Sound and Fury...

Luke 2:40-52 – In the Temple…

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 21 Dec 2015 15:22:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

From the beginning, Jesus lives in a tension between his God-given mission and who the world would have him be. Whether we know it or not, we live in this tension, too.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lesson students should:

1. Understand that, just like you and I, Jesus experiences growing up.

2. Understand that Jesus is caught in the tension of who God has called him to be and who the world, or his family, might hope he will become.

3. Realize that we too live in the tension between what God has called us to do and become and what others might hope we become.

Catching up on the story:

This week’s passage is the final story in Luke’s infancy narrative concerning Jesus. Up to this point in Luke, we’ve heard the foretelling of both John the Baptist, and of Jesus. Both men will be born in extraordinary ways. John will be a gift to an elderly couple who had long thought that they would not have children. Jesus will be born to a woman who was not married and who had never been with a man. Both births are foretold by angels.

We should be familiar with Luke’s birth narrative for Jesus. It is one of the longest and fullest presentation we find in the Gospels. Of course, Jesus is born in Bethlehem and is tenderly wrapped in bands of cloth and laid in a manger. His birth announcement is written in the sky by stars and angels, and delivered to shepherds. At his presentation at the Temple, elderly prophets proclaim the significant role that Jesus will play in the life of Israel. This is the last time we will see Jesus for 12 years.

The Text:

This week’s passage begins and ends with a statement about Jesus’ birth and maturation. Luke tells us, in verse 40, that Jesus, after his presentation at the Temple, grows up and becomes strong (presumably in body) and filled with wisdom. This statement, along with the one that takes place at verse 52, forms an inclusio or literary bracket around a statement or story. In this way Luke marks the transition from Jesus as an infant to a growing boy at the beginning, and from a child to a man in verse 52.

Some have speculated that a statement that Jesus grows in wisdom and divine favor might detract from Jesus’ nature as a perfect human. In order for Jesus to take on all of our humanity he must experience all of it, even the parts where we grow. Here, Luke is telling us that Jesus, just like you and I, experiences the growth and discovery that is common to all humanity.

The Passover Festival: 2:41-45

Every year Mary and Joseph made the trip from their home in Nazareth to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival. Passover was the celebration of God’s greatest act of salvation for his people up to that point: their escape from Egypt. The Passover Festival was also one of the festivals that Jewish men were required to keep in Jerusalem. Of course, by this time whole families came to celebrate the Passover (Marshall, 126).

There is no reason to think that this was the first time that Jesus had accompanied his parents on this journey. The journey, during this twelfth year, is significant. At twelve years of age Jesus would be beginning to make the transition into adulthood. While Jesus would not have formally been considered an adult until the age of 13, he would begin to prepare for full inclusion in the religious community during his twelfth year (Nolland, 129). By being a pious family, Jesus’ earthly parents were preparing him well to undertake his God-given mission.

The Passover Festival would have been eight days long. Normally, not everyone who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem would have stayed for the duration of the Festival. Indeed, it was not required that they do so. Jesus’ family, however, has stayed until the festival has concluded.

It was normal for families, on a pilgrimage such as this one, to travel in large groups to and from their destination. It is very likely that the traveling party would have been comprised of extended family, neighbors and friends. Traveling in Jesus’ day could be very dangerous, especially at night. Going as a group also lessened the amount of stress and preparation that each individual family would have needed to make.

We are told that the traveling party sets out from Jerusalem to Nazareth but Jesus is not with them. We are not immediately told why Jesus stays or what he was doing, only that he remained and that his parents did not know it. Before we get too rough on Mary and Joseph, who after all have been tasked with ensuring that the Savior of the world makes it to adulthood, we need to realize that it is very possible that Mary and Joseph believed that Jesus was with relatives or close friends for the day.

On that first day of travel from Jerusalem they might have noticed that he was not there. The text gives us the sense that they began to check with friends and relatives during the journey, but could not be sure he was not with the traveling party until they made camp that first night. It is at this point that they decided to travel back to Jerusalem. Where else could he be?

They Were Amazed: 2:46-47

When they arrive in Jerusalem they spend some time looking for him. On the third day of looking (day one: travel from Jerusalem, day two: travel to Jerusalem, day three: looking in Jerusalem), they find him in the temple. There he was sitting among the teachers of the Law soaking up their teaching and asking his own questions. The educational model used by teachers in that day was very dialogical. Teachers would have used questions posed by their students as a springboard for significant teaching.

Jesus was not just participating in the discussion as other might have been. Jesus amazed all who heard him with his understanding of the Law and the answers he gave. In fact, the Greek word which both the NRSV and the NIV translate as “asking them questions” can imply that Jesus was asking questions that probed and were intended to illicit firm decisions from the Rabbi’s (Marshall, 127). Indeed, Jesus has grown in wisdom and maturity, and he will grow even more by the time we meet him as an adult in chapter 3.

Why Have You Treated Us Like This? 2:48-51

Finally, Mary and Joseph discover Jesus in the Temple. Those who are parents are sure to understand Mary’s frustration. I’m sure that Mary and Joseph experienced both relief, anger and frustration upon finding Jesus. I’m also sure that many parents have uttered Mary’s words in verse 48, “Child, why have you treated us like this?” Even parents of young children are often amazed and confounded by the behavior that their children exhibit. Parents of adolescents surely know how Mary feels.

Mary wants to know why Jesus would do such a thing. Why would he cause his parents such great anxiety? This question sets up the tension in the text. Certainly, Mary and Joseph have done a great job raising Jesus. The have provided him with an environment in which he can grow and mature as a person of learning and faith. They are a pious family who values the story and practices of their faith. Mary’s reference to Joseph as Jesus’ father also highlights the tension in the text.

The tension is, in some ways, normal in the life of adolescents. It is the tension of belonging to two different worlds. For normal, non-Son of God teenagers, the tension exists in finding one’s own identity apart from the one created for them by their parents. The tension here, in this text, is not that normal tension, but the tension between the pious life of his human family and the call of his heavenly Father.

Jesus’ response to his mother highlights this tension, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Two things need to be noted here. First, I do not believe that Jesus’ response is one of frustration or disappointment at his mother’s rebuke. Rather, Jesus’ response is one of surprise and astonishment. “Surely,” Jesus wonders, “you should know that this is where I need to be!” The Greek phrase translated here by the NRSV as “must be” and as “had to be” in the NIV carries with it the sense of necessity. Jesus is really saying that “it is necessary” for me to be in my Father’s house.” This phrase, “it is necessary” in Greek, is employed regularly throughout Luke and Acts to indicate what must take place in order that God’s plan of salvation can take place (Green, 156). In other words, Jesus is telling his mother that in order for God to do all that needs to take place so that salvation can come to the whole world, he must be in that place. Mary, for her part, fails to understand what Jesus is saying. She will, however, continue to wonder at what her son says and does.

Second, Jesus is not negating the wonderful formation that he has received at the hands of his human family. He is, however, declaring, even at the age of twelve years old, which “father” must take prominence in his life. Jesus is declaring that his Father is the God of the Temple, the same God who brought Israel up out of Egypt and established them as God’s people in the Promised Land. Jesus’ first recorded words in the Gospel of Luke are words that establish who Jesus is and to whom he belongs.

So What…?

We are constantly under the same tension as Jesus is here in this passage. There is always a pull from one side, be it our family, our friends, or the culture to which we belong, that seeks our allegiance. On the other side, we have our heavenly Father calling us to posture ourselves so that we can do his will. Sometime we are the ones caught in the tension, other times we are the ones causing it.

We may not know that we are placing this tension on our children. I was lucky. The call of God in my life to become a minister of the Gospel did not put me at odds with my family. They fully supported my call, sacrificing financially so that I might receive the proper education and training. I wonder though, as parents and friends of children, teens and young adults, if we are really willing to always be supportive of our children when they express God’s call on their life? It doesn’t have to be a call to full-time ministry, it may be a call to enter a helping profession that won’t earn them the kind of money we think they should make, but that actively places them in position to bear witness to the Kingdom of God.

If we were Mary, would we have been so supportive of Jesus’ call in life? Would we have actively worked against him to ensure that he is able to live a long and safe life?

Our children, if we raise them right with the help of our church family through the power of the Holy Spirit, will find themselves needing to decide where their ultimate allegiance lies. For some of them, God will call them to do things that we would rather not have them do. We should rejoice when this happens because it means we have helped them into a posture that has allowed them to hear the voice of God. We should also release them into the very capable hands of God even when it is unclear that doing so will bring them harm.

Critical Discussion Questions:

What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

God in Christ Jesus is setting his face firmly toward his mission. Nothing will keep him from doing the will of the Father. Indeed, he will constantly put himself in a posture which will help him know the will of the Father and be obedient to it.

What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

The salvation of our children almost entirely depends on our willingness to give them back to the God who gave them to us. It is so very important that, like Mary and Joseph, we raise our children in a pious environment that enables them to heave the voice of God calling them in life. We must then not be afraid when we discover that they are being obedient to that call, even when it might lead them to do things and to go to places we might not think are best.

How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

We need to be utterly and entirely concerned with the spiritual formation and education of our children, not just our biological children, but the children of our friends and neighbors. They depend on us guiding them into a relationship with their heavenly Father so that they might one day be obedient to him like Jesus was.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. What do you think Luke means in verse 40 when he says that Jesus “grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.”

2. What is the Passover Festival and why was it an important celebration for the Jewish people?

3. Is it important that Mary and Joseph go to Jerusalem every year to celebrate the Passover Festival? How might this have helped Jesus grow and become strong and filled with wisdom?

4. How would you have felt if you had traveled a day’s journey and discovered that your child was not with you?

5. In verse 48 Mary chastises Jesus for staying behind. Was she right in doing this? How might you have responded differently?

6. Read Jesus’ response in verse 49. Do you think his response was one of frustration or shock at his parents’ lack of understanding? Why?

7. The “must be” of Jesus’ response could really be translated as “it is necessary” that Jesus be in the Temple. Why would it be necessary for Jesus to be in the Temple?

8. This passage displays for us the beginning of the tension that will constantly exist in Jesus’ life. It is the tension between his God-given mission and what the world would have him become. How does Jesus deal with this tension in the text? How does Mary deal with this tension?

9. Have you ever experienced this same tension between the call of God in your life and someone else’s expectations of you? If so, how have you handled it? Have you ever been the one placing this tension on someone else? How did you resolve the tension?

Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, New International Commentary on the New Testament, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 1997)

I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1978).

Luke 1:39-56 –Mary’s Song of Hope

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 21 Dec 2015 15:18:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

Mary proclaims what God has done in the past because she understands that what is happening in her now is a continuation of God’s faithful saving acts toward his people. It gives her hope for the future.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Understand that Mary’s song is a testimony concerning God’s past faithfulness

2. Understand that remembering God’s past saving actions gives us hope for the future

3. Be encouraged to constantly remember God’s saving acts in hopeful anticipation of Jesus’ final coming

Catch up on the story:

In the very early stages of this narrative, Luke has been weaving together two separate yet connected story lines. The first story line is that of the elderly couple, Elizabeth and Zechariah. They are from the priestly line of Aaron and yet are unable to bear children. Zechariah, while working in the Temple one day, gets a visit from an angel proclaiming that the couple will soon give birth to a son. The son’s name will be John and he will be no ordinary person. He will be the one who will prepare the way for the Messiah. Zechariah fails to believe and so loses his ability to speak until the baby is born.

The second story line is that of Mary, a young woman who is engaged to be married to a man named Joseph. Mary, who is a virgin, is also visited by an angel telling her that she will become pregnant, too. Only, this pregnancy will not come about by the normal way, but will be a blessing from God. Again, the boy she will bear, Jesus, will be no normal son; he will be called “Son of the Most High” and will sit on the throne of his ancestor David (1:32-33). Mary receives the news with more faith than Zechariah does, yielding herself as a servant of God.

Of course, Mary and Elizabeth are related and the angel informs Mary that Elizabeth is pregnant as well. These two initially separate story lines are now about to come together.

The Text:

The Journey and Greeting: 1:39-45

It is not long after Mary receives the news of Elizabeth’s pregnancy that she sets out to visit her. In those days, young women did not travel once they had been engaged to be married. Normally, an engaged woman would remain secluded in her home until she entered the bridal chamber. She certainly would not have left unaccompanied on what was possibly a seventy-mile trip (Green, 94-95). We are given no specific reason for Mary’s trip. The angel did not command her to go. Nevertheless, her journey to visit Elizabeth fits with Luke’s general journey motif. Narratively, it also helps the reader get a clearer idea of how these two story lines intersect and who the true hero of the story is. Or, perhaps her hasty visit was an attempt to flee some of the shame that came with being a young unmarried woman who was with child.

Mary arrives at the home of Elizabeth and offers a greeting. Upon hearing Mary’s greeting the child that Elizabeth carries in her womb begins to leap for joy and Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit. We can assume that what fills Elizabeth now fills John, too. The Spirit’s filling of Elizabeth and John enables them (and us now as witness to this event) to discern the significance of Mary and the child she carries. As we will hear in Elizabeth’s speech, there is no doubt about the hope that is about to be fulfilled.

Elizabeth’s Spirit-guided discernment also turns social custom on its head. In her world, those of lesser standing, because of age and the like, travel to and visit those of greater standing. The initial greeting is offered by the lesser person, too. For her part, Mary acts accordingly, which causes Elizabeth to wonder why she has done so. Elizabeth questions why such a good thing, that the mother of her Lord would come to visit her, has happened to her. Elizabeth recognizes that due to God’s graciousness toward Mary, Mary is the one who is now the greater person in the relationship. As a general rule, Luke’s gospel will constantly turn social norms and customs upside down. This instance is but one of many.

Elizabeth also offers Mary a blessing. The word used here, “blessed,” is the same word that Jesus will use in the Sermon on the Mount. It is a word that is “spoken over those who are judged to possess what is necessary for a joyful life and especially over those who are the recipients of God’s gift of redemption” (Green, 96). Mary has truly been blessed by God as she carries this child who will be the savior of the world.

Mary’s Song: 1:46-56

In response to Elizabeth’s blessing, Mary sings a song that takes the form of a declarative psalm of praise (like Psalms 8, 33, 47,100, 135 and 136). Mary’s song uses bits of psalms, hymns and scripture that she would have been familiar with since young childhood. The song itself functions a bit like the songs in a Broadway or Disney musical. Songs in those types of productions do not usually advance the narrative, but they do help the viewer understand what has already transpired and, perhaps, offer a bit of foreshadowing. Thus, Mary’s song does not advance Luke’s narrative, but helps us understand the significance of the events that have already taken place.

Mary’s song begins with Mary stating that, on the deepest levels, in her “soul” and “spirit” she is filled with joy. Throughout the Old Testament, the idea of joy is bound together with God’s future saving events. As we have already seen with John’s prenatal leap of joy, the expectation is that God is about to act in a decisive and positive way for his people.

As is normal with psalms of praise, there is the declaration of praise and then the reason is given for the praise. Mary’s reason for being filled with joy is that God has looked on her (and her people) favorably in the midst of their “lowliness.” Lowliness in this context has to do with Israel’s position as an oppressed country at the hands of the Romans. Luke also uses the term in significant connection with “the poor” in both his gospel and in Acts (Green, 103). What is clear is that Mary sees her self and her people as being oppressed, poor and in need of God’s saving hand. Now, she believes, God’s hand is going to act in a mighty way to reverse the situation.

Beginning in verse 48 Luke begins to use a series of verbs (looked, done great things, shown strength, scattered, brought down, filled the hungry, sent away, lifted up) that in Greek are in the aorist tense, or a past tense that is undefined. In some places this means the result of the action of the verb has continuing consequences into the future. In the context of Mary’s song and Luke’s gospel, this string of verbs ties together a testimony about God’s faithfulness with the events that are now taking place. Additionally, these verbs link what has transpired in the past to the hope for what God will do in the future. The subject for each of these verbs is God. God is the one doing the action.

Mary is proclaiming God’s faithfulness in the past. Great things have been done. He has shown mercy for those who wish to follow him. God has shown the strength of his arm, he has brought down the powerful and lifted up those who have no power. He has kicked the rich out while filling the poor with food. All of this God has done because of the promises he has made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to Moses, to David and to those who returned from the Exile. All of this God has done because of his faithfulness.

It would be easy to read Mary’s song as a complete reversal of fortunes where the rich become poor and the poor become rich. “This is not to obliterate the powerful so that the lowly can achieve the positions of honor and privilege to which they previously had no access. Rather, God is at work in individual lives (like Mary) and in the social order as a whole in order to subvert the very structure of society that supports and perpetuates such distinctions” (Green, 105).

Taken as a whole, Mary celebrates God’s work in the past and identifies that what is taking place in her and Elizabeth’s wombs is a continuation of those mighty acts. Salvation, which God brought in the past, is now present in Jesus.

So What?

Advent should be for us a powerful time. It should be powerful for us because we are reminded of all of the ways in which God has acted on our behalf in the past and the effects that those acts have on our present and our future. The song that Mary sings, she sings because she remembers all that God has done, in covenant loyalty, for her and her people. Her remembering helps her make light of what God is doing through her now. Mary’s story is our story. We are children of Abraham. We are children of the covenant and God’s faithfulness to it. God has shown mercy to us from generation to generation. Mary’s song is our song too.

Our celebration of the birth of Jesus is just a few short days away. It is a celebration that rejoices in what God has done through the past work of Jesus. At the same time, however, it is a celebration that rejoices in the present work that Jesus is doing in our hearts, lives, and community here and now. When we, as individuals and as a community of faith, focus on the past and present saving works of God our eyes are cleared to see the possibilities for the future saving works of God. It sets aside the fear that we might have for the way our world is going and places in our line of sight a bright picture of what is to come, the Kingdom of God in its fullness. And what is to come rests securely in the arms of the one who is coming again, Jesus Christ.

Advent is a powerful time for us because in remembering the past our fears are casts aside and replaced with hope, and as the Apostle Paul reminds us, hope that is from God does not disappoint us.

Critical Discussion Questions:

1. What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

a. God is continuing his plan of salvation for his covenant people. What God has done in the past, bringing about salvation for those who are faithful, God will do in the present and the future.

2. What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

a. For both Elizabeth and Mary, their salvation and subsequent holiness is tied to their constant remembrance of the faithful acts of God on behalf of their people. This allowed them to live in hope and the hope allowed them to be faithful and obedient servants of God.

b. So often we forget what God has done in the past and our vision gets clouded by fear. The fear steals our hope and faithfulness to God and keeps us from being obedient and hopeful about the future.

3. How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

a. We should be a people who constantly retell the story of God’s faithfulness in the past, both through the biblical narrative and through the stories of our own lives. God has been and continues to be faithful to us. The phrase, “remember when God did this…” should always be on our lips. It leads us to have hope and believe that what God has done in the past God will do again.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. Mary sets out on a perilous three-day, seventy-mile journey to visit her relative Elizabeth. Why would she do this?

2. Why does the yet to be born John leap for joy in Elizabeth’s womb when Mary arrives? What does this say about who John will be in relationship to Jesus?

3. Elizabeth offers a blessing to Mary and wonders aloud why it would be that someone so important would come to visit her. Why would Elizabeth wonder why Mary would come visit her?

4. Mary’s song begins declaring that her soul and spirit are filled with joy. The rest of the song outlines why she is filled with joy. Make a list of all of the things that she describes in the song that God has done. What portion of those things are done for Mary and what portion of those things were done for God’s people?

5. Why would one who is miraculously pregnant with the “Son of the Most High” recount all these things that God has done in the past? What connection is there between what God is doing through Mary and what God has done in the past as related in the song?

6. In Advent we not only celebrate Jesus’ birth but we expectantly wait for Jesus’ coming again. How does remembering what God has done in the past (like Jesus’ birth) help us view and understand current events in our life and give us hope for future events?

7. As a group, try and compose a poem or song which outlines all that God has done for you in the past. Keep it as a reminder that as God has worked in the past, God will work in the future.

[1] [2]

[1] Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, Sixth Impression edition (Grand Rapids, Mich: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1997).

[2] I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1978).

Luke 3:1-17 –Bear Good Fruit!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 08 Dec 2015 20:42:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

Baptism, the repentance that takes place before it, and the cleansing and rising to new life that takes place in it, are meaningless if they are not followed by the bearing of “fruit.”

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Understand that John the Baptist is a prophet like the prophets in the Old Testament who were to prepare the hearts and minds of God’s people for his coming.

2. Understand that John’s call for followers of God to produce fruit is not just for the newly converted but for those who have been Christian a long time.

3. Discuss what it looks like to produce good fruit as Christians.

Catch up on the story:

The stage has been set for Jesus to appear on the scene as an adult. We have heard all about his birth and what people are saying he is and what he is to do. It is obvious to those who have read Luke’s story to this point that something great and expected is going to come from Jesus. Before we meet Jesus, however, we meet John who is called the Baptist. In the words and actions of John we will get a good idea of what Jesus is going to do. John, it seems, is the last of the prophets pointing the way toward Jesus.

John, if you will remember, is the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth who were at an old age and unable to have children. An angel visits Zechariah while he is working in the Temple and informed him that he would be the father of a special boy. This boy will grow up and help prepare the way for God’s salvation to enter the world.

The Text:

A Voice from the Wilderness: 3:1-6

John’s own birth was something of a miracle, marking him as a significant character in the story. Luke begins this section with John by giving us a bunch of clues to his actual historical and social location. Luke has done this in such a way as to make his readers draw a connection between John, what he will do and what he will say, with the prophets that Israel has seen before. Many of the Old Testament prophetic books begin in similar fashion. There is no doubt in Luke’s mind that John is a prophet who is to prepare the hearts and minds of God’s people for his arrival.

Luke also tells us exactly what John is up to, “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” We are not told much about the actual nature of John’s baptism, how he performed it that is. This leads us to believe that what Luke (and John) find important about the event is not how it is carried out, but rather that what is happening before, during, and after the event.

Baptism was not unknown in John’s day; it would have been one of the rituals a gentile would need to go through to convert to Judaism. As such it was seen as an outward ritual signifying the washing away of sins. Like other similar Jewish ritual washings, the symbolic action would have been deemed ineffective without a corresponding change in inward attitude and external behavior. (Marshall, 135). Luke connects John and his baptism within the general flow of Old Testament prophecy. He does this by quoting Isaiah 40:3-5. John is the one whose voice is crying out from the wilderness urging people to ensure that things are ready for the coming King. At the heart of the quotation is a desire for the hearts and minds of God’s people to be ready for his coming.

You Brood of Vipers! 3:7-10

There is no need to understand this section as all taking place at one time and place. It is rather likely that there were many opportunities for John to baptize people and to proclaim to them who he was and for whom he was preparing the way. John obviously had enough popularity and name recognition that people were coming in waves to be baptized by him.

Verse 7 begins with John announcing to the people what exactly it is that they are to be doing. As prophets do, John knows the context of his people, what they will say, and the difference between what they think they want and what they really need. John knows these people are seeking something –repentance and salvation– and they think it can be found in John’s baptism.

Just what they thought they were being saved from is different than what we commonly understand salvation. While it is true that many were seeking freedom from their sin, the sin of the people was also thought of as having consequences for the nation as a whole: political consequences. For some time leading up to the time of John, Israel had been ruled by the Romans. It was common to think that this Roman occupation was a result of Israel’s unfaithfulness and what was needed was a new Exodus of sorts. If Israel turned and repented, then God would bring about liberation from the Romans.

It becomes clear, as we look at the passage, that some in the crowd believed that if they merely received the right kind of baptism they would be saved from the harsh reality in which they already lived. After all, they were children of Abraham, God’s chosen people, and God had promised to be faithful to them. Some thought salvation should be secure just because they are God’s people. John, however, sees right through this and chastises the crowd. He clearly points out that it is not just the baptism that will bring about their salvation, but their subsequent change of action and attitude.

John introduces a metaphor that Jesus will pick up on and use, that of bearing good fruit. A tree that should bear a certain kind of fruit but does not is a tree that is not worthy of the ground it is using. John says, if you want this baptism to mean anything, then you must begin to bear the fruit that comes along with repentance. Repentance without fruit is worthless, it seems!

Then, John sends out a very sharp warning: even now your tree is about to be cut down. If you do not get it together the ax will strike the trunk and you’ll be cut down and used for firewood. There is no need to press the “thrown into the fire” image here. John is not making claims about what happens to those who are unrepentant. The fire pit is a place you put wood that has been cut down.

What Then Should We Do? 3:14

Realizing that John is indeed right, the people respond by putting a question to John, “What then should we do?” In other words, the people are interested in bearing fruit but they are not exactly sure how this is to happen. What does it look like?

This question, even though it seems so simple and, perhaps, only suitable for those who are seeking new faith, is for us too. Remember, John is not speaking to the unconverted here; he is speaking to those who are deeply familiar with the story of God’s working in, through and for Israel. This question comes from those who are “in” so to speak. Certainly, most of those who will attend your group this week are “in” as well. Let this question speak to them too.

To the first group John responds, “Those of you who have two pairs of underwear give it to those who have none. Likewise, if you have food share it with those in need.” John is not saying that just those who have abundance should give, -they should- he is saying that even the poorest of poor have something to give. If you’ve got more than one pair of underwear and someone needs some, you should give them a pair of yours. For this first group of people, who were perhaps the poorest of the poor, bearing good fruit is taking care of the needs of others.

Luke goes on telling more of the story, showing that it wasn’t just the poor ones that came but even tax collectors and soldiers (probably Jewish men assigned to protect the much hated dishonest tax collectors, or perhaps soldiers in Herod’s army). They came and asked the same question, “What should we do?” John responds with simple advice that should not seem too burdensome. These tax collectors and soldiers were to be satisfied with what they were paid and were to quit oppressing those from whom they collected taxes. Often collecting taxes was a contract job that went to the highest bidder. Payment was expected upfront and it was left to the tax collector to recoup his money from the people. This was often done in harsh and exorbitant ways.

Here, again, Luke places John within the same vane as all of the Old Testament prophets. John is calling God’s people to live with justice, righteousness and faithfulness in relation to their neighbors. The fruit which John calls us to bear is not just morality as we often understand it (a list of don’ts), it’s a way of living in relation to those around us that sees their dignity and humanity and seeks to ensure that others can live abundant lives. Repentance and the baptism that signifies it is not just for purity’s sake; it is also always for the sake of the other.

One Who is More Powerful: 3:15-17

The people who were gathered to hear John and receive his baptism are amazed. Something new yet remarkably familiar is happening through this man. Their hearts begin to stir, and they begin to wonder if John himself might be the one they are expecting. John realizes what they are thinking and puts an end to that kind of talk. He is not the one who is coming. John’s baptism is not the end; it is but the beginning of what God is going to do. Indeed, John says, there is one who is coming who is much more powerful and who will bring a baptism that will be like nothing you have seen or experienced. It will be a baptism of fire, not water. If water can wash away dirt and filth (symbolizing forgiveness), fire sterilizes (symbolizing the transformation of the human heart). The fire that is coming is the fire of the Holy Spirit. And it is for this purpose that Jesus came: to pour out God’s Holy Spirit upon people, and thereby change their hearts.

So What?

For Luke and his hearers John’s “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” is a public rite of washing that represents the opportunity for a new start in life, a renewal of things. Luke is saying, however, that baptism by itself is worthless unless those who receive it “bear fruits worthy of repentance” (v. 8). The change in direction must be validated by changed behavior.

One cannot rest on the fact that one has been “saved” or that one was born into a Christian family or that one has been a Christian his or her whole life or for a long time. What matters is that one responds to the grace and forgiveness that has been received with a change in direction and behavior. One must now produce good fruit (with the help of God’s Spirit of course). What does the production of good fruit look like?

In this current passage it looks like:

· Giving of one’s surplus to those who do not have

· Not taking more than you deserve

· Not extorting money (or anything) from people of lesser authority

· Living with justice and righteousness toward others

In other places it is:

· Loving your neighbor as yourself

· Caring for the orphan, the widow and the refugee

· Living with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:16-26)

It seems apparent that John is demanding from those who have gathered to repent and be baptized that merely being baptized or being Jewish isn’t enough. It translates for us today that things like going to church, being baptized, saying the sinner’s prayer, aren’t enough. What is necessary is bearing fruit worthy of the salvation we have received from Jesus Christ. It is a response to the love and grace that has been given to us that leads us to produce the fruit we talked about above.

Some of us have been “Christian” for so long and our lives have been initially changed. We have been saved from all sorts of maleficent things. Could it be that now we are guilty of resting on our once received salvation? Do we fail to continue to live into our salvation by continuing to bear fruit worthy of our repentance?

As we approach our celebration of the birth of Christ at Christmas, John reminds us that we can never rest on God’s past actions in us or our own past fruit, but that we must always bear good fruit. We must have regular practices in our lives whereby we do the sorts of things mentioned above. We also need to be continually baptized by the Holy Spirit, who empowers us to bear fruit more and more.

Critical Discussion Questions:

1. What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

a. God’s desire and God’s call on our life displayed in this text is the same as it has been throughout almost all of the Old and New Testament. God is ultimately concerned that we live in right relationship with him and others. He is concerned with how we treat one another, especially those who are unable to care for themselves.

b. God is using John to prepare the hearts and minds of his people for his coming in the person of Jesus. God does not want to surprise us with his expectations of us; he always helps us know what it is that we must do or not do to be prepared for his coming. We can hear and know what God desires of us if we are willing to listen and obey.

2. What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

a. Certainly, salvation is God’s gracious gift to us through his Son Jesus Christ. It is the gift of forgiveness of sins, symbolized by the baptismal washing. It is the transformation of our lives, through the power of the Spirit. Yet salvation is never a one-way street. There is always an appropriate way for us to respond to the salvation we have received. In this passage it looks like producing fruit, and that fruit looks a lot like seeking to act with the same justice, faithfulness, steadfast love and righteousness we talked a lot about this summer. God’s requirement of his people does not change with the coming of Christ. Yes, God is doing a new thing, he is becoming one of us, but that new thing that we celebrate at Christmas is so that we can live in right relationship with God and with others, which is not a new command.

3. How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

a. John’s call to those who came to seek his baptism is an appropriate call for us today. We may be baptized; we may be Christians; but are we truly producing fruit that is worthy of our repentance? What this passage calls us to do is to question how it is that we are living our lives, as individuals and as a church, to see if we are indeed bearing good fruit. If we are not, and if we persist in not producing fruit, then our lives and our church will eventually be cut down. All is not lost, however; we are constantly called toward this fruit producing life and it is never too late to change.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. Who does Luke believe John to be?

2. Luke tells us that John came proclaiming a baptism for repentance and the forgiveness of sins. Baptism was a ritual used when someone converted to the Jewish faith and symbolized the washing away of sins. So, John’s baptism was not completely unusual, but it was unique. Why were so many rushing out to be baptized by John?

3. In verse 4 Luke quotes Isaiah 40:3-5. What is that passage about and why would Luke quote it in regards to John?

4. Obviously, John did not come just to baptize. What was the role that John and his baptism were supposed to play?

5. It’s apparent that some in the crowd believed that their salvation was secure because they were Jews and had Abraham as their father. After all, God had promised to Abraham and his descendants that he would always be faithful to them. How might we have similar attitudes to some of those who were going out to see John?

6. After John warns the crowd, they want to know what it is that they should do. John tells them to produce fruit worthy of their repentance. What does that mean? Read verses 11-14 again. What kind of action steps does John tell the crowd to do?

7. John’s call to produce fruit worthy of the repentance is not just for those who are new believers. Those of us who have been Christians for a long time often fail to continue to produce good fruit. Take some time to quietly examine your life, are you producing good fruit? After you quietly reflect, share your thoughts with the group.

8. What are some of the ways we might produce good fruit as individuals and as a church?

Luke 1:67-79 –A Light in the Darkness

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 16:28:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:
Christ has come and is coming again. We are called, just as John the Baptist was called, to prepare the way for the coming of God.

Lesson Outcomes:
Through this lessons students should:
1.    Describe how John the Baptist was to prepare God’s people for his coming.
2.    Understand what it means to walk in the way of peace.
3.    Identify themselves with the mission to which John had been called.

Catching up on the story:
The story of John the Baptist’s birth is, in some ways, plain and ordinary. It’s plain and ordinary in two ways. First, we know it so well. Second, John’s birth narrative is similar to other great figures in Israel’s history where barren parents give birth to a child. Yet, it is this similarity to other birth narratives in Israel’s history that makes it so earth shattering.

