ohhh... sinful nation

Isaiah’s description of the people of God now continues into the next verses…

Alas, sinful nation, A people laden with iniquity, A brood of evildoers, Children who are corrupters! They have forsaken the LORD, They have provoked to anger The Holy One of Israel, They have turned away backward. Is 1:4 NKJV

They certainly ‘told it like it is’, these Old Testament prophets. From the description of its spiritual promiscuity Isaiah now turns to some of the consequences of the nation’s rebellious ways. Do remember that we are not pointing the finger here but simply seeing, in the description, a portrait of all men and women from God’s perspective. The man under whom I spent the earliest years of my pilgrimage would always say “you have to tell the bad news before you can tell the good news.” He was right, of course. The good news is good news because it brings the news of the remedy to what we have become. We are sometimes so eager to get to the good news that we merely scan verses like these and want to hurry on the ‘for God so loved the world’ verses, but it is often a blessing in disguise to let some of the bad news sink in before we move on.

The contrast could hardly be greater. This nation’s beginnings began with a conditional promise in which God promised them that…

…if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ Ex 19:5–6 NKJV

But to those destined to be a ‘holy nation’ God now brings the accusation that, in his sight, they are a ‘sinful nation’. They have gone in the opposite direction to their God declared destiny. What a tragedy. But it is not only ancient Israel that bears this tragedy. Here is God’s description and declared destiny for the whole race…

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; Gen 1:26 NKJV

Can we recognise the human race today from this ancient description? Neither does God… and yet God never gave up. Recently it was reported that Prince William had quoted his grandmother when he visited the site of the earthquake in Christchurch, NZ. “Grief is the price we pay for love”. They are profound words. When we love someone we put a terrible weapon into their hands; the more we love them, the more they have the power to hurt us, intentionally or unintentionally. At one level that is what Calvary is all about. There is a deep grief in God’s description of the nation of Israel and of us. The word translated 'alas' here is not really a word at all; it is a single letter groan. 'Alas' is the kind of word you might use if you spill your coffee down your shirt; the Hebrew is a groan from a broken-hearted God. God’s hurt at our rebellion has gone off the scale.

How greatly did he love us and grieve over our sin? Calvary is the measure of that love.

my people do not know

A shallow stream runs through the broad unpaved street and makes it typical of many smaller Romanian villages. So ‘across the street’ is across the stream too. It is not very wide and most folks can leap it easily. Each morning a young cow-herd gathers up the cows and goats from different places in the village and takes them out to pasture. In the late afternoon they return and as the cow-herd walks the length of the unpaved street cows peel off, one by one, from the little herd and stand with their heads by the gates to the little courtyards awaiting admission to their home stalls. No one has taught them to do this. They know their home and return to it gladly.

As an inveterate ‘town-y’ I am fascinated by this sight. Cows are not famous for their intelligence or navigation skills but apparently they can all recognise home. Although the nearest tree to my old home was almost a mile away in a local park I am not unfamiliar with this phenomena either; I read of it in the opening chapter of Isaiah…

The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth! For the LORD has spoken: “I have nourished and brought up children, And they have rebelled against Me; [i]The ox knows its owner And the donkey its master’s crib; But Israel does not know[/i], My people do not consider.” Is 1:1–3 NKJV

You can sense that Isaiah and God himself are somewhat incredulous. Even a cow knows where it belongs… but not Israel. Slow moving and full witted people are sometimes described as ‘bovine’, but Isaiah says the cows have more sense than God’s own people. It is a scathing denunciation.It isn’t as though they are strangers to the place. They were ‘nourished and brought’ up here; they have a long history of knowing that their home stall means safety and provision.

It is describing the nation of Israel but it is not recorded here for Israel’s sake alone; we all find our portrait in Isaiah. How faithfully God has ‘nourished and brought us up’ and yet, almost unbelievably, we ‘don’t know what side our bread is buttered on’; to use an old English expression.
The Bible frequently uses the word ‘know’ to mean ‘recognise’; ‘a tree is known by its fruit’. Israel’s behaviour is not the result of ignorance; they are refusing to ‘recognise’ where they belong. Another prophet, Jeremiah, put his finger right on the spot…

Why has this people slidden back, Jerusalem, in a perpetual backsliding? They hold fast to deceit, They refuse to return. Jer 8:5 NKJV

Ah, that’s the point, not that they are unaware but that they have consciously chosen to stay out in the cold. That’s why I say that this was not just written for the benefit of Israel;

Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. 1 Cor 10:11 NKJV

But was that God's last word?

