Psalm Reading for October 16, 2022

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Psalm 119:97-104
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Psalm 119 is unique.  It is one of about a dozen acrostic Psalms in the Hebrew hymnal, each stanza based on a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  It begins with Aleph and ends with Tav.

What sets Psalm 119 apart is that it is the longest Psalm in the Psaltery, with 176 verses; and also the longest single book in the Bible!  In fact, by itself Psalm 119 is longer than 17 Old Testament books, and 14 New Testament books!

Psalm 119 is devoted almost exclusively to the celebration of Yahweh and his holy law.

Our lectionary reading is only a small part of the total — focusing on the Hebrew letter Mem.  But this section lifts up the central theme of Psalm 119:

How I love your law!
It is my meditation all day.

This is the “first principle” of Hebrew faith — that God has revealed himself through the law.  Hence, meditation on the law makes one wise, righteous.

In fact, the Psalmist’s focus on the commandments gives him a leg up on his enemies, his teachers and the aged!

Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies,
for your commandments are always with me.
I have more understanding than all my teachers,
for your testimonies are my meditation.
I understand more than the aged,
because I have kept your precepts.

In other words, it would seem that simply studying the laws, statutes and commandments of God has given the Psalmist an unsurpassed advantage in life.

A common Biblical metaphor for the righteous way of life is walking with God (Enoch in Genesis 5:24; Noah in Genesis 6:9; Abram in Genesis 17:1; Israel walking in obedience to God’s law in Exodus 18:20, etc.), and this Psalm alludes to this Godly walk:

I have kept my feet from every evil way,
that I might observe your word.

And yet another frequent metaphor in Scripture is the imagery of the Word of God as honey that is eaten by the reader (cf Psalm 19:10; Ezekiel 3:2-4):

How sweet are your promises to my taste,
more than honey to my mouth!

As the Psalmist ingests these words, they give him wisdom to discern good and evil. And to avoid the evil:

Through your precepts, I get understanding;
therefore I hate every false way.

APPLY:  

For the Hebrew believer, the laws and commandments of God were paramount.  The law, delivered to Moses on Mount Horeb, forms the foundation of the covenant between God and Israel.  The law provides a way of life, of worship, and of righteousness to the Israelites.

For the Christian, the law is more complicated.  Paul strongly affirms that the law:

indeed is holy, and the commandment holy, and righteous, and good (Romans 7:12).

So, the Christian is never at liberty to denigrate or deny the law of God.  However, Paul’s insight is that the law can’t deliver the righteousness that it demands.  The perfect standards of the law cannot be attained by sinful men and women, no matter how good we are.

Thus, Jesus has fulfilled the law on our behalf through his sinless life and his atoning, sacrificial death:

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.  For what the law couldn’t do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh; that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit (Romans 8:2-4).

Are we to meditate on the law, as the Psalmist did?  Yes.  But we also realize that Jesus fulfills the demands of the law on our behalf; and through the Spirit fulfills the moral and spiritual law through the law of love written on our hearts.

RESPOND: 

When I was in seminary I wrote a paper that had a rather pretentious title — “The Dialectic of Law and Grace in John Wesley’s Theology.”  Actually, despite its high-falutin’ title, the premise was relatively simple.

John Wesley’s study of the Bible led him to conclude that God’s law is holy and just and good, like Paul said.  Wesley believed that the ritual and ceremonial law of sacrifices and diet were types that symbolically pointed to the priesthood and sacrifice of Jesus.  In his life, death and resurrection, all of those ritual and dietary laws were fulfilled and were no longer required.  Jesus is our sacrifice. Therefore, the sacrifice of animals is no longer required.

However, Wesley said that Jesus never contradicted the moral law that had been revealed in the Old Testament — in fact, Jesus doubled down on the moral law!  For example, murder is bad, but anger is the beginning of the murder of a brother; adultery is wrong, but lust is the objectification of a woman and the root of adultery.  In other words, the moral law isn’t merely external — it is internal.

