Isaiah 35:1-10, Matthew 11:2-11: “Being ready”

HTC Advent 3, 11 December 2016

The horror came in the ninth and tenth years of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah. Babylon the destroyer struck Jerusalem. Judah’s city was besieged and starved till it broke. The invaders burnt it to the ground; they forced the people of the city on a bitter march long days through desolate country into exile in distant Babylon.

Lamed by the forced march, struck dumb by the traumatic horrors of the siege, blinded by hunger, the exiles had to scrape out a meagre existence amongst a cruel people whose language they could not understand.

Our OT passage, Isaiah’s prophecy, was given as a promise to these exiles. Babylon the destroyer would not have the last word. The Lord God most high would bring his people home. Isaiah said (Isaiah 35:1 and following) “The desert and the parched land will be glad, the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.” When the Lord of Hosts acts on His love for His people, it is like spring in the desert. New possibilities arise everywhere. Suddenly life seems once more worth living.

The situation itself may well remain the same. Frustrations and difficulties may still be there. But learning that God still loves you, that’s like spring in the desert.

The exiles would have been exhausted, spirits broken both by the long march and by the daily struggle for existence in a hostile pagan city. Most of all, they would have been worn down by despair. So Isaiah said (Isaiah 35:3 and following) “Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way.” Their legs may feel like collapsing beneath them, but they are to endure, to keep going. God’s love for us is not soft, is not ineffectual. It is practical, like a family doctor telling a man to live a more balanced life for health’s sake, like a good teacher demanding the very best that the student can give. As we were told at the safeguarding session last week, God’s love is not naive.

Notice too, Isaiah mentions vengeance and retribution in Isaiah 35:4. God’s people were abused and tormented refugees, and they needed to know that God was on their side. All through the Bible, we learn that God has a special place in his heart for the refugee and alien. And God’s love is not soft, not ineffectual, not naive. Love and judgement are mixed together.

Isaiah continues (Isaiah 35:5 and following): the exiles’ lameness will be repaired, their blindness healed, no longer will they have to live dumb and deaf in a harsh and incomprehensible foreign city. Isaiah speaks of a road, a safe protected passage home, a way back to Jerusalem for ransomed exiles. God will rescue his people; they’ll be overwhelmed with a sense of His love, joy, gladness.

No wonder Isaiah’s prophecy left an indelible mark. Fast forward 600 years to Matthew 11, and God’s people are back in their land. But still they are not truly free. They live under the iron grip of Roman rule, governed by a half-pagan and arbitrary king. John the Baptist has lived his whole life by the promises of God made through Isaiah and the other prophets, and now he is imprisoned and ready to die for his faith. But he is troubled that it may all be for nothing. His protégé Jesus, the one he announced as Messiah, is not leading the movement. Instead Jesus is away up in the north country, apparently avoiding all confrontation. John sends a message (Matt.11:3): are you indeed the Messiah, or do we have to wait for someone else?

And Jesus’ reply is extraordinary (Matt.11:4-6). In effect he says, look and see! Isaiah’s words, which you lived by, they weren’t metaphorical after all. Blind are given sight, lame walk, … people are being healed here and now in a massive exhibition of God’s power. Not in the way John expected, not according to John’s political programme, but according to God’s agenda. Something new is happening: all sorts of possibilities arise.

We fast forward another 2000 years. Today we know whereof Jesus spoke. He is indeed our Messiah, who has rescued us in a way that was completely unexpected. It is neither a political programme nor a military revolt. It’s not a question of whether God is on my side; rather the question is, am I on God’s side? In Jesus, God has come to be one of us, to live life just like us, to go all the way with us even to a cruel and unjust death. And Jesus rises again to resurrection life, our own boy, become Lord of all! New possibilities spring up everywhere! And the road to salvation is right at our feet: all we have to do is accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. Suddenly life seems worth living!

