TRINITY SUNDAY. 2021

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.”
Revelation 4 : 8
 
Collect
Almighty and everlasting God, by whose gift your servants, in confessing the true Faith, acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity and adore the Unity in the power of your Majesty: Grant that by steadfastness of the same Faith, we may be defended from all adversities; through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
 

The Scope of Scriptural Recognition (Examples).
Isaiah 6: 1-8, Revelation 4:1-11, John 3: 1-15.
 
Isaiah 6: 1-8
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two that covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:

 “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
 
At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. “Woe is me!” I cried. I am ruined! For I am man of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
 
Revelation 4:1-11
After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.” At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it. And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne. Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads. From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder. Before the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God.  Also before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal.

In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back. The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle. Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night they never stop saying:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.”

Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him and worship him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say:

“You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”


PROPHET AND APOSTLE
There is a remarkable affinity between Isaiah and John. They are visionaries of great profundity and descriptive power. They are men of similar experience and spiritual insight into the mysteries of heaven - mysteries in the sense that the realities they report are the disclosures of divine revelation beyond the reach of normal or natural observation. They were bidden to special and supernatural access to God and beheld something of  his unique and awesome splendor, and they each ably relate the depth of the affects/effects of the sight of the divine glory and exaltedness upon the inner life of these astonished witnesses of God’s majesty and radiant holiness. They perceive something of the character, arrangements, and service concerning the denizens of the heavenly realm, their ordered activities and adoring demeanor under the sovereign sway of the Lord of All. Isaiah and John correspond in the musing and message of their encounter with Occupant of the Throne.

The throne of the Almighty was the centerpiece of their visionary experience. Each of them could enunciate their heartfelt tribute to the thrice holy God suggesting a plurality in the divine being that is now revealed to us in the fullness of Trinitarian doctrine. There is enthralling abundance and richness in the nature of God that yields, from his self-descriptive information laid before us, the discernment of three Persons forming a unity of one mind, one will, one power, in a community of social love and action. We now “acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity and adore the Unity in the power of his Majesty.”

The themes of Old Testament treatment were valid, insofar as they went, in their own time of presentation, but bounded by terms of incompletion and futurity of final fulfillment. They carried a message to be better ascertained in future installments. As the recipients of the features of the New Covenant we have the hindsight to better comprehend the clues embedded in the witness of the former covenant, and we rejoice in both the teaching and expectation of the past now fully unfurled, and therefore we engage in the wondrous matching of earlier data to the information of our day, which is confirmatory of our conclusions arrived at in faith and reflection (this is that).

Prophet and apostle extol and exalt the grandeur of God, unsurpassably majestic and glorious, arrayed in appearance and attire of uttermost brilliance, and we see the veneration and  homage offered by every rank of angels and all worshipful saints from every nation on earth. Isaiah foreshadows atonement for sin and awakens assignment to the spreading of the gospel. St. John exhorts the service of the gospel with the boldness of a lion, the strength of an ox, the humanity befitting “the man of God”, and the speed and endurance of an eagle. The united task is to bring the ruined to redemption.
 
John 3: 1-15
Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council.  He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

“How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!”

Jesus Answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.

“You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and you do not understand these things? I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven — the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”


I TELL YOU THE TRUTH
Jesus expounds the miracle and necessity of new birth from above, of which we have no true conception and for which we have no sincere desire.

Natural birth and life in the flesh cannot admit us to the kingdom of God. The plain fact is that to know God the Three-in-One and enter his kingdom it is essential to be born again. Regeneration is an exclusive achievement of God alone. There is no human contribution or co-operation, not a scintilla of human assistance, in the birth of the children of God. Each is an entirely new creature born of God through the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit. No effort of man prepares for this supernatural birth nor assists the Spirit in performing his act of recreation.

Nicodemus had no grasp of this extraordinary fact intimated in the Scriptures of Israel, yet he was regarded as an eminent teacher of the people of God on matters of eternal salvation. “You are Israel’s teacher” remarks Jesus, “and you do not understand these things?” How many experts poring over Scripture fail to identify this absolutely essential teaching of the Word of God? “You must be born again!” - the extension of the right to become children of God is the prerogative of God.

Jesus deftly draws “these things” that Nicodemus should be acquainted with from the prophecy of Ezekiel specifically: In chapter 36 of the book of Ezekiel the Lord promises Israel, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.  I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” 
In the valley of dry bones (Chapter 37) the prophet is commanded to summon the breath of life to raise the scattered bones of the long dead to life, - Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophecy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain that they may live’” (verse 9). It is the puff of the wind (spirit) that confers life to its skeletal recipients.

For Ezekiel water and wind (breath) point to the spiritual phenomenon of the sovereign work of regeneration - birth from above. And so Jesus differentiates natural birth and the second birth, “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit (verse 6). Jesus asserts that believers are born of water, even the Spirit, to which water is analogous in its cleansing effect. Water is a reference to the purification wrought by the third person of the Holy Trinity.

Likewise Jesus compares the sovereignty and power of the Spirit to the wind which is beyond human control and direction. Water and wind are emblematic of the life- giver, the Holy Spirit. These and other instances of imagery and symbolism in the Bible of the Hebrews ought to have conveyed the truth of the new heart which amounts to the fact of the new birth and its radical necessity. Nicodemus and his colleagues, bound up in a religion of “do this” for divine approval (and human praise), missed the point of effectual grace in the divine enterprise of salvation.

In the teaching of Jesus our eyes are turned from the religious quests and qualifications of human nature for a right relationship with our Maker to his marvelous mercy and grace alone which remakes us in his kind and loving role as Redeemer.

 
RJS

THE SUNDAY AFTER ASCENSION DAY 2021
 
Collect of the Day
Father Almighty, the King of glory, you who exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: We desire that you do not leave us desolate, but pray that you will send your Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to the place to which our Saviour has already gone; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen.
 
