lamb, personally identifying with the saving work achieved by the sacrifice.

This offer of a lamb was a true gift from God - a “Get out of jail free” card, for those familiar with the board game ‘Monopoly’ - and, if a household heard God’s call, through Moses, to take this gift he offers, trusted that he is as good as his word, and showed their trust on their lintels and their doorposts, their own firstborn son would be spared.

Individual status would not be taken into account: “every firstborn … from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne … to the firstborn of the slave … the firstborn of the captive … in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock” would die.  No, this is all about faith – do you trust God or not?  It’s black or white; there is no grey area here – it’s a simple yes or no.  And the Lord makes a very clear distinction between those who do trust him and those who do not.

But what does trusting him actually look like in this situation?

I want to introduce you to three hypothetical Israelite households living in Goshen that night…

Meet the Cohens: they are very religious – they’re always inviting Moses over to have him share the words of God; they’re always praying and talking to each other about Father Abraham and singing spiritual songs; and they’re always doing good deeds around the neighbourhood for the widows and orphans.  On one level, they’re quite disappointed about The Passover: they don’t want God to pass over them, they’d like him to come in, examine their lives, and they’d like to hear the words “well done, good and faithful servant!”  On the other hand, a command is a command, and they follow obediently, carefully putting down two coats of lamb’s blood around their door.

Not like the Fagins: they weren’t going to be going anywhere that night anyway because their whole family had been served ASBOs.  They are commonly known as being drunkards, gluttons, liars, gamblers, swindlers, benefits cheats, notoriously promiscuous … they avoid Moses like the plague (if you’ll pardon the pun) so it’s only by fortune that they’ve heard what he said about the lamb’s blood anyway, and they really don’t think it will do any good because they’re sure that the Angel of Death has had their card marked from a long time ago.  But, equally, they’ve nothing to lose by doing it, and there is the possibility that God will be merciful if they obey this once, so they splash the basin of blood on the lintel and doorposts.

Then there’s the Leaveys: they’re not as wicked as the Fagins, but then they’re nothing like as good as the Cohens either.  They keep phoning up the Cohens saying “ok, we’ve killed the lamb and we think we’ve applied the blood the way we’re supposed to, but we’re not sure – could you spy through your window over the street and say what you think? … And do we really think it will make the difference?  What if the Angel of Death doesn’t see it, I mean it will be dark out there!...” … they pace up and down all night wondering if they’ve done enough and done it right enough …but, nonetheless, the blood is around the door.

… So, which of these families will end up with the dead son in the morning?

None of them!  If the blood was on the door, God wouldn’t look in to check on any further details, he would stay the destroyer’s hand and move on to the next house.  It had nothing to do with the moral character, standing in society, or even the state of heart or mind of the people inside the house, and everything to do with the presence of the blood on the door.  It was the fact that the blood was there that gave full protection from any further scrutiny.

It wasn’t even about how much faith they had in the blood – he never mentioned doubts, fears, worries, and concerns – he didn’t discuss how the people were to feel about it at all!  He simply asks to be trusted to know what he is doing.  You could have been as doubt-filled and concerned as you like but if the blood was on the door, no-one was coming in.

In stark contrast to what we normally hear from the pulpit (or, frankly, from any other would-be teacher), it wasn’t about what was on the inside that counted, but what was on the outside!

This resonates with the idea of Christ’s righteousness cloaking our nakedness as we stand before the judgement seat, such that the Judge looks at us and, only seeing Jesus, pronounces us innocent.

Salvation is nothing to do with your own performance and everything to do with Jesus’.  Christ saves you by His blood – not by anything in you.  It’s not about the quality of your living, speaking, acting, praying.  It’s not even about the quality of your own faith.  It’s only about the blood.  It’s the quality of His death, not the quality of your life.  1 John 1:7 says “the blood of Jesus, God’s Son, purifies us from EVERY sin” – no sin can get past this purification.

We just need to remember to hold up this gift of the blood (alone) in our defence in the face of the judgement.

But, therein, lies a huge problem: we, as human beings, are invariably forgetful!  This is why the Bible and creation are littered with reminders – in fact, the Bible is not a book about doing so much as remembering.

And so, in this case, God calls for a regular reminder (Exodus 12:14-20):

This day shall be for you a memorial day and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord … you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day, throughout your generations, as a statute for ever.