The story continues. Because we belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, eternal life starts for us right here, right today. We don’t have all the right answers – indeed it’s a good day when we can manage some of the right questions – but we do know that in Jesus Christ we can experience God’s love like spring in the desert, full of unexpected opportunity. In Jesus Christ, God’s love is not soft nor ineffectual, but brings out life in all its fullness. In Jesus Christ, God’s love is there to rescue us, to overwhelm us with a sense of His joy and gladness.

Here and now, in the last year or so, I’ve been part of a prayer triplet that has been praying for all of us in HTC to be overwhelmed by a sense of the love of Christ. That’s not something that one can work up or manufacture; it has to come from God. But it would change everything. I know this is not just an oddity of our prayer triplet; I’ve heard similar remarks from a number of different people. Speaking on these passages gives me the opportunity to ask you all: would you be prepared to pray something similar? Maybe you could set your smart-phone to remind you every Sunday morning first thing, to pray to our loving heavenly father that all of us in HTC be overwhelmed by a sense of the love of Christ. Because that’s what we really need, just like the exiles in Babylon, just like John the Baptist, because that would be like spring in the desert, that would truly set us free, and all sort of possibilities would arise ...

Amen.

Joshua 6:15-25 also Joshua 2: "The wind of change at your back"

HTC Summer, 21 August 2016

Joshua 6:15-25 also Joshua 2
"The wind of change at your back"

Today we have been assigned a Bible passage which is difficult to hear. Joshua 6 describes a brutal episode in the dark and bloody history of the formation of Old Testament Israel. It tells us about a savage attack on a powerful city, a sudden victory, and then a sack of the city in which no-one is spared, everything is destroyed, except for one family who have managed to make a special arrangement. Harder still for our ears, the horrendous destruction is described in religious terms: "devoted to the Lord", utterly destroyed, nothing left. Just Joshua's idea? No: Deut.20:16-18.

It would be so convenient to ignore this horrific story.

But if we start by cherry-picking the Bible, missing out the parts we find difficult, then we'll end up by creating a fake God, a plastic Jesus, simply a pale imitation of ourselves. That won't save us.

It is tempting to spiritualize the passage: to say it symbolizes our spiritual struggle and is not to be thought of as a real event. And indeed, it appears there is no archaeological record of the destruction of Jericho at that time (though historians tell me that the absence of archaeological evidence does not necessarily imply that an event didn't happen).

But spiritualizing the Bible can be just another way of cherrypicking the good bits, ending up in the end with a God made in our own image. That won't save us.

The God who can save us, who can turn our lives round, is not like us. He is far bigger than we are, far beyond our understanding.

So what should we do with this passage? As is common in the Old Testament, we have to listen to the story and then think for ourselves what it means, what it tells us about God and the people with whom He deals We have to accept that we may not gain a full understanding: but we should attend to the Word, listen to the Word, think honestly about what happens, read Scripture with Scripture and try to see what God is saying to us when we take this story together with the Bible as a whole.

One thing we can say, reading Scripture with Scripture. Our Lord Jesus says "blessed are the peacemakers ...". Today is different from those early Old Testament days, and it would be wrong for you to go out and sack cities. Don't do it.

1: What makes this story hard?

It's a story about a hugely different and very insecure world. The people of Israel here are homeless exiles, with no safe place to go, called out of Egypt, now at everyone's mercy. Read Joshua 7:8-9 to get a sense of this. The children of Israel are just one mis-step away from total extinction.

Moreover this is a world in which the conventions are very different. Historically it has been the case till quite recent times that if a besieged city didn't surrender, then it could be completely wiped out when it fell to the besiegers. I don't understand this, I find it absolutely horrific, but this was the way things were only a couple of hundred years ago, just as in the time of our passage.

Our passage describes a dark brutal time, very different from our own. Today of course things are very different. Are things entirely different today? [Syria, Refugees.] We may need to remind ourselves that our world can be horrendously brutal too. Maybe there is a lesson here to learn about the darkness within ourselves.