The script goes like this: There is a barren couple who are old and well past their prime. Barrenness, the inability to fulfill God’s command to be fruitful and multiply, was a mark of shame. It was thought to mean that somewhere, somehow, someone in the family had sinned and this was God’s punishment on them. Of course, we don’t think like that today. Here we find Elizabeth and Zechariah in the same shoes as Abraham and Sarah. Barren.

Yet, in the midst of Elizabeth and Zechariah’s barrenness they are faithful, just as Abraham and Sarah had been. One day, while Zechariah was doing his duties as a priest in the Temple, an angel of the Lord appears to him and announces that he and Elizabeth will soon have a son who is to be named John. Zechariah is a little slow to believe because he and his wife are so old and past the years that people normally have children. So, he questions the words of the angel. Zechariah’s disbelief earns him the loss of his ability to speak until the day the child is born.

John is born and eight days later, when the child would have been circumcised and formally given a name, the couple’s neighbors and family want to know what he will be named. When Zechariah writes that his name will be John, immediately he regains his ability to speak. All who hear of this story begin to wonder just what this child will become. We don’t have to wait long to find out that this child, like the other children who were born by the power of God from barrenness, will become a great instrument in the hands of God.   It is from dark barrenness of all kinds that God does his most fantastic work.

The Text:
Our text picks up after John’s birth. Luke has already reported for us the birth announcement from God to Mary. When the time came for the child to be born the couple’s neighbors wanted to name him after his father. Zechariah, on the other hand, had been told by the angel that the boys name was to be John. As soon as Zechariah insisted that the boys name be John he was able to speak again. Immediately following his renewed ability to speak he began to prophesy, as he was filled with the Holy Spirit.

Israel at this time was under Roman rule and oppression. They believed that God was going to send for them a savior who would free them from their oppressors. Forgiveness would be given and national restoration would take place. Some thought this would happen in a military campaign, others did not. What was clear, however, is that Israel was also waiting for someone who would herald the coming of this savior. Luke is telling us that this John is that coming herald.

Blessed be the Lord!
This first part of Zechariah’s song, verses 68-75, deal with God’s continued faithfulness to Israel. This hymn begins with a blessing directed toward God. This hymn is often called the “Benedictus” because the first word, blessed, is benedictus in Latin. With this blessing Luke begins to connect the narrative around John with Israel’s past and her hopes and dreams for the future.

Why is God to be blessed? He is blessed because he has “looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.” The NRSV’s translation of “looked favorably” can be more literally translated, “visited his people.” In the Old Testament, when God “visited” his people it almost always had to do with bringing about deliverance (Nolland, 86). Surely, at this point, Zechariah knows some of the significance about what is to take place through Mary. In a very real way God will visit Zechariah and his people. Redemption and deliverance is right around the corner.

In verse 69 Luke begins to make a clear connection between God’s work and commitment to Israel in the past through the likes of David, and what is happening presently. God is raising up a “mighty savior,” literally a “horn of salvation.” The horns of an animal were seen as symbols of power and strength. Here the image depicted is that God is raising up one who will be strong and powerful and will act in strong and powerful ways for Israel. The one who will be this horn will not be just anyone, but one from the house of David. Again, there is a strong connection between God’s saving acts in the past and the ones that are coming.

As we move through the hymn, an element of national salvation begins to emerge. This mighty savior will come and will save Israel from her enemies and from the hand of those who hate them. All of this will take place as a result of God’s covenant with Israel through Abraham. Israel will finally be able to serve God without fear. We might be tempted to read this in an overly political way, that Zechariah is celebrating the sure defeat of Israel’s political enemies. The fact is, however, that by the time of Luke’s writing, Jerusalem had been conquered completely by the Romans and the Temple had been destroyed. Without over-spiritualizing this part of the hymn, we must read it in a future tense. Ultimately, we will be delivered from all things that oppress us, politically and spiritually, but it has not yet been completed.

The fact remains that Zechariah is celebrating the God who has been and will be completely faithful to his people. God has not left his children to die, but has continued to work for them toward salvation and redemption. Zechariah’s son is now an important part of Israel’s salvation history.

And You Child…
At verse 76 the song shifts to speak more directly about John. The language of this part of the hymn almost begs the reader to imagine a quaint scene where Zechariah and his wife are surrounded by friends and family. Zechariah is holding his new son and is uttering this song. At verse 76 he turns his gaze from those around him to his child. Addressing his son, he says, “And you, child…” Every parent spends some time gazing at their newborn child and wonders what they will one day become. What an amazing thing it must have been for Zechariah to look down on his child and know that the life that he holds will be used in a special way by God.

“And you, child will be called prophet of the Most High…” Here we begin to learn about who John will be and what he will do. Whereas Luke refers to Jesus in 1:32 as “Son of the Most High,” John will be Jesus’ prophet, specifically the one who is called to go before this coming King Jesus. Just as an earthly king would send representatives ahead of him to ensure that residents of a town he planned to visit would be well prepared for his arriving, here God is sending John ahead to prepare his people for the coming of God’s visit in Jesus Christ.

How is it that John will prepare God’s people for God’s coming visit? Zechariah tells us through a series of infinitives: John is going “to give knowledge of salvation…” “to give light…” and “to guide…” First, Zechariah tells us that John will give to the people knowledge of salvation. The phrase, “knowledge of salvation” may be a bit misleading for us. It does not mean that John merely proclaims that salvation is coming or outlines the way in which salvation can be achieved. That salvation was coming and specific ways in which it could be received was already known in Israel. Rather, the phrase “knowledge of salvation,” is a Hebrew idiom that deals more with the actual experience of salvation. John will not, in his own power, grant people salvation, but will practically lead people through the experience of salvation (Nolland, 89). John will do this through his preaching and his leading of people to baptism. As we look at the second part of verse 77, we notice that this knowledge of salvation will lead to the forgiveness of sins. Again, John is not forgiving sins, he is leading people to an experience of God’s salvation and through that salvation their forgiveness of sins.

The second infinitive is found in verse 79 but must be kept with the preceding verse, as the reason for the giving of the light is given there. It must be noted, however, that John is not the one giving the light, as our English translation might suggest. God is giving the light, but John is the one focusing it on God’s people. John’s job is to prepare the light, to present the light in such a way that the people will recognize it for what it is.

Verse 78 points to the reason for the song, for John’s birth and for Jesus’ coming. God, in his “tender mercy,” has decided to visit us (the NRSV’s “break upon us” is the translation for the same word we discussed above in verse 68, “visit.” Remember there that God’s visiting carries with it a sense of God’s immediate action for the ones he is visiting). It is through God’s compassion and tender mercy for his people that God decides to initiate his visit to us in the person of Jesus. This visit will be like the coming dawn after a great, dark and hopeless night. Those who sit in the shadow of death will not have that shadow removed from them. The light is coming and with the light comes life.

The third infinitive, “to guide,” works off the second. In a world filled with darkness it is hard to find one’s way. There are many obstacles in the path and, if one is not careful, the wrong step can lead to death. Here, the giving of the light will allow John to help guide God’s people in the way of peace. Here “peace” is not just the absence of conflict; it is a state of being that is marked by blessing and favor from God. The way of peace that is described here is the fulfillment of the Jewish greeting, shalom. Shalom is the way things are supposed to be, it is the time and place and way of being that sees all things working for the glory of God their creator.

John, this prophet of the Most High, has been called to prepare God’s people for God’s coming by leading people to an actual experience of salvation and forgiveness that is present in this dark and chaotic world because of the great and tender mercy of God. The light that John prepares the people to receive will be the light that fights backs the darkness of death and sin, the light that leads us to walk in the path of justice and righteousness. This light, which dawns with the birth of Jesus, will guide our feet so that we might discover peace, God’s shalom, his hope for the whole world.

So What?
I wonder if you and I aren’t called, by virtue of our baptism in Christ Jesus, to enact a ministry somewhat like John’s? I wonder if, as we emerge from those baptismal waters as children of God, we could hear the words of God speaking to us that we “will go before the Lord to prepare his ways…?”

I don’t mean to say that we will be prophets, predicting future events. I do mean that as we celebrate Christ’s first coming, and eagerly anticipate his second coming, we might lead God’s children –especially those lost ones– to experience God’s salvation and forgiveness. This is more than just a verbal proclamation, but an actual concrete and physical leading of people to salvation. I wonder if, this Advent season and beyond, we can become the kind of people who actively seek out and draw those who are sitting in the shadow of death into the dawning light of Christ? I wonder if we can be a church that actively seeks out the way of peace, the way of God’s shalom, the way things should be, and lead others to that path, too? By the grace of God, we will.

Critical Discussion Questions:

What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

God is fulfilling his promises to God’s people. Full and final salvation for God’s people is coming in and through the birth of Jesus. But God’s faithfulness is not just motivated by a need to keep covenant, but also by a great sense of compassion and mercy for the world. God’s salvation and light is coming because God is faithful and merciful.

What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

A people who are holy will engage in a ministry that prepares the way for Christ’s second coming. A holy people will be like John the Baptist. We will lead people to the actual experience of salvation and forgiveness, we will share God’s tender mercy with those who need it, we will direct God’s good and life-giving light to those who sit in the shadow of death, we will seek to walk in the way of peace and begin to lead others down that path, too.

How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

I think this passage asks us to evaluate if we are messengers of God’s coming like John was. It asks us to be a people who actively prepare the way for Christ’s continual coming in the Holy Spirit and his second coming.

Specific Discussion Questions:
Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

In verse 68 the text says that God has “looked favorably on his people.” The original Greek’s sense is that God has “visited” his people. In the Old Testament when God “visited” his people it meant that God was about to actively work for the benefit of God’s people. What stories in the Old Testament might be examples of God “visiting” his people? How might those stories be similar to what’s happening here in Luke?
Verses 68-75 serves as a brief summery of God’s relationship with Israel to this point. Why would Zechariah give such a summary? How might what God is going to do here through Mary and John connect to all that has gone before?
Why is John being called to “go before the Lord to prepare his ways?”
What does it mean to “give knowledge of salvation to his people?” In what ways might you give others knowledge of salvation?
What does it look like, for us and those around us today, to “sit in darkness and the shadow of death?” How might the dawning light of Christ help those who sit in the shadow of death?
John is said to help us walk in “the way of peace.” Peace here is more than just the absence of conflict; it is the wholeness that comes from living in a state of blessing by God. For the Jews, peace was encapsulated in the idea of “shalom.” What is shalom? How might we, as a church, walk in and help others walk in the way of shalom?
John was a special character in the story of God’s salvation for humanity, yet we may be called to be like John in the way he prepared the way for the coming of Jesus. Using this passage, how might we take up a role similar to John’s? How might we prepare people to receive Christ as he continues to visit us here and now?
Are you actively leading people to experience God’s salvation? Why or why not?

Jeremiah 33:14-17 –Hope in Exile

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 19:54:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:
We are in exile waiting hopefully for our king to come again. We must wait while proclaiming with our voice and our actions God’s desire for justice and righteousness.

Lesson Outcomes:
Through this lessons students should

Recognize that the church in America is in exile.
Identify the season of Advent as a time of active and hopeful waiting.
Understand that our King has come and is coming again to finally and fully establish justice and righteousness.

Catching up on the story:
Jeremiah, a prophet from the southern nation of Judah leading up to and during the Babylonian invasion of Judah, is spoken to by God while in prison in the court of the guard. God calls to Jeremiah and encourages him to seek God, calling on his name, so that God might reveal to him things that are hidden and secret. Jeremiah must have complied because what follows is a series of promissory oracles which detail a positive future for Israel and Judah.

A bleak vision filled with destruction is painted for us first. This vision will contrast with the promises that God will make to Jeremiah for Israel and Judah. A current detail of the destruction and despair that Judah has just or will experience is crucial for the message of hope that Jeremiah now brings.

As we get ready to look at this text two things are important to note. First, the promises that God will make in the following section concern the historical and sociopolitical future of the community. Second, these promises are voiced and heard in the context of exile. What Israel hears here is not predicated on their current circumstances, which aren’t good. Rather they are heard and then proclaimed in spite of those circumstances. God will bring about for God’s people what they have tried but failed to secure for themselves: safety, health, peace and a bright future.

The Text:
The text we are concerned with, verses 14-17, fall in a section of promissory utterances delivered by God to Jeremiah for the people. Verses 14-17 tell of the renewal of the monarchy. Only, this new monarchy will be unlike the kings who have gone before.

This promissory utterance begins with the formulaic words, “The days are surely coming…” Often when we hear these types of words what follows is dark and foreboding. Here, however, that is not the case. The formulaic statement jumps right into words which bring hope and comfort to a people in exile. The days are surely coming, says God, when God will fulfill his promise to Israel and to Judah of a king who will be in the line of David. This promise, which we find in Jeremiah 23:5-6, is not just for a king who will once again rule over Israel in Jerusalem. It is a promise for a king who will be like David, a man after God’s own heart.

Jeremiah describes this king as a righteous branch. Imagine that the kings of Israel from David on are represented by a tree. David would be the trunk and those kings that followed him, both good and bad, would be the branches. The exile amounts to a cutting down of this royal tree. The branches were dead and lifeless and so the tree must be cut down leaving only a stump. Yet God has no intentions of abandoning this stump or removing it completely. Instead, Jeremiah tells us, new growth will spring from that previously lifeless tree. This new growth will not take place because of anything that anyone in Judah, Israel or elsewhere does; the new growth will happen because God has decided, in his faithfulness, that it will happen.

Notice, however, how Jeremiah describes the branch. It will not be like the branches that died and caused the tree to be cut down in the first place. Rather, it will be a righteous branch. This righteous branch will work for justice and righteousness in the land, things that have been absent for a very long time. Now, we have encountered these words, righteousness and justice, before in the context of Israel’s unfaithfulness. Think back to our study of Hosea chapter 2. Israel, who had been so unfaithful, will not be abandoned by God. God was going to woo them back. God proclaims that he will pay the “bride price” for her. Only the price will not be livestock or money, but will be righteousness, justice, steadfast love, mercy and faithfulness. We said that those things that God had given Israel for her hand in marriage were the very same things she was to give God back in return. Now, Jeremiah joins in and echoes Hosea’s call for the people, beginning with their king, to live with justice and righteousness.

These two concepts, justice and righteousness, are complimentary. It would be hard to have one without the other. Justice deals with the rights and integrity of relationships within society and on a personal level. God will work on Israel’s behalf to ensure that she receives fair treatment and has dignity as persons created in his image. A king who seeks justice will be a king that works to ensure that people, especially those prone to mistreatment, the poor and marginalized, receive fair and proper treatment. Righteousness, on the other hand, is characterized by actions taken so that others may experience wholeness and wellbeing, as we seek to live in right relationship with them. God will act on Israel’s behalf so that she might experience wholeness.

So What?
After reading these words of hope we might remember that Israel has been destroyed and Judah is carried off into exile. David’s line is essentially cut off. Jerusalem will be destroyed and so will the temple. A political king, one from David’s line, never returns to Jerusalem even though it, along with the temple, will be rebuilt. This passage, then, is often read in the light of the hopeful expectation for the messiah. Those who return from exile will cling to promises like these in hope that, one day, God will restore Israel to her former glory.

Often times, though, we take the promises of God and reshape them to fit our own preferred future. This is certainly what Israel did. As we begin the season of Advent, this righteous branch that God will cause to spring up is none other than Jesus Christ. This king comes to us to lead us in justice and righteousness in the midst of our own exile. We may not experience exile as Israel did--our homes have not been destroyed and we have not been carried off to a foreign land--but the church is in exile anyway. The church no longer possesses the kind of power it once had in society and we are increasingly living in a post-Christian world. At times it feels like we are strangers in a foreign land. And that’s ok. Because it is in this place of exile that we hear these words of hope: A king is coming. Not just any king, but a king who will lead us in justice and righteousness, both in the future and here and now.

In exile we have two choices. First, we can constantly lament our situation. We can wallow in pessimism and worry. Or, we can embrace the hope that our righteous king has come and will one day come again. The embrace of this kind of hope leads us out to proclaim, alongside Jeremiah, that all is not lost. It is not just a verbal proclamation we are called to, however. The words used to describe the king in whom we hope, justice and righteousness, are active and relational terms. May we be a place and a people who not only proclaim the hope of our coming king with our voices, but with our actions, through our care for one another and through our care for the world around us.

Critical Discussion Questions:

What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

In the context of all that surrounds these short verses we are reminded that God is continuing his faithfulness to those whom he has created in his own image. This continuing faithfulness is most evident when we think that all is dead and lost. It is out of nothing that God created the world and it will be through seemingly dead and hopeless situations that God restores the world.

What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

We are called to enact the same justice and righteousness that our king enacts. If the king comes to establish those things, and we subject ourselves to this king, then we must act in the same kind of ways. We are saved because Christ comes to enact justice and righteousness, and we become holy by allowing the Spirit to work through us, transforming us so that we too might enact justice and righteousness.

How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

If we, as the church in America, are really in exile, where we may not be in charge of our own destiny, then this passage calls us to examine how we have been and will continue to react to a place diminished power and influence in this world.

Specific Discussion Questions:
Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

The passage begins with the words, “The Days are surely coming…” What days are those? What is God promising will happen in those days?
Jeremiah is using the imagery of a tree that has been cut down. Who is the trunk of the tree? Who are the branches? Why has the tree been cut down?
The text promises that a king from the line of David will always sit on the throne in Jerusalem. Historically, after the time of Jeremiah and the Exile, a king in David’s line never again sits on the throne. Many after the Exile began to read this passage in a way that looked for a future Messiah. Today, who would we say is the “righteous Branch” that verse 15 speaks about?
What kind of king will this “righteous Branch” be?
The concepts of justice and righteousness are not new to us. What do they mean? Where do we need justice and righteousness to be practiced in our city?
The church in America might also be living in exile. We are experiencing an ever-greater loss of influence in our world both socially and politically. How are Christians reacting to this?
If the church is in exile, what is the church’s hope?
What might it look like for us to embrace the hope of a coming king that Jeremiah proclaims?
Our “righteous Branch” has already come, beginning to establish justice and righteousness, but is yet to come again and finally make all things right. Advent is a season of waiting and expectation. How might we actively wait for Christ to come again this Advent season? Make a list with your group.

Amos 6:1-14 –Arrogance and Apathy

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 13:00:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

Those who are affluent and apathetic about the needs of those around them will be the first to experience God’s judgment.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Understand that Israel is being judged for her over inflated sense of importance and apathy toward the needs of others in the midst of her own affluence.

2. Be encouraged to examine their own life for arrogance and apathy.

3. Discover ways to fight apathy.

Catch up on the story:
Amos has lamented the current state of Israel. He has sung a funeral dirge over the loss of Israel, even though her downfall has not yet happened. For Amos, Israel’s destruction is as good as done. Yet, Amos still calls Israel to seek God so that they might live. Israel is encouraged to seek God, not as she has done in the past, by engaging in ritual worship services at special places of worship, but in returning to living lives of justice and righteousness. God has rejected Israel, and her worship because she has rejected justice and righteousness.

The Text:

This week’s passage can be split up into two sections, verses 1-3 and 4-7. Amos continues to speak using the same themes he has previously used. The affluence of Israel is her main source of trouble. Although in this passage, Amos does not focus on how Israel got to be affluent, but on her attitude in the midst of her affluence.

We’re #1: 6:1-3

The opening, “Alas” (“Woe” as the NIV renders it) of chapter 6 tells us that Amos is continuing his lamenting over Israel. This “woe” would have been a common cry when someone had died. The effect on the hearers would have been one of chill and sorrow.[1] Amos continues to speak to Israel from a place of solidarity with them. While he does not participate in Israel’s injustices, he offers prophetic speech and mourns their fate as one of them. Amos does not stand on the outside looking in, judging from a place of superiority. Rather, he mourns for them and with them.

Amos is mourning because he sees the self-deception that has fallen over Israel. Israel, and Judah too (Zion) have come to believe that they are the “first among nations.” By all accounts, Israel was not the largest or richest or most powerful nation in the world, or even the region. Yet, in their affluence and comfort they began to see themselves as more important then they actually were. Perhaps they even thought of themselves as invulnerable. They “feel secure on Mt. Samaria.”

To counter this over confidence, Amos encourages his hearers to go to Calneh, Hammath and Gath. These three cities were important cities in the region. Calneh and Hamath were important city-states and trading centers to the north of Israel in Syria. Gath was one of the important Philistine cities.[2] Amos wants Israel to have a dose of reality. Israel is small and insignificant compared to her neighbors. In a rhetorical question, Amos asks, is Israel’s territory better than any other? Amos probably would have received a positive answer from his hearers, but the question itself demands a negative answer. In Israel’s affluence she has come to understand herself as overly important and invulnerable.

This first section ends with a lament. Amos laments over the fact that Israel, because she has deceived herself into thinking that she is important and invulnerable to the calamity that fast approaches. “O you that put far away the evil day…” Here Amos laments because Israel’s self deception, her unwillingness to believe that God’s judgement is near, has actually brought that day ever closer. Her arrogance has led her to reject any possible notion of repentance.

Oh Apathy!: 6:4-8

Next, Amos turns to describing, once again, the lifestyle of those who have plenty in Israel. Again, he begins this lament with “Alas.” Woe to the one who sleeps on a bed made of ivory, or who has time to spend lounging often on couch. Woe to those who have the luxury of eating lamb and calf. Keep in mind here, that eating meat was a privilege for only those who had significant means. To have a choice between two different kinds of meat was even more significant. The average person would have only been able to afford a little meat once or twice a year. Woe to those who sing idle songs and have and drunk so much wine that a normal wine glass is not sufficient to satisfy their thirst.

Amos offers these woes, not because fine furnishings, or meat or singing songs are wrong in and of themselves, he offers these woes because the wealthy in Israel enjoy these things while there is great need and suffering around them. The end of verse 6 is the kicker for these two sections of chapter 6, Israel engages in this opulent lifestyle but they “are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph.” Joseph is another name for the northern nation of Israel. A little more literal translation of this phrase would go something like this, “Are you not sick…?” Amos wonders why Israel does not have a strong reaction that compels them to action when they are confronted with the needs of others around them. The point is clear, affluence that is enjoyed at the cost of less privileged people and while ignoring the need and suffering all around is affluence that is to be condemned.

The section ends with Amos declaring that Israel will indeed be first. They will be first to be carried off into exile. Their arrogance, their presumed importance and invulnerability, along with their apathy toward those in need while enjoying great wealth, will lead them to be the first to experience God’s coming judgment. God hates their pride.

So What…?

I wonder if here in America we don’t suffer from the same arrogance and apathy from which Israel suffered? We are indeed an affluent nation. We are indeed an important country in the global scene. It’s not sin to be proud of our country and the things that we have accomplished. We have been truly blessed with what we have, and we should be constantly mindful of those blessings.

But do we think more highly of ourselves than we ought? Like Israel, do we think we are invulnerable? Do we think that because we are who we are that God’s judgement may be a long way off? More importantly, do we enjoy the comforts of our material success while neglecting the needs and cries of pain all around us?

I think we do. Our affluence easily leads us to a misplaced conception of our on importance. Our affluence leads us to become apathetic about the needs of others, even while we have more than enough to share. While our church is moving in the right direction, as we allocate more time and resources to tending to the needs of others, I wonder how much more we might be able to do, personally and as church family?

The challenge of this chapter is very clear. Those who over value themselves, those who become apathetic about the needs of others while enjoying life’s comforts, they will be the first to experience God’s judgment. That judgment might not come for us until the hereafter, but it will come.

Critical Discussion Questions:

What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

God is speaking clearly about what our priorities should be as his followers. Our priorities should be toward those around us, especially those who are in need. Those who think they are safe, because they worship rightly, or because they have amassed a sizable fortune, are not safe. God will judge those who think that they are. God is judging those who do not have their priorities straight.

What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

Holiness in this text is using the gifts that God has given us in a proper way. The gifts God has given us are not just for our own enjoyment but so that we might alleviate the pain of others. As it has been said, there is no holiness except social holiness.

How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

I think this story should lead us to a good deal of self-reflection. If in that reflection we find that we have an over inflated sense of self worth, or that we are apathetic toward the needs of those around us, then we should seek the Spirit’s power to change our attitudes and actions.
Shifting from a place of apathy to one of active engagement is not easy. It takes practice and intentionality. If you cant pray that God would help you not be apathetic, at least pray that God would help you want to not be apathetic.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. Why would Israel have feelings of security? Why would she think that she was one of the “first nations,” first being most important?

2. Why would Israel’s belief that the day of judgment is far away actually bring it closer (verse 3)?

3. Amos describes Israel’s behavior as laying on beds made of ivory, lounging on couches, singing idle songs, drinking wine out of bowls because they have so much of it. Is there anything inherently wrong with these things? If not, why does Amos decry their behavior?

4. Why does Amos say, in verse 7, that Israel will be the first to go into exile?

5. Israel’s sins seem to be arrogance and apathy. They believe that their affluence has made them very important. Their affluence has also led them to turn a blind eye toward those in need. As Americans, are we guilty of the same sins? If yes, how so?

6. Does Jesus take up these same themes? Read Luke 16:19-31.

7. We are an affluent people. How might we guard against the apathy for which Israel was being judge?

[1] James Limburg, Hosea: Micah (Atlanta: Westminster John Knox Press, 1988). 110

[2] Bruce C. Birch, Hosea, Joel, and Amos, Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997, 225.

Amos 5:1-25 –The Dark Day of the Lord

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 14:34:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

Worship and justice go hand in hand. Worship without justice lacks substance.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Be able to define the biblical concept of justice.

2. Be able to define the biblical concept of righteousness.

3. Understand the connection between justice and right worship.

4. Seek to examine our church’s worship and seeking of justice.

Catch up on the story:
Amos has made it abundantly clear that God’s judgment on Israel is coming. It is coming because Israel, among all the people of the world, were God’s chosen and special people. They were God’s covenant people. But they have engaged in oppressive and exploitative behavior so that they might live in prosperity and luxury. It’s not just those who actively engage in those behaviors who will be punished, but also those who benefit from Israel’s ill-gotten prosperity. No one is innocent. Even though Israel has been warned, even the clearest of warnings have not caused her to change her ways.

The Text:

This week’s text can be split up into two large sections, 5:1-17 and 5:18-25. Each section is likely composed of a collection of smaller speeches made by the prophet Amos and compiled by Amos or later editors.[1]

A Funeral Dirge: 5:1-7

Chapter 5 begins in the style of and poetic meter of a lament for the dead given by lamenting mourners. The voice here is that of the prophet. Later on in the passage the voice will switch to God’s. Here Amos lifts his voice and calls the “house of Israel,” the entire northern nation of Israel, to hear the sad words he is about to speak.

Amos begins his funeral dirge declaring that Israel is fallen. There is no more chance that she would raise from the dead then there would be for a virgin maiden who has been tragically struck down. In fact, Amos likens Israel to a maiden, an unwed woman who was in the prime of her life with so much ahead of her. Israel is a virgin maiden who has died. It is always sad when a person dies, but it is even sadder when someone so young with so much unfulfilled potential dies. Israel is here pictured as a young woman who has collapsed in a desolated land with no hope of help. Since the following images will be that of military defeat, the image of Israel as a maiden is meant to heighten the sense of Israel’s powerlessness and vulnerability in the face of an enemy army.[2] What may have been equally startling to those who first heard these words was that Amos is not speaking in a future tense. Rather, Amos is mourning as if Israel were already dead.

As we move on to verse three the image shifts to the aftermath of a battle. A city engaged in conflict with another power has sent out a thousand men to fight the battle. When the battle is over they will only have a hundred left. It will also be that way for the city that marched out a hundred men, only ten will be left. The image here is of an utter and complete defeat. Only one out of ten men survives. Indeed, it would be very hard to go out and fight another day with only one tenth of your original army. Israel’s defeat is as good as done. They are dead before the battle even begins.

In verse 4 the tone changes from that of a funeral dirge to that of a summons to seek God and live. If God has already determined Israel’s fate, why then do we have these words of hope? It may be that Amos is introducing a glimmer of hope, perhaps knowing that Israel will not change her ways. It also could be that Amos is using the phrase “Seek the Lord and live” as a segue into a section which talks of ineffectual ways to seek the Lord. For Israel, to “seek the Lord” was often associated with going to the sanctuary or Temple. This was particularly true in times of trouble. If God is in the Temple, then it seems logical that one should go there if one were in trouble. Even now this is not uncommon. Families or individuals often return to church in times of trouble, hoping that some good may come of it. Often times, when the trouble is over, commitment to church wanes.

The verses immediately following verse 4 challenges Israel to seek God, not in the ways they have become accustomed to, i.e., engagement in religious services, but in other ways. By the end of the chapter we will have a clearer understanding of what it truly means to seek the Lord. Bethel, Gilgal, and Beer-sheba are all places of religious practice for Israel. They will be destroyed or will go will into exile. It is not that Amos, or God for that matter, believes that engagement in regular worship activities has become unimportant, rather, for Israel these religious engagements have become ends unto themselves. Israel believes that if they engage in worship enough, it will not matter how they engage in life outside of the sanctuary. There is a disconnect between worship and moral and ethical living, as the next set of verses will display.

Amos is quite clear at this point. There are two possibilities for Israel. The first is death and destruction at the hand of God. The second is life as a result of doing justice. In verses 7-9 Amos describes why this judgment is coming. Israel has turned justice into “wormwood.” Wormwood is a plant that is well known for its bitterness and has often been used as an image for bitterness and trouble. Israel, because of her oppressive and exploitive ways, has turned justice, something that should be sweet and life giving, into something bitter. Justice often denotes a right and ordered society. It refers to the “claim of all persons to full and equitable participation in the structures and dealings of the community, and especially to equity in the legal system.”[3] In God’s eyes, Israel has ceased to be a right and ordered society. The one who will bring the judgment is the very one who ordered the universe in the first place. The one who made the constellations, brings rain upon the mountain, and brings day from the dark night. The God of order now brings punishment on a people who have brought about disorder.

Verses 10-13 again stress Israel’s sins. The city gate was a place where the elders of the town mediated disputes. It has ceased, however, to be a place where justice could be found. Those who speak truth at the gate of the city are hated. Part of a right and ordered society is that justice could be found for all, especially the poor and powerless. Israel, however, has actively denied justice to those who need it most. What is worse, they have denied justice to the poor and powerless so that they could increase in wealth and power themselves. Consequently, they have built houses of stone and they have planted vineyards (a crop of the wealthy because of the time investment needed). Because they have obtained these things in an unjust manner, they will no longer live in these houses they have built for themselves.

Once again, in verse 14, Israel is encouraged to seek the good and reject evil. Israel has claimed that God is with them, only because of their unjust ways, he has not been. But, God proclaims, that if Israel rejects the evil and seeks the good, he will be with them. Seeking good here is establishing justice and righteousness in the gate so that there might be an honest and equitable court system where the exploited and wronged my seek relief.

The Dark Day of the Lord: 5:18-25

The first section, 5:1-17 mourns the loss of Israel because of her lack of justice and righteousness. While she has been encouraged to seek God and reject evil, her fate is all but sealed. The remainder of chapter 5 deals with the Day of the Lord, which for Israel, expressed hope and expectation for the day when God would descend and bring judgment on Israel’s enemies. The Day of the Lord was to be a glorious time, when Israel would be vindicated and all would once again be right.

Amos turns this idea of the Day of the Lord on its head. This day will not be a day of light, as they had expected, but will be a day of darkness and fear. Verses 19 and 20 describe the day as going from bad to worse. The Day of the Lord will be like a man who is fleeing from a lion. He narrowly escapes the lion only to be met by a bear. Or, the man escapes the lion by running into a house. As he rests his hand on the wall to catch his breath a snake reaches out and bites him! The image is clear; the Day of the Lord will not be a good day, and just when Israel thinks she finds safety and respite from danger, she will be confronted with a fatal threat. Trouble will follow trouble and death will not be far behind. Israel thought she was safe and protected because she was God’s people. Only she has forgotten that God’s protection of her has always been contingent upon her faithfulness to the covenant, of which justice and righteousness are the cornerstone.

