Ezra 3. 8-13: Making a Start

It's not always easy to make a start.  

That new exercise book; that new canvas or piece of wood; but you need to pick up your pen and write; to pick up a brush and put some paint on the canvas; to pick up your saw or your chisel and begin to cut.  That’s the scary bit; the first cut.  Am I cutting in just the right place?  In verse 8 of our reading, the people who had come back to Jerusalem “got started” rebuilding the temple – literally bored a hole.  It's the beginning of a new year.  A time for getting started.  On this first “proper” Sunday of the year I want to look at fresh beginnings.  It's that first cut.

This temple, like this year, has a history. The very idea of a New Year as a total rebirth of everything – so that we can start fresh unaffected by what happened in the previous year – sounds very nice; but it's almost certainly rooted in paganism.  Of course there is forgiveness for the past with God; and that is a good  thing to appropriate at the beginning of the year.  But we can't scrub out last year's history just by scrubbing our steps on Hogmanay evening.  And you can't just switch resolutions on on new Year's day.  If you did, they may well be all broken by now!

For this temple, as for this new year, the history was a mixture of good and bad; pain and promise.

Negatively, after years of warning from God because of their sin, and a series of attacks from the Babylonians, the Temple had been destroyed in 586BC when Nebuchadnezzar took the whole nation into exile in Babylon.  And for over fifty years both the city and the temple lay in ruins, until Cyrus of Persia decided to allow some Jews back to their own country.  And I guess there are some things we would be glad to leave behind in 2016 if we could.  There are sins, failures and disappointments.     We need to leave these with God in prayer and penitence.    

And positively, this ruin had already started to be used for worship.  When Joshua the High Priest and Zerubbabel the Governor came back the altar had been rebuilt and the routine of sacrifices offered (v. 1-6).  They had celebrated the feast of Tabernacles,when they commemorate the people's forty years in the desert by camping out in huts for for forty days.  Quite an appropriate festival for people worshipping in a ruined building and living in a half-build city.  Sacrifice and worship. That was the first priority.   So before we make a start, we need to honour and bring with us the good things. We need to make sure that we are worshippers. 

The new start, the revival thing, doesn't just come out of nowhere.  The Hebridean revival that is associated with Duncan Campbell, started with two elderly ladies, in their 80's Gaelic speakers, who were praying.  Duncan Campbell says he didn't start the revival. “Revival was there before I ever set foot on the island. It began in a gracious awareness of God sweeping through the parish of Barvas...”  First thing, is the time with God.  Time to think, to pray, to celebrate, to repent.  Worship first; then building.

So they made a start.  
 
It's one of these moments in the Old Testament, when the historian gives us a clear date “In the second month of the second year after their arrival...”  And they began in earnest to cut the turf, or to make a hole in the rubble.  This was an organised, intentional community initiative, with money being spent, resources being brought in, a chain of command being established and skills being put to use.  And, interestingly responsibility being given to people at  quite a young age!    We need to make a start.

Jesus once had a conversation with an expert in the Law, about how to have eternal life.  Jesus asks,  “What does the Law say?”  The guy answers “Love the Lord your God with all your heart; love your neighbour as yourself...” 

Jesus says “Good answer. Do this and you will live!”

The guy asks “Who is my neighbour?”  And Jesus answers with a story – the parable of the Good Samaritan.  It ends with a question: “Who acted as a neighbour to the injured man.”  The answer, that sticks in the craw of the lawyer is “The one who had compassion.  (He doesn't want to say “The Samaritan.”)

And again Jesus says  “Go and do likewise.”   Go and do.  That’s not a call to activism.  We do need the spiritual disciplines of waiting, listening, praying, worshipping.  Without them, action is simply a frenzy of expended energy.  But unless these things lead to action – positive, intentional, missional, disciple-making, incarnation action – they are merely hot air.   Go and do.  But what exactly? 

We need to make a start – not building a physical temple but building relationships
1. ...with God.  Taking positive steps in our relationship with God.  On the Day of Pentecost, the people who had seen God at work and heard the story of Jesus, asked “What do we do about this message?”  and peter answered “repent and be baptised”.  We need to positive step of turning our lives over the God and making that public by being baptised.  And journeying on with God we need to welcome the Holy Spirit and actively discover our gifts; to make the effort to pray and lean to pray effectively.  
2. ...with one another, through being a real community.  We may need to take time to talk to people; to get to know people we don't really know in the Church.  Top open our homes to one another.
3. ...with people who don’t know Jesus, demonstrating his compassion and love.  We all know people who don't know Jesus. Maybe we need to make time for these relationships – have a neighbour round for a curry...

"He is good...."  
 
And when the foundations were laid they worshipped, praised, prayed.  The foundations were also spiritual. The ultimate foundation of their temple, their life together as the people of God, was not in the Temple.  It was not in the sacrifices that had been begun on a rebuild altar in the ruins of the temple.  It was not in the vestments or the choir.  It was in this: “You are good and your love endures.”   It was, in other words, in the character of their God.  
His goodness.  Good is a big broad word.  It refers to what is pleasing, plentiful, pure; it is about moral character but also about beauty and strength and sufficiency.
His steadfast love;  hesed, love that calls us into a covenant relationship with Him.

“He is good, and his love endures” was the verse that had been sung when the temple was first dedicated to the Lord.  (2 Chronicles 5. 13). It was part of their history, their heritage.  And it was part of their promise. 
Jeremiah 33. 10f prophesies that in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are deserted, inhabited by neither people nor animals, there will be heard once more the sounds of joy and gladness, …  bride and bridegroom, and voices... saying, ‘Give thanks to the Lord Almighty,  for the Lord is good; his love endures for ever.’  For I will restore the fortunes of the land as they were before.”  We need to be hearing from God.  I have been thinking a lot about a verse – just one verse – from Isaiah 7 – the background to the “Virgin shall have a child “ prophecy.  It's v. 9: “If you do not stand firm in your faith,  you will not stand at all.”  If you will not believe you will not be established.   But faith comes from hearing.  And hearing from the word of God.  

