(This message was preached at St John’s on the 19/8/07, and the audio may be found here. )

The tale of the Good Samaritan is one of the most famous stories that Jesus told. Most Australians, even those with limited exposure to Christianity and Christian teaching, will have heard some form of this tale. The term ‘good samaritan’ has passed into our everyday vocabulary¹.

Countless variations have been told and retold, for many different audiences, with the only consistent message that “it is good to be good”. Or perhaps more accurately, “it is good to do good”.

Prime Minister Howard, in his recent address to Christians across Australia² cited this parable (along with the parable of the talents, which he called a “model for a free market” – a sermon in its own right!) as being influential for him as a Christian in politics. His exposition of the parable was twofold: everyone is valuable; and thus everyone deserves compassion.

Whilst these two things are unquestionably true, and can clearly be inferred from this parable, are they an adequate summary of Jesus’ message? To find the answer, let us turn to the text.

A story of doing

This episode in Luke’s narrative opens with a man questioning Jesus. This man, a lawyer, asks “What must I do to inherit the kingdom of God?” (25). He is asking Jesus’ opinion on one of the hot topics of the day, in the same way that we might quiz Mr. Rudd and Mr. Howard about their stance on refugee policy, stem cell research or abortion.

Jesus, in typical rabbinic fashion, answers with a question of his own: “What is written in the Law?… How do you read it?” In doing so, he not only turns it back on his questioner, he signals that his teaching is not something new, but something old; it is from the scripture that he is drawing his response.

The lawyer, of course, is delighted. After all, the Law is his specialty, and this gives him a chance to demonstrate his prowess in a very public setting. He quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 – “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” – and Leviticus 19:18 – “Love your neighbour as yourself.” To which Jesus responds, “You have answered correctly… Do this and you will live.”

Let’s pause, for a moment, and consider this. The lawyer asked what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus answers exactly that question: love the Lord your God and love your neighbour. Elsewhere, Jesus says that “[a]ll the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments,”³ and “[t]here is no commandment greater than these.”⁴ That’s what you have to do to inherit eternal life. Sounds simple, right?

Wrong. What Jesus doesn’t say is that you have to do those things perfectly. Every minute of every day. No breaks, no lapses, no rest, no mistakes, no errors of judgment. Perfectly.

Not going to happen.

Sorry, not a chance.

Can you imagine what it would be like to live like that, even if you could do it? Knowing that, even if you have somehow managed to live perfectly up until now – that is, you have done everything the Bible commands without fault – but slip up today, or tomorrow, or next week… all of your efforts will be lost. Or what if, like the rich ruler of Luke chapter 18, you can say “[a]ll these [laws] I have kept since I was a boy”⁵ and then Jesus goes and asks something more than what you’re willing to do? Perfect record… gone.

Paul takes up this theme in his letter to the Galatians:

All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law”.⁶

I think it safe to say that Paul does not believe this is a ‘winning’ tactic. In fact, in all of history there is only one man who has ever lived up to that standard, who has walked that path all the way into eternal life: Jesus himself.

But at least our lawyer now has the answer to the question that he asked. Had he asked a different question, he might have received a very different answer.

The lawyer’s second question, together with Luke’s commentary, reveal his motivation: “But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?'” (29).

I was never a good student at school. Don’t get me wrong, I always did well, but this was more by luck than good management. I knew every trick to maximise my marks, took every short cut in order to minimise the amount of work I had to do. As a result, twice a year at exam time I found myself praying for mercy and not justice! One of my most common techniques in preparing for an exam would be to pay very careful attention to what the teacher indicated as being most important. Quite often they would volunteer this information, but even when they didn’t they would usually give some guidance when asked. As a result, I would study those things in detail, sometimes to the exclusion of other material, on the assumption that their priorities would be reflected in the allocation of marks in the exam.

I hear something of the same attitude in the lawyer’s questioning. “What is the minimum that I have to do in order to gain eternal life?” Or perhaps, if we are to give him the benefit of the doubt, “What should be my top priorities?”

This guy knew the law. He understood the implications of being under the curse of the law. But he had a plan; reduce the law to the absolute minimum that was required and live by that. He is asking Jesus for a manageable ‘neighbourhood’ – not too big, and not too small, but just right. One common interpretation of the law was something like this: “love your neighbour, the Jew.” Some among the Pharisees went further and, reasoning that they were the only ones who followed the law they should be the only ones to benefit by it, narrowed it to “love your neighour, the Pharisee.”⁷

Jesus has other ideas. God is not in the business of minimising problems, but rather of maximising solutions. Can you imagine Jesus saying, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, not to send such big crops in future”? Of course not! Instead he says “Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”⁸

And so Jesus tells the well-known parable, to enlarge the lawyer’s vision:

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

At this point, the lawyer is thinking to himself, “OK, I must be more compassionate than priests and Levites,” a task in itself, as these were the people most entrusted with helping people; perhaps modern day equivalents might be a rescue worker or a Salvation Army officer. The lawyer has already, in his mind, passed judgment on these two, and does not want to identify himself with them. Jesus continues:

But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

The Samaritans were traditionally enemies of the Jews. They claimed to worship Yahweh, but chose to do so in their own way, rather than in the way God had commanded; they set up their own temple at Mount Gerizim in opposition to the temple at Jerusalem. Whilst they were descended from the Jews, they had also intermarried with the nations around them. Jewish historian Josephus accuses them of being fair-weather friends, willing to identify themselves as Jews when the Jews were prospering, but distancing themselves whenever they saw the Jews suffering, so as not to share their fate⁹. For these reasons and more, they were held in utter contempt as a cowardly, mongrel, half-breed nation. John is not kidding when he says “Jews do not associate with Samaritans”¹⁰. In fact, in the chapter preceding the one we are concerned with today, James and John were ready to “call down fire from heaven” to destroy a Samaritan village for a minor snub¹¹.

