Jesus' parable finds its meaning from the context: calling sinners to repentance and feasting while the bridegroom is present. What are the old cloth and the new cloth? What are the old wineskins and the new wine? In v33 Jesus seems to be saying that the Jews religious laws and customs, wherein they differ from God's original intent, are the old cloth and the old wineskins. v33 seems to imply that fasting and praying were for the Jews ends is themselves -- something that religious people did as a sign of their religiousness. "John's disciples do it; the Pharisees disciples do it; why don't you?" Because the old cloth has holes but isn't holy. It's too late to attempt repair of the old system -- it would destroy the new and the patch wouldn't match and would be obvious to all as a patch. It's time to let go of the old; it's time to put on the new cloth and put the new wine in fresh wineskins. Putting the new wine in old wineskins -- the righteous man living by faith into the religious forms of the Pharisees -- won't work. These religious forms do not have the required flexibility. A religious form is required; a container is required for the new wine but a new, more flexible one, not the old, now inflexibie one.
There's a strong tendency for younger people to look at the religious forms of older people and take up a position against it. Maybe it's not just the young ...
There has been a pattern down through history of people looking at the prevailing religious forms, finding some fault therein, and seeking either reformation or removal in favour of a perceived "better way". These verses about old cloth/new cloth and new wine/old wineskins have often been quoted in favour of the upstarts against the establishment. When Protestantism could not reform Catholicism, it styled the other as old wineskins. Nowadays, as each generation of young people come through the church, they style the establishment with its "old" hymns and quiet perseverance in the old wineskins and their own choruses and lively worship service as the fresh wineskins into which God is pouring the new wine. Their perception of the older generation reflects the prevailing culture of our day -- old is bad; new is good. Out with the old, no matter what wisdom is lost in the process, and in with the new, no matter what the lack of wisdom and maturity may bring.
Saturday, July 24, 2004
Monday, July 19, 2004
Thinx 6: Luke 5:31, 32
And Jesus answered and said to them, 'It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.' -- Luke 5:31,32 NASV
Jesus is not being sarcastic to the Pharisees. As our Pastor, Linton Smith, pointed out on Sunday, he's correcting their eschatology. Jesus comes first to offer mercy and then later to crush the unrighteous. The Pharisees had not comprehended Isaiah and perhaps deliberately missed the implications of the revelation to the Gentiles. Jesus' mission involved calling the unrighteous to repentance, the tax-gatherers like Matthew, and the sinners like Peter; people the religious leaders had no time, compassion nor love for. Jesus had the time, the compassion and the love. He also offered one thing more: Purpose. It was as if he were saying, "Matthew, come! Follow me. I offer you freely life, light, love and purpose." It's an offer too good to refuse.
Thursday, July 15, 2004
Thinx 4: Jeremiah 2:19
The NASV uses "dread" rather than fear. Either way it is that fear, that dread, which, unlike terror, should have been a spur to devotion along with thankfulness. Thankfulness for all that God had done in bringing them into the good land and making their stay there profitable, and fear/dread because God does not leave the sinner unpunished, nor does he withhold the consequences of our sins from us (col 3:25 For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.).
But they were no longer thankful and they no longer feared God; they had forgotten what he had done and they had forgotten who he was. V13 [for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.] they had forgotten and forsaken God; treated him as worthless and walked away from him. AND they had proceeded to create something to replace him. God who is the source of life, both physical and spiritual, is disregarded and the people construct not so much a source of life as a container. For a cistern is a container more that it is a fountain. A cistern receives and holds. A fountain produces. But this cistern is broken; that which it receives leaks out and is lost.
This is so like our modern world. Being no longer content to accept that God made the universe and all it contains, we have forsaken his revelation in favour of our own naturalistic one. In the beginning there was nothing, and then it exploded. Can this explanation of all we see and experience give us life? No. It is a broken cistern for it is neither true nor consistent and the thought culture that it produces has for years been used as a way for the powerful to amass power and to control and destroy the powerless. 'The fittest survive; we think we are the fittest therefore we are going to survive and you aren't.'
