Category: BIble study notes

Through the Bible in a Year – February 18

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The Scheme for January and February can be found here

Exodus 15-16; Acts 24; Psalm 64-65

As the story moves on, we are shown what life with God means.

As we remembered yesterday, the Israelites are called to Remembrance of what God has done for them, and then as they walk with them, he provides – bread for the day. Not an excess, but what they need. Thus he reveals himself to be the source of their life, moment by moment. The bread is sacramental – as all food, it is more than a reminder of God presence. this is the food God has provided – we have it at his hand.

But for the rich there comes a double challenge. We have not learned our faith through such dependence – we forget where all we have comes from. God’s good creation is seen as a Right, rather than a daily gift. The connection is broken and often we will sit down now to eat without any thanksgiving.

We break bread to remember and in the remembering we are given life – but if we take more than that which God has given us, if we Grasp, if we seek to possess more, to take charge of our lives, to secure ourselves against tomorrow, that we might rest easy without faith – it turns to maggots in our teeth. For most of us in the West, the lesson of daily bread is one we have never learned. Perhaps this above all is why the church is so weak? For us, faith is not a daily act rooted in the material gift of God, now it is just a set of beliefs, little or nothing to do with the stuff of our everyday life, so ‘successfully’ have we secured this for ourselves

Through the Bible in a Year – February 17

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The Scheme for January and February can be found here

Exodus 13-14; Acts 23; Psalm 62-63

One of the great challenges to living faith today is our all too easy discarding of history. We live in a culture where history counts for nothing, such are the apparent advances in technology and our seeming mastery of all things. What has history to teach US?

Yet we see in the instructions of Moses to the children of Israel, Remembering that which God has done is essential to continuing in faith. Precise instructions are given also, this is no mere retelling of a story – it is to be embodied in the continuing redemption of the first born, thus the story is told from generation to generation.

Of course in a sense the Israelites also lived in an ‘ahistoric age’ – no sooner are they free of the slavery of the Egyptians than they forget how things were and want to return – a constant theme of their story those next forty years.

Throughout God is present in the pillar of cloud and fire – a living presence amongst them – but they often will not allow the possibility of God’s future could be better than their known history. God calls them into a future of His making, much as Christ calls us to leave our nets and follow.

Of course it is clear here that it is not that the Israelites have forgotten the past in the way we readily discard it, but rather that they refuse to focus on what God has done in the past as a guarantee of the future.

The future is Always an unknown. The past is in truth all that we ever know.

The call of faith is to recall the mighty acts of God, or his daily small mercies. Thus we grow in faith and submit ourselves into his hands for the future. He has provided daily bread these many days, will he not continue to do so? We too readily discount the Goodness of God, which is both our Source and our End.

Through the Bible in a Year – February 16

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Exodus 12; Acts 22; Psalm 60-61

Reading the Exodus narrative – one is struck by the sheer force of what is happening – that this Exodus is only brought about through immense cost, a cost that must perpetually be remembered in the redeeming of the first born.

Through the history of Israel, this night is to be remembered, for it is the night on which God said to them conclusively, ‘You are mine’, with everything that that means. As the prophets will remind the people many many years later, it is not through any goodness of their own tat God has done this, it is not a matter for pride. They do not choose Yahweh for their God. He chooses them, as at first he had called Abraham.

Over and over again in our faith, we make far far to much of our response to God’s call. Here in this Exodus passage it is laid bare – frail Moses, and doubting people are rescued. God creates a people for himself – as many many years later he will do conclusively in Christ.

As Israel was commanded to retell the story, so also Paul we note tells over and over again the story of his ‘conversion’. It is something which he had nothing to do with. It is the profound archetype of ‘becoming Christian’ – it has nothing to do with us – it has everything to do with God, and what is more it lays upon us now a duty, to live as dearly loved children.

Becoming Christian is not our choice – perversely we try to make it thus, but it is not – the only choice we have is whether or not we will live into the fullness of that calling

Through the Bible in a Year – February 15

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The Scheme for January and February can be found here

Exodus 10-11; Acts 21; Psalm 58-59

So much of the apparent ambiguity of the life of faith is explained in God’s strange choice to work in and through his creatures. So often we may well ask, ‘Why does God not do something?’ . . . and upon observation we might discover that he has done something, but that something has been through the agency of frail human flesh.

And again we might say, ‘why did God do THAT??’, and once more the answer is to be found in God’s chosen instruments.

It is Moses, hot with anger who declares to Pharaoh the death of all the firstborn, and Paul who in stubbornness does not listen to those who speak guided by the Spirit not to go to Jerusalem. Paul seems in a sense to have some ‘heroic’ vision of his mission – ‘I am ready not only to be bound, but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.’

And the scriptures do not hide this from us. The ‘Greats’ of faith are revealed to be all too frail – but more wondrous, God is revealed to accommodate himself to us – to work within the parameters of our frailties – to effect something beyond our ken.