For a Samaritan to overcome social taboo, then, and help a Jew in such a sacrificial way was a powerful statement of compassion. Perhaps the traveller was so badly beaten as to be unrecognisable. The point was that it didn’t matter; the Samaritan’s compassion gave him no choice but to set aside his own journey, his own priorities, his (no doubt) urgent business and turn aside to help a neighbour in need. “When he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine [costly!]. The he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him [even more costly!]. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'”¹²

It all depends on your outlook. To the thieves, this traveling Jew was a victim to exploit, so they attacked him. To the priest and Levite, he was a nuisance to avoid, so they ignored him. But to the Samaritan, he was a neighbour to love and to help, so he took care of him. What Jesus said to the lawyer, He says to us: “Go and keep on doing it likewise” (literal translation).¹³

Up until this point, I think most people would be willing to agree, no matter what their background – Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, atheist or any other. It is a suitably moral story, appropriate for the instruction of children and adults alike, exhorting us to have compassion and kindness on all. To hear him talk about it, this is what Prime Minister Howard would take away from this parable. But to stop there is to miss the point; it is like giving up a deep drink from the spring of living water and taking instead a sip from broken cisterns that cannot hold water¹⁴.

As Carson writes, in answering the lawyer’s query

Jesus does not supply information as to whom one should help; failure to keep the commandment springs not from lack of information but from lack of love. It was not fresh knowledge that the lawyer needed, but a new heart – in plain English, conversion.¹⁵

A story of being

Let’s back up a bit. The very first question that the lawyer asked was, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”¹⁶ One commentator notes that

[e]ternal life is something to be inherited. And to receive an inheritance, you have to be an heir. No amount of doing will make you into one. Keeping the law is a way of life; it is not a way to life. It is only when by God’s grace we have become the right sort of people – his people, by new birth – that we begin to do the right sort of things.¹⁷

There are two things to dwell on here: if we wish to inherit eternal life we must first become an heir; being an heir will lead us to act righteously. Let’s explore these.

Becoming an heir

In telling the tale of the Good Samaritan, Jesus laid a subtle trap. By the time the Samaritan appears on the scene, the actions of the priest and the Levite have already been heard and, in the lawyer’s mind, judged. In the same way that you and I might expect an “And they all lived happily ever after” ending, so he would have been expecting a role model character to come along, someone he could look up to and emulate. I can just imagine him recoiling in revulsion on hearing that it was a despised Samaritan. Many Jews would rather have died than thought of themselves in the same mental ‘breath’ as a Samaritan. But that only leaves one other character to identify with: the traveller. And this is exactly what Jesus intended, for the only difference between the lawyer (or you or me, for that matter) and the perilous pilgrim is that the pilgrim was only “half dead” (30). The Apostle Paul writes:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.¹⁸

We need the ministry of a Good Samaritan to restore us to life or, more accurately, give us new life. Fortunately we have such a Saviour, and his name is Jesus. He offers the only alternative path to eternal life; one based not on doing but on being sons and daughters of God, and thus heirs together with Christ. Those are your two choices: try to earn your way to God, by living under the ‘curse’ of the law; or accept the free offer of God, by acknowledging his Lordship over you. As we’ve already seen, trying to earn your entrance into heaven, trying to cut the task of living righteously down to manageable proportions is chancy at best, even if your salvation isn’t riding on it; on the other hand, relying on the promise of God and the work of his Son is a sure thing.

I know which one I have chosen, and I hope that you have chosen or will choose the same.

But if the important thing is who we are, not what we do, why does Jesus command “Go and do likewise”?

Acting like an heir

Being children of God does not absolve us of responsibility to act. On the contrary: part of being an heir of God is acting like one.

Members of royal families are always under the microscope; every action is analysed, every comment studied and every slip-up proclaimed. We expect them to act in accordance with the dignity of their family, and are scandalised when they do not. How much more then should we who are royal heirs of the living God act in accordance with our parentage?

It’s fairly obvious, from Christians that I know and from my own life, that this does not happen instantaneously. There is a process involved, and that process centres around the work of the Holy Spirit. He works in us to change our hearts and minds and to conform us to the image of Christ, because this is God’s will for us¹⁹. Michael Wilcock puts it well:

It is much less important that [disciples of Jesus] should rush out doing the things they believe he wants, than that they should let him make of them the kind of people who inevitably will do such things.²⁰

Do you struggle to give generously when the Salvo’s come to your door? When someone at the train station approaches you for money, is your first reaction one of compassion or of cynicism? When a single mum is struggling to shepherd 3 kids, do you grin and bear it, perhaps with a sad smile of sympathy, or do you offer to help? Perhaps participating in the 40 hour famine too much effort, or too inconvenient?

