September 21 - A Human King or a Divine King? 🚧Â
The Bible is filled with variations on a theme: humans messing up and God, remarkably, not giving up and working again with humans. The Bible starts with the description of how God intends humans and the world to function, and each iteration of the theme makes you wonder how many ways humans can mess up, and why God doesn’t just abandon his project. But, the story moves forward and clearly includes a place for us — right between Acts and Revelation. How is your variation on the theme going?! Remarkably, the Bible isn’t just a set of endless variations, it also describes how the story will ultimately work out.
We start here, because Psalm 1 is the heartbeat behind these readings. A few thousand years ago, you might have been intimidated to pick up the large scroll of Psalms. Today we have all the scrolls together — even more intimidating. Is that how you feel? The first part of that big scroll (Psalm 1) has advice: delight in and meditate (or “chew”) on scripture day and night. Look at the consequences: a flourishing tree, always bearing fruit! Is this part of your life-pattern? Is there some way to make “chewing on scripture day and night” part of your daily pattern? (Psalm 1 uses the Hebrew word torah which means instruction, teaching, guidance. If your version uses law, don’t think legal code).
**Genesis 1:1-2:4**
Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. This chapter is amazing, and it contains our job description: we are to rule and manage creation with God. And we get a little flavour of what that looked like: God and humans walked together in the cool of the day (Gen 3:8). I wonder what they talked about? Is this job description good enough for you? Do you wish for more details? As the Bible story unfolds, we get more details of what it looks like (for example days 4 & 5 this week). (Check out this great video on Genesis 1)
We got a whole two chapters into the story of God and humans ruling the world together, and now things fall apart when we meet a talking snake! Did you notice how he takes God’s words and twists them? Did you see the irony: the snake promises Eve they can be like gods when they are already God’s image. Tragically, they choose to define good and bad for themselves. Did you notice that shame, guilt and brokenness showed up right away, even before God describes the consequences? What about you, are you comfortable with God defining good and bad? Or do you want that right?
**Exodus 19:1-8**
We are now a few variations into the story. For several months, the people have been participating in this incredible display of Yahweh’s power and intention. At the beginning of a 1-year pause at Sinai, Yahweh tells this subset of humanity their job : you’re to be priests - the connection between humanity and me. Is this a different job from Genesis 1? What is their response? If you were there, what would your response have been? Next week, we’ll look further down the story to the demand for a human king.
We are now many more variations into the story. Jesus is describing what Yahweh’s kingdom is like and how to be a citizen of the kingdom - what it looks like to follow the original job description. Open and regular communication with God is essential and Jesus’ shows us how to pray. “When you pray” (Jesus assumes you are) does your heart desire to see God’s kingdom here soon (vs 10)? like your job description says? How are you doing with that? (We’ll revisit Matthew 6 in a big way in the new year)