The Lessons From Holy Scripture
Acts 1:1 – 11
In my former book, Theophilous, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach, until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. On one occasion while he was eating with them, he gave them this command : “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
 
So when they met together, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
 
He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
 
After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
​
They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
 
*He that rose from the clods, we expect from the clouds.
- Thomas Adam
 
Luke 24:44 – 53
He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”
 
Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you been clothed with power from on high.”
 
When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.
 
*The fact that Jesus Christ is enthroned as master of the universe should be of enormous encouragement to all believers.
- J.I. Packer
 
 
THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST

The season of Ascension marks a vitally important occurrence. As the day of special and concentrated emphasis occurs always on a Thursday, forty days after the resurrection, it is bound to be overlooked by the bulk of Sunday worshippers. But it is a joyful and triumphant occasion when the Lord Jesus rises to his heavenly glory and kingship as Lord of the cosmos and reigning head of the church.
 
Reading the accounts of Christ’s ascent to heaven and all that it implies in various references throughout the New Testament creates a huge adoration, gratitude, and trust toward our lovely and all-powerful Saviour. Our redemption is wrought on this planet in the comprehensive earthly history of the Lord Jesus from birth to departure. Every moment of his human life contributed to our salvation but there are several stages to be especially noted because of their key importance and power - the manifestation of the extraordinary concern, calendar and operation of God that demonstrate his wisdom and action for our restoration to himself.
 
We carry all the steps to the completion of Christ’s assignment on our behalf in our minds always, but there is great pastoral benefit in concentrating on central events through which he achieved the divine purpose of saving love. We make room to gaze deeply and intently upon Incarnation, Resurrection, Ascension as towering peaks along the route to our eternal rescue. Great divine events are the sources from which we derive our deposit of doctrine. The living persons and real happenings of Scripture fill us with living truth and godly experience that prevents our faith from becoming dry abstraction and a series of desiccated notions.
 
The celebration of Ascension makes provision for the full acknowledgement of the majesty and magnitude of the dominion of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are privileged to extol our Redeemer ascendant as loftily exalted and universally enthroned over all persons, places and powers. All phenomena seen and unseen are under his sway. Our disposition by grace is to exult in his absolute supremacy conducted in the perfection of all his incomparable attributes. His rule is total and true in its righteousness and reliability. When evil is entirely eliminated and abolished peace and happiness will prevail everywhere beyond our capacity to conceive.
 
There is an ever flowing realization of the marvel of the ascension as it pertains to the Lord. But there is an added dimension to the coronation of the Lord Jesus. It is actually participative and as his subjects we are “with him in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 2:6), recipients of his intimately personal donations of grace as actually apportioned by him (Ephesians 4:7) and gifted with talents and ability to render service in his name (Ephesians 4:8). He is ascended on high to lavish blessings upon us, and as believers we are destined to ultimately dwell with him in the Father’s house (John 14: 2). For us the ascension is the pledge of abundant and endless grace; the guarantee that our Saviour will never leave us while we are here on earth (Matthew 28:20), He says, “Never will I leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews13:5). His promise is firm, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am (John 14:3).
 
“Never was the sun itself gazed on with so much intention. With what long looks, with what astonished acclamations did these astonished beholders follow thee, their ascending Saviour, as if they would have looked through that cloud, and that heaven, that hid thee from them? But, O, what tongue of the highest archangel of heaven can express the welcome of thee, the king of Glory into these blessed regions of immortality?”
- Bishop Joseph Hall
 
 
Almighty Father and ever-living God, we truly believe that your only begotten Son our lord Jesus Christ has ascended into heaven: Grant, we pray, that we may also in heart and mind ascend there and continually dwell with him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
- The Collect For Ascension Day
 
RJS

THE SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER 

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, 
each of us has turned to his own way; 
and the Lord has laid on him 
​the iniquity of us all.
Isaiah 53 : 6 

Collect 
Almighty Father, you who have given your only Son to be for us both a sacrifice for sin and also an example of godly life: Give us grace that we may always receive with thankfulness the immeasurable benefit of his sacrifice, and also try daily to follow in the blessed steps of his most holy life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
Amen. 

THE WORD OF THE LORD 
The Old Testament Sacred Page: Ezekiel 34 : 11 - 16a 
“‘For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so I will look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of cloud and darkness. I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and all the settlements in the land. I will tend them in a good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land. There they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign Lord. I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. 

1 Peter 2 : 24 - 25 
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. 

The Mystery of Christ: John 10 : 11 - 16 
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares not for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me — just as the Father knows me and I know the Father — and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. ‘By the Lord’s passion the abyss of the Scriptures is made open to us’. Bede of Jarrow (673 - 735). 

MY SHEEP 
How profound is the love of the Lord Jesus Christ for his sheep. It extends from eternity to eternity, and he gathers them to himself throughout the course of time. They are given to him by the Father, warmly entrusted to him and, knowing them intimately by name, he rescues them from the estrangement and danger of a life of disobedience and calls them wooingly to himself in irresistible tones of enchantment that lead to indissoluble attachment. Jesus will never lose a member of his flock. He is the consummate shepherd and ever-attentive overseer, provider and protector. He excels in his occupation which is exercised with perfect and constant goodness. He is the Good Shepherd and untiring Overseer. From the commencement of our life until its conclusion his favor is upon us and his invisible hand of divine providence guides us from cradle to coffin. “The Lord will defend you from all evil - it is he will guard your life; the Lord will defend your going out and your coming in from this time forward for evermore” (Psalm 121 : 7 - 8). 

The sheep of the Lord are considered his from eternity and are kept for eternity. “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all he has given me, but raise them up at the last day” (John 6 : 37 - 39). 