Wesley summed it up like this — the law drives us to Christ by showing us, as though in a mirror, that we are loathsome sinners; Christ’s grace forgives us as he fulfills the law on our behalf through his life, death and resurrection; and then Christ drives us back to the law as a helpful guide to growing in grace.  What is behind the law is always the law of love which leads us to love God, neighbor, and even our enemy!

So, along with the Psalmist, we can also say:

How I love your law!
It is my meditation all day.

Our Lord, how I love your law!  Your law reveals to me what holiness looks like, revealed in your consuming love.  It also reveals to me how far short I fall when I try to fulfill the law in my own strength. Thank you for your grace in Christ Jesus that fulfills the law on my behalf, and for your Spirit that writes your law of love on my heart.  Only through you am I able to live the life to which your law calls me.  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
"How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. (Psalm 119:103) #godsword #honeybee #bee #honey #red #redflower" by Jeanette's Ozpix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for August 21, 2022

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Luke 13:10-17
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

This account of a sabbath’s day in a synagogue is inserted amongst seemingly unrelated teachings and healings.  However, we also detect a subtle and steady increase in the level of tension between Jesus and the authorities.

The town in which the synagogue is located is unnamed.  But we know that Jesus is drawing closer and closer, at least psychologically, to confrontation in Jerusalem:

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51).

We see the storm clouds of that coming confrontation already gathering here in Luke 13.

Jesus has already established himself early in his ministry as a healer and an exorcist — casting out demons even on the Sabbath (Luke 5:31-37).

Given his previous ministry, it comes as no surprise that a crippled woman should approach Jesus, even on the Sabbath in the synagogue.  Luke’s Gospel makes it clear that this affliction that causes her to be bent and unable to straighten up has a demonic source.

It is important to note that she doesn’t ask Jesus to heal her — he is proactive, and takes the initiative when he sees her misery:

When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”  When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.

If the story had ended here, we might simply have said that this was another example of Jesus’ healing power and left it at that.  But the leader of the synagogue couldn’t leave well enough alone.  This person was likely either a lay leader or a professional rabbi who was sympathetic to the concerns of the priests and the scribes who insisted on strict Sabbath observance.

What happens next illustrates the growing tension between Jesus and the priests, scribes, and Pharisees.  The leader of the synagogue is indignant toward Jesus, but he scolds the crowd, rather than Jesus for gathering to seek healing on the Sabbath day:

“There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.”

Obviously, he is annoyed at Jesus, but perhaps the religious authorities have begun to figure out that confronting Jesus directly doesn’t work all that well.  So this leader of the synagogue does something that Family Systems Theory calls triangling. He takes his wrath out on the crowd instead of on Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t let him get by with that.  What Jesus does is called de-triangling.  He confronts the leader, and in so doing also addresses the priests, scribes and Pharisees who might be muttering to one another. Jesus says to them:

“You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?”

Jesus isn’t necessarily denying the importance of the Sabbath as a day of worship and rest.  He himself observed the Sabbath.  However, he is criticizing the preposterous interpretation that would prevent acts of compassion.

It would be illogical and inhumane not to lead an animal to water to drink on the Sabbath day; how much more not to heal this fellow Jew (a daughter of Abraham) who had been in bondage to Satan for 18 years!

Jesus had already addressed their legalistic interpretation of the Sabbath earlier in his ministry, declaring to them that:

The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath (Luke 6:5).

And when he healed a man whose hand was withered he asked the pointed question:

I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?(Luke 6:9).

Mark’s Gospel quotes Jesus’ eloquent perspective on the proper use of the law, which is meant to benefit human beings, not enslave or oppress them:

The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27).

It is clear that Jesus won this round — as he does every round:

When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

APPLY:  

We Christians need to get past the false opposition between law and grace.  The law is never described in the New Testament as an evil thing.  Legalism, which is the effort to attain salvation by one’s own obsessive-compulsive ritual righteousness instead of relying on God’s grace, is the problem.