The sound of revival
 
Everyone gave a shout of joy and praise (v. 11)  The Hebrew uses two different words for shout (lost in English).  They called with a huge shout. The Message translation is good: “All the people boomed out hurrahs, praising God”.  There is emotion; there is joy, there is a bit of letting go in this praise.  It's unrestrained. 

But the old men wept (v. 12) …  Seeing the priests in their sacred garments, hearing the psalm being sung... for the older generation it brought back memories: maybe the very oldest could remember worshipping in that temple in its former glory as youngsters. Some would recall the national humiliation the oldest of them had lived through – years of exile in Babylon and Susa;  the struggles to see that prophetic word fulfilled.  It hurt.  As simple as that.  And they wept. 

V.13 no one could distinguish the sound.....  This is the sound of revival!  Weeping in penitence and grief for the pain they had been through.  Joy and hope and thanks for who God is.  All mingled together. So you cannot tell the one from the other.  And that is still the sound of revival: weeping  and joy.

But it was heard far away,. “the noise they made was so loud that it could be heard for miles.”   This is the sound of revival!  When we have our hearts right;  we are ready make a start, to demonstrate practical compassion in action; when we are dwelling on who God is, learning from the written word and responding to the prophetic word, crying out in penitence and in joy, then the shout that we shout will be heard for miles!  It will have an impact on our world.


© Gilmour Lilly January 2017

Luke 1. 26-38

"Advent faith"

When we were in England, the children's workers in one church had a tape that was used regularly as the background narrative for the nativity play.  It began “Mary skipped through the streets of Nazareth.”  I suppose it was making the point that Mary began life as a very ordinary girl.  And that is where we all start!  Ordinary people.  Women and men; with our weaknesses, our hopes and ambitions, our hurts and inadequacies.  And then Mary met an Angel – Gabriel whom we heard about in connexion with the highly educated senior civil servant, theologian and author, Daniel... And now that same angel was speaking to a teenage girl in a small town in Galilee district.   

Faith takes us beyond the ordinary
1. Mary's conversation with Gabriel began with  this:  "Hail, O favoured one, the Lord is with you!" (v 28).  This first thing she had to appropriate – by faith – was this: God's favour.   Mary, you have had grace, favour, thanks, delight, poured out upon you.   Initially, her reaction was one of panic: she felt troubled.   She was thrown into confusion.  “But.. what do you mean?  Me?   Favoured?  How?” So much so that Gabriel had to say it again: “It's all right Mary; don't be afraid, you have found favour with God.”  Our minds are so set in habits of doubt and self-deprecation, that it is a step of faith to hear Gabriel, or anyone else, say to us “You have found favour with God!”  But that is where we need to start.

2. Mary would need faith: she was favoured to give birth to a son who would be called Jesus.  "He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High;" (v 32)  That word, “most High” was one the Greek-speaking Luke would previously have heard referring to the greatest of the Greek Gods.  But Mary also knew it, referring to Yahweh, the Lord God, the only true god.   The angel was telling Mary she would  give birth to God's Son.  And she did give birth to God's son, because she believed this truth even if she did not fully understand it.  It takes faith to receive this second thing that Mary received: God's Son.  Gabriel goes on to say in verse 35: “The child to be born shall be called Holy, Son of  God”.  The word “Holy” here means more than a holy man: it means the “divine Son of God.” (it's used in the same way in John 6. 69). Faith is needed to grasp the awesome reality of who He is, the amazing truth that “Lo, within a manger lies He who built the starry skies” that “in the beginning was the Word, and the word as with God and the word was God...The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory”  (John 1. 1, 14)  We can't prove that Jesus was the Son of God (although there is strong evidence!); we can't prove his identity; we can't even begin to understand how divine and human nature can be perfectly combined or how God can exist in three persons. We receive these truths by faith. 

3. Gabriel went on to say  "and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end." (v.32f)   Flowing from who he is – God the Son – is what he came to do!   We sometimes sing “he was born to die...” Although that's true,  it's only half of the truth! He was born to bring God's kingdom – and in order to do that, he had to die.  God's Kingdom has broken in to our world through Jesus.  Mary speaks of the coming Kingdom in the Magnifacat (the name for her song of praise in verses 46-55): “He has performed mighty deeds... he has scattered those who are proud...He has brought down rulers… but has lifted up the humble.  He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.”   The things Jesus did were evidence of the Kingdom; they were the nature of the Kingdom – they way things are when God's rules apply.  There is wholeness, healing, hope.  There is justice, integrity, honesty.  There is peace, compassion, generosity.  Evil – greed, prejudice, violence, pain – are driven out. This is the scope and depth of what Jesus came to do.  And we are invited to receive God's Kingdom by faith in what Jesus has done on the Cross.

4. Now Mary needs to know how this is going to happen to her. We'll come back to her question in a moment. But as an answer, Gabriel explains, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (v. 35)  By faith, Mary was called to welcome God's Spirit and be touched by God's Power.  And in order that we may carry the truth about Jesus within us, in order that we might bring something of God's Kingdom to our world, we need to receive God's Power by faith.

Image: G Lilly

So faith takes us beyond the ordinary.  By faith we receive God's favour; God's Son and the truth about who he is; God's Kingdom and the hope it promises; and God's Power by The Holy Spirit to live for him.

That would be a nice place to  stop.  But it's not where we are, is it?  
 
Faith is allowed to ask questions
 
 We have a shed load of questions.  "How come God wants to use me?  How can Jesus be God?  How can God become human?  What is this Kingdom? Why has it not impacted the world more?  Why is there bad stuff in God's world?"  We have questions.

