NOVEMBER

NOVEMBER

NOVEMBER 1

2 Kings 14; 2 Timothy 4; Hosea 7; Psalms 120—122

AMONG THE SONGS OF ASCENT (see vol. 1, meditation for June 29) is the delightful Psalm 122. Here the psalmist joyfully accompanies those heading to Jerusalem for one of the high feasts: “Let us go to the house of the LORD” (122:1). Already in verse 2 the pilgrims have arrived: “Our feet are standing in your gates, O Jerusalem.”

Two themes dominate the remaining verses of the psalm.

First, verses 3-5 emphasize the unity of God’s people, brought about by their common worship in Jerusalem of the true God and by their common submission to the rule and justice of the house of David. There was of course diversity—not only the diversity common to all collections of human beings, but the diversity implicit in the twelve “tribes” (122:4), each with its own marked character. The unity was more profound than blood ties. It was based on a common covenant with the one God. These were “the tribes of the LORD” (122:4). Small wonder, then, that when the northern ten tribes revolted, the leader, Jeroboam, greatly feared that Jerusalem and its temple would become the rallying point for renewed unification (1 Kings 12:26ff.).

Yet unity was merely the byproduct of the festive ascents to Jerusalem. The purpose of the ascents was “to praise the name of the LORD according to the statute given to Israel” (122:4). When God becomes the means to the end, unity is never achieved; when God himself is the end, the glorious byproducts of unity and peace are never far behind. The sheer God-centeredness of biblical religion is one of the things that regularly distinguishes it from paganism, which commonly sees religion as a means to certain ends (cf. Hosea 2:5).

Second, in another distinction between means and ends, David exhorts people to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, not for the sake of an abstract ideal or for the sake of the city per se, but for the sake of people (122:8) and above all for the sake of “the house of the LORD our God” (122:9). To pursue political peace and forget people is a sham. Indeed, the exhortation to pray for the “peace” of “Jerusalem” (122:6) includes a pun: we are to pray for the shalom of Jerusalem; the Hebrew consonants are the same, and remind us that Jerusalem rightly conceived holds out the fullness of “well-being” to people. To pursue merely physical benefits for people and forget the presence and purposes of the Lord God is at best short-term thinking and at worst a route to disaster and to hell itself. “For the sake of the house of the LORD our God,” David writes, “I will seek your prosperity” (122:9).

Reflect on how to transpose these two points to the Christian antitype (Heb. 12:22-24), not least in detailed application (Heb. 12:28—13:13).

NOVEMBER 2

2 Kings 15; Titus 1; Hosea 8; Psalms 123—125

PERHAPS THE SINGLE ELEMENT that holds together the various sins condemned in Hosea 8 is human self-reliance. The “eagle” in 8:1 is probably a vulture. A “[vulture] . . . over the house of the LORD” is a way of saying that Jerusalem is as good as dead: the carrion eaters are already gathering for their feast. The people might be living in relative prosperity and peace, but the ominous signs were there for those with eyes to see. Evidences of sinful self-sufficiency include:

(1) A hypocritical allegiance to the covenant (8:1-3). What makes it hypocritical is that Israel cries out, “O our God, we acknowledge you!” (8:2) while breaking the covenant and rebelling against God’s law (8:1). This is the rejection of what is good—and there are consequences (8:3). Cf. 1 John 2:4.

(2) Defiant alternatives to the Davidic dynasty (8:4). That is what is meant by the charge, “They set up kings without my consent; they choose princes without my approval.” The Lord set his seal on the Davidic dynasty, but to preserve their independence from Jerusalem the northern ten tribes, now constituted as Israel, opted for their own monarchs. They were not “chosen” in any democratic sense; frequently they succeeded one another in bloody coups. But they were the choice of the northern tribes nonetheless, insofar as they preferred these to allegiance to David’s line. It is always the case that unless the Lord builds the house, those who labor do so in vain (Ps. 127:1); here the sin is compounded by the alienation from the messianic line.

(3) The development of idols, of the culture’s choice of religion (8:4-6, 11-13).

Initially two golden calves were set up, one in Dan and one in Bethel, to offset the draw of Jerusalem’s temple (1 Kings 12:27-30). Moreover, people in Israel would not have to travel so far. Thus, although they formally preserve the altars for sin offerings, these have become “altars for sinning” (8:11).

(4) The constant dependence on expensive and tricky allies (8:8-10). Instead of trusting the Lord, they think their clever diplomacy with regional superpowers will save the day. God is demeaned, and Israel (“Ephraim”) is further seduced by idolatry.

(5) Reliance on wealth and military strength (8:14). Israel (the north) has its palaces; Judah (the south) fortifies many towns—forty-six of them, in fact. But God will destroy them (8:14b). When Assyria vanquished Israel (722 B.C.), it also took all the walled cities of Judah except Jerusalem (2 Kings 18:13), which was spared until the rise of Nebuchadnezzar more than a century later.

What signs of self-reliance characterize our culture? What will God do about them?

NOVEMBER 3

2 Kings 16; Titus 2; Hosea 9; Psalms 126—128

“THE DAYS OF PUNISHMENT ARE COMING, the days of reckoning are at hand. Let Israel know this” (9:7). This chapter (Hosea 9) spells out some of the connections between sin and judgment.

(1) The language of prostitution continues: “For you have been unfaithful to your God; you love the wages of a prostitute at every threshing floor” (9:1). Both politically and religiously, Israel flirted continuously with alien gods and foreign powers. All the ceremony of religion she dearly loved. But the days are coming when she will be scattered, forced to abandon “the LORD ’s land” (9:3, 17). Israel will return to “Egypt” (9:3); some Israelites did end up there, but Egypt is also a cipher for any alien, oppressive country. Ephraim (= Israel) will “eat unclean food in Assyria” (9:3). Not just the ceremonial uncleanness of the food is in view, but the prospect of forced exile. All the offerings for her much loved festivals and ceremonies will dry up (9:5); the punishments are tied to the sins.

(2) Systematic denigration of the prophets means that the people cannot hear God’s warnings—and so their cynicism ensures that they stumble into the judgments against which the prophets warn. “Because your sins are so many and your hostility so great, the prophet is considered a fool, the inspired man a maniac. The prophet, along with my God, is the watchman over Ephraim, yet snares await him on all his paths, and hostility in the house of his God” (9:7-8). How well does this apply today?

(3) The history of Israel swings from really wonderful connections with the living God—from God’s perspective it was “like finding grapes in the desert” (9:10)—to abominable degradation. The incident of Baal Peor (9:10; cf. Num. 25) is telling, for it combines both physical and spiritual unchastity: the Moabite women seduced the men of Israel, and the local Moabite Baal attracted their worship. Our culture follows sex as avidly and sometimes connects it with the self-fulfillment of new age spirituality. The result with us will be what it was at Baal Peor: the people “became as vile as the thing they loved” (9:10). What you worship you soon resemble (Ps. 115:8); more, you identify with it, defend it, make common cause with it—and if it is an abomination to God, soon you are an abomination to him. So the “glory” departs (9:11), whether in the sense of reputation, or self-respect, or moral leadership, or, finally, the very presence of God (Ezek. 8:6; 11:23).

To defend a king or a president because of his economic policies when the moral core has evaporated means we have become as vile as the things we love.

NOVEMBER 4

2 Kings 17; Titus 3; Hosea 10; Psalms 129—131

MANY HAVE OBSERVED THAT PSALM 131 anticipates the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 18:1-4, where he asks, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”—and calls a little child to stand among his disciples. In certain respects, the follower of Jesus must be childlike, and this psalm makes its own contribution to that theme. Yet childlikeness is not childishness; simplicity is not simplemindedness; humility is not servility. The psalm will speak with greater power if we reflect on some of its features:

(1) According to the superscription, this is a psalm of David. One may well ask during what period of his career he wrote it. More than one writer has suggested it springs from an early period, before the successes of his middle and later years bred a certain arrogance that would have made it impossible for him to write, “I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me”

(131:1). That is possible, of course. Nevertheless a very young man who has not yet had the opportunity to concern himself with great matters would not be very likely to write these words—or if he did, they would sound vaguely pretentious, a bit like a pompous excuse for not tackling the tough issues. One cannot finally prove the point, but I suspect this psalm is easier to understand if it springs from the end of David’s life, after he has been humbled by such matters as Bathsheba and Uriah, and by the revolt led by his son Absalom. Humbled, less quick to imagine he alone understands, slower to take umbrage, and more impressed by the wise providence of God, David (one imagines) now quietly writes, “My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me” (131:1).

