The Narrow Path

  Monday, May 1, 2023 Psalm 74 Exodus 24 John 11:1-16 Observance: Philip and James, apostles and martyrs “ Let us also go, that we may die with him.” In the time of warfare when men fought with gunpowder, steel and cannonballs, taking a position that was fortified by the enemy was no easy task. The attacking army would lay siege, digging tunnels up to the fortress walls, while the artillery would pound on the position from afar. Through a combination of these and other works of siege engineering, a breach in the walls would eventually appear. It was at this point that the call would be put out among the men for volunteers to make up the first group of soldiers to go through the breach: the Forlorn Hope. Sometimes, men would volunteer for this position because they had been caught doing something very naughty, and surviving as part of a Forlorn Hope promised forgiveness for their crimes. But more often, men would volunteer for the chance at the glory of being kno...

  Saturday, April 29, 2023 Psalm 145 Exodus 23:20-33 John 10:31-42 Observance: Catherine of Siena, spiritual teacher (d. 1380) One generation shall laud your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts. There is a certain Swiss watch-making house – one of the best – whose marketing team deserve special mention for coming up with the genius line: “You never really own a Patek Phillipe. You simply look after it for the next generation.” As a new father, I must admit that sometimes I look around and wonder if any of my current belongings are heirloom-worthy. But then I come across a sentiment like this one today, which appears frequently enough in the Old Testament, and I am reminded of where my true riches lie. Jewellery gets lost, musical instruments get dented, book spines deteriorate; but the word of the Lord endures forever. The inheritance of our salvation, which is contained in the mighty acts of God, is a treasure not only for ourselves...

  Friday, April 28, 2023 Psalms 143; 146 Exodus 23:4-17 John 10:19-30 “ I and the Father are one.” The relationship of the Trinity is as dense as it is beautiful. One cannot but help wonder why God chose to reveal this aspect of Himself to us in the first place – at first sniff, it seems like it should defy logic; and looking at the swathe of Christian-adjacent religions which deny the Trinity, one cannot help but feel a twinge of pity. But just as Christ told the Jews under Solomon’s colonnade that He has given enough proof that He is the Messiah, so too do we have enough in the pages of scripture that incontrovertibly demonstrate that there is one God, and that three distinct Persons each hold the unique attributes that can only be ascribed to that one God. But that still doesn’t get us to why God revealed this about Himself in the first place. Why does God being Triune matter so much? Christ’s words this morning do not supply us with a doctrinal...

  Thursday, April 27, 2023 Psalm 140 Exodus 22:20-23:3 John 10:1-18 “ I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” I hate delayed gratification, and I accede to the fact that it is probably a character flaw to which I should not admit. Having to wait until I get a goodie is an unpleasant experience which I try to avoid as much as possible. But I am not a Christian in spite of the fact it means I have to wait until I die before I get to heaven – rather, I am a Christian because it means I get to be in heaven in the here and now. In this passage, Christ is having a barny with the people about who He is. He has already displayed works of power: heaven is breaking in wherever He goes. They don’t need to wait until they die before they know for certain if Jesus is the Messiah or not. He is right there in front of them, performing the works of God and bringing in the kingdom of heaven before their very eyes. It all comes back to the generosity of G...

  Wednesday, April 26, 2023 Psalm 137 Exodus 20:18-21:6 John 9:24-41 Observance: Mark, evangelist and martyr “ I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out a free person.” When Jonathan Edwards first began preaching, his words were so powerful that they are believed to have helped kick off the nation-wide revival now known as “The First Great Awakening”. The title of his sermon? “Sinners in the hands of an angry God”. By the end of his career, which spanned revivals, missionary work, and some of the modern era’s most influential theological works, his sole purpose was to spend as much time as possible admiring the beauty of God. This progression from the stick to the carrot, so vivid in one individual, is repeated time and again in the church, both in institutions and individuals. It raises the question: do we truly love God for who God is? Or do we stay by God’s side simply because we are terrified of the alternative? Being an ancient Heb...