Salvation is not a human achievement of any kind — through works, the law, or spiritual discipline. Salvation is a gift of God for the sake of Christ.

The law doesn’t save, and the law never trumps love and compassion. However, the moral law, used properly under the auspices of the law of love, can provide moral guidance to the Christian.  Jesus observed the law by resting and worshiping on the Sabbath because of his love for his Father.

But when law becomes legalism, and morality becomes moralism, then the law becomes a bludgeon instead of a tool for spiritual growth.

The obsessive-compulsive rigidity of the leader of the synagogue misses the whole point of the law of the Sabbath.  A day that is created for rest and renewal becomes instead a day of rigid rules that increase religious anxiety and guilt, and neglects those who are suffering.

Jesus reminds us that the law at its best is for the spiritual growth and benefit of human beings.  The law at its best can be an extension of his loving grace rather than a source of oppression.

RESPOND: 

This passage makes me think of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece, Les Miserable.  Jean Valjean, the protagonist, has been imprisoned because he broke the law — he stole a loaf of bread for his starving family.  The law is strict and rigid concerning theft.

After he is released — 19 years later — he is offered hospitality by a kindly bishop who finds him shivering and homeless on the street.  Valjean tries to steal the bishop’s silver, but when he is arrested the bishop insists to the authorities that he had given the silverware to Valjean.  Valjean goes free, a much richer man because of the grace of the bishop.  The bishop tells Valjean that his life has been spared for God’s sake, and he should use the silver to make a better man of himself.

The major complication of the novel is the character of Inspector Javert.  As the plot develops, Valjean has become the compassionate, generous mayor of a French city, and a wealthy and just owner of a factory.  But Javert becomes suspicious — he begins to remember Valjean from years before when Javert was a prison guard, and learns that Valjean has been accused of another crime.

Javert makes it his life’s mission to obsessively hunt Valjean and arrest him.  In a moment of dramatic irony, Javert falls into the hands of revolutionaries, and Valjean contrives to spare his life.  But Javert cannot live with the conflict of his rigid devotion to the law and the merciful goodness of his intended victim, Valjean.  Because of his intense inner conflict, he finds the contradictions irreconcilable and drowns himself in the Seine River.

That is a rather elaborate illustration of the principle that there is a spiritual law of grace and love that always trumps the rigid law of legalism.

Lord, I love your law — but it is the law of love that I seek to follow.  I pray that you will give me a healthy respect and obedience to your law, but always illumined by your love and compassion.  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
"Orthodoxy" by timchallies is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Psalm Reading for October 20, 2019

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Psalm 119:97-104
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Psalm 119 is unique.  It is one of about a dozen acrostic Psalms in the Hebrew hymnal, each stanza based on a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  It begins with Aleph and ends with Tav.

What sets Psalm 119 apart is that it is the longest Psalm in the Psaltery, with 176 verses; and also the longest single book in the Bible!  In fact, by itself Psalm 119 is longer than 17 Old Testament books, and 14 New Testament books!

Psalm 119 is devoted almost exclusively to the celebration of Yahweh and his holy law.

Our lectionary reading is only a small part of the total — focusing on the Hebrew letter Mem.  But this section lifts up the central theme of Psalm 119:

How I love your law!
It is my meditation all day.

This is the “first principle” of Hebrew faith — that God has revealed himself through the law.  Hence, meditation on the law makes one wise, righteous.

In fact, the Psalmist’s focus on the commandments gives him a leg up on his enemies, his teachers and the aged!

Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies,
for your commandments are always with me.
I have more understanding than all my teachers,
for your testimonies are my meditation.
I understand more than the aged,
because I have kept your precepts.

In other words, it would seem that simply studying the laws, statutes and commandments of God has given the Psalmist an unsurpassed advantage in life.

