The Narrow Path

  Monday, January 1, 2024 Psalm 113 Deuteronomy 30:6-20 Colossians 3:12-17 Observance: The Naming and Circumcision of Jesus The LORD will once again rejoice to see you do well. God has done great things for us – amen and amen! And so we rejoice in Him. He has put a song in our hearts and a spring in our step. The love of God the Holy Spirit has been poured into us and overflows out into our thoughts, deeds and meditations. Rejoice always – and again, I say rejoice! Such joy that the people of God know (a joy that is as natural as breathing) comes out the wellspring of the life of Jesus. Jesus gives us this never-ending and never-failing stream of abundant life, the permanence of which gives us peace, and the truth of which gives us joy. But what a scandalous thing to suggest that God also rejoices in us. God, above the earth and the heavens, looking upon us as mere creatures with the shortest of spans, here one day, gone the next – this God rejoices in Hi...

  Saturday, December 30, 2023 Psalms 148; 149 Isaiah 63:1-9 Ephesians 1:15-23 Observance: Josephine Butler, social reformer (d. 1905) Give light to the eyes of your hearts. God the Father has mighty strength. Raising Jesus from the dead and seating Him at His right hand is indeed an awesome display of mighty strength. Paul thinks very highly of this strength of God, and we do too, celebrating it every Sunday at the table, and developing our calendar around an annual celebration of Easter. This climactic display of the mighty strength of our heavenly Father is consistent with the power that awakens our souls to spiritual understanding. We all see the material world. It takes a little insight to see past the material world at the spiritual forces that guide it; for example, that unpleasant inclination towards consumerism that is inflamed at Christmas. But to see past even that, to gain spiritual understanding of the highest forces in the universe, the ...

  Friday, December 29, 2023 Psalm 145 Isaiah 62 Ephesians 1:1-14 Observance: Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, martyr (d. 1170) Praise commensurate with God’s grace. People who look to gain praise from others are rightfully seen with scorn and not a little suspicion; this is because we are all in the same boat, and we understand that praise needs to be earned, not asked for. But in the case of God, it is not pride or arrogance to seek praise. With God, it is a plain fact that He deserves praise. He actually deserves every bit of praise we can give – and a whole lot more, besides. Trying to capture just how praiseworthy God is escapes words. But Paul gives it a red-hot go. He even makes it a point that he begins every one of his letters with reminding us of just how wonderful God is. Paul also ends each letter with a blessing, affirming God’s praiseworthiness in his actions. And quite often, Paul will even be in the middle of teaching us something, a...

  Thursday, December 28, 2023 Psalms 143; 146 Isaiah 61 Titus 3 Observance: Holy Innocents God’s gift has restored our relationship with him and given us back our lives. When we read various commandments from God in our Bibles, they are often in the context of a covenant. A covenant is like a deal: if we do this, then God will do that. It is like Newtonian physics on an eternal scale, where every action has its consequence: if we bless others, we will be blessed; if we curse, then we will be cursed. God has said this to us so that we can have a basic understanding of how He works. But God wanted to teach us more about Himself. This is because God does not want us to be cursed, in spite of how much we might act like we want this to be the case. And so, in order to teach us just how much God wants us to live the blessed life (and be free of the cursed life), Jesus came and lived as one of us. Jesus’ incarnation – that five dollar word that describes how Jesu...

  Wednesday, December 27, 2023 Psalm 140 Isaiah 60:12-22 Titus 2 Observance: John, apostle and evangelist I will make shalom your governor. The peace of God surpasses all understanding. It is not peace such as the world knows; it is the peace of Jesus. The Lord Jesus is the Prince of Peace, and the Father has given Him all authority in heaven and on earth. This peace that He gives is not a general sense of calm. It is not a lack of activity; it is not boredom. Peace in the sense of that which our Governor of Peace brings is like a fortress in our soul. It is a place to which we can and must retreat. Our constant prayers take us to the place of peace. Through our prayers, the peace of God fills up our soul, sharpens our spiritual weapons, clarifies our understanding of the way things are (and the way things ought to be). We are ruled by peace; God has made peace our governor. Having been given that peace, our Governor gives us work to do. Right...

