Other comments on this day's readings can be found here.
Reading 1 - 2Sa 21:10
"Rizpah daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it out for
herself on a rock. From the beginning of the harvest till the rain poured down
from the heavens on the bodies, she did not let the birds of the air touch them
by day or the wild animals by night" (2Sa 21:10).
If the love of a woman for her slain sons could make her
prolong her mournful vigil for so long, how can we grow weary of considering the
sufferings of our Lord? These her children were slain by other hands than hers,
and yet she wept and watched: what ought we to do who have by our sins crucified
our Lord (Isa 53:5,6)? Our obligations are boundless, and so our love should be
fervent and our repentance thorough. To watch with Jesus should be our business;
to protect his honor should be our occupation. To remain beside him, come what
may, should be our life's work.
"She did not let the birds of the air touch them by day":
Compare Abraham's protection of the sacrifices in Gen 15:11. Shall we not chase
from our meditations those worldly and sinful preoccupations which defile both
our minds and the sacred themes upon which we are occupied? "Go away, evil
thoughts. Leave the sacrifice alone!"
"Or the wild animals by night": She chased away even the wild
beasts, with courage unusual for a woman. Will not we be ready to encounter
every foe for Jesus' sake?
Reading 2 - Jer 24:7
"I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD" (Jer
24:7).
Or "Yahweh". But this does not simply mean that the righteous
or the favored will be led by God to know that there IS a God. Any man possessed
of reason may know that there is a Supreme Being, who created all things and
preserves the universe in existence. The heavens declare the glory of God, and
the evidence of divine skill and power are so abundant that "God's invisible
qualities... have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made,
so that men are without excuse" (Rom 1:20). No, the knowledge intended here is
much deeper than that which comes from observation, and only affects the
intellect. To know that there is a God is a first step, which many men have
taken. The verse goes beyond that, to promise that the favored ones shall know
that God to be... Yahweh. He leads men to see that the God revealed in
Scripture, and manifested in the person of the Lord Jesus, is the God who made
heaven and earth.
Man fashions for himself a "god" after his own liking; perhaps
out of wood or stone, or perhaps out of his own consciousness, or his cultured
thought, a deity made to order, who will not be too severe with his iniquities
or deal out strict justice to the wicked. He rejects God as He is, and develops
other "gods" as he thinks they ought to be, and he says concerning these works
of his own imagination, "These are your gods, O Israel."
But those who are truly instructed by God's word learn that
Yahweh is God, and beside Him there is none else. The God of heaven and earth is
the God of the Bible, a God whose attributes are completely balanced, mercy
attended by justice, love accompanied by holiness, grace manifested in truth,
and power linked with tenderness. He is not a God who overlooks sin, much less
is pleased with it, as the gods of the heathen are supposed to be, but a God who
cannot look upon iniquity, and will by no means spare the guilty. This is the
great quarrel between the philosopher and the Bible believer. The philosopher
says, "MY god must be of such a character as I now dogmatically declare him to
be"; but the believer replies, "No, our business is not to invent a god, but to
obey the One who is revealed in the Scriptures of truth."
The God of the Bible is love, of course; but He is also
possessed of justice and severity; He is merciful and gracious, but He is also
stern and terrible towards evil; therefore unrepentant hearts say, "We cannot
accept such a God as this," and they call him cruel. In doing so they make
themselves idolaters -- even if they set up no graven images -- for they set up
another god and forsake the true God.
The Lord teaches his people that he is Yahweh, who brought
Israel up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage: the Yahweh who
smote Pharaoh with plagues, and drowned his army in the Red Sea, the Yahweh who
led his people through the wilderness, but cast out their enemies from before
them with a strong hand and an outstretched arm; the Yahweh who redeemed His
people, but chastened them for their iniquities and took vengeance upon their
idolatries. The God of Sinai is exactly the same God as the God of Jesus. 'I am
Yahweh your God, and I stand alone.' When man is content to believe in this God
as He has revealed Himself, and no longer goes about to fashion a deity for
himself according to his own desires and notions, then he is well on his way to
the Kingdom of God.
Reading 3 - Rom 12:1
"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to
offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God -- this is your
spiritual act of worship" (Rom 12:1).
The term "living" suggests how unusual is the "sacrifice" that
believers can now offer, since Old Testament sacrifices were dead.
Being a dead sacrifice is RELATIVELY easy: it means dying
once, and that's it. Even for Jesus, it might be said -- with all due reverence
-- that the death on the cross was the "easy part" -- terrible and painful
though it was. It was easy enough to do: thousands upon thousands of Jewish men
died on crosses, helped along by Roman soldiers.
The difficult part was what Jesus had done, for years and
years earlier -- living a perfect and blameless life. Of course, that's what
made the last act of his life meaningful to all the rest of us.
So we don't -- or shouldn't -- just offer a dead sacrifice: we
don't just throw ourselves down at the foot of the cross, or the "altar", and
say: "Take me, Lord, and kill me!" Absolute as such a sacrifice would be, it
would be relatively easy compared to what we are called to do. We are called to
be "living sacrifices", every day -- making mistakes, falling into sin again and
again, but standing up, being forgiven, and going forward again... seeking to
exemplify, in our lives every day, something of the perfect character of Jesus
Christ.
The sacrifice of Abraham and Isaac is a perfect example of
that: God doesn't accept the slaying of Isaac -- he gives him back his life. As
if to say: "Thanks for the offer; now I know that you want to serve me; but here
is how I want you to serve me... by LIVING. Now go and do it."
But the "go and do likewise" part is... really HARD! It goes
on and on, and -- inevitably, and many times over -- we fail. So we are taught
the lesson of our own fallibility, our own weakness, our own childishness, and
our pride is shredded, and we know how little we are worth! In this we learn the
need for forgiveness of sins, even as we strive to be the "living sacrifice".
And still we must get up and pull ourselves together, and try again, and again,
and again -- and go on.
And that's what is meant by a living sacrifice. But as one
observant (and probably rueful) fellow once wrote, "The trouble with 'living'
sacrifices is they keep climbing down off the altar!"
So we pray, "Lord, bring me back to your altar!" And we keep
praying that prayer.
