Peter Misselbrook's Blog
Jan 30 2020 - Luke 14:7-35 – Finishing well

I don't know whether you watch and enjoy the TV programme, Grand Designs. I watched an episode a while ago which I found deeply disturbing. A man, along with his wife and two teenage daughters, was living in a lovely house on the cliffs beside the sea. But he had always wanted to live in a lighthouse. Instead of adding a lighthouse shaped tower to the corner of his property he decided to demolish the house and build an extravagant and immense steel framed structure with an impressive tower on the corner facing the sea. The cliff on which he was building was unstable, requiring him to sink piles through the soil to rock. He managed to get the basic frame up before his money ran out. In debt and unable to carry on building his wife divorced him and his family fell apart. The house remains a shell, a mocking monument to its builder.

For me, that man's tragic project brought vividly to mind the parable told by the Lord Jesus. Jesus tells a story about a man who began to build a tower but abandoned the project with the foundations and perhaps a course or two of stone. Those who passed by laughed at his lofty ambitions – he intended so much but had produced so little. Jesus told the parable as a warning to the crowds who were saying that they would follow him. Jesus calls us to realistic discipleship. We need to understand what it means to follow him; it demands a complete devotion of all our energy and resources. A half-hearted disciple is one who will not last the course.

Yesterday we looked at how Jesus was determined to go on to Jerusalem even though it would result in his death. He had counted the cost and would let nothing turn him back. He was not going to leave a work half done. And he calls us to follow him with this same resolve; "Whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:27).

The man who set out to build a tower ran out of resources and could not continue. We need to recognise that we do not have sufficient resources in ourselves to live a life of consistent and persistent discipleship. But Jesus never turned back from the course mapped out for him by his Father. By his Spirit and risen power, he is able to provide us with the encouragement and strength we need to go on following him. In writing to the Philippians, Paul said that he was confident “that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). His confidence lay not simply in the character of the Philippian Christians, it rested in the God who had laid hold of them in Christ. If we try to live the Christian life in our own strength we will fail. But Jesus who first drew us to himself is able to keep us following him. Jesus has no abandoned projects.

Lord Jesus, thank you that you did not turn back from the cross and leave your work half done. You finished the work that had been entrusted to you and saved me from judgment and destruction. Help me to go on following you and never to turn back. Make me continually aware of my own weakness that I may depend entirely upon the presence and power of your Spirit who began the work in me. Enable me to finish the race you have run before me and to finish strong and full of joy.

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Jan 30 2019 - Genesis 38 – Judah and Tamar

What an extraordinary chapter of Scripture this is. Again we might ask what this chapter with all its unseemly details is doing in our Bibles, and particularly why it is located here, interrupting the flow of the story of Joseph. I suspect that most sermon series focussing on the history of Joseph would skip over it. Have you ever heard anyone preach from this passage?

Judah was the fourth of Jacob's sons, coming after Reuben, Simeon and Levi, all of whom were born to Leah. He had been the ringleader in persuading his brothers to sell Joseph into slavery; he appeared to have little compassion for his brother. This chapter recounts the humbling of Judah. Its graphic picture of immorality provides a dark background against which the honesty and integrity of Joseph, described in the chapters which follow, shines out more brightly.

The chapter begins by telling us that Judah left home and went to stay with a man of called Hirah. Might Judah have found the grief of father Jacob and the secret of Joseph's sale to the Midianites just too much to bear? We don't know, but for some reason he chose to leave the rest of his brothers and to live among the Canaanites. There he was attracted by a Canaanite woman called Shua. He married her and in due course she bore him three sons, Er, Onan and Shelah.

Many years pass by with Joseph all but forgotten. When Er reaches marriageable age, Judah finds him a Canaanite wife called Tamar. We are then told, "Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death" (38:7). We do not know what he did to merit such swift judgment but it may have been that he adopted some of the pagan practices of the Canaanites, practices that were an abomination to the Lord.

Judah then gave his second son, Onan, to Tamar. This chapter provides us with the first mention of "Levirite marriage" which was later incorporated into the Mosaic law. According to this custom, if a married man died without his wife bearing him an heir, his younger brother should then marry the woman. The first son she bore would be considered as the heir of her first husband (see Deuteronomy 25:5-6). Onan was not happy with this arrangement and so refused to get Tamar pregnant. He also was struck dead by the Lord.

Judah promised his remaining son, Shelah, to Tamar when he was old enough for marriage. But he failed to keep his promise and so Tamar tricked Judah into having sex with her and, when Judah threatened to have his pregnant daughter-in-law put to death she declared, with proofs, that Judah himself was the father of her twin children.

The chapter is full of hatred, strife, jealousy, immorality and revenge. God hates all of this, but he uses these very events to bring his own Son into the world. In Matthew's genealogy, or family tree, of the Lord Jesus only four women, other than Mary, get a mention. The four are Tamar who tricked Judah into fathering her child, Rahab the prostitute, Ruth the Moabite and Bathsheba the wife of Uriah the Hittite whom David seduced before having her husband killed. These are people through whom God was at work to bring Jesus into the world.

Once again we see that human sin and folly cannot derail the purposes of God that will be unfolded through the story of Joseph and the rest of the Bible. Rather it is precisely such human acts of wilfulness, immorality and evil which move the living God to act for our redemption. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus secures forgiveness and cleansing for such a world as this.

Father God, thank you that your grace in the Lord Jesus Christ is more than able to cover all our sins. We cannot excuse our sins, nor can we hide them from you; we readily confess them and plead your forgiveness. Humble us, Lord, that we may always remember that our hope rests not in our own schemes but in your grace and goodness that have been made known to us in Christ.

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Peter Misselbrook