  Saturday, December 23, 2023 Psalms 123; 130 Isaiah 26:1-19 Revelation 22:6-13 To you I lift up my eyes. There is a very useful piece of motherly advice that encourages young men to be better at self-censorship when choosing what media to consume. It is the fact that once you see something, you cannot get that image out of your brain. This sage advice forms a principle that can be extended further and it is revealed in another piece of elderly wisdom: you are what you eat. The Christian has been given the divine imperative to ensure their own spiritual well-being. If we look at things that are rotten, evil and disgusting, then that influence will rub off on us. But if we turn our eyes to that which is beautiful, noble and live-giving, then that is what we turn into. Often we cannot help the evil influence of the world, the flesh and the devil. Our home is elsewhere, in that perfect paradise. Here, we are surrounded on all sides by forces that hate God. ...

  Friday, December 22, 2023 Psalm 118 Isaiah 24:21-25:9 Revelation 21:22-22:5 I will praise your name. The mark of the Christian is the capacity for praise. Whether God lifts us up, or allows our path to wind through the valley of death, praise is continually on our lips. God’s enemies win when we blame God for our troubles. This is because to blame God is to lie. God is light, in whom there is no darkness at all, and His steadfast love endures forever. Only good things come from our loving Father in heaven. This way of seeing the world and our lives requires the corrective lens of scripture. Satan manipulates the world, and sends vile fiends to try and make us see things their way. It is easy to imagine how offensive and confusing Isaiah’s message must have been the first time it was heard: “You have made the city a heap, the fortified city a ruin.” How is this “a wonderful thing”? Many things, both in our lives and out in the world, can seem like...

  Thursday, December 21, 2023 Psalms 120; 121 Isaiah 24:1-20 Revelation 21:9-21 Observance: Thomas, apostle and martyr “ Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” The Australian economy runs on real estate: this nation is obsessed with property. Where to live is such an important decision that real estate agents have harnessed the power of the algorithm to help us spend even more time thinking about it. But no matter where we live, there is still the chance of hearing the sirens of emergency vehicles. There will always be neighbours somewhere in the vicinity, and their domestic lives will have issues of varying degree, just as ours will. There is no such thing as the perfect neighbourhood; the ideal city is a myth. Towards the end of John’s vision, he was shown something incredible which was described to him as “the wife of the Lamb”. We know from elsewhere in the Bible that the people of God have been described in such a way. But here...

  Wednesday, December 20, 2023 Psalms 43; 43 Isaiah 23:8-18 Revelation 20:11-21:8 Her profits will not be stored or hoarded, but will supply abundant food and fine clothing. God’s influence makes things holy. During times of tribal conquest, the law of the survival of the meanest was the law of the land. But God then took the biggest tribe of them all – the Roman Empire – and turned it Christian, dissolving the barbaric practises and turning an empire into a church. Afterwards, when Europe looked like it would return to barbarism, God’s influence in the form of Christian princes turned things around, and so we had Christendom. Then, in the age of exploration, greedy men went to discover foreign lands, to enslave the people and steal their riches. But God sent missionaries, and the light of Christ overcame the darkness of people’s sin, outlawing the slave trade but keeping the church, and now the Bible has been translated into more languages than the printers c...

  Tuesday, December 19, 2023 Psalm 18 Isaiah 22:15-23:7 Revelation 20:1-10 I will fasten him like a peg in a secure place. The promises of God which concern our common destiny is awe-inspiring. Even more so as we sit in this time of Advent when we turn our prayers towards the expectation of Christ’s second coming. Jesus gave us some very explicit descriptions of what the future holds in His parables about the kingdom of God. The smallest seed has been planted, and will grow into the largest tree. David sings today’s Psalm as a victory song; God has delivered him from his enemies. Isaiah calls out a corrupt court official, and prophecies a message directly from God that the official will be replaced by someone who walks in God’s ways. And in John’s vision we are shown the grand scope of human history from God’s perspective in a mere ten verses. The dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan has been bound and thrown into the pit, and the pit...