(2) Some commentators (and even translations) picture the child of verse 2 as nursing at the breast. But that is not what the text says. David pictures himself “like a weaned child with its mother.” This child, like David, no longer cries for what it formerly found indispensable. This too suggests that David is mature enough now to be giving something up—namely, in the light of verse 1, the confident questing to understand everything, borne of more than a little arrogance. The immaturity he abandons is like a little child squealing to get hold of its mother’s breast. But David has eclipsed that point. He is weaned, and he is content. Cf. Philippians 4:11ff.

(3) The maturity David has reached is grounded not in escapist retreat from life’s complexities, but in trust in the Lord (131:3), whose perfect knowledge is a bulwark for our hope.

NOVEMBER 5

2 Kings 18; Philemon; Hosea 11; Psalms 132—134

IN HOSEA 9, GOD SAYS OF HIS covenant people, “Because of all their wickedness . . . I hated them there. Because of their sinful deeds, I will drive them out of my house. I will no longer love them; all their leaders are rebellious” (9:15). Yet here in Hosea 11 God declares, “My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused” (11:8). How shall we put these two passages together?

First, this emotional turmoil is the language of the jilted husband: in this book, Almighty God plays the role of the cuckolded husband. Make all the allowance you like for anthropomorphism, this is as truly the way God presents himself in Scripture as the passages where his utter sovereignty is affirmed. It is the juxtaposition of such themes that has driven orthodox confessionalism to insist that God is simultaneously, on the one hand, sovereign and transcendent, and, on the other, personal and interactive with his image-bearers.

Second, the juxtaposition of God’s wrath and God’s love makes it unnecessary to pull verses out of two chapters (9 and 11). Within chapter 11 the tension is already almost unbearable. The chapter opens with a brief historical review. God saved Israel out of Egypt at the time of the Exodus (11:1) and taught her to walk, leading her “with cords of human kindness, with ties of love” (11:4). But the more he lavished on Israel the more they turned away (11:2), and they utterly refused to repent (11:5). So God will come at them with great wrath: “Swords will flash in their cities. . . . Even if they call to the Most High, he will by no means exalt them” (11:6-7). It sounds as if it is too late. And then suddenly, almost as if God is talking with himself, he asks how he can possibly give them up (11:8).

What is the answer? The answer lies in the very character of God. He is not exactly like a cuckolded husband. “For I am God, and not man—the Holy One among you. I will not come in wrath” (11:9). Or, more precisely, as the next two verses demonstrate, he will not finally come to them in wrath. They will go into captivity, but he will roar again with the lion’s royal sway and call his children from the west, from Egypt, from Assyria, and they will be settled again. Indeed, within the larger canonical framework, the fact that God is God and not a mere mortal, the fact that both his wrath and his love must be satisfied, means that wrath and love will rush forward together—until they meet in the cross, the cross of the man who was also called out of Egypt by God to be the perfect son, the perfect anti-type of Israel (11:1; Matt. 2:15).

NOVEMBER 6

2 Kings 19; Hebrews 1; Hosea 12; Psalms 135—136

SOME PSALMS GIVE US A glimpse of ancient Israelite worship, and Psalm 136 is one of them. Probably this was sung antiphonally: either a restricted part of the choir, or one part of the congregation in the temple would sing the lead line of each cycle, and the whole congregation would burst out and respond with “His love endures forever.” Comparing 136:18-22 with 135:10b-12 suggests that some other psalms were sung this way too. In Jewish tradition this psalm is known as the Great Hallel, “the Great Psalm of Praise.” The refrain itself celebrates God’s “love”: the Hebrew word is hesed, notoriously difficult to render consistently by one English word. The King James Version opts for “steadfast love.” It is bound up with God’s faithfulness to the covenant, and in various contexts might properly be rendered “grace,” “love,” even “covenant-fidelity”—with overtones of a reciprocal obligation.

What makes this psalm so thought-provoking is not the compactness of the refrain but its connection with a vast grounding of evidence—evidence that God’s love endures forever. The psalm speaks of God’s character (136:1), the sweep of his sovereignty (136:2-3), his creative power (136:4-9), the extraordinary displays of his might when he redeemed his people from Egypt (136:10-22), and his mercy displayed alike to his elect and to every creature under heaven that needs food (136:23-25). Contrast this specificity with more than a few contemporary praise choruses that endlessly exhort us to praise the Lord, without telling us why we should praise the Lord, or perhaps giving us only a reason or two. In the choruses, the emphasis tends to be on worship; here, the emphasis is on the One who is worshiped, such that the worship has the flavor of being no more than the inevitable response to so great a God. The one focuses on what we do, the other on who God is and what he has done.

Some final reflections: (1) The expression “Give thanks” that opens the first three verses and the last suggests more than a casual “Thanks a lot.” It has to do with “confessing” (in the old-fashioned sense), “acknowledging” (with thoughtful God-centeredness), with grateful worship. (2) This God brooks no rivals. He is the God of gods, the Lord of lords (136:2, 3). (3) Informed as they are by pluralism, our ears find it strange to append the refrain “His love endures forever” to such lines as “who struck down great kings” and “[h]e swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea.” But these actions were expressions of God’s elective love for his chosen people. The notion that God loves all people exactly the same way and in every respect finds little support in Scripture.

NOVEMBER 7

2 Kings 20; Hebrews 2; Hosea 13; Psalms 137—138

IT IS APPROPRIATE THAT Hosea 13 should be read in conjunction with Psalm 137. Hosea 13 brings the prophet’s promises of judgment to their climax. God is going to destroy proud Samaria (Ephraim). Similar warnings were repeatedly thundered against Judah, but they showed no sign of repentance. In 587 B.C., God destroyed Jerusalem and the last great wave of people were transported into exile. Here in Psalm 137, the captives from that catastrophe voice their utter despair, and almost all of their focus is on the secondary agents—their captors, the Edomites, the people of Babylon. And both perspectives are valid and complementary.

Here I shall reflect on the four sections of Psalm 137.

(1) The first (137:1-3) is so vivid it sounds like eyewitness recollection. A relief from the Assyrian palace of Sennacherib in Nineveh pictures three prisoners of war playing their lyres while a soldier marches them along; doubtless this also happened in Babylon. The “rivers of Babylon” was a system of canals connected with the Tigris and Euphrates river systems. The “harps” (lyres) were instruments of joy. In the symbolic language of Revelation 5, when the lion who is also the lamb takes the scroll from the right hand of the Almighty, signaling that he is worthy to open the scroll and bring about all of God’s purposes in blessing and judgment, all the “harps” break out; it is a moment of ineffable joy, the opposite of this paragraph.

(2) But the exiles refuse to sing (137:4-6). All of the associations of the songs of the Lord are tied to Jerusalem and the temple. For them, their staunch refusal, even to their tormenting captors, was a sign not only of pathos and heartbreak (v. 4) but also of passion and fidelity (vv. 5-6).

(3) The Edomites had obviously delighted in the destruction of Jerusalem and perhaps helped it along. On this point the prophet Ezekiel has more to say (Ezek. 35; see meditation for October 2). God hates smugness and a vengeful spirit. The judgment on Jerusalem came, ultimately, from God—but he would also judge those who delighted in and contributed to Jerusalem’s fall. One of the ugliest recent evidences of that smug vengefulness within the ranks of professing evangelicalism was the slogan “no tears for queers” after a young gay man had been beaten to death.

(4) At the end of a siege, victorious soldiers might pick up small children by their ankles and kill them by bashing their heads against a wall. What such barbarism demands, strictly speaking, for justice to prevail, is similar suffering. These white-hot lines are not cool policy statements, but the searing cries of moral indignation. We must hear the anguish, before we also hear God insisting that vengeance is his (Rom. 12:19).

NOVEMBER 8

2 Kings 21; Hebrews 3; Hosea 14; Psalm 139

THE FINAL CHAPTER OF THE PROPHECY, Hosea 14, has a gentler tone. It is almost as if the thunder of rebellion and judgment has exhausted itself, and grace triumphs. The chapter begins and ends with exhortation from Hosea. In between there are, first, the words of the people (or, more precisely, the words the prophet instructs the people to say), and then the words of God. I shall reflect briefly on each of these four sections.