Verses 21through 24 forms the climax for this section of Amos, if not the book itself. Here God himself speaks to Israel declaring that because Israel has not paired justice and righteousness with her worship, her worship is meaningless. God hates her religious festivals and takes no delight in her worship gatherings. They offer the right sacrifices at the right time and in the right amount but God will not accept them. He will not listen to their songs. They are a useless noise. “God has become numbed to Israel’s efforts to draw God’s regard toward them.”[4]

Instead, God says, justice should roll down like the water of a waterfall. Justice and righteousness should flow through the land like an unrestrained and unending river. Water, even small amounts, has the power to dramatically shape the landscape. Even very hard rock can be shaped by the constant application of water. Righteousness and justice, even in small amount, have the ability to radically reshape our world. What God makes very clear, here in chapter 5, is that Israel, even though she engages in right worship, has neglected justice and righteousness, therefore her worship has been rejected and so has she.

So What…?

This passage should give us pause. It forces us to ask ourselves a very crucial set of questions, Are we like Israel? Have we neglected justice and righteousness? Has our material comfort been purchased at the expense of the ability of others to live above poverty? Do we help perpetuate a justice system that is more accessible to the wealthy? Do we place more emphasis on our worship than we do living lives filled with justices and righteousness?

If we answer yes to any of the above questions, and I think as Americans we have to, then we are in danger or ending up like Israel. The good news is, even though we may live in a land where injustice seems to rule the day (maybe not for us directly, but for many Americans), as the church we are called to work for justice and righteousness. Our worship will be pleasing to God when we are challenged to examine the ways in which our consumption of material goods affects the lives of others. Our worship will we be pleasing to God when we are sent out from our sanctuary to seek justice and to live in righteous and right relationship with our neighbor. Through the work of the Holy Spirit we have the ability to go forth like an ever-flowing stream of justice so that the landscape may be dramatically altered!

Critical Discussion Questions:

What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

God is just as concerned that we live with justice and righteousness, as he is concerned with our engagement in worship. God is bringing judgment on Israel because she had not lived lives of justice.

What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

Holiness looks like allowing our times of worship to prepare us to go forth into the world to seek justice and righteousness. The perfected love of holiness propels us to seek for the good of those who are poor and powerless. Sometimes this means the sacrifice of comfort and wealth on our part.

How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

Justice and righteousness are extremely important to God. Our worship becomes meaningless if we do not live lives that seek justice and righteousness. Therefore, we must constantly examine the ways in which we live to see if we are seeking after justice and righteousness.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. Why does Amos tell Israel not to go to Bethel, Gilgal and Beer-sheba, all centers of religious activity, to seek God?

2. What does Amos mean when he says that Israel has turned “justice to wormwood?”

3. The city or town gate was where the elders would gather to mediate disputes between people. What kind of activity does Amos say is taking place in the gates? What kind of place should the gate be?

4. What is the Day of the Lord and why would Israel want that day to come? How does Amos understand what the Day of the Lord will be?

5. In verse 21, God says to Israel that he hates their festival and solemn assemblies. What has caused God’s hatred? Why has completely rejected their worship?

6. Instead, God wants justice to roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Why does God use this water imagery to illustrate what justice and righteousness should be like?

7. Define both justice and righteousness.

8. In what ways might we be like Israel in this passage? Do we work toward justice? How do we ensure that our worship is acceptable to God?

[1] Hans Walter Wolff, Joel and Amos: A Commentary on the Books of the Prophets Joel and Amos, trans. S. Dean McBride Jr, and Waldemar Janzen, (Philadelphia: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1977), 231.

[2] Bruce C. Birch, Hosea, Joel, and Amos, Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 212.

[3] Birch, 215.

[4] Birch, 219.

Amos 1:1-2:16 –You Fat Cows…

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 14:22:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:
God’s judgment is not just for those who actively participate in oppression and violence, but also for those whose lifestyle perpetuates the system of violence and exploitation.
 
Through this lessons students should:
1.     Understand that Israel chose to walk with God in covenant fidelity
2.     Understand that Israel had saved up oppression and violence not earthly goods
3.     Understand that God’s judgment is not just for those who actively oppress others, but also for those who participate in oppressive systems.
 
Catching up on the story:
Ok, so I’m not sure where this went. The entire file went missing but I’ve managed to find this much, minus this section. I’ll have to work on it later.
 
The Text:
This week’s text can be split into several sections. The first section, 3:1-8, establishes a cause and effect relationship between Israel’s action and God’s forthcoming judgment. Verses 9-11 seek to call outsiders as witnesses against Israel. Finally, 3:12 through 4:3 begin to announce the ways in which God will bring about punishment on Israel. We will examine each section in turn.
 
Cause and Effect: 3:1-8
Chapter three begins with a formulaic pronouncement statement. The words of the previous two chapters should give Amos’ hearers an occasion to pause and consider what will happen. Amos stands and declares that what is about to follow if a word directly from God. They are not his words, but the word of the God who brought them up from the land of Egypt. In reality the line, “O people of Israel, against the whole family that I brought up out of the land of Egypt.” is meant to remind Israel, not just of their past salvation, but of the fact that they belong to a family much larger than themselves.
 
They are no less and no more God’s people than their neighbors Judah. God asserts that Israel, and Judah for that matter, have been in special relationship with God. The “You only have I known” of verse 2 details this special relationship. In the Old Testament the word “know” has two specific meanings. The first is used to describe intimate relations between a man and a woman. The second use belongs to the realm of covenants and treaties. Taken together, God has “known” Israel in both a close and intimate way because of covenant relationship to one another.
 
As Amos reestablishes the fact that Israel exists as a result of God’s good grace and mercy, he begins to remind the people that they entered into this covenant relationship willingly. Verses 3 through 8 describe a series of questions that are put to the listener that describe some cause and effect relationships. Each question is meant to elicit the answer, “No, of course not.” The first, “Do two walk together unless they have made and appointment.” can be a little ambiguous. The NIV’s rendering, “Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so?” is clearer. The effect of the line of questioning is to get the hearers used to answering in the negative.
 
Verses 7 and 8 are where Amos really wishes to make his point. At this point in his ministry some might be wondering, “Who is this guy and why is he talking like this to us?” Amos offers an answer. When it comes to God’s interaction with his chosen people, especially when it comes to correction and judgment in the light of covenant unfaithfulness, God speaks his intentions through a prophet. In these two verses Amos declares that God is about to act and he has revealed his plans to Amos. The burden of the prophet is so great that he cannot be quiet. Those who hear the words of God must speak them. Amos is a prophet of God. God’s plans have been revealed to him and he cannot remain silent.
 
Inspection Time: 3:9-11
Now that Amos has established who he his and why he speaks, he will begin to deliver God’s message. The language in this section is largely metaphorical. Amos commands the leaders of Israel to issue summons to Ashdod (a Philistine stronghold) and Egypt for their experts to come and inspect Israel’s fortifications. Only, what the inspectors are to inspect is not the strongholds themselves, but Israel’s treasures, which Amos declares are great tumults, oppressions, violence and robbery. This international review board is to come to Israel to see how Israel has gained all that she has gained through unrest, oppression and robbery. In fact, Israel has not stored up for herself riches, as she has assumed she had, but has stored up for herself unrest and violence.
 
Because they have prospered through violence, unrest, robbery and oppression, their land shall be surrounded and their strongholds will be plundered. There is a sense here that the very violence and oppression, which came to be housed in Israel’s metaphorical strong holds, will now be unleashed upon her. As the rich and powerful in Israel have treated others, so shall they be treated.
 
Fat, Stubborn Cows: 3:13-4:3
Verse 12 begins a new section with the phrase, “Thus says the Lord.” Israel, in addition to her violent and oppressive lifestyle, has also practiced a form of self-deception. She has fancied herself safe because of her wealth and because of her continued religious practices. She has never stopped worshiping God, but she has failed to remember exactly what that means for her and her lifestyle. In this section Amos strips away those self-deceptions noting that the things Israel trusts to save her will not.
 
The imagery of verse 12 is drawn from the life of a shepherd. A shepherd was responsible to pay restitution for any animal he lost while on watch. The shepherd, however, was not responsible to pay for the animal if he could prove that the death was unavoidable. If an animal was carried off by a predator the shepherd would not be charged if he could produce a little of the animal’s remains. A small part of the ear, or a leg from a sheep, would have been sufficient. God declares that all that will be saved from Israel will be the small corner of a couch and part of a bed. The reality that the shepherd image evokes is stark. The destruction of Israel will be complete. Not much will be left, only bits here and there. The destruction of Israel will also be inevitable. Despite our stories of the shepherded David fending off a lion and bear, attacks and losses of animals due to large predators were inevitable. So, Israel’s destruction, as a result of her continued covenantal infidelity, will be inevitable.
 
In verse 13 an unnamed group is called to bring warning to the house of Israel. The unnamed group may be those summoned to Israel earlier, or they may be those who have suffered at the oppressive and violent hands of Israel. Whoever they are, they are called, not as a normal witness is, to implicate guilt or innocence, but to warn Israel that judgment is coming.
 
Israel has continued to offer worship at the altars of Bethel. The horns of the altar were places of safety and asylum. “In a situation of blood vengeance and punitive pursuit, a fugitive could grasp and hold on to these horns. Because the altar also functions as a place of asylum, the fugitive was there by safe from his pursuers (1 Kgs 1:50; 2:28; Ex 21:13-14).” If the horns of the altar were to be cut of, it would cease to function as a place of safety and asylum. The point is clear; the place where Israel has sought safety in times of trouble will be destroyed. Israel’s worship will not be able to save them. Neither will the wealth that has allowed them to maintain two residences.
 
The beginning of chapter 4 remains part of this section. Once again the people are encouraged to hear what will now be said. Only this time the audience has been narrowed down. Amos now speaks to the women in the crowd. Bashan was a fertile plan known for its pasturelands, which could support cattle. These cows would have been fat and well fed, lacking in nothing. Just who is Amos calling cows? Amos is referring to the wives of the political social elite. Judgment is coming on them because they have pressed their husbands to provide for their every want. They say to their husbands, while reclining on couches, “Bring something to drink!” “Amos charges that their lifestyle has been purchased at the cost of direct oppression and exploitation of the poor and needy (v. 1). Their excesses have denied the possibility of enough for others.” This affluent lifestyle was maintained by the oppressive and violent practices about which Amos has already spoken.
 
In verse 2 we get one of the first glimpses of exile. A power, which God has appointed to do his bidding, will destroy Israel and bust through her walls. They will take these cows and lead them away through the breach they created in the wall. They will be dragged away with hooks. The image here is not a pretty one, but is clear. Those who oppress others so that their desires can be satisfied will not go unpunished.
 
So What:
It will be difficult, in the weeks that follow, not to get bogged down in the rather melancholy and judgmental tone of the book of Amos. What we must not miss, however, is the message that Amos declares is for us too. This message, while dark and foreboding, can enlighten us to our own possible sins and crimes against humanity (personally and corporately). The one thing that is clear from these oracles, specifically the oracle against Israel, is that Israel is just as guilty if not more guilty than the others because of the circumstances from which she rose. It was out of God’s compassion for the poor, the barren and the oppressed that Israel becomes a nation. It is in an act of judgment against a people who had mistreated the poor that God carves out a place for Israel to live. Simply, Israel owes her existence to the grace and mercy of God.
 
We, like Israel, are a people who owe our existence to the grace and mercy of God. It is out of the bondage of sin, out of the oppression of death that we have been saved and constituted a people. But unlike Israel, we must not forget how and by whose hand we became a people. If we forget, in our prosperity we will fall prey to the same temptations as Israel did, the temptations to use and abuse our neighbor instead of becoming extensions of God’s grace and mercy. To whom much is given, must is expected.
 
Critical Discussion Questions:

    1.        What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?
    a.    In the light of Israel’s history with God, God is making a case for the judgment he will bring. God will not allow those who perpetuate exploitation and oppression to go on forever. There will be judgment for everyone who exploits and oppresses others so that they might prosper.  

    2.    What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?  

    a.    Holiness looks like living a life that is free of exploitation and oppression. This kind of life is hard for us to achieve here in the United States. Holiness means allowing the Holy Spirit to challenge the ways in which we live so that our lives might not harm others. It also means actively seeking to fight injustice and oppression here and now.  

    3.    How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become? 

    a.    It is very easy for us to cry foul when someone has actively cheated others so that they might gain monetarily. No one thinks Bernie Madoff, credit card scammers, or identity thefts, should get off scot-free. What we often fail to see is how our own lifestyles implicate us in systems that actively seek to exploit and oppress others. Amos makes it clear that God’s judgment is for those who are implicitly guilty too. We should examine our own entanglements and then seek to change our ways.  

Specific Discussion Questions:
Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

Amos addresses the people of Israel as the “whole family that I brought up out of the land of Egypt.” Why does he do this?
Verse two states that God had a special relationship with Israel. Why does he remind them of that here?
What is the point behind Amos’ set of questions in verses 3-8? What is the common answer that they all share?
Amos calls the leaders of Israel to invite outsiders (Ashbod and Egypt) to come and inspect their strongholds. Why does Amos thing that the inspection will reveal “tumults” and “oppressions?” These strongholds should have held treasures and wealth. Is it significant that they now hold violence and robbery?
  In verse 14 God says he will punish the “altars of Bethel.” Bethel was one of the places that those in the northern nation of Israel went to worship. Why would this place of worship be punished? Why is it significant that the horns of the altar would be cut off?
 At the beginning of Chapter 4, Amos brings a word against political and socially elite women of Israel. Why does he refer to them as “cows of Bashan?” Is this a compliment or a backhanded insult?
What behaviors have these women engaged in that brings them under judgment? What will ultimately happen to them?
These women aren’t actively engaged in the oppression and violence for which Israel is being punished. Why are they being punished as well?
 Like the women in 4:1-3, we may not be actively engage in oppression and exploitation, but how might we be implicitly involved in it?

Amos 1:1-2:16 –Roaring Like a Lion…

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 03 Jun 2015 13:46:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

We are the people of God because of God’s grace and mercy. We are called to remember who we are as God’s people so that we can live in covenant faithfulness with God and others.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Understand the historical context for the book of Amos.

2. Understand that God’s judgment always takes place in the context of a covenant relationship.

3. Understand that we are the people of God because of his grace and mercy and so we are required to live in covenant faithfulness to God and to others.

Catch up on the story:

We do not get much, in the way of biography, concerning Amos. Unlike his contemporary, Hosea, we only get a few lines about the man Amos. We are told, at the beginning, that Amos is a sheepherder or breeder from the town of Tekoa. The traditional location for Tekoa is about 10 miles south of Judah’s capital city of Jerusalem. This area would have been ideal for raising and keeping sheep. We are also told that he begins his ministry during the reign of King Uzziah of Judah and King Jeroboam son of Joash in Israel. This places his ministry during the 750s BCE. Scholars believe that his ministry was not long, perhaps 5 years or so.

Unlike Hosea, who we will study in a few short weeks, Amos is likely not part of the priestly class, nor is he part of the religious establishment. There has been some discussion regarding the nature of Amos’ job as a sheepherder or breeder. If he were the owner of a large flock, or trader of these sheep that he may have owned, then he would have likely traveled the region in the execution of his business. In this way, he may have had some personal knowledge of the injustices he reports in the oracles against the nations later in chapter 1. Amos’ exact job is ultimately unimportant for his mission as a prophet and mouthpiece of God.

While Amos is a resident of Judah, the southern kingdom, his ministry is to the northern nation of Israel. You will remember that, once upon a time, the nation of Israel was a united whole under King David and Solomon. Unfortunately, after King Solomon’s death around 930 BCE, Israel split into two nations, Israel in the north and Judah in the south. By the time of Amos’ writing, Israel is at the height of it’s economic and political stability. Things are good in Israel. There is relative peace and stability and profitable trade with its neighbors.

As peace and stability, not to mention economic fruitfulness, as they often do, caused Israel to become comfortable and forget just how much the God who brought them up out of Egypt had provided for her. An elite economic class grew up and with that group came a steady injustice against those not belonging to this affluent class. Amos is predominately concerned with these social and economic injustices.

The pronouncements of doom in Amos are almost always set in the context of God’s covenant relationship with Israel. The judgment that Amos pronounces is not some willy-nilly decision from God. It is, rather, the terms of the covenant that Israel agreed to beginning at Mt. Sinai. In the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy we find a long list of curses and blessings that are tied to Israel’s behavior. Israel, for a long time, has engaged in the type of behavior that would trigger these covenant curses. Now Amos is charged with bringing God’s case and his pronouncement of judgment to Israel.

The Text:

After the opening introduction that gives us the author of the book, where he was from and the time he was active, we are given another short inscription that announces that what will follow is a word from God. This word from God will be no still small voice. Rather, the words that will issue from God’s mouth will be more like a lion roaring in the wilderness. This roar will have devastating effects on the area around it. This opening poem amounts to a curse announcement. The curses that were laid out in the covenant God made with Israel and Moses at Sinai will now be enforced. This poem also identifies God’s earthly dwelling place as Jerusalem, which was often referred to as Zion.[ For Israel’s part, after the split with Judah, they had set up their own shrines and places of worship, which led to the infiltration of pagan practices and rituals. Because of this infiltration, Israel, at this point had lost most of the idea of what it meant to be God’s chosen people.

Oracles Against the Nations: Amos 1:3-2:5

After the text establishes that what will follow is a pronouncement of judgment issuing from God, Amos begins by speaking against cities and nations that surround Israel. Verse 3 begins with “Thus says the Lord…” This reinforces the fact that Amos is really just a mouthpiece for what God wants to say to the nations.

While we won’t take much time with the specific content of each of these oracles against the nations, it will be important to note a few things. First, all of these oracles rest on the same theological assumption, God is the God of all creation and as such, has power over of all creation and will not tolerate unrighteousness from anyone. This view, that a god could be the god of all creation is a minority one with Israel’s neighbors. Deities were supposed to reign over a geographical area. Nations would have their own gods. With these oracles of judgment for injustice and unrighteousness, God proclaims that he is not just the God of Israel and Judah, but the God of all creation. God has an implicit covenant with all people in all places and he expects obedience to this basic understanding of law and morality. God will enforce these covenantal sanctions on the nations.[2]

This leads to the second thing, the infractions that are listed in the oracles against the nations are sins that would be considered wrong to most people.

The specific accusations in the first six sayings all have to do with crimes in war. Damascus has treated the people of Gilead with extreme cruelty, grinding them as a grain is ground on a threshing floor. The Philistines and the people of Tyre have been involved in large-scale programs of deportation. Tyre has violated an international treaty, the “covenant of brother-hood.” The Edomites are accused of pitiless and ongoing cruelty against a “brother” people. The atrocity of the Ammonites is especially reprehensible: Innocent civilians, pregnant women, are killed by the sword, taking two live at one blow….The Moabites are accused of extending their atrocities beyond death, burning human bones to make consumer products…[3]

These crimes were not isolated incidents. They were part of repeated patterns of violence and injustice committed by these neighboring nations. As we will see in just a minute with Judah and Israel, God often allows us to go a very long way off from his covenantal plans for us before bringing about the required judgment for our sins. These nations did not just commit one sin, but have, since at least the time of Solomon’s death, been engaged in systematic and repeated abuses against other people.

Another thing to note about these sayings against the nations is that God himself will be the one who brings the judgment and destruction. Notice in seven of the eight sayings the first person singular “I will bring…” The destruction will come in the form fire, presumably the fire of war set by nations who God will use to bring his punishment. None of the countries cited will be able to stand the upcoming destruction.

Finally, the list of nations creates a circular pattern that begins to come closer and closer to Israel (see map). Each nation that is mentioned is or was at some point, enemies with Israel. Some, Edom, Ammon, and Moab all have historical kinship relations with Israel. The Edomites were considered descendants of Jacob’s brother Esau (Genesis 36:1), while the citizens of Ammon and Moab came from Lot’s descendants (Genesis 19:36-38). Finally, of course, Judah and Israel were once one united country. They were both direct descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

As Amos rounds out the first six oracles we can begin to imagine that the crowd who has been listing to him is getting very excited. After all, God is pronouncing judgment on a good many of Israel’s neighbors. This is good news for Israel, right? Then things get even better. Amos moves on to Israel’s closet neighbor, Judah.

Judah’s oracle is much like the previous six in form and style. It begins with the same formulaic saying as the others have, “For three transgressions of Judah, and for four, I will not revoke punishment…” Why will they be punished? They will be punished because they have not kept the laws and statutes that God had given them. Secondly, Judah has fallen into the same traps as their ancestors had, following false teaching and the lies of the religions of surrounding nations.

This would have been music to the Israelite’s ears as Judah had constantly charged Israel the same kind of infidelities (2 Chron. 13:5-12; 1 Kings 14:22-24; 2 Kings 17:19). With gleeful anticipation Amos’ hearers would have waited for what was next. What would come next, however, would not bring them joy or excitement!

The Oracle Against Israel: Amos 2:6-16

This eighth and final oracle begins the same way as the rest of them have; God unequivocally announces his judgment on Israel. There will be no relenting; no changing of God’s mind about what will befall Israel. Her systematic and consistent unfaithfulness, just like the surrounding nations, has not gone unnoticed and will not go unpunished.

This next section, 2:6-16, follows a similar yet elongated format to the previous oracles. It can further be split into three sections. Verses 6-8 detail the crimes that Israel has committed. Verses 9-12 are intended to remind Israel, albeit ever so briefly, what God has done for them in the past. Finally, verses 13-16 line out the judgment that will soon transpire in Israel. We will look at each section in turn.

The Charges: “Thus says the Lord…”

This first section, consisting of verses 6-8, details the charges that God is bringing against Israel. There are four distinct charges, which are unlike the charges that have been brought against the nations. They are specific to the covenant that God has made with Israel. As such, they are not war crimes, but rather they are transgressions against the harmonious and peaceful ordering of Israelite communal life.[4] These are issues of socio-economic justice.

The first charges concerns selling an individual into slavery. Now, slavery was a carefully practiced and regulated practice among God’s people (Exodus 21:2ff; Leviticus 25:39ff; and Deuteronomy 15:12ff.). Slavery, in the form in which God’s people were allowed to practice it, was meant to protect the lives and well beings of those who found themselves in poverty and unable to pay their debts. It was always the ultimate aim that the person enslaved would return to an independent existence. Amos is not taking issue with slavery, per se, but with the way it was being practiced in Israel at the time.

Who is being sold into slavery is the important part. Amos uses two words, “righteous,” which the NIV translates as “innocent,” and “needy.” Those who are being sold are those who are up right and who are the most vulnerable segments of society. They are being sold “for a pair of sandals.” The image that Amos is seeking to evoke is that of a rich and prosperous person taking advantage of a very small debt, the worth of a pair of sandals, so that he might sell a living person into slavery and make a profit. The “needy” in Israel were to be protected. The normal civil and judicial laws would never have allowed this kind of injustice. Nevertheless, the guilty have used and abused the legal system so that might profit personally.

The second charge is oppression of the poor. In verse 7 we get a further picture of what the injustice rampant in Israel looks like. The rich and powerful trample on the heads of the poor. The image of trampling a person’s head had long been a familiar symbol in illustrations that depicted Mesopotamian kings subjugating their conquered enemies. It is an image of complete dominance. Furthermore, the “push the afflicted out of the way,” which the NIV better translates as “deny justice to the oppressed” is less about harmlessly pushing someone out of your way on the street and more of a violent obstruction of justice through the bribing of judges.[5] The judges were the elders of the town or village who sat in the gate of the city to adjudicate disputes in the community. If the judges could not be counted on to provide justice, then justice would not be had.

The third charge deals with sexual abuse. There is much ambiguity concerning the nature of this charge. Some argue that the girl in question is a maid, a young woman who still may be a minor who is in service to a rich family. On the other hand, some think that the girl in question is just a young woman in the community. Or, she might be the lover of the son mentioned in the text. Ultimately, what is at stake in this charge is the elevation of sexual desires over against the dignity and humanity of a young woman. “Amos sees before him a society in which sexual desire determines a person’s actions, desire shamelessly selecting socially dependent persons as victims.”[6]

The final charge of exploiting debtors, rounds out the section. Two separate things are happing in this charge. First, Amos speaks against the misuse of things that have been taken in pledge. The law allowed for items to be taken from a debtor as collateral until the debt might be paid. There were certain items and certain situations in which things could not be taken as pledge. A hand mill or grindstone could not be taken at all (Deuteronomy 24:6). The cloak, the outer garment, which was used as a covering during the night, of a poor man, could not be kept over night (Exodus 22:25). A widow’s cloak or garment could not be taken at all (Deuteronomy 24:17). The spreading out of the cloak likely alludes to using it as a place to lay on at night. Or, it could mean that the garment would be used to recline on at a meal. Either way, it was improper to use the object that way. Secondly, the accused are getting drunk in God’s house with wine that was bought with fines levied on people who had offended or harmed them. These fines were a normal part of the law. They could be imposed on some one who, while fighting with an advisory accidently hit a pregnant woman so that she miscarried. The fine was to be restitution for the infraction. Amos, for his part, believes that exorbitant fines are being levied on the poor for the slightest of infractions. What is at steak here is not the drunkenness, but the way in which the drunkenness is achieved, through the oppression of the poor.

While these charges are more specific they are not comprehensive or exhaustive. A common thread is beginning to emerge. God is angry at Israel for the injustice that runs rampant because of their prosperity.

“I brought you up out of the land of Egypt…”

The “yet” at the beginning of verse 9 provides a pivot on which the passage turns. The charges against Israel have been laid out and the verdict will be announced shortly. Before that, however, God sees fit to remind Israel where she came from. These three verses are important for us as well. They remind us that Israel’s judgment does not take place in a vacuum, but rather is based on the many blessings and rich covenant that God has with Israel. Israel acts in shameful ways despite that fact that God brought her up out of slavery in Egypt, and in pretty spectacular ways too. God uprooted the Amorites who were a large and powerful people. They were like strong trees, but God destroyed their fruit and uprooted them.

Israel was not left to her own devices in this new land. God raised up for her prophets who would help guide them and correct them. Some became nazirites who were not to cut their hair or drink wine or come into contact with the dead. They were to be totally and utterly dedicated and committed to the service of God. Verse 11 ends with the asking of a rhetorical question. God wants to know if Israel remembers that God did all these things for her. But, in Israel’s greed and wickedness she defiled the nazirites and commanded the prophets to cease speaking. They silenced the ones who could help them get back on the right track. I imagine that the crowd, which had likely been rejoicing at the oracles pronounced on the nations, have now become silent.

“So, I…”

It is apparent that Israel has forgotten who they are and who rescued them from slavery to plant them in a land flowing with milk and honey, a land with houses they did not build and cisterns they did not hew. “So, I…” begins the final section of the oracle. Once again God will be the agent of judgment. Israel will be crushed the like grass that finds itself under the wheel of a fully loaded cart carrying grain. There will be no escaping it either. Just like the grass has no ability to run away from the crushing weight of the oncoming cart, so will all ability to flee be removed from Israel.

The judgment that God visited on the Amorites in verse 9 will not be the judgment that befalls Israel. “At one time Yahweh waged holy war on Israel’s behalf against her enemies (2:9). Now Israel has joined her enemies, becoming likewise a target of Yahweh’s attack. The people of God has despised the privilege of compassion and has itself thus become Yahweh’s enemy.”[7]

So What…?

It will be difficult, in the weeks that follow, not to get bogged down in the rather melancholy and judgmental tone of the book of Amos. What we must not miss, however, is the message that Amos declares is for us too. This message, while dark and foreboding, can enlighten us to our own possible sins and crimes against humanity (personally and corporately). The one thing that is clear from these oracles, specifically the oracle against Israel, is that Israel is just as guilty if not more guilty than the others because of the circumstances from which she rose. It was out of God’s compassion for the poor, the barren and the oppressed that Israel becomes a nation. It is in an act of judgment against a people who had mistreated the poor that God carves out a place for Israel to live. Simply, Israel owes her existence to the grace and mercy of God.

We, like Israel, are a people who owe our existence to the grace and mercy of God. It is out of the bondage of sin, out of the oppression of death that we have been saved and constituted a people. But unlike Israel, we must not forget how and by whose hand we became a people. If we forget, in our prosperity we will fall prey to the same temptations as Israel did, the temptations to use and abuse our neighbor instead of becoming extensions of God’s grace and mercy. To whom much is given, must is expected.

Critical Discussion Questions:

What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

God is declaring what kind of world he finds acceptable, and it is not the kind of world that is marked by violence, abuse and oppression of the poor and needy innocents. God is the God of the whole world, not just of Israel, and as such, God is within his rights to bring judgment on all nations.
At the same time, however, God does not hold back judgment on those he loves. Israel, precisely because she was God’s chosen people, will be held accountable just like the other nations.

What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

Holiness looks like the right and proper treatment of those who are poor and needy. It looks like seeking peace. It looks like fair lending practices. It looks like giving grace to enemies. It looks like seeking just treatment for the victim and the perpetrator. It looks like constantly remembering the saving actions that God has preformed for us so that we might live in covenantal faithfulness to God and others.

How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

As a church we have been constituted the people of God through the self less act of Jesus Christ’s life, death and resurrection. We are a people through the sheer grace and mercy of God. Through this we have been given everything. As a people we are called to continually examine if we are living in covenantal faithfulness to God and others.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. Who was Amos and where was he from? Where did he minister?

2. Why does Amos use the image of a lion roaring to depict the way in which God will speak in the following lines?

3. Who are these nations that Amos speaks against? Where are they located? How might they be related to the nation of Israel?

4. What point does Amos make by pronouncing oracles of judgment on nations other than Israel? How might those hearing Amos’ speech react to such oracles?

5. Verses 6-8 of chapter 2 identify 4 charges leveled against Israel. What are the specific charges and how might they be connected thematically?

6. In chapter 2, verses 9-12 detail a little bit of Israel’s history. Why would it be important for God to remind Israel of where they came from?

7. Like Israel, as a church, we have become God’s people because of his mercy and grace. How might these words to Israel speak to us today?

8. Do we remember how we became God’s people? In what way might be like Israel (personally or corporately) in the way we have treated others? How might we guard against receiving the same kind of judgment that Israel eventually receives?

[3] James Limburg, Hosea: Micah (Atlanta: Westminster John Knox Press, 1988), 89.

[4] Hans Walter Wolff, S. Dean McBride Jr, and Waldemar Janzen, Joel and Amos: A Commentary on the Books of the Prophets Joel and Amos, First American edition (Philadelphia: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1977), 165.

[5] Jorg Jeremias, The Book of Amos, trans. Douglas W. Scott, First American edition (Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 36.

[6] Jeremias, 37

[7] Wolff, 173

Isaiah 6:1-11 –Isaiah’s Call

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 26 May 2015 14:34:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

True worship always ends with a sending out of God’s people.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Understand that an encounter with God should always elicit praise and worship.

2. Understand that an encounter with God should move us to confession of our sinfulness.

3. Understand that as we confess our sinfulness, God will cleanse and forgives us.

4. Understand that our forgiveness is so that God can send us out to do his work.

Catch up on the story:

The very beginning of the text tells us that Isaiah had this vision of the heavenly throne room the year King Uzziah died. This places the date for this vision sometime between 742 and 736 BCE. The death of Uzziah marks a transition for the book of Isaiah and historically for Israel. Historically, Uzziah’s death marks the end of a period of relative peace and stability. Assyria’s power and influence has begun to grow and will soon pose a great threat to Israel. For Isaiah, this chapter combined with Uzziah’s death, also highlights two different understandings concerning who has ultimate authority in the world. In chapters 2-4 the prevailing understanding in Israel is that the world is controlled by human activity and agency. Chapter 5 begins to challenge that assumption. By the time we get to chapter 6, there can be no doubt that the world works according to God’s rule.[1]

Isaiah 6 is a commissioning or call narrative, similar, in some aspects, to stories we have about Moses and Jeremiah. At the same time, this vision also functions somewhat as a theophany, or a story relating God’s self-revelation. The setting for the vision most likely takes place in the context of Isaiah’s worship of God at the temple. In fact, much of the imagery will reflect that of the Temple mixed with imagery of the heavenly throne room.

The Text:

The text begins, as we have said, with a historical marker. It is the year that King Uzziah died and Isaiah is likely in the Temple when he begins to have a vision. All of the sudden he sees the Lord sitting on a throne that is high and lifted up. The vision Isaiah has is very fluid and dynamic. Very soon, Isaiah sees the hem of God’s robe filling the temple. Then, seraphs, or fiery creatures, appear in the same space. Traditionally, in surrounding religions, especially in Egypt, creatures like these guarded the entrance to divine throne rooms. The description of these seraphs is different enough as to not be copies of beings from other religions. Each creature had six wings. Two of their wings covered their faces, two covered their feet and with two they flew. Even though these creatures are heavenly beings they cover their faces in respect and protection against the brilliant glory of God. The seraphs are there not to protect the throne room, but to lead it in unending praise.

