Prayer, anointing with oil, and healing (2)

Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. James 5:13-15

Last time I described these words from James 5 as “a tricky passage” because (according to my understanding, anyway) they seem to “promise more than they deliver”: the healing of the sick seems to be seen as an automatic result of faith-filled prayer by church leaders, when accompanied by anointing with oil. This goes contrary to the experience not only of most of us very ordinary Christians, but also to that of many great “heroes” of faith.

I suggested that the passage can serve as a test-case for the way we read our Bibles: do we try and wriggle out of what seems the plain meaning of the text – the most natural sense - or do we feel bound by honesty to accept that some passages just don’t yield an obvious sense that we can identify with?

This is where another vital principle of Bible interpretation helps us: we must learn to “compare scripture with scripture”.

The Bible is a big book, and no single verse or passage tells us everything we need (or want) to know, so we need to read the Bible in its entirety if we are to grasp the full spectrum of its truth – and even then there will be parts that leave us scratching our heads. When it comes to the matter of healing, the Bible gives us a wide variety of emphases.

Let’s ask a few questions…

Can God heal?

Yes! This is most obvious in the earthly ministry of Jesus. He opened the eyes of the blind; he cleansed people with leprosy; he set the paralysed back on their feet; he even raised the dead.

Does God always heal?

No. Even Jesus’ powers were sometimes limited, as a passage like Mark 6:5 makes clear, where “a few people” getting healed sounds like a real anti-climax! “He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few people who were ill and heal them…” And Paul, who could hardly be accused of lacking faith, was himself denied physical well-being after three times of focussed prayer (2 Corinthians 12:8-9). Paul also reported in 2 Timothy 4:20 that he “left Trophimus ill in Miletus” as if it were the most natural thing in the world - which leaves us wondering Why, Paul?, given that we know from other places that he was used by God in healings.

Are accompanying actions like anointing with oil or “laying on of hands” the key?

No! Jesus had no set method. Sometimes he laid hands on; sometimes he even used his own spit to make mud for anointing; sometimes, as with the woman with the flow of blood, he healed unawares (“Who touched me?”); sometimes he healed at a distance, with no contact at all with the sick person. God can’t be pinned down to formulas! - and we shouldn’t understand James to be saying that, as if anointing with oil is some kind of magic charm.

There’s more to the James 5 passage, of course – it goes on to speak of a connection between the healing of sickness and the forgiveness of sins, suggesting that sometimes, at least, the two things run parallel. It encourages Christians to confess our sins to one another, and it goes on to hold up the prophet Elijah as an example of the power of faith-filled prayer: “He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years…” (verses 17-18).

But that’s for another day: where we find ourselves puzzled is with those two uncompromising “wills” in verse 15: “the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up…” Really?

So… How can these puzzling verses help us?

I suggest two responses we might make to them…

First, to learn to be realistic in our Bible-reading.

People who talk about accepting “the plain, simple meaning of the Bible” are not being realistic. Many parts of the Bible are anything but plain and simple! - and we might as well get used to the idea. (An example: Does anybody really understand the Song of Songs in the Old Testament, and how we as Christians should approach it? A few generations ago it was assumed in many Christian circles that it was a love song, only not about a man and a woman, but about Christ and his church. Today most Christians see that as fanciful and forced, and (if they read it at all) prefer to treat it as a celebration of romantic human love.

I could suggest many other examples. But a practical outcome for us today is clear: Christian, it is not a sin to say “Sorry, but I just don’t understand such-and-such a passage!” As you persevere in reading over the years, God by his Spirit will give more and more light. Just rest in that.

(The writer GK Chesterton was once challenged about his Christian faith: “Doesn’t it bother you – all those parts of the Bible you can’t understand?” To which he replied “No! – the parts that bother me are the ones I can understand…” A wise man, I think.)

Second, let’s allow James’s robust faith, however unrealistic it may seem to our limited understanding, to stir up our sluggish faith. Is it time, perhaps, to call on those wiser and stronger than us to share with us in a time of focussed prayer for healing (with or without laying on of hands or anointing with oil)? Certainly, God may say “No”, as he did to Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, or possibly “Not yet”. But who knows? We may be in for a wonderful surprise.

Lord, grant us a spirit of keen expectation!