Interestingly, it is not called the Feast of The Lamb, or even the Feast of The Lamb and Unleavened Bread, as you might expect from the prominent place lamb has on the Passover menu.  It’s just the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

For those who are saved, Jesus was The Lamb who was sacrificed once for all so that no further sacrifice is required.

On the night that he was betrayed (the day he was to become The Passover Lamb), Jesus appears to change the Passover meal for all future years, from the eating of the lamb, proclaiming his sacrifice that buys freedom, to the breaking and eating of bread in remembrance that he had given his body to be broken in our place, and to the drinking of wine, in remembrance that his life was poured out in our place.

I said I’d go through Genesis 22, Exodus 11-12, Isaiah 53, and Mark 14-15, focussing mainly on The Passover and The Cross.  I’ve done half of this – if you’ll allow me, I’ll go through the second half next week.

In the meantime, if you have tasted of Jesus and seen that he is good, please take and eat communion with us this morning in remembrance that he died and was raised to eternal life so that we might live with him for eternity.

Before we do, let me thank God as we pray together: Father, thank you for your son, who - doing only as he saw you do – sacrificed himself in order that we might be with you forevermore.  Help us always to remember, to remind others, and to be reminded by others about your love for us, your wisdom for us, and your power for us.  Help us to be content in all things, living life to the full, knowing and enjoying you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Controversial: God is love.

Image found at http://darrellcreswell.wordpress.com/2011/09/14/god-loves-you-this-much/ on 1Nov2012 via Google search

From a sermon I gave to my church October 21st:

I’d like to talk about reading the Bible, but this will not a “You should be reading your Bible more!” thing, and it’s certainly not a dry lecture about different genres or anything like that!  Last week Sid spoke about prayer, which is us approaching God with our thoughts and feelings, so this week I’m going to speak about the Bible, which is God approaching us with his thoughts and feelings.

I’ll talk briefly about why read the Bible and then spend more time on how to read the Bible, but my main thing today will be that horrible contradiction of the loving God … who seems to behave in an unloving way.

But, first, let’s look at some of God’s promises regarding the Bible to briefly address why we should bother reading it at all.  (… If there’s anyone here who is not a Christian, thank you for coming – we are truly delighted that you’re here and would love to help you feel at home!  The passages we’re about to hear may help you to understand why the Bible – often called his Word - is so important to Christians.)

I don’t want to add anything to these passages because, as it says in Romans 10:17, “faith comes by hearing the word of God” - not the word of God as filtered through me or anyone else.

Ok: “why read the Bible?”

Proverbs 30:5-6 … Deuteronomy 8:3 … Luke 8:11,15 … Luke 11:28 … Revelation 19:12-13

There are many others - one that hits the nail right on the head, for me, is John 6: when many turn away from Jesus, he asks his closest twelve: ‘You do not want to leave too, do you?’ … Peter answers him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life!’

Another term for this Word of God is “The Law”.  Many of the concepts we’ve looked at are brought together in the Psalms, such as:

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.  But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.  He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.  Whatever he does prospers.

But I don’t read the Bible every day.  I do think of the tree, though, planted by an abundant stream of fresh water, sucking up the goodness in order to be refreshed, and grow, and bear fruit … and I wonder: Why don’t we read the Bible every day, especially if all these benefits are true?

One reason is because we just don’t ‘get’ passages in which the God we have come to trust as loving behaves in a way that does not seem loving at all!

The God we have come to trust as loving is the God who loved us to death … his own painful, humiliating death on the cross.

He is the God who showed us that his love for us was so great that it even eclipsed his love for himself, as he endured physical and psychological abuse, poured on him by creatures he could have snuffed out with a word.

He is the God who showed us his power to do all the good he has promised us, when he put death in its rightful place under his command, humiliating Satan, and when he rose from death to life forevermore.

And he is the same God who, time and again, has shown me his wisdom as he has dealt with each and every turn of my life from as long as I can remember.

This is the God that defines love!

… And then we read about the God who sentenced Adam and Eve to death for eating from the wrong tree;

… who cursed them when they were deceived by the guardian he appointed;

… who ‘loved Jacob but hated Esau’;

… who ordered the destruction of entire nations just because they weren’t Hebrews;

… who wrote laws that involved the murder of, literally, millions of innocent animal sacrifices;

… the list goes on.

