Peter Misselbrook's Blog

Jul 17 2019 - Hosea 14 – Repentance and blessing

Hosea's home life formed a painful visual aid of the relationship between the Lord and Israel. Despite the unfaithfulness of Gomer, Hosea's wife, he continues to love her and seeks to draw her back to loving him. The Lord has the same love for Israel, despite their unfaithfulness to him.

Hosea 14 records Hosea's pleas to Israel that they should return to the Lord. They need to return in a spirit of repentance, seeking forgiveness. They should have learnt by now that there is no other power to save them and care for them like the Lord their God – Assyria will not save them (v.3).

In verses 4-8 the Lord speaks tenderly to his people. God knows that left to themselves they will not change their ways. So God will not wait for them to return to him; he will act in love towards them; "I will heal their waywardness and love them freely" (v.4). The verses then go on to speak of how Israel will again prosper under God's blessing.

The chapter, and the book, then conclude with a word to the reader:

Who is wise? Let them realise these things.
    Who is discerning? Let them understand.
The ways of the LORD are right;
    the righteous walk in them,
    but the rebellious stumble in them. (Hosea 14:9)

All who read this sad story of Israel's faithlessness and God's judgment need to consider the implications for their own lives. If you are wise, you will take this lesson to heart, understand that God's ways are right and best and will seek to walk in them – to remain in the love of God.

This chapter of Hosea reminds me particularly of the parable Jesus told about the Prodigal Son or the Waiting Father. In that parable, the son who had rebelled against his father and squandered all that the father had given him at last comes to his senses and, with some trepidation, returns home. There he finds his father has been waiting and longing for his return. The prodigal is forgiven, embraced and generally made a fuss of, much to the elder brother's consternation.

The parable pictures God's longing for the return of his rebel children. But the best news of the Gospel is that our loving Father does not merely wait passively for his rebel children to return. Jesus is not like the elder son in the parable, on the contrary, he reflects the Father heart of God expressed in Hosea. He, the Father's obedient Son, loved us so well that he left the Father's house and came to find us when we were sat in the degradation and poverty of our sins. He came to grant us forgiveness, heal us and restore us. He came to bring us back to the Father's house where there is great rejoicing over each rebel who returns home.

And, as Christ reflects the loving heart of the Father who grieves over his wayward children, so we are to reflect the heart of Christ who came to seek and to save those who were lost:

Filled with compassion for all creation,
Jesus came into a world that was lost.
There was but one way that He could save us,
Only through suffering death on a cross.
God, you are waiting. Your heart is breaking
For all the people who live on the earth.
Stir us to action, Filled with Your passion
For all the people who live on the earth. (Noel & Tricia Richards)

Loving Father, thank you for the embrace of your love. Lord Jesus, thank you that you were willing to come and find us when we were lost and to bring us home. Holy Spirit, help us to show the same love for those who are still far off from you and to invite them to come home.

Jul 17 2020 - Mark 1:1-28 – Turn, turn, turn

Mark begins his account of Jesus in an abrupt, no-nonsense style, "The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God" (Mark 1:1). The rest of his book will unpack this claim. It starts (or almost starts) with the declaration of God himself, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased” (1:11). At the centre of his Gospel is the confession of Peter, “You are the Christ” (8:29). And at the end (or almost the end), Mark records how even a Gentile, a hardened Roman centurion acknowledges, "Surely this man was the Son of God!" (15:39).

Mark begins with a brief account of John the Baptist. He is introduced with a quotation from Isaiah 40;

A voice of one calling:
“In the wilderness prepare the way for the LORD;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God... (Isaiah 40:3)

In its original context, these words from Isaiah are addressed to the exiles in Babylon. It is part of an announcement that God's judgment upon Israel is coming to an end and that he is about to come and save them. Just as God had previously rescued Israel from Egypt and brought them through the desert to the land he had promised them, so now he will rescue them again and bring them into their inheritance.

... Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
And the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” (Isaiah 40:4-5)

John has come as the herald of an even greater salvation. He calls everyone to repent and get ready for the arrival of God their Saviour. He calls them to turn around and face the coming King. He also tells them that he is only the warm-up act. He can only baptise with water, but the one coming after him will baptise with the Holy Spirit. With his coming, they will know the powerful presence of the living God.