Father, I thank you for your written word in scripture. Help me to persevere in the task of learning from it day by day, to enjoy it, and to let myself be guided by it. And when I come to parts I find hard to understand, help me to believe that you will give light when the time is right. As I grapple with the mystery of pain and healing, may I always bear in mind the coming day when “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for all these things have passed away”. Amen.

Prayer, anointing with oil, and healing

Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. James 5:13-15

A tricky passage, this. Why? Because it seems to “promise more than it delivers”.

There’s no problem about praying for those “in trouble”, of course; that’s fundamental to our faith, something we do very day. Nor, of course, with “singing songs of praise” when we’re “happy”; why wouldn’t we?

But it’s in the next part that we might start to feel a little uncomfortable. When we’re sick, James tells us, we should “call the elders of the church” to pray over us, and get them to “anoint us with oil in the name of the Lord”. Certainly, we don’t have a problem with praying for the sick; we do it routinely. But James clearly has something more in mind: he envisages a gathering of the church “elders” for this purpose, and he explicitly recommends that such a prayer time should be accompanied with “anointing with oil in the name of the Lord”. Many of us may feel at this point that we’re getting a little “out of our comfort zone”!

Still worse (so to speak) is to come: “And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well”. Not, notice, “may make the sick person well”, but will make the sick person well”; no ifs, no buts. You see what I mean by “promising more than it delivers”.

We may feel like replying to James, “No, James, our experience just isn’t like that! We take the point about faith, just as Jesus said, and we are only too conscious of the weakness of our faith. But we know Christians of deep and even radiant faith who didn’t, or don’t, experience healing. Sorry, James, but you’re surely overstating your case. Life just isn’t like what you say”.

This is a difficulty there’s no wriggling out of - not, at least, if we are determined to be honest. Whether we like it or not, experience seems to contradict scripture. So what are we to do?

One possibility is simply to ignore it – it becomes one of those passages we file away in our minds as “not for now”, perhaps deep down recognising that “now” will probably never come. So it becomes an irritating niggle at the back of our minds.

If we are of a more determined spirit we might, second, collect whatever Bible commentaries and other books are relevant and hope for enlightenment. Good! But I’m afraid it’s very likely we will end up disappointed and even confused, for we will find that even the “experts” (perhaps I should say “especially the experts, including those who have good reputations for their biblical soundness) cannot agree, so we are no further forward.

Some well-respected scholars will tell us that miraculous events happened, certainly, in New Testament days, but that after that they ceased, so we shouldn’t expect them today. (I have heard it claimed, for example, that Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 13:10, “when completeness [or “perfection”] comes, what is in part disappears” refers to the “completeness” of the whole Bible, something we now have, and that it renders “signs and wonders” obsolete. But that is decidedly forced and artificial! – raising the question why, if that is the case, James’ words were ever included in the Bible in the first place.)

I fully accept that there are parts of the Bible which were never intended to be taken strictly literally for all time – the six days of creation, for example, or the instruction that women in worship should always have their heads covered. But James 5:13-16 doesn’t read like that; James writes in such a matter-of-fact way that it’s hard to avoid the feeling that he intends his words to be taken at face value: follow this procedure, and healing will result.

So, the question again: what should we do? I wish I had an easy answer, but I don’t. Let me just offer a couple of thoughts.

First, such passages as this can serve as a test-case for the way we read our Bibles.

It’s a basic rule of Bible interpretation that we should interpret it in the most natural way – whether “literal” or not - not twisting ourselves into contortions in order to get round difficult passages. Putting that another way, we should read the Bible as we find it, as it is, not as we would like to find it, or as we think we ought to find it, or even as some learned scholar tells us we should find it. James, writing this chapter, obviously had high expectations of direct and even miraculous answers to prayer, and that is a fact which, as I suggested earlier, it’s not really honest to try and wriggle out of, so let’s look it fair and square in the face. Better to honestly hold up our hands and say, “I just don’t see how to understand this!” than to multiply various unlikely alternative possibilities.

A question for every Bible-reader: am I honest in my reading, tackling tricky passages head-on and being open to possibilities that make me a little uncomfortable, or do I just limit myself to the nice, easy passages, the ones I feel comfortable with?