So there’s a problem: God is love … but we don’t always see him acting like it when we read his own account of how he interacts with his creation.

I’ve purposely dressed up this list in a provocative way, and I know the problem lies within me, not in God or his word.  But it does leave the question:

… how do we read the Bible?

I’ll not spend any time on that all-too-common way of just dutifully reading the words on the page without actually engaging with what is being read - that really highlights the phrase “you get out what you put in”.

But what about when we read to know God better or to hear from him?  This may involve having to really grapple with what we’re reading, wrestling with concepts until they make sense in the context of the rest of the Bible, and it won’t always be easy, or immediately conclusive.  Then, when we do read ‘thinkingly’, there’s the issue of interpreting what we’ve read.

For example, when we read ‘God is love’ and then we read a passage that looks like God is not love, do we…

1. … simply throw out one or the other as a mistake that should never have made it to the final cut of the Bible?

2. … note the disagreement, resign ourselves to thinking “God is mysterious and we’re frail, fallible humans who’ll never understand God”, and move on to read something else?

3. … note the disagreement and try to devise a new definition for the word ‘love’ that allows for the occasional unloving act?

… OR:

4. … note the disagreement and try to find a different way of interpreting the stories such that they show God, in fact, being loving?

Let’s just quickly take a look at the natural outcomes of each of these …

The first – editing the Bible myself - is a non-starter: if I can decide what should be in the Bible and what should not, I am no longer seeking to know God, but to invent a god of my own.  Paul wrote, in 2 Timothy 3:16, that “All Scripture is God-breathed” - editing the Bible is not an option.

The second option, however, does seem to have an apparent humility that makes it quite appealing to many Christians: surely being humble is a valid argument for not delving deeper into the things of God?

The problem is: being humble without knowing God is nothing on knowing God!

In fact, true humility is only possible when we know his humility … and how can we, until we know him?!  God wants to be fully known by his children, with an intimate knowledge.

Sure, we are finite, mortal, and small-minded, and can’t cope with the infinite-ness of God, and there are things we are not supposed to concern ourselves with in this lifetime, but what we’re not supposed to concern ourselves with is clear from its omission from the Bible.

… So, how – then - do we interpret passages that seem to suggest that questioning God is wrong?  For example …

·     “my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.  “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts"

Well, this is preceded by verse 7: “Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts.  Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.” … so, putting verses 8 and 9 in context, God is specifically explaining why he will freely pardon the wicked, even after all their wickedness, just for turning to him … even though this flies in the face of … the ‘thoughts and ways’ of human justice.

… Or what about this one …

·     But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?

Again, in the context of the rest of the passage, this is talking specifically about questioning God’s wisdom concerning the gifts and purposes he has given each of us, in order to best communicate his love to - and through - us.

… Ok, so what about …

·     Job chapters 38-41 … I won’t read them all(!) … but God doesn’t seem too happy about Job’s questioning of him!?

Here, God says why he is not happy about being questioned: it is not that he is being questioned, but that the way Job has gone about this questioning has resulted in him discrediting God’s justice and condemning God, in order to justify himself.

So even passages in the Bible that seem to put us off getting to know God better aren’t actually designed to do that at all.  God’s being too mysterious for us to understand is not an option.

The third option - redefining ‘love’ - is more understandable: so many stories that make God look unloving, and only two occurrences of the expression ‘God is love’!

The Bible was written in unfamiliar languages, by unfamiliar people, from unfamiliar cultures, in unfamiliar times … and I know that, in Greek for example, they had five different words covering what we call ‘love’!  Maybe we’ve just misunderstood what “God is love” means?

But, God established the Bible for all people, in all places, throughout all time: if cultural differences might mislead us, he provides help in his word.

And he gives example after example of what ‘love’ means, both in his Word and in Creation: think of marriage, parenthood, friendship, or any relationship where, to ‘love’, you have to give your time, money, thought and consideration, sleep and strength and energy, care and protection, and more besides … to someone with an unquenchable appetite for all this and more … even when you have nothing left to give.

Think of how God has given us breath, water, food, clothing, shelter, family, friends, joy, comfort, and everything we need, throughout our lives, unfailingly, … even before we ever even knew him.

… Think of the Cross …

God knows what love is, and he has given it to us to know what love is too.  Redefining ‘love’ is not an option.

That only leaves the fourth option.  What about holding on to the understanding that God is love, and seeking to understand the stories in which he appears spiteful or discriminatory or aloof in a different light?

