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Bible Tuesday for Lent 2, 2017

Bible Tuesday for Lent 2, 2017

Genesis 12:1-4

Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’*

4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him.

In the book of Genesis, the reader/hearer has been going along with some great stories of how things came to be: the creation stories that explain the natural word, the Tower of Babel story that explains the origins of language, the Flood Story that explains more aspects of the natural world the disbursement of peoples and ethnicities. Then the writer spells out the family tree of Shem, son of Noah, through whom the Semitic tribes descend. In that family tree are lots and lots of men including one Abram. (Abram is given the name Abraham by God later in the story.) With this mention of Abram, suddenly “the plot thickens!”

Despite the fact that we know nothing of Abram other than who is father and grandfathers were, going back many generations, God suddenly speaks directly to Abram and gives his the foundational promise of all Judaism and Christianity.

“I am asking you, Abram, to leave behind all this family tree that the previous chapter took such great pains to spell out, and to start anew in a place that I have chosen for you. In so leaving your past behind, I will do new and amazing things with you. I will give you your very own land which I will show you. I will give you your very own offspring, despite you age, offspring that will become so numerous that you will be ‘Abraham’, which means ‘the father of a great nation’. Through your great nation in your own land, I will bless all people of the world.”

It is because of this promise that the nation of Israel has fought for the past 4000 years to retain and maintain the Holy Land. It is because of this promise that Christians believe Jesus came, to fulfill this promise and be the blessing to all nations that God pledges to Abraham. It is because of this promise that the gospels and Paul’s letters were written, as an explanation of how God fulfills this promise through Jesus.

It is because of this promise that Christians are obligated to view Jews as the tree on which we have been grafted, because Christians are heirs to this promise because of the people who are Abrahams descendants, the Jews.

Psalm 121

I lift up my eyes to the hills—
from where will my help come?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.

3 He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
4 He who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.

7 The Lord will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
8 The Lord will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time on and for evermore.

Even a casual reading of the Hebrew Scriptures (aka Old Testament) reveals that the Israelites frequently blew off God and worshiped the gods of the peoples who already lived in Canaan at the time that God moved Abraham into the land. The most popular of these gods were Baal and his consort/concubine Ashera/Astartes. A common way to worship these was to erect little shrines to them atop the highest places around: atop hills, mountains, at the base of the tallest trees. It was a common thought that the higher up in the air you were, the closer you were to the relm of the gods and could best get their attention.

This psalm starts out “I lift my eyes to the hills” directly referencing those shrines to Baal and Ashera. The psalmist is in need of divine help and asks, “Will it really help me to go to the shrines in the high places?” But emphatically answers, “No! My help comes from the Lord God, the maker of all that is!” Frequently when gods are compared with Yahweh/God, these are divinities whose attributes are that they control fertility or water or mountains/volcanoes. But God’s attributes are that God made all the stuff which these other lesser deities supposedly control.

The psalm goes on to state how God rules and works all that God has created and how God cares for the people to whom God made that promise through Abraham.

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

What then are we to say was gained by* Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? 2For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3For what does the scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.’ 4Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. 5But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness

13 For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. 14If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. 15For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.

16 For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, 17as it is written, ‘I have made you the father of many nations’)—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

Here Paul the Apostle is formulating an argument. In the time of Jesus and Paul, Jews believed that salvation was assured them because they were descendants of Abraham, which they reasoned meant that they inherited the covenant which God made with Abraham in the Genesis text above. However, here Paul argues that inheritance by family tree, “according to the flesh”, doesn’t count for anything because the covenant God made with Abraham required that Abraham keep his end of the covenant, that is, Abraham had to leave his family and his kindred and go to where God would show him. For Abraham’s progeny, keeping the covenant meant living perfectly according to the Law of Moses. However, it is impossible for them to keep the Law perfectly, therefore the promise given to Abraham does not pass down to them.

Paul presents a whole new way of looking at the covenant God made and that Abraham was supposed to keep. Instead of discerning whether or not Abraham and all of his kindred kept the covenant, therefore will inherit what was promised, Paul argues that what really matters is whether or not Abraham believed God when God made this covenant. It was Abraham’s faith in God and what God was promising that was counted by God, not Abraham’s imperfect adherence to his end of the covenant.

John 3:1-17

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.2He came to Jesus* by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ 3Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’* 4Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ 5Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.* 7Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You* must be born from above.”* 8The wind* blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ 9Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ 10Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

11 ‘Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you* do not receive our testimony. 12If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.* 14And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.*

16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

17 ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Nicodemus only appears in the gospel of John. He is a member of the ruling council of the Jews, the Sanhedrin, or “the Seventy”, along with Joseph of Arimathea. In the gospel of John, both Joseph and Nicodemus go to Pilate asking for the body of Jesus and they both lay him in Joseph’s tomb.

This story is written to illustrate the main themes of the gospel of John. 1) Jesus is “the light of the world”. 2) Jesus “came to his own and his own did not receive him. 3) Jesus is the messiah who is to come AND the Son of God.

Jesus is the light of the world –

Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night symbolizing that Nicodemus is living in the dark. He acknowledges that Jesus is a great teacher, even one from God, but is still in the dark about the rest. When Jesus tries to revel the light of God to him, Nicodemus seems completely stumped and befuddled.

Jesus came to his own and his own did not receive him –

Jesus’ own should have been the not only his family but also the Jewish authorities: the High Priest, King Herod, the Sanhedrin, the Scribes and Pharisees. These were the guys that were supposed to know Hebrews Scriptures backward and forward and be able to spot the messiah from miles away. Yet here is Jesus in the flesh, in the same room as Nicodemus, but the poor guy fails to recognize God in the flesh.

Jesus is messiah AND Son of God –

For ancient and some modern Jews, these are not the same people. The Messiah was supposed to be a great military hero and monarch like King David. But the Son of God was supposed to be more like Elijah, a great prophet, but with Godly power. The gospel of John states from its very first verses that Jesus is God in the flesh, God in human form. Jesus is more than the messiah. Jesus is more than the Son of Man. Jesus is completely the Son of God and God himself. It is impossible for humans to wrap our minds completely around this. No wonder Nicodemus was so confused!