It may be now or never
Commentary
One of the most remarkable and thrilling insights into reality which the Bible provides is the up-front and constantly clear way in which God deals with his people. There is never any time wasted in beating around the bush with how much he loves them, what he is prepared to do, and does, for them. Nor is there any time squandered by hedging on what he expects from them, either! He was clear about his expectations with the man and woman he created from the first encounter with them the Bible records.
After blessing them with the earth to live upon and shape, the Lord lays out the course of conduct he expects from them both, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die (Genesis 2:16-17)." That short passage had it all in a thimble ... what God had done for them ... what God expected from them ... and who was to set the standards and limits within which all were to live. Even the consequences for violating the limits divinely set were specific and unequivocal ... the wages of sin would be death. No one could possibly misunderstand that contract, in Hebrew berith, covenant. Once accepted, the terms were to be life-governing from that point on.
In later times that covenant was to be built upon and fleshed out. With Abraham, and especially with the wandering Hebrew tribes who had recently been delivered from Pharaoh's homicide, God deciphered what love and loyalty looked like in action by giving his people the 10 words from Mount Sinai. Written out for them, carried in the ark wherever they went, read at public festivals throughout the year, they had kept before them what was good and what being the Lord's people involved for them! They were to be different! They were to obey God's voice and keep his covenant. Then they would be "a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation (Exodus 19:6)." The Hebrew for holy is kadosh, "to be weird, to be unusual, to stand out from what surrounds the person." And they were to be that because they took their values and clues for living from God, not their neighbors! The crux of the matter was as plain as the noses on their faces ... "You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy (Leviticus 19:2)." Jesus was to affirm the same position in teaching his disciples, "You, therefore, must be perfect, (Greek teleios, "full-blown, mature, completed") as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48)." Not to act out their commitment to God in relationship to the people and in the situations that presented themselves, was to be disobedient, and sinful ... both of which eventually would cause judgment and pain to invade their lives as well as the lives of those they abused. The word sounded for this day is to remember that ... and act accordingly ... now!
OUTLINE I
Woe! Woe! Go!
Amos 6:1-7
A. vv. 1-6. Biblical religion is based squarely on love for, and dogged loyalty to, God. It is not a matter of proper liturgies, and regular pious gatherings, or even the pouring out of plate-filling contributions to the temple, church, or God (Amos 5:21-23)! True religion is letting justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:24; cf. James 2:27). That is the only kind that God wants to see practiced by ... or will tolerate from ... his covenant partners. Those sitting on Mount Zion, within a stone's throw from the temple, had forgotten that. They were more corrupt than their pagan counterparts. Go to the sacred centers of the Philistines and Canaanites, and see if it were not so! Their sins were destroying the people God had rescued from Pharaoh. "Woe! Woe!"
B. v. 7. Sin has its price. It always boomerangs and skulls the launcher! Sometimes it just takes longer to happen than at others, that's all. But happen it does. God not only watches as we bend ourselves and our world into shapes he never intended, but he grieves as he does. At some point the divine patience runs out. When it does we feel the separation sin brings ... and hear the divine sentence, "Go!"
OUTLINE II
The eye that never blinks!
1 Timothy 6:11-19
A. vv. 11-12. As Psalm 1 tells us, the godly life is built one step at a time, from the bottom up. Paul gives Timothy the names of the components for a life that hangs together. When all is said and done, "aim at righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness." These terms are found throughout the Bible in one language or another, from Genesis to Revelation. But as Paul acknowledges, those qualities and commitments do not come easy or cheap! Faithfulness involves struggles, even fights, with temptations and the tempter. Holding on for all one is worth to the confession (public commitment) made in the presence of many witnesses, who understand what is at stake and are there to support you when the heat is on, can keep one on the right track in life. Expect the tests.
B. vv. 13-16. Commandments, and their keeping, did not end with the Exodus. Those 10 words God had Moses deliver to his people had no termination date affixed. They were to last as long as the covenantal relationship between God and the redeemed lasted. Jesus even added to the words ... "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you love one another (John 13:34)." Both the Father and Son fully expected those commandments to be lived out by those who received them. And Paul reminded Timothy to do the same, "I charge you to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach." What Timothy, and we, should never forget is that Jesus will return at the proper time as King of kings and Lord of lords. That day will be one of accounting for our commandment-keeping before that eye that never blinks!