So had Mary.   "How shall this be, since I have no husband?" (v. 34)  or  "How shall this be, I am a virgin?" (literally, as in the AV “I do not know a man”)  What she means is “We were keeping the law, and waiting until we were married.  What are you saying Gabriel?”  Now Mary didn't have a  problem believing it was possible (that was the problem Zechariah had when he was told he and Elizabeth were going to have a child in their old age – see verses 5-12).  In a fairly short time Mary and Joseph would be married, and in the normal course of things, children would happen.  She could even get married a bit sooner if that were what God was saying.  Mary's problem wasn't with believing it but with making sense of it.  Listen – faith is allowed to ask questions.  

Faith leads to submission in action
 
When she was told how this was going to happen – the Holy Spirit coming upon her as he had upon the prophets of old, the power of God overshadowing her, the  pre-existent, eternal Word of God, becoming flesh in her womb – Mary had no problem believing it.  And, remarkably, she had no problem submitting to it. By faith, Mary gave the Lord a submission that was marked by three key words:

1. Transformation "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." (v.38) It involved her self-image, her plans, her reputation, the whole direction of her life. No arguments; no protests; no complaints about the pain and the cost involved.  Just “Let it be to me according to your word.”  There are few sentences in the Bible more powerful, and few prayers that the Lord wants to hear more than this one: “Let it be to me according to your word”!  I am ready for my life, its direction, its motivation, its ownership, to be transformed.
 

Image - G Lilly

2. Travelling.  Immediately, Mary wasted no time. Gabriel had given her Elisabeth's story, as evidence to show that God was at work. (v. 36) So she immediately went and found Elisabeth. She went to explore what God was doing. On a journey of discovery.  And she found that old Elisabeth was indeed six months pregnant.  Elisabeth's baby  jumped in the womb when Mary arrived.   She saw what God had done and heard words of encouragement.  And she stayed to serve Elisabeth in the last three months of her pregnancy.  We need to travel – to get up and visit someone, to cross the street, to put ourselves about  and see and hear what God is doing in other people's lives.  It will encourage us.  We need to travel to serve others.  And we need to travel on an inner journey as we grow.
 
3. Telling.  See verses 46-56.  Mary herself had an experience of the prophetic, when she spoke out this wonderful piece of Hebrew poetry that emphasised to upside-down, life-transforming, radical nature of God's Kingdom.  “The Lord has done great things, and holy is his Name.”  We need to let our faith lead to telling people who God is and what God has done – for us. 

• Speaking Gospel: about God's good news. 
• Speaking testimony: our story. “The Lord has done great things for me.” 
• Speaking prophetically, talking about how God's kingdom turns our world upside down.

So by faith we receive God's favour, God's Son, God's Kingdom and God's power.  And by faith we say to God, “Let it be to me according to your word”
© Gilmour Lilly December 2016

Matthew 3:1-17

Advent 2 Preparing the way:  Penitence

We normally prepare because we expect something to happen.  Today's story is that this eccentric man, dressed in a rough coat woven from camel-hair, tied round his waist with a leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey (in other words, living on the absolute basics) comes  preaching in the desert – and people are excited by his appearance, his presence, his message, so much so that the flock to listen to him. 

His message is terse: “Repent (change of mind) for the kingdom of heaven is near.”  

John self-identifies as the “One sent to prepare the way of the Lord...”   he was, as Michael Green put it, “His Master's Voice”!

Something was going to happen.  The Lord was going to come among his people.  The promised “Kingdom” was at hand – this season of the Messiah that Isaiah had promised, the last days that Joel spoke about, the beginning of the “end” that Daniel had hinted at.  The Kingdom is at hand.  It's going to happen.  There was “one coming after John”, more powerful than him; he wasn't worthy to tie this guy's laces.  This was the person who was going to bring the Kingdom; who was going to baptise with the Holy Spirit, who as going to bring judgement.  A winnowing fork or fan was used by a farm worker to throw grain into the air, so the husks and weevils and other rubbish blew away and the seeds could then be ground for flour.  This person – Messiah – and the Kingdom, were coming with the power of the Spirit and with judgement.

So what does “ready” look like? 

People were coming to John and being baptised.  People went down into the River Jordan, and were splashed, plunged into the water. (Not sprinkled with a few drops of water from a clam shell.  Greek has two words: bapto means to dip, like the blacksmith dips the red-hot horseshoe in a barrel of water to temper it, or like cloth is dipped in dye; and baptizo means to swamp, flood, drown, or sink... baptism was meant to ruin you!  It was a public declaration of a private change of heart, a reorientation.  It was a token of a desire to be spiritually clean, a way of expressing this “repentance” thing.  

Now this wasn’t something John invented.  These Jewish people already knew about baptism. When a family from “outside” of Judaism – Romans or Greeks for example – adopted the Jewish way of life so totally that they wanted to be accepted fully as Jews, it took three stages.  All the family were baptised – a ceremonial bath to wash away their “Gentile unclean-ness.”  Then all the men were circumcised.  Then the head of the household offered a sacrifice. 

John's baptism was different.  It was offered to Jews and non-Jews alike.  So John was in effect saying to the Jews “you are just like pagans in the eyes of God.  Your Jewishness isn't going to save you!  You all – Jews and gentiles alike –  need to “repent!”

