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Mark 8:1-9 - Lectionary for Trinity 7

7/23/2020

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7/23/20
Many churches throughout the world use a Bible reading schedule called a "lectionary." It's just a fancy word meaning "selected readings." Posts like this reflect on the readings for an upcoming Sunday or other Church holiday, as found in the historic one-year lectionary.

It’s easy to view Mark 8:1-9 from the perspective of the miraculous feeding of the multitude. About four thousand people (v. 9), all fed to the point of satisfaction, when before they ate there was concern that they wouldn’t make it back home before fainting from lack of food, and all of it happening starting with seven loaves and a few fish. Certainly, this is a powerful miracle.

However, I’d like us to look at the passage from a slightly different perspective. What were the people doing? Jesus had been going here and there, healing and teaching. We don’t really have information about the occasion or the overall context of this gathering. But it’s significant that the crowd, apparently this crowd, had been gathered for three days. We can only assume they were hearing Jesus’ teaching and that those who were sick were coming to him for healing.

Would this take a while? No doubt. I have had instances of working with a crowd of people, but the biggest one I have ever worked with in this way, praying for individuals, hearing problems and bringing biblical teaching to them in a public space, and trying to show care outside of a formal setting was much smaller, perhaps four hundred people, not four thousand. This is an enormous crowd of people, all with different needs. And the amazing thing is that they stick around. It’s entirely different from having a Bible study or conference in which there are set presentations and people come and go.

It probably isn’t late in the day. You don’t send a crowd of pedestrians away to go home when the day is already over. You send them home in the middle of the afternoon. But they can’t go home without eating something. They will pass out on the way. This indicates to us that they may have had some food on the first day, and maybe a little on the second day, but it is gone. They didn’t plan, maybe couldn’t plan, to be with Jesus as long as they were. If Jesus were to extend the gathering, it would result in hunger again, as well as loss of ability to care for any family at home. The crowd needs to eat and be sent away.

What’s amazing here is that the crowd stayed with Jesus as long as they did! Their food ran out, they had been hearing him, receiving healing, receiving strength. Jesus was caring for people. But when you’re hungry and thirsty you start thinking about going home. The second day you will almost certainly decide to go home. But this is a third day. 

Jesus is giving the people words of life. They are eager to receive those words. They need to hear that God’s kingdom is with them, that God’s merciful reign is present in Jesus, and that he is able to care for them all the days of their life, into eternity. 

In these last days, God has provided for his people. We can hear God’s Word over and over again through books, church services, studies in person and even online. We can receive the teaching of Jesus. But are we willing to stay with him? What if it were a whole day? Two? Into a third day?

Jesus has the words of life. He is willing to provide them for us. He can provide for all our physical needs as well, but what he’s really there to do is to bring us reconciliation with God, forgiveness, life, and salvation. May we, like this crowd in Mark 8, be ready to hear from our Lord.

If this brief meditation was helpful to you, I hope you will check out the other materials on our website at www.WittenbergCoMo.com and consider supporting us.

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Romans 6:19-23 - Lectionary for Trinity 7

7/22/2020

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7/22/20
Many churches throughout the world use a Bible reading schedule called a "lectionary." It's just a fancy word meaning "selected readings." Posts like this reflect on the readings for an upcoming Sunday or other Church holiday, as found in the historic one-year lectionary.

The Bible pictures all of humanity as being in some sort of servitude. Speaking to the Romans, a culture where slaveholding was very common, the apostle Paul uses the very familiar terms of slavery. When the Romans were in sin, they were slaves to sin. They have been purchased out of that condition and are now slaves of God. He doesn’t picture the Christians as entirely free agents. That would be to say they serve themselves and thus are still slaves to sin, as the world became a slave to sin in the Fall.

When we are purchased by God, we no longer serve sin. We serve God. Rather than working for evil we work for good. Rather than working for unrighteousness we work for righteousness. Rather than receiving wages of sin, which lead to death, we receive wages of righteousness, leading to sanctification - being holy before God.

By the way, from an historical perspective, it was perfectly normal for slaves in the Roman world to receive some wages. They weren’t that much, but a person who was careful could usually purchase his own freedom after several years’ servitude. Slavery was not race-based but was culturally and politically based. Nations threatened or overcome by Rome would send slaves to Rome. 