It is the exertions of Christ as well as the love of Christ that guarantee the safety and eternal wellbeing of every true believer. Here is the mystery of Christ as he is intimated by the prophets and divulged by the apostles: Christ the Good Shepherd has laid down his life as the purchase price for his sheep, and his blood is the seal of their impregnable security in the mighty care of the Lord. “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no-one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one” (John 10:28-30). 

So intense is the affection of the Lord for his people as it is described by Ezekiel. Known by him they are searched for, looked after, and rescued from scattered places. The sheep of Lord will be brought home to lush pastures on high places, tended with scrupulous care, able to lie down without fear of any peril or insoluble anxiety. The lost and the strays will be infallibly retrieved and everlastingly preserved. The depth and infinite dimension of the Lord’s ancient Promise enunciated to us from the sacred pages of the Old Testament is now made plain in the message of the New, and its profound meaning, the abyss of the Scriptures, is made open to us. Actual believers begin to discern the mystery of the Lord’s purpose of salvation for Jew and Gentile who are enabled to hear his voice and follow him - there are still others from another pen, those worldlings yet to be converted, whom Jesus must bring to himself (John 10:16). 

​How complete is the role of the Shepherd. The Shepherd has to claim us, seek us out, rescue us as lost strays, and gather us into his strong and welcoming arms: “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young” (Isaiah 40:11). How comprehensive is the tender concern of Jesus for every individual believer. He alone must perform every part of our salvation. We cannot help ourselves but rely on him exclusively. “This why I told you no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him” (John 6:65). I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved (John 10: 9).

RJS

EASTER DAY 2021

The Easter Anthems - 2 Corinthians 5:7-8; Romans 6:9-11; 1 Corinthians 15:20-22. 

Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us:
therefore let us celebrate the feast.
Not with the old leaven of corruption and wickedness;
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Christ once raised from the dead dies no more;
death has no more dominion over him.
In dying, he died to sin once for all;
in living, he lives to God.
See yourselves therefore as dead to sin:
and alive to God in Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Christ has been raised from the dead:
the first fruits of those who sleep.
For as by man came death:
by man has come also the resurrection from the dead.
For as in Adam all die:
even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning, is now,
and shall be forever;
world without end. Amen. 

Collect
Almighty Father and ever-living God, you who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ have overcome death, and opened to us the gate of eternal life: We humbly pray that, through your grace going before us, good desires will enter into our minds, and, by your continued help, we shall be able to bring them to right fulfillment; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.


THE WORD OF GOD

Exodus 12 : 21 -28
Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, ”Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. Not one of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning. When the Lord goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down. Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ Then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’” Then the people bowed down and worshiped. The Israelites did just what the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron.

Colossians 3 : 1 - 7
Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.

John 20 : 1 - 10
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)


CHRIST OUR PASSOVER

Christ sacrificed for us is an ever-engaging theme. His was a death instead of ours. A gospel devoid of a Substitute is not the Gospel of God. Whatever form of Christian faith it is that denies the Savior’s vicarious suffering and dying on our behalf as condemned sinners, that articulation of the faith is dubious. Paul sums up our message as “Christ crucified”, and that historical fact is matched in Holy Scripture with the night of the passover long ago in Egypt when Israel’s faith in the blood of the lamb spared them from the wrath of the Destroyer. The true believer is spared the penalty of sin by the passion and death of the Lord Jesus. 

Sentiment and specious sophistication of religious thought in the boundaries of the Christian Church has often attempted to silence the scandal of the cross and brand it as barbarism in the way that a pompous aristocrat repudiated the sermon of George Whitefield preached on a particular occasion in an upper class salon of his day (was it Bolingbroke or Chesterfield?). The cross is an offense to the proud and the worldly-wise, even among those deemed to be respectably religious and who harbor the desire to fit theology to their delicate and pretentious sensibilities; Christ our passover is cherished by the poor in spirit, frightened and humbled by the demands of the law, and the awesome holiness of God. “For our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). 

It is sheer pride that quarrels with the biblical way of salvation. Pride and human blindness fail to reckon on the depth and extent of our corruption and wickedness and that we have forfeited any entitlement to life, temporal and eternal. Intellectual and moral arrogance occupy a prime seat at the heart of the nominal people of God. Therefore, sovereign grace is despised and the cross is regarded as contemptible. We can only be spared destruction through the way that divine compassion has devised - the substitutionary death and sacrifice of a loving and voluntary victim embracing death in our stead. We cannot pretty-up Calvary. Only convinced sinners discover its wonderful attraction.


ALIVE TO GOD IN CHRIST JESUS OUR LORD

Where justification by faith (through the blood-shedding) has been wrought in the heart of the guilty there is the effect of renewed minds and holy life: not the poisonous notion of already attained perfection, but an hatred for and constant struggle with remaining sin, which keeps us lowly before God and neighbor in spirit, and ever reliant upon freely available cleansing and restorative grace. 

The words of our seventeenth Article are beautiful and true: “The godly consideration of Predestination, and our Election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things”, exactly as Paul exhorts “Set your minds above, not on earthly things”(Colossians 3: 2). True trust and confidence in Christ is evidence of his resurrection life within us which engenders reverent and “high and heavenly thoughts”, and virtuous living and action. Holiness strives to expel the vileness of the old nature. Growing goodness is a complementary and essential quality donated to the disposition of faith. 

There is no indifference to righteousness in the heart of those born from above through supernatural re-creation. We used to walk in evil ways but now we detest them and mourn when we slip inadvertently, or stray stubbornly. Our frailty and fluctuations frustrate us and bring us to contrition. Continual repentance is a featurein life with the risen Christ. 


THE GATE OF ETERNAL LIFE

Exalted views of the Lord Jesus are sure fruits of authentic Easter faith within us. We participate in his resurrection through new status, sensibility, behavior and destiny. Our new being has begun and will be complete in the world to come. As sacrifice, Christ procures our new and blessed life - sins forgiven, amends are made to God through him, and fellowship restored. In Christ and because of him we are alive to God, aware of him, enjoying him, recipients of his favor. The crowning blessing bestowed through the Lord Jesus is to enter, by his mercy and merit, the gate of eternal life. 

