The Narrow Path

  Monday, August 1, 2022 Psalm 74 Hosea 6:4-7:7 Romans 7:1-12 Lesser Festival: Holy men and women of the Old Testament But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit. Isn't it curious how a marriage between a man and a woman comes up yet again to be used as analogy for our relationship with God? There is something deeply spiritual that is revealed in this concept. In Hosea, God is using it to describe how much He loves us, by setting up a terrible marriage and communicating Himself as the husband continually rescuing his wayward wife out of danger and bringing her safely back home. Paul now takes marriage between a man and woman and uses it to describe how completely we are attached either to sin or Jesus. In the reading from Hosea, the nation of Samaria is told that their attachment to sin is like a wood-fired oven that burns so hotly it does...

  Saturday, July 30, 2022 Psalm 72 Hosea 5:5-6:3 Romans 6:12-23 Lesser Festival: William Wilberforce (d. 1833) For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under the law but under grace. Yesterday, we opened the can of worms of “free will”. Today, Paul turns around and scolds us for our hubris using the analogy of slavery. Before we go any further, we should remember that this section of Romans is talking about a Christian concept called “sanctification”. Sanctification is a two-dollar word used to describe our walk with God. This walk is, ideally, away from sin and into righteousness. The problem Paul wants us to figure out is how to reconcile the high doctrinal teaching that we experience a “new birth” - where our old self is dead and nailed to the tree - with the real life fact that we continue to sin after baptism. The key to figuring this out is understanding where we sit as humans in relation to the spiritual nature of God and Go...

  Friday, July 29, 2022 Psalm 69:1-16 Hosea 4:10-5:4 Romans 6:1-11 Feast Day: Mary and Martha of Bethany So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. What is “free will”? It is a concept that the church has considered as either a rank heresy or a fundamental premise for the order of salvation. Some consider the issue a biblical paradox: for example, we read about the Israelites being trapped in a “spirit of whoredom”, yet also being held responsible for their actions. What are we to make of this? The Reformed position holds that our will is not so much “free” as it is always inclined to follow what we most desire. A popular example revolves around two men in a dark alley late at night. The first man asks the second for his wallet. The second man refuses. Then, the first man pulls out a very sharp, scary-looking knife. The second man changes his mind and hands over the wallet. Is the second man exercising his “free will”...

  Thursday, July 28, 2022 Psalm 71 Hosea 4:1-9 Romans 5:12-21 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man's trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. When Daniel Craig was announced as the new actor to play James Bond, it was interesting to see what unique interpretation he would make on the classic character. What stood out was Bond's new understanding of his “00 license”: the “license to kill”. In the past, it was considered a sort of freedom for the agent; should his life be in danger, he was legally permitted to do whatever it took to get home safely. The new understanding saw it as a great responsibility: much of the new Bond's mental anguish surrounds his wrestling with deciding how and when to make use of his 00 license. A quick decision made for the sake of convenience could mean untold consequences, which Bond now had ...

  Wednesday, July 27, 2022 Psalm 68:1-20 Hosea 2:14 – 3:5 Romans 5:1 – 11 On that day, says the LORD, you will call me, “My husband,” and no longer will you call me, “My Baal.” Before we jump into trying to figure out what God wants us to do with these readings before us, let's try and figure what God wants us to understand first. These two passages are all about Him first. Carrying on from yesterday's reflection, let's start with empathising with this husband in the book of Hosea. His wife is cheating on him. The one person in all the world that he loved the most, the mother of his children, is running around with other men. He should be pretty upset! But look at what he does in today's reading: he goes back to her to try and woo her back. Somehow, she's gotten herself into a slave auction, so he has to pay the cost of a slave, then he gives her gifts on top of her freedom. God is then very direct in telling us that this is what it is like ...

  Tuesday, July 26, 2022 Psalms 65; 70 Hosea 2:1-13 Romans 4:13-25 No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God... Today's section of Hosea has made many trendy modern types uncomfortable. Graphic imagery of a man casting out his unfaithful wife does not blend well with today's culture wars. But since we are faithful students of God's word, let's try and figure out together what God is saying to us. Let's think for a moment about what state of mind the husband in this situation must be in. (This is imagery; God teaching us invisible spiritual truths using examples we would understand.) Marriage is meant to be a covenant of trust: two people making a promise to stay exclusive and faithful. If one of those people runs off and misbehaves with other people outside the marriage, that trust is broken. There is no more relationship. This brokenness makes the faithful person in the couple very upset. This trust is what Paul means wh...