And what does repentance look like? 
It's more than an idea.  There has to be fruit.  Some of the people who came to John were very religious, and John wasn’t keen to baptise them. He wasn't sure they had really repented. Some were from a group called “Pharisees”: they took the Bible seriously; they believed in the resurrection.  They were expecting Messiah to come.  They believed in keeping the law, observing the Sabbath, washing their hands before eating, and so on.  They were the traditional bible-believing people of the first century.  And others were called Sadducees: they were more interested in the Temple and sacrifices than the Bible; they didn't believe in the resurrection, or angels.  They didn't worry too much about the details of the law.  They were the upper-class, intellectual, gown-wearing liberals of the first century.  But all of them – Pharisees and Sadducees alike – were a “brood of vipers”. There was something poisonous in the way they thought, in their smugness, their lack of concern for others.  Both needed to produce fruit of repentance.  For the ordinary people, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” (Lk 3. 11)  Then there were the soldiers, the tax collectors: they had to be fair in their dealings, not abuse their power, not oppress people. (Lk 3. 12-14)   So John wasn't keen on baptising some of the people who came forward.

And tantalisingly, there is this other person who comes forward for baptism, whom John is reluctant to baptise. This time, it was because John wasn't sure this guy, Jesus, needed a baptism of repentance at all. In fact Jesus wasn't baptised in an act of repentance but “to fulfil all righteousness”. “Righteousness” here means the kind of life people were expected to live after being baptised: a life totally surrendered to God.  So in his baptism, Jesus is saying “God is aleady fully in charge of my life.”   And as part of his surrender to God, Jesus is embracing the cross, beginning to stand with the sinners he came to save.   Jesus has a unique and special relationship with God the Father – he is God's Son; the Holy Spirit falls on him at his baptism; his Father is pleased with him.   This was the Person, for whom John was preparing the way. 

What are we to get ready for? What is the thing we are expecting to happen?  Jesus has come.  And he wants to visit us again by his Spirit.

We are to get ready for Jesus!   Not just for Christmas!

We are to get ready for:
The kingdom of God to be manifested, to be seen!  God's rule. God's rules!
Judgement that separates the wheat from the chaff, blows away the dust, and the weevils.
The Holy Spirit filling our lives.
Righteousness to be fulfilled... sins to be dealt with
Revelation of who Jesus is!

And how can we get ready?
By a public declaration of a private reorientation. 
One way we can do that is by baptism. The baptism we do is shaped by what John did and by the fact that Jesus was baptised by John. God knows that we need to respond to him, we need to make a clear, public declaration of a private re-orientation. But the content of Christian Baptism is more than John's Baptism. John's was all about repentance. Christian Baptism is about reception as well as repentance. It is an appeal to God from a clear conscience. (1 Peter 3. 21) It is about repentance and faith.

So to be ready, we may need to make some kind of public, physical step:  we have made Christianity too intellectual, too cerebral, too internal, and too private and too easy.  You say something in your heart, to invite Jesus in.  “Every head bowed, every eye closed; raise your hand so the preacher can see. “  But John, and Jesus, insist that wont' work.  We need the sacraments.  We need to step forward and get baptised.  We need to take bread and wine.  We need as Billy Graham used to say to “get right up out of your seat”. 

Why do we have a prayer-team here every Sunday?  Is it because they are better than all the rest of us? Is it because sometimes we can't pry for ourselves?  Well, sometimes we do need someone to stand with us in prayer; sometimes we are not sure how to pray for ourselves.  And we have a recognised team so that people who step forward are safe.  But these guys' prayers are not necessarily any better than your own.  Sometimes we know we can pray for ourselves.  But we need to stand, to step forward and ask for prayer.    I believe that the physical act of stepping forward and asking for prayer, is sometimes what opens the door for God to bless us. 

We need to produce the fruit
As simple, Bible-believing Christians, we need to produce the fruit.  As people who feel we know the “Right way” to do things, we need to produce the fruit of repentance.  Attitudes of superiority, criticism, rivalry and hatred need to go.  Attitudes that exploit and manipulate other people, need to go. Indifference to the suffering of the poor, needs to go.  The instinct to put ourselves first, needs to go.  The desire to be in control, or any idea of self-sufficiency, needs to go. Then we will be “our Master's voice”, empowered by the Spirit, and preparing the way for Jesus' kingdom to touch our world.

© Gilmour Lilly December 2016

Daniel 12 - Contented with hope

Daniel is still at the side of the river River Tigris (verse 5, see ch 10 v 4) where he has been receiving the last and longest of his visions from God.     The vision has just moved on from dealing with events that would happen only a couple of hundred years after Daniel – to deal with things that over two thousand years later are still to happen. 

Daniel has learned that a figure will appear who will be the great final enemy of the people of God; and that figure, that enemy will “come to his end, with no-one to help him”  (11. 45)

So the first couple of verses of Daniel are about “that time.”   What CS Lewis called “The Last Battle” in the adventure of human history. It's easy to get all excited about “the end times... Daniel gives us three key New Testament themes to help keep us on track.

1. It is a battle. Michael rises to defend God's people, but the time of conflict gets worse.   And Michael brings deliverance in suffering not from it. Victory in spiritual warfare does not eradicate the need for commitment & sacrifice nor the possibility of going through a difficult time.

2. It's final.  It ushers in not just a new chapter in history.  It brings history to its end and opens the door on eternity. “Many who have been long dead and buried will wake up” (v. 2, the Message) The “many”  or “Multitudes” means everyone.   There's a general resurrection.  Isn't that amazing?

3. It's followed by judgement.   Some will rise “to eternal life, others to eternal shame.”  Verse 10 contrasts the “Wicked and the wise” and says in the final judgement it will become plain: the wicked continue to be wicked.   The Message translates the second half of verse 3, “Men and women who have lived wisely and well will shine brilliantly, like the cloudless, star-strewn night skies. And those who put others on the right path to life will glow like stars forever.”  We need to be the wise – living God's way and spreading his light, helpign others to live that way too.