The misery of sin has been taken away, that barrier to life and the dread portal to the realm of death. Unimaginable bliss is our prospect in the inextinguishable joy of heaven and its perpetual friendly and cheering light. The face of the Lord will shine endlessly upon us and his presence will surround and infill us, causing us to glow more brightly than angels. 

The thrill of the gospel is that Christ has “opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers” (Te Deum). The Easter Season, the Resurrection Festival, opens before us, and displays, every dimension of our Christ-wrought rescue and redemption: Christ our passover has been sacrificed for us: therefore let us celebrate the feast. Through him we have been spared. See yourselves therefore as dead to sin, and alive to God in Jesus Christ our Lord. We have entered a new existence. Christ admits us to everlasting life. Our cause for exceeding joy. All this is true, real and assured because “He is Risen!” 

Christ crucified draw you to himself, to find in him a sure ground for faith, a firm support for hope, and the assurance of sins forgiven. Blessing for Holy Week.

RJS

THE FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY


Collect.
Lord God, we ask you to keep your household, the Church, continually in your true faith and devotion; so that that they who rely only upon the hope of your heavenly grace, may always be defended by your mighty power; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
 

Holy Scripture: Colossians 3 : 12 - 17
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion and kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
 
Let the peace of Christ rule your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
 

AS GOD’S CHOSEN PEOPLE: Holy Aspiration.
The apostle’s opening adverb, “therefore”, suggests such mighty consequences as a result of our status as believers in the gospel of Christ. His explication leaves us breathless, if we heed it thoroughly. He speaks initially of the highest privilege we may possibly conceive, and then he adumbrates our qualities and practice as God’s dear people. His first remark places us within the personal possession of God, a fact that extolls the greatest force in the universe, and mentions the greatest blessing we could ever receive - the unearned, undeserved, unmeasurable grace of God. There is no more fortunate consequence of the gift of faith than to know that we are in the grip of eternal divine love that destined us for the favor, fellowship, and family of God - the Lord’s selection of his people.
 
Electing love through and in Jesus Christ is the action of maximal mercy, kindness, generosity and forgiveness on the part of the Lord; infinite x infinite. Superabundant liberality beyond calculation and comprehension has settled upon us. In Christ, God has determined to donate to the elect his all, and that all will not be exhausted throughout all eternity. The choice of his people is God’s magnificent distinguishing magnanimity that he minded to manifest from the Beginning in the calling of the elect, those associated with the Son and considered for union with him before the dawn of time. Believers are marked out by everlasting love for everlasting life in the sovereign decision of God.
 
It is this priceless intent and purpose of the Lord that conditions every iota of meaning in St Paul’s rousing exhortation to the Christians at Colosse. Moving from the astonishing initiative of God in predestination (a theme for the comfort of Christians, and not for speculation, Article 17), Paul advances into the calling of the saints to heartfelt imitation of the goodness of God that has sought and secured them for the uninterrupted knowledge of him and the bliss of heaven. Conversion is the entrance to virtuous character in the likeness of Jesus. Being dearly loved, with holiness of heart wrought by grace, the chosen are reminded and motivated by the apostle to be a living demonstration of loving-kindness to each other that ultimately should overflow as wooing power to draw outsiders into the people of God also. Believers are enrolled as those who attract others to the world’s Redeemer. Evidence of this attraction should shine forth from the life of the church as proof of the certainty of God’s graciousness to all who seek and desire him. The aim of redemption is replication of Christ-likeness in the persons of the redeemed. All these marvelously graced lives bring glory to God.

“Clothe yourselves with compassion and kindness, humility, gentleness and patience”: Our dress, or habitual outward demeanor, is to be representative of our sincere interior disposition, and we are to reflect the preferred traits of the Divine Being in our sanctified relationships as fellow children of God. It may therefore be asked, do we exercise in our church gatherings, and the emergence of differences, these attitudes to the fullest extent possible, and with reasonable consideration of ethical permission?

“Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another”: Grievances occur so swiftly. They can be sown by hasty judgments that are ill-informed, and situations that are misconstrued. Wounds may be felt through faulty reception in certain individuals caused by negative mood at a given time, and heightened sensitivity can exaggerate the sharpness of perceived barbs. Misunderstandings abound in the life of congregations. Rumors gain credibility too readily, and the tendency of the old nature to criticism is often not regulated or restrained. Sin is at work intentionally and unintentionally in any Christian company. Paul brings to mind the vital reality of unlimited forgiveness that God extends toward his own by sovereign choice. As hard, gradual, and painful as it may feel, a like forgiveness and forbearance is to be extended to others among us where contrition replaces stubbornness and pride. “Forgive as the Lord forgave you” is the premiss of our mutual behavior. There should always be the willingness to forgive, conditioned, of course, by the offender’s contrition. It is spiritually harmful to declare the word of forgiveness prematurely when scope for repentance and the seriousness of offense is disallowed to the consciousness of the wrongdoer with responsibility to achieve reconciliation.
 
All virtues are valueless without love. Love, that genuine respectful regard for another that avoids any injury toward them, harbors every desire to benefit them, and should lead to the cherishing of one observed to belong to the Lord, should crown every thought and overture directed toward a fellow believer on the ground that the most supreme love of all has been unconditionally conferred upon us. How can we withhold that which we have so freely received? Love, as Paul acknowledges and avers, has the binding effect of bringing the people of God into perfect unity, and the peace granted by the Lord Jesus to his people should prevail among them. All these things require self-denial and self-giving that only supernatural ability from God can achieve, but our aim should be high, and our self-examination candid and thorough at all times. For in all things we are to bring honor to the name of the Lord Jesus, our very strongest incentive in the lives we live through him. Paul brings us to sober assessment of the quality of our relationships, the earnestness of our gratitude to the merciful will of God and its ensuing obedience. None can reflect on the apostolic exhortation without sorrow for falling short and with accompanying resolve for amendment of life, and this capacity can only be enabled by his doing within us.