Moses is still the same – he was fearful of Pharaoh, he is still ungrown and angry, an anger that years later will prove his undoing. Paul is almost seeking to die as a great hero – there are clear echoes here of Peter – but the Scriptures are silent as to their eventual death. The words of the risen Christ to Peter ‘But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go’ – ring true also for Paul.

In the end, this is not about us – it is about God – and for that we should be unutterably grateful.

Through the Bible in a Year – February 14

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The Scheme for January and February can be found here

Exodus 8-9; Acts 20; Psalm 56-57

Two hearts are revealed in our readings today.

There is the heart of Pharaoh – which we are told continually is hardened towards God’s people, and thus of course to God, himself. Pharaoh is outwardly utterly secure – all the wealth of Egypt belongs to him, and even his magicians seem to be able to control the natural world, to manipulate it, if rather perversely, towards the judgement of God. Externally strong, internally hard.

Then there is the heart of the Psalmist – exposed to the destroying storms, trampled on by his foes, lying down amongst lions that greedily devour human prey. Externally weak,  and yet whose heart is steadfast, turned continually to God that in the midst of adversities, he sings and makes melody – he so rejoices as to awake the dawn.

In the eyes of the world, Pharaoh symbolises life, but his heart is dead. In the eyes of the world the Psalmist symbolises death, but his heart is Alive!

We see this summed up in Paul, in the difficulties he faces, and yet living as though he sees him who is invisible. And from this heart of Life, Life comes forth. Constantly breaking bread with the disciples, the bread of life sustains him and is a fountain of life even to those who have died. What is more his heart for his young churches leads him into the sacrificial life, pouring out his life for them, preaching through the night, never ‘shrinking from doing anything helpful, proclaiming the message to you and teaching publicly from house to house’ – ‘for tree years, night and day, I did not cease to warn you.’

His heart is open to the one who Is Life – he follows him in obedience towards Jerusalem – the story of his Lord cannot have been far from his mind at anytime. His heart is open, Alive – Captive to the Spirit. May it be also for us who hear these words.

Through the Bible in a Year – February 13

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The Scheme for January and February can be found here

Exodus 6-7; Acts 19; Psalm 55

Confuse, O Lord, confound their speech;
for I see violence and strife in the city.
Day and night they go around it
on its walls,
and iniquity and trouble are within it;
ruin is in its midst;
oppression and fraud
do not depart from its market-place.

Moses and Aaron go therefore in fear and trembling before Pharaoh, he who to the eyes of the world wields absolute power, whose word is reality, whose story appears to be the only one in town.

In a powerful sense this is precisely the world we live in. When we think of what our lives might consist of, the stories we we tell a) do not account for the ‘I AM’, and b) have a strange familiarity about them. ‘Life’ so called consists of childhood, education, more education that we are fit for work, marriage (perhaps), children (perhaps), a home, retirement . . . this story, so common, has an even greater commonality, its destination. Christian faith is in our day  used to suggest another ending . . . not another story.

We read two days ago in Acts of how Jason and other believers are accused of turning the world upside down, by those in the market place . . . They suggest there is another King – they suggest that there is another story. The powers are exposed in Ephesus – behind the false god Artemis lies human desire for wealth and the power it brings – and so Paul and Silas find themselves similarly hauled up to answer for this strange teaching – another life, another story

But the story we inhabit is ‘safe’ – we know its parameters, we figure out that we know how its supposed to work and those of us with advantages of birth, often are highly skilled at playing out that story that the world suggests to us, the death narrative. We may even, skilled as we are, shape our understanding of the gospel and life, so that it fits the death narrative – our perversity knows no limits.

In the face of Life we see three responses in our reading from Exodus. There is the response of the powers that be – Everything they stand for is threatened – the cost is too high – ‘how hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of heaven’ Pharaoh has Everything – he must die to live and he refuses the trade.

Then there are the Israelites – but they could not believe in this other narrative, this other story – ‘because of their broken spirit and cruel slavery’ – indeed the story of Israel to the time of Christ can be interpreted as a refusal at the end to believe the other story, for once they are freed, they continue in the same story as before, but now playing Pharaoh.

It is given to those called to enact the other story – and how hard that is. As the disciples follow Jesus, they struggle to believe – as too do Moses and Aaron. They are as yet not attuned to that voice that calls us forth from the tomb, that bids us live, that declares that there IS another story, that calls us to the adventure of faith rather than the anxiety of navigating the Death Narrative ‘successfully’ to its end  . . .

Through the Bible in a Year – February 12

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The Scheme for January and February can be found here

Exodus 4-5; Acts 18; Psalm 53-54

We thought yesterday about how we are still dominated by the Narrative of Death – and Moses too is fearful. This Strange God, the ‘I AM’, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who IS Life challenges Moses to his core. HE is exposed before him – his weakness, his fallibility, his stumbling speech. As he is afraid of Life, so he knows that the Israelites are not ready for this Life.

God in his infinite mercy, meets him where he is. As before he had bargained with Abraham over Sodom and Gomorrah, so too he gives him something ‘magical’, which Moses is still at a level that he will entrust himself to it [Pharaoh’s magicians do the same – Ex 7:8-13], he gives him Aaron – but all the same God’s anger is kindled in the face of such unbelief and it is only through blood that Moses is protected.