A common Biblical metaphor for the righteous way of life is walking with God  (Enoch in Genesis 5:24; Noah in Genesis 6:9; Abram in Genesis 17:1; Israel walking in obedience to God’s law in Exodus 18:20, etc.),  and this Psalm alludes to this Godly walk:

I have kept my feet from every evil way,
that I might observe your word.

And yet another frequent metaphor in Scripture is the imagery of the Word of God as honey that is eaten by the reader (cf Psalm 19:10; Ezekiel 3:2-4):

How sweet are your promises to my taste,
more than honey to my mouth!

As the Psalmist ingests these words, they give him wisdom to discern good and evil. And to avoid the evil:

Through your precepts, I get understanding;
therefore I hate every false way.

APPLY:  

For the Hebrew believer, the laws and commandments of God were paramount.  The law, delivered to Moses on Mount Horeb, forms the foundation of the covenant between God and Israel.  The law provides a way of life, of worship, and of righteousness to the Israelites.

For the Christian, the law is more complicated.  Paul strongly affirms that the law:

indeed is holy, and the commandment holy, and righteous, and good (Romans 7:12).

So, the Christian is never at liberty to denigrate or deny the law of God.  However, Paul’s insight is that the law can’t deliver the righteousness that it demands.  The perfect standards of the law cannot be attained by sinful men and women, no matter how good we are.

Thus, Jesus has fulfilled the law on our behalf through his sinless life and his atoning, sacrificial death:

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.  For what the law couldn’t do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh;  that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit (Romans 8:2-4).

Are we to meditate on the law, as the Psalmist did?  Yes.  But we also realize that Jesus fulfills the demands of the law on our behalf; and through the Spirit fulfills the moral and spiritual law through the law of love written on our hearts.

RESPOND: 

When I was in seminary I wrote a paper that had a rather pretentious title —  “The Dialectic of Law and Grace in John Wesley’s Theology.”  Actually, despite its high-falutin’ title, the premise was relatively simple.

John Wesley’s study of the Bible led him to conclude that God’s law is holy and just and good, like Paul said.  Wesley believed that the ritual and ceremonial law of sacrifices and diet were types that symbolically pointed to the priesthood and sacrifice of Jesus.  In his life, death and resurrection, all of those ritual and dietary laws were fulfilled and were no longer required.   Jesus is our sacrifice. Therefore, the sacrifice of animals is no longer required.

However, Wesley said that Jesus never contradicted the moral law that had been revealed in the Old Testament — in fact, Jesus doubled down on the moral law!  For example, murder is bad, but anger is the beginning of the murder of a brother; adultery is wrong, but lust is the objectification of a woman and the root of adultery.  In other words, the moral law isn’t merely external — it is internal.

Wesley summed it up like this —  the law drives us to Christ by showing us, as though in a mirror, that we are loathsome sinners; Christ’s grace forgives us as he fulfills the law on our behalf through his life, death and resurrection; and then Christ drives us back to the law as a helpful guide to growing in grace.  What is behind the law is always the law of love which leads us to love God, neighbor, and even our enemy!

So, along with the Psalmist, we can also say:

How I love your law!
It is my meditation all day.

Our Lord, how I love your law!  Your law reveals to me what holiness looks like, revealed in your consuming love.  It also reveals to me how far short I fall when I try to fulfill the law in my own strength. Thank you for your grace in Christ Jesus that fulfills the law on my behalf, and for your Spirit that writes your law of love on my heart.  Only through you am I able to live the life to which your law calls me.  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
"How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. (Psalm 119:103) #godsword #honeybee #bee #honey #red #redflower" by Jeanette's Ozpix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for August 25, 2019

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Luke 13:10-17
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

This account of a sabbath’s day in a synagogue is inserted amongst seemingly unrelated teachings and healings.  However, we also detect a subtle and steady increase in the level of tension between Jesus and the authorities.