We are told next that the seraphs begin to sing a song of praise. Their song starts with honoring God’s holiness but ends in a declaration of God’s glory. God’s greatness, literally in Hebrew, his heaviness, his splendor, is not limited to this throne room vision. Indeed, what the prophet has seen is just a glimpse of what and who God is. Using the temple imagery, only a portion of the hem of God’s robe fills the space. God’s holiness and his glory spread out like that robe and fill the whole earth. This massive seen is overwhelming to Isaiah as we come to compare and contrast his life and that of his normal surroundings with that of his vision.

The room shakes because of the voice of these angelic beings and the room fills with smoke that adds to an even greater sense of vulnerability and brokenness for the prophet. This vision and event causes Isaiah to call out in confession of his unworthiness to be there. Isaiah confesses that he is lost, unclean and his people are unclean. He is not worthy, nor are the people he comes from, to be in the presence of such a holy and glorious God.

This confession from the heart of Isaiah is not ignored. One of the seraphs flies over to him with a coal from the altar. Holding the burning coal in a pair of tongs, the seraph applies the coal to Isaiah’s lips and then pronounces him clean. Isaiah’s “guilt has departed” and his “sins are blotted out.” The application of the live coals produces a complete purging of sin and sickness and rehabilitates Isaiah to the point of holiness.[2] Isaiah’s confession, prompted by an encounter with the holiness and glory of God, is met with God’s response of healing and cleansing.

Then, for the first time in the passage, we hear the voice of God. It’s important to keep in mind that the setting of this vision is the throne room of God. It is the place from which God goes about administering the world. There is business to be done. This vision is not just for Isaiah, but it is a part of God’s active engagement in and for the world. So it is appropriate that God’s words here are active in nature, questioning who it is that will do the work that God wants done.

“Whom shall I send, and who shall go for us?” Notice that even though God has revealed himself to Isaiah in this special way, and that God has cleansed him too, that the call is still placed in the form of a question. God would have had every right, as he had done with other prophets, to tell Isaiah what he wanted done. In this case, God asks. It is up to Isaiah to respond to the call that God now issues. “Whom shall I send…” There seems to be no hesitation on Isaiah’s part to answer the call. It is not like those times when we are in a meeting and a boss asks for a volunteer to undertake a particularly unpleasant job and everyone sits there with their eyes turned down. Isaiah’s response is immediate. “Here am I; send me!”

So What…?

This passage reads like a classic outline for worship. In verses 1-4 we have unbridled praise of God. As we gather together, the Holy One comes into our midst and the appropriate response is always praise. The praise moves from a confession of God’s holiness or his otherness into a declaration of his glory and might. Our engagement in worship of this holy and glorious God highlights in us our unworthiness to be in his presence. When confronted with such a great and good God we are compelled to cry out with Isaiah, “Woe is me! I am lost, I am a man of unclean lips living among a people of unclean lips!” True worship leaves us with the longing to be like the one in whose presence we are gathered.

This longing is not left unfulfilled. God, in his great grace and mercy, comes to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and in the fire of the Holy Spirit to blot out our sin. This fire begins to cleanse us too. Our response to God’s presence is confession. God’s response to our confession is forgiveness and cleansing. Worship does not end with our forgiveness. If we end with forgiveness we almost entirely miss point. Our forgiveness is part of the means by which we get to participate in God’s mission of love and grace on earth. In worship, as we are forgiven we are always called, called to proclaim God’s holiness and glory, his grace and forgiveness, his love and mercy. We have only worshiped properly when we respond to this call in affirmative and tangible ways. We must echo Isaiah’s “Here am I; send me!” going out into our world in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! True worship must always end with a sending out of God’s people.

Critical Discussion Questions:

What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

God is hard to see. What Isaiah sees is what God wants him to see and that is but a fraction of his glory. God is holy and full of glory, which fills the whole earth. In the context of Isaiah’s book, God is preparing one of his children to proclaim the news that he has for his people. Isaiah’s call comes in the midst and out of worship.

What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

Holiness looks like allowing the fire of the Holy Spirit to cleanse us from all of our sin and unrighteousness. God forgives us so that he can cleanse us, so that we can be called, so that we can respond and move into our world in mission. Holiness looks like moving out into our world to proclaim God’s good word, and at times his judgment, as a result of our gathering together to participate in worship.

How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

I think this passage should make us stop and think about what we believe about worship. We should shape our personal and cooperate times of worship so that as we encounter the living God we are moved to confess his holiness and glory, confess our sins and transgressions in the light of this holy God, and allow God to move in us for our forgiveness. Then we must respond to God’s call, which is ever present in worship, to carry forward the mission he has given us.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. Have you ever been in a worship service where you were overwhelmed by God’s holiness? How did you respond to that service?

2. Why does Isaiah begin with noting that the vision he had took place in the year that King Uzziah died? Was Uzziah a good king?

3. The seraphs, literally “fiery creatures,” were part of the heavenly throne room. What do you think their job was? What do you make of their song?

4. In verse 5, why does Isaiah respond to the vision in the way that he does?

5. What is God’s response to Isaiah’s words?

6. God wonders aloud in verse 8, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Why do you think he asks this question and does not just tell Isaiah what to do?

7. This passage can be used as a basic outline (see below) for our worship. What are some of the ways in which we might do this as we gather together each week and as we seek to worship at home? Is this pattern contrary to how you have understood worship in the past?

a. We gather together in the presence of a Holy God.

b. Confronted with God’s holiness we proclaim our praise for this Holy God.

c. We examine our lives in the light of God’s holiness and realize that we are unclean.

d. We allow God to cleanse us through the fire of his Holy Spirit. We are forgiven.

e. God calls us to go on mission for him.

f. We respond echoing Isaiah’s “Here am I; send me!”

[1] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 55.

[2] Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah, Vol. 1: Chapters 1-39, (Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 59.

Genesis 11:1-9 –The Tower of Babel…

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 18 May 2015 19:21:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

As a church we are called not to make a name for ourselves, but to be fruitful and multiply. Pentecost is the renewal of the command and an empowering to be fruitful and multiply.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Understand that the scattering which took place at Babel was the nudge given to humanity so that they might multiply as God’s image bearers in creation.

2. Understand that we are called to make a name for God by bearing his image in creation.

3. Understand that Pentecost is another scattering so that we might be fruitful and multiply.

Catch up on the story:

Noah and his descendants have been saved from the flood and have begun to repopulate the earth. Directly after Noah and his family get off the Ark, they are given his command, at least twice, "be fruitful and multiply." It's not a new command. In fact, it’s the same command that God gave Adam and Eve at the beginning of time. If the Flood narrative is a reset/restart on creation, then the command to the new fathers and mothers of humanity is the same: reproduce yourselves, your godly selves so that the world that God has created might be filled with the image of God bearing people, people who look and act like the one who created them.

Noah's descendants have, in one sense, been fruitful and multiplied. They have had lots of offspring and they are beginning to fill the whole earth. But, in another sense, they have not been faithful to the command. Implicit in the command to be fruitful and multiply is the idea they will cover the whole earth, not in a dominant kind of way, but in a diverse kind of way. In our passage, however, Noah's descendants begin to consolidate their power so that they might make a name for themselves.

The Text:

Making a Name for Ourselves:

I think there's a natural drive, inside all of us, to want to become something, to want to do something with our lives. Well, if it's not natural, then it’s at least a large part of the story we are told about how life works from the very earliest of ages. We tell our kids things like, "You can grow up and become anything you want to be."

At least, that's the story we tell ourselves here in America. It's the American Dream. The dream is that no matter who you are, where you are from, what your race, gender or religion is, you can become someone or something important. We tell our kids, if you want to be president, you can be the president. You just have to work hard enough. We tell our kids, if you want to be a doctor, you can be a doctor. We tell our kids, if you want to be famous and make a name for yourself, you can!

In fact, shows like American idol, The Voice and America's Got Talent all thrive off of the American Dream and its hopes of becoming something, of becoming someone. Some contestants, I’m sure, participate in auditioning for shows and competitions like these because they fear obscurity, they fear that one day they will die and their name and everything that it represents will be lost to the world. No one will care, years after they are dead, who they were or what they did. They will be lost in obscurity.

If you've ever watched American Idol, or any of those types of talent shows, you'll notice that each individual who auditions has hopes and dreams about what that opportunity might lead too. For some of the more promising prospects, we are treated to a montage of what their life has been like so far and the struggles they’ve had to overcome and still need to overcome. Some, who are realistic, realize that they have only a slight chance of becoming famous, or having their name becoming recognizable. Others, who obviously don't have a good grasp of reality, think that they've got an honest shot.

The show does what it promises, though. Some of the contestants do actually make a name for themselves. The winning contestant in American Idol gets a record deal and a good deal of notoriety. Their names become household names. In some cases, the runners up become more famous then the winners, going on to make more records and become even more of a household name. But for every one person that become famous, there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, who do not. Dreams are crushed. Not everyone gets to make a name for themselves. But everyone gets to try.

Making a Name for Themselves:

This is where the stars of our bible story this morning are. They are trying to make a name for themselves. They fear obscurity, being lost to history as just another group of people who lived, worked and died with nothing to show for their labor.

Let's provide a little context for the passage. Not too long ago—scholars disagreed on how long ago, but I'm not sure it matters all that much—the world and everything in it was destroyed by a giant flood. Humanity was evil and that continually, to the very core of their being. God, who had created creation to be good, and it was very good indeed, was sad and sickened by how his good creation was turning out. There was one man, however, Noah, who was doing his very best to be what God had created and intended everyone to be, a faithful follower of God –a faithful bearer of God’s image in the world.

Noah, because of his faithfulness, was spared from the destruction. God commanded him to build an Ark, to stock it with food and with pairs of animals of every kind. God's intention was to press a giant reset button on the world. Noah, his family and the animals he saved, would become a new start. Noah and his descendants would not be like those that had died in the flood. No, they would be fruitful and multiply (a command that they are given at least three times after the Ark hits dry land). Their being fruitful and multiplying is more than just being good at making babies. They were to be the kind of person Noah was: God fearing, faithful, image of God reflecting people. They were to spread throughout the world, bearing God's image, making a name for God as his creation, everywhere they went.

And, for the most part, they did. We are told, in the text, that Noah's sons have lots of children. We are told where they end up living and what nations are birthed from those families. Nations are formed, languages are created and the image of God is spreading all over the world. But this wasn't enough for Noah's descendants. No, they wanted to make a name for themselves, not God.

The Scattering:

Our text reads like this, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” (verse 4) Like every contestant on American Idol, Noah's descendants set out to make a name for themselves. Very clearly they are afraid that they will die in obscurity, no one will know that they ever existed, that they had even walked on the face of the earth. They want, desperately, to make a name for themselves.

Just how are they going to do this you ask? By building a monument to their own strength and abilities. They are going to take the normal stuff of building and creation and form it into a city and a tower that will touch the heavens. This tower will keep them from being scattered; it will be a testament to their greatness for years, decades and perhaps millennia to come. It will be a monument to them.

We all know about monuments. They are valuable aids in remembrance. As society, anytime we want to remember a person or an event, or a generation of people, we build a monument out of materials that will last a very long time. Monuments help us remember; they immortalize people and events. They center our attention on the greatness of certain individuals or groups. But very rarely do they point beyond a person or group of people.

This quality of monuments to immortalize is precisely the problem with the tower that Noah's descendants set about to build. God, who is always watching, decides to come down and take a closer look at what his creation is doing. Upon further inspection God declares, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech." v. 6-7

It isn't out of fear that God decides to do something about Noah's descendants ambitious building plans; rather it is out of a desire for God’s creation to engage in the task of being fruitful and multiplying that God decides to act. You see, making a name for themselves, monument building if you will, is directly contrary to the command to be fruitful and multiply. It takes the focus away from being and becoming who they were supposed to be as God's created beings, as people who were to take the image of God into their world and make it known. They were to be fruitful and multiply so that God's name might be spread throughout the world, not theirs.

So God comes down and acts. He acts, not to destroy, but to nudge, to guide his creation to do what they were created to be, God-fearing, image of God bearing people just like Noah had been.

God confuses their language. Really, the force of the words means that God made it impossible for them to hear and understand each other. Communication becomes impossible, and their fears are realized, they are scattered.

Our Scattering/Hearing, Speaking, Being, Doing...

But today is Pentecost, and God is doing a new thing. Well, not really a new thing, but an old thing in a new way. In the passage from Acts 2, a passage we are all very familiar with, God breathes his Holy Spirit on his followers 40 days after his resurrection and ascension.

They were all gathered together in the upper room. They have been waiting and praying because Jesus told them to. Suddenly, the room begins to shake and the wind begins to blow. Tongues of fire begin to settle on each of their heads representing the Holy Spirit. This mighty wind blows them out of the room, out of the building and they begin to proclaim everything that they have seen and heard. There are people from all over the world living in Jerusalem and they begin to hear the disciples talk, in their native language! The confusion, the inability to hear and communicate that happens at Babel, is undone. Scattering takes place. Only this time it is a scattering that isn’t the consequence of disobedience, of trying to make a name for oneself; it’s a scattering that is the fulfillment of the command to be fruitful and multiply. It is the sending of those who are bearing the image of Christ to the world, so that those in our world might become like them as they are becoming like Christ. It is the undoing of Babel.

So What…?

What does this mean for us? It is a call to quit trying to make a name for ourselves. It is call to not fear that if we haven’t done anything in life, if we haven’t built a monument to ourselves, then we will be left to die in obscurity. It is a call to attend to the command that God has given us from the very beginning, the call to be fruitful and multiply. It is a call to be Holy Spirit filled people who are scattered throughout our world to make a name for Christ. It is the call to evaluate our individual actions to answer this question: Does this make Christ known, or does this make a name for me?

What does this look like for our church? There is always a choice, when thinking and planning for the work of the church. It is the same choice that those at Babel had. We can make a name for ourselves. We can build a monument to ourselves, a legacy to the work that we have done, so that the Webster Groves Church of the Nazarene might be someone.

Or, we can be fruitful and multiply. We can work to be image-bearers of Christ, seeking to make a name for him, not for ourselves. This choice needs to be the lens through which we view each and every decision about programming and activities. Does this make a name for us? Or does this make Christ known? Does this feed the hungry? Does this clothe the naked, does this work to take care of the widow, the orphan and the poor? Does this proclaim the Good News in all of its forms, spiritual and physical? Is this motivated by self-giving love, the love that Christ has for us, or is it motivated by self gratification?

This struggle between these two questions is nothing new. It’s been happening since the beginning of time. It is with confidence, however, that we celebrate this day: God is faithful and will help us to be fruitful and multiply!

Critical Discussion Questions:

What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

God has give creation a mission and that mission is to bear his image in creation so that he might receive glory through us. Our attempts to make a name for ourselves keep glory from being given to God. God, in this narrative, is nudging creation to be faithful to the command to be fruitful across the whole earth.
At Pentecost God is renewing the command for us to go throughout the earth and bear his image to creation. Only this time, we are to tell the story of the love and faithfulness of God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God scatters us in the power of the Spirit, translating for us his message into the words of the people who need to hear the gospel.

What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

Holiness means allowing ourselves to be sent, through the power of the Spirit, so that we might bear God’s image in the world. It means that our own name and notoriety take a back seat as we are used to tell the story of God’s love and faithfulness. In short, it is ceasing to seek a name for ourselves and allowing ourselves to be scattered in our community and world so that God’s love and glory may be displayed.

How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

All our decisions concerning life and church should be filtered through this question, “Does this make a name for myself? Or does it make a name for God?” As we reflect on this question it should help us make career decisions, life decisions, and decisions regarding the church’s events and programs. The story of Babel and of Pentecost is a reminder that we are not building the church for our sakes, or even the church’s sake, but for God’s sake, and for the world that God loves.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. Look back at the previous chapters. What is the context for this story about the Tower of Babel? What command has God given Noah and his descendants after the flood?

2. Why did the people at Babel want to build a tower? What was their motivation?

3. What was God’s response? Why does God choose to act as he did? Is God scared of what the people might now be able to do?

4. Why would God confuse their language? How might that help them fulfill God’s earlier command to be fruitful and multiply, filling the whole earth?

5. Today is the Day of Pentecost. Read Acts 2:1-13. What similarities might there be between the Tower of Babel story and the one in Acts? How is God using human language to further his mission?

6. Reflecting on our personal lives and our church: are we more like the people at Babel before God confuses their language, or are we like the disciples on the Day of Pentecost? Are we trying to make a name for ourselves or are we allowing ourselves to be scattered?

1 John 5:13-21 –Boldness in Prayer

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 11 May 2015 14:40:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

Because our right belief has led us to live rightly we have assurance that we are children of God. This assurance leads us to have boldness in prayer for our brothers and sisters in Christ so that they might resist sin.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Know that our eternal life begins now.

2. Gain a boldness in our prayer for others regarding sin.

3. Be encouraged to take concrete steps toward prayer and accountability with others.

Catch up on the story:

John has just finished up a rather lengthy segment in which he affirms the importance of the divinity and the humanity of Jesus. Right belief and right practice belong inseparably together. In fact, one cannot act properly Christian apart from a right belief about who Jesus is. The proper practice of faith is the way in which we testify to our right belief. Through the course of the letter, John has defended the faith against those who would either deny Jesus’ humanity or his divinity. Those who do either are not children of God. Those who are children of God are those who believe correctly and allow that belief to shape and give energy to their love for God and for neighbor. If you have Jesus, then you have life.

The Text:

John begins the final section of his letter with a brief one line explanation of why he has written. Verse 13 is the only explicit explanation we get regarding the reason for John’s writing. The reason is simple, and one that we have surmised throughout the work. John wants those to whom he is writing to have the assurance that they have eternal life.

As we have said at the outset of our study of First John, John has been writing to those who already believe, not as one who has been trying to convert those who do not believe. Here he explicitly notes that he is writing to those “who believe in the name of the Son of God.” We have also said that, in the context in which these addressees live, there has arisen a group of individuals and teachers that have brought the faith of the church into doubt. The primary issue has revolved around the nature of Jesus. John’s desire is that those who read this letter, after hearing his argument defining what marks a child of God and what doesn’t, would find rest and peace in the fact that they are, indeed, children of God. Because they have latched onto and confessed their belief in the incarnate Son of God and because their belief has found expression in love and care for their neighbor, they are currently in possession of eternal life.

It should be noted here that John’s audience is currently in the experience of eternal life. The language of the text is present and active in nature. It is not in the future tense. They have eternal life. So often we talk about eternal life as something that begins in the future. This belief is a bit of a misnomer. As much as the phrase eternal life is quantitative, in that it goes on forever, it is also just as much qualitative. Eternal life, to a large degree, is about the nature and quality of life here and now. So, when John says in the previous verse, to have the Son of God is to have life, he means that they have life now, a full, rich and abundant life of love and grace and peace. If we identify ourselves with John’s audience, and I hope that we do, then you and I have eternal life here and now as well.

John moves on. This assurance that we have that we are children of God now gives us a boldness in prayer. Those who are children of God can have confidence that when we ask according to God’s will, in prayer, it will be heard favorably. God will answer our prayers. Some use this kind of language to their advantage, thinking that if they are true believers, if they have enough faith, that God will answer their every prayer. At times, this kind of verse gets taken out of context by those who peddle a prosperity gospel. This is not what John is saying. Our prayers must be offered in Jesus’ name and according to his will.

Our experience has taught us that our prayers, at least seemingly so, often go unanswered. Jesus himself offers a prayer, the night before his death, that he might not have to experience the suffering that was coming his way. What we see from Jesus, though, should be a model for us as he prays, “Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:36) We do not always know what God’s will is, yet we can know with confidence that God always hears and is always working things according to his will.

We might ask then, if we should only pray according to God’s will then why pray at all? If God’s will is going to be done if we pray or not, why do it? One commentator offers this explanation,

To speak in such terms is to assume that God’s will must be understood in a static kind of way, as if God has made a detailed plan beforehand of all that is going to happen –including the fact that we are going to pray in a particular way and at a particular time. But while the Bible does speak of God’s plan and purpose for the world, to speak in such deterministic terms is inconsistent with the freedom which the Bible itself assigns to God’s children, and it wreaks havoc upon the biblical idea of the personal relationship which exist between God and his children. The point is rather that the believer must seek to submit his will to God’s by saying, “Your will be done” (Mt. 6:10). It is as we freely yielded ourselves to God that he is able to accomplish his will through us and our prayers…Through prayer we make ourselves instruments of God’s will, and at the same time, in a manner that lies beyond human comprehension, he is able to act powerfully to answer our prayers.[1]

This confidence in prayer, for John, concerns one area specifically, and that is prayer for a brother or sister in Christ who has fallen into sin. Here, John advises, that if you see a brother or sister sin, you should pray for that one that God would give life to the offender. Our prayers, it seems, should be specifically concerned with helping other refrain from sin and to recover from sin.

Verse 16 gets a little tricky, however, as John makes mention of “mortal sins” (the NIV renders it, “sin that leads to death”), and those that are not mortal. What does he mean by this? Does not all sin ultimately lead to death? Indeed it does, but John is probably referring to the kinds of sin which are committed by those who are not children of God and those that are.

Let’s clarify for a moment. When John refers to “what is not a mortal sin” he is referring to sins that are committed by individuals who are considered children of God. They have confessed rightly about the nature of Jesus Christ. They have born out their confession about Jesus through their constant love and concern for their brothers and sisters in the faith as well as their neighbors. They have a desire to be obedient but yet have fallen into some kind of sin, either deliberate or not. As we have noted in an earlier lesson, this kind of sin happens when we do not, as Wesley said, “keep ourselves” in God –breathing in God’s love and grace and constantly exhaling it as well. John is concerned that we pray for this type of person so that they may confess their sin, repent, and so that they can continue to walk in newness of life. This sin, which is not mortal sin, according to John, can lead to death, but it does not have to. The praying community of faith can help in this regard.

What then is the mortal sin? If the non-mortal sin is committed by those who have a desire to be and remain children of God, then the mortal sin is committed by those who consciously and deliberately choose to deny God and walk in the way that leads to death. For John, this way that leads to death is rooted in a denial of Jesus Christ and a consistent failure to love one’s brothers and sisters. If Jesus is the only one in whom real life can be found, there can be no life for those who deny him. We may guess, that those whom John is warning his hearers against in this letter, are those who are guilty of committing this mortal sin. Notice that we have not identified one individual sin that ultimately leads to death. To try and do so would be unfruitful.

We may be troubled by John’s statement that we should not pray about those mortal sins. I do not believe that John wishes that we should not pray for those people. How can our refusal to pray for those who are consciously against God and his Son be an expression of our love for our neighbor? Quite simply, it cannot be. Keeping in mind John’s primary audience and concern, those who are already children of God, it makes sense that he would emphasize prayer for our brothers and sisters in Christ. Also keeping in mind the tone of the rest of the letter, love requires of us concrete action for others. Prayer, while seemingly not a concrete action, is a good and proper response for those who are far from God, especially for those who might seem to be too far-gone.

In verse 18 John begins to wrap up the letter by reiterating that those who have been born of God do not sin. God protects them from the evil one. At the same time, however, that the children of God are under the power of God, the rest of the world seems to be under the power of the evil one. It is precisely because the world is so pervasively under the influence of the evil one that we should approach God in confident prayer. We know the nature of the world, and the battle that rages in it, because God has revealed himself to us, giving us understanding about who Jesus is and who we are in the light of that understanding.

Verse 20 acts as a confession and summary of what has gone before in the letter. We know that the Son of God has come. We have heard, and seen and felt him. He was from the beginning. He has given us understanding, he has revealed himself to us so that we might know him and enjoy fellowship with him. He is truth and light, in him is no darkness, no sin. Jesus is God’s Son, the true God and it is through him that we are now enjoying eternal life.

So What…?

As much as John in concerned with our right belief about who Jesus is, he is just as concerned about our constant care for our brothers and sisters in the faith. As we have said before, John believes, and so do we, that right belief shapes our daily life and practice of faith. The letter closes with a concern for prayer. Notice, however, that the concern for prayer is not individually or selfishly focused, even though one might be able to read it that way. John’s concern regarding prayer is that it be used to accomplish the will of God and that will is that those who believe might not fall prey to sin.

You and I are children of God! We have an assurance that we have, at this very moment and in this very place, eternal life. Because we have this assurance that our faith and action gives us we now can approach God in prayer with boldness interceding for our brothers and sisters that they might grow in Christlikeness avoiding sin. When they do fall into sin, we pray with boldness that the one who is in us who is greater than the one who is in the world will rescue them from that sin, restoring them to wholeness.

We are in this thing together. It is our job, as a community of faith that confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, to help each other grow in our understanding of right belief. If we do not struggle together in our attempts to rightfully articulate and live our beliefs then we will not be able to struggle with one another, in prayer and in accountability through the power of the Spirit, to avoid sin. We confess our orthodox faith in the fully human and fully divine Jesus Christ through our constant love and care for our neighbor and brother and sister in Christ. This faith leads us to pray with boldness for our brother and sisters in Christ.

Practically speaking, entering into a relationship with a few select individuals to pray for one another is one of the best ways to live out the faith that John is describing. Discuss our Spiritual Formation groups with your group. You can find a list of questions that will guide you in prayer for one another at wgcn.org/discipleship.

Critical Discussion Questions:

What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

God, in his wisdom, knew that it would be impossible for us to live out our faith merely as individuals. So, God has given us the gift of his Church so that we might help each other recover from and remain free from sin. In doing so, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the sin that could lead to our death does not have to lead to our death!

What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

Our holiness, our continual growth in Christlikeness, is tied up with our care for and actions toward our brothers and sisters in the faith. We cannot claim to be children of God if our love does not find concrete expressions of care for those around us. One of these expressions is our constant prayer for those who struggle with sin. We pray with boldness because we know that it is God’s will that none of us remain a slave to sin.

How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

This passage should clarify some of our reasons for prayer. Yes, prayer is part of the way in which we draw close to God. We pray for physical healing. But our constant concern should be for our brothers and sisters in Christ so that they might remain free from sin. This prayer, while it can be general in nature, should compel us to dive deep into each other’s lives, so that we can pray specifically for the sins that each of us struggle with. Praying, “Lord, help so and so remain free from sin” is good. Asking of that person, “What known sins have you committed since our last meeting?” is better.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. John begins his epilogue stating that he writes all of these things so that they might “know that you have eternal life.” Why might John’s hearers doubt the fact that they have eternal life?

2. The language of the phrase “know that you have eternal life” is present and active, not future. What does it mean that we currently have eternal life? How might this be different than you’ve previously understood it?

3. Because we are children of God we have assurance that we have eternal life. John says this gives us boldness in prayer. How do our prayers have to be offered in order for them to be favorably heard?

4. John’s main concern regarding prayer is our prayers for our brothers and sisters so that they might resist and recover from sin. What are the two types of sin John mentions? How do they differ? John does not offer a list of sins that are mortal and those that are not. Why doesn’t he give us a list?

5. Why is John so concerned with our prayer for others to resist sin? What kind of role do we have in helping each other resist and recover from sin? What specific things might we do?

6. Often our prayers center on physical needs. How often do you prayer for others’ spiritual needs?

[1] I. Howard Marshall, The Epistles of John, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1978), 244-245.

1 John 4:1-6 –The Word Made Flesh

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 05 May 2015 13:25:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

Our beliefs about Jesus’ nature are important for how we daily live out our faith.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Understand that not everyone who claims to have authority to teach is from God.

2. Understand that what we believe about who Jesus is matters for how we practice the Christian faith.

3. Understand that the nature of Jesus as God incarnate drives our call to embody the love of God for those around us in the church and the world.

Catch up on the story:

John has just finished up describing for us the marks of someone who has truly been born of God. His primary focus is the tangible love that believers show toward their brothers and sisters in Christ. This love, we have said, is practice for how we are to go out and love our world. If we see one of our Christian brothers or sisters in need and yet do not help them, we will not be able to help those outside of our community who desperately need it.

John moves on, though, to discuss other marks of being a true child of God. He begins to emphasize belief as a mark of being born of God. The kind of belief that John advocates is not just a mental assent to the idea of God, but rather a belief in Jesus that is born out in action. John will have more to say about right belief in this week’s text.

The Text:

John’s main concern for our text this week is Christological in nature. That is, it is all about what we believe about who Jesus is as the incarnate Word of God. The conversation, however, is set up the same way as many of the arguments in First John have been to this point. There is a negative example and then a positive one.

First, we are admonished to not believe every spirit, and by proxy those who say they have the Spirit and who are claiming to be teachers. Crucial to understanding John’s comments here is remembering the context in which John has been writing. There have been people, or rather a group of folks, in John’s community, that have broken away and have begun to teach in ways that deny or place significantly less stress on Jesus’ humanity. John, in other places in the letter, will refer to these people as antichrists (In Greek, anti means “against” or “a substitute for.” So, antichrist is “against Christ” or “a substitute for Christ.”). These people had mostly or completely spiritualized Jesus. They thought that Jesus either only seemed to be human, or that Jesus’ humanity is completely taken over by his divinity. Either way, there was a significant denial of Jesus’ humanity going on.

The Council of Nicaea in AD 325, from which we get the Nicene Creed, affirmed that God was indeed present in Jesus and not as some subordinate divine being, but as God himself. The Council affirmed what John says at the beginning of this letter, that Jesus was “from the beginning.” He is co-existent with God the Father before creation. While at Nicaea the church affirmed Jesus’ divinity, it was not until over one hundred years later at the Council of Chalcedon that the church affirmed the balance between Jesus’ divinity and his humanity. Jesus, in the incarnation, is fully human and fully divine.[1] We might add as well that Jesus continues, even to this day, to be fully human and fully God. The incarnation does not end with Jesus’ ascension.

It is in this context that John admonishes his hearers to test the spirit of those who claim to be dispensing right teaching. For, as John says, many false prophets have gone out into the world. We do not know, but can suppose, that at least some of these false prophets have come from John’s own community of faith. This makes them even more dangerous. There is a way, John confesses, that we can know if teachers are from God or not. If the spirit confesses through the person claiming to have authority, that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh and is from God, then that testimony is to be accepted. If a spirit denies the humanity of Jesus then it is not from God. Those who confess this way have the spirit of the antichrist.

At this point we might ask, why does it matter if Jesus is both human and divine? Why is it so important that we confess that Jesus became human in such a significant and permanent way? If God the Son is not embodied in the concrete historical person of Jesus then there can be no salvation for us. We need Jesus to be fully God because we cannot save ourselves. We need Jesus to be fully human so he can live the perfect life in a way that we are unable to. If Jesus does not really and physically die, then the power of death is not defeated in Jesus’ physical resurrection.

For John, if we deny Jesus’ humanity then all of this talk about embodied and tangible acts of love become unimportant. The Christian faith, as the church has defined it through thousands of years, through the Councils which shaped our Creeds, is an embodied faith. It is a faith that cares for more than just our souls and where they end up after we die. If Jesus is just spiritual then there is no need to care for anyone’s physical needs. This spiritualizing of Jesus has always been a temptation. Indeed, even today there are many who, though they probably do not know it, functionally deny Jesus’ humanity by placing too much emphasis on the spiritual. To be sure, we need both Jesus’ humanity and his divinity. His divinity allows us to enjoy fellowship with God now and forever. The truth is, however, that the nature of Jesus Christ is embodied, and if we want to be like him, then we must live our lives in the same kind of incarnational embodiment as he did. Any teacher who does not confess the physical nature of Christ, through both word and deed, is not to be accepted.

As we turn to verse 4, John begins to encourage his hearers by reminding them that they have believed and acted rightly. They are from God. In faithfulness to the divine/human Jesus they have ousted these false teachers from their ranks. This probably means that they have rejected their teaching and not allowed them to have any teaching authority. How have they done this? They have done it because they are from God and the one that is in them, John says, is greater than the one who is in the world! This is truly Good News! The Spirit of the God who created and sustains the heavens and the earth resides in us, teaching us, cleansing us, helping us to discern right teaching and right practice from what is not right.

It is because of this that the church need not worry about being defeated. We can look out at our world, which often seems to be in such a chaotic mess, and say with confidence that we will not be defeated. The church, so long as it remains faithful to the incarnated Son of God, so long as it remains willing to allow the Spirit to teach and guide it, will never be destroyed. Greater is the one who is in us than the one who is in the world!