(1) Hosea begins with repentance: “Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God”

(14:1). “Return” is perfectly answered by “your God”: the prophet is not calling for some new and hazardous spiritual journey, but for a turning away from the rebellion, a turning back to the Lord they have long known. They must come to terms with the heart of the problem: “Your sins have been your downfall!” (14:1).

There is never any way back without coming to grips with this fundamental reality. Moreover, what the prophet wants is not a mere return to formal adherence to a code of law. He wants them to “take words” with them when they return (14:2). Words, of course, can be empty: sometimes actions speak louder than words. But often genuine repentance demands not only begrudging conduct, but words—not a sullen return to prescribed ritual and church attendance, but the kind of repentance that bubbles up in words that disclose what is in the heart.

(2) And what words should they say? Hosea tells them (14:2b-3). They must ask for the forgiveness of sins; they must ask that God would receive them; they must renounce their political allegiances, implicitly acknowledging that such ties distracted them from trust in God; they must put aside their idolatry and place their hope in the living God. Precisely how should such petitions find echoes in our own lives?

(3) The Lord’s words (14:4-8) are lovely. “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them” (14:4). Then in a series of images God describes the blessings he will be to Israel and provide for Israel. The closing lines of the section reinforce the theological point of the entire chapter: “I am like a green pine tree; your fruitfulness comes from me” (14:8). God has all the “greenness,” the constancy, of the evergreen, and all the nourishment and prosperity of a fruit-bearing tree (cf. Ps. 1:3).

(4) Hosea concludes the book: “Who is wise? He will realize these things. Who is discerning? He will understand them. The ways of the LORD are right; the righteous walk in them, but the rebellious stumble in them” (14:9).

NOVEMBER 9

2 Kings 22; Hebrews 4; Joel 1; Psalms 140—141

THE PROPHECY OF JOEL IS anomalous on several grounds. Most canonical Old Testament prophecies are introduced by prophets who identify the period of their ministry with reference to the reigns of kings (e.g., Hosea 1:1). Joel does nothing of the kind. Nor do we have any idea who his father Pethuel is. Estimates of the date of composition of the book vary from the ninth century B.C. to the second century B.C. Clearly the temple is in operation (e.g., 1:13), but it is uncertain whether this is the first temple (built in Solomon’s reign) or the temple built after the exile.

In some ways this open-endedness is an advantage. While we lose the specificity that characterizes much Old Testament prophetic writing, we gain in a kind of timeless feel that perhaps makes application easier. Almost certainly what precipitated the crisis was a plague of locusts (though some think of the locusts as symbols for a mighty army). That experience has become the template the prophet uses to call the people to repentance in the light of judgment both past and portending. It is also the background for some of the most stirring prophecies of the future, fulfilled in the coming of the Gospel, found in all of the Old Testament canon (see especially tomorrow’s meditation).

The locust plague pictured in Joel 1 is a phenomenon well known in some parts of the world today. Once locusts have swarmed, they are almost impossible to stop. Really terrible plagues of locusts were recognized for what they were: the judgment of God. That is why Solomon in his prayer at the dedication of the temple includes the possibility that God would chasten his people with locusts—and he prescribes what to do about it (1 Kings 8:37). Joel is doing it. He invites the priests especially (“you who minister before the altar,” 1:13) to put on sackcloth, mourn, and declare a holy fast, calling a sacred assembly, summoning the elders to the temple to cry out to the Lord (1:13-14). Joel himself ends the chapter with the cry, “To you, O LORD, I call” (1:19).

This is a good place to reflect for a moment on how we should think about disasters. We should not adopt the stance of fatalists. If we can stop locusts today (satellites can sometimes spot incipient swarms that are then stopped by trucks with pesticides), then we should do so—in exactly the same way that we should try to stop war, plague, AIDS, famine, and other disasters. But in a theistic world where God is sovereign, we must also hear the summoning judgment of God calling his image-bearers to renounce sin’s selfism and cry to him for mercy.

NOVEMBER 10

2 Kings 23; Hebrews 5; Joel 2; Psalm 142

THE OPENING VERSES OF JOEL 2 provide a stunning picture of the advancing hordes of locusts. The last verse of the section (2:11) makes it clear that these locusts are the Lord’s army. The fact of the matter is that “the day of the Lord” in the Old Testament, i.e., the day when the Lord manifests himself, is as often a day of judgment as of blessing and light: “The day of the LORD is great; it is dreadful. Who can endure it?” (2:11). Transposed to the ultimate day of the Lord, the same thing is true: it is very great and dreadful. Who can endure it? Only those who have fled for protection to the security that only God himself provides will be able to proclaim on the last day, when the wrath of God is fully displayed, “I need no other argument / I need no other plea; / It is enough that Jesus died / And that he died for me” (L. H. Edmonds).

Two highly memorable passages follow:

First, in Joel’s exhortation to return to the Lord comes this remarkable verse: “Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity” (2:13). The habit of wearing sackcloth or of rending one’s garment at times of great distress or as a sign of repentance was well known. Like all outward manifestations, however, it could be aped. Instead of being an outward manifestation of inward repentance, it could easily become one more piece of religious cant. God wants a change that stems from within, not an external display that hopes it can wheedle blessings from him. This also suggests, in strong terms, that deep repentance involves not only a turning away from sinful behavior but an emotional, visceral response—a rent heart, a deeply shamed repugnance at previous engagement with sin. It does not produce people who try to negotiate a new contract with God, but men and women who, convicted by the Spirit, cry out in desperation, “What shall we do?” (Acts 2:37).

Second, the closing verses of the chapter (2:28-32) tell us what God will do “afterward,” i.e., after the blessings that he promises to pour out on the people in terms of their homeland and harvest. He will pour out his Spirit on all people (2:28) so mightily that all will have the knowledge of God, all will enjoy the prophetic Spirit. These verses are quoted by Peter as being fulfilled on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:17-21); they are parallel to various promises of the new covenant (Jer. 31; Ezek. 36). See the meditation for July 15 in volume 1, and, in this volume, for August 3 and October 3.

NOVEMBER 11

2 Kings 24; Hebrews 6; Joel 3; Psalm 143

TRADITIONALLY, PSALM 143 IS classified as the last of seven penitential psalms, doubtless because verse 2 admits to universal guilt. Yet regardless of how important that truth is in the Bible as a whole, in this psalm only in the one verse does this theme surface. Most of the psalm is devoted to the troubles David is facing, occasioned by enemies (143:1-6), and David’s growing resolve as he focuses on following God’s way, regardless of what his enemies may do. Some observations:

(1) David’s initial appeal is to God’s faithfulness and righteousness (143:1). This is entirely appropriate, in exactly the same way that the goodness of a potentate or the integrity of a judge is welcomed by those trying to redress a wrong. The difficulty, of course, is that as we sinners appeal to the righteousness of God for vindication, it is easy to remember that we ourselves are horribly soiled compared with the clean glory of the unshielded holiness of the Almighty. Hence verse 2: David acknowledges that “no one living is righteous before you.” This is a tension not finally resolved until the cross (Rom. 3:21-26; cf. 1 John 1:9).

(2) If verses 3-4 wallow in the slough of despond, verses 5-6 find David beginning to climb out. On first reading the line “I remember the days of long ago,” a reader might think that David is succumbing to nostalgia, remembering “the good old days.” But he is not so foolish, as the rest of the verse shows: he commits himself instead to thinking of all the things that God has done—in other words, he meditates on all of God’s creative and chastening and redemptive acts in the past; he sets himself to meditate on the God of the Bible. Nor is this a merely intellectual exercise, like reviewing lists for an impending exam. David knows that this focus on what God has done is a God-given means of connecting with the living God himself, and that is what he wants: “I spread out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land” (143:6).

(3) Three times in verses 8-10 David prays for guidance. Each petition has a slightly different focus. “Show me the way I should go” (143:8) reflects David’s confusion, but also hints that there are unique and individual elements to the guidance he needs (as there are individual callings in the church, John 21:21-22). “Teach me to do your will” (143:10a) now focuses entirely on God’s agenda (“for you are my God”). Knowing and doing God’s will is the very stuff of guidance. “[M]ay your good Spirit lead me on level ground” (143:10b) is to admit that we may trip as well as rebel, stumble as well as stray—and always we need help.