  Monday, July 25, 2022 Psalm 62; 63 Hosea 1 Romans 4:1-12 He only is my rock and my salvation: my strong tower, so that I shall not be moved. The prophecies of Hosea are rich with vivid imagery. Look at these names: firstly, “Hosea” means “salvation”. So too do the names Joshua and Jesus. Then Hosea has three children: “God scatters”, “Not pitied”, and “Not my people”. This is because the children are part of the marriage between Hosea and Gomer, which is an image God is showing to the nation. It is to our profit that God has used real-life events to communicate spiritual imagery and divine truths. We find it very easy to understand our relationship with God as being a faithful wife to a loving husband. We can reconcile this message with what Paul has to teach us today in Romans. He makes the very important observation that Abraham was given God's righteousness as a result of his faith before, not after, his circumcision. Again, this is God using real-life events...

  Tuesday, July 19, 2022 Psalm 45 Amos 6:8-7:9 Romans 2:1-11 The Lord relented... It is my prayer, dear friends, that having just come out of the great ending to Romans 1, the passage which speaks about God's truth surpassing any attempt at autonomous knowledge and morality we could come up with ourselves, that we are now able to read the judgements contained in Amos without squirming too much. The judgements of God have been revealed to us so far as being made manifest in two different ways: one way is that God actively performs the judgement. The Lord will cause strongholds to burn. The second way is that God walks away from evil, allowing evildoers to experience for themselves the natural (and unhappy) consequences of their actions. If we have any sense of justice ourselves (and this is something we all have), then it is irrational to complain when God acts justly. Since squirming at God behaving like God is unproductive, how do these readings tell us we should ...

  Saturday, July 23, 2022 Psalm 54; 55:1-12 Amos 9:7-15 Romans 3:21-31 But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. I am going to mention the names of two men. They are considered as the leading thinkers of our generation, depending on your political leaning. The first, on the left of the political spectrum, is Slavoj Zizek. The other, on the right, is Jordan Peterson. They are both pagan philosophers. What is interesting about them both is that they are so close to the truth of the gospel, yet are held back by one thing. Jordan Peterson claims that the Bible contains some truth, insofar as “truth” is something “out there”; that while Jesus may not have literally been God, He still had some generally good things to teach us. Slavoj Zizek, in misunderstanding Jesus quoting Psalm 22 on the cross, thinks that God is revealed as b...

  Saturday, July 16, 2022 Psalm 38 Amos 5:1-17 Romans 1:16-25 They hate the one who reproves in the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks the truth. If you understand the language in which these words are being read or heard, then it is very likely you understand precisely the general theme of today's readings. Here in the cultural West, we have a God problem. Paul responds with the bold claim that there is no such thing as an atheist: “For what can be known about God is plain to them”. Humanity's biggest danger is not a pandemic, or inclement weather, or economic systems, but our illogical and irrational rejection of God. Biblical philosophy holds as true that “there is nothing new under the sun”. Reading today's prophesy in the book of Amos proves it. It might be easy to get caught up in the words written thousands of years ago about worshipping false idols, and imagine people dressed in animal skins dancing around a wooden statue. But note these wor...

  Friday, July 22, 2022 Psalm 51 Amos 9:1-6 Romans 3:9-20 (Feast Day: Mary Magdalene) Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness: and cleanse me from my sin. Folk wisdom has it that for us to know where we are going, we need to know where we have come from. Sometimes we also need to be reminded about where we are. Today's readings, if they existed in a vacuum, would be the most terrifyingly miserable thing we could ever come across. It holds two positions that we must always keep in mind: firstly, that we have an infinitely powerful and holy God, and secondly, that we as His creatures come nowhere even close to that standard of perfection. This makes many Christians uncomfortable. We want to run away from today's message and jump straight into tomorrow's. Yes, tomorrow Paul will turn our frowns upside down with the glorious message of how God fixed our broken relationship with Him. But tomorrow's message of salvation is lessened without today's lesson o...

  Thursday, July 21, 2022 Psalm 50 Amos 8:4-14 Romans 2:25-3:8 Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart – it is spiritual and not literal. Such a person receives praise not from others but from God. Today's readings are pregnant with anticipation. Paul is gearing up to prepare his argument in favour of salvation by faith in Christ. Amos is turning up the heat for the Israelites, moving from physical suffering for those who turn from God, to the spiritual. It is interesting to compare here the foundation for Paul's argument with some presuppositions Amos makes about his fellow Israelites. As Paul readies himself to launch into the great doctrine of Sola Fide (salvation by faith alone), he prepares his audience by reinforcing just how important God's Word is to the Jews. They held, as the basis of their salvation, the fact God spoke to them first. Even though, as we have learnt in the past days, this is not a...

  Wednesday, July 20, 2022 Psalm 48 Amos 7:10-8:3 Romans 2:12-24 Now therefore hear the word of the LORD... Why do we find it so difficult to do the right thing? Last week, when we were concluding the book of Galatians, Paul spoke about how the Spirit and the flesh are opposed to each other, so that we don't want to do what we should. Today, we learn of a few more ways in which God shows us what we should do, and also how we try to ignore Him. God sent the prophet Amos to tell the people what they should do. They told him to go home, to “earn his bread” elsewhere. Amos wasn't in it for the money, like the professional “prophets” of his time. He had the word from God that had to be spoken. These prophesies have been written down for us, praise God, so that we can learn from them too. We should not be so quick to ignore them just because they are old, or that modern literary criticism can poke holes in their veracity. Are these prophesies problematic becaus...