John continues to talk about those who are the false teachers and prophets. They are from the world, and so it is no surprise that the world flocks to them and listens to them. Here is a warning to us. Whenever we see a preacher or Christian personality gaining great fame outside of the church we should be a little suspicious. The message of Christ is foolishness to the world (1 Corinthians 1:18-25). It convicts the world and challenges the way it works. It is not easily accepted. If it is, what is being preached just might not be the true message of the crucified yet risen Christ.

The believing and confessing community, however, is from God. John squarely places himself and those he is writing to in that camp. He then goes on to say that whoever knows God will listen to the message John is proclaiming. Those who are advancing false teaching and professing to have received a message from the Spirit, they are the ones who will not listen. Proof of their not being from God is in their lack of willingness to hear and confess. So, we will know if a person has been inspired to teach by the Spirit if they do two things, confess that Jesus was both human and divine and is willing to listen (and submit) to the community of faith and its message.

So What…?

To this point in the letter, John has stressed love as the mark of being a child of God. This love that works for the benefit of the other is to a large degree what defines the Christian faith. In just the next passage, John will confess that God is love.

Indeed, our belief and confession that God is love comes straight from our confession about the historical and physically embodied reality of Jesus Christ. Right belief drives right practice and right living. Right living and practice confirms our right belief. In this case, and I believe that this is what John wants us to hear, our right belief about Jesus being fully in the flesh compels us to exercise love for our brothers and sisters in the faith and in the world. If our beliefs about Jesus are not inline with the church’s confession concerning him, then our expression and practice of the Christian faith will look vastly different than it did for much of church history.

Belief and practice go hand in hand. The bottom line is this, Jesus became one of us and remains one of us. He gave himself up, in death, for us so that we might have freedom from the power of sin and death. He was resurrected in the flesh. He ascended to be with God the Father for all of time, in the flesh. He will come again one day, in the flesh, to judge the living and the dead. We live, day in and day out, as bodies who confess that this Jesus is God and that what he did he did in the flesh because of his great love for us. If we want to truly claim that we follow this incarnated Jesus, then we must live as he lived, in the flesh, in love, among the hurting, needy people of our church and of our world. “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.” (1 John 4:11)

Critical Discussion Questions:

What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

John wants us to understand that what God has done is that he has become completely one of us, in the body, so that we might love through him. John also confesses that God in Christ is stronger than anything that is from the world.

What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

Salvation and holiness begin with right belief and confession concerning Jesus. Right belief is proved, not just through our words, but through how those beliefs influence our daily behavior. We cannot be holy without believing the right things about who Jesus is.

How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

We should constantly be testing the beliefs that are being taught to us, not just by our clergy, but other outlets as well. We should be able to begin to recognize the importance our beliefs have on our daily lives. The belief that God’s great love is on display for us through the concrete reality of Jesus should compel us to exercise our belief in and love for God through our own incarnational ministry in the church and in our surrounding world.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. Why does John admonish us to test every “spirit” to see if they are from God? To which “spirits” is John referring?

2. Who are these “false prophets” that have gone out into the world?

3. How will we know what comes from the Spirit of God?

4. What does “antichrist” mean? Is there just one antichrist or are there many?

5. John claims that the true mark that a spirit is from God is that it affirms the physical person of Jesus. Why is it important that we believe and confess that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine? Is there salvation for us if Jesus only seems to be human?

6. Jesus honors or dignifies our bodies by becoming one of us. If bodies matter to Jesus, how might that affect how we live out our faith?

7. Last week John asked us this question, “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?” (1 John 2:17) In what ways might John’s stress on the importance of Jesus’ incarnation help us better understand John’s question in chapter 2?

8. This week, what is one way in which you can express your belief in Jesus through action?

[1] D. Moody Smith, First, Second and Third John, Interpretation: A Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991), 102.

1 John 3:11-24 – “Luv Is A Verb”

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 27 Apr 2015 18:46:00 +0000

“The need of the world is not for heroic acts of martyrdom, but for heroic acts of material sacrifice.”[1]

Lesson Focus:

God’s love for us enables us to love others like God has loved us. More often than not, we are called to express our love for others through our care for those who do not have.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Understand that an important part of Christian love expresses itself through material care for others.

2. Examine the quality of love that we have for one another in the church.

3. Identify ways in which we might grow in our practice of love for one another and for the world.

Catch up on the story:

John has been describing for us what it means to be a child of God. We have been and are in the process of being changed into the likeness of Jesus. While Jesus is for us the fullest revelation of who God is, we still do not yet know Jesus in his fullness. When he returns we will finally know him fully and, as children of God, we will become like what he is.

Another important aspect of being children of God is our freedom from sin. We have had our sins taken away and so, we should not continue to commit sin. John made a startling statement that those who have truly been born of God cannot sin. We explored what this means, and came to the conclusion, with a little help from John Wesley, that indeed we do not need to sin, and will not as long as we are attentive to authentic prayer and worship in mind, body and spirit. As the Spirit breathes into us, we are transformed and empowered so long as we continue to breathe the Spirit in and out. Finally, John tells us that doing right means loving our brothers and sisters. John will continue discussing what this kind of love looks like.

The Text:

This week’s text can be split into two sections. The first, 3:11-17 defines the sort of love that Christians should have for their brothers and sisters in Christ. The second, 3:18-24, gives us some assurance in the midst of our shortcomings in love as well as helping us to understand the link between belief and love.

Section #1: Love From the Beginning…

John begins this section declaring that this command to love is what “we” have heard from the very beginning. This statement, “from the beginning” harkens back to the opening line of the epistle where John declares that what was from the beginning was the person of Jesus Christ. This message of love then, is tied tightly to the work and person of Jesus. John may be referring to Jesus’ words in the Gospel: “A new commandment I give you: love one another” (John 13:34). As such, the command to love spoken of here is nothing new.

What is the nature of this love that we have been commanded to show and to whom is it to be given? Most commentators believe that John is referring to love for one’s Christian brothers and sisters. Love for neighbor, as Jesus defined for us in the parable of the Good Samaritan, must begin with love for one’s fellow Christian. The community of faith is the place where we learn and practice the love that we are called to have for the world. Without loving our Christian brother or sister first, it will be impossible for us to share with the world the love that we have received.

As John has done throughout the letter, he compares and contrasts a negative example of love with a positive one. He begins first with the negative in the form of an admonishment. We are not to be like Cain, who you will remember from your elementary Sunday school class, killed his brother Abel. John claims that Cain was from the evil one. This is not to discount Cain’s personal responsibility in the matter. Rather, it is to display that those who engage in murder, and even hate are still under the influence of the realm of evil and death, the realm, John says, that we have been freed from because of Jesus.

Verse 14 can be taken the wrong way. John is not asserting that love is how we cross over form death to life, but rather that love is the result of our being freed from the power of death. The proof that a person possesses eternal life is displayed through expressions of love for one’s brothers and sisters. Love expressed in concrete action for others is the evidence of Christian faith.

If love is the evidence of Christian faith and love, then hate, and the murder that springs from it, is the evidence of lack of faith. Most, if not all of us, are not, nor will become murders. John’s description, however, should not fail to convict us and call us to examine our inner thoughts towards our Christian brothers and sisters (not to mention the world at large). Something as simple as hate can derail our Christian life. Hatred is the wish that another person were not there. It is the denial of a person’s right to live in full connection within the community. Nowhere is hatred expressed more, by Christians at that, than on social media. Our posts in support of this or that cause, or our posts in opposition to this or that movement, often reveal to us and the world around us just how much hate lives in our hearts. Those who hate, John says –and he draws on sayings of Jesus in Matthew 5:21 and in other places -- do not “have eternal life abiding in them.”

John now moves to the positive image of love. He goes straight to Jesus and his actions for the best and clearest picture of love. We know what love is because Jesus, in love, laid down his life for us. It was not just that Jesus sacrificed himself for us, but that in Jesus’ death he said no to his own life so that we might live. It was for our benefit. Love that does not work for the benefit of the other is not love.

What Jesus has done for us, the love that we have experienced through Jesus we ought to share with others. This is more than a mere telling of the love of God through Christ; it is a concrete, lived out expression of love for the other. It is a self-sacrifice for the benefit of another. No doubt, due to the nature of Jesus’ sacrifice for us that resulted in his death, we will champion the kind of love that actually leads one to literally give up one’s life in martyrdom. For some, in some contexts, this might be a close reality. This is not so here in America or most of the developed world. We might, at some point, be asked to lay down our life for our Christian brother or sister, but this is not what John has in mind.

The last verse in this section, verse 17, displays for us John’s intention, and that intention is much more mundane than dying as a sacrifice. The love that is expressed in laying down one’s life for another person is love that sacrifices one’s material goods, time and money so that another might live. Here John speaks of love that is displayed through compassion and mercy for those who do not have adequate means of caring for themselves.

The NRSV’s phrase “yet refuses to help” fails to communicate the true nature of what John is expressing. The NIV’s “but has no pity” is a little better, but still misses the mark. What these two translations render as “refuses” and “no pity” comes from the Greek phrase that means, “to close the bowels.” The intestines were regarded as the seat of emotion and compassion. To close off one’s intestines means to shield their inner selves from the suffering and want that takes place around them. The language is active in nature. This intentional shielding oneself from the very real physical reaction that takes place upon seeing someone in need and refusing to help. It is a conscious choice. The image is vivid and describes something we almost all certainly have felt. We have seen great and small human need and felt the knot in our stomach that is compassion. Yet, we all have, at sometime or other, shut off our minds to those feelings and have gone on our way.

John’s point is that, “Christian love is love which gives to those in need, and so long as we have, while our brothers [and sisters] have little or nothing, and we do nothing to help them, we are lacking in the love which is essential evidence that we are truly children of God.”[2] John concludes the section with the admonition, based on his argument to this point, to love not just in speech and word but also in the truth of love expressed through action. I’m sure that, if the popular Christian rock band from the ‘90’s, DC Talk, would have been around in John’s day, he would have quoted their song, “Luv Is A Verb.”

So What…?

The question that John poses in verse 17 should stop to give us pause. How can the love of God truly remain in someone if they choose to turn from the needs of their brothers and sisters in Christ? While it is true that John is speaking about the love that members of the community of faith have for one another, this community is the place that we practice our love for the world at large. If we cannot seriously take care of one another we will not be able to exercise our love for the world, and if we cannot exercise our love for the world then we fail at being the body of Christ, the physical hands and feet of God in our world.

What is at stake here is more than just the nature of our own community of faith, how we might love and live together, it is the very nature of our witness to the larger world. If we are to take seriously the part of our mission statement, which says, “…to bear witness to the kingdom of God,” then we must intentionally and tangibly express our love for our Christian brothers and sisters, so that we can better express our love for those in need in our community.

This is not to say that our church does a bad job with loving one another and caring for each other’s needs. I know our church to be just that kind of place, a place of love and generosity. It never hurts, however, to be reminded of the true nature of the love that we are to exercise. We can always do better. I’ll leave you with the words of DC Talk,

Words come easy but don't mean much

When the words they're sayin' we can't put trust in

We're talkin' 'bout love in a different light

And if we all learn to love it would be just right

Critical Discussion Questions:

What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

This message that we have hard from the beginning, that we should love one another, is intimately tied to the One who was from the beginning, Jesus. The nature of love has always been about God’s self-sacrificial care for his creation. Love itself is born in God’s creative act. It is expressed through God’s promise to a barren Abraham and Sarah. It is manifested in the Exodus, and it is exemplified in the incarnation, in Jesus’ becoming one of us. Love seeks the good of the other. God is always seeking our good. God is love.

What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

Our sanctification is bound up with our willingness to allow the Spirit to perfect us in love. We will only be a holy people, who call others to be holy, when we allow the Spirit to help us to love in intentional and tangible ways. There can be no salvation without our reciprocating God’s love. There can be no holiness with out expressing our love to one another and to the world.

How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

We must become a people who gather to practice love for one another so that we can love our world. We must love in word and deed. We must seek and find ways in which we can better and more fully love each other. We must identify the things, attitudes, structures and the like that keep us from loving one another.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

John says that we must not be like Cain who was from the evil one. What does that mean? What does Cain do that might show that he is from the evil one?
Why does Cain kill Abel? Why does John say that we should not be astonished when the world hates us?
John says that we have passed from death to life because we have loved one another. What does John mean by that? Do we receive life because we love? Or, do we love because we have received life? Why would that distinction matter?
How are hate and murder connected? Has there ever been a time when you have hated someone? How did that come about? Have you moved on from that? If so, how?
According to John, how do we know what true love is? Who shows us what true love is? What is our proper response to an encounter with that love?
In verse 17 John asks this question, “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and see a brother and sister in need and yet refuses to help?” What do you think
John is addressing a community of believers and in encouraging them to care for one another. Why is it important for us to care for each other, as brothers and sisters in Christ, first? How might our care for one another impact our witness to the world around us?
As a church, how good are we at tangibly caring for one another? How might we be better at it? What are some specific and intentional ways we might practice our love for one another so that we can love our world better?

[1] I. Howard Marshall, The Epistles of John, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1978), 195-196.

[2] Marshall, 195.

1 John 3:1-7 –Children of God

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 16:05:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

We will remain children of God as long as we continually seek to return to God the love and faithfulness that God has breathed into us.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Understand that we are children of God.

2. Understand that we do not need to sin.

3. Seek to participate in spiritual exercises and disciplines such as acts of service and mercy, prayer and worship, as a means of remaining in fellowship with God and neighbor.

Catch up on the story:

John continues to instruct those who are the intended recipients of the letter. As we recall, John’s intention, first and foremost, is to remind us that Jesus, the one the believing community of faith has seen, heard and touched, is really fully God as well as human. We are to have fellowship with God through Jesus so that we might have fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Sin, on the other hand, keeps us from both forms of fellowship.

John goes on to warn us about deceiving ourselves. If we say we love God, but don’t follow God’s commands, then we are liars. If we obey God’s word, however, then the love of God has reached perfection in us (2:5). The chapter we have skipped, 2:1-29, can be broken down into two sections. The first, 2:1-15, deals with God’s command for us to love our neighbor. John makes it really clear that we cannot walk in the light of God’s fellowship while hating our brother and sister. The second, 2:16-29, warns us about the “antichrist.” Here, John is not making specific claims about who the antichrist is. In fact, he claims there are many who have been “antichrists,” that is, deniers of Christ. Anyone who has denied that the Son and the Father are one is an antichrist. We are warned not to listen to their teaching, but to remain (abide) in fellowship with the community of faith and in fellowship with the Father through the Son.

The Text:

Section #1: Who are we?

Verse 29 of chapter 2 acts as a bridge between the two chapters. The proof about who enjoys true fellowship with the Father through the Son is found in their deeds and their teaching. Those who believe and obey have been born of God.

Throughout the letter so far John has addressed his hearers as “little children.” Now, John will help us consider more fully what it means to be children of God. First and foremost, being called children of God is rooted in the initiative that God has taken in calling us to be children of God because of his love for humanity. In the Father’s great love for creation he sends forth his Son so that we might be adopted into God’s family. We are God’s children because God wants us to be God’s children. In love God has called us. John is speaking to those who have heard the loving call of God and have responded in mutual love. The initiative is God’s. We respond to God’s love and we are thus adopted into God’s family, which begins our transformation into a people who look like the Son.

Our status as children of God, who are becoming more and more like Jesus, creates for us a bit of static with the world around us. We are misunderstood, rejected, harassed and the like because, in our Christ likeness, the world does not recognize us as something it needs. This is precisely how the world responded to Jesus. It rejected him because it did not know him.

In verse 2, John leaves the world behind to further the conversation about who we are and what we will become as God’s children. John reminds us that we are now God’s children, but explains that this status as children has consequences for all of eternity. We will not stop being children of God at our death. We will, however, change. Even now, as we are becoming more and more like Jesus, our transformation is not complete and will not be complete until Christ returns. John says, “what we will be has not yet been revealed.” We do not yet know what we will be like in the end because we do not yet fully know Christ. When Jesus returns he will be fully revealed and we will finally and fully see who he is. This revelation of the fullness of Christ will transform us into his likeness.[1]

Section #2: “Those who have been born of God do not sin…”

In this section, John’s main concern is to set up the first negative condition for those who seek to live as children of God. That is, the renunciation of sin.[2] For John, everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness. In fact, John says, sin is lawlessness. Sin is a rejection of the law of God, and Jesus has summed up the law for us, that we love God with all we are and that we love our neighbor as ourselves. We are guilty of lawlessness when we reject the notion that our fullest response to the love of God is expressed through love of God and neighbor. John will make this connection more directly at the end of the passage.

Indeed, John says, Jesus was revealed precisely so that sin might be taken away. In Jesus we find the fullest completion of the law as Jesus obeys and loves the Father and creation by giving himself up for us. There is no sin in Jesus because he loves fully and perfectly. As children, we are called to “live” (NIV) or “abide” (NRSV) in Jesus. Conversely, no one who remains or lives in sin can be a child of God. This entire section has very much to do with actions. The “live” and “abide” of verse 6 is less static than our English translations might suggest. Often the images that are evoked by living, abiding or remaining are passive. We remain somewhere until a force causes us to move. The Greek, as it is used here, however, connotes an active posture, to “keep on, continue in an activity or state, as an aspect of an action…”[3] Those who actively remain in sin cannot be children of God, but rather are children of the devil who has been sinning from the beginning.

It’s at verse 9 that we run into an apparent contradiction with what John has said earlier. As you will recall, in chapter one John warns us that if we say we are without sin we are liars. Remember, John is speaking to believers, not unbelievers. How now can John say that those who have been born of God cannot sin? John Wesley devotes an entire sermon to just this verse from First John. In, The Great Privilege of Those That Are Born of God, Wesley helps us see what John really means. In Wesley’s opinion, John is not contradicting himself. You can find the sermon here.

We, who have been born of God, have been transformed from the inside out. Our existence is changed. “The Spirit or breath of God is immediately inspired, breathed into the new-born soul; and the same breath which comes from [God], returns to God: As it is continually received by faith, so it is continually rendered back by love, by prayer, and praise, and thanksgiving; love and praise, and prayer being the breath of every soul which is truly born of God."[4] What Wesley is saying here is that as we receive God’s Spirit our constant response is to exhale it in a response of love, praise and prayer. It is this continual respiration of the Spirit of God that keeps us from sin. As long as God’s breath is in us, as long as we take it in and continue to respond to it, we cannot sin. This spiritual breathing is not entirely natural to us, and so, it becomes a choice for us to continually respond to God’s grace.

Our ability to not sin, First John’s “they cannot sin,” is less a determined thing than it is a continued choice on our part. This living or remaining as children of God, as we said above, is not a passive or static thing; it is active. We remain as children of God by choice. But, Wesley says, when we cease to breath back God’s Spirit in love for God and others, in prayer and praise, sin creeps back in.

Wesley uses two examples from scripture to demonstrate what he means. The best known one is that of King David and Bathsheba. If there were anyone who was “after God’s heart” it was David. But, Wesley argues, David does not keep himself in God through the continued discipline of love, prayer and praise. As David lets the temptation into his heart, it gains mastery over him and sin is born. Wesley describes the process like this:

You see the unquestionable progress from grace to sin: Thus it goes on, from step to step. (1.) The divine seed of loving, conquering faith, remains in him that is born of God. “He keepeth himself,” by the grace of God, and “cannot commit sin.” (2.) A temptation arises; whether from the world, the flesh, or the devil, it matters not. (3.) The Spirit of God gives him warning that sin is near, and bids him more abundantly watch unto prayer. (4.) He gives way, in some degree, to the temptation, which now begins to grow pleasing to him. (5.) The Holy Spirit is grieved; his faith is weakened; and his love of God grows cold. (6.) The Spirit reproves him more sharply, and saith, “This is the way; walk thou in it.” (7.) He turns away from the painful voice of God, and listens to the pleasing voice of the tempter. (8.) Evil desire begins and spreads in his soul, till faith and love vanish away: He is then capable of committing outward sin, the power of the Lord being departed from him.[5]

As long as we are willing, cooperating with God’s Spirit by breathing back the love and grace we have received from him, he will help us resist the temptations that lead to sin. When, however, we fail to keep ourselves in God, we give temptation a hold in our lives and are thus pulled into sin. “For it plainly appears, God does not continue to act upon the soul, unless that soul re-acts upon God... He will gradually withdraw, and leave us to the darkness of our own hearts. He will not continue to breathe into our soul, unless our soul breathes toward him again; unless our love, and prayer, and thanksgiving return to him, a sacrifice wherewith he is well pleased.”[6]

Finally, John tells us that we will know who are children of God or children of the devil by their actions. Those who do what is right, which John defines as “love their brothers and sisters” are children of God. Those who do not love their brothers and sisters are not children of God.

So What…?

The beautiful truth of this passage is that sin no longer needs to have mastery over us. The very purpose that Jesus the Son has been revealed to us is that sin might be defeated. Using very strong language, John declares for us that sin has been defeated. We have been born again as children of God. This means that we breathe a different sort of air than we did before. The air we now breathe as children of God is the air of God’s Holy Spirit. We take it into our lungs and it is transported throughout our body, transforming us, strengthening us just as does normal air.

As with our body, this spiritual respiration is not engaged in passively by us. No, we take this new spiritual air into our bodies and then we exhale it back out. God longs for us to continually bring in his Spirit, but will not make us do it. We must continually react to God’s love and grace by tending to the things that help us love our neighbor and God. Our part of this spiritual respiration is acts of service and mercy toward those around us. It is our continual engagement in worship with the Body of Christ, as well as personal and communal prayer.

As Wesley would say, we must “keep ourselves.” Our resistance to sin is only as good as our willingness to allow the Spirit to keep us from sin. When we fail to engage in spiritual practices like acts of service and mercy, prayer and praise, we seriously limit the Spirit’s ability to keep us from sin and our status as children of God comes into danger.

So, let us persist in the practices and disciplines that we took up during Lent. May our practices of denying ourselves; our practices of loving and serving our neighbor, our practices of worship and prayer continue to lead us into fellowship with God and with others.

Critical Discussion Questions:

What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

God, through Christ and the Spirit, is constantly engaged with helping us live into our status as children of God. God is working in us and with us so that we might not sin.

What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

Our salvation and subsequent holiness rely on our response to God’s Spirit-given grace. We are children of God when we, as Wesley says, breathe in and breathe out God’s love and grace.

How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

Our fellowship with God and neighbor is not static or passive. It is a continual breathing in the Spirit of God and breathing out of God’s Spirit through service and mercy, love, praise, and prayer. As we engage in continually giving ourselves to spiritual practices and disciplines such as these, we are strengthened to go and sin no more.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. John states in verse 1 that the world does not know us because it did not know Jesus. What does he mean by that?

2. What does John mean when he says that we will know what we will be like when Jesus is revealed. When will Jesus be finally revealed?

3. In verse 4, John says that everyone sins is guilty of lawlessness. What is the law to which John refers? (For a clue, see Matthew 22:36-40). What are practical ways that we often fail to keep this law?

4. John says, in verse 6, that “No one who abides in him sins.” The word “abide” can have the meaning, “keep on, and continue in an activity or state, as an aspect of an action.” How is “abiding” in God a continual action? What types of habits or practices might help us abide in God in an active sense?

5. Respond to John’s statement, “Those who have been born of God do not sin…they cannot sin.” (Verse 9) How could it be possible to not sin? Keep in mind the active nature of abiding with God.

6. John tells us at the end of the passage that those who “do not do what is right are not from God.” Given all the things that First John has already said, how do you think John would define “what is right”?

7. How are you doing personally with abiding in God?

For a printable version of this lesson and handout, click here and here.

[1] John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, Fourth American Edition (New York: J. Soule and T. Mason, 1818), 661.

[2] Stephen S. Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John, Word Biblical Commentary, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009), 153.

[3] James Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament) (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997).

[4] John Wesley, Sermons, on Several Occasions (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1999).

[5] Ibid.

[6] Wesley.

1 John 1:1-2:2 –The Word of Life…

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 14:11:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

John wants us to live lives that have been freed from sin. To do this, we must first recognize that sin has had power over us, but that Jesus’ sacrifice frees us from that sin and enables us to walk in his light.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Confess that there is no sin or darkens in God.

2. Confess that we are sinful people who have been dominated by sin.

3. Confess that Jesus has freed us from slavery to sin so that we might walk in God’s light.

4. Be encouraged to go and live a life free from sin.

Catch up on the story:

First John is categorized as an epistle or letter with other New Testament works just as the first letter to the Corinthians and the like. It is categorized as such without the normal markings of a first-century letter. For instance, unlike Paul’s letters, we have no greeting. There is no mention of who the author is or to whom the letter is written. Nevertheless, First John gets the epistle label. While the work lacks these formal markings, what becomes clear as one reads the letter is that the author is speaking to a specific community of faith that is dealing with specific issues regarding Christology, or how one understands and talks about the nature and person of Jesus Christ.

It is not crucial to spend too much time seeking to discover a definitive answer for both the author of First John and its recipients. What we do know, however, is that the text presupposes the work of the Gospel of John. The prologue (verses 1-4) strongly echoes the prologue of John’s gospel. There are enough similarities between the Gospel of John and First John that one might suppose that John is the author of both. At the very least, we can say that John’s followers might be responsible for the epistles that bear his name. For simplicity’s sake, we will take the view that the author of the Gospel of John and First John are the same.

The Text:

The Prologue (1:1-4)

By the nature of the way in which John structures the original Greek, we learn that the focus of this prologue, and the entire work, is the “word of life.” What is this “word of life?” It is that which was from the very beginning. Here John echoes the opening to the Gospel that bears his name. This “word of life” is none other than the pre-existent second person of the Trinity. For John’s audience there seems to have been some tension concerning the nature of Jesus. Some would have emphasized Jesus’ divinity while downplaying his humanity. A heresy, Docetism, will spring up which describes Jesus as only appearing to be human. Others will say that Jesus could not be fully God and still be human.

John begins to address this tension by proclaiming that Jesus is this “word of life.” He has been from the beginning. In fact, John says, we have heard him with our ears, seen him with our eyes and touched him with our hands. This brings a concrete reality to this “word of life” that at once brings together Jesus’ divinity and his humanity. Jesus was someone that John and others could hear, see and touch.

The “we” language of the prologue does two things. First, it declares that this witness of Jesus as word of life is not an individual thing, but was witnessed by the faith community’s earliest believers. This is not just one guy’s vision; it is the witness of the community. The second thing the “we” language does is it invites his hearers to join, in a fuller sense, that community of faith by embracing both the humanity and divinity of Jesus. We are not to suppose that the original hearers of John’s letter are non-Christians. The rest of the tone of the letter will not support this. Rather, the letter is addressed to those who already believe but are in danger of slipping into heresy.

John’s intent is to proclaim the centrality of the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Jesus is both the message and the center of the message. He has proclaimed to us the nature of the Father and we now proclaim what we have heard, seen and touched. This proclamation is so that those who hear it might enter into fellowship with the believing community, whose fellowship is rooted and grounded in fellowship with the Father and the Son. This fellowship, however, is not just any fellowship. It is the fellowship of the Trinity, the love that the Father has for the Son, and the Son has for the Father. It is a mutual love, a love that always seeks the good of the other person. It is the love that is sent out, in the power of the Spirit, to draw others into its fellowship.

In this prologue John is reminding us that God himself became one of us: a living, breathing, speaking person, so that we might fully know the Father and enter into fellowship with him. For all of time at that!

If… (1:5-10)

This message of good news and fellowship with the triune God that John received is now proclaimed to us. The first message of this proclamation is that God is light, pure light, in which there is no darkness. Light has significant meaning for John, both here and in his Gospel. This description of God as light concerns both his nature and being. It means that God is absolute in his glory, in his truth and in his holiness.[1] In other words, God is without deficiency in regards to his power and might, his truthfulness and his set-apartness from creation. Because God is light there is not room for the darkens of sin and death.

The next few verses are set off by a series of “if”s. Because God is true light we must walk in the light. If, John says, we are walking in darkness there can be no way that we are enjoying true fellowship with God. Those who inhabit the darkness, that is walk in sin, yet say that they live in the light, deceive themselves. They may say all the right things. They may have all the right answers, but they do not do what is true. Wesley says this about the verse, “If we say—Either with our tongue, or in our heart, if we endeavor to persuade either ourselves or others, we have fellowship with him—While we walk, either inwardly or outwardly, in darkness—In sin of any kind, we do not the truth—Our actions prove that the truth is not in us.”[2] But, John says, if we walk in the light we are able to have fellowship, not just with God, but with one another as well. As we step out into the light of Jesus’ love, it exposes our sin. Then the blood of Jesus cleanses us from those sins. The light exposes us for who we really are. Christ’s sacrifice brings us into full fellowship with God.

John moves on by presenting a tension within the Christian life. In the first place, as he has already said, if we walk in darkness of sin then we do not have fellowship with God. We are liars. But in the next set of conditional statements John says that if we claim to be without sin we are liars too! Perhaps, John is speaking to those who are not yet in the faith but who claim to be without sin. Keeping in mind that John’s letter is likely not written to those who have not yet come to place their faith in Jesus, this seems not to be the case.

If John is really speaking to a group of believers, then he is likely making a distinction between different kinds of perfectionism. The first type, which it seems like some who have some influence in the community that John is addressing would espouse, asserted that they were sinless and not guilty of committing sins since their conversion. Perhaps the form of perfectionism that John is combating is close to those older Nazarenes I grew up with who would say things like this, “I’ve been saved and sanctified and haven’t sinned since!” Implicit in this kind of statement is that the movement toward Christlikeness is over. The reality is, in my experience anyway, that those who made these kinds of statements failed to live out their Christlikeness. In John’s words they deceived themselves.

The second kind of perfectionism, of which John will speak and advocate for in chapters 3 and 5, deals with the stopping of habitual sin.[3] It is not that they are unable to sin, but that, through fellowship with one another, fellowship with God through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Christian is capable of not sinning. This is the nature of perfectionism that John Wesley will promote. As Christians we are to give ourselves over to the power of the Spirit’s work in our lives so that we may walk fully in the light. Our walking in the light, by virtue of it being in the light, necessitates that our sins are exposed and done away with. We once walked in darkness, but now that we walk in the light we have put away those habitual sins.

Now, in the very next phrase, John will pen one of the lines that every student of evangelism will memorize, “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleans us from all unrighteousness.” In the context of the current conversation I believe that John is referring to the sins of those who are moving toward Christlikeness but who occasionally stumble because of the weakness of the spirit and the flesh. When we do so, we must confess, that is, bring those deeds into the light of God’s love. Here’s the good news: those sins will be forgiven and the Spirit will continue to clean us from all unrighteousness.

Here John confesses that it is because God is faithful and just that we will be forgiven and cleansed. Often we hold these two ideas at odds with one another. A proper reading of both the Old and New Testaments will show that God’s faithfulness and his justice go hand in hand. God is faithful,

Because he had promised this blessing, by the unanimous voice of all his prophets. [God is] just—Surely then he will punish: no, for this very reason he will pardon. This may seem strange; but upon the evangelical principle of atonement and redemption, it is undoubtedly true. Because when the debt is paid, or the purchase made, it is the part of equity to cancel the bond, and consign over the purchased possession: both to forgive us our sins—To take away all the guilt of them, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness—To purify our souls from every kind and every degree of it.[4]

John rounds out the section with one last conditional statement. If we claim sinlessness of the first order we discussed above, we not only declare ourselves liars, but we make God out to be a liar as well!

Little Children! (2:1-2)

Here John’s pastoral intentions come out. He addresses his audience as his little children. He is not talking down to his audience, but is addressing them with a term of endearment. His purpose for writing is so that they may not sin by saying that they are without the possibility of sin. In a way he is urging those who are errant in his audience to confess their arrogant sin of presumed sinlessness.

In doing so they give themselves over, not to a vengeful and vindictive God, but to Christ who is our advocate with the Father. John will say that, by virtue of Jesus being our atoning sacrifice, Jesus is able to present our case before the Father who will forgive because he is faithful and just. This is an open invitation for confession. We can confess, not out of fear, but in the confident hope that one who is greater than us speaks on our behalf.

Not only is God’s forgiveness of sins for those who are a part of the faith, for those who walk in fellowship with God, but for the whole world. Part of what may have been at work in John’s context is that some might have presumed that due to God’s revealing of himself to them, that God’s salvation was just for them. John dismisses this idea. God has revealed himself to the believing community so that they might begin and continue to reveal God to the whole world.