  Tuesday, April 25, 2023 Psalm 135 Exodus 19:16-20:17 John 9:13-23 Observance: ANZAC Day I the LORD your God am a jealous God. I think we have all met those types of people who are really good at telling stories. People who seem to have had a life of adventure, and are always ready with a tall tale to tell, the type that really gets a group conversation going. If we are a member of the unlucky masses who do not have this talent, there is the temptation to, when telling our own story, to insert more than a little hyperbole, perhaps in a nervous attempt to entertain our listeners. The fish was this big; we were travelling this fast; he had drunk that much. The writers of the Old Testament were much better at recounting past events. Firstly, because the stories they tell are the stories of God, and so there is no need to exaggerate when talking about what the Creator of the universe has been getting up to. But there were, at times, certain things that needed...

  Monday, April 24, 2023 Psalms 130; 131; 133 Exodus 19:1-15 John 9:1-12 “ Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” If God is the ultimate source of all good, what misery it must be to be cut off from Him. Sitting on the side of a busy footpath, always hearing about but never seeing or joining in on the fun. Worse still is the fact that we do this to ourselves: thinking ourselves wise, we have become fools, and having been placed on a branch on top of the tall tree, we take out the chainsaw and chop off the very thing that holds us in place. The blind man begging for scraps off the very people hostile to Jesus is almost poetic in its sad irony. There is nothing for him here except temporary relief – no, not relief – just something to dull the senses to try and help them all forget about the fact that they are hiding from the One that would save them. Praise be to the man of action that is Jesus! He marches straight in to the problem and announces th...

  Saturday, April 22, 2023 Psalm 118:1-18 Exodus 18:10-27 Luke 24:36-53 Then Jesus opened their minds to understand the scriptures. There used to be a long-running series of novels for schoolchildren about some high school students who had been given alien technology that granted them the ability to temporarily morph into any animal into which they came into physical contact. Every now and again, the aliens who had given them this technology would visit them to check up on how they were doing. In one of these interactions, the alien spent some time marvelling on the elegant brilliance of the humble book. The book never runs out of power. It never runs into technical difficulties. And if you want to find a certain piece of information, all you have to do is to flick to that page. The written word has always been powerful. We have ancient letters that talk about military movements: one king asking another to send reinforcing armies his way. Others contain endles...

  Friday, April 21, 2023 Psalms 121; 122; 123 Exodus 17:8-18:9 Luke 24:28-35 Observance: Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, teacher (d. 1109) Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. You may be familiar with the term “thin places”. It comes from Celtic Christianity, and refers to the idea that there are some places in this world where the barrier between the material and the spiritual is not so strong. Ancient monks in the far-flung most northern reaches of Scotland would go out and sit on rocky crags in the ocean and come back with reports that they could almost reach out and touch heaven. As a pilgrim who prefers much more to sweat than to shiver, I can confidently assert that we have our own “thin places” here at home: try going to your favourite beach at the very early hours of the morning, just as the sun begins to decide to wake up, when it is just you, the waves and the Lord, and experience heaven on earth for yourself. But we all know that all of creation s...

  Thursday, April 20, 2023 Psalms 114; 115 Exodus 16:22-17:7 Luke 24:13-27 The dead do not praise the LORD. We like to spend a lot of time thinking about how much Jesus loves us. Some years ago, there was a serial sticker-applier who hit the suburbs, and it was as if every second road sign had a “Jesus loves you” sticker on the other side. This little devotional series is not immune from the trend, either. It is a good thing to keep in front-of-mind, to remember just how much our Lord loves us. Indeed, prayer itself would be impossible without knowing that Christ is engrossed in the conversation, hanging on to our every word. But it is also spiritually enriching to remind ourselves that love goes two ways. Christ loves us, yes – and we love Christ. He is my everything. I call out to Him as soon as I open my eyes in the morning. I reach out the hands of my spirit to find Him every waking moment. I cannot get back to sleep at night without admiring ...