The town in which the synagogue is located is unnamed.  But we know that Jesus is drawing closer and closer, at least psychologically, to confrontation in Jerusalem:

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51).

We see the storm clouds of that coming confrontation already gathering here in Luke 13.

Jesus has already established himself early in his ministry as a healer and an exorcist — casting out demons even on the Sabbath (Luke 5:31-37).

Given his previous ministry, it comes as no surprise that  a crippled woman should approach Jesus, even on the Sabbath in the synagogue.  Luke’s Gospel makes it clear that this affliction that causes her to be bent and unable to straighten up has a demonic source.

It is important to note that she doesn’t ask Jesus to heal her — he is proactive, and takes the initiative when he sees her misery:

When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”  When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.

If the story had ended here, we might simply have said that this was another example of Jesus’ healing power and left it at that.  But the leader of the synagogue couldn’t leave well enough alone.  This person was likely either a lay leader or a professional rabbi who was sympathetic to the concerns of the priests and the scribes who insisted on strict Sabbath observance.

What happens next illustrates the growing tension between Jesus and the priests, scribes, and Pharisees.  The leader of the synagogue is indignant toward Jesus, but he scolds the crowd, rather than Jesus for gathering to seek healing on the Sabbath day:

“There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.”

Obviously, he is annoyed at Jesus, but perhaps the religious authorities have begun to figure out that confronting Jesus directly doesn’t work all that well.  So this leader of the synagogue does something that Family Systems Theory calls triangling. He takes his wrath out on the crowd instead of on Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t let him get by with that.  What Jesus does is called de-triangling.  He confronts the leader, and in so doing also addresses the priests, scribes and Pharisees who might be muttering to one another. Jesus says to them:

“You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?”

Jesus isn’t necessarily denying the importance of the Sabbath as a day of worship and rest.  He himself observed the Sabbath.  However,  he is criticizing the preposterous interpretation that would prevent acts of compassion.

It would be illogical and inhumane not to lead an animal to water to drink on the Sabbath day; how much more not to heal this fellow Jew (a daughter of Abraham) who had been in bondage to Satan for 18 years!

Jesus had already addressed their legalistic interpretation of the Sabbath earlier in his ministry, declaring to them that:

The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath (Luke 6:5).

And when he healed a man whose hand was withered he asked the pointed question:

I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?(Luke 6:9).

Mark’s Gospel quotes Jesus’ eloquent perspective on the proper use of the law, which is meant to benefit human beings, not enslave or oppress them:

The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27).

It is clear that Jesus won this round — as he does every round:

When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

APPLY:  

We Christians need to get past the false opposition between law and grace.  The law is never described in the New Testament as an evil thing.  Legalism, which is the effort to attain salvation by one’s own obsessive-compulsive ritual righteousness instead of relying on God’s grace, is the problem.

Salvation is not a human achievement of any kind — through works, the law, or spiritual discipline. Salvation is a gift of God for the sake of Christ.

The law doesn’t save, and the law never trumps love and compassion. However, the moral law, used properly under the auspices of the law of love, can provide moral guidance to the Christian.  Jesus observed the law by resting and worshiping on the Sabbath because of his love for his Father.

But when law becomes legalism, and morality becomes moralism, then the law becomes a bludgeon instead of a tool for spiritual growth.

The obsessive-compulsive rigidity of the leader of the synagogue misses the whole point of the law of the Sabbath.  A day that is created for rest and renewal becomes instead a day of rigid rules that increase religious anxiety and guilt, and neglects those who are suffering.

Jesus reminds us that the law at its best is for the spiritual growth and benefit of human beings.  The law at its best can be an extension of his loving grace rather than a source of oppression.

RESPOND: 

This passage makes me think of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece, Les Miserable.  Jean Valjean, the protagonist, has been imprisoned because he broke the law — he stole a loaf of bread for his starving family.  The law is strict and rigid concerning theft.