So What…?

Two things are important as we begin our journey though First John. First, even though this letter is written mainly to those who are already, in some form at least, a part of the believing community of faith, it speaks to those outside of the faith. With no apology, John points to the reality and nature of sin. Sin is a part of who we are to the very core. We are all sinful people. Jesus Christ, the fullest expression of God, is light and life. There is no sin, no darkness at all in him. We cannot have life apart from the light that Jesus brings. John invites those who are in darkness, those who refuse to believe that they are in darkness, to quit deceiving themselves and step into the light. Our God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from it.

Secondly, John’s message speaks to those of us who have been a part of the faith community for a long time. It challenges us to look at our lives retrospectively. Are we resting on work that Christ has done in our life in the past? Do we think, that because of what Jesus and the Spirit has done in our life, we are without habitual sin? Are we mindful of Christ’s call for us to grow in grace? John urges us to bring our habitual and eventual slip ups to Christ in confession. As we do so, we are able to enjoy continued fellowship with one another and with the Father. At the end of the day, John wants us, and the whole world it seems, to walk in the light and fellowship with God. We can do this because of Jesus’ sacrifice for us.

Critical Discussion Questions:

What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

There is a historical and tangible reality to God in Jesus Christ. God has revealed himself to us. He was something people could hear, see and touch.
God is inviting us to walk in fellowship with him and his church. Confession is an important part of our continued fellowship with God and one another.

What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

Our holiness comes from the work of the Spirit in our lives. It is contingent upon our continual confession of sin. The Christian sanctified life is one of constant reflection on our actions and attitude.

How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

The call is to become a holy people who understand the holy nature of God and that we cannot walk in sin and remain in fellowship with God. The Spirit gives us the power to be free from the need to sin. Therefore, we should seek to walk in the light.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. John begins by declaring what “we” have seen and heard and touched concerning the word of life. What does John mean by this?

2. John says that he is proclaiming what he has witnessed so that his hearers might have fellowship with him and with God. How might fellowship with a believing community of faith and fellowship with God be connected?

3. We confess that God is triune, meaning that God is three in one, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Father loves the Son, the Son returns the love of the Father, and the Spirit is sent out by the Father and the Son, in love, to draw humanity into fellowship with the Triune God. How might this be a model for us as a believing community of faith?

4. In verse 5, John declares that the content of the message he is proclaiming is that “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” What does it mean that God is light? What does darkness represent?

5. What does John mean by “walking in darkness?” What does it mean to “walk in the light as he himself is in the light” mean?

6. What kind of connection might there be between walking in the light and having fellowship with one another? With God?

7. John also says that those who say that they have no sin are liars. It appears that John is contradicting his earlier statement in verse 6. How might we reconcile that apparent contradiction?

8. John says that if we confess our sins, our habitual sins and our slip ups, God is faithful and just and will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. In what contexts can we be transparent and confess our sins?

For printable copies of this lesson and the participant's handout, click here and here.

[1] Stephen S. Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John, Revised edition (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009), 20.

[2] John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, Fourth American Edition (New York: J. Soule and T. Mason, 1818), 656.

[3] Smalley, 30.

[4] Wesley, 657.

Mark 14:32-42 –Gethsemane…

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 18:53:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

Jesus is deeply anxious about doing the work of his Father. Because we get anxious about doing the work of the Father, too, Jesus encourages us to pray for strength to do the will of the Father.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Recognize the emphasis that Mark is placing on Jesus’ humanity.

2. Understand that Jesus’ prayer is a model for us as we pray.

3. Be encouraged to pray “not what I want, but what you want.”

Catch up on the story:

Jesus and his disciples have just celebrated the Passover meal together. The identity of the one who will betray Jesus to the religious authorities has been revealed. It is in this setting that Jesus begins to instruct his followers on how they are to remember the events that will soon take place. The Lord’s Supper re-imagines and re-interprets the Passover meal so that it becomes a remembrance of what God is going to do through Jesus.

The meal ends and they travel outside the city to the Mount of Olives. The disciples will soon abandon Jesus. They will be scattered like sheep are when the shepherd is attacked. They are not to fear, though; they will be gathered back together. Peter, for his part, wants to hear no talk about desertion. Not only will Peter abandon Jesus, he will deny him three times! The most trying part of Jesus’ ministry is just ahead. If he is to be faithful, he will need to spend some time in prayer.

The Text:

Jesus and the disciples make their way to the Mount of Olives and more specifically, to a place called Gethsemane. Only John in his gospel refers to Gethsemane as a garden. The name itself, however, has its roots in the Hebrew and Aramaic word for “oil press.” It’s plausible to assume that the place Gethsemane was in fact a garden, and more specifically, a garden for olive trees. It was common at the time for an oil press to be located within the grounds of an olive garden.[1]

The group enters the garden, but Jesus only wants to take Peter, James and John deeper into the garden with him. It’s at this point that Mark gives us a group of three words that describe Jesus’ physical, emotional and spiritual state. The first, ekthambeo, means someone becomes excessively affected by emotions, either fear or wonder. The NRSV and NIV both translate it as “distressed.” The NIV, more appropriately, adds the modifier “greatly.” This is the only time in the gospels where this word is linked to Jesus. The word, as it is used in extra biblical sources, is often associated with the fear or dread that happens before an impending emergency.[2] Jesus’ trial and crucifixion is close on the horizon and Jesus is afraid.

The second word follows closely after ekthambeo. Ademoneo is translated as “agitated” (NRSV) and “troubled” (NIV). Both translations are rather week in comparison to the force of the Greek, which means to become subject to extreme mental or spiritual anguish, at times even to the point of losing one’s composure. Not only is Jesus afraid, but also he is physically showing signs that the imminent crisis has him quite rattled.

Finally, Mark states that Jesus is “deeply grieved, even unto death.” The NIV has the better translation while more literally following the Greek, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” In Jesus there is a deep grief and sorrow that has consumed him over the events that must now take place. The “my soul” portion of the quote is possibly a reference to Psalm 42:5 and 43:5.

Why are you cast down, O my soul,

and why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

my help ⁶and my God.

It is possible that Jesus’ eventual and complete acceptance of the will of the Father during this moment is owed to his familiarity with the Psalm, where a mood of deep despair eventually gives way to a calm trust in God.[3]

Jesus instructs the trio to sit and keep awake while he goes a little further to pray. He wanders a few more feet into the garden and then throws himself on the ground and begins to pray. The image that Jesus throws himself on the ground is quite startling. It may be that in his great distress, his fear and his sorrow, that Jesus is quite unable to remain standing. For those of us who have experienced great tragedy, trial or adversity these feelings and this scene may be one we have experienced. It may also be that Jesus is taking a physical position that is one of lowliness and service before the one to whom he prays. Jesus is prostrate on the ground earnestly praying that what is about to happen may not happen.

We are told that Jesus prays that, if it were possible, the cup and the hour might pass from him. Jesus is hoping and praying that the will of the Father might be accomplished in another way other than his death. We must remember what the church has confessed from the very beginning, that Jesus is both fully God and fully human. In this moment in the narrative, Jesus’ humanity cries out for deliverance.

Here Jesus uses the Aramaic word, Abba. It is often supposed that this term is the most familiar term a child might use to refer to his or her father. There “is nothing childish about the special relationship implied (it was also used, for example, by disciples addressing their rabbi)…The term conveys the respectful intimacy of a son in a patriarchal family. And in that sense Jesus’ use of this form of address to God is striking and unparalleled.”[4] Jesus is pleading with his Father that the mode of his mission might be changed. Even in his humanity, however, Jesus remains singularly focused on the will of the Father. Jesus will unswervingly do what the Father wills. His human will aligns with the divine will. His human “want” unites with God’s “want.”

Jesus gets up and goes to the three that followed him further into the garden, but he finds them sleeping. He calls to Peter using his personal name, Simon. Jesus wants to know how it is that Peter could be asleep at a time like this. Jesus then admonishes Peter, and the other two, presumably, to “Keep awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial…” Here, Jesus is encouraging the disciples, and us too, to be alert, awake and in prayer. Why are we to do so? We are to do so that we may be kept from trial or temptation. The call here is to keep out of temptation all together, to not get into it in the first place. Watchfulness and prayer seem to be keys to remaining faithful to the will of God. Indeed, the Spirit of God that can be received through prayer and devotion is strong and able to help us remain faithful. Without the Spirit, in our flesh we are weak.

Jesus goes back to pray twice more and each time he returns he finds the trio sleeping. By this point the disciples are dumbfounded, they just do not know how to respond in the face of their own weariness. The third time Jesus returns he chastises them again for resting. They have had enough sleeping and resting; the time has come for Jesus to be betrayed. Judas is near.

So What…?

Two things are important for us as we read this story. The first is that we see and recognize Jesus in his great distress. It is important for us, as we approach Holy Week, to highlight Jesus’ humanity along with his divinity. Here we are shown the vulnerability and distress that God faces as a result of becoming one of us. We confess that Jesus is both fully human and fully God. We see his humanity being shaken by his forthcoming torture and death. He is physically shaken in ways that you and I know all too well. And yet, in that place of vulnerability, in that fear of all that will come, Jesus is able to pray “not what I want, but what you want.”

Sure we might be able to say, “He was human, but he was God too, so that kind of obedience should be easy for him.” To say that misses the point of the incarnation and the cross. The early church settled the debate that Jesus had two wills, a fully human will and a fully divine will. His divine will did not overwhelm his human will. Nor did it give him some kind of advantage over us. He had to bring his human will faithfully in line with the divine will, just as we all do. That is what it means for him to be fully human. Jesus, in his distress, in his humanity, chooses God’s will over his own.

The second thing I think that is important is how this passage should shift our attitude about prayer. Certainly Jesus has faith that God can change his current situation. It is not that God refuses to answer Jesus’ prayer. Jesus’ prayer is answered by Jesus bringing his will inline with his Father’s will. We should view prayer the same way. Prayer consists not necessarily in changing God’s mind about things and events, but in finding our own place in alignment with God’s will. Prayer is the way by which our desires come into line with our heavenly Father’s will.

As we prepare to enter the last week of Lent, let us take comfort in the fact that the God who created and sustains the entire universe became one of us, living like us in every way, suffering like us in every way. It is through this complete identification with humanity that Jesus is able to bring about our salvation and redemption. Thanks be to God for his steadfast love and grace which brings us from death to life!

At the same time, however, let us confess that we often use prayer as a way to manipulate God into giving us what we want. Sometimes our prayers reveal a deep-seated mistrust of God. We pray too often for our desires and less about our daily bread. As we enter Holy Week, let us pray that we might have the strength that Jesus had, who, in the face of torture and death, was able to pray, “not what I want, but what you want.” This prayer never gets easy, but it is possible through the grace of God.

Critical Discussion Questions:

What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

God in Jesus Christ became human. He is afraid; he is shaking and distressed about the future. Yet, he is committed to us and to do the will of the Father over his desires. Jesus models for us a form of faithfulness that is difficult but not impossible.

What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

Holiness is praying “not what I want, but what you want.” It is not enough to simply pray those words, but to allow ourselves to be led to possibly unpleasant places by God. What helps us as we pray this prayer is the knowledge that God vindicates Jesus through the resurrection. Jesus doesn’t stay dead. The will of God for our lives may, for a time, lead us into discomfort and possibly suffering, but on the other side of that suffering there is the life-giving power of God.

How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

We should examine how we pray. Our prayers should help us orient our will and desires so that they will be inline with the will of the Father.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. In verse 33 Mark tells us that Jesus is “distressed and agitated.” A fuller translation of the original Greek could go something like this: “[Jesus] began to become greatly frightened and apprehensive about the coming events so much so that he physically lost his composure.” When have you felt this way? What does this description of Jesus have to say about Jesus’ humanity?

2. What do you think Jesus means when he says that he was “deeply grieved, even unto death?”

3. Describe a time when you have been so distressed that you have been unable to remain upright? Why does Jesus “throw himself on the ground?” Is there a possible reason Jesus chooses to pray from the ground other than his distress?

4. Jesus prays that “this cup” be removed from him. What is “this cup?”

5. Mark tells us that Jesus prays three times that the cup of his suffering might be removed from him. Each time he declares “not what I want, but what you want.” Why does Jesus need to pray this prayer three times? Was it hard for Jesus to do the will of the Father?

6. What would it look like for you to pray, “not what I want, but what you want” and really mean it? How would that prayer affect your daily life or your future plans?

7. Jesus encourages his followers to keep awake and pray so that they might not enter into the time of trial. What do you think Jesus means by that? What kind of temptation do you think Jesus is referring to? What kind of connection might there be between prayer and staying out of temptation?

[1] R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press, 2002), 581.

[2] Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 4.

[3] France, 582.

[4] Ibid., 584.

Jeremiah 31:31-35 –A New Covenant…

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 13:48:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

God, through Jesus, has made a new covenant with us. It has been written on our hearts, guiding us, strengthening us, and helping us to become Christ-like.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Recognize that the new covenant about which Jeremiah speaks is the covenant that Jesus has brought.

2. Confess that we have not been faithful to the covenant that God has made with us.

3. Desire to renew their covenant with God through Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Catch up on the story:

God, since the time of Noah, Abraham and Moses has been covenanting with God’s people to be their God. As the story progresses from Noah to Moses the covenant gets more and more specific. At the time of our passage, Israel is God’s special covenant people. God has promised to provide and protect them, remaining faithful to them. As with all covenants there are stipulations. Israel, as a partner in the covenant, must remain faithful and fulfill its obligations as well. Some of the most significant obligations are to not have any other gods along with God and to observe the Sabbath.

God has done all that God has promised to do. Israel had grown into a great nation with lots of people and a great land that they called their own. Israel, on the other hand, had not been so faithful to the covenant. The curses that God set forth at Sinai for breaking the covenant are beginning to happen. God is turning Israel over to reap the penalties of their unfaithfulness. Those punishments have come from the hands of the Assyrians and now the Babylonians. The northern kingdom of Israel has already been destroyed. Much of Judah has been taken away into exile and now Jerusalem is about to be destroyed. There have been many prophets who have come to warn God’s people. But no one has listened to them. Jeremiah, who is very sad at the current state of affairs, is currently trying to offer hope and a bright future to the people of Judah and Jerusalem.

The Text:

Chapter 31 begins with a proclamation from God that God is indeed going to bring the exiles home. Those who have survived will be able to return home. God declares that God has never ceased loving them. God has continued in God’s faithfulness toward God’s people.

Earlier in the book of Jeremiah God has promised to pluck up and destroy Israel and Judah for their unfaithfulness. Now that their time of punishment and correction is over, God is going to plant and build his people up once more.

Then he calls them virgins. This is incredible. Throughout almost all of Israel’s prophetic literature God has been likening Israel to prostitutes and unfaithful wives. All of that has been forgotten. God, even though the past is still there, is choosing to remember Israel as she was, a virgin characterized by faithfulness and steadfastness. God will once again call Israel his wife.

Israel is told to mark out the road for the journey home. They will be returning from exile. No longer will God bring punishment upon the children of the wicked. Those who eat sour grapes will have their teeth set on edge. The children will be innocent. Each one will die for his or her own sin. Our passage, verses 31-34, belongs with what precedes it. The result of God bringing Israel home from exile is that God will do a new thing, make a new covenant with Israel. Things will not be the same as they had been for Israel. The days are coming, God says, when this new covenant will come. God is going to do a new thing. God is going to make a new covenant to replace the old one. This new covenant will be better. It will not be external. It will not be written on stone tablets like the old one; it will be written on the people’s heart. This new covenant will be able to do what the old one was unable to do: it will help God’s people walk more faithfully in the ways of God.

The days are coming, Jeremiah proclaims. We say today that the day has come. This new covenant that God was going to make has been made in the birth of Jesus. It has been made through the life of Jesus. It has been made through the death and resurrection of Jesus. This new covenant is here now and ready for us to enter and have God’s law written on our hearts. To have our lives defined and shaped by the one with whom we are in covenant. To have God be our God and for us to be God’s people

This internalization of God’s law, one day, will be so complete that God’s people will no longer need to teach each other, they will no longer need to spur one another on, they will just know what to do. The sins and iniquities of the people will be remembered no more. We aren’t yet to that point, though. We do have this new covenant with God. It has been written on our hearts. If we are faithful, it will begin to define us as the people of God.

So What…?

Why is this important for us? First, looking back, we now know that this new covenant that Jeremiah spoke about is the work that God did in and through Jesus Christ. Jesus is the bringer of the new covenant. He has provided a way for our sins to be forgiven and our relationship with God to be restored. Jesus has provided a way for the Holy Spirit to replace our hearts of stone with hearts that have the will of God written on them.

The birth of Jesus, which we celebrate each year, is the beginning. It is the inauguration of this new covenant. The day has come, but is still in the process of coming. It is appropriate to talk about this new covenant during Lent because it is during Lent that we become more aware of our unfaithfulness to the covenant.

Because of what Jesus has done, the new covenant has arrived, and we can live in complete obedience to the law, because the Holy Spirit has changed our hearts and empowered us for holy living. As Wesleyans, we would say that in the grace of entire sanctification, God’s will is written on our hearts and we can live in accord with it, and no longer intentionally violate his law.

Yes, God remains faithful to us, even when sin remains in our hearts after conversion. Yet, God wants to do a radical transformation, and write his will on our hearts, and empower us to obey it. That can happen on this side of the resurrection.

So, as we gather together let us confess our sins and remember that God had promised to make a new covenant with his people, to remember that he has done that in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and that we need to accept this new covenant, through the power of the Spirit A faithful relationship, to God or to anyone else, requires a regular recommitment to that relationship.

Critical Discussion Questions:

1. What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

a. God, despite Israel’s unfaithfulness, has remained faithful. God chooses to view Israel as a virgin again instead of the soiled prostitute and unfaithful wife that she has been. God is going to restore his people. God is faithful.

2. What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

a. Holiness looks like responding to God’s faithfulness with a faithfulness of our own. It means accepting this new thing, the new covenant and the One who brings it. It means remembering our covenant with God on a daily and yearly basis. It also means a routinely confessing of our sins and/or shortcomings so that we might move on from those things to an ever-increasing faithfulness to the new covenant.

3. How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

a. It should remind us of our own unfaithfulness in contrast to the love of the Faithful One. At the same time it should spur us on toward a response of greater faithfulness. It should give us hope that God can so transform our hearts that his will and law will be written on them, and we can live in obedience through grace.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very

unfamiliar with the story.

1. What is a covenant? How do they differ from a contract? What kind of relationship is normally described as a covenant?

2. God begins by saying that the days are coming when he will make a new covenant with Israel. This new covenant will not be like the old one. What was the old covenant like? How is it different than the new one God is bringing?

3. Who is the bringer of this new covenant?

4. What does it mean that the covenant will be written on our hearts?

5. The text says that with this new covenant no one will have to say, “Know the Lord” because everyone, even the very small, will already know the Lord. What does this mean?

6. When parties are in covenant with one another they begin to be defined by their relationship with the other person in the covenant. How are you being defined by your covenantal relationship with God? What are some of the ways in which you have been changed?

7. How does confessing our sins and/or shortcomings help us live in greater faithfulness to this new covenant?

Exodus 20:1-21 –The Ten Commandments: Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 19:44:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

God gives us laws as a way to help us live in faithful relationship with him and with others. All too often we fail to fulfill these commands.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Understand that the nature of these commands are relational and not legalistic.

2. Identify how these laws are applicable to us in our current context.

3. Confess their failure to keep these commandments and subsequently seeking forgiveness and strength to remain faithful.

Catch up on the story:

Last week we examined the first four of the Ten Commandments. Before we began, we noted that the commands given here in this passage are relational commands. That is, they are grounded, not in a sense of duty or obligation, but in the context of God’s historical relationship with Israel. At the outset, God gives these laws because he is “the God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Israel is called to follow the law, not to gain status as God’s people; they are already that by virtue of their exodus from Egypt. They are called to follow the law so that they might grow and flourish as the kind of people God intends them to be.

Those first four commands have more to do with Israel’s relationship with God than with Israel’s relationship with one another. To be sure, though, when Israel breaks these first four commands, her relationship with her fellow Israelite begins to disintegrate as well. If we are to grow into a community of faith that confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, then we must seek to be faithful to the commands that are directly related to God as well as the commands that more profoundly affect our relationships with one another.

The Text:

The Fifth Commandment: Care for Your Mommas and Poppas

“Honor your father and your mother…”

It struck me the other day, when thinking about this particular command, that one is not excused from following it after they reach adulthood! For some time, I do not know how long, I have believed that now that I am an adult with children of my own that this command does not apply to me. It certainly applies to my children, though!

The command itself, to honor our parents, is open-ended. That is, it has no particular behavior in mind. Rather, what is recommended is that a child’s behavior brings honor and not shame to the parent. As a parent I can think of a million ways in which my children can bring me honor. They can obey me the first time I ask them to do something. They can get good grades in school. They can be calm and polite when we are out in public. They can respect others who are their friends and those who are in a position of authority. It might be safe to say that we intuitively know what it looks like for our children to honor us with their behavior. In the same way, we know when they are not honoring us!

Most of the time I think this command gets read this way, from the perspective of the parent who has children. We tell them, “Life will go better for you if you obey and honor your parents.” That is, after all, what the command promises. Israel will have a long and faithful life in the land that God will give them if they are conscious about honoring their parents.

But what does it look like for those of us who are grown adults with children of our own to honor our parents? My grandmother recently passed away. She was 90 years old and had lived a life filled with love and generosity, even in the midst of her own poverty. Toward the end her health began to degrade. She had a series of mini strokes that left her physically and cognitively impaired. It soon became apparent that she would no longer be able to live alone. She needed almost constant care. Our family decided that we would sell her house and she would move in with my Aunt Glee. Aunt Glee, at great cost to herself, lovingly cared for my grandmother until the day she died. My grandmother was truly honored by the care and support she received from my Aunt Glee.

So while this command urges children, when they are young, to honor their parents through their behavior and by growing up into responsible and well-adjusted adults, I also believe that the command urges us to examine how we care for our parents when they reach old age. It may not always be possible to care for sick or aged parents in your home. It is possible to bring honor to our parents in their last days by ensuring that they live out their last days with the dignity that befits them as people who bear the image of God.

The Sixth Command: Taking Life…

“You shall not kill.”

Much ink and words have been spilled over this command that takes up just two words in the Hebrew text. Most of the modern translations that you and I might consult translate the command, “You shall not murder.” To translate it in this way is to narrowly restrict the nature of the command. Murder carries with it the implication that the taking of a life was done in an intentional and individual way. The Hebrew word in question, however, is used in various places in the Old Testament when speaking of cases involving killings of all kinds. The Hebrew word, “rāṣaḥ applies equally to both cases of premeditated murder and killings as a result of any other circumstances, what English Common Law has called, “man slaughter.” The root also describes killing for revenge (Num 35:27, 30) and assassination (II Kgs 6:32).”[1] So, it is best to translate the command as a prohibition against killing in general.

When talking about this command there will always be a pull to try and reconcile this prohibition against life taking with all of the violent deaths that take place in Israel’s narrative. We often try to make a case for the legitimization of war and capital punishment based on this diversity within the biblical text. If you are not careful, most of your group time will be eaten up discussing this command!

To best understand this command we must examine it in light of the previous commands. Inherent in the first few commands is the idea that God is the giver and sustainer of all life. The act of creation itself, which we are called to commemorate in keeping the Sabbath, is an act of sheer grace. It is life-giving. The intent of the prohibition against killing is completely inline with God’s creative, life-giving intentions. Life is God’s to create. It is also his to take away.

Of course, there must be room for discussions about the appropriateness of a nation-state, such as our own, to engage in activities such as war and capital punishment, or to the appropriateness of allowing laws for self-defense. In those discussions, however, we must not lose sight of the fact that this command warns us “that any human killing is far from routine; it can never become some ordinary outcome of a legally constituted system of justice nor some inevitable result of a declaration of war, however justified such a war may claim to be. Because all life is in fact God’s life, we humans take life at our own peril. No killing can ever be a cause for rejoicing. Weeping may be the appropriate response whenever killing is done, no matter the circumstances.”[2]

Perhaps the best approach to discussing this command is a positive one. We must ask these questions: what does it look like for the body of Christ, that is the church, to work to ensure that all life has the opportunity to flourish? How can we encourage forgiveness and reconciliation instead of hatred and revenge? After all, God is working in our world so that it might become a world without violence and estrangement. In Isaiah 11:6-9, the prophet paints a picture for us of the kingdom that God is seeking to establish, a kingdom that Jesus Christ has and is establishing.

⁶ The wolf shall live with the lamb,

the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

the calf and the lion and the fatling together,

and a little child shall lead them.

⁷ The cow and the bear shall graze,

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

⁸ The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,

and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

⁹ They will not hurt or destroy

on all my holy mountain;

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea.

The Seventh Command: No Fooling Around…

“You shall not commit adultery.”

Once again, this command is only two words in the Hebrew text. The literal issue at stake here is the violation of the marriage relationship. Adultery, as the word here is translated, has to do with a man having a sexual relationship with a woman who is either married or engaged.

The larger issue here, I believe, is one of faithfulness. Sex was meant to be a beautiful and practical part of God’s intention for creation. Beautiful in that it connects two people together in a way that is otherwise impossible. Practical in that it provides a way for humanity to be faithful to the command to be fruitful and multiply. It is in that command that we are invited into becoming co-creators with God.

Anytime we use sex in a way that is contrary to God’s intention for it, either through pre-marital affairs, extra marital affairs, lust or pornography, we actually work against God’s invitation for us to be co-creators. It is because these forms of sexual activity actively destroy the relationships that allow us to be fruitful and multiply. Who among us has not witnessed a life or marriage destroyed because of this kind of unfaithfulness?

What does it look like for us to fulfill this command in a positive manner? Perhaps it begins with how we treat those who have been unfaithful. Instead of shaming them and casting them out of our fellowship (as we do with many who are caught in affairs, especially those in positions of authority) we should seek to remain faithful to them. This is, after all, how God has responded to our repeated unfaithfulness, with the steadfast love and self-sacrifice of Jesus. When we welcome and forgive those who have been unfaithful into our fellowship so that they might become faithful again, we positively fulfill this command.

The Eight Command: Don’t take what isn’t yours.

“You shall not steal.”

As I have studied the creation narrative found in Genesis one of the things I have learned is that work was a part of God’s plan for us from the beginning. We were created to be people who derived worth and dignity from the work that we did. Just as sex is a part of our invitation to become co-creators with God by being fruitful and multiplying, so also work gives us the opportunity to create. After a day’s labor we can step back and find fulfillment in the fact that we have created something. To be sure, not all work is equally as fulfilling or equally as creative. Some of it is downright drudgery. This, we believe, is a consequence of the fall.

The fact remains, however, that work was a part of God’s plan for us. Also a part of God’s plan for us is that we would receive some of the fruit from our labor. Originally, Adam and Eve were allowed to eat the produce that the garden brought forth as they tended it. Theft, however, takes what one has not worked for, be it money, or goods, or a person’s character or reputation. In doing so it devalues both the thief and the victim. Theft is also an upraised fist in the face of God. It shouts at God, “You haven’t taken good enough care of me! So, I will take matters into my own hands!” When we steal, we fail to acknowledge that all that we have is a gift from God. Even our ability to work is a gift from God.

There are three ways in which we positively keep this command. We can go about our work with fervor and dignity, knowing that through our work God will provide for us. The second way we can positively keep this command is by working to ensure that what belongs to our neighbor is safe. We work together as a community to ensure that all of our needs are met. There is a third way as well: we fight injustices that cause people to be caught in cycles of poverty, that, at times, forces them to steal to survive. Similarly, we can actively seek to liberate people from addictions that drive them to theft.

The Ninth Command: Liar, liar!

“You shall not bear false witness…”

A friend of mine used to say; “You only have as much relationship as you have honesty in that relationship.” I have found this saying to be true. The best and longest lasting relationships I have had have been built on mutual honesty and truth-telling. One simply cannot have a good relationship when lies are a constant presence.

Truth-telling is hard. It takes courage. At times, it takes a willingness to place the needs of the other in front of our own. The temptation to lie comes from the constant pull of selfishness. Relationships, though, with God and with our neighbor do not flourish where selfish lies abound. We positively keep this command when we value the relationship with God and with others over our own selfish desires. We keep this command when confess our sins and when we seek forgiveness and commit ourselves to being a people who tell the truth to one another in love.

The Tenth Command: Don’t Covet!

“You shall not covet.”

The Lord’s Prayer has profoundly impacted my life. One of the lines in the prayer that I get stuck on is, “And give us this day our daily bread…” I’ve come to realize that this line has two movements to it. First, to pray it is to recognize that all I have is a gift from God. My family, my house, and the food I eat, while seemingly the fruit of my own efforts, is really the gracious gift of the God who has given me the ability to work. The air I breathe and the body I have are gifts as well. Acknowledging that all that we have is from God is not our natural mentality. At least, that is, not here in America where it is believed that we are what we make of our selves.

The second movement is tied to the first. If God has provided all that I need, then all that I have is enough. There is a freedom and a rest that comes with realizing this. Contentment comes from resting in God’s good gifts. The urge to covet, the over-grown desire for that which we do not posses, comes from not believing or trusting that God has provided sufficiently for us.

This is a constant struggle for Israel. Israel, as they journeyed from Egypt to Mt. Sinai, grumbled that God had brought them out to the wilderness to starve to death. They grumbled when heaven-sent bread was not enough. They grumbled when it seemed they had no water. At each and every turn, however, God’s provision for Israel was more than enough. Even after they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years they had found that their clothes had not worn out.

To fulfill this command requires us to rest in what God has given to us. God calls to us in this command, “My gifts are enough for you.” I find, when I fail to believe or trust that God will provide for me, that I begin constantly repeating that line from the Lord’s Prayer, “and give us this day our daily bread…” It reminds me that I am God’s. It reminds me that God loves me and has provided for me. It gives me hope that God will continue to provide for me.

There’s a larger social component to this command too. If we are resting in what God has given us then we are not so consumed with ourselves. This allows us to focus on the needs of others, asking how it is that we might help our neighbor resist the urge to covet and the subsequent sins that follow.

So What…?

I don’t believe that it is enough for us to look at this list and check off our obedience to each command. It is not enough for us not to be murderers. We must find ways to work against violence and hatred so that life can flourish. It is not enough that we are not adulterers. We must find ways to encourage faithfulness for both those who have been unfaithful and for those who are learning and growing into the faith. It is not enough to honor our parents as children and then be done with that command. We must find ways to honor our parents as they age and grow close to death. The same things can be said for stealing and coveting. Both these sins have their roots in a lack of faith and trust that the good gifts of God are enough for us. We must find ways of helping one another see the ways in which God has provided for us so that we might rest in it.

The Ten Commandments are more than just a list of rules that are intended to keep us from sin. The commands are intended for us so that we might flourish as the people of God, and as we flourish as the people of God, the world can be blessed through our ministry.

Critical Discussion Questions:

What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

God is deeply concerned with how we act in relationship with one another.

What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

Holiness looks like working to fulfill these commands in their positive movement. It is not enough just not to steal or lie or kill. Our faithful fulfillment of these commands urges us to find ways to ensure that others don’t need to seek, that there is truth told, and that we work toward seeing that life flourishes in the midst of brokenness.

How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

As a whole, the Ten Commandments help us live ethical and moral lives in response to the personal God who has saved us because of our relationship with him. We follow these commands because we trust that the one who has freed us from slavery knows how our lives should be ordered so that we might have life and life abundantly.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. We often believe that the command to honor our parents is directed toward children while they are young. Our responsibility to honor our parents does not cease when we have children of our own. What might it look like for us to actively seek to honor our parents as adult children?

2. We live in a culture that celebrates violence and war. Even in the Old Testament we witness a lot of killing. How do we reconcile the prohibition against killing with the rest of the Old Testament? What might it look like to actively seek to positively fulfill this command to not kill?

3. The term the seventh commandment uses is adultery. The intention of the command is much greater than just infidelity within the marriage relationship. What are other forms of sexual unfaithfulness? Why is sexual faithfulness so important? What are some of the ways we might positively fulfill this command?

4. Work seems to be part of God’s plan from the beginning. We are to derive meaning and worth from our work. How is stealing a violation of God’s creation? What are some of the ways we might positively fulfill this command?