NOVEMBER 12

2 Kings 25; Hebrews 7; Amos 1; Psalm 144

THE PROPHECY OF AMOS CALLS the people of God back to the behavior stipulated by the covenant. But since so much of Israel’s misbehavior is bound up with social injustice, not exclusively individualistic sins, this prophecy includes some of the most incisive denunciation of social injustice found anywhere.

Some preliminary reflections on Amos 1:

(1) Unlike Ezekiel, who was a trained priest before he became a prophet, and unlike Isaiah and Jeremiah, who seem to have been prophets all their lives, and unlike Daniel, whose work was in the “secular” arena but whose training was first-class, Amos was neither a professional religious leader nor a scholar. He was a shepherd (1:1)—as Elisha was a farmer and our Lord was a carpenter.

(2) Unlike the book of Joel, this book specifies the reigns under which Amos preached: under Uzziah king of Judah and Jeroboam II of Israel (1:1). We do not know the date of the earthquake to which Amos alludes, but the two kings in question enjoyed long reigns in the first half of the eighth century B.C., the former from about 790 to 740 B.C., the latter from about 793 to 753 (including co-regencies with their respective fathers). During that time Assyria, the regional power, was not expansionist, so the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel were not oppressed from the outside, and grew politically and militarily strong. (Assyria did not become a threat until after 745, when Tiglath-Pileser III ascended the throne.)

(3) Amos was a missionary, i.e., a cross-cultural preacher of the word of God. He was a shepherd from Tekoa, in Judah, but his ministry took place in Israel. During that time, Jeroboam II, an able man, extended the boundaries as far as Solomon had done. But despite all the prosperity and expansionism, the wealth settled into the hands of a very few. Combined with moral decay and continuing idolatry, this meant that the nation was heading for destruction—and apart from Amos, very few detected the dangers.

(4) Regal king that he is, the Lord “roars” like a lion from Zion, threatening judgment (1:2). His forbearance is running out. That is why one popular Amos commentator (J. Alec Motyer) titles his book The Day of the Lion, and another (Roy Clements) When God’s Patience Runs Out.

(5) The formula “For three sins of X, even for four” (1:3, 6, 9, 11, 12) is a poetic way in Hebrew of specifying four sins. In Amos 1, the sins are the sins of Israel’s neighbors: the God who chastens his own covenantal people is nevertheless Judge of all the earth—a truth both somber and encouraging.

NOVEMBER 13

1 Chronicles 1—2; Hebrews 8; Amos 2; Psalm 145

WOE TO CHINA. IN THIS CENTURY she has butchered fifty million of her own people in the name of equality. Proud and haughty, she maintains an officially atheistic stance, persecuting the church while that church, nurtured by the blood of the martyrs, has in half a century multiplied fifty times.

Woe to Russia. In the second decade of this century she embarked on a massive social experiment that resulted in the deaths of more than forty million people. She subjugated nation after nation, so certain was she that the tide of history was on her side. She became excellent at producing the “revolutionary man,” but could not produce the promised “new man” of Marxist thought, and so hid behind illusions and lies until her economic incompetence brought her down.

Woe to Germany. Privileged to serve as home to some of the greatest Reformers, she became extraordinarily arrogant intellectually, and in this century started two world wars that wreaked death and havoc, including the horrors of the Nazis, on countless millions. Today she builds excellent BMWs but has a materialist soul, worshiping nothing greater than the deutsche mark.

Woe to Great Britain. At one time ruler of one-quarter of the world’s population; inheritor of some of the greatest Christian thought and literature ever produced, she became ever more proud and condescending to the nations she colonized and the people she enslaved. Having repeatedly squandered a heritage of the knowledge of God, she thrashes around directionless and degraded.

Woe to Canada. She likes to think of herself as morally superior to her nearest neighbor, while hiding under the U.S. military umbrella. Sliding toward a moral abyss, her Supreme Court issues decisions that are as morally corrosive as any in the Western world, while the English-French factionalism drives toward enmity and breakup for want of courtesy and respect from both sides.

Woe to the United States. She prides herself on being the only world power left, but never reflects on how God has brought low every world power in history. Her cherished freedoms, so great a heritage, have increasingly become a facade to hide and then defend the grossest immorality and selfishness. To the nation at large, no issue, absolutely none, is more important than the state of the economy.

This is the reasoning of Amos. In Amos 1, he circles around the pagan neighbors, articulating the judgment of God. Here in Amos 2, he moves to Moab, Judah (“Canada”), and finally brings it home to Israel. Israelite audiences would begin with smug contentment during the early parts: how would they end up? And understand: the sequence of my “Woes,” above, could have been rearranged to end with any country—with your country.

NOVEMBER 14

1 Chronicles 3—4; Hebrews 9; Amos 3; Psalms 146—147

HERE I REFLECT ON TWO themes from Amos 3:

(1) “You only have I chosen of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your sins” (3:2). The basic premise is simple: privilege brings responsibility. But the matter runs deeper, along at least two lines. (a) The peculiar privilege here is being chosen to know God, being known by him—and all knowledge of this God entails proximity to holiness. Small wonder, then, that this privilege brings punishment for sins. (b) But this is in any case itself a privilege. Nurtured sin eventually brings condemnation and destruction; sin punished may bring repentance and contrition, which the Lord seeks. Certainly this text excludes the view that being chosen by God means one is exempt from obedience and faithfulness to him, or that God is a big sugar daddy in the sky. As J. A. Motyer has put it: “Special privileges, special obligations; special grace, special holiness; special revelation, special scrutiny; special love, special responsiveness . . . the church of God cannot ever escape the perils of its uniqueness.”

(2) The sequence of rhetorical questions in verses 3-5 may initially seem irrelevant to Western eyes. But doubtless they were Amos’s way of getting his message across to hearers who were hostile both to him and to his message. In a culture that loved riddles and proverbs, his questions drew them into his thought before they realized what was up. The point becomes clearer with each new question: events have causes. If people meet and walk together, it is because they have agreed to do so. If a lion roars, it is because it has killed its prey. If a trap is sprung, it is because some bird or animal has triggered it. If a warning trumpet sounds, it is because a dangerous enemy has been sighted. Events have causes. So Amos drives home two points. (a) If disaster strikes a city, God must be behind it (3:6). Of course, there may be many secondary causes, but ultimately God himself is behind it. Amos does not believe in coincidence, bad luck, or a finite God who slips up now and then. He believes in providence—and believing in providence means believing that in disasters God is speaking the language of warning or judgment. (b) The warnings God gives correspond with real dangers. The trumpet blows to warn of a real enemy. God may provide gracious warning through his servants the prophets (3:7)—and such warnings are not hot air, mere religious mouthings, but flags that correspond with imminent danger. So repent: “The lion has roared—who will not fear?” And don’t shoot the messenger: “The Sovereign LORD has spoken—who can but prophesy?” (3:8).

NOVEMBER 15

1 Chronicles 5—6; Hebrews 10; Amos 4; Psalms 148—150

IN SOME WAYS AMOS 4 follows on very naturally from Amos 3. God has said that the warnings of the prophets are linked with real dangers (3:7-8). Now he highlights some of the sins that have evoked his warnings (4:1-5) and explains some of the warnings themselves and what they mean for the future if they are not taken to heart (4:6-13).

(1) The first warning is to the wealthy women of Israel (4:1-3), derogatorily described as “cows of Bashan”—proverbial for being well-fed, fat, and lazy, rather than lean and tough. These women have used their wealth and position to “oppress the poor and crush the needy” (4:1). The one-line vignette is devastating: they say to their husbands, “Bring us some drinks!” (4:1). This conjures up a picture of spoiled matrons, peremptory, decadent, interested only in being served and never in serving, lording it over their husbands, swilling down their boredoms in booze. So the Sovereign Lord swears “by his holiness” (4:2), which is akin to saying that he swears by himself, and thus by that which is immutable and than which there is nothing and no one greater. He swears that he will drag them away with hooks and chains into captivity, humiliated and degraded, in pain amid the rubble of their city (4:2-3).