  Monday, December 18, 2023 Psalm 144 Isaiah 22:1-14 Revelation 19:11-21 Its rider is called Faithful and True. Watching too much television is bad for you. But you don’t need some quiet, little Christian corner of the internet to tell you that. Even so, the plague of overseas war seems to be spreading to this land which has blessedly been mostly free of war for most of its history. Not that we are at risk of actual war – it is the heartbreak of war which is infecting us through our screens. The readings today shake us out of our comfort and complacency. Here is Jesus, our Brother and Friend, showing a side of Himself to us that may seem confronting. The rider of the white horse is not gentle Jesus meek and mild: this is the Lord Jesus Christ, the king of heaven and earth, riding out to war to take back His kingdom. He wields a sword and an iron scepter, and He is treading the winepress of fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. King David sings of Him: “Blesse...

  Saturday, December 16, 2023 Psalm 7 Isaiah 48:1-13 Revelation 14:13-20 Blessed are the dead who from now on die in the Lord. When writing about the human conscience, a certain Puritan divine described it as either the most wicked burden or the greatest foundation. Our standing before God is something personal that we all must deal with. We have each been given a conscience as a tool to use in this endeavour. Everyone has a conscience, and there are many ways that people respond to theirs. Most of these responses fall on a scale between useless at best, to antagonistic at worst. But our conscience is a gift from God to be used for our good and His glory. To ignore it is to waste it. Attempting to re-fashion it is futile. Worst of all is to try and harden and kill it. This is because the Lord Jesus Christ will, one day, hear the word from His Father that the time of judgement has come. Jesus will be on the clouds of glory (the same clouds that lift...

  Friday, December 15, 2023 Psalms 11; 14 Isaiah 46:1-47:4 Revelation 14:1-12 Even when you turn grey I will carry you. God made you. God bore you. God carried you, and God saved you. And look at the words God spoke through Isaiah for the people then, and us people now: God will bear; will carry; will save. Everything that has happened is because God made it so, and God will continue this good work to the end. Did any of us have a helping hand in the decision to send Jesus to live as one of us? Did any of us help in the incarnation, where Jesus was born of the virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit? Did any of us hang on the cross to die for the sins of anyone else? The entire history of redemption is an act of God. Some people would take a physical artefact and bow down and worship it. God is flabbergasted at their idiocy. But that is what idolatry is: the foolishness of human selfishness taken to its extreme. We are not like God, and God is not like us. Whe...

  Thursday, December 14, 2023 Psalm 9 Isaiah 45:9-25 2 Thessalonians 3 Observance: John of the Cross, mystic and teacher (d. 1591) Does the clay ask the potter what he is doing? As the potter fashioning us for various tasks, God has the freedom to decide where we are to go, what we are to say, and how we are to act. The good plans that God has for us are worth surrendering to. God has the future of the entire universe all worked out. There will be wars, and there will be rumours of wars. Nation will rise against nation; brother against sister, and children against parents. The clay will argue against the potter. Many pieces will complain that their Maker has no skill. But God responds: “You have no right to question me about my children or tell me what to do!” We hear echoes of God’s conversation with Job: “I am the one who made the earth and created human beings to live there.” We humans have been given two options: live according to the way we wer...

  Wednesday, December 13, 2023 Psalms 28; 62 Isaiah 44:24-45:8 2 Thessalonians 2 Observance: Lucy, martyr and virgin (d. 304) Treasures hidden in darkness. Our lives are adventure stories. God has not put us on this earth for no reason. We all form part of the body of Christ, and no person is surplus to requirements. Every believer has a divine task set for them by God, a part of the story of the triumph of God’s kingdom on earth. When things get darkest, God reveals the treasures He has buried there. And so, after God made judgement on the rebellious people, He sent Cyrus, the Persian king who would release the Jews from their captivity and allow them to return to their homeland. When Isaiah first made this prophecy, no-one could believe him. The outlook was far too bleak. The future was far too dark. Yet 150 years later, just as Isaiah prophesied, a Persian called Cyrus took the throne and did exactly that. Such a marvel was a treasure of darkness, riche...