  Wednesday, April 19, 2023 Psalms 110; 111 Exodus 16:1-21 Luke 24:1-12 Those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed. Earlier this year we spent some time in Jesus’ teaching on the plain as recorded in the gospel of Luke. Jesus was being explicit when He taught us that we never need to fear the threat of want, because our Father in heaven knows exactly what we need, and are we not worth more than a sparrow? Is Christ not simply repeating what the scriptures have taught us since the very first pages? When the Israelites were hungry, God gave them manna from heaven to eat. This mystical substance escapes comparison. Even the name defies definition: the question “ man hu?” in verse 15 becomes the proper noun manna in verse 31. It is not the same grain that convinces mum to buy Tip Top bread. This stuff is something truly special. No wonder, then, that Christ describes H...

  Tuesday, April 18, 2023 Psalm 107:1-22 Exodus 15:19-27 Matthew 28:11-20 And the people complained… On my bookshelf lives a very weathered copy of Julius Caesar's Conquest of Gaul. It comes off the shelf and goes into circulation every few years because it is such a jolly fun read. Not so much the ruthless efficiency with which Caesar put down Gallic opposition, but rather how the great man was so acutely aware that this work would be read widely back in Rome and function as pro-Caesar propaganda. How Caesar described Caesar was quite different to how someone like Cicero described Caesar. I rather think that if our own lives were to be made into a book or a movie then we would feel much more comfortable if it was to be autobiographical, and not left in the hands of someone else to write. We see two sides to the same story this morning, with this portion of Psalm 107 describing the same event as it is recorded in Exodus. Moses cannot believe the ungratefulness...

  Monday, April 17, 2023 Psalm 106:1-24 Exodus 15:1-18 Matthew 28:1-10 “ The LORD is a warrior; the LORD is His name.” The LORD has many names. He is our Provider. He is our Advocate. He is our Helper. Jesus showed us that He is also our Brother and our Friend. But what about when the enemy approaches? Not a human enemy; not the type of enemy that humans invent out of thin air when nation decides to fight against nation over land and resources. But an alien enemy, the type of enemy that comes from the realm of the supernatural. The type of enemy that seeks only to rebel against God’s goodness, and bring as many of us down with them. “We are legion” said the demon to Jesus, and it is hard for the imagination not to run away and start thinking about big battle-scenes from The Lord of The Rings movies. We need a Warrior. We need a strong man to rise above the rest of us, to brandish the weapons of war and ride out into battle on our behalf. The enemy is in ...

  Saturday, April 15, 2023 Psalm 136:1-12 Exodus 14:15-30 Mark 16:9-20 Observance: Saturday in Easter Week O give thanks to the LORD, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever. “Sustainability” has been a buzzword for such a long time now that it seems to have lost all meaning. Or, if it does have meaning, the concept is applied in places where it absolutely shouldn’t. In certain places and at certain times, God decides to move His Holy Spirit. His Word is preached and His children hear His voice. Seeds are planted, buds develop stalks, and sheaves drop heads of grain. Then the Spirit moves somewhere else, and people spend the next hundred years writing books about how your local church can bring about revival, too. Whatever God has given us here and now is exactly what He wants us to work with. Saints will be built up if we listen to His instructions wherever we are. But there is no such thing as a sustainable church model; at least no...

  Friday, April 14, 2023 Psalm 118:1-18 Exodus 13:17-14:14 Mark 16:1-8 Observance: Friday in Easter Week “ The LORD will fight for you, and you only have to keep still.” How did you go reading the Psalm for this morning? If you were distracted, or just skimmed over it so that you could get this devotional done before you started that job you were going to do today, stop and go back over it. It’s almost like the air is thick from the resurrection. The bird songs are sweeter. The suns warmth is now gentle as opposed to oppressive. And when we pick up our Bibles and read a Psalm like this, we feel bullet-proof. Was your heart not burning within you, reading again the history of God’s guidance and protection over the Israelites in the wilderness? The tomb is empty; Christ is not there anymore, He is risen, and has gone ahead of us. He is leading the way in the pillar of cloud, and His Holy Spirit is a roaring fire guiding us through the darkness. Wha...

