Good Morning Friends,
This morning I am considering the work of some scientists who recently recalculated the possibility that we on Earth are the only intelligent species in the universe. Here the math data used is based on what they know about the universe from a scientific viewpoint. Many have come to believe that life exists in other places because it seems so abundant here on Earth and we have so many stories like Star Wars and Star Trek that have become part of our culture. But the reality is, according to those who should know better than I, that there is a 50% to 95% chance, based on the math, that in all the billions upon billions of stars and planets, we are alone in the Universe when it comes to a place that sustains intelligent life. Friends we are very, very special. In today’s Gospel text it becomes clear that Jesus, like His creation is very special as well. The text claims that Jesus is greater than Jacob, Jonah and Solomon. But friends, that is only the beginning for God is the God of miracles. Unfortunately, people with religious power were reluctant to acknowledge Jesus and wanted to explain away his miracles or discredit them as evil. The spiritual blindness of the people opposed to Jesus is demonstrated in their reaction to His good works. Their refusal to hear His message is echoed in their speaking out against Him. The same is true related to our passage from Exodus. And even our Old Testament passage from Micah echoes this judgement from a higher court with God the challenger and the wayward people Israel challenged with questions of prophetic insight. So, for us today it would be wise to do mor justice, and love with more kindness and to remember the importance of a humble walk with God. Friends, we need to consider how we treat this place where we live and begin with how we treat each other. Our Exodus from this planet would not be so easy at the Exodus from Egypt. I do not know how God parted the Red Sea, but the story is told in that way for a reason. The journey begins inside and how we react to the story and the world in which we live. So, Do You See The Signs For Reform That Is More Like A Miracle Or a Mirage?
Scripture: Hear what the Lord says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for the Lord has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel. “O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me! For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Micah 6:1-4, 6-8 (NRSV)
Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth. The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here! The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here!
Matthew 12:38-42 (NRSV)
When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the minds of Pharaoh and his officials were changed toward the people, and they said, “What have we done, letting Israel leave our service?” So he had his chariot made ready, and took his army with him; he took six hundred picked chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them. The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt and he pursued the Israelites, who were going out boldly. The Egyptians pursued them, all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots, his chariot drivers and his army; they overtook them camped by the sea, by Pi-hahiroth, in front of Baal-zephon. As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites looked back, and there were the Egyptians advancing on them. In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, ‘Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” But Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.” Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward. But you lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the Israelites may go into the sea on dry ground. Then I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them; and so I will gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army, his chariots, and his chariot drivers. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gained glory for myself over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his chariot drivers.”
Exodus 14:5-18 (NRSV)
Message: Today the court of God is in session and here we explore how to approach God in a relationship as we seek to discern what God desires from us. Today we pose the most important question of religion and our view of God. And in raising it up some might think we could breathe easier, but such is not the case, for what God wants for an answer is truth itself, and that is so hard to pin down even in a court of law. Those who should know the truth seem to be those who are last to see it. Even the relatively ignorant Gentiles believed the prophet Jonah, and the Queen of Sheba sought out the wisdom of King Solomon, yet the Scribes and Pharisees failed to recognize Jesus as their expected Prophet and King. After all the trials and lessons of the wilderness, the judges, the Kings, and the exile, Israel had at last come to realize that there is just one God, and that the worship of idols is nothing less than demon worship. However, having swept away the evil spirit of outwardly false religion, the scribes and Pharisees represented a legalistic form of religion which still, by their own denial of Jesus, excluded the true and living God. They were blind to the truth, deaf to the message of Jesus, and their voices spoke blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. These were the ones who thought so much of themselves before God that they were enticed to exhibit enmity against God. And a wicked generation is sentenced because it did not reform. A lot is at stake here…we need to be reformed and seek to continually reform our ways from the inside out. The biblical story of the crossing of the Red Sea and how we interpret is instructive in this regard for the story has some skeptics that just can’t believe it and try to overlook it. Cecil B. DeMille’s depiction of this event (in “The Ten Commandments”) was beautiful. You could almost sense the awe that God’s people must have felt as they passed beneath those walls of water. The crossing of the Red Sea is a central part of the story of Israel. But to reject it outright is a problem that flies in the face of the evidence of the overall story of Israel. So, some suggest it was a mirage or that the crossing was at the shallow shoals of the Sea of Reeds or was a natural event akin to a tsunami in reverse. But this thinking tends to minimize God’s role in the event and is a denial of sorts that seems beneath the drama of the event. You see scripture is clear that God had been leading the Hebrew nation both by day and by night to this time and place. The context is that the people were afraid, and their backs were against the sea, and they were facing certain destruction and there was not a thing they could do about it. Their dreams were being crushed and some must have felt angry against God and Moses too. But for the Christian faced with such difficult circumstances the objective is to stand firm in the faith. Christ did. The thing is that the world wants the qualities of Christians… their generosity and pleasant attitudes but do not want our God. This is much akin to not believing in miracles nor the power of love when our backs are against the wall.