God says:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.²¹

We must continue to pray for the truth of this promise to be revealed in us.

So will you do or will you be?

Jesus offers us two paths to eternal life. The first involves living under the ‘curse’ of trying to live up to the law. Like the lawyer, you can seek to cut the law down to make it manageable, to carve out a neighbourhood for yourself and do your best. If this is your current strategy, however, I urge you to reconsider because it does not work. God’s way is not to reduce the problem; he wants instead to increase the solution!

The alternative is to accept the Good Samaritan’s help, to allow him to bring life through new birth into his family, and to thus become heirs together with him of eternal life. And if you choose this, he will make you into the kind of person for whom there is no neighbourhood too large.

Endnotes

1. Even such a militant atheist as the celebrated Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins unblushingly uses the language of this tale to describe the presence of altruism amongst humans and other species (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion [Bantam, 2006] p. 215.).
2. 2007 Make it Count, organised by the Australia Christian Lobby, and webcast to hundreds of Australian churches on the 9th August, 2007.
3. Matthew 22:40
4. Mark 12:31
5. Luke 18:21
6. Galatians 3:10
7. Similarly, at Qumran the scope included only the “sons of light” – i.e. other members of the Essene community. “Sons of darkness” – anyone else – were to be hated! (1QS 1:9)
8. Luke 10:2
9. Josephus, Antiquities IX.xiv.3.
10. John 4:9
11. Luke 9:51-56
12. Luke 10:33-36
13. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary (Cook, 2001) p. 213.
14. Jeremiah 2:13
15. D. A. Carson et al, New Bible Commentary (21st Century Edition, IVP, 1994) p. 998.
16. Luke 10:25, emphasis mine
17. Michael Wilcock, The Message of Luke (IVP, 1997) p. 123.
18. Ephesians 2:1-2
19. Romans 8:29
20. Michael Wilcock, The Message of Luke (IVP, 1997) p. 121.
21. Ezekiel 39:26

The following is the content of a sermon I preached in January 2005, and is reproduced here for posterity… or something

• Luke 2:1-20
• Revelation 12:1-12

“What is the Matrix?” This was the question that formed the basis of a series of movies, about a world within a world. As the lead character pursues the answer to this question, he is suddenly taken from his “World”, that which he believes to be reality, and forced to completely re-evaluate it. Everything that he knows is shown to be false, a “prison for the mind”.

For Neo and the millions of other people blissfully unaware of the existence of the Matrix, life inside the Matrix was the only reality they knew. People lived and died, got married, had children, made friends, ate & drank. They experienced love, grief, joy, peace, anger, laughter, sadness and any other emotion known to man. Life was, so far as they were concerned, complete.

Yet, when Neo sees his life from a different perspective, when he understands that his “life”, as he knows it, is nothing more than a computer simulation, he is suddenly empowered to do all kinds of things – he jumps off 30-storey buildings and is not hurt, he learns skills in an instant, simply by having them ‘loaded’ – he even dodges bullets! The life that he thought he knew so well is completely changed through a new perspective, a different understanding.

Tonight, however, the question is not, “What is the Matrix?”, but “What is Christmas?”. I have entitled tonight’s sermon “Christmas Reloaded”. It is my hope that, through gaining a different perspective on what is arguably one of the best known stories in the world, we might, like Neo, see our lives transformed. Not that I recommend you run out and try dodging bullets after this sermon!

When you think about the Christmas story, what are the images that come to mind? For me, they are images of peace, tranquility and joy. “Peace on Earth and goodwill towards men,” as many carols put it. Indeed this is what we find in our reading from Luke. Aside from the minor problem of having to sleep in a stable, there seems little to indicate anything out of the ordinary. Hardly material for a story or movie, surely? Children are born all the time, there hardly seems anything special about this one. Sure, there are a few angels, some wise men, but where’s the action? Where’s the drama? The romance? Sure doesn’t seem to fit into any book or movie genre I know – it’s all so dull!

Then we turn to Revelation 12. The same event becomes so much more interesting. Crowns of stars, clothing of sunshine, a seven-headed dragon, warrior angels, great battles. You name it, it’s there! Much more like what we are used to seeing on TV.

And yet this is not the Christmas story we know. This is not the part of the bible that we turn to each year at Christmas time, that our parents read to us when we were little. Why not? Perhaps because it is somewhat harder to come to terms with, lacking the solid, earthy realities of mother and father, stable and manger, donkey and cattle. Without these things, Revelation 12 (and indeed Revelation in general) is dismissed by many Christians as being a dream bearing little or no relation to reality. Without easily recognisable anchors to things we are familiar with, we find ourselves unable to understand what is going on.

To understand Revelation 12, we must first understand something of its context. The book of Revelation was written by the apostle John, somewhere between 20 and 60 years after the death of Christ. He writes of a vision that he had whilst on the island of Patmos, a vision that God intended for him to share with seven gentile churches around Asia Minor. This kind of writing is often referred to as apocalyptic literature, which simply means writing that is prophetic in nature, often referring to the end of the world. If you’re interested, another example of apocalyptic writing in the bible may be found in Daniel 7.