The Israelites had forgotten God and replaced him with a mythology of their own devising -- an eclectic mix of Egyptian and Assyrian mumbo-jumbo [v18] -- and enough of the forms (but without the substance) of Judaism to give it the appearance of validity. These were the same people who would go on to worship the bronze snake.
21st century people fancy themselves wise and enlightened and no longer under the sway of myth and falsehood [echoing the sentiments of Jer 2:31b "We are free, we will come no more to thee"]. Sadly this is not the case. If Jesus does not come back for another thousand years there will be those who will look back upon our time and write books about the myths and legends of the 21st century. Top of the list will be a fairy story called Evolution.
We are no longer willing to "hear the word of the Lord" preferring the word of scientists and other self-confessed experts. We are proud: Proud of our accomplishments and our technology; Proud of our control over the forces of nature (small as that control really is against the might of cyclone, earthquake, flood and volcano.)
Similarly the Israelites, no longer content with the revelation of God, concocted their own. And that offended God, deeply.
For as much as Jeremiah may be a book about a man thrown in at the deep end, it is also a book about the wisdom of God and the foolishness of mankind. God is to be feared. That fear is such that it drives out all other fears. We are also to love God but too often we confuse love with "in love" and the emotional rollercoaster of infatuation. The "love" that God calls us to is more profound, more deliberate than that. Fear is not out of place in that love. Dread is not out of place in that love. For that love implies a devotion which may cost us in the short term. That love may even lead us into pain, suffering and death. It certainly led Jeremiah into pain and suffering. It led Paul into suffering Acts 9: 15, 16 'But the Lord said to [Ananias], “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”'
But they were no longer thankful and they no longer feared God; they had forgotten what he had done and they had forgotten who he was. V13 [for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.] they had forgotten and forsaken God; treated him as worthless and walked away from him. AND they had proceeded to create something to replace him. God who is the source of life, both physical and spiritual, is disregarded and the people construct not so much a source of life as a container. For a cistern is a container more that it is a fountain. A cistern receives and holds. A fountain produces. But this cistern is broken; that which it receives leaks out and is lost.
This is so like our modern world. Being no longer content to accept that God made the universe and all it contains, we have forsaken his revelation in favour of our own naturalistic one. In the beginning there was nothing, and then it exploded. Can this explanation of all we see and experience give us life? No. It is a broken cistern for it is neither true nor consistent and the thought culture that it produces has for years been used as a way for the powerful to amass power and to control and destroy the powerless. 'The fittest survive; we think we are the fittest therefore we are going to survive and you aren't.'
The Israelites had forgotten God and replaced him with a mythology of their own devising -- an eclectic mix of Egyptian and Assyrian mumbo-jumbo [v18] -- and enough of the forms (but without the substance) of Judaism to give it the appearance of validity. These were the same people who would go on to worship the bronze snake.
21st century people fancy themselves wise and enlightened and no longer under the sway of myth and falsehood [echoing the sentiments of Jer 2:31b "We are free, we will come no more to thee"]. Sadly this is not the case. If Jesus does not come back for another thousand years there will be those who will look back upon our time and write books about the myths and legends of the 21st century. Top of the list will be a fairy story called Evolution.
We are no longer willing to "hear the word of the Lord" preferring the word of scientists and other self-confessed experts. We are proud: Proud of our accomplishments and our technology; Proud of our control over the forces of nature (small as that control really is against the might of cyclone, earthquake, flood and volcano.)
Similarly the Israelites, no longer content with the revelation of God, concocted their own. And that offended God, deeply.