I am reading in the prophecy of Jeremiah and have arrived at Chapter 18. It is famous for its metaphor of the Potter's Wheel. The imagery is beautiful but the goal of the illustration is both encouraging and daunting.

Jeremiah sees a potter working at his potter's wheel. Jer 18:3–4 Although preachers have made some interesting conjectures there is no real explanation as to why this pot 'went wrong'. If we read further on we shall see the implications. The illustration and the accompanying prophecy is aimed at Israel. Jer 18:6; Israel in this context is the northern kingdom of Israel, as distinct from Judah. Israel had been broken and dispersed over a hundred years before Jeremiah's prophecy. Its peoples had been merged into the empire of Assyria and had 'vanished off the radar'.

The was the pot which even while it had been in the potter's hands had been spoiled. For a time I worked as the labourer for a very skilled potter in the Wedgwood factory in Staffordshire. Clay is a pretty cheap commodity. If a pot was 'spoiled' it would be much more cost-effective to 'bin it' and start again. But this is not what this potter does; he simply remakes it as something different;

And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter; so he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make. Jer 18:4 NKJV

again and another... perhaps it is important to note that this spoiled pot is not 'repaired', it is remade and to another design. It is the same clay but it now has an entirely different destiny.

It was a word of hope for the scattered remnants of 'Israel', the northern kingdom. Their situation must have seemed utterly hopeless, ruined beyond repair and yet God gives this amazing picture. Even when God has pronounced judgement and that judgement is in process of being worked out, God has not given up.

The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it, if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. Jer 18:7–8 NKJV

If ever a nation had been plucked up out of its land, pulled down and left as a ruin, and destroyed as far as any might judge, that nation was Israel, the northern kingdom. And yet God's last word seems to have a post script; if this plucked up, pulled down, destroyed nation will only hear God's word and turn from its headlong flight to destruction, God will step in yet again and 'make it again into another vessel'.

There is an even deeper tragedy than their exile later in this chapter. In spite of this wonderful and generous offer Israel refuse to accept it;

And they said, “That is hopeless! So we will walk according to our own plans, and we will every one obey the dictates of his evil heart.” Jer 18:12 NKJV

and then it really will be the last word.

For the Romans January was named after their two faced god Janus who stood on the threshold of the year and looked both backwards and forwards. It is a practice many of us repeat without a consciousness of how old the pattern is. What of 2010? Was it a year in which you were plucked up, pulled down and destroyed? That is not necessarily the last word. There is a Potter who is still willing to remake it into a new design, just as long as we return to him and reject our obstinate hopelessness.

For each one of us as we stand on the threshold of a year past and another begun God holds us still in his hand and is ready to work a miracle, are you ready to receive one?

Poetic Imagination v Revelation?

I received a very special and unexpected Christmas present, a copy of "the History of the World in a 100 Objects". It is the text that has accompanied a BBC series in which 100 items from the British Museum have been selected to tell the story of human history. It is beautifully produced with great art plates of some amazing artefacts. I am one of those odd people who read the Prefaces and Introductions to books and this book has both; they explain the philosophy behind the book in some detail.

Some years ago I while working in the City of London I attended a lunch-time lecture at the British Museum on the Philosophy of History. There is an old adage that there is 'no such thing as uninterpreted history'. That means that all history is edited and interpreted, almost always by the victors who put their own spin on events. This lecture declared that we can pass no judgments of any kind on history without reinterpreting it and advocated a kind of history without conscience in which we pass no moral comment but simple 'give the facts'. It is impossible of course for any human being to be really objective in 'giving the facts'. Only the man or woman who knows they are subjective and takes that into account has any chance of 'giving the facts'. Those who have dabbled in the mystery may recognise the 'post modern' approach of my lunch time lecturer.