RJS

THE FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY

Collect
Lord God, you who know that we are placed in the midst of so many and so great dangers, and that because of our human weakness we cannot always stand upright: Grant us such a measure of strength and protection that we may be supported in all dangers, and be carried through all temptations; through Jesus Christ our lord. Amen.

Matthew 8 : 23 - 27
Jesus Calms the Storm
Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”

He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.

The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”

Meditation
The Lord Jesus displays his dominion over the forces of nature. The God-man in the boat had designed the journey across the lake to be a voyage of understanding for the disciples. It was not to be a peaceful crossing. Providence had decreed not just a run-of-the-mill storm that causes no great panic, but a furious storm that descended without warning. Un-forecasted terror gripped the seasoned sailors who normally could handle
their fishing vessels with great expertise. Waves easily mounted the sides of their boat threatening to fill it with an unwelcome volume of water and sink it. The disciples instantly sensed the danger with unaccustomed alarm. But Jesus was unaware and continued sleeping. His former encounter with a crowd tired him and he needed refreshment. His sleep was so sound that the raging storm did not disturb him. The
disciples rising reliance upon the master was quickly awakened.

They woke Jesus with urgent appeals for safety. They were embroiled in a life or death situation and they had sufficient trust in the power of Jesus to rescue them. “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown?” A disastrous death was imminent. No sailor of any kind underestimates the danger of water. These hardy and experienced men who derived their living from the lake were seriously afraid of the fate that surrounded them - demise by storm stronger than any they had ever experienced.

It was a case of the Lord educating his folk by extreme measures. Experts and people of exceptional accomplishment can tend to rest on heir abilities to cope. Providence sometimes issues a surprise that shakes us out of our presumptuousness. None of us are
omni-competent or invulnerable. There is always something that will scare the greatest hero out of their wits. The disciples quickly learned that they were mere men dependent on more than their acquired skills or inherited abilities. When it comes to the crunch many of us learn our dependence on divine action and intervention. Humans are not supermen (Hyper-men) as much as some males may retain that boyish notion.

But the disciples were taught much more about themselves in the midst of the tempest. Mere men they certainly were, but mere man Jesus was not. “The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!” The raging
storm revealed the unrestricted authority of the Son God. Our self-trust, our creature-trust in our fellows must subside as we arrive at an absolute trust (never fully gained on earth) in the Saviour who ever sails with us. How often has he stood with us through the storms of life? How often could he address us with those words, “You of little faith, why are you afraid”.

This is not simply a cosy story to soothe the timid or apathetic. It is a call to courage in our confidence in God when our stoutheartedness falls apart and we tremble in great fear. It points to our ultimate defense, our only deliverer Jesus Christ. Jesus’ power prevails everywhere, always. O, for that certitude!

*The sea of life: Blessed are all your saints, O, God, and King, who have travelled over the tempestuous sea of this life and have made the harbor of peace and felicity. Watch over us who are still on dangerous voyage. Frail is our vessel, and the ocean is wide; but as in your mercy you have set our course, so pilot the vessel of our life towards the everlasting shore of peace, and bring us at last to the quiet haven of our heart’s desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord. St. Augustine

Matthew 8: 28-34
Jesus Restores Two Demon-Possessed Men
When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. “What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”

Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.”

He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water. Those tending the pigs ran off, went into the town and reported all this, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region.

Meditation
Jesus' lake crossing was dual purpose. He had demonstrated his power to govern nature (of which he was Creator), now he will show his supremacy over the realm of the demonic. He transfers himself from the stormy elements of wind and wave to the dark realm of mental derangement and terrifying physical violence. He elects to arrive at a place too terrible for folk to pass by and notice, and he encounters the fearsome territory
and fury of men inhabited by evil spirits. Their desperate depth of depravity and dangerousness is signified by their frightening emergence from the desolate tombs of the dead. These men are deemed beyond all help and hope. They stir revulsion and dread in every heart that hears of them. What an unimaginable and miserable destiny.

But Jesus went there to meet these prisoners and practitioners of evil. He was sovereign over the demonic oppressors to liberate them, and powerful enough to banish the devil’s minions. The Lord Jesus proved himself superior to all powers, natural and supernatural, and all that is deadly and destructive. He is the strong man and strong Son of God and our Refuge from all that threatens to harm us. He is our all-round and abiding security. Heaven will reveal the times and types of his rescue of us in a hazardous life. Yet, there are those for whom Jesus is the principal upsetter of a preferred way of life that they cannot ever envision quitting. They bid him to depart from them. They deem him unprofitable to their accustomed desires. They are the ones to be pitied in life’s story.

RJS

 Matthew 8 : 5 -13

For the Christian, facts are the foundation of sure knowledge and renewed life in union with Jesus Christ. We are folk of conviction as to the truth of divine revelation laid before us in Holy Scripture. Our confidence and abiding hope are lodged in God the Three-in-One, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A reality derived from historical record and insight into the invisible sustains and surrounds us. We are inhabitants of the realm of faith with a grasp of verities illuminated only by the light and manifestation of things as they really are by the Spirit of Christ. The Word of God shapes our world view - our understanding of this world, and our incomplete apprehension of the world to come. A God-given certainty accompanies us through life and into the enjoyment of life everlasting. Solid truth surrounds and sustains us. The divine message in the Lord Jesus, Son of God, guarantees an adequacy of accurate perception to the mind and the guidance of the Comforter ensures our safe journey toward eternity.