The beauty of being a slave of God is the value God has placed upon us. He gave his life, in the death of Jesus, God the Son, to purchase you and me. He gives us freedom from the tyranny of sin. He gives us eternal life as opposed to eternal death. And there is no reason why anyone in his right mind would want to buy his way out of such a situation. We have the riches of God in Christ. We are presented before him in holiness.

If this brief meditation was helpful to you, I hope you will check out the other materials on our website at www.WittenbergCoMo.com and consider supporting us.

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Psalm 33:1-11 - Lectionary for Trinity 7

7/21/2020

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7/21/20
Many churches throughout the world use a Bible reading schedule called a "lectionary." It's just a fancy word meaning "selected readings." Posts like this reflect on the readings for an upcoming Sunday or other Church holiday, as found in the historic one-year lectionary.

It’s always hard to make predictions. Often it is even difficult to evaluate our current situations. Yet I think Psalm 33:10-11 may just have a strong application to our lives today. “The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations” (ESV). Who would have thought, a years ago, that our nation would be in the midst (at least I hope we are not near the beginning) of a health crisis, that we would have nearly tripled unemployment, and that financial markets would have gone reeling in the first half of this year? There weren’t really many warning signs about that. Yet we are where we are.

Is God in the process of bringing international plans to nothing? Is he frustrating our plans? Some will ask whether this is God at work! The Bible describes God as the one who knows all our hopes, all our dreams, all our plans, all our cultures, all our finances, and all our weaknesses intimately. Not one of them escapes his eye. And in none of them are we separated from God (Romans 8). 

Verse 11 reminds us that our plans are subject to change, but that God’s eternal plan and purpose doesn’t change. His plan is to convict the world of sin, to turn people to faith in Him, and to reconcile the world to himself. This he accomplishes through Jesus’ perfect life, death, and resurrection. His Word says it is for you.

If we want our plans frustrated, we can depend on ourselves or on anything other than Jesus. Or we can look to the Lord, acknowledge that he is the redeemer and Lord of all. We can know that his plan, his intent, is sure, and that it is for our good.

If this brief meditation was helpful to you, I hope you will check out the other materials on our website at www.WittenbergCoMo.com and consider supporting us.

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Genesis 2:7-17 - Lectionary for Trinity 7

7/20/2020

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7/20/20
Many churches throughout the world use a Bible reading schedule called a "lectionary." It's just a fancy word meaning "selected readings." Posts like this reflect on the readings for an upcoming Sunday or other Church holiday, as found in the historic one-year lectionary.

I think it’s really significant that, in Genesis 2:15, before the fall into sin, God gave the man he had created a job - to work the garden and keep it. We don’t really know what this included, but we can get a reasonable picture of it based on what a wilderness is like after the fall. There are lots of plants. This is a fertile place, well watered, and rich in natural resources. God intends his people to do some caretaking. There are plants that provide food, plants that provide shelter, warmth, and the ability to cook (I think the first humans knew about cooking, tools, and creating shelter. They were created in God’s image. They didn’t need to invent everything from scratch. They were inventive and instinctively knew a good bit about how to take care of themselves.). The goal was not to leave “nature” to itself. It was to take care of nature, to intervene when appropriate, and to use resources for good.

At times, Christians have forgotten that they still have a divine mandate to care for their surroundings and use them for good. Some have engaged in plunder and careless use. Some have decided that temporal things don’t matter and can be squandered. On the other hand, some have adopted the view of the Romantic environmentalist movement which says we want to leave nature entirely to itself and avoid human interaction of any sort. 

The biblical view is somewhere in between. We are to use our environment, but carefully and gently. There’s a sort of sustainability which comes from good stewardship. Since the fall into sin, it’s harder to keep everything in order. The plants that provide food are under more active attack by plants and animals that could kill them. Plants that are overcrowded don’t mature to their full potential. However, the crowded plants might be very useful for cooking, heating, and even building. Animals that are overcrowded become sick and even starve. Animals that are over-hunted become rare and can die out. Meanwhile, we try to persuade most of the wildlife to stay in their homes (outside) and out of our homes (inside). 

God gave his people a mandate to keep the garden. As human population has spread, that mandate has remained unchanged. We tend the garden where we live. And as we keep it and nurture it, we’ll have a good and pleasant place to live, abundant with food, shelter, and all sorts of interesting things to explore. The work is good.

If this brief meditation was helpful to you, I hope you will check out the other materials on our website at www.WittenbergCoMo.com and consider supporting us.

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