Second, a few thoughts about the whole question of prayer for the sick (with or without anointing with oil). But I’m afraid we will have to leave that till next time…

Father, I confess that there are places in your word that leave me puzzled and even confused. But thank you for those parts where the meaning is glowingly and wonderfully clear. Help me to grow in my faith both by luxuriating in the clear passages and by wrestling honestly with the hard ones. Amen.

More than ten years ago a book was published called How to read the Bible for all its worth, by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart, respectively an Old and New Testament specialist. Not always an easy read (but then the Bible isn’t always an easy book, as we have seen!), but it has stood the test of time. Worth looking out for if you are serious about your Bible reading.

Gossip - don't tell it, don't listen to it!

Without wood a fire goes out;

    without gossip a quarrel dies down.
As charcoal to embers and as wood to fire,
    so is a quarrelsome person for kindling strife.
The words of a gossip are like choice morsels;
    they go down to the inmost parts. Proverbs 26:20-22

The tongue is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell… it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison… James 3:6-8

Have you ever had anybody sidle up to you and say behind their hand, “I know I really shouldn’t tell you this, but…” You have? So, I imagine, have most of us, even if it wasn’t done in quite such an obviously crude and  furtive manner.

And how did you respond? “Well, if you know you shouldn’t tell me, then don’t! Kindly keep your mouth shut! I really don’t want to know!”? Or did you smile inwardly and ready yourself for a nice juicy bit of gossip?

I wish I could say that’s a test I have always passed. But, to my shame, that’s not so. It’s so tempting to be in the know, isn’t it? to be part of the in-crowd?  All right, we might perhaps try to be kind and reject the approach a little more gently: “Er, if you don’t mind I’d rather you didn’t…” But, whether bluntly or gently, such an approach needs to be firmly rejected.

The Book of Proverbs has a lot to say about the power of words, both for good and for ill. This little paragraph is about gossip - a curse, I suspect, of any and every church, and it uses a couple of vivid illustrations.

First, fire.

Few things are more frightening than fire when it threatens to get out of control. It’s not something most of us have ever experienced, for which we can thank God. But the mere thought of it – the appalling damage it can do and the ferocious speed with which it can spread - should sober us up if ever we are tempted to gossip.

Second, particularly tasty food, a “choice morsel” that “goes down to the inmost parts”. In a word, greed.

I think it was Oscar Wilde who is supposed to have said, “I can resist anything but temptation”. Well, ha-very-ha. But many of us know that feeling of failure when we allow ourselves “just a little bit more”, even though we’re full and have had all we need. The pleasure soon turns to a sense of guilt and self-reproach. And it’s the same when we have given in to gossip… “Why did I do that!” we say to ourselves – “How could I be so stupid?”

Well, at least we have recognised our failure: but will we handle the situation any better next time? Mmm, not so sure about that...

In the New Testament James the brother of Jesus adds another quite alarming illustration to go along with fire and greed: poison. “The tongue is a restless evil, full of deadly poison”. That’s pretty strong language!

Whatever else, these illustrations leave no room for doubt that our words – whether deliberately malicious or just plain careless - can have an effect beyond our wildest nightmares.

Of course, gossip can come cleverly disguised as sensitive pastoral care. Someone in a prayer group says in a very concerned voice, “We really ought to be praying for Jack and Kelly during this difficult time”. But, instead of praying, everyone is thinking, “So what’s happening with Jack and Kelly? Health problems? A spiritual crisis? Their marriage is breaking up? Their dog has died?”

I was once told off by someone on the fringe of the church: “Will you please tell your people to stop praying for me! I haven’t asked them and I’d be grateful if they would mind their own business”. I felt ashamed, and rightly so.

Why is gossip so tempting? Well, as I said earlier, it makes you feel important, part of the in-crowd. Perhaps gossips tend to be insecure, in need of a purpose in the life of the church. In which case, the right advice is something like, “You have all the security you need in Christ. So relax! He, in his love, is quietly turning you into the person God intends you to be. Be content with that. Just be like him, and be yourself”. (Not a bad motto for the Christian life as a whole, that, in fact).

The extent of the problem of gossip is illustrated by the number of entries it has in my Treasury of Christian Wisdom…

I like the quote by Billy Graham: “A real Christian is a person who can give his pet parrot to the town gossip”.