Since the invention of SMS, we have taught ourselves a new way of writing, almost a new language – words and phrases get compressed down to as few characters as possible. ‘I will see you later’ becomes ‘Cya l8r’, ‘Where are you?’ becomes ‘Wru’. These conventions are used so often that they are simply understood. And because everyone understands them, nobody feels the need to explain what each one means, we simply use them as a normal part of our communication.

As John writes Revelation, he takes similar shortcuts. He uses symbols and metaphors to express himself, many of which are completely foreign to us. The churches that John is writing to, however, were part of a culture very much used to interpreting such ‘signs’. It was quite common for people to go to the temples of the gods of their culture to receive an oracle from a seer – kind of like today’s horoscopes, only even more vague and obscure. It was then up to either the priest of the temple or the person receiving the oracle to interpret it. Over time, a rich tradition of how certain symbols were to be interpreted was developed. These would not have had to have been explained to the people receiving this message from John, but we don’t have the luxury of having grown up with them. Just like some future generation trying to understand our SMS messages, we struggle to understand what these symbols mean.

As we go through the passage tonight, I will try to highlight some of the most important symbols, and explain what they mean.

Let’s start by examining the characters in Revelation 12.

1 A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.

The first of our three major characters appears, at first glance, to be Mary. A pregnant woman, giving birth to a child who will “rule all the nations with an iron scepter” (v. 5) (more on this later!). A closer examination, however, gives us a different interpretation.

The woman wears a “crown of twelve stars” (v.1), is clothed with the sun and has the moon for her footstool. There is another place in the bible where this combination of sun, moon and stars occurs – Joseph’s dream in Genesis 37. There, Joseph dreams of the sun, the moon and eleven stars bowing to one star. The dream is interpreted to mean that the stars are the twelve sons of Jacob, whilst the sun is Jacob himself and the moon is Rachel, Joseph’s mother. Extending this somewhat, we can then understand that the stars in the woman’s crown represents the twelve tribes of Israel, with the woman herself representative of the people of Israel.

The next character to appear in our unfolding drama is a dragon.

3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. 4 His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born.

One of the most common symbols throughout Revelation is that of the horn. A horn, quite simply, is a symbol of strength. The dragon has ten horns, and so is a creature of great strength.

In Revelation (and elsewhere in the bible) the number seven is usually symbolic of completeness. Having seven heads and seven crowns, therefore, indicates the completeness of the dragon’s power on earth – he is overwhelmingly powerful. This becomes clearer when we understand from verse 9 that the dragon is “that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the world astray” – that is, the dragon is the “Prince of this World”¹. Jesus himself does not dispute Satan’s claim when he offered Him the “kingdoms of the world” and the glory of them.

The line, “His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky,” (v.4) probably refers to the angels that Satan deceived, and who were cast out of heaven with him.

The third character is, of course, the child himself:

5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.

Without any doubt whatsoever, the child is Jesus. The “iron scepter” is a reference to Psalm 2:9:

You will rule them with an iron scepter;
You will dash them to pieces like pottery.

The image is of an iron rod being used to shatter clay. Just as the clay doesn’t stand a chance, so too is evil doomed under Jesus’ rule.

Now that we have a feel for who the characters are, we can turn to examine what they are doing. I don’t think the woman giving birth needs any explanation… so let’s instead ask ourselves why the dragon is hanging around in the delivery room.

Two weeks ago, Dave shared with us about two people who had been waiting for Jesus to appear – Simeon and Anna. Their waiting would have been characterised by longing, a massive desire to see the promised saviour. For them, the appearance of Jesus was an occasion for great joy, together with great peace that God was keeping his promise.

There was another, however, for whom the waiting period had not been so pleasant. Satan knew very well what the result of Jesus coming would be – indeed we see his fears come to pass towards the end of tonight’s passage:

7 And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down… He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

You see, Satan knew that his days were numbered – God had promised way back in Genesis 3 that there would come a descendant of Adam and Eve who would “crush [the serpent’s] head”. Since we have identified Satan as being the serpent (v.9), this prospect would not have been a pleasant one for him. Like Captain Hook hearing the crocodile’s clock, Satan has long been able to hear the sound of his death approaching.

In fact, Satan has been doing his level best to destroy the “seed” all along. Throughout history, he has taken every opportunity to try and kill off those who would be Jesus’ ancestors. Examples include: when Cain killed Abel; when Haman sought to have all of the Jews killed; the barrenness of both Sarah and Rebekah; and Esau threatening to kill Jacob for robbing him of his birth-right. In spite of this, he has failed every step of the way. His last remaining chance is that he can somehow corrupt or destroy Jesus himself.

Once again he fails, as Jesus is “snatched up to God and to his throne.” (v.5)

It would seem, from this passage, that Jesus was no sooner born than he ascended to be with God. The reason, I think, is that this passage is not really concerned with the fate of Jesus. Jesus’ story is covered much more thoroughly elsewhere in Revelation. Instead, the point of this passage concerns the fates of the woman and the dragon.

