The Bible Lessons:
Isaiah 55:10-13
Psalm 65:9-13
Romans 8:1-11
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
The Prayer of the Day:
Almighty God, we thank you for planting in us the seed of your word. By your Holy Spirit help us to receive it with joy, live according to it, and grow in faith and hope and love, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
A Few Thoughts:
1. As I've explained before, some scholars believe that Isaiah was written by three different authors over an extended period of time. Because the ancients didn't have the same understanding of authorship that we have, it was considered legitimate for a writer trained by a particular teacher or trained by teachers operating in a teacher's school of thought, to write in that person's names. Scholars claim to be able to discern an Isaiah, a Deutero-Isaiah, and a Trito-Isaiah, each writing at distinctive times in ancient Israel's history.
2. According to Lutheran scholar Ralph Klein, our first lesson, from Isaiah, comes at the end of Deutero-Isaiah (Second Isaiah), a section of the book composed of chapters 40 through 55.
3. Klein goes on to say of the Isaiah passage:
- The prophet compares the sureness of Yahweh's word of promise to the regularity and effectiveness of rain and snow, which do not just bounce back to the sky, but soak into the ground and bring forth abundant crops.
- God's word too does not return to God empty-handed, but carries out the tasks God has assigned to it.
- Verse 12 returns to the theme of a new Exodus, which has emerged often in the previous sixteen chapters. The deliverance of Israel will lead to a new creation, a re-creation, of nature. The mountains and hills will hail this day with singing, and all the trees will give liberated Israel a standing ovation. Instead of weeds and other noxious plants there will be cypress and myrtle.
- These events will lead to Yahweh's honor; they will be an everlasting sign which will never lose its effectiveness.
In Old Testament times, vows were taken seriously and fulfilled completely. No one had to take a vow, but once made, it was binding (Deuteronomy 23:21-23). The vow being fulfilled here is to praise God for his answers to prayer.I cringe to think of how often I've prayed desperately for something and after God has answered the prayer, often in ways far more fantastic than I would have imagined, just gone on about my business, as though His grace was what I deserved, not a word of thanksgiving passing from me to God. That's nothing less than shameful! At least in this instance, David wasn't so mindless: He thanked God.
5. In our lesson from the Psalm, David says that the water God sends to earth accomplishes something. It brings growth. In just the same way, our other lessons remind us, God's Word accomplishes good things in those open to it.
6. In last Sunday's lesson from Romans, Paul wrestled with the fact that the law of sin that lives in all of us thwarts even the good-intentioned from doing the right thing. (Anybody who's ever made a New Year's resolution knows all about this!) He asks, if we can't be relied on to live according to God's law of love for God and neighbor, even when we don't want to us, who can save us from futility? He answers by saying, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" We throw ourselves on God's mercy and God helps us.
How? That's the question that today's lesson answers.
7. It begins by reveling in the fact all "who are in Christ Jesus," that is, all who repent of sin and follow Jesus Christ, are free of the rightful condemnation for sin that is the common lot of all humanity.
8. Paul then draws a contrast between what he calls "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" and "the law of sin and death." The Spirit of God (also the Spirit of Christ), the Holy Spirit, enables us to trust the Good News of Jesus Christ. Once we are under Christ's lordship, we're set free from the old domination of sin which, barring what He accomplished for us through His death and resurrection, otherwise would have led to our everlasting separation from God.
9. Verse 4 makes clear that God's implacable requirement of righteousness are fulfilled in us not because of our obedience to the "first law," the laws embodied in the Ten Commandments and in Jesus' response to the young man about the greatest commands of God. When it come to obeying these laws, we have failed and failure leads to death.
But by the power of the Spirit, we are able to believe in Christ, Who has obeyed the law perfectly and payed the penalty for sin--death--on our behalf.
Belief in Christ then, is obedience to "the law of the Spirit," the means by which God graciously makes it possible for rebel sinners to be fit for eternity with God.
Those familiar with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe will see how C.S. Lewis worked this element of Biblical faith into the novel. There, Edmund turns traitor against Aslan, his siblings, and the people of Narnia. According to what's called "the deep magic" of that world, the White Witch, sort of a devil figure, has right to take Edmund's blood as "forfeit" for his treachery. She demands that Aslan turn Edmund over to her. Instead, Aslan gives his own life in Edmund's place. In this way, the "deep magic" is assuaged, just as in Christ's death, the appropriate sentence of the law that all sin deserves death, is fulfilled.
In Narnia, Aslan, resurrected like Jesus, later explains, there was "a deeper magic." It held that "when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead...death itself would start working backwards..." The deeper magic of our real world is what Paul calls "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus." As we trust Jesus Christ, our own death works backwards. We are made alive with Christ!
10. In the balance of the lesson from Romans, Paul talks about those who "live according to the flesh" over against those who have "set their mind on the Spirit." This is really no different from the contrast between the law of sin and death and the law of the Spirit.
Please note that when Paul talks about "the flesh," he isn't talking about sex, as many erroneously conclude. He's referring to people who have a "this world is all there is" mentality. Afflicted by this perspective, we no longer look at things from God's point of view. Life "in the flesh" can even take over among people who confess Christ as their Lord. Most frequently, it causes them to be closed-minded, to turn their churches into museums, and their faith into tales of what God did "back then," rather than relying on God to lead them through life today. Among those who don't profess belief in Christ, living "in the flesh" leads to all sorts of ills: materialism, racism, sexism, promiscuity, selfishness, traditionalism, and so on.
11. The Gospel lesson from Matthew happens on the same day that Jesus runs into opposition from the religious leaders of His nation and He claims that His true family aren't the mother, sisters, and brothers among whom He was raised in Nazareth, but all those who do the will of the Father. (See here.)
12. The great question with which we're left at the end of Matthew, chapter 12, is if Jesus is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy of a Savior, why is Israel, including it seems, His Nazareth kin, repudiating Him?
13. In Matthew, chapter 13, Jesus answers that question through a string of parables, most notably the one that begins the chapter, in verses 1 through 9, which Jesus goes on to explain to His disciples (and to us) in verses 18 through 23. For a detailed exploration of this passage, go here. There, I also explain a little bit about parables.
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