  Tuesday, December 12, 2023 Psalms 76; 82 Isaiah 44:6-23 2 Thessalonians 1 Who is like me? Idolatry comes in many forms. Sometimes it is a physical object that is treated as special. Other times it is more abstract; an idea, or a purpose, which is given special properties to save the one who worships it. This section of Isaiah gives us a set of principles by which we can identify idols both in our own lives and in the wider world. It also tells us how to defeat them. The set of principles that we can use to identify an idol is to compare it to a piece of wood. In this section, God (through Isaiah) speaks of the man who takes a piece of wood, uses some of it to warm his home, uses another bit to cook up a roast dinner, and takes the last bit and worships it as a god. God is not like anything or anyone else. If we think it is God, we should look to see if it can be used for anything else – in which case it is an idol, and we should stop worshipping it. God is s...

  Monday, December 11, 2023 Psalms 10; 75 Isaiah 43:14-44:5 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28 Respect those who labour among you. As your alarm wakes you up this morning and rouses you into action, take a moment to pray for your pastor. Your mission in the army of Jesus is to serve the world. Their mission is to serve you. It is a Monday morning, the morning in which the weekly cycle of work starts again. For the pastor, it is their day off. And yet they will still wake up, dress their soul in repentance and faith in the blood of the Lamb, and go to the throne of heaven and bring your case before God. As you go about your workday, in the office, on the road, on the worksite, in the home, or in the home of someone else, your pastor is standing before the Lord Jesus and bringing your name forward to His attention. Through Paul, God the Holy Spirit has established various orders of ministry to serve the body of Christ. Your mission field, your area of ministry...

  Saturday, December 9, 2023 Psalm 7 Isaiah 42:18-43:13 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11 Through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who have died. Encourage one another; build up one another with these words: we will be with the Lord forever. We know how the story started. One day, we opened our eyes, and realised we were a person. The womb was not even a distant memory to us, but God had been there, knitting us together. We grew. We learned how to play, we learned how to wonder. We learned how to laugh, and we also learned how to cry. Jesus’ joy in us made our joy complete; and His angels bottled every one of our tears. Our woes were remembered by our loving Father in heaven, and our success was met with His loving smile. There is still yet more of the story to come. It may only be a few more lines, or it might be a multi-volume work. The Lord Jesus’ return will be like a thief in the night, or He might call us home before then. The gap between n...

  Friday, December 8, 2023 Psalms 11; 14 Isaiah 42:1-17 1 Thessalonians 4:1-12 Observances: The Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary ; Richard Baxter, pastor and spiritual writer (d. 1691) But we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more. The nature of the kingdom of heaven is to expand. God is not a “one and done” kind of Person. Do you want friends? Jesus teaches you how to buy friends for heaven, that is, to develop relationships that will stretch out into eternity. Do you desire holiness? Jesus will send you His Holy Spirit, which will increase your desire for the things of heaven, and the will to achieve them. Is it life you are after? Jesus will give you life, life in abundance. Let the people from the desert to the towns shout for joy; let them declare God’s praise from the mountains all the way to the coastlands. God is sending Jesus, in whom He delights, in the power of the Holy Spirit to bring forth justice to the nations. His kingd...