   The substance of our faith is objective. Its content is communicated and confirmed by God himself at work within us. The basis of our confidence is infallible. But not so is our behavior. We are frail and fallible to a high degree. If God and his truth are immutable we are creatures of fluctuation determined by mood. By mood means that we vary in our apprehension and sensibility toward matters and our attitude and actions are not yet consistent with the will and character of God. Within our subjective selves there is a dissonance with the nature and ways of God. There will be such discord until we are fully delivered from self, sin, and the ways of this world. We are not yet perfect. That is our prospect in paradise. Our holiness and wholeness are partial. The exhortations and encouragements of Scripture, prophetic and apostolic, are essential. We are not only to be instructed in the truths of the Lord; we need to be educated as to being true in the Lord. Life here, under God and with God, is developmental. It is a process of healing. Scripture is comforting and corrective in accordance with the divine compassion.

   There are many lapses in the lives of the saints. Some of these are evident but many more are secrets confined to the deepest crypt at the core of our being, driving our secret conceptions and imaginings, and often not discovered or detected by ourselves. Jeremiah, that man of deep inner disturbances, declares that we cannot know ourselves exhaustively. “The heart is deceitful: above all things: and beyond cure: Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9). Knowing this predicament the prophet wails before the Lord: “I know, O Lord, that a man’s life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps. Correct me Lord, but only with justice — not in your anger, lest you reduce me to nothing’ (10:23-24).

   Hence the biblical insistence on justness of outlook and of life. Belief and behavior must be right with a divinely determined fairness of approach to life, evident in active roles and relationships. The God of grace will make us gracious gradually as we discern our continual need for supernatural assistance. “As far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18). This is an enormous responsibility so contrary to our self-serving ambitions (often disguised). Harmony is a collaborative exercise among the people of God. It is godly, sensible self-denial that promotes peace and harmony. The vengeful heart, wounded unjustly or reacting from offended pride, must struggle through the donation of grace not to provoke conflict and division. Paul does not hector the family of God. It is evident that he sees the problems among folk that are difficult to surmount given the residue within us of the old Adamic nature that still fosters the evil of the curse. He ardently desires the wellbeing of believers individually and collectively (an ecclesiology we have not quite grasped).
 
  We are a congregation, all believers, gathered to the Lord, not separate individuals occasionally swarming together, all busy bees seeking our own advantages and forgetting our obligation of mutual care and service, shared respect and patience, love and fairness (justice). Paul is familiar with the instant instincts of human nature that rush to the fore of our minds and manner. With God’s strong aid we must, with deliberation, curb and quash the evils that still prompt our old, familiar inclinations. May God supply his grace in abundance. May he ever be accessible to our urgent plea for righteousness, and may we always be alert to our total dependence upon him.

RJS

SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY 2020
 
COLLECT
Lord God, let your continual pity cleanse and defend your Church we humbly pray; and because it cannot continue in safety without your aid, always preserve and protect it by your help and goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
 
LESSONS
Ephesians 3 : 13 - 21
 
I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.
 
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom the whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
 
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
 
 
DIVINE DIMENSIONS - IMMEASURABLE
Our minds are locked into dimensions. Everything is a matter of size, proportions, mass, extension, area. We are constitutionally compelled to observe all things, visible and invisible by measure. That which is infinite is beyond our grasp. Our perception inevitably balks at limits and boundaries, and even if we attempt in our minds to leap over these restrictions toward a notion of the infinite we can only think in terms of successive stages, portions, degrees. Extension is irrelevant to infinitude, to the concept of unceasing endlessness because it cannot be curbed, cut short. Infinity rolls on continuously - width, length, height, depth. We are out of breath and our minds are befuddled by a reality we cannot assess or contain. The immensity of God in his being and attributes is immeasurable. All our concepts concerning the deity are practically diminishing of his unspeakable dimensions. The Lord is indescribably great. No mental telescope can detect the margins of his substance or essence. It is salutary to admit that he is beyond calculation or confinement. What a wonder it is to enter the realm of prayer as Paul does for the saints. Prayer has the motivating incentive of pressing on to the farthest limits of possibility for the Lord we call upon is the God of the impossible.
 
But is it a wonder that Paul kneels before God? Surely not. Our God is beyond our human capacity to know him fully. We are constrained to bow before him - incomprehensible, but through Jesus Christ the Word, knowable, and increasingly so.
 
Paul points to a God of Personhood who relates to us intimately in his radiant glory and rich goodness as Triune. The Father who adopts his elect as family grants them identity as his children. Great earthly families traditionally exhibit pride in their remarkable exploits, status, accumulation of honors, traditions and, in consequence of these, they glory in their famous names emblazoned upon their escutcheon.  Believers in Christ belong to the greatest family of all that encompasses the redeemed citizens of heaven and those who will join them from earth when their home going eventually occurs. Both segments of the people of God bear the most noble family crest of all through the privilege of special grace that links them with the Son of God with whom, in the mind of God, they have been associated before time was, “Chosen in Christ”.
 
Glorious and inestimable riches are available to this family; the wealth of God’s mercy and provision, wide and always, but particularly the wealth of the human spirit (inner being) as bestowed by the Holy Spirit. The bounty of God is liberally poured out upon us on earth prior to our gaining of our full inheritance in heaven, “the future state”. No benefit could be greater than the indwelling of Christ in our hearts. There are no quotas of blessing in the heavenly resident of our souls. He brings the fullness of God into our possession; He is the inexpressible favor granted to us by the Father. The Three-in-One closeting with us and caring for us.
 
Everything in this brief passage from the apostle proclaims boundlessness - the love of God that settles upon us and surges through us, that grounds us in the firm foundation of eternal affection and compassion; the mighty power that assures all the people of God that they are at the centre and surrounded by the love of Christ that cannot be gauged in its all-round, inexhaustible volume - experienced but never arriving at a point of expiration, a full supply that will never run dry, ever flowing, ever increasing, known in its beneficent nature and effects but surpassing our ability to sum up its length and strength. We are integrated into the sphere of divine love, an ocean of cherishing and endearment we do not have the means to survey.
 