That's it.  The last instalment of Daniel's longest vision.   The rest of the chapter is about what we do with all that.  Daniel is told to “seal up the words of the scroll” i.e. until they are needed.  Not that they are to be  untouched; just kept safe – and perhaps one of the best ways of doing that is to avoid “cutting and pasting” our interpretations into these words.  Just as interbreeding can contaminate the genetic code of rare animals, so human interpretations can infiltrate the way we read Scripture. l When these prophecies are needed, their meaning will become plain.

But... This business of the future leaves us  with questions.  What's it all about?  When is it going to happen?  How will we know?  And it is OK to have questions.  Daniel's mind is filled with questions.  These visions each had painful, unsettling effect on Daniel.   And even the angels have questions.

Standing by the Tigris river, with al his questions, Daniel is still seeing the figure of a man clothed in linen – this figure we recognise as Jesus.  The future that is revealed to Daniel, God's plan for the climax of hsitory, is all connected with jesus – his person, his coming into the world; his life, death, resurrection; and his gift of the Spirit to God's people.

So the end of the chapter is a question and answer session.  And the first questioner is one of the angelic figures.  The angel asks "How long?” [that is, “To the end”]     Clearly, it was not going to happen at the time of Antiochus Epiphenes (about whom we have heard a lot in Daniel)...  Antiochus was a bad lot but he never succeeded in breaking “the power of the holy people” (v. 7). i.e. the Jews.  Quite the opposite: they defeated him! 

When was the power of the holy people broken?  How about 70 a.d. with the final destruction of Jerusalem?  The Romans defiled, decommissioned and destroyed The temple.  It seems like “the power of the holy people” was broken then. But it wasn’t; it had already been transformed and enlarged, because Jesus had come and said ““The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near” (Mk 1. 15).  The purpose for which God created the nation was fulfilled when Jesus came. From the time of Jesus, the “Holy People” is expanded to include not just one nation but people from every tribe and nation.  (Rlatnn  7.9) We are part of it.  

That's the good news.  The bad news is that “The Holy people” have still to go through these times of warfare and global persecution.

How long will that last?  Daniel is told “time, times and half a time”.  Some people want to make that “years” which gives you a nice timetable.  But there is no reason for that, apart from it being convenient.  “Times” means “feasts, assemblies, meetings or seasons”.  But not “Years.”  Feasts and assemblies, meetings and seasons will come and go.  God answers the angel, quite deliberately, with a bit of  mystery.  The end will happen at just the right time.  Jesus says in Mk 13. 32 that the angels still did not know the answer to that question ( and neither did he!)

The second questioner is Daniel.  He asks "what will be the outcome?" (v. 8) “What's going to happen?  How will it all pan out?”  But the answer is flatly denied!  “Go your way” (v. 9). One your bike Daniel.  There's one crumb of information: “Days” instead of the undefinable “times” puts a limit on the time of trouble (v. 10)  Nobody will get more than they can bear. 

The disciples once asked Jesus a similar question: “Master, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now? Is this the time?” (Acts 1. 6)

And Jesus answer was similar to that given to Daniel: “You don’t get to know the time. Timing is the Father’s business. What you’ll get is the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes on you, you will be able to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all over Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the world.”  (Acts 1. 7)

We live between Jesus first coming and his coming again.  And what we get is the Holy Spirit. What we get is his power to be wise and put others on the right path to life.  (v. 3)  The Spirit is given to help us live for the Kingdom, until the Kingdom comes.   

Like Daniel, we go our way, in the power of the Spirit.

Like Daniel we are promised “you will rise”.  We will shine like stars!

Be content with the Spirit God has given us.

Be content with hope!


© Gilmour lilly November 2016

Matthew 4:17-25... Fishers of men

Jesus says, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men". But wait a minute - fishermen catch fish! They try to trick them with maggots or fake flies. They hope the fish will bite, then they fight them onto land!  Or they scoop them up in a huge net. Out of water, the fish die. Then they are sold, cooked, eaten.   The fisherman gets paid, and the fish gets, well, dead.

In fact, in the Old Testament, fishing is used 4 or 5 times, as a metaphor -- for evil & judgment! Listen to this:  "I will send for many fishermen,” declares the Lord, “and they will catch them. ...I will repay them double for their wickedness and their sin, because they have defiled my land with the lifeless forms of their vile images (Jer 16.16); "I will put hooks in your jaws" God says to Egypt (Ezk 29.4); "The time will surely come when you will be taken away with hooks, the last of you with fishhooks" (Amos 4.2);

“You have made people like the fish in the sea, like the sea creatures that have no ruler.

“The wicked foe pulls all of them up with hooks, he catches them in his net,

“he gathers them up in his dragnet; and so he rejoices and is glad.” (Hab 1.14-17)  

So, does "Mission" do harm?  

IT CAN if we take this image the wrong way...
(a) fish have to be killed. If we think this is why Jesus used this imagery, then mission can turn into a processes by which people are destroyed, their uniqueness taken from them, they are expected to dress in a certain way, listen to a certain kind of music, and suppress parts of their personality to make them acceptable at polite Sunday services... For example, when we only have room for one type of person, we “kill cultures”. This is what happened when mission and colonialism meant the same thing. But shouldn't people be encouraged to flourish and grow into the unique people God has made them to be?
(b) The image can lead us to develop a type of mission that thinks “we just need to throw out some nets”, or “we trap people with bait.”In France, lots of people think “evangelism” is all about handing out tracts. But to hand out literature without talking to someone and finding out whether this particular tract, or any tract for that matter, is neither helpful or appropriate. We throw out our nets and think we're fishers of men. (c) It would be important for a fisherman to catch a certain amount so he knew he would have enough money. So the “fishing” image can also depersonalize those you were trying to reach, and encourage you to only concentrate on numbers. It can turn people into a means for a Missional end rather than as persons to relate to.Working with the homeless as I did for a few years, yes we want to help as many people of the streets,  but if we focused on the “many" and not the individuals we would not have given the help needed and people's recoveries would not have been sustainable. How much more so when we are inviting people into relationship with Jesus.
 