  Thursday, December 7, 2023 Psalm 90 Isaiah 41:17-29 1 Thessalonians 3 Observance: Ambrose of Milan, bishop and teacher (d. 397) For now we are alive, if ye stand fast in the Lord. One of the precious Biblical truths of God’s grace towards us is the fact that we are in a communion of saints. No man is an island, and no Christian is on their own. The burden of suffering we bear in this life is made easier not only from Jesus’ helping hand, but the knowledge that it is our badge of membership in the kingdom, a badge every saint of every age wears proudly on their chest. Persecution helps strengthen our resolve. It proves we are a citizen of heaven, not of earth. And it trains our soul to follow our Lord’s command to bless those who curse us. For it is one thing to bless those who wish us well – do not even the pagans do this? True strength is shown when we are able to bless our enemies. Paul’s heart aches for his beloved friends in Thessalonica. All ...

  Wednesday, December 6, 2023 Psalm 86 Isaiah 41:1-16 1 Thessalonians 2:13-20 Observance: Nicholas of Myra, bishop and philanthropist (d. c. 342) I have chosen you and have not rejected you. Paul, in writing to the Thessalonians, is at pains to emphasise that the gospel message is not an invention of human imagination, but the very word of God. Indeed, through much of Paul’s writings we get a sense of Paul’s deep respect for the power of God’s word. Preachers and theologians can come up with all the wonderful and flashy spiritual insights under the sun, but if it is not grounded in God’s word, it has no power. The tragedy of powerless words is forgotten when we consider the overwhelming joy when the power of God’s word comes into action. The Thessalonians were joined in the suffering of the Jewish Christians, who themselves were being joined to the suffering of Jesus. Does that sound strange? That to suffer is joy? Paul goes on to point out that the ...

  Tuesday, December 5, 2023 Psalms 82; 84 Isaiah 40:18-31 1 Thessalonians 2:1-12 God, who tests our hearts. There is only one true God, and He is the great I Am. God’s ways are true and honest, straight and narrow, loving truth and goodness. Within the great I Am, the Rock of Ages, the Ancient of Days, are many names. Each name describes a facet of the great jewel of God, shining out His different aspects across time and space. Paul, missionary, ambassador and emissary of the Lord Jesus Christ, is eager and careful to do nothing except that which brings glory to God. He has preached the kingdom of heaven to the people of Thessalonica and has been rewarded with discovering a number of God’s people among the population. Having shepherded them into a church – a body of worshipping disciples of Jesus – he now follows up on them, to see how they are travelling on their narrow path, to encourage them further to deeper faith and greater works of love. Reminding...

  Monday, December 4, 2023 Psalm 80 Isaiah 40:1-17 1 Thessalonians 1 Observances: John of Damascus, monk, teacher of the faith (d. c. 749); Nicholas Ferrar, deacon, founder of the Little Gidding community (d. 1637) Co mfort and keep comforting my people. Look at our world: all these human beings scurrying about to and fro, getting our work done on time, making sure our plans are fulfilled. Zoom out, take in the bigger picture. Keep panning that shot wider and wider. Then we might get a glimpse of what the prophet Isaiah has seen: that all humanity is merely grass, all its kindness like wildflowers: the grass dries up, the flower fades, when a wind from the Lord blows on it. The prophet has become the spiritual astronaut. High above the atmosphere he sees this planet, all the plants and animals, mountains and oceans, and little humans covering it all. But it is not only to demonstrate how fragile our existence is. The grass dries up and the flower fades, bu...

  Saturday, December 2, 2023 Psalm 77 2 Kings 25:21-30 Mark 3:19b-35 Observance: Frances Perry, founder of the Royal Women’s Hospital, Melbourne (d. 1892) Plundering the strong man’s house. Satan has been a busy boy in his time roaming around the earth, devouring whom he may. While the earth is the Lord’s, as well as everything in it, Satan has been going around and pocketing as many goodies as he can get his grubby little paws on. Money that should be given to the church and its mission is held up in back accounts of weapons manufacturers. Musical talents that should be lifting our hearts to the Lord have been employed in the service of base lusts and desires. Physical health, a gift from and marker of the work of the Lord Jesus has been tied up, and those lacking it have been tied down when they should be enjoying God and glorifying Him. But Jesus is the stronger man. He has broken into Satan’s house, tied him down, and returned all those blessings...