  Monday, July 18, 2022 Psalms 41; 44:1-9 Amos 5:18-6:7 Romans 1:26-32 They know God's decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die – yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them. Last week, we finished with hearing Paul's teaching that there is no such thing as an atheist. People either love God and live in truth, or they hate God, and lie. Now we see (along with Amos) what happens to people when they lie to themselves. The wealthy elite Amos warns have been lying to themselves. Living in luxury on their ivory couches, drinking so much wine they need to serve it in bowls, worshipping Moloch (the god of child-sacrifice), they have set themselves up for God's intervention: “the day of the Lord”. Many ancient prophets talk about the coming day of the Lord. We do too, when we affirm with joyful expectation during the Eucharist that “Christ will come again”. Do not be deceived, however, as to what to expect on this Day. Just...

  Friday, July 15, 2022 Psalm 37:1-17 Amos 4 Romans 1:1-15 I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and the foolish – hence my eagerness to proclaim the gospel to you also who are in Rome. The idea that all humans are, on some basic level, equal to each other, is so widely spread that it may be easy to ignore the fact that it was God who invented things this way. Take, for example, the ancient nation of Israel. While chosen by God, this didn’t change the fact that God had no problem with administering the same corrective punishment on them as He did with the Egyptians. God’s judgement is holy, and we are all equal under God’s Law. When considering God’s system of justice, His judgement is not the only thing applied equally. God’s mercy, as proclaimed in the good news of Jesus of Nazareth, who was born as a human and therefore capable of bearing our sins, while also being God and Lord, and thus able to raise us up to the place of glory, is ...

  Thursday, July 14, 2022 Psalm 34 Amos 3 Galatians 6:11-18 The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord GOD has spoken; who can but prophesy? When Peter Parker first discovered his new superpowers as Spiderman, his uncle Ben told him that “with great power comes great responsibility”. Uncle Ben was paraphrasing the words of our Lord in Luke 12:48: “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.” Two thousand, seven hundred years ago the Israelites discovered what happens when we misuse, abuse, and take for granted the fact that God chose us to be His own before the foundation of the world. “ See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand!” writes Paul, desperate for the church to listen and understand. Nothing matters except the “new creation”. Paul doesn’t care that he is physically scarred from his missionary work. Neither does he care whethe...

  Wednesday, July 13, 2022 Psalm 35:1-17 Amos 2:6-16 Galatians 6:1-10 Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ. Having completed his whirlwind condemnation of the cities and nations surrounding Israel, Amos now moves in to tell them how they are to be measured by the same standard. Just as God will reward the evil of Israel’s neighbours with “fire that will devour strongholds”, Israel themselves will be pressed down in place “just as a cart presses down when it is full of sheaves”. Being held in place, the oncoming Assyrian army will then be able to do as it pleases with the people of Israel. The fundamental offence Israel has made against God is their greed: selling the needy for sandals, trampling the poor into the dust, imposing fines on people in order to buy wine on which to get drunk, both father and son committing sexual immorality with the same girl. Paul uses a particularly vivid word to describe sin in 6:8: “corru...

  Tuesday, July 12, 2022 Psalm 33 Amos 1.11-2:5 Galatians 5.16-26 If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Our friend Amos, the redneck truth-teller, is calling out the wealthy elite for another crime today: the crime of anger. The nation of Edom has attacked a neighbouring country with a perpetual anger and eternal wrath. Ammon, in their own jingoistic fervour, somehow worked themselves into such a state that they commit the horrific crime recorded in verse 13. Moab was so angry at the king of Edom they weren't happy with just killing him, but had to burn his bones down to lime. In this context, God's judgements are indeed just: exile and destruction for those who would do the same to their fellow humans. Paul is in hearty agreement: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. In building a human kingdom by human means, which is what was happening in front of Amos' eyes, these people were walking down the path t...

  Monday, July 11, 2022 Psalms 28; 29 Amos 1.1-10 Galatians 5.1-15 For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Being a prophet in ancient Israel was no walk in the park. Amos came on to the scene during the time of unrivalled military and economic success for the region. Israel was rich; as was Damascus, Gaza, and Tyre. Like the good little pagans they were, they thought that being rich and powerful meant that God was rewarding them. But Amos, a dirt-poor shepherd from out the back of Burke, knew that wasn't how things worked. One crime pops up again and again: “cut off inhabitants... carried into exile entire communities... delivered entire communities”. These cities had gotten fat off slavery. And, as Paul will point out in Galatians, the slavers themselves were under an even worse kind of slavery: they were enslaved under the idea that God rewards us for doing good things. Since these cities had gotten ...