After he is released — 19 years later — he is offered hospitality by a kindly bishop who finds him shivering and homeless on the street.  Valjean tries to steal the bishop’s silver, but when he is arrested the bishop insists to the authorities that he had given the silverware to Valjean.  Valjean goes free, a much richer man because of the grace of the bishop.  The bishop tells Valjean that his life has been spared for God’s sake, and he should use the silver to make a better man of himself.

The major complication of the novel is the character of Inspector Javert.  As the plot develops, Valjean has become the compassionate, generous mayor of  a French city, and a wealthy and just owner of a factory.  But Javert becomes suspicious — he begins to remember Valjean from years before when Javert was a prison guard, and learns that Valjean has been accused of another crime.

Javert makes it his life’s mission to obsessively hunt Valjean and arrest him.  In a moment of dramatic irony, Javert falls into the hands of revolutionaries, and Valjean contrives to spare his life.  But Javert cannot live with the conflict of his rigid devotion to the law and the merciful goodness of his intended victim,  Valjean.  Because of his intense inner conflict, he finds the contradictions irreconcilable  and drowns himself in the Seine River.

That is a rather elaborate illustration of the principle that there is a spiritual law of grace and love that always trumps the rigid law of legalism.

Lord, I love your law — but it is the law of love that I seek to follow.  I pray that you will give me a healthy respect and obedience to your law, but always illumined by your love and compassion.  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
"Orthodoxy" by timchallies is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Psalm Reading for October 16, 2016

START WITH SCRIPTURE:

Psalm 119:97-104

CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Psalm 119 is unique.  It is one of about a dozen acrostic Psalms in the Hebrew hymnal, each stanza based on a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  It begins with Aleph and ends with Tav.  What sets Psalm 119 apart is that it is the longest Psalm in the Psaltery, with 176 verses; and also the longest single book in the Bible!  In fact, by itself Psalm 119 is longer than 17 Old Testament books, and 14 New Testament books!

Psalm 119 is devoted almost exclusively to the celebration of Yahweh and his holy law.

Our lectionary reading is only a small part of the total — focusing on the Hebrew letter Mem.  But this section lifts up the central theme of the Psalm:

How I love your law!
It is my meditation all day.

This is the “first principle” of Hebrew faith — that God has revealed himself through the law.  Hence, meditation on the law makes one wise, righteous.

In fact, the Psalmist’s focus on the commandments give him a leg up on his enemies, his teachers and the aged!

Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies,
for your commandments are always with me.
I have more understanding than all my teachers,
for your testimonies are my meditation.
 I understand more than the aged,
because I have kept your precepts.

In other words, it would seem that simply studying the laws, statutes and commandments of God have given the Psalmist an unsurpassable advantage in life.

A common Biblical metaphor for the righteous way of life is walking with God  (Enoch in Genesis 5:24; Noah in Genesis 6:9; Abram in Genesis 17:1; Israel walking in obedience to God’s law in Exodus 18:20, etc.)  and this Psalm alludes to this Godly walk:

I have kept my feet from every evil way,
that I might observe your word.

And yet another frequent metaphor in Scripture is the imagery of the Word of God as honey that is eaten by the reader (cf Psalm 19:10; Ezekiel 3:2-4):

How sweet are your promises to my taste,
more than honey to my mouth!

As the Psalmist ingests these words, they give him wisdom to discern good and evil, and to avoid the evil:

Through your precepts, I get understanding;
therefore I hate every false way.

APPLY:  

For the Hebrew believer, the laws and commandments of God were paramount.  The law, delivered to Moses on Mount Horeb, forms the foundation of the covenant between God and Israel.  The law provides a way of life, of worship, and of righteousness to the Israelites.

For the Christian, the law is more complicated.  Paul strongly affirms that the law:

indeed is holy, and the commandment holy, and righteous, and good (Romans 7:12).

So, the Christian is never at liberty to denigrate or deny the law of God.  However, Paul’s insight is that the law can’t deliver the righteousness that it demands.  The perfect standards of the law cannot be attained by sinful men and women, no matter how good we are.