And so grace is extolled to such an extreme extent to encourage us to request and expect great things in the cause of the kingdom, far beyond what we might ask or imagine. “Thou art coming to a king, large petitions with thee bring.”
 
I ask great things,
 Expect great things,
  Shall receive great things.
From The Valley of Vision, A collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions, Arthur Bennett, Banner of Truth - a superb compilation of uplifting and invigorating meditations.
 
Luke 7 : 11 - 17
 
Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out - the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her. When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.”
 
Then he went up and touched the coffin, and those carrying it stood still. He said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.
 
They were all filled with awe and praised God. “A great prophet has appeared among us,” they said. “God has come to help his people.” This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country.
 
Jesus entered a village called Nain (Pleasantville). Even the most pleasant locale or happy, vibrant home cannot exclude the coming of death, and sadness cannot be prevented from touching any human life.
 
As Jesus approached the gate of the attractive little town with its aspect of pleasing countryside the grim reality of death was closely encountered. It invades every environment and disturbs every heart. It knows no barriers and penetrates every defense and attempt at denial. We cannot hide from it.
 
Every funeral is a sorrowful occasion, even if only as a reminder of our own tenuous grip on life and our certain mortality.
 
The grieving party that Jesus providentially met was especially piteous. A widow was weeping over her only son. A large crowd was with her to extend silent comfort, but a stricken heart feels cold, empty, and distant from surroundings and onlookers, enveloped in the void of deep personal loss.
 
The Savior of the world looked tenderly upon the distraught lady before him and “his heart went out to her”.  The God-man expressed both human and divine tenderness together. His word of comfort availed. “Don’t cry.” It was followed by Jesus omnipotent command over the power of death. “Young man, I say to you, get up!”
 
The man sat up and was wonderfully restored to his mother.
 
In this poignant incident divine omnipotence was allied to gentle mercy. The sweet strength of God was so beautifully exhibited so that we might not hesitate to call upon him in trouble or distress.
 
His power is proven and our plight may be eased.
 
RJS

FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 2020
 
COLLECT
Guard your Church, O Lord, with your perpetual mercy; and because in our frailty we cannot stand without your support, keep us always from all that may harm us; and lead us to all that is profitable for our salvation, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
 
LESSONS
Joshua 24 : 14 -24
“Now fear the Lord and and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away your gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River, and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living, but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
 
Then the people answered, “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve others gods! It was the Lord our God himself who brought us and our fathers up and out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. And the Lord drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land. We too will serve the Lord, because he is our God.”
 
Joshua said to the people, “You are not able to serve the Lord. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.”
 
But the people said to Joshua, “No! We will serve the Lord.”
 
Then Joshua said, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to serve the Lord.”
 
“Yes, we are witnesses,” they replied.
 
“Now then,” said Joshua, “throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.
 
And the people said to Joshua, “We will serve the Lord our God and obey him.”
 
On that day Joshua made a covenant for the people, and there at Shechem he drew up for them decrees and laws.
 
Matthew 6 : 24 – 34
“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one, and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. 1You cannot serve both God and Money.
 
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
 
And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even 2Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ Or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
 
1Certainly to be devoted to the increase of wealth. . . rules  out that devotion to God which alone is the ground of human integrity or wholeness. (H. Melinsky).
 
2Here the point is that the king was proverbial for magnificence. But not even that magnificence can compare to the way the flowers are clothed. One points to the basic unit; Solomon’s clothes could not compare to that of even one of the flowers. (Leon Morris).

LOYALTY TO GOD: WE WILL SERVE THE LORD

The fundamental condition of human nature is weakness. We are created for dependence upon the Lord - totally; he is to be our strength and our complete reliance is to be upon him. Our frailty as mere creatures is huge in every way. Physically we can only survive within very limited and congenial conditions that are moderated for our comfort. We have a well defined, confined range of adaptability and functional capacity. Under the force of various pressures and weights our bone structure is brittle and subject to fracture, and the flesh that envelopes our various vital organs and inner parts is very soft and tender. How vulnerable we happen to be. Humans can only prove to be strong in comparison with each other.
 
As a race we are all highly exposed to threatening dangers and hazards that can snuff us out in a moment and each of us eventually falls victim to the summons of death - brief life, earthly extinction. The best minds are ultimately delicate given the enormous strains and uncertainties in life that can be brought to bear, and the most resilient constitutions can eventually crack and collapse. In ourselves, under honest scrutiny, we are by nature extremely feeble. Most crucially, as a result of our breach with our Maker and Sustainer, we are fatally flawed and defective in a moral way, being also volitionally erratic, and subject to being easily swayed and unpredictable. It is only outlandish hubris that can cause us to be boastful and self-reliant. Written across our character in bold letters is the devastating description of the content of our hearts, “wickedness and inconstancy”.
 
It is our inconstancy, even as believers, that is addressed in our Scripture lessons for the day. With our speech we make great assertions and utter very solemn vows, but in fact our inner attitudes and outward behavior fall dismally low beneath the talk of the tongue, that instrument of falsehood and deception. It is even possible for we Christians to be unaware of the gravity of conceited, casual, insincere speech before God, and even directly in communication with him.

Joshua gives Israel opportunity to assess its genuineness of professed allegiance to its gracious liberator and deliverer. “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve.” In reply Israel recites the benefits it received in covenant with the Lord, but Joshua knows the tendencies of the people to still cling to foreign gods they have discovered beyond the River and also currently adopted in the land they have by grace inherited. He declares their inability to cast these gods away. He knows that in spite of their profession of loyalty to God they remain untrue, and by intimating that in their hearts that they are wavering, he deftly touches on their inconstancy by posing an unavoidable decision: “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves. . .” Choices are determined by desires. The will of sinful man is not the arbiter of our deepest desires but their captive. Hence Joshua’s verdict on Israel’s verbal superficiality, “You are not able to serve the Lord.” The holiness of God, the claims and prerogatives of God do not appeal to the Israelites. Their false declaration acknowledges him but in their desires they abandon him.
 