The woman, we are told, “fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days”². In Israel’s history, the desert was traditionally a place of refuge – God took care of Israel whilst they wandered through the desert for 40 years. More specifically, this reference reminds us of Elijah being cared for in the desert during three and a half years of drought – 1,260 days. Whilst there, God provided food in the form of the widow’s flour and oil which miraculously never ran out. Because of this, the period of 1,260 days is traditionally associated with a time of testing and trial – it is not actually a literal 1,260 days, but is symbolic. It is also, by the way, the exact length of time that Satan is given to “trample on the holy city” (v11:2), as well as the length of time given to God’s witnesses for witnessing (v11:3). It is important to note that there is a fixed end to Satan’s rule on earth – it will not go on for ever. This is an important promise to us, who have to live through it!

The final part of the passage explains exactly what happens to Satan:

10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
‘Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Christ.
For the accuser of our brothers,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
11 They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.

12 Therefore rejoice, you heavens
and you who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea,
because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury,
because he knows that his time is short.

Wherever you come across the words “I heard a loud voice say”, it generally means that an explanation is on the way. The Scooby gang is about to pull the rubber mask off the bad guy and tell us exactly who dunnit, how and why.

The who? The word Satan is the Hebrew word for ‘accuser’, so when the voice talks about the accuser having been “hurled down” (v.10), we know it is Satan they are talking about.

Why did they cast him out? Well, the only reason Satan was allowed to remain in heaven was because of his role as ‘accuser’. Kind of like the heavenly prosecutor – his purpose was to accuse us of our sins, to remind God that we are sinful and to invite his judgement upon us. More than just a job, this is something he did “day and night,” (v.10) suggesting that it is his purpose for existence. It is easy, now, to understand why Satan was so desperate to prevent Jesus’ coming – his reason for living was being taken away!

And God’s verdict? “Case dismissed. Thankyou Mr. Prosecutor, your services are no longer required, please remove yourself from my presence!”. Then when he refused to go, it was up to Michael and the other angels to remove him.

Now hang on. How could God, who is just, deliver a not-guilty verdict when we are so obviously guilty? From verse 11, we find that “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb (Jesus) and by the word of their testimony.” You see, when Jesus came to earth and died for our sins, Satan no longer had grounds for accusing us. As C. S. Lewis puts it in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

‘Though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.’

The Witch, like Satan, had the role of accuser. Her demands that Edmund was hers because of his treachery, and that his treachery could only be dealt with through blood, are not denied by Aslan. Instead of killing her then and there and removing the problem that way, instead of breaking the Emperor’s law, he chooses instead to be killed on the Stone Table in Edmund’s place – with amazing results! Aslan lives, whilst Edmund is freed from his guilt and the punishment that go with it. And the Witch? Her role as accuser is done – there is no-one left to accuse – and so she dies at Aslan’s hands (or paws!).

So out of all of this, what have we learned in answer to the question, “What is Christmas?” Christmas is, if you like, history’s alarm bell. The coming of Jesus marks the commencement of the time between his birth and his return – sometimes referred to as the “last days”. It heralds the 1,260 days of Satan’s time on earth, and of God’s witnesses witnessing. We who live in these times should remember that we, like the woman, have a place of shelter and refuge made ready for us by God. More than anything else, however, it should be a reminder of a victory already won:

Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God
and the authority of his Christ.
For the accuser of our brothers,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down. (v.10)

Endnotes

1. John 12:31
2. Wherever you see the phrase “Times, time and half a time,” in the Bible, it is referring to this length of time – a ‘time’ is a year, so ‘times’ is 2 years and half a time is half a year – three and a half years or 1,260 days.

When I was little, few things could make me happier than to bring a smile to my parents’ face. I used to love Fathers’ and Mothers’ days, because they meant that I could get a present and enjoy watching them unwrap it, and could bring them breakfast in bed then crawl in beside them and enjoy their company. Whether it was because of something I said or did, just knowing that I had brought them joy, that they were rejoicing in their love for me brought me great pleasure. Which is not to say, of course, that this was always foremost in my mind. Plenty of times I made them sad, angry or disappointed too, and that generally wasn’t so fun.

Nowadays, I particularly enjoy delighting and surprising my wife, Katrie. I love to surprise her, to express my love for her in as many different ways as I can think of – I might cook a special meal, or plan a special night out or organise some time when we can just do something entirely random. Once or twice I’ve even bought her flowers, but I tend to save that up for really special occasions!

I remember when we were dating, we used to leave notes for one another in innocuous places – in books, on the computer, in the microwave – just for the knowledge that it would be appreciated by the other person. I once heard of a couple who did the same thing, and she unrolled an entire roll of toilet paper so that she could write him a note on the last square. I just hope he wasn’t in too much of a hurry to appreciate it!

The Bible describes this kind of pleasure using the word ‘delight’, and tells us that God responds that way to us. We are his children and we delight him. True, sometimes we make him sad, angry or disappointed, but the fact remains that he loves us, and we bring him great joy – he delights in us, rejoices in us, cherishes us as his precious, precious children.

This week and next week, we’re going to look at some of the things that the Bible tells us delight God.

Psalm 147 – The Lord Delights in those…

1 Praise the LORD.

How good it is to sing praises to our God,
how pleasant and fitting to praise him!