Thus, Jesus has fulfilled the law on our behalf through his sinless life and his atoning, sacrificial death:

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.  For what the law couldn’t do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh;  that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit (Romans 8:2-4).

Are we to meditate on the law, as the Psalmist did?  Yes.  But we also realize that Jesus fulfils the demands of the law on our behalf; and through the Spirit fulfils the moral and spiritual law through the law of love written on our hearts.

RESPOND: 

When I was in seminary I wrote a paper that had a rather pretentious title —  “The Dialectic of Law and Grace in John Wesley’s Theology.”  Actually, despite its high-falutin’ title, the premise was relatively simple.

John Wesley’s study of the Bible led him to conclude that God’s law is holy and just and good, like Paul said.  Wesley believed that the ritual and ceremonial law of sacrifices and diet were types that symbolically pointed to the priesthood and sacrifice of Jesus.  In his life, death and resurrection, all of those ritual and dietary laws were fulfilled and were no longer required.   Jesus is our sacrifice. Therefore, the sacrifice of animals is no longer required.

However, Wesley said that Jesus never contradicted the moral law that had been revealed in the Old Testament — in fact, Jesus doubled down on the moral law!  For example, murder is bad, but anger is the beginning of the murder of a brother; adultery is wrong, but lust is the objectification of a woman and the root of adultery.  In other words, the moral law isn’t merely external — it is internal.

Wesley summed it up like this —  the law drives us to Christ by showing us, as though in a mirror, that we are loathsome sinners; Christ’s grace forgives us as he fulfills the law on our behalf through his life, death and resurrection; and then Christ drives us back to the law as a helpful guide to growing in grace.  What is behind the law is always the law of love which leads us to love God, neighbor, and even our enemy!

So, along with the Psalmist, we can also say:

How I love your law!
It is my meditation all day.

Our Lord, how I love your law!  Your law reveals to me what holiness looks like, revealed in your consuming love.  It also reveals to me how far short I fall when I try to fulfill the law in my own strength. Thank you for your grace in Christ Jesus that fulfils the law on my behalf, and for your Spirit that writes your law of love on my heart.  Only through you am I able to live the life to which your law calls me.  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
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Gospel for August 21, 2016

START WITH SCRIPTURE:

Luke 13:10-17

CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

This account of a sabbath’s day in a synagogue is inserted amongst seemingly unrelated teachings and healings.  However, we also detect a subtle and steady increase in the level of tension between Jesus and the authorities.

The town in which the synagogue is located is unnamed.  But we know that Jesus is drawing closer and closer, at least psychologically, to confrontation in Jerusalem:

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51).

We see the storm clouds of that coming confrontation already gathering here in Luke 13.

Jesus has already established himself early in his ministry as a healer and an exorcist — casting out demons even on the Sabbath (Luke 5:31-37).

Given his previous ministry, it comes as no surprise that  a crippled woman should approach Jesus, even on the Sabbath in the synagogue.  Luke’s Gospel makes it clear that this affliction that causes her to be bent and unable to straighten up has a demonic source.

It is important to note that she doesn’t ask Jesus to heal her — he is proactive, and takes the initiative when he sees her misery:

When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”  When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.

If the story had ended here, we might simply have said that this was another example of Jesus’ healing power and left it at that.  But the leader of the synagogue couldn’t leave well enough alone.  This person was likely either a lay leader or a professional rabbi who was sympathetic to the concerns of the priests and the scribes who insisted on strict Sabbath observance.

What happens next illustrates the growing tension between Jesus and the priests, scribes, and Pharisees.  The leader of the synagogue is indignant toward Jesus, but he scolds the crowd, rather than Jesus for gathering to seek healing on the Sabbath day:

“There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.”