A legitimate fear, here, is that a pick-and-mix God is no God at all: believing the bits we like and rejecting the bits we don’t?  Not an option.

But that’s not what I am talking about.  I am talking about clinging to the God whom I know through his Spirit in me and through all the time I’ve spent - with his Spirit - in his word and in his church … I am talking about looking for a more real sense of what is going on in each event … I am talking about looking around the Bible for help in understanding…:

·     … what’s the back-story?

·     … where else has something similar happened with the same or a different outcome?

·     … what were the similar or different factors involved?

… In short, using the Bible to understand the Bible.

Sounds like detective work!  But getting to know anyone involves time spent with them … looking into who they are and what makes them tick, and struggling with things that make them different to us until we accept or understand them.

It was never intended for us to do this alone, however.  God sends his Holy Spirit to anyone who truly seeks him, and the Holy Spirit lives forevermore in all who put their trust in him.  So, whether I am a Christian or not, if I am honestly seeking the one true living God, then the very author of the Bible is ready to enter into discussion with me about what I am reading.

Luke 11 reads: “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.  Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?  Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?  If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Some Christians say: “I believe in a God of love, but I also believe in a God of justice.”

They mean, they believe in the God that - A.D. - walked around the eastern Mediterranean, healing and forgiving and performing miracles… and the God that - B.C. - looked down from on high and ordered the slaughter of entire people groups … it’s just that they’re not sure if these were the same person or not!

This is a real problem:

… does the God who is both of these … really want no-one to perish?

I want to try to show how the God of love is the God of justice … and how this loving God is the Father as much as the Son and the Spirit.

An Old Testament story that seems to show God with a split personality (in this case, the God of love to Israel, but the God of justice to Egypt) is the story of Moses and The Pharaoh.

In brief:

·     the Israelites are enslaved in Egypt

·     they cry out to God for rescue

·     God sends Moses to The Pharaoh to command him to free them … but he also hardens The Pharaoh’s heart to resist this command

·     He then shows The Pharaoh a sequence of miracles, which, had he sought God, he would have understood to be showing that his sin could be forgiven through the death of God’s innocent one

·     The Pharaoh, instead, hardens his own heart

·     The Pharaoh is forced to let the slaves go … but he chases after them and, along with all who follow him, is killed in the sight of the freed slaves

The Bible says that God raised The Pharaoh up for this very purpose: “that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth”.  So, did God set this man aside, from birth, and raise him up to be forever separated from him – in hell, eventually – with no chance for him to change God’s mind?

… Is this love?

… Alarm bells are ringing!  Let’s look at the back-story:

The ‘raising up’ referred to the way God made him into someone the whole world would hear about: God made Egypt the richest nation on the face of the planet through Joseph, an Israelite.  This made the position of Pharaoh the most powerful in the world: what The Pharaoh said and did, and what happened to him and his people, would be proclaimed throughout the world.  God then put this hard-hearted young man in that position, and the Israelites became this Pharaoh’s slaves.

With this world stage, and the characters in place, God could ensure that all would hear about his love for the world, in the hope that they would reconsider their current dead relationship with him, and enter into the marriage-like love with him that he had always wanted for them.

… So the question is: does God show his love by raising up men to die for the sake of his name and fame?  … Or does he show his love by offering himself to death in place of man?

"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him … For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God”

Let’s check Romans 9 again – surely that was where it said that God raised him up to send him to hell, right? … verse 17: “I raised you up for this very purpose: … that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”

This remit doesn’t seem to mention anything about The Pharaoh’s salvation.  As it happened, The Pharaoh did not make peace with God and surrender his own pride to trust in God’s love … and God’s power and name were proclaimed throughout all the earth!  (In Joshua 2, Rahab, a citizen of faraway Jericho, confessed: “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”) …

… But what would have happened if The Pharaoh had surrendered his resistance against God?  Surely, this act, alone, of The Pharaoh turning to God – quite apart from all the miracles that helped him reach that faith – would ensure God’s power and name were proclaimed throughout the earth?!

God’s plan that did not preclude The Pharaoh’s own salvation - Christ’s death on the cross provided for The Pharaoh too, if he would only accept it.  The choice to surrender his resistance to God’s love lay with The Pharaoh until his death. … Sadly, The Pharaoh continued to reject God and to grasp at his people - attacking the children of The Father … the Bride of the Bridegroom - until God stopped him permanently.