(2) In the last half of the preceding chapter (3:9-15), God hammered away at three disgusting features of national life: social oppression, self-indulgence, and corrupt religion. The first two are enlarged upon in the first three verses of chapter 4, as we have just seen. The third, corrupt religion, is now treated with fine prophetic scorn (4:4-5). “Go to Bethel and sin; go to Gilgal and sin yet more”— the equivalent of saying, “Go to Canterbury and sin; go to Baptist headquarters and sin yet more.” (Fill in your own denominational mecca!) The place where, historically, Israel faithfully offered stipulated sacrifices (before the temple took precedence) are still places of sacrifice, but are now characterized by fine aesthetics, religious enthusiasm, and lots of bragging. Where are contrition and the broken spirit (cf. Ps. 51:17)?

(3) In the following verses (4:6-13) God reviews some of the temporal judgments he has imposed on the people at various times as warnings of much greater judgment to come. These warnings proved ineffective: witness the dreadful refrain, “‘[Y]et you have not returned to me,’ declares the LORD” (4:8, 9, 10, 11). Therefore the God of Israel will meet them (4:12)—he will meet them, all right, not in the glory of theophany but in the terror of judgment.

NOVEMBER 16

1 Chronicles 7—8; Hebrews 11; Amos 5; Luke 1:1-38

ON FIRST READING, AMOS 5 is a bit of a muddle. It is made up of such diffuse bits—not only different themes, but different forms and literary genres. The NIV recognizes the point by putting verses 8-9 in parentheses (there are no parentheses in Hebrew). The first three verses are a lament, a funeral dirge, mournfully bemoaning the fall of Israel. Verses 4-6 and 14-15 constitute an evangelistic appeal. This is how Israel must respond if they are to be accepted by the Lord and survive. Verses 7 and 10-13 deal with the oppression and corruption in the land. The last two verses (16-17) return to lament.

It is easy enough to reflect on these distinct themes separately. For example, one might well meditate on how seeking the Lord himself (5:4-6, 14-15) is more important than the aesthetically pleasing form of worship (5:4-5), on how genuine repentance embraces a massive hatred of sin not only at some distant, theoretical level, but at the level of practical integrity and social responsibility, including justice in the courts (5:15). Does any society need to hear this more than ours, where there is less and less interest in justice and righteousness, and more and more interest in merely manipulating the duly enacted laws? And so we could work through all of the themes and forms in 5:1-17.

For some purposes, of course, such thematic analysis is helpful. It finds its extreme in the liberal critic who thinks the chapter is a mismatched pastiche of sources that can be set to rights with scissors and paste. But that misses the genius and power of the chapter. This is a collage, akin to a rapid succession of images on film that dance from war to sermon to funeral to judgment to sin to repentance. Amos’s original hearers were hostile. To retain their interest he had to knock them off base, and the resulting rapid transitions give power to the whole precisely because they are jarring and unexpected. We are forced to think not only about the themes themselves, but about their interconnectedness with other themes.

The direction of the whole is exposed in the final verses of the chapter (5:1827). For all their self-indulgence and moral ambivalence, these people retain a religious fervor that hungers for “the day of the LORD”—as many of us hunger for “revival.” But God says he despises their religious feasts and hates their assemblies. What he demands is implacable: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (5:24). Otherwise “the day of the Lord,” when he truly does meet with them, will be a day of dark judgment, infinitely removed from the paradisiacal light for which they hope.

NOVEMBER 17

1 Chronicles 9—10; Hebrews 12; Amos 6; Luke 1:39-80

TO UNDERSTAND ARIGHT THE POWER OF Amos 6, it is helpful to reflect a little on two themes: complacency and the power elite.

(1) I shall begin by reminding you of a story I told in the meditation for January 15. One of my high school history teachers related how, toward the end of World War II, he had been furloughed home because of an injury. He had seen many of his buddies killed; others were still in action. He was riding a bus in a Canadian city, and he heard an obviously wealthy and ostentatious woman in the seat in front of him talking to her companion. Her husband was making a lot of money in arms production. She confided to her seatmate: “I hope this war doesn’t end soon. We’ve never had it so good.”

That is the ugly face of complacency. The picture of those “who are complacent in Zion” (6:1) is no less repugnant. There they are, strumming away on their guitars, fancying themselves to be gifted musicians like David (6:5), slurping their Chardonnay, the atmosphere charged with their perfumes and aftershaves (6:6)—but they do not grieve over all that is wrong and corrupt.

(2) Virtually every society develops an elite. An absolute monarchy or a dictatorship demonstrates this in obvious ways. Communism, theoretically classless, develops its own elite, its own rulers; the privilege of birth gives way to the privilege of party membership and political power. In a democracy, there may be relative equality of opportunity, but that is not the same as classlessness. Rather, at its best equal opportunity ensures some mobility within a more or less stratified society: outsiders can become insiders, and the elite can be penetrated by hoi polloi. Aristocracy and dictatorship are then replaced by meritocracy; the rule of the rich and the noble is replaced by the rule of the successful and the clever and the vicious. Of course, this is almost inevitable, as many sociologists have explained: for practical reasons, direct rule by the people is impossible. There have to be representatives, appointees, someone to make decisions and effect things—and a new power bloc is born. Perhaps the greatest benefit of democracy is that it provides a peaceful way of turning blighters out every few years, and selecting others.

But from God’s perspective, leadership goes hand in hand with responsibility. Amos 6 is directed against the capitals of Judah and Israel (Zion and Samaria) and against the “notable men” (6:1). The ugly complacency of this chapter is the complacency of rulers and leaders presiding over decadence, compromise, injustice, theological perversity, and their own creature comforts. And where, in the church and in the broader culture, do leadership and complacency join hands today? At how many levels? And what does God think of it?

NOVEMBER 18

1 Chronicles 11—12; Hebrews 13; Amos 7; Luke 2

IN AMOS 7:1-9 THE PROPHET intercedes with God to avert two catastrophic judgments. In both cases, the Lord relents (7:3, 6). But then God deploys a plumb line to show just how crooked Israel is, and promises that he will spare the people no longer (7:6-9). Two reflections:

(1) If God were endlessly forbearing, there would be no judgment. A lot of people think of God in these terms. God is good, so he is bound to forgive us: that’s his job. So argued Catherine the Great. The Bible insists that such a picture of God is hopelessly flawed. On the other hand, if God executed instantaneous justice, there would be no place for either compassion or forbearing delay. This sort of tension is bound up with many virtues. Genuine courage presupposes fear that is overcome. If there is no fear at all, there can be no courage. Similarly, if there is no wrath, forbearance is no longer a virtue; it dissolves into some strange alchemy of niceness and moral indifference. Thus a large part of what these scenes are saying to the ancient Israelites is that God’s patience is running out. The reason God has not destroyed them already is that he is forbearing. But genuine forbearance presupposes that justice must sooner or later prevail: it is a call for repentance before it is too late.

(2) God here answers the intercessory prayer of Amos and relents—as in a number of other moving passages where God responds to fervent intercession (Gen. 18:23-33; 20:7; Ex. 32:9-14; Job 42:8-9). How does this square with a passage like 1 Samuel 15:29? “He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind.” Indeed, if I were certain I could change God’s mind in some absolute sense, I would be terrified of trying, for I know far, far less than he. Yet the “prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective,” we are told (James 5:16-18). The point, surely, is that this God is not some cold, deterministic, mechanical, force. He is a personal God who has ordained means as much as ends—means that include our intercession. If we are to pray according to God’s will (1 John 5:14), then Luther was right: “Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance. Prayer is laying hold of God’s willingness.” It is not so much a means of talking God into a position repugnant to him, as a God-ordained means of obtaining the blessings that God in the perfection of his virtues is willing to bestow. But that perfection of virtues also means that there may come a point when the collision of holiness and sin issues in implacable wrath that will not be diverted.

NOVEMBER 19

1 Chronicles 13—14; James 1; Amos 8; Luke 3

THERE ARE MANY THINGS IN AMOS 8 that one might usefully reflect on: the whining moans that religious services last too long and cut into time better used for business (8:5); the shady practices that boost profits (8:5b); the rising slavery grounded in economic penury (8:6); the bitter irony of 8:7 (if one remembers that “the Pride of Jacob” is God himself); the apocalyptic language of 8:9 (compare Joel 2:30-31 and Acts 2:19-20); the colorful imagery of the “ripe fruit” (8:1-2). But here I shall focus on verses 11-12: “‘The days are coming,’ declares the Sovereign LORD, ‘when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD. Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it.’”