Why did Jesus use the “Fishermen” image?
So with all this potential misunderstanding, why does Jesus call Peter and Andrew to become “Fishers for people”?   Simply this:  because fishing was their job.  He did with them, exactly what he did with so many people – he built bridges with them by entering their world and speaking in a way they could understand and relate to.   Jesus uses "fishing" as a metaphor in conversation with fishermen -- so he is modelling "relational" & incarnational.  He might say to Ruth, “Follow me, and we will cook up a feast for people’s souls!”  Or to Sandra, or Alan "follow me and I'll make you  a musician for my glory" ... He did say to my Mum a few years ago in a prophetic word, that he was giving her some boots for climbing spiritual heights.  

And when Jesus called Peter and Andrew to become “Fishers for people” he was assuring them that he could use what they were, and their unique insights into the world. 

How would he call you like that, what image would he use?

So let's look a little closer at what being a fishermen meant to Peter and Andrew in their context... which will help us get to the real essence of what Jesus is saying to us...

What positive assets did the fishermen bring to the task of evangelism?

• Perseverance. There were times when they worked all night and caught nothing. They didn't give up. They couldn’t because fishing wasn't a spare-time hobby they could turn to when they felt like it. If they didn't fish, they didn't eat. So they kept going even when things were difficult. There's an idea going round, that we "shouldn't waste our time" on people who are not interested in Jesus. Now we need to respect people's space and not keep on about Jesus; we become boring and people will end up trying to avoid us! But we need to NOT drop people just because they don't respond quickly to Jesus.
• Courage. I respect the guys who go out to catch fish because it takes a lot of physical courage; they face danger & discomfort. Galilee is famous for its fierce and sudden storms , and could be just as dangerous as the open sea. If we are going "fishing" we need to go where the fish are: that may mean we spend time in places we don't find all that pleasant: city streets at 1a.mm. for Street Pastors, for example. Or a workplace where people regularly show open contempt for Christianity and Christians.
• Hard work. They were used to rowing, raising sail, pulling nets of fish, sorting out their catch, keeping nets, sails and the structure of their boat in good order. Mission is a call to hard work.

As I mentioned we could think that all we need to do is throw out a net and if we get any bites, we'll be good... but these were professional fisherman, and there was a little more to it than that. They would know the sea, which type of fish would be in the shallows and the deep at what time... and would use different nets and lines for different types of fish... the “Fishermen” image shows that we cannot simply approach people with a "one size fits all" mentality. Not everyone reacts the same way. People need different things and to know different things about God...

For example, our little church plant has around 10 people, two of whom are just exploring what it means to be a Christian... One of those is a Congolese Single mum with a young family and mobility issues, who needs to know Gods love and care in her situation. The other is a young French lady who loves talking about philosophy, who needs to know that you don't have to turn your mind off to believe in God. If we started talking to the Congolese lady about philosophy she would feel intimidated. In the same way if we went to the French lady's house to help her change lightbulbs, she would just be really confused.

As we mentioned, Jesus talks about fishing for men, with fishermen.  Fishing wasn't just something they did, it was their livelihood, it was their identity. For them this would mean a complete change of lifestyle, and of identity. As dad mentioned, being a fisherman was hard work, and they would know from this image that following Jesus would leave no room for complacency. They also would know from days and nights of fishing without any catches that, although they mustn't be complacent, they also cannot be self-reliant... you can do everything right and still not catch any fish. It is the work of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. That should be comforting when we try and things don't go right, that ultimately it doesn't come down to us. We must be faithful fishermen, but it's God who brings in the fish.
 
So how do we bring all that together and take something home with us?

Jesus is announcing the kingdom! (v. 17) He lives the Kingdom as he heals the sick, drives out the demons and builds bridges between people and cultures. And he calls us, first of all, to follow him. Then, he makes us fishers for people.

Fishers for people is something we ARE not something we do. It's not something Jesus tells us to do. It's something Jesus promises to make us.

What he calls us to do is follow him.

• Follow Jesus into the Kingdom of God
• Follow Jesus  & experience an ongoing transformation.
• Follow Jesus you will be made to fish people into the total reality of God's kingdom. Not just into our church!

What we are can be part of that, when we answer the call of Jesus, simply to follow Him into his kingdom. And guess what, unless we are following him, we are never going to be fishers for people. The best we can hope for is to hook a few people into our organisation! I'd rather be bringing people into God's Kingdom!

© November 2016 Gilmour Lilly (Material in black type) and Peter Lilly (Material in blue type)

Daniel 11:

Wars, Casualties, and the Last Battle.

I want to tell you what we know of the story of an Olympic champion – a young woman called Berenice, (Bearer of victory) who won the equivalent of gold at the Olympic games in 256 BC. She was of royal descent, the daughter of Ptolemy II of Egypt. Four years later, she was taken to Egypt’s northern border with the Seleucid empire, destined to marry Antiochus II days later. She brought the possibility of peace between the two empires and a considerable dowry with her. Antiochus divorced his first wife to marry her. She had one son, but by 246, she and her son were dead, murdered by supporters of Antioch's first wife.

That’s the story that Daniel foretold in verse 6 of chapter 11. It's a story repeated over and over again: the story of people, individuals, who are treated as nothing more than pawns in the great games of politics and war. When Bashar Assad of Syria was recently asked

Aleppo - Public Domain image

whether he can sleep at night knowing about the suffering of children in Aleppo and other theatres of war in his own country, he laughed, assured the journalist that he sleeps just fine, and remarked “this is war, not charity”. When German storm troopers were hunting down the Jews of Warsaw, they found a wee Jewish girl named Zosia, who had bright, sparkling eyes: one of the soldiers remarked, her eyes were like diamonds and would make two lovely rings, one for him and one for his wife. In an orgy of unspeakable cruelty, her eyes were torn out; a few days later she was taken to a death camp.

