The Narrow Path

  Saturday, April 1, 2023 Psalm 74 Exodus 10:21-11:10 Luke 21:29-22:6 “ Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Jesus was in His final days, preparing Himself for His final festival with His disciples, before His battle with evil and death on the cross. Of all the topics to go over with them, of all the lessons He was to give that would be His final teaching, He chose to teach about the end times. There was, of course, the prophetic warning about how His death would mean the end of the sacrificial cult and the temple in Jerusalem. When He would breathe His last on the cross, the curtain in the temple would split in two. There would be no need for any more animal sacrifice. And judgement would come upon those who wouldn’t trust in His blood; the Roman empire was to be used as the instrument of destruction of the temple. All these full stops: no more temple, no more animal sacrifices, no more division between Jews and everyone else. T...

  Friday, March 31, 2023 Psalm 59 Exodus 10:1-20 Luke 21:20-28 Do forgive my sin just this once, and pray to the LORD your God that at the least He remove this deadly thing from me. In all likelihood, Pharaoh was being insincere in making this plea to Moses. At the very least, the public servants working in his government began to understand that there was a God in heaven who was displeased at their evil policies. Maybe Pharaoh was beginning to get the message at this point, but he was still more concerned with how his nation’s success reflected upon his fame, rather than how he personally had offended his Creator. But even in his selfishness, Pharaoh’s prayer for deliverance was answered. When the Bible says that God is quick to forgive, it is saying the truth. While the royal entourage may have been quick to worry about what worse plague would be coming for them next, at least they experienced a fleeting moment of relief from God’s justice. For the Chr...

  Thursday, March 30, 2023 Psalm 72 Exodus 9:13-35 Luke 21:1-19 But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned once more and hardened his heart. Just as our physical body depends utterly on our physical heart, so does our soul depend on our spiritual attitude. When we speak of the heart in the biblical sense, we are talking about that bit of ourselves that is only known by God and the individual. It is why God desires a holy attitude more than dry religious actions. He didn’t make meat robots; He made material creatures in His image. The Bible also speaks about how our salvation is wrought by God when He removes our sinful heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh – all spiritual imagery, but illuminating in how it explains why we mourn over our sin. If God had “given us up in the lusts of our hearts to impurity” (Rom 1:24) then we would never feel remorse for offending Him. This idea of “hardening...

  Wednesday, March 29, 2023 Psalm 69:1-16 Exodus 8:20-9:12 Luke 20:27-47 Observance: John Keble, priest (d. 1866) The sacrifices that we offer to the LORD our God are offensive to the Egyptians. This statement is instantly recognisable to any Christian who has attempted to speak about the message of the cross in public. Moses wanted to lead the Israelites out of Egypt to the holy mountain to offer sacrifices acceptable to God; sacrifices of thanksgiving and atonement for sins. It would not have been the fact that they were slaughtering animals that would have upset their Egyptian masters, as ancient pagans slew beasts all the time. The offensive bit was the why, not the what. Christians love and forgive one another because that is how we are made to be by God. The unbeliever does the same thing; but their reasons are different. Either the idea of God is offensive, or the fact God would demand us to act in this way is offensive. But this is not the core of ...

  Tuesday, March 28, 2023 Psalm 71 Exodus 7:25-8:19 Luke 20:19-26 You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again. The Psalmist is crying out against “enemies”. These are enemies not just of the Psalmist, but of God: they accuse the author of being forsaken by God. In their hubris and arrogance, they presume to think that God would ever forsake one whom He loves. Sometimes, it is not just about us. God works through all people and all of creation. Sometimes there may be other people who need to be ashamed of their enmity towards God; who need to be put to shame and consumed. Sometimes God may decide it is one of us who is to be the vehicle of their humility; but it never means we are the ones who are forsaken. Sometimes we need a bit of humbling, but, once again: God always revives us from the depths of the earth. This narrow path of discipleship we walk is not easy. God makes us see many troubles and calamities along the way....

  Monday, March 27, 2023 Psalm 68:1-20 Exodus 7:8-24 Luke 20:1-18 So they answered that they did not know where it came from. Our conscience is a very useful thing. It is like a dial on the display panel of our soul, telling us whether certain actions and attitudes are spiritually damaging or not. But our conscience is not the same as the voice of God the Holy Spirit. God speaks from somewhere external to our self, telling us “this is the way, walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:21) God’s voice then interacts with our conscience; this is when the dial starts moving. Pharaoh had been told by the prophets of the one true God to allow His people to leave. Upon refusal, his river was turned to blood. But his sorcerers were able to conjure up a reasonable enough counterfeit, and so Pharaoh was able to dull his conscience in spite of the definite voice of the Almighty. The dial was bouncing, but Pharaoh looked away. Jesus’ enemies knew the scriptures back to front, ...

  Saturday, March 25, 2023 Psalms 62; 63 Exodus 6:2-7:7 Luke 19:28-48 Observance: The Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary All the people were spellbound by what they heard. There is a very good reason that these devotionals do not go for much longer than three minutes. It is for the same reason that social media algorithms prefer this length of video, and why smartphones are so wildly popular: our attention span is measured in the tens of seconds. As soon as something is no longer fresh, it is swiped off the screen, or used to wrap tomorrow’s fish and chips. While the people in the Temple in Jerusalem did not, as we do, suffer from the curse of the black mirror, they were still people, and the appeal of the new and apathy towards the old still led their desires. But those who heard Jesus’ words were “spellbound”; they were hanging off His every word. This is because the words that proceed from the mouth of God exist outside the categories of “fre...