This expresses a “use it or lose it” philosophy. The covenant people in Amos’s day are content not to regulate their lives by God’s revelation, and so they will lose it. Whether “the words of the LORD” refers to messages spoken to them through prophets such as Amos, or to the written Word of God (substantial parts of which were already available) makes little difference. The point is that the people who do not devote themselves to the words of God eventually lose them. The loss is catastrophic. The only adequate analogy is a desperate famine.

It is easy to see how this judgment works out in history. For complex historical reasons, France turned on the Huguenots and persecuted them almost out of existence, so the Bible and the Reformation never took hold in France as it did in England. Sometimes the antipathy toward the Bible has arisen from drift, rather than from persecution. In many Western countries, the public sense of morality was until a few decades ago largely tied to the Ten Commandments. Nowadays very few even know what the Ten Commandments are. The result is not freedom and integrity, but a lilting scorn that flaunts its superiority over something no longer even understood, much less respected—and what shall the end of these things be? So many Bibles, so many Bibles—and so little thoughtful reading of them. The next stage is the Bible as source of prooftexts; the stage after that is the Bible as quaint relic; the next, the Bible as antiquarian magic; the next, implacable ignorance—and all the while, a growing hunger for something wise, something stable, something intelligent, something prophetic, something true. And the hunger is not satisfied.

The only answer is the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer in John 17:17.

NOVEMBER 20

1 Chronicles 15; James 2; Amos 9; Luke 4

ALTHOUGH AMOS 9 CONTAINS some pretty dreadful threats of judgment, it ends on a positive chord in three-part harmony.

(1) The judgment will not be total, but partial. “I will not totally destroy the house of Jacob,” the Lord declares (9:8). The sifting will be very thorough (9:910), but God will spare a remnant. From about the time of Elijah on, the remnant theme gets stronger with each passing century. Thoughtful people receive it and are greatly encouraged: God always preserves some faithful people.

(2) “In that day”—a prophetic formula that is exceedingly flexible in its referent—God “will restore David’s fallen tent” (9:11). God will restore the Davidic dynasty to its former splendor—indeed, to something even greater, as the next verse suggests. Amos was warning the northern kingdom; at this point the Davidic dynasty, however reduced, was still intact in the south. This prophecy does not envisage the restoration of the dynasty after it has ceased for a time to exist (which is the way the later prophets speak, a century and a half after Amos). Rather, it foresees the restoration of the dynasty to its former glory, and more.

(3) The final verses of the chapter (9:13-15) portray such a time of fertility in the land that the reaper is overtaken by the plowman—a wonderful picture of almost magical fertility. The ruined cities will be rebuilt, and never again will Israel be uprooted from the land.

When are these prophecies fulfilled? The first is surely fulfilled in the events surrounding the exile, but similar events have happened many times since. God preserved a remnant then, and he has done so since. Some think that once the extravagant language of the closing verses is taken with a grain of salt, these promises were fulfilled when the people returned to the land after the exile. But the text says they would “never again” be uprooted, and of course they were. So one must conclude either that Amos goofed or that this promise was not fulfilled in the postexilic period. Certainly that period did not witness the restoration of the Davidic empire. So some foresee a literal fulfillment in the future. But Christians will remember how 9:11-12 is applied by James at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:16-17). He insists that Jesus is the Davidic king, that his reign fulfills this promise, that the blessings to the Gentiles hinted at here are being fulfilled in the extension of the Gospel to the Gentiles. This suggests a typological fulfillment of some Old Testament prophecies—an approach that has a bearing on how we read some other Old Testament prophecies as well.

NOVEMBER 21

1 Chronicles 16; James 3; Obadiah; Luke 5

WE EARLIER REFLECTED ON THE judgments God pronounced on Edom, the nation made up of the descendants of Esau (and thus the distant cousins of the Israelites). Ezekiel is very explicit (Ezek. 35; see meditation for October 2); Hosea is less prosaic but says similar things (Hosea 13; see meditation for November 7). Here in Obadiah, an entire book (albeit a short one) is devoted to this theme. The time is after the sack of Jerusalem in 587 B.C., and possibly as late as the early postexilic period when the Jews started returning to the land. The fulfillment of these prophecies took place over an extended period. Certainly by 312 the capital of Edom was firmly in the hands of the Nabatean Arabs. A coalition of Arabs had been displacing the Edomites for more than a century. In the early period they were led by King Geshem, who in about 440 was one of Nehemiah’s opponents.

One must ask why the Old Testament prophets devote so much time and space to Edom.

(1) Swelling through this little book is the theme of God’s justice. If Edom could get away with her triumphalism and gloating, when her own conduct was no better than that of the nation of the Jews she mocked, then there is no justice.

(2) The point can be universalized. “The day of the Lord is near for all nations. As you have done, it will be done to you; your deeds will return upon your own head” (15, italics added). Although in some ways Edom is unique (of the surrounding nations only she had blood ties to Israel), yet at another level she stands as an important model for all nations. When we see opponents fall, we had better recognize that God is the One who exacts temporal judgments—and one day all of us will face eternal judgment. Temporal judgments are thus God’s prophetic announcement of what will happen to all. Jesus argues along similar lines (Luke 13:1-5) with respect to relatively small groups of individuals. Here Obadiah insists the same thing is true at the level of the nation. The Nazis fell: should we gloat and pat our backs in triumphalistic glee? Shall we not remember that Germany was a country of extraordinary education and technical competence, and it turned toward power, expansionism, and cascading evil—and fell? Should we not fear, and beg God for mercy that we might walk in integrity, honor, and love of virtue?

(3) In some ways, Obadiah is a commentary on Amos 9:12. Like Judah, Edom is cut down. Nevertheless the hope of the world lies in Judah’s future, not Edom’s—and that kingdom is the Lord’s (17, 21). That was reason enough not to despise God’s covenant people, both then and now.

NOVEMBER 22

1 Chronicles 17; James 4; Jonah 1; Luke 6

REGARDLESS OF WHEN THE BOOK OF Jonah was written, Jonah himself can be located with fair accuracy. According to 2 Kings 14:25, Jonah son of Amittai was a prophet from Gath Hepher who predicted the military successes of King Jeroboam II (about 793 to 753 B.C.). If one were to play a game and ask what verbal link comes to mind when the word Jonah is uttered, probably most people would reply, “big fish” or “whale” or the like. Yet we should not forget that the big fish occupies textual interest for precisely three verses—three out of forty-eight. The comment of G. Campbell Morgan is still appropriate: “Men have looked so hard at the great fish that they have failed to see the great God.”

The greatness of God is highlighted by Jonah’s twin confessions (1:9; 4:2). Here we reflect on the first: “I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land” (1:9).

(1) From our perspective, as from Jonah’s, this confesses that God made everything, that he is the Sovereign Lord over the entire universe. Probably the pagan sailors did not understand quite so much. For them, the gods have various domains. If this Hebrew claims that the God from whom he is fleeing is the Creator of the sea (whatever else he made), for them the claim would gain credibility precisely because of the storm.

(2) But for Jonah (and for us), the claim has two other overtones. First: not only has God made the sea, but everything; and he is in charge of everything. So there is no escaping this God. Even if Jonah were to find a way to get to shore safely, this God can track him down anywhere. Jonah painfully recognizes that there is no fleeing from this God—if “the hound of heaven” is on your trail and resolves that you will not get away. That is why he invites death. Second: the sheer greatness of God is what makes sense of God’s determination to give the wicked city of Nineveh an opportunity to turn from its sin. If monotheism is true, if there is but one God, then in some sense this God must be God of all, not just the God of the covenant people. This Jonah could not stand. He could see that just over the horizon Assyria would become a formidable foe of his own people, the people of God—and here is God giving them ample opportunity to repent.

(3) From a canonical perspective, here once again is the missionary God—far more committed to reaching toward “outsiders” than his people are. Here too he prepares the ground, step by step, for the Great Commission that mandates believers to herald the good news of Jesus Christ throughout the whole world.

NOVEMBER 23

1 Chronicles 18; James 5; Jonah 2; Luke 7

TWO STAGGERING THOUGHTS COME together in Luke 7:36-50:

(1) The first I have mentioned before in these two volumes, but it is worth mentioning again. Who has the right to forgive sins? If someone robbed you of your life’s savings or murdered your spouse, I would not have the right to forgive the perpetrator. On the human plane, the only one who can forgive is the injured party. From God’s perspective, of course, regardless of how many human beings are injured, the primary offense is against God himself (cf. Ps. 51:4). Thus God can forgive any sin, because he is always the injured party. On the human plane, the sinful woman in this narrative had not injured Jesus in any way. At that level, he did not have the right to forgive her. But the narrative turns on Jesus’ forgiveness of this woman (7:48)—and the other guests, a bit confused by this development, raise the question, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” (7:49). Who, indeed?