For as much as Jeremiah may be a book about a man thrown in at the deep end, it is also a book about the wisdom of God and the foolishness of mankind. God is to be feared. That fear is such that it drives out all other fears. We are also to love God but too often we confuse love with "in love" and the emotional rollercoaster of infatuation. The "love" that God calls us to is more profound, more deliberate than that. Fear is not out of place in that love. Dread is not out of place in that love. For that love implies a devotion which may cost us in the short term. That love may even lead us into pain, suffering and death. It certainly led Jeremiah into pain and suffering. It led Paul into suffering Acts 9: 15, 16 'But the Lord said to [Ananias], “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”'
Monday, July 12, 2004
Thinx 3: Luke 5:23
Not WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) but HDJT (How Did Jesus Think). Barna Group has a book out about that. It's about having a biblical world view. For us the two statements ("your sins are forgiven" and "take up your bed and walk") seem unrelated. What's the similarity between healing and forgiveness? Or, what's the similarity between Jesus forgiving and Jesus healing? How are they tied together in this event? If Jesus heals, does it mean God forgave? If Jesus forgives, does it mean God healed?
This impacts healing ministries -- we focus on the healing and ignore the forgiving, as if the one could be and should be separated from the other. Some healing services I've been to, you'd think it were possible to have one without the other.
This impacts healing ministries -- we focus on the healing and ignore the forgiving, as if the one could be and should be separated from the other. Some healing services I've been to, you'd think it were possible to have one without the other.
Thinx 2: Luke 5:2
"Depart from me for I am a sinful man."
Seeing Jesus as in touch with God and thus able to do miracles and seeing himself as out of touch with God and thus unclean and not able to much at all, Peter seems to be saying "Unclean! Unclean! My uncleanness with defile you." Jesus says, "Do not fear." Could he be saying "do not fear for my purity and cleanness; they are greater and more powerful than your uncleanness."
Perhaps Peter was used to being avoided by the "religious" people of his day for fear that his bad company would affect their good morals. Had Jesus gone away, Peter's presuppositions about religious people would have been confirmed, along with a profound sense of lostness of his behalf no doubt.
Peter seems to be saying, "Jesus, you don't want to hang round with me; I'm bad." Jesus doesn't argue with Peter's analysis, implying perhaps, "Yes, I don't want to hang around with you; I want you to hang around with me. No longer will life be on your terms. From now on life, love, liberty, etc will be on _my_ terms."
Peter's preuppositions were challenged: Jesus stayed and instead invited Peter to be a part of what he, Jesus, was doing. Jesus also invites us. No matter how foul we have become he does not recoil from us. And we are also able to reach out to sinners round us and invite them as Jesus did, to be involved in what Jesus is doing.
Seeing Jesus as in touch with God and thus able to do miracles and seeing himself as out of touch with God and thus unclean and not able to much at all, Peter seems to be saying "Unclean! Unclean! My uncleanness with defile you." Jesus says, "Do not fear." Could he be saying "do not fear for my purity and cleanness; they are greater and more powerful than your uncleanness."
Perhaps Peter was used to being avoided by the "religious" people of his day for fear that his bad company would affect their good morals. Had Jesus gone away, Peter's presuppositions about religious people would have been confirmed, along with a profound sense of lostness of his behalf no doubt.
Peter seems to be saying, "Jesus, you don't want to hang round with me; I'm bad." Jesus doesn't argue with Peter's analysis, implying perhaps, "Yes, I don't want to hang around with you; I want you to hang around with me. No longer will life be on your terms. From now on life, love, liberty, etc will be on _my_ terms."
Peter's preuppositions were challenged: Jesus stayed and instead invited Peter to be a part of what he, Jesus, was doing. Jesus also invites us. No matter how foul we have become he does not recoil from us. And we are also able to reach out to sinners round us and invite them as Jesus did, to be involved in what Jesus is doing.
Thinx 1
What does God do with all the knowledge, skills and attitudes which his children develop over the course of their mortal lives? Does it all go up in smoke? Do we really spend the rest of eternity sitting on clouds playing harps?
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