Whether in wars, or acts of terror, or company takeovers, economic downturns or government cutbacks, all too often there are little people, women, children, people with disabilities or with few resources, who become the collateral damage. Berenice reminds us that in the midst of wars and political crises, there are real people getting hurt.

And Berenice reminds us that God knows about all the twists and turns of history. Remember she was a real person. Like the mighty king of v. 3 (Alexander the Great), the king of the south (Ptolemy's empire in Africa) and the King of the North (the Seleucid Empire based in Syria) the wars between these two powers (verses 11-20) and the contemptible person (Antiochus Epiphenes , v. 21) who desecrated the temple (v. 31) it was all written in the book of truth. It all happened. Even that fact that some of the Jews compromised with Antiochus, while others stood firm against him. (v. 32) God knows all of that in advance.

And God knows about our history. He knows about the millions slain in World War 1 (750,000 from the UK, 1.1m from France, 1.7m from Russia) He knows about the fact that there has not been a single decade of peace in the century since then. British troops have been deployed in conflicts ranging from Ireland, Palestine and the Middle East, Suez, Aden, Kenya, Eritrea, Korea, the Falklands, Bosnia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan. God knows about Hitler; about Saddam and Assad and Putin; he knows about Trump and the dangerous rise of right wing extremism that is happening in the Western world. He knows about the school kids abusing Hispanic students in Bend, Oregon yesterday and those in Detroit chanting “Build the wall!” The whole of history is God's book of truth. He knows. And as verse 1 – linking us with the previous chapter – reminds us, back of evil stuff is the evil one; behind our human struggles is a spiritual battle.

So why does he allow it? Why do things happen that treat little people as disposable? Why did he allow what happened to Zosia? Why does he allow millions to die in wars? Why does he allow a holocaust or ethnic cleansing or ISIS? But God answers with silence. Bishop James Jones asks “What sound would God make? And if he did cry out who would be able to stand the sound of his wailing.”

Ron Wallace says “History is foreknown but in such a way as to allow for human choices.” But why give us these choices, knowing what we would do with them? Ravi Zacharias, an Indian Christian whose ministry has been devoted to finding answers to some of these difficult questions says this: “The supreme ethic God has given to us is the ethic of love...which places value on the other person.. but you cannot have love without weaving into it the freedom of the will. If your are compelled like some machine to a certain decision, you can never love.” God's silence is the silence of one who created us for love, created us with free will, and who sees the world he made racked by a spiritual battle.

And there's something else... if Daniel was written by someone else after the Maccabean revolt, that someone didn't know his history that well. In verses 31ff we are told about things that didn't actually happen to Antiochus – or anyone else. Suddenly, the clear fulfilments run out. Whereas the chapter up to verse 35 is all about things that have actually happened, the rest of the chapter tells of things that we are still waiting for. So the “king” in verse 35 is a different person. Antiochus desecrated the temple, but he never turned against all the Gods of his own people. He didn't turn against the gods of his ancestors or the “one desired by women” (probably a god called Tammuz who was thought to die and rise again every year and for whom the women would “Mourn”.) There is no evidence that Antiochus came again to invade Judea, Egypt or North Africa. In other words, this bit is still to happen. The King that Daniel is talking about here, is the Antichrist or “man of lawlessness” (2 Thess 2. 3)

We can't really figure out what all the details of this section mean. Like the prophecies in the earlier verses, they would be recognised when they were fulfilled and not before. I believe it is the same here. We're not meant to figure it all out – and if we try we will probably get it wrong. But what we do know is that a figure will appear who will be the great final enemy of the people of God. And that he will come to his end, with no-one to help him. Defeated, gone, his supporters wiped out, no-one to help him.

1. There is warfare. All the rubbish that happens in our world, all the oppression, all the violence and terror, all the suffering that comes to individuals, is part of an ongoing, cosmic battle.
2. That battle will eventually reach a climax of godless evil, violence and greed. The world isn’t' going to start becoming a nicer place so that Jesus come and can set up his Kingdom. It's going to get worse, until Jesus comes back to set up his Kingdom. We need to be ready for that. Like the Jews in the time of Antiochus we have the choice between, selling out to the enemy or firmly resisting him (verse 32) the people who know their God will firmly resist him.
3. And in that warfare, the enemy will be defeated. His end will be brought about by the glorious return of the Son of God from heaven. When Jesus comes back and the enemy is defeated, all that is evil, all that is bad, all that is brutal, frightening, oppressive will be swept away for ever. There will be no more crying, because the old order will pass away. Jesus will make all things new. That's the triumph and the victory that we await.

And what happens to Berenice, or Zosia, or you or me, has as its context, not only the power of God, or our choices, or the spiritual battle. It also has as its context, the coming final triumph and victory of Jesus. In the 1300's lived a woman who wanted to devote her whole life to prayer, so had a tiny cell built for her in the wall of the Church of St Julian in Norwich; so she became known as Julian of Norwich. She lived and prayed through a time of upheaval, and is famous for her statement of faith, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

© G Lilly November 2016

Daniel 10 Warfare

Daniel is now an old man, in his 80's.  Cyrus has come to the throne of the Persian empire – and has allowed some of the exiles to go back to their own country.  Daniel isn’t among them: maybe too frail for the journey, maybe only younger people were sent, maybe he still had a job to do in the Persian court.  

The timing of this vision is around Passover.  And at Passover, Daniel is thinking about God's people, Israel. He thinks about the bitter herbs that were part of the traditional passover feast, and the bitter bondage in Egypt that they represented.  He may well be thinking about the bitter bondage for seventy years in Babylon.  He thinks about the passover lamb that was shared, and how God showed his power on the night of the first passover when the angel of death “passed over” every house that had the blood of a lamb painted on the door. He thinks about eating the passover with unleavened bread, dressed as though ready to go on a journey – because as soon as they had eaten, they left Egypt and God miraculously brought them through the Red Sea.  That was the defining story of his people, and now it was happening again, seventy years after the exile, just as Jeremiah had prophesied (see Daniel 9). 