(2) The axiom Jesus develops in his interchange with Simon is puzzling. At one level the axiom is clear enough: the person who has been forgiven many things is likely to be more thankful to the benefactor than the person who has been forgiven little. As Jesus says, “[H]e who has been forgiven little loves little” (7:47). The axiom makes sense of the conduct of both the woman and the Pharisee: she is overcome with tears of sheer gratitude, while he is stuffy and supercilious.

But if this axiom is pressed too hard, would it not mean that those who have lived a relatively “good” life inevitably love God less than those who have been converted out of a life of abysmal degradation? One might then argue that there are some benefits to being degraded before conversion: one appreciates grace in proportion to the degree of depravity grace must overcome.

That misses the point. At the social level, of course, the woman’s sins are much worse than the Pharisee’s. But the gradations of sin that one makes at the social level are nothing compared with the awfulness of the rebellion in which each of us has indulged. Simon the Pharisee has not even got to the place where he perceives that he needs to be forgiven. Suppose instead that two people have both been converted, one from a socially despicable background and one from a disciplined and “righteous” background: what then? Both ought to pray that they may see the ugliness of their own sins, whether sins socially disapproved or those ugly sins (often condemned by Jesus) of arrogance and self-righteousness. For unless we are given grace to see the horror of our sin, it is quite certain that we shall never grasp the glory of grace, and we will love Jesus too little.

NOVEMBER 24

1 Chronicles 19—20; 1 Peter 1; Jonah 3; Luke 8

THE CALMING OF THE STORM (Luke 8:22-25) as reported in Luke’s gospel carries special weight:

(1) The substance of the account is straightforward, though almost obliquely it sheds light on the sheer exhaustion Jesus sometimes experienced in the course of his extensive ministry “from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God” (8:1). Not only could he fall asleep in the boat, he could remain asleep even when the boat tossed and corkscrewed in a storm serious enough to frighten fishermen.

(2) The closing lines of this paragraph draw attention to its chief focus: who Jesus is. “Who is this?” the disciples ask. “He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him” (8:25). Indeed, the paragraph kicks off a series of miracles. In the following verses Jesus heals a demon-possessed man (8:26-39), raises a dead girl and heals a sick woman (8:40-56), provides the Twelve with similar authority (9:1-9), and then feeds the five thousand (9:10-17)—which is then an entirely appropriate place to pause and reflect again on who Jesus is (9:18ff.). The one who controls the natural elements and the powers of the spirit-world and who can even overturn death itself is not only the promised “Christ of God” (9:20) but is transfigured before three apostles (9:28-36), who see something of the glory that his incarnate form normally shielded.

(3) But one must also ponder the strange question Jesus asks: “Where is your faith?” (8:25). This must not be misunderstood. Jesus is not berating his followers for some ostensible failure to see the goodness of the world or the inevitability of a happy ending. Storms do kill people; cancer can take out a fifteen-year-old; accidents happen; good people die. To think otherwise is to display not faith but Pollyannish optimism. The faith the disciples should have had is faith in Jesus—not simply faith that he could or would help them out, but rich faith in him precisely because if he is the promised Messiah sent by Almighty God, it is ridiculous to think that an “accidental” storm could kill him and those with him. Their fears betray less than a firm, faithful grasp of who Jesus is. (On this point see also vol. 1, meditation for February 3.)

(4) Now the contribution of 8:22-25 to the larger context is clearer: The parable of the sower looks for hearers of the word who persevere and produce a crop (8:10-11, 15). The next lines tell the reader, “Therefore consider carefully how you listen” (8:18, italics added). Jesus’ real mother and brothers “are those who hear God’s word and put it into practice” (8:21, italics added). So now our text: genuine disciples display their faith when they so broadly recognize who Jesus is that they trust him in all circumstances.

NOVEMBER 25

1 Chronicles 21; 1 Peter 2; Jonah 4; Luke 9

JONAH IS TERRIBLY UPSET (Jonah 4) because the judgments he has pronounced against Nineveh have not taken place. The people have repented, from king to pauper, and God has relented and shown mercy to the great city. “O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home?” (4:2). This is stronger than an idiomatic and caustic “I told you so.” The expression “what I said” is literally “my word”: Jonah pits his own word against “the word of the LORD” (1:1) that he had been called to deliver. He is telling God, “See? I told you so. My word was right, and your word was at best ill thought out.” He explodes, “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity” (4:2). This basic creedal confession is found in Exodus 34:6-7; Jonah cites it in the same form in which it is found in Joel 2:13 (which may be significant: Joel 2:14 is cited in Jonah 3:9). When the prophets want grace and mercy for themselves, they appeal to God’s character; when Jonah does not want grace and mercy for others, he portrays the same attributes of God as fatal weaknesses. He has forgotten 2:1-9, where he recognizes that only God’s mercy could have released him from the big fish. The ironies call to mind one of Jesus’ parables in which grace is gladly received but denied to another (Matt. 18:23-35). In 4:3 Jonah pretentiously strikes a pose: his words “take away my life” are culled from Elijah (1 Kings 19:4)—but instead of continuing “for I am no better than my ancestors” (a confession of personal weakness and failure), Jonah says “for it is better for me to die than to live”— which is nothing but whining self-pity.

There follows the incident of the “vine,” probably a ricinus plant, whose broad leaves provide some shelter. When it dies, Jonah repeats his whining desire to die (4:8), and God repeats the question he raised earlier: “Have you any right to be angry?” (4:4, 9). In rough language Jonah insists he has every right to be angry. What’s the point of living in a world that pops up a ricinus and then cuts it down again, dead almost before it is alive? So God debunks Jonah’s thinking. Jonah shows more concern for the death of a plant than for the death of a city. Yet even here, his concern for the ricinus is not deep, but provoked by self-interest. He views the Ninevites the same way—with no thought for what is good for them, but out of self-interest. It is God, the gracious and merciful God, whose compassion extends to “that great city” (4:11). Reflect on Matthew 23:37-39; 28:18-19.

NOVEMBER 26

1 Chronicles 22; 1 Peter 3; Micah 1; Luke 10

THE OPENING LINES OF MICAH 1 show that this prophet served in the second half of the eighth century B.C. Initially, mighty Assyria was dormant, and the twin kingdoms of Israel and Judah flourished. Israel expanded its territory under Jeroboam II. This book records the vision that Micah saw “concerning Samaria and Jerusalem” (the two capital cities, 1:1). The first oracle was clearly delivered before either capital had fallen. Later in the book Samaria has fallen (722 B.C.) and Jerusalem itself, in the time of King Hezekiah, is under threat. Although Judah was overrun by the Assyrians in 701, Jerusalem itself was miraculously spared. Micah, from Moresheth Gath (a farming village southwest of Jerusalem), is called to prophesy in Judah, much as Amos was called to prophesy in Israel.

Throughout much of Micah’s ministry, Judah was prosperous. The money was invested in land, with the result that a few rich and powerful operators bought up huge tracts, destroying the system of agricultural small holdings mandated by the covenant (2:2; Isa. 5:8 inveighs against the same corruption). But issues of justice and social responsibility were not high on anyone’s agenda. Coming as he did from the fertile lowlands, Micah doubtless saw firsthand how ordinary people were being crushed; he was providentially prepared to utter the prophetic word of God’s own indignation. He attacks the rising selfishness and the widespread abandonment of the standards of God’s law, as he depicts Judah on the brink of catastrophic judgment. Writing a century or so later, Jeremiah records a fascinating report of Micah’s ministry (Jer. 26:18-19); it is probably not too fanciful to conclude that Hezekiah’s initial and powerful reformation owed a great deal to Micah’s preaching.

Above all Micah is shocked at the perversion of true religion (2:6-9). Israel’s election has come to be equated with triumphalist theology (3:11); God himself has been reduced to a grandfatherly protector of a pampered people. Micah therefore warns the people of the implications of covenantal disloyalty (6:14-15). Already in chapter 1 he makes it clear that God must punish his people if they continue in their sin: “All this is because of Jacob’s transgression, because of the sins of the house of Israel” (1:5). Where is the locus of such sin? In the capital cities themselves (1:5b). The odious corruption and faithlessness have worked down from the top.