5. Respond to this statement: You only have as much relationship as you have honesty in that relationship. What do you think this statement means? What does it say about the importance of truth-telling for individual relationships? For our relationships within our community of faith?

6. Coveting is an over-grown desire for that which we do not posses. How does coveting betray our faith in God? How does it damage our relationships with one another?

[1] William White, “2208 רָצַח,” ed. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody Press, 1999), 860.

[2] John C. Holbert, The Ten Commandments: A Preaching Commentary (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), 77.

Genesis 18:1-15 –“Oh yes, you did laugh!”

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 19:25:00 +0000

“Faith is not a reasonable act which fits into the normal scheme of life and perception. The promise of the gospel is not a conventional piece of wisdom that is easily accommodated to everything else. Embrace of this radical gospel requires shattering and discontinuity.”[1]

-Walter Brueggemann

Lesson Focus:

We sin because we fail to have proper faith in the sometimes-nonsensical ways of God.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Recognize that faith sometimes means living in ways that may not make a whole lot of sense.

2. God works to fulfill his purposes for creation even when we do not have proper faith.

Catch up on the story:

God has promised to make Abram a great nation, through whom all nations of the world would be blessed. Up to this point we aren’t sure how this is going to happen because Abraham and Sarah are barren. Sarah, in attempt to try and have children vicariously, gives her servant Hagar to Abraham. This situation only causes discord. Later, God performs a covenant ceremony with Abraham changing his name from Abram. God also give him the sign of the covenant that is circumcision. Once again, God reasserts that he will make Abraham’s children a great nation that will bless all the nations.

The Text:

Our text begins during the heat of the day. Abraham, who has just had all of the male members of his family circumcised as a mark of the covenant that God has made with him, is sitting at the entrance to his tent. He looks up, and the text tells us he sees “the LORD.” This first verse, however, may function as a heading to the section. Scholars are divided when it comes to the identity of the three men with whom Abraham interacts. What is important, at this point, is that God is reminding Abraham and Sarah of his promise to them.

Abraham, while sitting in the entrance to his tent, spies three men and runs to meet them. When he arrives at the three men he bows down and addresses them. The text is unclear about what Abraham knows about these three men. He may know that these men are different in some kind of way. Perhaps he knows that they are messengers from God. His immediate treatment of them gives us no clue as to his understanding.

Providing hospitality for those who were traveling was one of the most important, if not the most important, social rule of the day. To turn aside strangers or travelers, not offering them food, water and shelter, would have been unthinkable. It would have also brought shame on the family. Abraham’s offer of hospitality will be contrasted with the hospitality (or lack of) that is offered to these men in the city of Sodom.

So, Abraham addresses the men as if he were their servant. His aim is to please these strangers. Abraham offers them the things that traveling men most want; water for drinking and washing, rest, and food. The men do not refuse Abraham’s offer. The narrative moves quickly as Abraham begins to instruct Sarah to make bread from the best flour and his servants to kill and prepare a tender calf. It would have taken some time for the food to be prepared, but in the interest in moving the story along we cut straight to the shared meal.

Abraham brings the food to his visitors and they engage him in conversation. There is no small talk. The men want to know where Abraham’s wife is. Abraham responds that his wife is in the tent. Sarah, as almost certainly you and I would do in this type of situation, was listening to the conversation between her husband and the three strangers. I’m sure her ears perked up when the conversation turned to her.

The men offer a promise to Abraham and Sarah. To be sure this promise had been offered to them some time before and now it seemed as if it would be impossible to fulfill. The men declare that in due season Sarah will give birth to a son. Let’s remind ourselves of what has taken place so far. God came to a barren couple, a couple for whom the possibility of life and future were non-existent. To be barren, in the biblical world, was to be already in a sense dead. There will be no one to carry on the name, no one to carry on the memory of the family. God comes to this barren couple and promises them a future filled with descendants that outnumber the stars in the sky.

Time passed and Abraham and Sarah still did not have any children. It was then that Sarah decided to take matters into her own hands. She would give her maidservant, Hagar, to Abraham as a wife. They would have a child through Hagar. It works, too. Hagar becomes pregnant and gives birth to Ishmael. Abraham is content now with what he has. After Ishmael is born God comes to Abraham and Sarah once more. Ishmael will not be the one through whom God blesses the world; he is not the fruit of God’s promise to Abraham. Sarah herself will have a son. Abraham’s response is one of laughter. How can this be? Abraham is 100 years old and Sarah is 90! The promise that was originally offered will be kept. Sarah will have a son.

We aren’t told how much time has passed between God’s last conversation with Abraham and the three visitors. It is enough time, however, for the couple to doubt that God will keep his promise. Sarah hears the voice of the men proclaiming that she will have a son soon. Like Abraham, her response to this news is one of laughter. It is, however, not the laughter that is born from the joy of good news. It is the laughter that comes from disbelief.

It is the laughter that comes when a friend tells you that he is finally going to go and talk to that girl he has been admiring for such a long time, or the kind of laughter elicited when a Cardinals fan hears a Cubs fan say, “This is our year!” “Haha! I’ll believe that when I see it!” Even though both the NIV and the NRSV render the verse, “she laughed to herself,” the original text indicates that the laughter that Sarah produces is not just a polite little laugh, or even a silent chuckle to herself. It is, rather, a full out belly laugh produced by the absurdity of an old woman giving birth.[2] Perhaps the laugh is also a way to cope with the reality that what Sarah has hoped for has not come to pass. Even now that these men say that it will happen, the wound is still sore; she believes it less now than she did before.

Sarah wonders out loud how it is that someone of her age, who has stopped menstruating, can have a child. The question is then put to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh…Is anything to wonderful for the Lord?” Here is the crucial part of the text, this question, “Is anything to wonderful for the Lord?” The question concerns Abraham and Sarah’s belief, or lack there of, in God’s ability to fulfill the promise against all odds. It was nonsense to Sarah that at her age, and in her condition, that she would be able to have a baby.

The question is asked to us, and to the aged couple in a rhetorical manner, and it is asked with confidence. The question is left to linger in our minds. It is left to challenge our assumptions about the nature of our world and what is possible. Left up to us, a promise such as the one these men make to Sarah is very laughable. It just is not possible. For Israel, whose story this is, and for us too, it is meant to draw us into believing that the world in its broken state is not how the world should or ought to persist. Indeed, it calls us to begin to have faith, faith in the promise that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has tangibly changed things.

At the end of the day,

“The story is constructed to present the tension between this inscrutable speech of God (that comes as promise) and the resistance and mockery of Abraham and Sarah who doubt the word and cannot believe the promise. Israel stands before God’s word of promise but characteristically finds that word beyond reason and belief. Abraham, and especially Sarah, are not offered here as models of faith but as models of disbelief. For them, the powerful promise of God outdistances their ability to receive it.[3]

What might be even more remarkable is that God keeps his promise despite their unbelief.

So What…?

The narrative ends with this simple yet profound question hanging in the air. It moves on to a story about great evil in the world while Abraham and Sarah continue to wait for the fulfillment of the promise. The last words of the section, “Oh yes, you did laugh” should haunt us. How many times have we encountered a command of Jesus only to laugh at it because of its impracticality? We laugh in the face of Jesus’ command to turn the other cheek when someone wrongs us. We laugh in the face of Jesus when he commands us to repay evil with love. We laugh in Jesus’ face when we pretend to serve God yet we are bound to making money. We laugh when Jesus tells us that in order to truly gain abundant life we must first give it all away.

No doubt, many of us will deny our laughter in the face of the foolishness (to us anyway) of the kingdom of God. We will say to ourselves and to others that, perhaps, Jesus did not mean those things literally. Our laughter is a sign of our disbelief, and that disbelief leads us into sin because we cannot fully trust the one who has the power to bring us from death to life.

Last week, during the first week of Lent, we confessed that our sin, our violence and wickedness causes God anguish and grief. This week, as we continue our walk toward the cross, let us confess our lack of imagination and faith in our God who “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” (Romans 4:17) Let us ask that we might have great, yet simple faith to follow in the path of Jesus.

Critical Discussion Questions:

What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

a. In this text God continues to be faithful even when we are not. God, faced with the laughing disbelief of Abraham and Sarah, does not stop to find someone else who will do his will unquestioningly, but continues to remain faithful to his promise. While our disbelief doesn’t always disqualify us from relationship with God, it does hinder us from fully enjoying and experiencing all of God’s life-giving ability.

What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

a. Salvation looks likes God’s faithfulness in the midst of our unbelief. Even though we laugh at the way and plans of God, God still is working for us. This text does not directly show that there are consequences to our unbelief, but to be sure, there are. Even after we have proven ourselves unfaithful, or unwilling to be faithful, God ultimately provides us with chances to respond to his gift of salvation. Even though Abraham and Sarah have laughed in the face of God, God is still going to work redemptively through them.

How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

a. This story calls us to answer the question, “Is there anything too hard/wonderful for God?” The answer to this question can only be spoken after we have witnessed and heard of God’s mighty and saving deeds. As we engage the story of God’s redemption in the bible, and we listen to the stories of God’s people in our church who have experienced God’s loving kindness, we are compelled to answer a resounding “No!” We should then walk forth in faith and obedience even when it makes no sense.

b. While our faith may falter, and we may not believe in God’s future for our world and our lives, God is still able to work through us. If in the past we have laughed at God’s plans because they seem inconceivable, there is still hope for us. God desires to work through and with us even at times when are not exactly willing.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. Familiarize yourself with the story of Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 12, 15-17). What are the promises God has made to Abraham (Abram)? How has God kept those promises so far in the story? How have Abraham and Sarah taken control of the situation for themselves?

2. The men repeat God’s promise to the couple that they will someday have a son. Why do you think God chooses to remind them instead of just making it happen?

3. Sarah laughs at the news. Put yourself in her situation (90 years old, barren for all these years, had ceased menstruation), how would you have responded to such news?

4. Sarah’s laughter is one of disbelief. The idea that she will have a child at her age and condition is just too absurd to believe. Yet, God chooses to use her anyway. Why do you think that God chooses to use us at times despite our disbelief?

5. The question asked at the end of the story is, “Is there anything too wonderful for the Lord?” (v. 14). Why do you think this question was asked at this point in the story? How do you think Abraham and Sarah would have answered the question at the very end of their lives?

6. The question in verse 14 is meant for us as well. What might be some of the ways we respond to Jesus’ teaching like Sarah responded to the news of her approaching pregnancy, that is, with a lack of faith?

7. Are there times you just can’t see how God’s desires for the way we should live make any sense?

[1] Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1982), 158–159.

[2] “Commentary on Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7,” Working Preacher.org, accessed January 19, 2015, https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1087.

[3] Brueggemann, 158.

Exodus 20:1-21 –The Ten Commandments: Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 17:01:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

God gives us laws as a way to help us live in faithful relationship with him and with others. All too often we fail to fulfill these commands.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Understand that the nature of these commands are relational and not legalistic.

2. Identify how these laws are applicable to us in our current context.

3. Confess their failure to keep these commandments and subsequently seeking forgiveness and strength to remain faithful.

Catch up on the story:

As this passage begins, Israel is encamped at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Israel arrived there after being liberated by God from over 430 years of slavery in Egypt. When Israel arrived in Egypt, she was only a small family. Now, however, she is a numerous people whom God has chosen to be his special and called out people.

Israel’s departure from Egypt was nothing short of miraculous. God, in power and might, provided a safe way for Israel through sea and wilderness. By day and by night, God led them in the way they should travel. Shortly after arriving at Sinai, Moses went up onto the mountain to have a conversation with God. Moses is told that soon God will descend and speak so that Israel might hear him. God is going to make a covenant with the people. Moses is instructed to gather the people, inform them what is going to take place and ensure that they are consecrated as a holy assembly. First, however, God wants to know if Israel will do what God will command them to do. Israel responds in the affirmative, “Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do.” (19:8) The stage is set for God to begin instructing the people concerning what it means to be the people of God.

The events that are about to take place are classified as a theophany, or a breaking in of God into the normal world and lives of the created order. God is about to come close enough for Israel to hear his voice. This is a special event, and in the rest of the Old Testament, a unique event. God will not be directly visible to the people, but will be shrouded in clouds, fire and smoke.

Moses’ role in this event is important, not just for the event itself, but for his continued role as leader of God’s people. To this point it has been Moses who has been the direct mediator between God and the people. For Israel’s part, they would still be back in Egypt if God had not chosen Moses to be his mouth to both Israel and to Pharaoh. Moses’ leadership, however, has already been questioned. The way in which God chooses to reveal himself and his wishes to Israel at this point is partly to validate Moses’ leadership role. God speaks to Moses in the direct hearing of the people so that they will be able to believe that the direction that Moses gives is not just his own personal whim, but the command of God. Moses is standing among the people when God gives the law.

The Text:

The First Word: I Am the Lord Your God

When all the players are in place God begins to speak. The very first words out of God’s mouth are extremely important for all that follows. “I am the Lord your God…” The “your” here is not plural as you might suspect; it’s singular. God begins his speech by addressing the individual in the congregation. While these commands have in mind the health and vitality of the community that is Israel, the health and vitality of the community begins with individual and interpersonal relationships.

Not only is God addressing the group and the individual, God is presenting these commands in terms of relationship. It is not some impersonal, distant and unknown God who is capriciously laying down commands. No, it is a God that is known to Israel, known to Israel through mighty deeds that secured their salvation. This relationship is one with a history. Not only is God Israel’s God, he is the one “…who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” These laws are given in the context of relationship. Israel is called not to obey the law for the law’s sake. Israel is called to obey the one who gives the law. Further, it’s important to note that God’s grace comes before the commands. God graciously redeemed his people out of slavery in Egypt, and now they will be called to respond to that grace through obedient living.

It’s important to keep in mind here that Israel’s faithfulness to these commands is not conditionally based. God is not saying that if Israel keeps these commands they will be God’s chosen people. They are already, by virtue of their deliverance from Egypt, God’s people. Keeping these commands does not make them the people of God. Rather, these commands allow God’s people to grow up into and flourish as God’s covenant people.

One more thing is important to note before we look at each of the commandments in turn. Eight of the commands are negative in nature, “You shall not…”, while two of them are positive. One commentator points out that at this point the commands are not intended to create life but to protect it from behaviors, private and cooperate, that might destroy it. Yet, he notes, that the commands implicitly move us toward considering their positive side. “For example, not bearing false witness invites speaking well of one’s neighbor, not killing suggests efforts to preserve life, and not wrongfully using the name of God commends the praise of God. It is not enough for a community’s life and health simply to avoid crimes.”[1] With every “shall not” is a “shall.” I believe that this is part of what Jesus means when he says in Matthew that he did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it.

Our study of each command will focus on the prohibition of the negative commands as well as the positive intention inherent in it. We will ask: what does it look like to fulfill this negative command in positive way? We will examine the first five commands this week and the final five next week.

The First Command: No Other Gods!

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”

The prohibition against having any other gods other than Yahweh is tied tightly to God’s previous action. As we have already said, these commands, especially this one, is given in the context of a previous history and relationship. This history of God as one who delivers from slavery and bondage will be foundational for Israel. A phrase similar to “who brought you out of the land of Egypt” is found in over 130 places in 30 of the 39 books of the Old Testament. 91 times we are explicitly told that it was Yahweh who brought Israel out of Egypt.[2]

There is to be no doubt left in Israel’s mind that the one who freed them from slavery is the one who is in control. God is being clearly defined as the one who has acted, in sheer grace, on behalf of Israel. God is committed to Israel and now God wishes that Israel be committed to him. This is made explicit in the command to have no other gods. The phrase may confuse some, making them think that the “before me” is a matter of order. As in, God being the first god in what might be a small pantheon. This might give the sense that Israel (we) might serve other gods too as long as our first allegiance goes to God. This is not the case. The literal translation of the phrase is “before/beside/in addition/together with my face.” God desires a solitary commitment. This includes, to be sure, placing ourselves as god alongside the one who has freed us from slavery. A good and long discussion could be had concerning the things or people lifted up as gods. They are legion and we do so, at times, without ever realizing it.

In a positive way, what does it look like to not have any other gods besides the one who brought us up out of slavery? Constantly, through the pages of scripture, we are being called to become like this very God who desires our allegiance. Keeping this command means that we seek to be like God in that we are active in bringing people from bondage to freedom. This may be very literal, as in seeking to bring people to freedom from addiction, human trafficking, and many other things. Or, it could be more spiritual in nature.

The Second Command: No Idols!

“You shall not make for yourself an idol…You shall not bow down to them or worship them…”

Idols were prevalent throughout the countries that would surround Israel. Indeed, even the house of slavery from which they have just been liberated liberally used idols and images to represent what was of ultimate concern for them. In short, idols were everywhere and presented a grave danger to Israel. In other places in Israel’s sacred literature, God would warn Israel that worship of idols would bring about consequences of the gravest sort.

The problem with idols is that they are static. They represent an image of a thing, a person or an animal in an unchangeable form. To cast an image and call it God, as Israel will do in just a few short chapters, is to represent God as something he is not, static and unresponsive. Rather, the God that is depicted in the pages of our bible is one that is immanent; he is among us responding to us as we live our daily lives. To cast God in an image is to deny that God acts in relationship to the world he created.[3]

The prohibition against idols goes beyond their mere existence. The tendency with all idols is that one will bow down in worship to them. Bowing down might seem innocent enough, but it’s the posture that is important. To bow down, or to prostrate oneself before someone or something, places oneself in a position of complete subservience. In a bowed down position one is totally vulnerable. “To prostrate oneself is to announce that the person in whose presence one is in is vastly superior and worthy of complete deference.”[4] For Israel and for us, as ones who have been created in the image of God, this kind of posture should only be reserved for the one who has brought us up out of Egypt, out of slavery.

To fulfill this command in a positive way is to find rest in the God who has pursued us, who has sought us and graciously promises to remain steadfastly loyal to us. It is a constant burden to seek after something or someone who might bring us safety, security, and love. We need not waste our energy on that search. God is with us. God has come to us in Jesus Christ, the form of the invisible God. So, let us leave off the work of constructing something to worship. Let us, instead, turn to the God who is constantly calling to us and who is easy to find.

The Third Command: Don’t Give God a Bad Reputation!

“You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God…”

We often use this commandant to help our children learn how not to talk. We teach them not to use God’s name as a swear word, and then we teach them not to use swear words at all. Somewhere along the line we make the connection between this commandment and all forms of speech we deem as unbefitting our status as Christians.

This commandment concerning the right use of God’s name goes much deeper than swearing. It has everything to do with God’s reputation here on earth. Names are important markers of identity. The modern world of marketing knows this. That is why those involved in marketing products or services do their best to ensure that the name of a product matches what it does and becomes synonymous with quality and excellence in that area. Companies and marketing firms are so effective at this that people build up great loyalties to these products. Names conjure up all kinds of ideas about the nature of the product. Just think of some of the conversations you may have had about companies such as Apple and Microsoft or Ford and Chevy. Names matter. They point back to something larger.

The God of Israel is constantly concerned with his name and the larger reality to which it points. Moses, in a few chapters, will convince God not to destroy Israel because of the damage it would cause to God’s good name. In this command, God wants Israel to represent God, not only in how it handles itself in truthfulness, but in how it characterizes God. God is the God of truth. Therefore Israel should not lie. God is the God who frees people from slavery; therefore Israel should free others from slavery. God is the God who is steadfastly loyal in love; therefore Israel should be steadfastly loyal in love. The question for us is, when we invoke the name of God do we do so for things that are of great importance? In other words, are the things we proclaim God being for really the things that God is for? Do we carry God’s name in the world well, or do we bring it into disrepute through our words and actions?

Positively, making right use of God’s name is done in praise and recounting the great deeds of God. “We can and do raise up God’s name for praise and adoration and for support of the things God calls us to: actions for justice, lively and true worship, support for our weakness, challenges to our sloth, hope in our hopelessness.”[5]

The Fourth Commandment: The Sabbath! Keep it!

“Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy…”

The first word of this command, remember, is an important word for Israel. So often in the Old Testament Israel is commanded to remember. Most of those commands demand that what is to be remembered is God or what God has done. What are we to remember? We are to remember the Sabbath. The call is not so much to remember a certain day, but to remember the way in which God created all that is. Six days God worked to bring the world to order. On the seventh day he rested. God did not rest because he needed to; he did not rest because he was tired. God did not even rest from his completion of creation; God rested as a way to complete creation. By doing so God establishes within creation a rhythm of work and rest. This is the way it is supposed to be: work then rest. It is only when creation honors this work-rest rhythm that creation can be what it was intended to be. In a counter intuitive way, not working keeps the forces of chaos away.[6]

This is certainly contrary to how we think and talk about the world. We scurry around, working constantly (at our jobs or at other things as well) so that we can live our lives in the way that we want to live them. Our constant working is an attempt to ensure that we are in control. The opposite happens. The more we frantically work the more things unwind. Our marriages unwind, our relationship with our children disintegrates, and so does our heath. When we do not stop to rest we declare that God is not really in charge.

Ironically, our call to remember the Sabbath is more than a call to cognitively remember. Remembrance in the bible is almost never passive. We are called to remember the Sabbath by keeping it. In our world today, keeping the Sabbath requires planning and commitment. It requires the work of discipline to set it apart as holy.

So What…?

As we journey towards the cross, we are confronted with the numerous ways in which we fail to keep God’s commands, not just in not doing wrong, but failing to fulfill these commands in their positive aspects as well. Our failure to keep these commands damages our relationship with God and with others.

When we stress keeping the law by stressing the importance of the law itself rather than the relationship behind the law, we miss the point. It’s a sin because it characterizes God and the law as caring more about what we do and do not do over the law as a way to help us become the people God wants us to become by way of our redemption from slavery.

When we build idols for ourselves we fail to represent God as a personal God who is in a responsive relationship with us. We end up creating a god we can control, one we’ve made in our own image instead of serving the God who created us in his image.

When we wrongfully use God’s name we do damage to his reputation. The ways we talk about God, the things we pray for, and the ways we live—those things show others what we think is the nature of the God whom we serve.

Finally, when we fail to keep the Sabbath holy we sin by failing to allow God to be God. We work and believe that if we were to cease our toil that the world would come crashing down on us. We fail to trust that the God who created and sustains the universe will now take care of us as we seek to follow the rhythm of creation: work then rest.

As we confess our sin and our unfaithfulness we need to remember that our confession is just the first step toward our collective repentance, our walking in a different direction. If we are to be faithful it will be because we have allowed the Holy Spirit to work in us as individuals and as a community.

Critical Discussion Questions:

What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

God has created us as his holy people. He has liberated us from slavery and is helping us as we journey toward the Promised Land. God is giving us the guidance and rules we need to fully become what he has intended us to become.

What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

Holiness looks like following these commands because they come from the God who has brought us up out of slavery. Holiness looks like faithful obedience as a grateful response for the saving actions of God.

How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

We often gloss over these commands thinking we know what they mean and what they demand of us. We must confess that we have read them too simply and have often missed the point and then move toward being more faithfully obedient.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. Why does God begin the Ten Commandments by speaking these words, “I am the Lord your God.”

2. Regarding the first commandment, why doesn’t God want us to have any other gods beside him?

3. Why does God specifically remind Israel of what he has just done for them?

4. What is an idol? What are our idols today?

5. The prohibition against bowing down to an idol had in mind the complete vulnerable state that bowing down created. We may not physically bow down before our idols today, but what are some of the ways in which we make ourselves completely vulnerable to our idols?

6. What does it mean to make wrongful use of God’s name? Is it mainly about using God’s name as a swear word? How else might we make wrongful use of God’s name?

7. A name represents the nature and character of the thing it represents. For Israel, God’s name represented a whole set of beliefs about who God is and how God interacts with creation. For instance, for Israel the name “God” comes to mean “the one who sets the captive free.” When you talk about God, what beliefs about who God is come immediately to mind?

8. The commandment to keep the Sabbath holy is rooted in the creation story. God works six days and then rests on the seventh. God intended this to be the normal rhythm of creation: work then rest. Why do you think God planned it this way?

9. Is it tough to truly take a Sabbath, that is, to rest from your work? If so, why? What might that say about the trust, or lack thereof, that we place in God for our future?

[1] Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991), 221.

[2] John C. Holbert, The Ten Commandments: A Preaching Commentary (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002) 17.

[3] Fretheim, 227

[4] Holbert, 29

[5] Holbert, 48

[6] Fretheim, 230

Genesis 6:5-22; 8:21-22 –Starting Over…

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 22:17:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

Our sinfulness causes pain and grief in the heart of God. After the Flood, God chooses to respond to evil, not with destruction, but with love and forgiveness.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Understand that God’s reaction to creation’s infidelity is one of grief and pain.

2. Understand that the Flood is an act of recreation not pure judgment.

3. Be challenged to respond to evil like God now has chosen to respond to evil, with love and forgiveness.

Catch up on the story:

Adam and Eve sinned and the world was forever changed. Men were cursed to work hard on the land in order to produce means for their survival. Women were cursed to have great pain in childbirth. But even though humanity sinned, it did not spell the end for God’s creation that was indeed, “very good”. Humanity continued to multiply and with that multiplication sin multiplied. The descendants of Adam were continually evil in their hearts and in their actions. This caused God to grieve. The world had gone its own way, a way not pleasing to God. But God had not given up on the world; rather he wished to start over. Noah, surrounded by all kinds of unfaithfulness and resistance to the good will of God, found favor with God.

The Text:

This text is one of our most cherished and familiar stories. If you look in any children’s storybook bible it is sure to be included, complete with cute illustrations of elephants, monkeys and penguins. The Flood narrative’s familiarity to us sometimes does us a disservice. While we might read the story to our children at bedtime, we often forget to probe deep enough into the text to see what is really going on. Or, we simplify the story so that it remains only about punishment for sins, or about God’s salvation for the righteous. To be sure, the story has elements of both of those things, but it is not primarily about either of those things. What is the story about?

The Setting:

We are not given any specific information concerning the location or date of the Flood. To search for a concrete historical location and time for our story would distract from the narrative purpose of the story. What is clear is that the world that God had created as “very good” has turned out to be anything but good. Beginning with Adam and Eve’s first sin, humanity has begun to assert itself over the guidance and direction of God. In a fit of uncontrolled desire Cain slays Able. Sin compounds and grows. Generations have passed since Cain and we are told that the world and the hearts of humanity are evil and that continually. The wickedness of humanity covers the whole earth.

God’s Response: Pain and Grief

God decides that humanity’s evil and wickedness has spread far enough. God will now act to rectify the situation. God will act to cover the whole world with a great flood. Every human creature along with the animals of the world will be blotted out. Here the Hebrew denotes more than just to destroy those who have been evil, but to cease to remember any longer. The image has its roots in the preparation of written texts. The world will be rubbed clean in the same way a scribe might correct an error by rubbing the ink from the page. The same word will be used in 1 Kings where God will wipe away Jerusalem like a person cleans a dirty dish so that it might be used again.[1] Mistakes will be wiped away, making space for something new.

The image is clear. There will be a fresh beginning. This is not destruction for destruction’s sake. It is not just judgment on those who have been wicked. It is the clearing of the table so that it might be reset with human actors who will not continually work against the good will of God. The chaos of wickedness and evil will be wiped away by the cleansing chaos of water.

The reason for this cleansing, however, is not what we might first expect. All too often the image of God that we have constructed for ourselves is one that is utterly unsympathetic towards disobedience and evil. This God must act immediately and swiftly deal with those who have sinned against him. While we can agree that sin and wickedness are antithetical to the nature of God and that God does indeed bring about judgment on those who work against his good purposes, that is not God’s primary motivation here.

According to the text, God’s sole motivation for this cleansing is grief, sorrow and pain. Three times in three verses we are told that God was sorry or grieved. The Hebrew word here is yatsav, and it means to hurt, feel pain or to grieve. This is the root word used to describe how humanity’s persistent wickedness affects God. In the NIV it is translated as “was deeply troubled,” in the NRSV it is translated as “sorry.” Here the NIV’s choice is probably the better one. God, in his inner most parts, felt pain and sorrow that his good creation has turned out to be so thoroughly bad. This sheds a different light on the destruction that takes place in the flood. It is not because God, in his fierce anger, must destroy what is not pleasing to him. One commentator has this to say about God’s motivation, “First, with amazing boldness the narrative invites the listening community to penetrate into the heart of God (vv. 6–7). What we find there is not an angry tyrant, but a troubled parent who grieves over the alienation.”[2]

The stunning part of this narrative is not just that God would act in such a destructive way, but that God was sorry that he created in the first place. We understand this felling all too well. How often have we made decisions or a series of decisions (seemingly good ones at that) whose consequences have left us in deep pain and sorrow, longing to go back and undo what we did? Our text gives us the very distinct impression that this is God’s state of mind at the end of verse 7. Of course, at the end of the day, these word images are Israel’s best attempt at understanding God’s mind in mind in the midst of such a chaotic event.

Now you might be asking if the view taken by this narrative depicts a God who is less than all-powerful or all-knowing? How could God create something and then be sorry for it? Would that not mean that God was not in control of what he created? God, in his greatness and power, created a world founded on love, and love requires freedom. Love is always risky. From the beginning, there was always the chance that we humans would refuse to be the creation that God wanted us to be.

Our God, however, chooses to work within the bounds of love, so that love might be true love, so that we might freely turn towards God and embrace the one who embraces us first. It always takes more courage and more strength to love. We celebrate God’s power and sovereignty precisely because he created us out of the freedom of love.

The Emergence of Noah: Covenant and Re-creation

In the midst of all the evil and wickedness Noah finds favor with God. The destruction that God brings on the earth will not be total or complete. God will work through a faithful servant to bring about salvation for creation. Noah embodies a new possibility for creation. God will establish a covenant with Noah. The narrator wants us to look to Noah as one who represents a fresh alternative to the destruction that sinfulness and willful disobedience bring. The text wants us to see that, in the midst of great evil, God is always there, seeking those who are obedient, offering them freedom from the sin that destroys. Noah is obedient, and the text makes us aware of this in three different places in the Flood narrative, 6:22, 7:5 and 7:9.[3]

God could have just saved Noah and his family outright. This is not what God does. Wesley states that, “God could have secured Noah, by the ministration of angels without putting him to any care or pains, but he chose to employ him in making that which was to be the means of his preservation, both for the trial of his faith and obedience, and to teach us that none shall be saved by Christ, but those only that work out their salvation; we cannot do it without God, and he will not without us…[4]

So Noah, in faithfulness and obedience, sets about constructing the ark. God gathers the animals to him. Noah is faithful and his faithfulness and obedience is vindicated when the rains began to fall. Again, his obedience is vindicated when the waters rise, when they survive their time on the ark, and when the ark once again rests on dry land. Finally, Noah is commanded to open the ark and go forth to repopulate the earth.

One of the first things Noah does after he steps off the boat is to build an altar to God where he sacrifices one of every clean animal and bird. God is pleased by this offering and makes a promise to Noah. God will never again curse the ground or destroy every living creature again. This is the promise of a faithful God who knows that his creation will not be faithful. Has the flood changed humanity? No, it hasn’t. In spite of the knowledge that the “inclination of the human heart is evil from youth” (8:21) God chooses to remain faithful to that which he created. We have been and always will be deeply set against God’s purposes, until we are transformed by the grace of Christ.

This is the good news for us! Despite our inclination toward evil, God has not; God will not give up on us. God’s resolve is one that always works toward re-creation and redemption. Destruction will not serve God’s redemptive purposes, only the self-giving love of God will.

So What?

Rather than being a tale of God’s wrath and destruction the Flood narrative is a story of God’s covenant faithfulness with us. No amount of judgment and destruction will change the continual wickedness of humanity’s heart. God knows this. No amount of wickedness and violence will change God’s love for his creation. It is because of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness toward creation that God has set about to change our hearts in a different way. Fear cannot make a permanent change in a wicked person’s heart, but love can.

In a way that is so unlike how we respond when someone hurts or grieves us, God’s response to our wickedness is now one of love. God will not beat our sinfulness out of us. Instead he takes it on, absorbs it, conquering it with forgiveness and love. As Christians we confess that this is what happens as Jesus hangs on the cross. Jesus takes on the weight of the sin of the whole world, and the death that sin produced, and vanquishes it by refusing to retaliate. Love has won. Love wins.

The challenge for us is to live like this Jesus who is our fullest picture of God. When we are confronted with our own world-destroying evil how will we respond? Will we demand that those who have done harm to us be wiped away like food from a dirty dish? Or will we respond like the God who has covenanted with humanity to never destroy it again? Will we respond like the God who became one of us, who conquered our sin and shame through love?