2 The LORD builds up Jerusalem;
he gathers the exiles of Israel.

3 He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.

4 He determines the number of the stars
and calls them each by name.

5 Great is our Lord and mighty in power;
his understanding has no limit.

6 The LORD sustains the humble
but casts the wicked to the ground.

7 Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving;
make music to our God on the harp.

8 He covers the sky with clouds;
he supplies the earth with rain
and makes grass grow on the hills.

9 He provides food for the cattle
and for the young ravens when they call.

10 His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his delight in the legs of a man;

11 the LORD delights in those who fear him,
who put their hope in his unfailing love.

12 Extol the LORD, O Jerusalem;
praise your God, O Zion,

13 for he strengthens the bars of your gates
and blesses your people within you.

14 He grants peace to your borders
and satisfies you with the finest of wheat.

15 He sends his command to the earth;
his word runs swiftly.

16 He spreads the snow like wool
and scatters the frost like ashes.

17 He hurls down his hail like pebbles.
Who can withstand his icy blast?

18 He sends his word and melts them;
he stirs up his breezes, and the waters flow.

19 He has revealed his word to Jacob,
his laws and decrees to Israel.

20 He has done this for no other nation;
they do not know his laws.

Praise the LORD.

- Psalm 147

Psalm 147 is a psalm of praise to God, the creator and Lord over all – possibly written for the dedication of the rebuilt walls of Jerusalem¹. It is a psalm that touches on the ways God has blessed Israel, building it up, gathering exiles, healing the brokenhearted and binding their wounds. God is revealed as a God of great wonder, great power and great mercy.

Yet the key to understanding this psalm, the very heart of it, lies not in his power, his wonder or his mercy but in his delight.

11 the LORD delights in those who fear him,
who put their hope in his unfailing love.

In verse 11 we are told how we should respond to all the other stuff in the psalm. If we want to please the LORD, we need to fear him. If we want to delight him, we must put [our] hope in his unfailing love.

But what does this mean?

God, because of his love for us, desires relationship with us. What’s more, he loves it when we seek him out, when we turn to him and pursue relationship with him in turn. He loves it.

Jesus gives us the beginnings of insight into God’s delight when he tells the parable of the Lost (or Prodigal) Son². Picture for a moment the son, finally returning after being all but given up for dead, being embraced by the father who, “filled with compassion for him” (20) orders that a massive party be thrown in his honour – how’s that for delight? As he later explains to his other son, “‘We had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.'” (32). The son was not loved because of his actions – after all, by asking for his inheritance he effectively said to his father, “I wish you were dead” – but because of who he was and because of the relationship between them.

I’m fairly certain that my parents’ delight when I brought them presents was not directly because of the presents that I gave. Let’s face it, a $2 piece of slice wrapped in cellophane and all but destroyed by that peculiar mode of transport we call the school bag cannot have been all that appealing!

I remember that one time I decided to make breakfast in bed for both Mum and Dad. The only trouble was that I had never made either tea or coffee before… but how hard could it be? Now Dad used to drink instant coffee, but Mum used to have tea leaves. I knew that the strainer came into the whole thing somewhere, but wasn’t quite sure where… and so I put the coffee in to the strainer and poured hot water through it, and put the tea leaves in the bottom of a cup and poured boiling water in on top. Needless to say, Dad ended up drinking what was, to all intents and purposes, hot water, whilst Mum’s hot water had floaties in it! They both smiled, though, however crookedly, and thanked me profusely, heaping me with praise for my kind actions – you see, they were interested not so much in the gift as they were in the heart of the giver. They knew that my gifts were merely a token of the love that I bear for them, and the I was expressing that love the best way I knew how.

In the same way, God is more interested in our attitude as we approach him than in our actions. Some Christians have conceived this idea of God as being like some elderly relative who, so long as you say the right things, suffer your cheeks to be pinched and write a nice thank-you note for them to show to their friends, will give you presents (at least) twice a year. But God is not like that at all. If I’m singing half-hearted praise to him, if I pray with my lips but not with my heart, if I insist on trying to conform God into my own image and plans then that is abhorrent to him. God will not tolerate people who seek him out trusting in their own righteousness, nor will he put up with braggarts or boasters. The Lord sustains the humble but casts the wicked to the ground (6).

Instead, the psalmist spells out the attitude that we are to have when we come into God’s presence – one of fear, and of hope.

… who fear him

Fear is a word commonly used in the Bible, particularly in relation to God. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom”³ we are told. It usually has one of two meanings: terror; or awe.

Terror is the kind of fear we are most familiar with. We’re afraid of many things: snakes, spiders, sharks; heights, depths, small spaces, large spaces, empty spaces; separation, commitment, rejection. In fact, I looked up phobias on the internet and found a site⁴ where they are listed from ablutophobia (the fear of washing or bathing) all the way through to zoophobia (the fear of animals) – some 530+ in all! Indeed, we make and watch entire movies whose sole purpose is to scare the wits out of us!

Psalm 147 alludes to many things of which we might rightly be afraid: a God of piercing knowledge, able to count the stars and call them by name (4, 5) surely knows all of our secrets, the ones we’d rather stayed buried; a God who can cover the sky with clouds and supply the earth with rain, who makes the grass grow on the hills and provides food for the cattle(8,9), well, what happens if he decides to stop doing those things? Who can withstand his icy blast? (17)

Is it God’s desire then that we should cower in fear whenever we are in his presence?