  Thursday, April 13, 2023 Psalm 116 Exodus 13:1-16 John 21:1-15 Observance: Thursday in Easter Week I love the LORD, because He has heard my voice and my supplication. There is such a thing as too much humility. When we approach our thrice-holy God, we are always mindful of the fact that the angels singing by the throne are covering their eyes, their hands, and their feet in respect and deference. But at the same time, we remember that Christ came as a human to save humans, and so while our intimacy with God is a great honour (as it is with any creature who would dare approach our Creator), God has asked us to come forth. It is only right that we should respond to God’s gift-giving by accepting the gift. There is a certain prayer practice that you should try, and you might find it confronting at first. When you are in your prayer closet with your eyes closed, envision yourself actually physically sitting beside the Lord Jesus. Then, when you are speaking ...

  Wednesday, April 12, 2023 Psalm 113 Exodus 12:37-51 John 21:1-14 Observance: Wednesday in Easter Week Now none of the disciples dared to ask Him, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord. You can imagine it: one of those movies or TV shows, where the unassuming, scrawny protagonist faces down against the big bad bully, who, turning to the one who would dare oppose him, slowly drawls: “who do you think you are?” Jesus seems to spend half of His public ministry having to deal with people wondering who He truly is. Even at His trial, His accusers are constantly badgering Him to admit that He is the Messiah. Although the Bible doesn’t often communicate tone, only literal speech, you can imagine one way Jesus must have told Pilate “you have said so” at the repeated question “are you the king of the Jews?”. In other places, the Bible teaches us that everyone knows that God exists, has the almighty power of creation, and is deserving of our praise...

  Tuesday, April 11, 2023 Psalm 112 Exodus 12:21-36 John 20:19-31 Observance: Tuesday in Easter Week For the righteous will never be moved; they will be remembered forever. It can get quite tough being a Christian in this world. For one, if there is any aspect about our faith that non-Christians seem fine with, that agreement is only ever fleeting – as cultures and societies shift, so too do their values, and so what seemed common sense ten years ago is now considered blasphemous by the mainstream. Give it another ten years, and the pendulum will probably swing back again, but something else we hold on to as eternal truth will, in turn, be up for grabs. Another thing that makes the life of a pilgrim tough is the daily effort to keep that chip off our shoulder. Sinners go out and make lots of money at the expense of others, and live quite comfortably – yet God has called us to a particular place and given us a particular job to do which seems only to take f...

  Monday, April 10, 2023 Psalm 2 Exodus 12:1-20 John 20:1-18 Observance: Monday in Easter Week “ I am ascending to my Father and your Father.” From eternity past, God has existed: three Persons, one Being; the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Spirit. In perfect love and union stretching back an infinity before the creation of the universe, they were swept up with each other in what C. S. Lewis described as the “divine dance”. To try and comprehend the magnitude and glory of such a thing is too much for our feeble human minds. The entry of humans on the scene was an expression of this complete love. When the Psalmist writes that “He who sits in the heavens laughs”, he is capturing perfectly how ridiculous an idea it is that we humans could possibly rebel against the power of God’s infinite love with our little rebellion. It is interesting to note that, while all through the books of the Bible that were written before Christ’s incarnation, God is a clos...

  Saturday, April 8, 2023 Psalm 30 Genesis 2:1-3 John 19:38-42 Observance: Saturday in Holy Week – Easter Eve God rested from all the work He had done. If you are in Brisbane at the moment, you may be like me, and appreciating how the weather seems to be fitting the mood of this holy weekend so very well. The heavens themselves mourn over the death of God. But the weekend carries the promise of the rain clearing, and it is predicted that Resurrection Sunday will be the perfect kind of day to admire God’s handiwork down the coast. If you are the type of person who likes to watch storms, you will be familiar with the little game of counting seconds between lightning and thunder to approximate the distance of the strike. Those moments between light and sound, between flash and thunder, can sometimes be quite tense, particularly when you are in the middle of a sub-tropical thunderstorm. This is where we are today. At Christ’s death, the earth shook, the ...