2: What glimmerings of God to we get from this story?

You might ask, what's God doing, associated with such horrible actions? And indeed that's a question worth asking. Why didn't he wait until the world became more civilised, more humane, more ... well, more like us? The answer of the Bible, both Old and New Testament alike, is that He is ready to take us on just as we are. He doesn't wait till we pass some qualifying test – He took on the children of Israel, and equally He is ready to take on us. Don't wait till you're perfect before you come to God: He's ready for you right now, just as you are. He was ready to deal with people in the savage and terrifying world of the early Old Testament, and He is ready to deal with us right now.

But God is not a softie either. There's a fascinating little clip at the end of the chapter preceding our passage: Joshua, the commanding general of the Israelites, is out inspecting the battleground, doing whatever generals do. Joshua meets a man with a drawn sword and asks, naturally, whose side is he on? And the answer is, neither, because the man is the commander of the army of the Lord and God is on no-one's side. God is not like the children of Israel, and He is not like us either. He's not "on my side": the question is, am I on His side?

God is ready to take us on, but He is also demanding, rather like a really good teacher, or an Olympic coach: He's there for us, but He's not necessarily there to make our lives easy.

The God revealed to us in the Bible and through our Lord Jesus Christ is holy. He is not like us; He is the one who can and does save us, just as we are. He's no plastic imitation: He is far beyond our understanding. He's the real living God of the whole Universe. And He is ready to deal with us now.

3: So what about Rahab?

We have to remember, the people in our passage were very different from us. Clearly Rahab's background was what we'd regard as dodgy: earning her living as a sex-worker. Amazingly, the Old Testament is absolutely honest about this and yet tells us about how she found a place among God's people. Indeed (Matthew 1:5) she even gets into the family tree of King David and thus of our Lord Jesus himself. But note: we simply don't know much about her position in the city of Jericho. Was she exploited? Or was she regarded as having a high position? The Old Testament doesn't tell us.

Just prior to our passage, two young men came along to spy out the land for the Israelites, When the king of Jericho heard about this, he ordered Rahab to turn them over to him. But Rahab decided to help them and to protect them against discovery and death. Why did she decide to do this? What made her give up her loyalty to her city? The passage doesn't answer this question: it leaves it for us to think about. Was Rahab terrified by the stories of the invading people of Israel; did she see a chance for her and her family to escape? Or had she somehow gained a glimmering of a notion of the one true God, and decided she wanted to follow Him? Or was it a matter of being angry that the king had ordered her to betray the duties of hospitality – right through the Old Testament, it is clear how very important it was to be hospitable to strangers (and maybe we have something to learn here from this very different world). Whatever, the Old Testament doesn't reveal Rahab's motives, and maybe the answer is a mixture of all of these.

But what we do see is a woman who remains faithful to her guests in the midst of a clash of loyalties, someone who sees a glimmer of something to do with the Holy God and who wants in, someone who realizes the time has come for her (and her family) to change. So she makes a deal with the two young men: she helps them escape, and they agree to look out for her when the city falls. And our passage tells us how this happens, how Rahab and her family are delivered from the horror of the fallen city, and our passage ends with the sign-off, "and [Rahab] lives among the Israelites to this day". Despite her dodgy past, Rahab is brought right into the heart of God's rescue plan for all of us. Despite my dodgy past, despite yours, the same can be true for you, for me.

4: Take-home points?

We've spent a little time paying attention to this story. What might be the take-away points suggested by our passage, and the surrounding story? Here are some possibilities:

• I shouldn't wait till I'm perfect before I come to God: He's ready for me right now, just as I am, just as God was ready for Rahab.
• God's not on my side: the question is, am I on His side?
• Rahab showed her faith by her commitment to hospitality for the two young men. Is there a divine call here to me, to figure out ways to practice hospitality towards strangers?

Amen.