Genesis 12-28
Matthew 5-9
If you're managing to keep pace with our 'read-the-Bible-in-a-year-timetable', this incoming week you will be reading Genesis 12-28 and Matthew 5-9. So, over the next 7 days, what can you expect?
Genesis 12-28: by this stage, the Bible story is up and running. The basic plot-line of the Bible has already been set by chapters 1-11: God has created and promises to lovingly sustain the universe. But His idyllic paradise prepared for Adam and Eve and the relationship that was to flourish and deepen with them there has been devastated by their refusal to trust in God's Word, preferring to listen to the Serpent (Satan). From this point onward, the ramifications of this single act of defiant disobedience will be disastrously experienced by the whole of God's created order and in the life of every human being that will follow. But despite God's measured judgement against their sin, He graciously promises that someone, sometime, somehow will appear to crush the Serpent's head (3:15) and undo the effects of human sinfulness. But who is this Serpent-crusher? Cain? Abel? Enoch? Noah? No. We have to read on to find out who can overcome Satan (although see below!) However, in this week's chapters, the Bible's focus now centres upon Abraham and his relationship with God. The story of God's great redeeming reversal has begun…
In Genesis 12, God
promises that through Abraham's offspring all the families of the earth will
blessed. But how will this promise be
fulfilled? When will this promise be fulfilled?
In God's time and in His way - that's what these chapters are
about. Despite the age of Abram and
Sara, despite their prolonged period of waiting for the child to come, despite the
damage they cause by trying to fulfil God's promise their way (chapter 16), and despite God's unexpected command to sacrifice the promised son and heir, Isaac, we discover that nothing will prevent or hinder God's will to bless the
world through Abraham's descendants. But the twists and
turns that Abraham and Sarah experience are designed to reveal more of God's
loving and faithful character, as well as stimulating and stretching their faith in
His trustworthy Word. This forms the basic pattern of how we are to relate to
God: Abraham provides the model - 'the just will live by faith'.
Matthew 5-9: Matthew arranges his Gospel into interweaving blocks of Jesus' teaching (such as chapters 5-7) followed by chapters that describe His miracles, ministry and engagement with His disciples and others. This pattern is followed throughout the Gospel.
The opening chapters of the Gospel assured us that Jesus is the promised, long-expected King who would come to win people back to God and overcome the enemies of God and those who are faithful to Him (see above!). From now on, faithfulness to God means submitting one's life to King Jesus and in faith following Him as His disciple. We cannot claim to know and serve God if we keep Jesus at arm's length (7:21-23). But what does the King require of those who commit to Him? What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? That's what the Sermon on the Mount begins to answer. There will be so much more to learn about discipleship in Matthew's Gospel, but this is where we start.
So much of what Jesus says in these chapters is not telling believers what to do as it is in describing what disciples become as they live under the Kingship of Christ. The Pharisees were known and, in measure, commended for their religious righteousness in their relentless pursuit of obeying God's Law (5:20). But their 'obedience' was only on the surface of their lives; their hearts remained unchanged and harboured all sorts of internal sins such as anger, lust, revenge and hatred (5:21-48) which festered away unchallenged and untouched. The righteousness that Jesus commends is an obedience to God's Law that flows from a repenting heart transformed by Jesus and which seeks to please Him because His blessing (5:3-10) is what our hearts desperately long for and delight in. We do not obey God in order to be loved and blessed by God; we lovingly obey God because we know we are loved and blessed by Him.
Jesus is not teaching "a" way (one of many ways) to living a better or more satisfying life. In fact to live like this - like Jesus, for Jesus - is to invite suspicion, opposition, even persecution (5:11-12). Rather, Jesus is saying, in light of eternity, there is only one way to live: His way, through trusting in Him. To live life in any other way is lose one's life and will lead to disaster (7:13-14, 21-27).
No comments:
Post a Comment