Obviously, he is annoyed at Jesus, but perhaps the religious authorities have begun to figure out that confronting Jesus directly doesn’t work all that well.  So this leader of the synagogue does something that Family Systems Theory callsl triangling. He takes his wrath out on the crowd instead of on Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t let him get by with that.  What Jesus does is called de-triangling.  He confronts the leader, and in so doing also addresses the priests, scribes and Pharisees who might be muttering to one another. Jesus says to them:

“You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?”

Jesus isn’t necessarily denying the importance of the Sabbath as a day of worship and rest.  He himself observed the Sabbath.  However,  he is criticizing the preposterous interpretation that would prevent acts of compassion.

It would be illogical and inhumane not to lead an animal to water to drink on the Sabbath day; how much more not to heal this fellow Jew (a daughter of Abraham) who had been in bondage to Satan for 18 years!

Jesus had already addressed their legalistic interpretation of the Sabbath earlier in his ministry, declaring to them that:

The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath (Luke 6:5).

And when he healed a man whose hand was withered he asked the pointed question:

I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?(Luke 6:9).

Mark’s Gospel quotes Jesus’ eloquent perspective on the proper use of the law, which is meant to benefit human beings, not enslave or oppress them:

The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27).

It is clear that Jesus won this round — as he does every round:

When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

APPLY:  

We Christians need to get past the false opposition between law and grace.  The law is never described in the New Testament as an evil thing.  Legalism, which is the effort to attain salvation by one’s own obsessive-compulsive ritual righteousness instead of relying on God’s grace, is the problem.

Salvation is not a human achievement of any kind — through works, the law, or spiritual discipline. Salvation is a gift of God for the sake of Christ.

The law doesn’t save, and the law never trumps love and compassion. However, the moral law, used properly under the auspices of the law of love, can provide moral guidance to the Christian.  Jesus observed the law by resting and worshiping on the Sabbath because of his love for his Father.

But when law becomes legalism, and morality becomes moralism, then the law becomes a bludgeon instead of a tool for spiritual growth.

The obsessive-compulsive rigidity of the leader of the synagogue misses the whole point of the law of the Sabbath.  A day that is created for rest and renewal becomes instead a day of rigid rules that increase religious anxiety and guilt, and neglects those who are suffering.

Jesus reminds us that the law at its best is for the spiritual growth and benefit of human beings.  The law at its best can be an extension of his loving grace rather than a source of oppression.

RESPOND: 

This passage makes me think of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece, Les Miserable.  Jean Valjean, the protagonist, has been imprisoned because he broke the law — he stole a loaf of bread for his starving family.  The law is strict and rigid concerning theft.

After he is released — 19 years later — he is offered hospitality by a kindly bishop who finds him shivering and homeless on the street.  Valjean tries to steal the bishop’s silver, but when he is arrested the bishop insists to the authorities that he had given the silverware to Valjean.  Valjean goes free, a much richer man because of the grace of the bishop.  The bishop tells Valjean that his life has been spared for God’s sake, and he should use the silver to make a better man of himself.

The major complication of the novel is the character of Inspector Javert.  As the plot develops, Valjean has become the compassionate, generous mayor of  a French city, and a wealthy and just owner of a factory.  But Javert becomes suspicious — he begins to remember Valjean from years before when Javert was a prison guard, and learns that Valjean has been accused of another crime.

Javert makes it his life’s mission to obsessively hunt Valjean and arrest him.  In a moment of dramatic irony, Javert falls into the hands of revolutionaries, and Valjean contrives to spare his life.  But Javert cannot live with the conflict of his rigid devotion to the law and the merciful goodness of his intended victim,  Valjean.  Because of his intense inner conflict, he finds the contradictions irreconcilable  and drowns himself in the Seine River.

That is a rather elaborate illustration of the principle that there is a spiritual law of grace and love that always trumps the rigid law of legalism.

Lord, I love your law — but it is the law of love that I seek to follow.  I pray that you will give me a healthy respect and obedience to your law, but always illumined by your love and compassion.  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
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