The preface and introduction of my Christmas present give a different slant. They declare, particularly with pre-text artefacts, that it is essential to use 'poetic imagination' in the interpreting of history. I read of a man chipping away at a flint hand axe whose mental processes of flint-knapping stimulated those parts of the brain that would create language. It created, I read, the kind of language which had the vocabulary of a seven year old child. (notice, not a 6 or 8 year old child) It then takes this 'fact' into the next chapter and uses it as the foundation for the next layer in human evolution in which carved animals and human figures show the evolution of religion. For 'poetic imagination' read 'sheer speculation'.

Are we then at the mercy of the imagination of our poets for our understanding of the world in which we live or is there an alternative? Short of the discovery of time travel the only alternatives can be imagination or revelation. There are aspects of life of which we can discover absolutely nothing by our own investigations, but we need not be ignorant of all these. God has given us, not a poetic speculation, but a unique and reliable revelation in the Scriptures. We know where 'religion' came from; it came because men had rejected 'revelation'.

although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Rom 1:21–25 NKJV

Idolatry then, whether in physical images or in contemporary philosophies, is always the consequence of turning our back on revelation.

Paul and the Nativity: Part Two

Our first look at Paul and the Nativity took us on a round trip from heaven's throne to Calvary's Hill and back again. This second glimpse into the 'why' of the incarnation comes in the midst of an appeal that Paul makes for contributions to his 'poor saints fund'. He reminds the saints in Corinth of the 'unspeakable gift' that God in Christ has already made.

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich. 2 Cor 8:9 NKJV

It a brief sentence that holds wonderful revelation. When Paul speaks of Christ 'becoming poor' he is not thinking of Bethlehem and the manger, although that is included. In his birth the Son of God 'became poor' but that poverty was relative. He was born into a working family where Joseph presumably had his small family business. That was comparative poverty but the Greek language would have a word for that; the man for whom it was necessary to do a day's work so that he had the resources to buy bread to give him the strength to the same thing all over the next day.

But New Testament Greek has another word which means abject poverty, the poverty of the beggar who has no resources whatever. Perhaps we could make the point like this; by his birth in Bethlehem the Son of God was impoverished but at Calvary he was 'beggared'.

"He was rich" goes farther back that we can imagine. In the eternity before time began the godhead coexisted in perfect union and delighted in each others' company. Before a single star was made the one that we now know as the Son of God was 'rich'; not 'rich' in possessions but in relationship. God is the only self-sufficient being in the universe; all else is daily dependent upon him.

If 'rich' then means fellowship and harmony within the godhead what can 'beggared' mean? Surely it can only mean the loss of his 'riches'. Was there such a time when the Son of God was bereft of such 'riches'? Yes, there was and we hear it the the testimony of his dereliction; "My God, My God why have you forsaken me?" This was the culmination of a staggering journey. The Gospels tell the story of the journey's beginnings in incarnation, birth and life but it was at Calvary that the journey reached its furthest extremity. Stuart Townend captures the truth in his contemporary hymn;

How deep the Father's love for us,
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure

How great the pain of searing loss,
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the chosen One,
Bring many sons to glory

The cry 'forsaken' was not a misapprehension but the heart-broken testimony of one who was never deceived and only ever spoke the truth.

But if 'rich' means harmony and fellowship with God and 'made poor' means the loss of harmony and fellowship how are we to understand the rest of this brief sentence? In mathematical terms we have 'established a value for 'rich' and another for 'made poor' but Paul is not retelling the record he is answering the unasked question 'why?' What was the purpose of this event that Stuart Townend describes as a 'searing loss'? The answer could not be more plain... it was so that others might become 'rich'.

Now we have already established a value for the word 'rich' so we can declare categorically that the 'searing loss' was 'in order that through his poverty others might become 'rich'; that others might gain access into that 'harmony and fellowship' with God that the Son of God relinquished at Calvary.

I pray for all who read this at this Christmas-time, that the promise of Isaiah's prophecy may be further fulfilled in each one, that...

He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. Is 53:11 NKJV

Paul and the Nativity: Part One

There is a line in a Graham Kendrick song which says...

...if you keep him in the manger,
then there is no danger
from the Christmas child.