… A bridegroom or a father will go to great lengths to protect his bride or child from someone who would enslave or kill them.  If the would-be abuser, kidnapper, enslaver, or murderer refused to stop their attacks no matter what, the most peace-loving bridegroom or father in the world would do whatever they could to stop them once and for all.

Violence - even resulting in death - inflicted on someone unrepentantly hell-bent on enslaving or killing your beloved is not a lack, or a compromise, of love.  On the contrary, it would be very unloving if the bridegroom or father didn’t take whatever action was in his power to stop the attacker.

… So does God love us any less than this?

“I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me ...But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."

God loves his church – his bride, his children - SO much that he protects us from any and all that is truly harmful, even to the death.  This is not unloving, but deeply loving.

In fact, ‘hell’ is the result of deep, deep love!  Hell will be the unbreakable holding cell for those who, despite God’s greatest efforts throughout history and throughout their lives to win them with his love, continue to hate and wish harm to God and his church.  There, there will be gnashing of teeth, which is a term used in the Bible for hateful anger, not regretful repentance. There, their worm (their hatred towards God) will not die – they never stop hating God.  God reached out to them in their lives to offer his love, which was not accepted.  Now his love for we who did accept this same offer will cause him to protect us from them.

This understanding of how a wrathful God and a loving God are one and the same – the fact that God can get wrathful because he is loving – helps with so many stories, particularly from the Old Testament, where, initially, it feels like we’re reading about a completely different God to the God who is love, who we’ve come to know from the New Testament.

There are other, more subtle places where we can find ourselves thinking of a God different to our God of love, but the same advice still applies: use the Bible to understand the Bible, and ask God for his Holy Spirit to come and chat it through with you.

Another example is when God forbade Moses from entering The Promised Land because he disobeyed an instruction.  This seems both harsh … and quite bizarre, given the bigger picture of the whole story of the exodus, given how intimate he had become with God, …

… and given Moses’ own desire to enter The Promised Land.  Yet, at one point, God seems to snap at him: “Do not speak to me any more about this matter!”

Again, the back story helps: Moses had, at a crucial point in their travels, demonstrated a pride in his position as intercessor between God and his people – a pride that, as Ezekiel tells us, was the root cause of Satan’s fall at the first; a fall which brought death into the world.

We know that God is love, and that he loved Moses intimately, and that he forgives sin after sin after sin – it makes no sense whatsoever that he would punish this man that he loved for a solitary slip-up.  It makes a lot more sense that he wanted to protect Moses from his own pride.  This pride would have only been fed if he were to be the one man who led God’s people both out of slavery and into The Promised Land (and, inevitably, continued to rule until his death).  God, in his deep love for Moses, did not want him to go the way of Satan, so he forbade this for Moses’ sake.

Just one last thing I want to address, and this, whilst tremendously important, will be brief.

Another problem with seeing the God of wrath being different to the God of love is that we tend to see Jesus as the God of love and the Father as the God of wrath – have you ever thought that?

There are many significant problems with this, including the break-up of the trinity and the preservation of the idea that we’ve been fighting today: that of God (i.e. the Father) as NOT loving.

It is useful, at these times, to remember that Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God, so it was he who we see acting, both lovingly and wrathfully, in the Old Testament, before he was born as man.

AND, he himself said he did nothing without seeing it first in his Father.

So, as Jesus cries from the cross: “why have you forsaken me?” … he must be doing only what he sees the Father doing: … so, the suffering of the cross, rather than being about the lashings of a wrathful Father against his loving Son, must instead be about the removal of sin as far from God as the east is from the west, to use a Biblical phrase.  Both Father and Son suffered this forsakenness … this separation from each other … this horror of a perfect relationship broken … so that we may enter into a loving relationship with them.

As I finish, may I plead with you to know and remember that God – Spirit, Son, and Father – is love, and that this love is constantly poured out into you and me.  Whether you are a Christian or not, please – in the privacy of your own heart and mind - ask God to open your eyes to his love for you today; seek to really know that love, with his Holy Spirit and his Word; and knock on the door of the home of that love – I promise you, it will be opened to you.

Who forgives your sins and heals your diseases?  Who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion?  Who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s?  The Lord made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel.  The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.  He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.  As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions.  (Psalm 103)