We’ve already established that he is a God of love, that he rushes to meet us when we return to him. Indeed Psalm 147 gives more evidence (as if we needed any) of God’s unfailing love for us… he builds up Jerusalem’ he gathers the exiles of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. (2, 3), and He grants peace to your borders and satisfies you with the finest of wheat. (14). No, this is not the picture of a God bent on intimidating us into cowering submission and incoherent terror!

Instead, it is God’s intention that we should approach him with awe and respect.

Imagine for a moment that you were presented with the opportunity to meet with your greatest hero, or someone who you respect above all others. What would you do to prepare yourself? Who here would rock up drunk to a meeting with the Queen? Or would go to a wedding or a funeral wearing stubbies and thongs? Even if you did, you would know it was wrong, right? Why? Because there are certain people and certain events that demand our respect.

In certain people, both of these aspects get mixed. For example, when pulled over by a police officer, most of us are able to respect that he or she is doing their job. At the same time, however, we know that the officer has the power to take away our licence, impound our vehicle or even to imprison us – and this leads us to fear that they might do so. Similarly, imagine yourself in front of a judge, who has the power to fine you, imprison you or even (in some places) condemn you to death. Even an innocent person might be afraid in such a setting, because what if the judge got it wrong?

But if there was ever a person for whom fear and respect were in order, it is Jesus. When the time comes, and all the peoples of the earth stand before him, Jesus himself tells us that “‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God'”⁵. Note what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say “some knees”, or “most knees”. It doesn’t even say “every Christian knee”. No, when Jesus comes again, and is revealed in his glory as the Judge of all the Earth, everyone will acknowledge him as their Lord. I assure you that, when that happens, both kinds of fear we have talked about will be present to some extent or another in every mind. Who can doubt that we will be in awe of Jesus, who “will come like a thief in the night”⁶ and yet will be undisguisable in the same way that “lightning that comes from the east is visible in the west”⁷? Who can even imagine standing before Jesus and not harbouring the tiniest amount of fear – even an innocent man standing before a judge has his doubts and fears, how much more should we who are far from innocent and standing before the One who knows everything we ever did?

There will be a difference, however, between those whose uppermost thought is one of fear and those who are overcome with awe. That difference will be where they have placed their hope.

… who put their hope in his unfailing love.

Now we’ve come to the heart of the matter.

Picture, if you will, the scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and friends finally reach the Emerald City. As they are escorted through the city, drinking in the wonders of a horse of many colours and the grandeur of the great city, their trepidation steadily builds, climaxing as they are ushered into the vast chamber of the Wizard himself. As the Wizard’s voice booms out, all of them are afraid, not least the cowardly Lion whose knees are almost visibly knocking together. And yet they don’t turn tail and run. Why? They have heard the tales of a Wizard who is good, who is able to help them out of their various predicaments. They have come in hope that he will do so, and their hope overcomes their fear.

One guy describes it like this:

There is a beautiful relation between hope and fear… They are like the cork in a fisherman’s net, which keeps it from sinking, and the lead, which prevents it from floating.⁸

Together our fear and our hope keep us with a proper attitude towards God. Psalm 147 is drenched in this balance: on the one hand you have the LORD, counter of stars, mighty in power, with limitless understanding (4,5), who hurls down his hail like pebbles (17) and is, above all others, worthy of fear; on the other hand stands the LORD whose lovingkindness for Israel stretches across generations, whose provision brings prosperity (8,9), who has revealed his word to Jacob, his laws and decrees to Israel (19) as a sign of his covenant with them, his special promise that he will be their God, and they will be his people – cause for hope above all others.

Let’s take a moment to consider what kind of hope we’re talking about here. Hope as the world would describe it is something of chance. “I hope I win the lottery,” “I hope you have a nice day,” or “Hopefully it won’t rain.” We are expressing a desire that something will (or won’t) come about. Usually it is something we have no control over. And usually we have some sort of backup plan in case it doesn’t happen.

That’s not the kind of hope Psalm 147 talks about. Listen again to verses 10 and 11:

His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his delight in the legs of a man;
the LORD delights in those who fear him,
who put their hope in his unfailing love.

Horses and the legs of men represent cavalry and infantry, the armies of ancient times. The psalmist is deliberately setting up a contrast between those who rely upon their own strength rather than God’s mercy and love. This is particularly poignant if, as is speculated, this psalm was written for the occasion when the returned exiles had just finished rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. In that light, God is saying through the psalmist, “Even though you now have walls, even though you have kings for friends (for the moment), don’t rely on them. Rely on me.”

This is a reminder for us as a nation. How much do we Australians rely on our strength, easy-going natures, tolerance and our relatively peaceful and democratic society? We define ourselves by who we are friends with, we go to war overseas to prevent war coming to us. We feel safe because of our physical distance from other nations. Let me ask you, is our hope in our horses and men, or is it in God’s unfailing love? When the chips are down, do we turn to God? Or to the Americans? When we consider our world in chaos, climate change out of control, floods, cyclones, fires, hail storms, tsunamis – where is our hope in these things? In God’s love? Or in our own efforts?

