The Narrow Path

  Tuesday, November 1, 2022 Psalms 1; 2 Nehemiah 9:6-25 Revelation 1:9-20 Observance: All Saints Day But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and you did not forsake them. It is important to understand what the Bible means when it speaks of “the Son of Man”. Daniel 7:9-14 describes a vision Daniel had, where he saw the “Ancient of Days” sitting on the throne, to whom was presented “one like a Son of Man”. This ancient prophecy was not some obscure part of scripture, but rather a well-known and central aspect of Jewish understanding about the end times. Therefore, when we read in Revelation about John seeing “one like the Son of Man”, he means he is seeing the Messiah as He truly is, revealed in all His heavenly splendour: the Lord Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, King and saviour of the world. No wonder John fell down at His feet “as though dead”. It is difficult, at times, to ...

  Monday, October 31, 2022 Psalm 83 Nehemiah 8:13-9:5 Revelation 1:1-8 Observance: Martin Luther (d. 1546) and other Continental Reformers To Him who loves us and freed us from our sins by His blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Happy Reformation Day! Today, all over the world, our Reformed brothers and sisters are dressing up in funny hats, singing A Mighty Fortress, and feasting in fellowship. The great gift, the blood of Christ, was re-appropriated back into the mainstream church 500 years ago, cleansing not only the individual from the burden of inescapable sin, but also Christendom itself from centuries of spiritual abuse under such terrors as indulgences, purgatory, and Thomistic scholasticism. Ever the consummate politician, Martin Luther condensed his teachings into easily remembered slogans. Other Reformers picked up on this and so now we can study the Reforma...

  Friday, October 28, 2022 Psalms 143; 146 Nehemiah 6:10-7:4 2 Peter 3:3-10 Observance: Simon and Jude, apostles and martyrs And when all our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us were afraid and fell greatly in their own esteem; for they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God. This is the third time now in two letters where Peter appeals to the Flood as an example for us to learn from. Our reading this morning gives us the best starting point to think about the Flood because the context of this reference is so apposite to our situation, Peter may as well have written these words yesterday. Peter seems to think there are three truths revealed by the Flood worth teaching us about. In 1 Peter, he demonstrates that God’s judgement of destruction in the Flood works similar to our baptism, and they both point to the resurrection of Jesus: evil dies so that good may blossom. Then, he teaches that the example of Noah and ...

  Thursday, October 27, 2022 Psalm 140 Nehemiah 5:14-6:9 2 Peter 2:12-3:2 I am trying to arouse your sincere intention by reminding you that you should remember the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets, and the commandment of the Lord and Saviour spoken through your apostles. One of the most embarrassing examples of humanity’s hubris is the idea that history is progressive. The idea that each generation is just a little more enlightened, forward-thinking and cultured than the one before is both laughable and demonstrably false. Consider today’s passage from 2 Peter, written two millennia ago: the most obvious marker of sinful and destructive intentions is sexual immorality. Adultery, and it’s driver greed, lead people off the narrow and straight path. Numbers 22:21-39 is the passage Peter is referring to with the “speechless donkey” speaking with a human voice. The ridiculousness of this situation shows just how ridiculous our human desire for sexual ...

  Wednesday, October 26, 2022 Psalms 137; 138 Nehemiah 5:1-13 2 Peter 2:1-11 The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial. One of the side-effects of God’s softening of our hearts is that we become zealous for God’s will. In his first letter, Peter wrote words of encouragement for the church besieged by enemies from without. Now in his second letter, he is encouraging us to stay firm despite attacks from those among us, “secretly bringing in destructive opinions”. Our rocky fortress, protecting us in all trials, is our Lord. There is a long list of evils Peter has given us to avoid. Flip them around and we learn what is good; to see if there are any virtues we display that can give us encouragement in our own walk. A church pleasing to God therefore teaches truth; approves and celebrates her Master; is generous; speaks truthfully; bows to authority; and is sexually clean. We can probably recognise in all of these points places where we have stumble...

  Tuesday, October 25, 2022 Psalm 135 Nehemiah 4 1 Peter 1:12-21 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of His majesty. Once upon a time, there were two men, both professors and Christians, who, in their spare time, wrote novels. Their shared aim was for each to write a story that contained, according to them, “true myths”. C. S. Lewis’ Narnia and J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings are both works that imagine fantastical worlds which, while obviously not meant to be interpreted as literal history, still contain fundamental truths. Tolkien was a little more delicate than Lewis; while Narnia’s Aslan is a literal Christ figure, Tolkien’s Middle Earth contained characters who would, at times, express virtues that could only be inspired by our Lord. For example: Gandalf’s resurrection; Aragorn’s return from the wilderness to victory and coronation as Kin...