These driving themes have two critical bearings on us. First, they demand that we become passionate about righteousness and covenantal faithfulness in our own day. Second, they set the stage for Micah’s vision of a promised redeemer (e.g., 5:2).

NOVEMBER 27

1 Chronicles 23; 1 Peter 4; Micah 2; Luke 11

WHEN THINGS GO RADICALLY WRONG in a culture, the problems often become intertwined. Two of the strands are twisted together in Micah 2:6-11. The passage begins and ends with a warning against false prophets, but in the middle of the oracle is Amos’s ongoing denunciation of the powerful people who are stripping bare the powerless (2:8-9).

Begin with the latter. They are so corrupt, Micah announces, that they act not like the people of the covenant, but like their enemies (2:8a). Women and children are despoiled by these brutes (2:9). Children cruelly lose their inheritance while these powerful people become richer—even though it is written, “Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless” (Ex. 22:22-23).

With this background in God’s revelation, one might have thought that the prophets of the land would be calling the powerful to account. Instead, the powerful and the corrupt turn out to be the prophets’ patrons. These prophets still preach, but what they preach is that Micah must not preach (2:6). Micah’s response is blistering: “If a liar and deceiver comes and says, ‘I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,’ he would be just the prophet for this people” (2:11).

We must see how this happens. It is terribly easy for the preacher to shape his message to fit in with the spirit of the age. What begins as a concern to be relevant and contemporary—both admirable goals—ends up with seduction and domestication. This is especially likely when the rich and the powerful are paying our bills. At every level it is easy to fool oneself into thinking that cowardice is prudence, that silence on the moral issues of the day is a small price to pay in order to have influence in the corridors of power. Get invited to the White House (or even denominational headquarters!), and you will never inveigh against its sins. Give a lecture at a prestigious academic organ, and be sure to ruffle as few feathers as possible. Become a bishop, and instead of being the next J. C. Ryle, you sell your silence. Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way. God will always have his Micah and his Amos. But it happens frequently enough that we ought to return often to God’s revelation, to make sure that our message is shaped by what he has said and is neither the fruit of smart-mouthed petulance nor the oily “appropriateness” of those who cleverly say only what people want to hear.

NOVEMBER 28

1 Chronicles 24—25; 1 Peter 5; Micah 3; Luke 12

JESUS TELLS HIS “FRIENDS” not to be afraid “of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him” (Luke 12:4-5). The Gospel demands that we examine not only our loves, but our fears. We are to love God above all others; so also are we to fear him above all others. The reason is the same in both cases: he is God. He deserves our passionate adoration; he is not to be trifled with. His untrammeled holiness evokes our awe; it also evokes our fear. We should love him now, and we will love him without reserve in the new heaven and the new earth; we should fear him, for he has both the power and the right to exclude us from the new heaven and the new earth.

People sometimes say, unthinkingly, that it is a great blessing that so-and-so has died, for he or she was in such great pain during the last days or weeks of life on this earth. But supposing the person was an unrepentant reprobate: is he or she better off now? Not according to this passage. Again, how many of our decisions in life are shaped in part by what people think or, more precisely, by what we fear they will think? In short, we are often afraid of people—if not afraid of brutal attack, then afraid of condescension, afraid of rejection, afraid of being marginalized, afraid of being laughed at. There is very little possibility of overcoming such fear by merely trying to stop fearing. We need to fear something else more, something that will make the fear of people not only wrong but silly. If we absorb the words of these two verses, and fear God above all, the problem will largely be resolved. That is one of the reasons why it is so important to know this God and to think much about him: you will never fear God if he rarely crosses the horizon of your thought.

Lest anyone should think for a moment that the Christian’s connection with Almighty God is characterized by nothing but fear, we must observe that even in this chapter Jesus tells his followers, “Do not be afraid, little flock”—of people, or circumstances, or the future—“for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom” (12:32). Although God is to be feared, the reason is not because he is the meanest dude of all. Far from it: his love and grace and holiness—all of his perfections—combine to provide the most glorious future possible for his own.

NOVEMBER 29

1 Chronicles 26—27; 2 Peter 1; Micah 4; Luke 13

SEVERAL TIMES MICAH MOVES from a long section of denunciation and warning to a relatively short, positive vision of the future. Micah 4 includes one such vision (4:1-5), immediately followed by a description of how the daughter of Zion gets from here to there (4:6-13): she passes through severe testing and chastening, and emerges on the other side into the light of God’s blessing.

The opening verses depict a time when “the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and peoples will stream to it” (4:1). Many mountains in the ancient Near East were sites for the worship of some god or other. To say that “the mountain of the LORD’s temple”—i.e., Zion—is established as “chief” among them and “raised above the others” is to say that the God of Israel has now eclipsed all other gods. The result is that not only does Israel stream back to the site, but “peoples” do so as well. “Many nations” exhort one another, saying, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths” (4:2).

Then the movement of the oracle swings around from the centripetal to the centrifugal. “The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem” (4:2b). The result is that justice prevails among many peoples, and war sinks away, swamped by peace as people, transformed by the word of God, “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (4:3). The vision concludes with the only thing that can ensure its fulfillment: “the LORD Almighty has spoken” (4:4). So now, in his own day, Micah insists that genuine believers not be seduced by other gods, who could not possibly effect this transformation. This is the time to be faithful to the one, true God of the covenant. “All the nations may walk in the name of their gods; we will walk in the name of the LORD our God for ever and ever” (4:5).

The symbol-laden vision is cast in the categories of Micah’s day: the weapons of war, for example, become plowshares and pruning hooks, not tractors and combines. Though cast in terms of the supremacy of Mount Zion, there is no mention of an Israelite hegemony over the nations, nor of the Messiah or the sacrifice he would offer. Even the geography of the oracle looks a little different from the perspective of John 4:21-24. But in the light of the Gospel, the triumph of the new Jerusalem, which brings to an end death and war and all sin (Rev. 21:1-4), is that for which all Christians pray, the fulfillment of Micah’s vision.

NOVEMBER 30

1 Chronicles 28; 2 Peter 2; Micah 5; Luke 14

IF THE FORWARD-LOOKING VISION OF Micah 4 does not include any description of a coming Messiah, the opening verses of Micah 5 redress the balance. The chapter begins with a sad depiction of Jerusalem and her king (5:1). Probably the historical allusion is to the invasion of the Assyrians under Sennacherib in 701 B.C. Although in God’s providence Jerusalem held up, the other walled towns of Judah were breached, and King Hezekiah was humiliated and almost overthrown. Ideally, the king from David’s line was to quell rebellion and disorder “with a rod of iron” (Ps. 2); he was to promote justice by striking with the rod of his mouth (Isa. 11:4). Yet here “Israel’s ruler” is struck “on the cheek with a rod” (5:1).

But the dynasty survives. Without filling in the intermediate steps, Micah the prophet envisages another king from the Davidic line (5:2-4). He springs from Bethlehem Ephrathah, ancestral home of David, the birthplace of his dynasty. From this village, God says, “will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times” (5:2). This wording is not affirming the eternal preexistence of this messianic figure (though of course it is not denying it). Rather, the glorious prospect is grounded in the past, in the ancient Davidic dynasty. When this king takes up the scepter, he will “shepherd his flock,” not in the uncertain strength of Hezekiah or any other king who precedes him in the line, but “in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God” (5:4). And in due course “his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth,” and the secure peace pictured in the previous chapter will be ushered in (5:4-5).

So in the fullness of time, God arranged international affairs to ensure that Jesus was born not in Nazareth, the residence of Mary and Joseph, but in Bethlehem, their ancestral home (Luke 2). It was almost as if Almighty God was going a second mile: not only would it be said that Jesus “as to his human nature was a descendant of David” (Rom. 1:3) and thus an offshoot from Bethlehem, but that he was actually born there. Indeed, when the Magi arrived in Herod’s court to inquire as to where the promised King had been born, the chief priests and teachers of the Law quoted this passage in Micah 5 to settle the matter: he would be born in Bethlehem in Judea (Matt. 2:5-6). Though the village of Bethlehem was entirely unprepossessing (“small among the clans of Judah,” 5:2), with such a son it could “by no means” be considered “least among the rulers of Judah” (Matt. 2:6).

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