But Daniel has this other number ringing in his ears: seventy weeks of years, 490 years, 483

Banvie Burn, Blair Atholl. Photo G Lilly

before the Anointed One would come, and then a final period of trial (chapter 9).    So this  old man sets himself on a three-week prayer retreat....  he wants to understand.  He wants to be right with his God. Whatever God is doing, Daniel wants to be walking humbly with his God.  So he goes to a location beside the Tigris, possibly with a few friends, and he fasts and prays, only eating the basics, no meat, no wine.

The whole process – fasting, praying, wrestling to understand, was in itself a battle.  NIV and other translations, quite wrongly, say in verse 1, “the message was true and concerned a great war.”  The Hebrew literally means “the word as true and the warfare great”; that refers to the whole process of receiving the message.  It was difficult to find.  It was contested both on earth and in heaven.  When it came it was difficult to grasp.  

And it is in his old age, as the climax of his ministry, that he sees this most powerful vision.... 

I want to encourage all of us – myself included now I have my bus pass – not to give up expecting great things from God, or attempting great things for God.   Jesus tells two parables about people who make an amazing find: one is the farmer whose story begins when he finds treasure hidden in the ground – and goes and sells all he has to buy that piece of land.  The other is the pearl dealer who keeps on searching until in the end he finds the pearl of great price, then he goes and sells all and buys it. Some of us stumble over God's goodness.  Some of use spend years searching.  (Matthew 13. 44-46)  Whoever we are, however we have waited for
God, he does want to speak to us.

What Daniel sees is a man, dressed like a priest in fine linen, but with a face bright as lightning, eyes like fire, arms like bronze and a voice like the roar of a whole army, loud, powerful; but maybe not always easy to understand..   A man, but a man clothed in amazing glory.  I believe he saw Jesus, the eternal Son of God, in the glory he had before he was conceived as a collection of cells in Mary’s womb.   And this man stands over the river Tigris, and over all the currents of human history.  People, we need to see this Man.  He is the Victor.  He stands above the ebb and flow of history.  He is Lord and King, and the triumph of his Kingdom is a more important matter than whether Daniel gets to return to Jerusalem, or whether Jerusalem is restored in 70 or 490 years, or what happens in your life or mine. He is the lynch-pin of history; he has triumphed and will triumph, and he demands our obedience.  We need to see him. 

But what do we make of the state of the world and the church in our day?What Daniel sees   Once again this vision was so overpowering: Daniel fell on his face, unconscious.  Someone – possibly an angel  –  shakes Daniel awake, and begins to explain that he was sent with the answer as soon as Daniel started his prayer retreat – but was hindered by the “Prince of Persia.”  It was a battle for Daniel on earth because there was  battle going on that Daniel could not see: the very desire of God to answer Daniel's prayers, was being contested by this Prince of Persia. That fight will continue: when the prince of Persia is beaten it will be the turn of the prince of Greece. 

The angel is describing an unseen dimension occupied by spiritual beings representing or corresponding to nations, peoples and movements in the world we can see. 

Image: "sannse" Creative Commons

Some of these spiritual beings are doing God's will, while others are opposed to God's will.  And these beings are engaged in a conflict – “a strange and dreadful fight” as Martin Luther put it.  Until the final triumph of Christ's Kingdom, the world is a battlefield. In order fully to understand the problem of suffering in our world, we need to factor in the realities not only of God's power (why should a good God allow this stuff to happen?) and of freewill (humankind has rebelled against God) but of spiritual conflict (at the present time God's purposes are challenged by another power). 

That has some implications for us:
1. The heavenly battle affects us in the earthly battle.  The battle on earth – the one  we feel when we struggle to pray, to understand, to humble ourselves before the Lord, to serve him is a crazy mixed up world – corresponds to the battle in that unseen, heavenly realm. Paul says we are “not fighting against flesh and blood but against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”  (Eph 6. 12)
2. And the earthly battle affects the heavenly one. We engage in the warfare by prayer, discipleship, submission to Jesus, and acts of service in our world.  Same way Daniel did.  We pray “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.”  And we live the life of the Kingdom – speaking truth, seeking justice and peace, caring for the last, the lost and the least, the broken and the dispossessed.  We don’t need to name or call out the spirits that are opposing God's Kingdom in the heavenlies. Leave that to those who can see them: the angels of God.  

Finally, Daniel needs to know certain truths, and we need the same truths:
1. He is “highly esteemed” (v. 18, NIV)  “God loves you very much” (Living Bible). He is beautiful.  In the midst of the warfare, we need to hear that: you are beautiful. God loves you very much.
2. The future history of God's people, is written in the “book of Truth”: it is aWhat Daniel seeslready in God's hand. God, despite the spiritual battles, will triumph in the end.  The idea that God and evil are kind of “equal and opposite” is called “Dualism.”  It would be neat and tidy and would cleverly solve the problem of evil.  But it is not how the Bible sees things.  We live in a universe where God has had to make some tough choices. There is warfare. But God will triumph. It's written in the book of truth. Jesus is the victor.
3. And Daniel is invited to continue to play his part. Verse 21b sounds a bit sad.  “No one supports me against the princes of Persia and Greece except Michael, your prince”.  But it is an invitation to Daniel, to stand with the angels of heaven, in the spiritual battle, by the way we pray and the way we live. Jesus is the victor.  And we are like Daniel invited to stand with the angels of heaven, by the way we pray and by the way we live.   

© Gilmour Lilly November 2016