  Monday, October 24, 2022 Psalms 130; 131; 133 Nehemiah 2:9-20 2 Peter 1:1-11 Observance: United Nations, inaugurated 1945 Therefore, brothers and sisters, be all the more eager to confirm your call and election, for if you do this, you will never stumble. John Bunyan’s autobiography Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners is a most encouraging read, primarily because of the determination he had in his battle against satan when confirming his election unto salvation. Before Bunyan felt able to hold on to the promises of life eternal and absolute forgiveness at the foot of the cross, he was blown about by moods and temptations. He records that every now and then, when feeling like he was at rock bottom and discarded by God, a passage from the Bible would come to mind, so he would rush to his wife and hassle her if she knew which passage he was thinking of. This was in the days before Google, so poor Bunyan had to manually flick through his mighty Geneva Bible t...

  Saturday, October 22, 2022 Psalm 118:1-18 Nehemiah 1:1-2:8 1 Peter 5 And the king granted me what I asked, for the gracious hand of my God was upon me. In this, Peter’s concluding remarks, he instructs the elders of the church to exercise their oversight of the flock willingly, not under compulsion. Then he tells them that if they do so, they will get a reward. Extend this line of thinking beyond the elders to every believer: do we do what we ought because we should, or because Christ rewards each person according to what he or she has done (Rom 2:6; Rev 22:12)? Which one is it? The Bible will often speak euphemistically of the heart as the control centre of desire. A heart of stone is turned against God; a heart of flesh feels emotions such as love. Pharaoh’s heart was “hardened” and he suffered the plagues; the Israelites at Manasseh in the wilderness also suffered in a similar way by similar means: a hardening of the heart. John Calvin’s personal m...

  Friday, October 21, 2022 Psalms 121; 122; 123 Ezra 10:1-19 1 Peter 4:12-19 But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when His glory is revealed. What does it mean to suffer? Is it a presence, the presence of evil? Peter had his share of suffering; writing in the time of the first wave of official Roman persecutions of Christians, he had a lot of encouragement to share with the first generation of believers. Hearing a knock on the door and loud voices in Latin would have meant the arrival of evil at the doorstop. I would argue that suffering is not an active presence, but an absence of that which is good. God created all things, and He is light, in whom there is no darkness. God does not “create” suffering. Therefore, suffering is not a thing. The natural order is marked by blessing and love. Suffering is where God’s blessings and love are not received as much as at other times. Sin...

  Thursday, October 20, 2022 Psalms 114; 115 Ezra 9 1 Peter 4:3-11 Discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. It should be the aspiration of all of us to reach the blessed prayer life. The prayer life, or, open communication with God, is not to be assumed as a basic human right. It comes in different forms, at different levels, changing in different seasons. Jesus was, first and foremost, concerned about His relationship with His heavenly Father. His mission on earth was to bring us into that same relationship (if not on an equal level than offer the equal opportunity to begin the journey). Prayers themselves are different: sometimes we are to stand in the breach between God’s people and God’s righteous wrath. Take Ezra; the people deserved destruction but he, like Moses before and Jesus after him, interceded specifically on behalf of the people, petitioning God to deliver mercy rather than justice. Sometimes it is praise; take today’s Psalms. Sometim...

  Wednesday, October 19, 2022 Psalms 110; 111 Ezra 8:15-36 1 Peter 3:17-4:2 Observance: Henry Martyn, Bible translator in India & Persia (d. 1812) The hand of our God is gracious to all who seek Him, but His power and His wrath are against all who forsake Him. What a liberating inversion of the relationship between the world and the believer Ezra has given us! He had made some bold claims about God, and found himself having to walk the walk in front of all his detractors in the empire. How strongly do we believe what the Bible teaches about God? How deeply have these divine truths sunk into our stubborn, sodden minds? The problem with picking and choosing the bits we like and ignoring the bits we don’t like means that not only are we left with an incomplete picture of the beautiful Christ, but the bits we have decided to keep don’t digest; we neither see Christ truly, nor does Christ bother speaking to us. Christ is perfect, and deserves perfection, y...