And So, loving acts are genuine to the degree that they are not done begrudgingly. The sign that Jesus gave to the Pharisees and Sadducees is a sign to us as well. For those who believe, this becomes the bedrock of our faith and confession. We can with full confidence be assured that we are included in the Kingdom and have been set free. It does not matter where we came from. What matters is whose we are and where we are going. But to the skeptics, it serves as a sign also. To those who reject the Resurrection as well as miracles like the parting of the Red Sea, it is a sign that they are blind to an ultimate reality. They see things totally in a scientific matter, as far as human “science” is concerned. And I am not against science at all. But the presupposition of modern world is that God is totally unnecessary to describe reality. Skeptics may see that there is global decay everywhere. They can see things going wrong, but they can be blind to both its real cause and its cure, attempting to cancel instead of correct. Technology is not leading us to a better world, if God is forgotten in the process. Jonah serves as much as a warning to us today as it did to the people in Jesus’ day. Neglect this truth at your own peril. The Ninevites repented when confronted by Jonah. But now we have Jesus’ warning to us, a far greater witness than Jonah. There are many who call themselves “Christians” who deny the fundamentals of our faith and try to create a different Jesus, a teacher rather than Christ, a Jesus who was a victim of religious intolerance rather than the victor over death and hell. They see Jesus as an idea and not a person. This is not the Jesus proclaimed in the Scripture, both Old and New Testaments. The judgment of Nineveh proclaimed by Jonah is a portent of even a greater judgment. The proper response to this is to do as the Ninevites did, to repent. They were spared from judgment for a season. God was gracious to them. But their repentance did not hold and the Ninevites went back on their repentance. The prophet Nahum tells of Nineveh’s destruction. Jesus also tells us to go beyond our prejudices, to not shelter ourselves from the world in the church. This is to seek security in the belly of the fish, so to speak. The gates of hell cannot withstand the church. Gates are exclusionary and defensive. The church has no gates. It is hell that does. Jesus was commissioned to come here to enemy territory, just as Jonah was sent to Nineveh. Both had a proclamation, Jonah’s was one of doom, Jesus came to proclaim the good news of God’s favor, but the heart of each message was Repent! Like Jonah, who was willing to give up himself to save the sailors, Jesus had to give up himself in order to save us. And after three days and nights, Jesus came out of the grave, just as Jonah came out of the fish. Jesus said that Jonah’s experience was a sign of his death, burial, and resurrection. Maybe the sign of Jonah is a sign for all the skeptics to take note of, even those who doubt God parted the Red Sea.
Pray we believe in the miracle of Jesus. Pray we realize that God is always with us. Pray we realize what a special gift we have been given to be alive in this time and place. Pray we realize that the God of all creation wants our love more than our sacrifices. Pray we seriously focus on continual improvement in the work we have been called to serve. Pray we act kindly, joyfully praising and purposefully witnessing and powerfully living and plentifully giving. Pray we believe in Jesus and seriously seek to do the will of God in the Spirit of Christ. Pray we are not only reformed but transformed. Pray that our authentic hearts are filled with loving acts that give testimony to the miracle of Jesus reforming us into a people who do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God each day.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 