Former idols of the heart may still beckon to us and stick to us annoyingly, and we can be tempted to cling to them and fall in line with their seductive suggestions - the acquisitions and ambitions fostered by the gods of gratification and worldly greatness are alluring, and may even take on a pronounced religious guise. We may wrongly perceive that “he is our God”, but he may simply be the figment of our own self-serving imagination and wants. Idols that are fabricated in the misled mind are, of all fancies, most dangerous. The Lord must teach us about ourselves as well as about himself. We must match together in a state of holiness. Serving the Lord is a costly, painful dying to self. We are not able, as Joshua recognized, to serve the Lord but by his grace and enabling alone.
 
The Lord Jesus is, of course, fully acquainted with our divided loyalties and inconsistencies, but he warns us that no one can really serve two masters, exercise a duality of devotion, or adhere to a plurality of allegiances. He specifically instances the ancient and yet very modern god, Mammon, a name which is now accurately rendered as Money. The pursuit of wealth and wellbeing for our own sakes and satisfaction is exceptionally perilous. Riches are not sinful in themselves. The moral issue to consider is how affluence is gained and as to how it is dispersed, but in our fallen state riches can cultivate many evils; failure in probity and rectitude, greed, arrogance, presumptuousness, social superiority, and that most fatal flaw of lack of reliance upon God.
​
Our secret interior idols are simply expressions of the inclinations of the heart. Pursuit of our own preferences and proposed glamorous and gratifying results is the essence of idolatry. The goals and gains of our self-will are images of our own selves usurping the sovereignty and supply of the Lord. Our hearts are the chapels of our own ungodly desires and devotion. We neglect the comforts and commands of the word of God, his speech of endearment and demand. We repel his companionship and wise control.
 
The words of the Lord Jesus are powerfully striking and convicting, and they bring us to our knees in penitence and prayer:
 
“Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one. And you shall love the lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”
 

RJS

The New Testament in Its World Workbook: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christian by Nicholas Thomas Wright & Michael Bird

For this person, the Bishop's Blockbuster has not the slightest appeal. Background information concerning the New Testament only has "saving value" if it is clearly in support of the New Testament Gospel. Apart from this the acquisition of historical and cultural knowledge is a time-consuming and futile pursuit.

Background knowledge, as advantageous as it may be under right circumstances, will not deliver the soul of sinful man, though it might fascinate the human mind, and swell the sense of superiority of readers over the common laity. If the principal author errs in that most vital area of justification by faith alone, and the nature of the atonement, the above volume will merely load the human brain with heavy verbiage and lighten the wallet of hard-earned cash.

Holy Scripture carries the message of divine redemption quite adequately and accurately on its own. It is sufficient for the communication of a complete salvation. The simplicity of the "way of salvation" is its cardinal quality as to its comprehension and magnificent charm. The Old Testament lays the basis for the Gospel and the New Testament explicates the welcome message to the full.

The cultural contexts of the various documents that comprise the Bible are of great assistance to our appreciation of the Word of God only when the Word is gratefully received in faith and humility. If the facts of historical events and cultural features are taught by those who dispute the teaching of Holy Writ in its primary assertions the scholarship, however elegant and exhaustive, is greatly diminished in its usefulness and spiritual benefit, and many, more modest publications than the above, abound for the education of sincere believers.

No culture at any time determines the content of the Gospel. We cannot be sure, even, of which strands of culture had any determining affect/effect upon the writers of Scripture, and in what sense they regarded and interpreted contemporary philosophy, literature and ideology, or what nature of nuance they employed from any vocabulary available to them.

N. T. Wright has already stolen the heart and essence of the gospel from those eagerly enquiring about it (Justification and Atonement). Atonement and justification are the keys to the kingdom and N.T. Wright has cast them away.

N.T. Wright's claim for his specialist expertise as being necessary for our accurate comprehension of the Bible's message has already stolen the Scriptures from those seeking to know the Word of God. The people of God must now rely upon a new priestly caste of professional scholars who alone are wise to the secrets of divine revelation and capable of conveying them to us.

N.T. Wright shadows the lines of Scripture with his proud, emphatically pedagogic "second digit" (it wags), repeating necessary terms as and because they arise, but distorting the meaning at many significant points.

N.T. Wright has promoted first century Gentile thought above the authority of the Old Testament. "The Scripture is that wherewith God draws us unto him. The Scriptures sprang out of God (expectation), and flow unto Christ (fulfillment), and were given to lead us to Christ (completion). Thou must therefore go along by the Scriptures as by a line, until thou come at Christ, which is thy way's end and resting-place." Scripture is sufficient in its role of conducting us safely to the Lord Jesus. --- William Tyndale

N.T. Wright has greatly reduced the personal spiritual intensity of intimacy with our Savior God to be enjoyed fully by the children of God as they trace the mystery of saving grace extended toward them individually through the eternal and infinite love of the Lord. (1 John 1: 1-4).

If most of us did not unduly defer to fame, success, and opaque scholarship we would have to concede that N.T. Wright is not a safe guide to eternal salvation and there has to be the issue of his intellectual resources which, sadly and inevitably, compromise our way to life in and with God.

This latest hefty tome is not the treasure it purports to be in all the recent hype. We hope its publishers, in the interests of the environment, printed it entirely on recycled paper, possibly reclaimed from previous NTW publications. However, its weight and dimensions would qualify it to serve as a handy doorstop, or even more suitably as a means of keeping a stout cathedral door ajar for the convenience of guests who may wish to enter the building.

With chirpy Michael F. Bird as his co-contributor it may be wondered if antipodean Anglican Reformational theology is about to crumble.


By Roger Salter
Special to Virtueonline
www.virtueonline.org
September 18, 2020