More than just a message to our nation, though, I believe that Psalm 147 challenges us to consider our own attitude towards God. Let’s play a game. In your head, I want you to finish each of these sentences:

• When things are hard, I am encouraged because…
• When things go wrong, and not according to plan, it’s OK because…
• When I screw up, when I let myself and everyone around me down, I tell myself that…
• When the chips are down, when all other hopes have disappeared, the one that will remain is that…

How’d you go? What kinds of things came to mind? Here are some of mine: I have an education; I have a job; I am resourceful, and will find a way through somehow; I have friends and family who love me; I’m an Australian. Perhaps you came up with some others: I’m a good person; I’m attractive; I’m healthy (or perhaps I have the right doctors); I know the right people; I have the right girlfriend/boyfriend; I come from the right family; I’m financially secure; I’ve done this before. Some of you might even have “spiritual” answers: I go to church; I pray; I read the Bible.

Your answers to each of those questions reveal where your hope lies. And unless your first word in finishing each one was “God”, your hope is in yourself – your qualities, your possessions, your relationships, your actions. But what happens when those things are taken away? What will you do for hope then? Compare this with placing your hope in God’s unfailing love, a love that will not ever be taken away, a love backed by the power to transform your life, a God who makes “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future”⁹, both in this life and the next. God loves us. Unfailingly. He preserves our inheritance for us in heaven, and he shields us until the time comes for us to receive it¹⁰.

I was reminded recently of the story of Jairus and his daughter¹¹. Jairus, a “ruler of the synagogue” (41), was an important man whose job would have included reading the scriptures in the synagogue and perhaps preaching from them; he would have prayed with and for the sick; he would also have been responsible for protecting the people under his care from ‘false Messiahs’, of whom he no doubt considered Jesus to be one. When “his only daughter, a girl of about twelve, was dying,” (42) he would certainly have prayed for her – after all that was his job. But that didn’t work. I can imagine him there on his knees, pleading with God: “I have served you all these years, I have studied your word, I have cared for your people – haven’t I earned the right to have you heal my daughter? Whatever I have to do, I’ll do it! Just, please, please, save her.” All of his hopes had been stripped away. None of them were any good now. Can you imagine his confusion when God’s response was, “You need Jesus” ? Can you imagine the mixed feelings as he “fell at Jesus’ feet, pleading with him to come to his house” (41)? How about the emotional yo-yo as Jesus first says he will come, then stops half-way there for some seemingly trivial matter of someone touching him, the arrival of messengers to inform Jairus that his daughter is dead? And then come Jesus’ words, “‘Don’t be afraid; just believe and she will be healed.'” (50) How would you be after a day like that? I suspect strong drink might be involved!

In the end, Jairus had to believe Jesus and take him at his word. What choice did he have? But believe he did, for he went in with Jesus and witnessed his daughter being healed, indeed being raised from the dead.

Here’s the point: Jesus didn’t come because Jairus was a good man, although he probably was; he didn’t heal the girl because Jairus was well respected, or well educated, or popular, or pious, although he was probably all of those things; Jesus acted because Jairus had chosen to rely upon his love and his power, he had chosen to acknowledge that he was helpless in himself and was utterly reliant upon God’s unfailing love to be sufficient for him and for his daughter.

How about it? Is that the kind of hope that you need, the kind that can bring the dead to life, the blind to see, the captive to freedom? Are you ready to give up the uncertain hope found in your own power, privilege, position, performance and piousness? Do you hear God’s voice saying to you, “You need Jesus”? The good news is that God loves you, and his love for you is unfailing. He invites you to put your hope in his love. [Possibly pray some sort of sinner’s prayer here, explaining that it is not the words themselves that are special, but rather the attitude – a mixture of fear and hope.] The choice is yours. If you have made that choice tonight, I would love to hear from you, to pray with you and encourage you to take hold of the hope that God is offering to you.

One final note. Our hope in God’s unfailing love is for now – he loves us now, he cares for and tends his flock now. But that is not all. The hope we have now is like the promise of the time just before dawn: light appears in the east, and we know that the darkness is on the way out, even before the sun is revealed in all of its glory. But it is the Son that we are hoping for, who is the answer to and completion of all our hopes. It is the Son who will chase away the darkness and imperfections of this world, who will judge the world according to true justice. It is God’s Son who is our hope, who is the gift of God out of his unfailing love.

Our hope is anchored in the past: Jesus rose! Our hope remains in the present: Jesus lives! Our hope is completed in the future: Jesus is coming!¹²

Endnotes

1. See Ne 12:27-43
2. Luke 15:11-32
3. Proverbs 1:7
4. http://phobialist.com
5. Romans 14:11, quoting Isaiah 45:23; cf. Philippians 2:10-11
6. 1 Thessalonians 5:2
7. Matt 24:27
8. George Seaton Bowes, In Prospect of Sunday, quoted in C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David (Hendrickson) Vol. 3, p. 430.
9. Jer 29:11
10. 1 Pet 1:4-5
11. Luke 8:41-56
12. Clowney, The Message of 1 Peter, IVD, p. 46.