C. vv. 17-19. We need to live our days with the long view of time predominating. Throwing ourselves into piling up riches that can vanish to vermin, or be forfeited to another with the stopping of our pulse, is folly, as the farmer in one of Jesus' parables was to learn. (Luke 12:13-21) "Fools" do that! Give yourself to service that outlasts time, and keeps producing good effects long after you are gone.
OUTLINE III
Moses, the prophets and you
Luke 16:19-31
A. vv. 19-22. The parable of the poor man and Lazarus is a case study of a life that went wrong. Lazarus, who may well have been a religious, respectable sort of individual, who assumed that his purple and fine linen and overloaded table were signs of God's pleasure with him and his lifestyle, was in for a surprise! What happened to him probably would have made his neighbors, who would have given their eye-teeth to change places with him, pop their jaws in astonishment. Him in Hades and in torment? My heavens, what does God want from us? To look past things, and business as usual, that's what! To look around you and see the human need that lies at your feet, that's what! Why can't we see those parcels of our own flesh and blood when they are close enough for us to trip over? Because we are too busy looking up or out, for the next step on our ladder to making it, or because to look down may force us to see and get involved with people and problems that can cost us time and resources that are greater than we want to put on the line!
B. vv. 23-25. Things have a way of evening out. While justice does not always play itself out in this earthly plane, it does play itself out eventually. Lazarus got his here and now. The poor man got his when the eternity phase rang in. When that happened Lazarus saw how he shortchanged himself ... but too late. But then, treating this world as though it was the only world, and its values and claims, as the only ones to which we must respond, always leads to a disaster. For those who don't believe it ... well, there is a new day coming. But then it is too late to go in reverse! You had your good things ... now it's their turn to be comforted.
C. vv. 26-31. In A Christmas Carol Marley returns to warn Scrooge about what happened to him in life so Scrooge can escape a similar fate. But that is a fairy tale! Life does not operate that way. God has sent his word to show his world what the secrets to life lived as his children are. Moses and the prophets have been passers-on for God's intent and direction. Listen to the Lord through them, and the others he has provided for our enlightenment! If you think visitations from the dead will turn the trick for those who won't believe God's multitude of other messengers, you are dead wrong! The visitor from the other world has already come to give you all you need to do his will ... and sent his Son to illustrate it even beyond what Lazarus had in Moses and his fellow spokesmen. Listen to them ... or wish you had. This is ominous news, but it is intended to save us, not condemn or write us off as hopeless.
After blessing them with the earth to live upon and shape, the Lord lays out the course of conduct he expects from them both, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die (Genesis 2:16-17)." That short passage had it all in a thimble ... what God had done for them ... what God expected from them ... and who was to set the standards and limits within which all were to live. Even the consequences for violating the limits divinely set were specific and unequivocal ... the wages of sin would be death. No one could possibly misunderstand that contract, in Hebrew berith, covenant. Once accepted, the terms were to be life-governing from that point on.
In later times that covenant was to be built upon and fleshed out. With Abraham, and especially with the wandering Hebrew tribes who had recently been delivered from Pharaoh's homicide, God deciphered what love and loyalty looked like in action by giving his people the 10 words from Mount Sinai. Written out for them, carried in the ark wherever they went, read at public festivals throughout the year, they had kept before them what was good and what being the Lord's people involved for them! They were to be different! They were to obey God's voice and keep his covenant. Then they would be "a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation (Exodus 19:6)." The Hebrew for holy is kadosh, "to be weird, to be unusual, to stand out from what surrounds the person." And they were to be that because they took their values and clues for living from God, not their neighbors! The crux of the matter was as plain as the noses on their faces ... "You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy (Leviticus 19:2)." Jesus was to affirm the same position in teaching his disciples, "You, therefore, must be perfect, (Greek teleios, "full-blown, mature, completed") as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48)." Not to act out their commitment to God in relationship to the people and in the situations that presented themselves, was to be disobedient, and sinful ... both of which eventually would cause judgment and pain to invade their lives as well as the lives of those they abused. The word sounded for this day is to remember that ... and act accordingly ... now!
OUTLINE I
Woe! Woe! Go!