Herod, of course, did not fear the child in the manger but the man he would become. To yield up the throne is the most difficult thing ever asked of human beings and ultimately, at some point in life, we will be faced with the age-old challenge; do we crown him or crucify him? There are no alternatives to this stark choice.

As we move from the Gospels to the Letters we discover that the writers are not apparently interested in the kind of events that are recorded by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. As historians their task was mainly along the lines of 'what has happened'. The early Christians had many faithful witnesses to 'what has happened', questions they now faced were those answered in the Letters; 'why did these things happen? and what are the lasting implications.

Paul seems to have little to say about angel visitors, wise men and shepherds; that is not his brief. He knows those records but his task is to ask 'what does it all mean?' This is Part One of Paul's Nativity teaching.

Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Phil 2:4–11 NKJV

That thrilling passage of Scripture is a mixture of amazing choices and amazing consequences. Paul has gone behind and beyond the story of the Nativity; he telling us 'why is all happened'. It is thrilling to identify the choices that the Son of God made and the consequential things that 'happened to him'.

First something he refused to do; he refused to his equality in the godhead as a prize to be snatched for. Being in the form of God he refused to claim his rights then he 'emptied himself'. There are important historical theological reasons why translators don't usually translate that as 'emptied' but 'emptied himself' and 'made himself of no reputation' are both legitimate translations; with either translation the point is that he performed the actions himself, it did not 'happen' to him but was an action that he took.

The list continues; he himself took on the form of a bond-servant. This was not an inevitable consequence on incarnation, this is part of the reason for the incarnation. This was his choice to come into our world as a bond-servant. It continues, he humbled himself; he was not 'humbled by the incarnation', the incarnation was the consequence of his self-humbling.

Down, down he comes from the highest to the lowest; from godhead to bondservant. He chooses to humble himself and chooses to be obedient to the death, and not just any death but 'the death of the cross'; the kind of execution that bond-servant, non-persons were subjected to under Roman law. In a few masterful strokes Paul maps the journey from heaven's throne, through Bethlehem's stable and Calvary's hill and back to heaven's throne again. It is breathtaking.

His current reign demands a response. Like Herod we may refuse his reign or like the wise men and the shepherds we may bow at his feet. Not the feet of a child in a cattle trough but at the feet of the one whose reign will know no end. We have tracked his choices, now he is tracking yours.

Daily Bible Reading Schemes

I have been using the CWR 'cover to cover' Bible reading scheme for a little while. This as the blurb says is 'as it happened'. It is designed to read through the Bible in one year in chronological fashion. I have enjoyed it but found some things I wasn't quite so keen on.

For example, it puts the first chapters of Deuteronomy together with the Exodus account of the deliverance from Egypt. There is a logic to that but that is NOT 'as it happened'. Deuteronomy is the 'second giving of the law' and took place 40 years after the 'first giving of the law'. The whole point is that it was later, much later. I think it is better to read individual books in their entirety to get the sense of the books' themes.

So I have returned to my own Daily Bible reading scheme. I created this some years ago to help international students at the Church Life School that we ran here in Reading for some years. This has some particular advantages, I think.

The BibleBase Daily Bread App is a Bible reading schedule based on a 3 year cycle.

The OT is roughly 3 times longer than the NT, but as the Bible contains 'progressive revelation' I think it is best to spend equal amounts of time in each Testament. So in the 3 year cycle you will read the OT once, but you will read the NT 3 times.

It is 'roughly chronological' meaning that the books are in chronological order, or roughly so, but the events are not synchronised as with 'cover to cover'.

It has smaller 'bite size' pieces giving time to chew over what you are reading, and it had a few gentle questions to encourage the students to think about what they were reading and its personal relevance.

My brother and colleague Gary Sims has created two 'apps' for this reading programme, one for the iPhone, iPodTouch, iPad and one for the Android. Both apps are free. Currently we are getting about 500 downloads per week. Why not give it a try to see if it suits your needs?

The iPod, iPodTouch, iPad app is freely available at
Biblebase Daily Bread for the iPod etc

and the Android version is available at
Biblebase Daily Bread for the Android

Let us know what you think. Thank you.