This is the first week of Lent. As we journey toward the Cross and Jesus’ death may we give up our “right” to respond to evil with evil. Instead, this week, take time to intentionally pray for those who hurt you. Perform an act of kindness for a work place or school adversary. As you hear news of various kinds of violence and wickedness taking place here and aboard, pray that your thoughts and attitudes toward those who perpetrate evil might be an attitude of love.

Critical Discussion Questions:

1. What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

a. In this text God is both faithful, but willing to discipline his creation. God shows us, by not completely wiping everything away and starting completely afresh, that he is not yet done with what he has created. He may not be happy with what we have done, or where our lives our headed, but he continues to be our God. He continues to be the God who brings fresh and new life out of the chaos of the world and our lives.

2. What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

a. Salvation looks like recreation. Even though we have royally messed up the good world that God has created, salvation is still to be found. As we have fouled up our lives, God has promised not to just erase us and start again, but he has given us a lifeboat that brings us to the new possibility of life. Just as the Ark provided salvation for Noah, his family and the living things of the world, Jesus Christ provides salvation for us. We can know that God has promised to not give up on us. In the end, salvation looks like being obedient. Only this time we have not been instructed to build an Ark, but to live in right relationship with God and our neighbors. As we enter into relationship with Christ, we learn what it means to be obedient.

3. How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

a. We can rest in the knowledge that God has promised never to destroy the world again. He has done much more than that, he has given us a way and an example to live by that will create in us new life and we will once again be “very good”.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. Our passage begins by stating that in the time of Noah, “every inclination” of humanity was evil. Is this still the case for humanity today? If yes, why? If no, why?

2. We are told that it grieved God’s heart and he was sorry that he had made humankind. Why would God regret making humankind that much? Does it surprise you that God is depicted as regretting doing something? Why or why not? What does that mean?

3. God decides to “blot out” people from the earth. What does God hope to accomplish by doing this?

4. Noah finds favor with God because he is obedient. John Wesley points out that God could have saved Noah, his family and a few animals without having him build an ark. Angels could have protected Noah. Why does God have Noah build an ark?

5. Finally the Flood is over. Noah and his family are instructed to leave the ark. The first thing Noah does is to build an altar and offer a burnt offering to God. This is pleasing to God. God then promises that he will never again curse the ground because of humanity or destroy every living creature again. He won’t do this because the “inclination of the human heart is evil from youth.” (8:21) If the heart of humanity is evil from youth, why won’t God come to destroy like he has with the flood? Was God hoping that the Flood would change the heart of humanity?

6. The heart of God, post Flood, is revealed to be one that is steadfastly faithful to an evil creation. The nature of this God will be revealed to us through the loving self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ. As a group, take time to discuss ways in which you might act with steadfastly faithful love to an evil world.

[1] James Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Hebrew (Old Testament) (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997).

[2] Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1982), 77.

[3] Brueggemann, 80.

[4] John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, vol. 1 (Bristol: William Pine, 1765), 32.

Matthew 17:1-8 – Listen to Him!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 22:15:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

We are called to listen and to obey the voice of God as made known to us through the person of Jesus Christ even when it is hard or causes us fear.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1. Identify Jesus as the full revelation of the nature of God.

2. Understand that Jesus represents a continuation of what God has been doing from Old Testament times onward.

3. Understand that Jesus, as the revelation of who God is, should be listened to even when it is hard or impractical.

Catch up on the story:

We have reached the middle of Matthew’s gospel. Jesus is currently in the region of Galilee teaching, preaching and doing miraculous things. After moving on from the area around Caesarea Philippi, Jesus begins to explain that he must make his way toward Jerusalem where he will suffer and die. As we hear from Peter in 16:22, the idea that Jesus must suffer and die does not fit well with the disciples’ understanding of Jesus as Messiah. Jesus will have none of Peter’s temptations. Truly, Jesus declares, if anyone wants to follow him, he or she must take up their own cross of self-denial.

At the same time, however, the question of Jesus’ identity is never very far away in Matthew’s gospel. Characters in the story are constantly seeking to discover just who this Jesus is. Matthew, for his part, is clear about who Jesus is and, to that end, places stories which help answer this question all throughout his narrative. The Transfiguration is one of those stories.

The Text:

As with most texts, the only way to understand the Transfiguration is to understand it in its immediate context and within the context of Matthew’s gospel as a whole. Let us start with the immediate context beginning in chapter 16. Jesus asks his followers a simple question. The question is, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” The purpose behind Jesus’ question is the desire to begin a discussion about who Jesus is, what he has come to do and how he will do it. Peter answers rightly proclaiming that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of the Living God. For Matthew, this question of Jesus’ identity is at the forefront of the gospel. Peter has answered correctly, but fails to grasp exactly what that means for Jesus and his followers. Peter displays his flawed understanding of Jesus’ identity as he rebukes Jesus for saying that he must go to Jerusalem to suffer and die. He understands the Messiah to be someone who will defeat God’s enemies militarily (i.e., the Romans), not someone who will suffer and die. Truly, though, Jesus declares that anyone who wants to become his follower must practice self-denial as he has and as he will in his upcoming suffering and death.

At the beginning of chapter 17 we are given a time marker. It is six days since Jesus has had the above-discussed conversation with his disciples. Jesus gathers his inner circle of followers, Peter, James and John, and climbs up to the top of a mountain. There has been lots of discussion amongst scholars as to which mountain this is. The actual mountain on which the Transfiguration took place is inconsequential. What matters is that this event takes place on a mountain. All through Israel’s history God reveals himself in special ways on mountaintops. God gave the law on Mount Sinai. The Temple was built on Mount Zion. Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew’s first readers would have anticipated that something remarkable was about to happen.

Once they reach the top of the mountain something remarkable does indeed happen. Jesus’ appearance begins to change. Jesus’ face begins to shine as bright as the sun and his clothes become dazzling white. At this point we should be reminded of another story containing another characters whose face glows, which is Moses. After the Exodus, Moses goes up to the top of Mount Sinai to receive the Law. Because of his proximity to God, Moses’ face begins to glow and continues to glow even after he has returned to the camp. Whereas Moses’ transformation is a result of his encounter with God, Jesus’ transfiguration (metemorphothe - to take on a different physical form or appearance—‘to change in appearance.’)[1] is merely a revealing of who Jesus is on the inside. As Jesus’ appearance changes the disciples get of glimpse of Jesus in his full glory. Jesus divinity is here reinforced.

I suppose we would have a neat and memorable story if things were to end just with the transfiguration, but the story does not stop there. As Peter, James and John stand gawking at their friend’s changed appearance, suddenly two other figures appear. They are Moses and Elijah, two of Israel’s most important leaders. What could be the significance of the appearance of Moses and Elijah? Bruner believes that Moses and Elijah perform two important services. First, they announce the continuity between Israel’s history (the Law and the Prophets) and Jesus. In Matthew’s gospel there has been a tension between the religious authorities, who style Jesus as a Law breaker, and Jesus who has been offering the fullest interpretation of the Law by saying things like “You’ve heard it said…But I say to you…” Moses and Elijah would not be conversing with Jesus in this way if Jesus were opposed to the Law. Second, it provides a discontinuity and a hierarchy between the Old Testament and Jesus. While the Old Testament and the Law were trying to achieve the same things as Jesus, that is, enabling God’s people to live truly as God’s people, Jesus stands above Moses and Elijah and all they represent.[2]

As Jesus, Moses and Elijah are standing there a bright cloud descends on the mountain. From this cloud God begins to speak, echoing words we have already heard at Jesus’ baptism earlier in Matthew’s gospel, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” If we were to inspect the original Greek we would find a definite article (the) before the word, Son. Whenever a definite article appears in this way it specifies that what follows the “the” is the only thing of that kind. So, God says that Jesus is “the” Son, the only Son. Even though Moses and Elijah are there with Jesus, God is not speaking of them as if to say, “Here are my sons, listen to them!” No, God is singling out Jesus. Moses and Elijah were good, and we should not forget them or throw them out (or the Old Testament), but this is Jesus, the Son of God. The voice then adds a second phrase, which is not uttered at Jesus’ baptism, “listen to him!” The word used here is akouo, which means to “listen or pay attention to a person, with resulting conformity to what is advised or commanded—‘to pay attention to and obey.’”[3] Akouo is also plural in this case and as such can be translated as, “You all, listen to and obey him!” In other words, God is urging Peter, James and John –and us too!– to not only listen to the words and teaching of Jesus but also to obey what he commands.

In the context of the Transfiguration it becomes clear that the things that Jesus has done, how he has healed and taught, how he has interpreted the Law for God’s people, have been pleasing to God. Even Jesus’ turn toward Jerusalem where he will suffer and die is pleasing to God because of Jesus’ steadfast obedience. Jesus is doing and being all that God wants him to do and be. Now we are being called to listen and obey, even when what Jesus commands and does is difficult for us to understand or challenging for us to live out in our own lives. Remember, Jesus has just called his disciples to deny themselves and take up their cross and follow him (16:24). In 17:4, Peter’s desire to stay on the mountain and build three dwelling places for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah seems to reflect his reluctance to participate in self-denial and suffering. Peter wants to stay on the mountain where he can experience Jesus’ glory and power for himself. He does not realize that Jesus’ glory and power will be revealed definitively only on the other side of his suffering and death on a cross. Peter wants a Messiah who is glorified and powerful; not one who is suffering and dying.

Peter, James and John hear God’s voice and they fall to the ground in fear. Then, just as quickly as the experience began, it is over. Jesus, seeing his friends afraid, walks over to them and touches them. The very same person who was just a moment ago glowing with the glory of God, the same person who created the universe, now bends down to touch and help these men to their feet. Bruner describes the significance of the touch likes this, “Everything is in that little seventh verse, and in some ways this little grab-and-lift at the end of the Transfiguration… Jesus shines not just to shine, not just to impress, not even in the final analysis just to make us obedient or trembling, but especially to help us up, to put us on our feet, to enable us to breathe again so that we can be obedient to his Word, [so we] can ‘Listen to him.’”[4]

So What?

The question of Jesus’ identity is at the forefront of this passage. If Jesus is just some guy then all that he says and does is really of no consequence. If Jesus is who Matthew says he is, it has major implications for how we are to live. All through Matthew there are disputes between the religious leaders and Jesus about his identity. Most religious leaders question his authority to interpret the Law. In the Transfiguration Matthew undeniably depicts Jesus as God’s Son. Not only that, but Jesus as God’s Son is doing everything the Father in heaven has sent him to do, even down to suffering and death. God is pleased with Jesus and commands that we listen and obey him.

The point is this, Jesus is who he claims to be and so we are called to follow and obey. Only Jesus does not leave us to our own devices to listen and obey. Listening to and obeying the words and commands of Jesus is hard and, at times, terrifying. Loving our enemies, turning the other cheek, responding with love, all of those responses can be so hard. But, Jesus reaches down to us as we are face down paralyzed by fear of following and he lifts us up. We can listen and obey Jesus because he is there urging us to not be afraid, cheering us on as we seek to follow in the path that he blazed for us.

Critical Discussion Questions:

What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text?

God is revealing himself to us in a special way in this text. God announces his pleasure with Jesus because he has been so completely obedient, obedient even in suffering.
Jesus is the only way through which we can understand what it means to be a follower of God’s law.

What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

Our holiness is deeply connected to our careful listening to what Jesus has to say to us. Our growth in grace depends on our ability to hear and obey Jesus. At the same time, Jesus reaches down to us, grabs ahold of us and encourages us to obey. Jesus does not leave us to grow by ourselves, but gives us the help we need.

How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

It is no doubt that Peter, James and John were changed by this encounter with God. This passage should encourage our faith. Yes, Jesus is the Son of God and yes we should do what he says, even when that means denying ourselves and sharing in his suffering.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. What other stories from the Old Testament might the Transfiguration remind you of?

2. Read Matthew16:13-28. How is this passage connected to the passage concerning the Transfiguration?

3. Why do Moses and Elijah make an appearance at the Transfiguration? Can you describe how the Old Testament is in continuity with the New Testament?

4. Look at verse 4. Why do you think Peter wants to stay on the mountain and build three dwelling places for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah? What are the parallels between Peter’s response here and our own responses to Jesus? Do we ever prefer to stay on the mountain and experience Jesus in his glory instead of going down the mountain to follow Jesus in his death? If so, explain how.

5. Why would God need to proclaim that Jesus is his Son and that he is pleased with him?

6. Peter, James and John’s response to this encounter with Jesus is one of fear. Why were they afraid?

7. Discuss a time in your life when you listened to Jesus and obeyed even though it was very hard to do that.

[1] Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 586.

[2] Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary: The Churchbook, Matthew 13-28, Revised & enlarged edition (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004), 168.

[3] Louw and Nida, 466.

[4] Bruner, 179.

Mark 1:29-39 –Jesus Heals, We Serve

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 19:42:00 +0000

Lesson Focus

Jesus heals us so that we might engage in active and intentional Christian ministry.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lesson students should:

1. Comprehend that our healing from sin and death prepares us to engage in Christian ministry.

2. Examine their lives to see if they are ministering as a result of their healing.

3. Examine the ministries of our church to see if they are faithful to our mission of bearing witness to the kingdom of God in word and deed.

Catch up on the story:

Mark’s narrative is off to a fast start. He introduces us to John the Baptist, a preacher who begins to prepare the way for Jesus’ coming. John the Baptist, and the context in which he is set, places the narrative that follows squarely within the scope of Israel’s hope for the future found in the Old Testament. Jesus, then, is seen as a continuation of what God has been doing for Israel in the past.

Jesus is baptized at the hands of John. It is his public commissioning. Even though the crowds do not hear the voice of God proclaiming his pleasure with his Son, we, the readers, hear it. There can be no doubt that Mark wants us to understand that Jesus is the divine messiah who has come to set Israel free. Immediately after his baptism Jesus goes off into the wilderness and is tempted by the devil. While the narrative is sparse, Jesus does not succumb to the temptation and emerges from the wilderness to begin his public ministry. Jesus begins to preach about the coming kingdom of God. He also begins to call men to follow him and be his disciples. His mission will consist of preaching and healing. Both of these things he will do, not as the crowds have experienced others doing these things, but as one with authority.

The Text:

The setting of our text for this week is the small city of Capernaum. Jesus, his followers Simon, Andrew, James and John, have been in the synagogue on the Sabbath. Jesus has begun to teach and cast out unclean spirits. Word is beginning to spread about this Jesus fellow. His authoritative teaching and his works of power begin to be known in the surrounding area.

Scene #1:

While the passage takes place entirely in Capernaum, there are three distinct scenes. Scene one is the home of Simon’s mother-in-law. Jesus and his entourage enter the home and we are immediately told that Simon’s mother-in-law is in bed with a fever. A few things need to be noted here about fevers. They were not seen as a symptom but a terrible force that could bring about death. A simple fever could become life threatening very quickly.[1]

Simon mentions the ill fortune of his mother-in-law to Jesus upon entering the home. There are a few possible reasons that Simon could have chosen to point out the situation. First, it could have been a veiled attempt to ask Jesus to heal his mother-in-law. Although at this point in the narrative, Jesus has yet to heal anyone. He has cast out an unclean spirit so it might stand to reason that the disciples believe he has the power to heal as well. Second, Simon may have mentioned the fever as a precaution and warning for his guests. Contact with a sick person was frowned upon, not from our normal understanding of contagions, but because it would have made the individual ceremonially unclean, and thus keep the person from full participation in community life. Finally, Simon could have mentioned the fever as an excuse for the lack of hospitality that would normally have been provided by his mother-in-law.

Whatever the reason may have been, Jesus acts immediately and decisively to rectify the situation. Jesus takes the sick woman by the hand and lifted her up. Immediately the fever left her! No words were spoken, no spell was cast; Jesus’ touch was enough to make her instantaneously well. As we have already mentioned, touching a sick person would have made Jesus ceremonially unclean. In the same way, men did not touch women who were not a part of their family. Additionally, Jesus performs this healing on the Sabbath, which could be constituted as work. Thus, Jesus touches an unrelated sick woman and heals her on the Sabbath. In performing this act in the way he did he breaks more than just a few social and religious taboos.[2] Mark, however, does not believe that Jesus is doing anything wrong, but that he is faithfully bringing about God’s kingdom.

Excurses: Sabbath

Touching a woman, a sick woman at that, could be overlooked. Working on the Sabbath was a greater offense, one that would land you in serious trouble with the religious authorities. A proper understanding of Jewish Sabbath theology is important to grasping why Jesus heals on the Sabbath. For the Jewish people, the Sabbath had become a symbol of rest and peace (shalom -wholeness) that would happen when the messiah finally arrived ushering in the age to come. Creation, and all it’s inhabitants, would be relived of all the turmoil, disease, destruction and death that existed as a consequence of the fall. This rest and peace was much anticipated and longed for by Israel and her religious leaders. Honoring the Sabbath was a mini preview of the peace and wholeness that would accompany the coming of God’s dominion.

Jesus, by beginning his work of healing on the Sabbath, intended it to be seen as the first act in bringing about the end-time Sabbath rest and wholeness here and now. What better way to honor the Sabbath than by offering healing to a woman who was in the midst of suffering? Like the exorcism that took place earlier in the chapter, Jesus’ healing of Simon’s mother-in-law is part of the breaking in of the kingdom of God.[3] Unfortunately, Jesus’ actions on the Sabbath would not be seen this way by the religious leadership.

After Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law, she immediately gets up and begins to serve Jesus and his companions. There is no trace of the fever or the malady that might have caused it. The word that Mark uses here for “serve” comes from the word diakonos. In Mark, and the larger Christian tradition, this word, from which we get Deacon, is associated with Christian ministry. Simon’s mother-in-law is healed and immediately sets about serving Jesus and his companions in response to her healing. In many ways, this should be a model for us as we experience Jesus’ healing in our lives. As we are healed, our response should be to rise and engage in Christian ministry!

Scene #2:

Word begins to spread quickly of Jesus’ deeds of power. He has taught with authority. He has cast out unclean spirits and now he has healed a woman of her fever. Not only has word spread about his actions, but about his whereabouts as well. At sundown on the Sabbath people begin bringing their sick and demon-possessed. They begin to gather at sundown because sundown marks the end of one day and the beginning of another. This is unlike our conception of time with the beginning of a new day beginning at dawn. The crowds, now that the Sabbath was over, did not have to fear that they were breaking the Sabbath by bringing their sick to Jesus. Realistically, some of the sick would need to be carried, constituting work.

Mark tells us that the whole city comes out to the door of the house where they were staying. It is unlikely that they showed up en masse, but perhaps as a steady stream of those seeking help from Jesus. Regardless, Jesus heals many people with various kinds of diseases and casts out many demons. The demons were instructed not to speak because they knew whom Jesus was. Why would Jesus need to instruct the demons not to speak? It could possibly be that it was not yet the right time for Jesus to proclaim who he was. Or, Jesus may not have wanted the proclamation about who he is coming from the mouths of demons.[4] Either way, Jesus shows his power over the demons by not only casting them out but by keeping them from divulging what they know.

Scene #3:

We are not told how long into the night Jesus was with the crowd. It may have been late into the night due to the large crowds. Mark tells us though, that Jesus gets up early in the morning while it is still dark and sets out to find a place to pray. He arrives at a deserted place, perhaps one that he had used before. Soon enough, Simon and the others realize that Jesus is not in the house where they had been staying. They set out to find him and upon doing so they encourage him to come back into town.

The reason that Simon and the others use for a return to Capernaum is because everyone is looking for him. Behind this suggestion may be an urge to stay where they are because they have enjoyed success there. Jesus’ reputation is growing among the people. Greatness can be achieved when you have the support of the people. Perhaps Peter is already thinking about the positive political ramifications of a man who has such great power.

Jesus, however, refuses to go back to Capernaum. He tells us that his primary mission is preaching the message of the kingdom of God. Jesus insists that they must go to the neighboring towns (which were not bigger than Capernaum, but smaller) to preach. This is, after all, what he has been sent to do. So, we are told, Jesus heads out throughout the region of Galilee preaching the message of the kingdom of God.

So What?

I think two things are important for us as we consider this text. First, the way Simon’s mother-in-law responds to her healing and second, Jesus’ laser-like focus on his mission.

As soon as Simon’s mother-in-law is healed she gets up and serves Jesus and his followers. As we have said above, the Greek word that Mark uses carries with it the sense that as she was caring for Jesus’ needs she was engaging in intentional ministry in service to the kingdom of God. Whether or not she totally understood her actions in that way is, perhaps, inconsequential. For this is how Mark wants us to read her response. Mark has been up front with us, his readers, about who this Jesus really is. He is the divine Son of God. While the characters in the story will need some time to figure this out, Mark’s narrative is largely about helping us to discover what it means to be faithful disciples of Jesus.

Our faithful discipleship begins with our healing. For some, in early Christianity, anything that has enslaved us, any sin, any addiction, was seen as life-sucking fever. “For each and every one of us suffers from fever. When I grow angry, I am feverish. So many vices, so many fevers.”[5] Christ has come, however, and touched our hand, lifting us up and freeing us from our fever. We are never freed just from our fever, though. We are freed so that we might serve. In our healing we are given the immediate opportunity to get up and to serve in Christian ministry. We become more mature disciples of Christ when we are actively and intentionally engaged in serving in some kind of Christian ministry.

Secondly, our passage indicates Jesus’ laser-like focus to his mission. Jesus could have stayed in Capernaum while word of his deeds of power spread throughout the land. No doubt many would have made a pilgrimage to him so that their loved ones might be healed. From this he could have begun to garner great political support as well. Jesus, however, was not tempted by this initial success and the desire to build on it. He knew the plan. The plan was to proclaim the kingdom of God throughout the land.

At times, we are not as laser-like focused on our God given mission as Jesus was. Too often the tendency is to stick with whatever is causing us to have success. In fact, the temptation is to spend a lot of time trying to find that one thing that will bring us successes. It’s not wrong to be successful, but we can be tempted by it to neglect our real mission of bearing witness to the kingdom of God in word and in deed.

Critical Discussion Questions:

1. How does this text reveal to us the nature and character of God/What is God doing in this text?

a. God is beginning to bring about the pace and rest that we long for. Through healing and exorcisms, Jesus is, in a small way at first, allowing creation to rest. He is granting us freedom from the various things that plague us.

2. What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

a. Our growth as disciples is contingent upon our response to the healing we have received at the hands of Jesus. Like Simon’s mother-in-law we are to rise from our infirmities so that we might begin to engage in active and intentional Christian ministry.

b. Our growth as disciples also means that we resist the temptation to chase after all that might be successful at the cost of being faithful to our mission of bearing witness to the kingdom of God in word and in deed. While we are committed to excellence in ministry, we are also called, at times, to focus our energy on things that might not be seen as wise in the minds of the world around us.

3. How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

a. This passage calls us to respond to the healing we have received at the hands of Jesus and engage in active and intentional ministry.

b. It also calls us to examine our ministries as a church to see if they are true to the mission of bearing witness to the kingdom of God in word and in deed.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. What are the possible reasons why Simon informs Jesus of his mother-in-law’s sickness?

2. What is significant about the way Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law? Keep in mind; it would have been taboo for a man to touch a woman who was not related to him.

3. Some early Christians looked metaphorically at the fever that Simon’s mother-in-law. The fever was a stand in for anything that causes us to sin. What kinds of “fevers” have plagued your life in the past? What kinds of fevers do you suffer from now? How has Jesus healed you from those things in the past? How might Jesus heal you now?

4. Simon’s mother-in-law’s first response is to get up and serve Jesus and his followers. What is this important? Have you gotten up after your healing and begun to serve?

5. Why might Simon really want Jesus to stick around in Capernaum? What reason does Jesus give for moving on?

6. Jesus exercised laser-like focus on his mission to proclaim the kingdom of God all around. He refused to be tempted by the immediate and initial successes he enjoyed in Capernaum. As a church, are we ever tempted to go with whatever is successful at the expense of faithfulness to our mission?

7. Jesus had a single-minded focus on his mission of preaching the kingdom of God. Simon’s mother-in-law, once healed, became a servant of Jesus and supported his mission. As a church, the third part of our mission statement is to bear witness to the kingdom of God. List some of the ministries in our church that help us do that.

8. What keeps us from focusing on and participating in those ministries?

9. Have an honest conversation about whether or not you are like Simon’s mother-in-law. Are you one who has been healed by God’s grace and is now serving and ministering? What would it take for you to take the next step toward faithful service and ministry?

[1] M. Eugene Boring, Mark: A Commentary, The New Testament Library (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox

Press, 2006), 66.

[2] Ben Witherington III, The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B.

Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001), 98.

[3] Ibid., 100.

[4] R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press, 2002), 110.

[5] Jerome, Corpus Christianorum, LXXVII, 468 quoted in Lamar Williamson Jr, Mark: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) 55.

Jonah 4 –I’d Rather Die!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 19:28:00 +0000

Lesson Focus:

God is a gracious God, merciful and slow to anger while abounding in steadfast love. He is ready to relent from punishing. Most of the time, this is not who we are.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lesson students should:

1. Identify one of Israel’s core beliefs about God as “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.”

2. Examine their lives to see if they identify with Jonah in any way.

3. Repent for the ways in which they have not viewed their enemies with the eyes of God.

Catch up on the story: Jonah has finished preaching God’s message of repentance to the people of Nineveh and they have responded favorably. The destruction that God had planned to do to the city, he will not do. Jonah decides to sit on a hill overlooking the city to see what happens to it.

General Outline:

Told you so!

Jonah begins to see the people of Nineveh repent. His fundamental belief that God is, “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing” (4:2) is confirmed. Normally, when a prophet finds his belief in God validated it is met with great joy. God has done a great thing on the behalf of the people of Nineveh, Jonah should be happy. But he isn’t. Instead he is hopping mad. Not just kind of miffed, but smoking mad. The kind of mad that makes you want to break things. The kind of mad that might just cause you to say things…bad things. For Jonah, he is so mad he doesn’t want to live any longer!

We are told once again why it is that Jonah ran away in the first place. All of his life he was taught that God was a God of mercy and grace, who looked kindly upon those who are repentant sinners. But this promise was solely directed toward his people, the people of God, Israel –or so he thought.

Deep down inside Jonah knew that if he went to preach to the people in Nineveh they would respond, they would repent, and God wouldn’t destroy them, giving them the end Jonah thought they should have. And he was right. Jonah went and preached. Nineveh repented, and God spared them.

Keep in mind, in Jonah’s day, Israel has been going through great hardships. They have suffered under foreign power, had great economic difficulties, both of which severely affected life and heath. And here it is that while Israel continues to suffer, God now offers salvation to the wicked people of Nineveh.[1] It is from this context that Jonah’s call and his subsequent resistance comes.

Fretheim points out that if anything is sin, Jonah’s response this entire time has been sin –it has been a rebellion against grace. “Resistance to God’s gracious activity on behalf of others, however evil they may be.”[2] How often in life do we have the same kind of attitude about God’s grace toward others? On a global scale, sometimes we would rather see God’s wrath poured out on the enemies of the United States, than see any kind of attempt to love them as ourselves.

How do we respond when we see our enemies, both personally and nationally, as not getting the punishment that they deserve? Are we like Jonah, do we get mad? I don’t think any of us would get mad enough to ask to die. Or do we rejoice because God’s grace is at work in our enemies’ lives? Wesley said, “No one is a stranger to God’s grace.” I think we can confidently say his grace is at work.

After Jonah states that he was right from the very beginning about how things were going to turn out God asks, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Jonah doesn’t answer, he only climbs a hill overlooking the city to wait and see what happens to the city. He still holds the perverted hope that destruction will come to the people of Nineveh. While Jonah doesn’t quite get it yet, that he really doesn’t have a right to be angry over Nineveh receiving God’s grace –he, after all had been a recipient of God’s grace just two chapters ago– the reader is left to answer God’s question.

Jonah then sets up for himself a little shelter, which is apparently inadequate to provide protection from the sun and hot wind. So God, being merciful and gracious to this stubborn and sinfully angry man, causes a small bush to grow to give him protection. Jonah goes from being crazy angry, to being ecstatic. Perhaps the offering of shade and protection gave him hope that Nineveh would be destroyed, instead of it being a display of God’s grace toward Jonah, even when he does not deserve it! By the next day God sent a worm to destroy the bush. As the sun began to shine and the wind began to blow, Jonah once again wants to die.

God gets the last word…

Once again God asks Jonah if he is right to be angry. This time, however, it isn’t about Nineveh, but about the bush. God is wondering if Jonah has a right to be angry about a bush that he did not cause to grow or even ask for, but which was given to him. We are shown that Jonah hasn’t been changed a bit by his experience of being in the belly of a whale or watching God’s grace at work in the lives of a foreign people. Rather stubbornly Jonah replies, “Yes, angry enough to die!”

The final two verses of the book of Jonah are God’s response to Jonah. If Jonah should be concerned about a bush, which he did not cause to grow, then why shouldn’t God be concerned about the well-being of an entire city filled with people and animals, all of which are God’s creatures?

The point has been made. God’s grace is available for all of creation because God cares for what he has made. This is regardless of what “God’s chosen people” have to say about it. Yes, God should be concerned about the city of Nineveh and so should we.

The final question rings in Israel and Jonah’s ear through this book, “Why is God saving Nineveh when we are in such a mess?” God does still care for Israel, but they had many, many chances to escape punishment. Finally, they had to be punished, and at the time of Jonah, were still reaping the consequences of their sin. Nineveh, however, responded right away. Ultimately, God cares for all his creatures, and his grace is available to all.

So What?

The story of Jonah ends with a question. “And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” It’s a rhetorical question, to be sure, but we never get a hint of how Jonah might have responded. Did he begrudgingly answer that, of course, God should be concerned about all that he has created? Or did he respond with continuing recalcitrance that, no, God should not care for those wicked ones when he has not properly cared for Israel?

The author of Jonah wants us to identify, not with the people of Nineveh or even the sailors on the boat Jonah used to try to escape God. The author of Jonah wants us to identify with Jonah. He wants us to examine our lives and our attitudes to see if there is any Jonah in us. Are we perhaps bitter about our own rough spot in life, even though we are trying our best to be faithful? Do we look at the way in which the wicked prosper, when by all accounts God’s judgment should be upon them, and become infuriated? Do we get angry when God’s grace and mercy is extended to those who have committed great acts of evil? Do we see our enemies as we want to see them, or do we see them as God chooses to see them?

We are often caught seeing our enemies in the way that we want to, ways that cause us to demand our own brand of retributive justice, justice that demands a payment. On the other hand, God gently calls us to see our enemies, indeed all people, in the way that he does, with the eyes of a creator.

Critical Discussion Questions:

1. How does this text reveal to us the nature and character of God/What is God doing in this text?

a. God cares for all of his creation, cares enough to give them grace particularly when they do not deserve it. God even gives grace to those who have been stubbornly rejecting the giving of it to others.

2. What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

a. Salvation looks like God giving grace to those who choose to repent, even if we don’t think they deserve it. Salvation looks like not being destroyed even after being extremely evil.

3. How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become

a. This text calls us to examine how we understand God’s grace. Are we greedy with it? Should only those who think and act like us, or those who are willing to think and act like us, receive grace? The book of Jonah calls us to comprehend and share the magnitude of God’s grace. It calls us to give grace, to share God’s love with those whom we would just as soon see dead. And as hard as this may be, it calls us to rejoice when others receive grace and divine favor, even when it seems like we, who have been faithfully following God, have not received grace.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1. At the beginning of the chapter we are told that Jonah prayed to God. What is the content of Jonah’s prayer and what does it say about how he understands God?

2. Why is Jonah so very angry that Nineveh is saved?

3. Jonah climbs a hill to watch what happens to Nineveh. Then, God causes a plant to give him shade. Later, God causes the plant to wither. Why does God provide the plant and then take it away?

4. Is Jonah’s response to the plant withering appropriate? Why or why not?

5. At the end, God questions Jonah. Jonah is concerned with a plant that he did not plant. Should God not also be concerned about a city whose inhabitants he created? Why does God ask this question?

6. Imagine yourself in Jonah’s place. How would you respond to God?

7. Are we like Jonah, do we get mad? Or do we rejoice because God’s grace is at work in our enemies’ lives?

[1] Terence E. Fretheim, The Message of Jonah: (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Pub, 2000), 120-21.

[2] Fretheim, 118-19.