  Tuesday, October 18, 2022 Psalm 107:1-22 Ezra 7:11-28 1 Peter 3:8-16 Observance: Luke, evangelist and martyr In your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. In this one short phrase is contained the cosmic love song of eternity. To “sanctify” is to separate; to make something distinct and apart from everything else. Christ our one true love is different from everything else in this life; He is Lord of everything. He wakes us up on Sunday mornings to go to church, but if you bend the knee He will take over so much else. Christ as Lord of our meals turns every snack into a heavenly feast. As Lord of our feet, he takes us along safe paths, leading us by the hand as Lord of the journey. Christ as Lord of our hands turns every task into heavenly kingdom-work. As Lord of the universe, our Brother and Friend gives us no reason to be intimidated. He is Lord of the spiritual realm, too – when we bless in His royal name, it is His blessings that flow out through ...

  Monday, October 17, 2022 Psalm 106:1-24 Ezra 6:16-7:10 1 Peter 3:1-7 Observance: Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and martyr (d. 115) With joy they celebrated, for the LORD had made them joyful. Before we get into the meat and potatoes of today’s reading, did you pay attention to Ezra’s lineage? There are quite a few famous faces in his family tree. One of them is Zadok, the priest who anointed Solomon as king. It is also the name of a famous piece of music by Handel, so here is your permission to go and listen to that after your prayers this morning. Peter’s lesson for today might rub us the wrong way because he uses the word “authority” in reference to the ideal relationship between a husband and wife. But remember the theme he established in 2:12: the theme of true honour; to whom it is given, and how it is received. Verse 8 describes women as the “weaker sex”. Before we all throw our Bibles out the window alongside our razors and bras, let’s think ...

  Saturday, October 15, 2022 Psalm 104:1-25 Ezra 6:1-15 1 Peter 2:18-25 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. Once a year, every year, the main street of every town and city in the country is filled with men in uniforms marching to impressive-sounding military music. ANZAC day has become, for better or worse, a national carnival of remembrance. Everyone who has ever had even the slightest passing involvement with the defence of the nation comes together for a couple of hours to march with shoulders back and chins up in front of crowds and cameras. The other national day for veterans, Remembrance Day, is somewhat different. This is the day for quiet reflection, and tears. We see two different expressions and understandings of the concept of honour. To be honourable can mean one of two things. (The two definitions are mutually exclusive.) The first looks upon the pe...

  Friday, October 14, 2022 Psalms 108; 109:20-30 Ezra 5 1 Peter 2:11-17 We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth… One of the curious side-effects of the rise of the middle class and Australia’s history as a place of upward economic mobility is the inversion of the relationship between class and money. During colonisation, Australia became known internationally as the place where one could escape Victorian era snobbery. Some 200 years later we see the result: people with money have no class, and people with class have no money. Public commentators call this system “egalitarianism”. It is no small cause for mirth that correctly using a knife and fork in public makes one stand out. Peter wants the church to stand out even more than an Australian who, instead of swearing, manages to use the correct words for their sentence. His concept of social distinction is between “the exiles” and everyone else. The basis for this distinction is, as he has already ex...

  Thursday, October 13, 2022 Psalm 101; 102:1-11 Zechariah 8:9-23 1 Peter 2:4-10 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people. Over the past few months we have identified a couple of tendencies in God’s word. One is that God moves in human history in such a way that real-life events have spiritual realities embedded into them. We can deepen this understanding with Peter’s teaching that all of human history has been to point forward to Jesus. The rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem is one such event. Earlier in Zechariah we read about certain visions that didn’t seem to make much sense, apart from being particularly flowery ways of describing events in the immediate future. But chapters 4 to 7 seem to conflate civil rule (that is, by the king) with religious authority (found in the position of high priest). At the time this prophecy was given, that was two different jobs (Zech 4:14). The Temple; the King; the Hig...

  Wednesday, October 12, 2022 Psalms 99; 100 Zechariah 7:1-8:8 1 Peter 1:18-2:3 Observance: Elizabeth Fry, prison reformer, England (d. 1845) I am jealous for her… There is a certain British biologist in our day, who is one of those men who increases the volume of his opinions in direct opposite proportion to the level at which he is qualified to hold those opinions. Unfortunately for the level of the intelligence of the general population, the opposition to the gospel we hear the most in our apologetic efforts come from his works. His problem with Jesus is, fundamentally, one of rebellion. He, and many others, claim they cannot understand why we, alongside the apostle Peter, think so highly of “the precious blood of Jesus”. This precious blood is, says Peter, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. Peter is directly referencing the Passover with this statement. The judgement of God, come as the angel of death, is moving through the earth, slaying...

