Aug 17th

1 Samuel 9     Jeremiah 46     Mark 7     (Click on the Reference to go to the passage)

Being a leader of God’s people is never easy, as Samuel is discovering. You can hardly fault his efforts to dissuade the people from their wish for a king. He spells out the consequences in considerable detail and warns that it will all end in tears.

But the people refuse to listen to him and insist on their own way. Note again how rejection of the Lord’s leader is bound up with a subtle rejection of the Lord himself – the people’s desire is to

be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles

What about God? Is his kingly rule no longer good enough for them? Have they learnt nothing from their roller-coaster ride of military defeat and victory? Have they not seen that their only guarantee of success comes when the Lord leads them into battle? How can they imagine that having a human king will improve their chances?

The extraordinary thing is how graciously God deals with his people’s rebellion. He accedes to their demands and begins to direct events (and specifically donkeys, ironically the members of the animal kingdom which we label as stubborn and headstrong!) supernaturally to ensure that Samuel meets Saul and anoints him king.

However, even if God is gracious and blesses his people despite their sin, there is a clear hint in the text that they have missed God’s best for them. Note the description of Saul in 9:2 – the people will get the king they crave: impressive in an outward, human way but, as we shall soon discover, lacking in the depth of spiritual character needed. [When David is chosen as Saul’s successor, the contrast is striking – there is no human reason to select him at all]

Jeremiah 46 shows the Lord straddling the global stage: kings, emperors, armies and empires are all at his disposal, a point which, as we have seen, God’s people are prone to forget. We’re also given one of scripture’s historical pegs – the battle of Carchemish, in 605 BC, saw the end of Egypt as a world player, and left the Babylonians as the ancient world’s only superpower.

Despite the miraculous signs of the previous chapter, the Pharisees decide that the most pressing concern of the moment is to ensure that Jesus instructs his followers in correct liturgical practice and ritual hygiene. This is a chilling example of something which starts out as a God-ordained practice with a deep spiritual resonance, but which over time becomes divorced from that meaning, and ends up as a dry religious observance bringing death rather than life. Jews were commanded to attend to external cleanliness as a continual reminder of the need for inner purity, and a life lived in response to God’s command to love neighbour and stranger as self.

One of the main reasons that religion becomes a curse is that it always tempts us to limit what we need to do for God. He wants us to show compassion to the alien, the widow and orphan, to take care of elderly parents, and to see the world transformed. But it’s so much easier just to give that dinner plate an extra rinse …

Having exposed the corrupt heart of the Pharisees, Jesus exposes the desperate heart of a foreign woman in one of scripture’s most extraordinary encounters. Yes, he does seem to call her a dog, doesn’t he? Yet we can’t see the tenderness in his eyes, nor hear his tone of voice. Whatever it was, something encouraged her to persevere, and this showed Jesus the heart attitude he continues to seek in those who come before him. We heard earlier in the week that some people took offence at Jesus. Still today he offends the mind to reveal the heart. I know a modern-day Syro-Phoenician woman who came to faith as a result of this text, and is now an evangelist on the streets of Albania.

What does your heart tell the Lord today?

(member of the clergy)

Aug 16th

1 Samuel 7-8     Jeremiah 44     Mark 6     (Click on the Reference to go to the passage)

Samuel is one of those rare characters in scripture who straddle the transition between key stages in God’s dealing with his people. The disciples have a foot in both the Old and the New Covenant eras. Samuel is both the last in the long line of ‘Judges’ and the first of the ‘Prophets.’

It is fascinating to witness the difference godly leadership can bring. Under Eli, God’s people were defeated by their enemies. CS Lewis comments that ‘the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart’ and Samuel brings reform where it is most needed – to the hearts of God’s people. Note that Samuel is clear that only the Lord can deliver them, and only if they are willing to humble themselves before him in repentance (7:3). His leadership is effective – the people follow and obey the word he brings them from the Lord! (7:4-6). He demonstrates spiritual passion and prayer (7:8-10) which is infectious and powerful.

What has changed? The people still face the same enemy, but now they win a mighty – and  decisive: ‘the Philistines were subdued and did not invade again’ – victory, through trust in the Lord alone. Samuel then sidesteps the danger of pride in any human achievement, by ensuring that the glory goes to God (7:12). Many non-comformist chapels took the name ‘Ebenezer’ from this scripture – do we have that same sense as we look back over life that ‘thus far has the Lord helped us’?

Sadly, God’s people are never more than one generation away from triumph or disaster. Astonishingly, the problems Eli had with his sons are now repeated in the life of Samuel (it’s never wise to assume that people are mature and wise and godly simply by association, biological or otherwise, with someone who clearly is), and the stage is set for further calamity, as the people demand a king. What’s wrong with that, you might wonder? The clue is in 8:5, which reveals they want to be like ‘all the other nations.’ If there is one thing the Lord asks of his people, now as then, it is that we be radically distinct from our world. Are there any ways in which we are longing to be like everyone else? The Lord tells Samuel that the people are rejecting not Samuel but him.

A similar stubbornness confronts Jeremiah as, yet again, he faithfully brings God’s words of life to the people. The Lord wants them to turn away from false worship, but the people reply

 ‘We will not listen to the message you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord!’

Rather, they explicitly commit to continue their pagan practices.

Mark 6 opens with a similar rejection of Jesus himself, as the people ‘take offence at him.’ Sending out his disciples in twos, he has them enact, where needed, a vivid demonstration of God’s own rejection of those who will not welcome his good news. Herod’s lifestyle epitomises the rejection of God’s ways which calls forth God’s judgement, and underscores the need for someone to save us from our own waywardness.

The next two incidents would have lit every lightbulb in the memory of every Jew who witnessed or heard about them. The people’s understanding of the ‘salvation’ or ‘deliverance’ for which they were longing was entirely contigent upon the great story of God’s deliverance through Moses in the Exodus. In the recounting of this great act or rescue, two key elements were highlighted – the supernatural provision of food in the wilderness, and the parting of the Red Sea so that the people could walk across on dry land. Here, Jesus provides food for thousands from a few loaves and fish, and then walks across lake Galilee as if it were dry land.

Here indeed is the promised messiah, the Saviour, for all who turn to him, whether a Herod or an unnamed member of the crowd in need of his saving touch.

(member of the clergy)