Amos 6:1-7
A. vv. 1-6. Biblical religion is based squarely on love for, and dogged loyalty to, God. It is not a matter of proper liturgies, and regular pious gatherings, or even the pouring out of plate-filling contributions to the temple, church, or God (Amos 5:21-23)! True religion is letting justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:24; cf. James 2:27). That is the only kind that God wants to see practiced by ... or will tolerate from ... his covenant partners. Those sitting on Mount Zion, within a stone's throw from the temple, had forgotten that. They were more corrupt than their pagan counterparts. Go to the sacred centers of the Philistines and Canaanites, and see if it were not so! Their sins were destroying the people God had rescued from Pharaoh. "Woe! Woe!"
B. v. 7. Sin has its price. It always boomerangs and skulls the launcher! Sometimes it just takes longer to happen than at others, that's all. But happen it does. God not only watches as we bend ourselves and our world into shapes he never intended, but he grieves as he does. At some point the divine patience runs out. When it does we feel the separation sin brings ... and hear the divine sentence, "Go!"
OUTLINE II
The eye that never blinks!
1 Timothy 6:11-19
A. vv. 11-12. As Psalm 1 tells us, the godly life is built one step at a time, from the bottom up. Paul gives Timothy the names of the components for a life that hangs together. When all is said and done, "aim at righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness." These terms are found throughout the Bible in one language or another, from Genesis to Revelation. But as Paul acknowledges, those qualities and commitments do not come easy or cheap! Faithfulness involves struggles, even fights, with temptations and the tempter. Holding on for all one is worth to the confession (public commitment) made in the presence of many witnesses, who understand what is at stake and are there to support you when the heat is on, can keep one on the right track in life. Expect the tests.
B. vv. 13-16. Commandments, and their keeping, did not end with the Exodus. Those 10 words God had Moses deliver to his people had no termination date affixed. They were to last as long as the covenantal relationship between God and the redeemed lasted. Jesus even added to the words ... "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you love one another (John 13:34)." Both the Father and Son fully expected those commandments to be lived out by those who received them. And Paul reminded Timothy to do the same, "I charge you to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach." What Timothy, and we, should never forget is that Jesus will return at the proper time as King of kings and Lord of lords. That day will be one of accounting for our commandment-keeping before that eye that never blinks!
C. vv. 17-19. We need to live our days with the long view of time predominating. Throwing ourselves into piling up riches that can vanish to vermin, or be forfeited to another with the stopping of our pulse, is folly, as the farmer in one of Jesus' parables was to learn. (Luke 12:13-21) "Fools" do that! Give yourself to service that outlasts time, and keeps producing good effects long after you are gone.
OUTLINE III
Moses, the prophets and you
Luke 16:19-31
A. vv. 19-22. The parable of the poor man and Lazarus is a case study of a life that went wrong. Lazarus, who may well have been a religious, respectable sort of individual, who assumed that his purple and fine linen and overloaded table were signs of God's pleasure with him and his lifestyle, was in for a surprise! What happened to him probably would have made his neighbors, who would have given their eye-teeth to change places with him, pop their jaws in astonishment. Him in Hades and in torment? My heavens, what does God want from us? To look past things, and business as usual, that's what! To look around you and see the human need that lies at your feet, that's what! Why can't we see those parcels of our own flesh and blood when they are close enough for us to trip over? Because we are too busy looking up or out, for the next step on our ladder to making it, or because to look down may force us to see and get involved with people and problems that can cost us time and resources that are greater than we want to put on the line!
B. vv. 23-25. Things have a way of evening out. While justice does not always play itself out in this earthly plane, it does play itself out eventually. Lazarus got his here and now. The poor man got his when the eternity phase rang in. When that happened Lazarus saw how he shortchanged himself ... but too late. But then, treating this world as though it was the only world, and its values and claims, as the only ones to which we must respond, always leads to a disaster. For those who don't believe it ... well, there is a new day coming. But then it is too late to go in reverse! You had your good things ... now it's their turn to be comforted.
C. vv. 26-31. In A Christmas Carol Marley returns to warn Scrooge about what happened to him in life so Scrooge can escape a similar fate. But that is a fairy tale! Life does not operate that way. God has sent his word to show his world what the secrets to life lived as his children are. Moses and the prophets have been passers-on for God's intent and direction. Listen to the Lord through them, and the others he has provided for our enlightenment! If you think visitations from the dead will turn the trick for those who won't believe God's multitude of other messengers, you are dead wrong! The visitor from the other world has already come to give you all you need to do his will ... and sent his Son to illustrate it even beyond what Lazarus had in Moses and his fellow spokesmen. Listen to them ... or wish you had. This is ominous news, but it is intended to save us, not condemn or write us off as hopeless.