  Tuesday, October 11, 2022 Psalms 95; 96 Zechariah 6 1 Peter 1:10-17 ...discipline yourselves… When considering which translation of the Bible to read, it is good to have an open mind. In the authorised translation of 1 Peter 1:13 this morning, something is lost from Saint Peter’s original words in the Greek. “Gird up the loins of your mind” is the phrase that the Holy Spirit inspired him to write, translated here as “prepare your minds for action”. To gird one’s loins is to prepare oneself for action, but we love imagery, so let’s imagine what it looked like for Peter’s loins to be girded. He (like most common working men of his time) would have worn a tunic, of which the relevant section to us is the part from the waist to the knees. It would have hung like a skirt. Girding himself, Peter would have taken all the fabric that hangs below the waist, tucked it between his knees, drawn it behind himself, and then brought it back forward again this time around t...

  Monday, October 10, 2022 Psalms 92; 93 Zechariah 4:8-5:11 1 Peter 1:1-9 The Lord is king, and has put on robes of glory. Apprehending the message of the gospel truly is, as Saint Peter says (quoting Jesus), an act of God’s grace by the new birth. If we had not received baptism by the Holy Spirit, none of this Bible stuff would make any sense whatsoever. But “blessed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”, because having been given a new vantage point by which to view life, the universe, and everything, the old way of thinking is laughably incomplete. David Hume, quoting Epicurus, claimed that God’s existence was unlikely because bad things happen. (Both men go into more detail, but that is the general argument.) This line of thinking is now understood to be so silly it is the subject of memes on social media. Our modern-day inheritors of Epicurus’ folly are just as silly when they open their mouths: Sam Harris thinks he is wise enough to be able to ...

  Saturday, October 8, 2022 Psalm 89:1-18 Zechariah 3:1-4:7 Philemon 15:25 See, I have taken your guilt away from you, and I will clothe you with festal apparel. I wonder what crime Onesimus committed that was so heinous for Philemon to send him away. Paul has described Philemon as being famous for his love, and Paul is not known for his flattery, so I am inclined to trust Paul’s character assessment. Sin is an awful thing, and the closer we get to God, the more we are horrified by it. If Philemon was particularly close to Jesus, then he would have had a good eye for the things repulsive to God. Paul is not here to diminish the crime of Onesmius, or to teach Philemon to look past evil in favour of some amorphous, ill-defined notion of free love. Paul has a robust, hairy-chested, hard soap-style of spirituality, based in the reality of scripture and human relationships. He has spoken to Onesimus, found him to be a fellow lover of Jesus, and appeals to Philemo...

  Friday, October 7, 2022 Psalm 90 Zechariah 1:18-2:13 Philemon 1-14 I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith toward the Lord Jesus. A retired bishop was running a silent retreat, and one morning he began the reflection by challenging the retreatants: “if you were arrested today for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” In a world of custom email signatures, creatively embellished resumes, and letters after names, it is very easy to get a big head. If this life is all that there is, the esteem of our fellow humans is indeed highly to be desired. But this life is not all there is, and if we think for more than two seconds about the standards of our culture and what is required to receive its praise, we are reminded of the words of the man when he received a poor reception at a convention of thieves: “your boos mean nothing, I’ve seen what makes you cheer!” On a cosmic, infinite scale, there is only one objective t...

  Thursday, October 6, 2022 Psalm 86 Zechariah 1:1-17 Colossians 4:7-18 Observance: William Tyndale, biblical scholar (d. 1536) He is always wrestling in his prayers on your behalf… What does our prayer life look like? These readings and reflections are intended to be a supplement to the Daily Office as it appears in our prayer book, a three-course meal of structured devotional time across the day at morning, evening, and just before bed. Structure is good, God made the universe to be structured and logical. But what does it look like when we retreat into our hearts and commune with God? What words are said? What emotions do you allow yourself? “Pray without ceasing” teaches the apostle Paul in another place, and in context he means with joy and thanksgiving. We ought always to give thanks to our Lord for the good things He gives us, and be strengthened and completed in our joy by the presence of our beautiful saviour. But that is not the final word on pra...

  Wednesday, October 5, 2022 Psalms 82; 84 Haggai 2:10-23 Colossians 3:18-4:6 How lovely is your dwelling-place: O Lord God of hosts! One of the saddest, yet funniest accusations of the unbeliever against the faith we have in the Lord of creation comes about from the invention of the telescope. Scoffers from every walk of life, from the secular statist to the pagan new-age “wise” men of the subcontinent claim that Jesus could not have come down from heaven, since, we have looked up into the sky, and there is no heaven to be seen. Those who are truly spiritual find themselves making a face-palm, because of course there is no up (or down, for that matter) in the spiritual realm, and looking into space merely reveals more space. Yet we still have this concept of Jesus “descending” from heaven in the incarnation, and “ascending” after His resurrection. (The old Book of Common Prayer described the incarnation as God “condescending” to be among us, which might actua...