As Moses and Aaron draw near to Pharaoh, as Life is revealed in the servants of the LORD, immediately the Death Narrative struggles to re-assert itself. Knowing that its time is limited, it seeks to take to itself all that it can. In the midst of this conflict, Moses pleads with the LORD for a quiet life. But this Life is not quiet. Moses has little comprehension of what he is caught up in – no sense of Awe, that God’s purposes are infinitely greater than simply changing the mind of Pharaoh – rather that in the Exodus which he will effect for his people, his Glory may be revealed.

This is the Gift that is given to the Church – to reveal his Glory in the resurrection of Christ – present amongst us – Manifested in lives of worship and holy obedience.

Through the Bible in a Year – February 11

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The Scheme for January and February can be found here

Exodus 1-3; Acts 17; Psalm 52

As our narrative resumes in Egypt we find an echo of the deeper story of the Creation, of the vocation of the children of God. The Israelites have been ‘fruitful’ and ‘multiplied’, ‘so that the land was filled with them’. The Narrative of Life that was in the beginning [Genesis 1:28] – but they have left The Garden, they have not come to the Land of Promise – and another Narrative is at work, a Narrative of harsh labour and of pain through childbirth. Yet those in the midst who fear God, still live out of the Primal story and Life continues to spring forth.

For Pharaoh and all those who know not the first story, this ‘New Thing’ is a terrible force of which they have no comprehension – indeed it is related to him in miraculous terms ‘the Hebrew women are vigourous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.’ – and Pharaoh tries to stamp it out, as much later they would try to stamp out the Life of the Church as we have been reading in Acts. This message of Life is ‘turning the world upside down!’ – the people of the city are disturbed – but Life continues to spring forth – ‘Many of them therefore believed’

The Gospel is The Narrative of Life – wherever it is revealed in God’s people, it reveals the Narrative of Death, it exposes it. It reveals ‘ordinary life’ for what it is, no life at all. The carefully planned world in which we would all feel secure is shown to be a terrible hoax.

Wherever there is Life this is so. It is the churches in those places where the Death narrative is obvious which flourish. Those such as ours in the ‘West’ shrivel – we have confused the two Narratives, and have put our lives in the hands of Pharaoh and called it Good. We would not dream of acting in a way that turns the world upside down, it suits us too well.

Perhaps this is most evident in our loss of the sense of ‘The Holy’ – ‘The Fear of Israel’. We no longer approach our God with our feet bared. We have little sense ourselves of ‘the Power that is at work amongst us, like the working of His great power when he raised Jesus Christ from the dead’, that in Christ, Death is no more. There is no fear of God before our eyes, merely the fear of our own demise – we believe the Narrative of Death.

Through the Bible in a Year – February 10

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The Scheme for January and February can be found here

Job 40-42; Acts 15:36- 16:40; Psalm 51

Yesterday we thought of ‘surrendering ourselves to the unfathomable mystery of the Love of God’ – that which sustains all life and upholds the universe and is its most profound meaning.

In the sure and certain confidence of such love we may pray Psalm 51. In the Orthodox liturgy it is said every day at morning prayer. It is an acknowledgment of who we are – and who God is. It is fundamentally honest with regard to ourselves and our relationship to God. ‘Against you only have I sinned’ Our sin of course always has consequences which hurt others. Every sin does this – we are I think hopelessly naive about how our lives are so woven together that every sin has consequences of which we cannot dream, and perhaps that is just as well. [There is I think, a helpful parallel in chaos theory – which famously suggests that the beat of a hummingbird’s wing in the Philippines leads to hurricanes over the Atlantic – thus it is with our sin]

But rather than hide this profound truth about ourselves, we live out of an even deeper truth – that we live our lives in even deeper weave with that of God, who is closer to us than our own heartbeat. And so we come with confidence before him, not parading our sins, but confident in his love and mercy, with broken and contrite hearts. All our efforts to please turned to dust – which is of course the raw material of life, from the dust of the earth we were made, and from dust God can and does remake us, in his tender Love and mercy.

We say with Job ‘I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted – my eye has seen you and I repent in dust and ashes’

Job is commended for speaking the truth about God. To daily seek forgiveness in confidence and trust, is such truth speaking, and therein lies our great Hope.

Through the Bible in a Year – February 9

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The Scheme for January and February can be found here

Job 38-39; Acts 15:1-35; Psalm 50

‘Then God answered Job out of the whirlwind . . .’

In the beginning of his travails, Job had sat in silence before God with his three friends for a week – as it were figure of creation groaning in expectation. In this his friends showed empathy for his great suffering and together they showed wisdom in not trying to explain the inexplicable. But the human mind is restless until it finds its rest in its maker and so the disputation begins as his three friends wheel out three of the ‘contemporary’ explanations – none of which is any comfort to Job, who knows that only God knows – yet it is not enough for him in his trouble and so he enters into the disputation. Continue reading “Through the Bible in a Year – February 9” →