  Friday, April 7, 2023 Psalm 40 Genesis 22:1-18 Matthew 27:32-54 Observance: Good Friday “ Here I am.” At the beginning of John’s gospel, the first sentences out of Jesus’ mouth involve telling us that if we want to know the answer to our questions, then to “come and see”. See the perfect life He lived. See how, in His humanity, Christ was able to live the life we should be, and therefore be able to approach God’s holiness. See also His Godhood, how He has power over life and death. Now, come to the cross, and see. He is hanging on an execution stake on top of a hill. There is no excuse to not see. Because He is human, He is able to taste that eternal death that, because of our sin, we deserve: our punishment is on Him. Because He is also God, He is perfectly righteous, and so we are given that righteousness in return. He takes our punishment and He gives us His reward. He is hanging on the tree, arms stretched out, the loudest voice God has e...

  Thursday, April 6, 2023 Psalm 55 Exodus 24:1-11 John 17 Observance: Maundy Thursday And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. All that happens over the next four days was prepared before the foundation of the world. The betrayal of Christ by one closest to Him; His suffering under both the Jews and the Gentiles; His agonising death and His glorious resurrection: all happens exactly as planned. Blood runs through it all. At the foot of the holy mountain, all must wait. Only one may ascend and speak intimately with God – Moses – but not before blood is spilt and splashed all around. Such is the price that must be paid to have sin dealt with. Such is the great chasm between sinful humanity and our holy God. Into that great pit of despair went Christ, giving Himself and His blood as that price. The eternal death that is the just reward for our evil was suffered by Christ, not ourselves, al...

  Wednesday, April 5, 2023 Psalm 88 Jeremiah 11:18-20 John 16:4b-33 Observance: Wednesday in Holy Week “ A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me.” A little while for the kettle to boil. A little while for the car to warm up. A little while for the order to be cooked. But with Christ, with whom every waking and sleeping moment is spent, there is no such thing as “a little while”. How can one even spend the time it takes to blink without Him? Christ, who holds my life, has to be here all the time, otherwise everything will fall apart. Even though I do so many things that would push Him away; even though my actions speak hate against my heart’s desire to love, He holds me close: my brother, my friend. I would go to the gates of hell with you, my captain. Test my will, and when I fail, test me again and again, so that I may have the chance to prove my love and obedience. Praise be to the ...

  Tuesday, April 4, 2023 Psalm 27 Lamentations 3:1-30 John 15:1-16:4a Observance: Tuesday in Holy Week One thing I asked of the LORD, that I will seek after; to live in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in His temple. On Friday, Pontius Pilate will have Christ whipped and beaten by his soldiers. After this torture, he will bring the wounded Christ out into full view of the bloodthirsty crowd and declare “Behold, the man!” (John 19:5) This is a far cry from the start of Jesus’ full-time earthly ministry, when John the Baptist saw Him approaching and announced “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) At Christmas, we beheld the Lord as a baby. Then we beheld Him as a strong man in the prime of His life, working miracles, raising the dead, and preaching the gospel of repentance and life. In the coming week we will behold Him broken on the cross, shivering an...

  Monday, April 3, 2023 Psalm 21 Lamentations 1:1-12 John 14 Observance: Monday in Holy Week Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Lent is wrapped up; now we begin the final march to Golgotha. Yesterday at church we heard both Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, as well as the Passion narrative. From joyous expectation to tragic heartbreak, all in one service: this is the story of Holy Week. We know how the story ends. We have heard it year after year. Some Christians have become so immune to the retelling they reject Easter altogether – following the rabbit hole of pseudo-history on the internet one can find a multitude of fallacious claims about the alleged pagan beginnings of Easter. But the focus of Holy Week is the same thing we use to find our place in the world wherever and whenever we are. Whether life is up or down or inside out, whatever confusing or distressing or joyful situations we find ourselves in, it always comes back to the...