As I read these words, the picture of a post mill sprang to mind. A post mill is an old fashioned windmill. But it is one built on an enormous post, made from the trunk of a tree. The whole of the wooden building is able to rotate around the post so that the vanes face into the wind and are able make use of its power. And it is the wind itself that causes the mill to rotate around the post – the wind continually nudges it one way or another to face the wind. If the mechanism becomes clogged and refuses to turn, the mill will end up without power.

John calls his hearers to repentance – to a life turned around to face God. And is only as they turn to face the coming Saviour that they will receive power from the wind of his Spirit, enabling them to enjoy the life of the kingdom and do the work of the King.

Repentance is a continual necessity in the Christian life. We need continually to turn away from ourselves and turn towards the Saviour. We need continually to be nudged by the Spirit to turn and face God and receive the power of his Spirit energising us for the work he has for us to do.

Awake, O Lord, as in the time of old!
Come, Holy Spirit, in Thy power and might;
For lack of Thee our hearts are strangely cold,
Our minds but blindly groping towards the light…

Turn us, good Lord, and so shall we be turned:
Let every passion grieving Thee be stilled…

Make us to be what we profess to be;
Let prayer be prayer, and praise be heartfelt praise;
From unreality, O set us free,
And let our words be echoed by our ways.

Jul 17 2020 - Introduction to the Gospel according to Mark

Who wrote this Gospel? 

This book that we know as the Gospel according to Mark, does not explicitly identify its author. However, Papias, writing at the beginning of the second century, quotes 'the Elder' (whom some consider to have been the apostle John). Papias writes: 

"This is what the Elder used to say: Mark became Peter's interpreter and wrote accurately, though not in order, all that he remembered of the things said or done by the Lord. For he had not himself heard the Lord or been his follower, but later, as I said, he followed Peter. Peter delivered teachings as occasion required, rather than compiling a sort of orderly presentation of the traditions about the Lord. So Mark was not wrong in recording in this way the individual items as he remembered them. His one concern was to leave out nothing of what he had heard and to make no false statements in reporting them."

R T France, a contemporary commentator on Mark's Gospel, adds, "If Papias's information is correct, Peter, even if not 'systematic' enough for some tastes, must have been a lively preacher. The vivid narrative style and content of the Marcan stories may well derive as much from the way Peter used to tell them as from Mark's own skill as a raconteur. The events are told and the teaching heard mainly from within the experience of the disciple group. This means that Mark's book reflects … the … experience of one of those who shared most closely in the stirring and yet profoundly disturbing events of Jesus' public ministry and his confrontation with the Jerusalem establishment. And it reflects those experiences as they were passed on in the day-to-day teaching ministry, 'as occasion required', of a living community of followers of Jesus (within which Mark no doubt himself also followed Peter as a recognised teller of the stories of Jesus). It is, perhaps, this grounding in the active life of the church which gives much of the special flavour (and 'feeling of otherness') to the 'good news' as told by Mark."

France makes the further point that Mark's Gospel was written to be read out loud; it has the character of storytelling and of drama. "Whether by exploiting Peter's memory or by exercising his own imagination, Mark has contrived to give his readers the feeling of 'being there', and that is in large part what makes his story so easy and rewarding to read."

There is really no reason to doubt that the Mark who appears in Acts as an assistant to Barnabas and Paul was the author this Gospel. It was probably written in Rome in the latter half of the 60s of the first century – after the persecution under Nero that followed the great fire in Rome in AD 64 and after the death of Peter, but before the other Synoptic Gospels and before the Jewish war of 70 AD.

Structure

Mark's Gospel is a 'drama in three acts.' The initial heading (Mark 1:1) and Prologue (1:2-13) are followed by: Act One – Galilee (1:14-8:21); Act Two – On the Way to Jerusalem, Learning about the Cross (8:22-10:52); Act Three – Jerusalem (11:1-16:8). "The two discourses of chapters 4 and 13 thus allow the reader a pause in the otherwise rapid pace of the narrative to think through the implications of the story so far, and provide a theological framework for understanding the new thing that is happening with the coming of Jesus of Nazareth. The fact that each occurs roughly halfway through what I have termed Acts One and Three of the drama suggests that there may be a literary as well as a theological purpose in the discourses, to provide a narrative pause which gives the reader time to reflect on the events as they unfold." (R T France)

Peter Misselbrook