What about: “Gossip is vice enjoyed vicariously” (by someone called Elbert Hubbard)? Yes, we masquerade as lovingly concerned, but really we’re loving every minute of it. Hypocrites!

And here’s a wonderful Spanish proverb: “Remember that the person who gossips to you will one day be gossiping about you”.

I don’t know if the writer Rudyard Kipling had a strong Christian faith, but he certainly hit the right note for all of us: “I always prefer to believe the best of everybody; it saves so much trouble”. Amen!

And a final word: “Just as the person who receives stolen goods is as guilty as the one who stole them in the first place, so the one who listens to gossip is as guilty as the one who speaks it.” Ouch!

Father, I remember how Jesus said that “by our words we will be acquitted, and by our words we will be condemned”. Please help me to take that saying seriously, and to do all I can to help keep my church, and indeed my whole life, gossip-free. Amen.

Superstition - a stepping-stone to true faith?

¹⁰ In the thirty-seventh year of Joash king of Judah, Jehoash son of Jehoahaz became king of Israel in Samaria, and he reigned sixteen years. ¹¹ He did evil in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn away from any of the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit; he continued in them…

¹⁴ Now Elisha had been suffering from the illness from which he died. Jehoash king of Israel went down to see him and wept over him. “My father! My father!” he cried. “The chariots and horsemen of Israel!”

¹⁵ Elisha said, “Get a bow and some arrows,” and he did so. ¹⁶ “Take the bow in your hands,” he said to the king of Israel. When he had taken it, Elisha put his hands on the king’s hands. ¹⁷ “Open the east window,” he said, and he opened it. “Shoot!” Elisha said, and he shot. “The Lord’s arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Aram!” Elisha declared. “You will completely destroy the Arameans at Aphek.” ¹⁸ Then he said, “Take the arrows,” and the king took them. Elisha told him, “Strike the ground.” He struck it three times and stopped. ¹⁹ The man of God was angry with him and said, “You should have struck the ground five or six times; then you would have defeated Aram and completely destroyed it. But now you will defeat it only three times.”

²⁰ Elisha died and was buried.

2 Kings 13:10-20

What a very strange story!

King Jehoash of Israel, not a king noted for his devotion to God (verse 11), hears that the old man of God, the prophet Elisha, is at the point of death. You might think he would rejoice at this news, or at least feel smugly satisfied.

But no: he “went down to see him and wept over hm. ‘My father! My father!’ he cried…” Doesn’t that sound like truly filial devotion?

Then he utters a strange cry: “The chariots and horsemen of Israel!” What’s that supposed to mean!

Elisha tells him to get a bow and arrows. He puts his feeble hands over Jehoash’s and tells him to shoot. Elisha declares this arrow to be “The Lord’s arrow of victory… over Aram!”

As if that’s not enough mystification, Elisha now tells Jehoash to take the remaining arrows and “strike the ground” with them. This Jehoash does; whereupon Elisha gets angry with him for limiting the strikes to just three - “You should have struck the ground five or six times!” Apparently this failure means that Jehoash’s victory over the Arameans will be less than total.

We might, I think, be forgiven for throwing up our hands in despair and exclaiming, “What on earth is going on here!”

Can we clear up some of the mystification? Well, we can but try…

First, when King Jehoash exclaimed, “The chariots and horsemen of Israel!” (verse 14) he was echoing the exact words of Elisha himself as a young man when he was adopted by Elijah as his successor (2 Kings 2:11-12). (Presumably Elisha at that moment had seen some kind of vision preparing for Elijah’s “assumption” into heaven.) By quoting those words now Jehoash was showing that he was familiar with what must have become a legend in Israel over perhaps fifty years. Was he expecting Elisha to go to God in the same way Elijah had done (if so verse 20 makes it clear that he was mistaken)? Whatever, he is showing great respect, even veneration, for the dying prophet.

Second, what sense can we make of the business with the bow and arrows?

This seems to have been a prophecy, though one acted out rather than spoken. Elisha is demonstrating to Jehoash what is going to happen regarding the enemy Arameans. His hands may be feeble, but by “putting them on the king’s hands” and by calling the first arrow “the arrow of victory over Aram!” he is saying, in effect, “God will use you to subdue the Arameans”.

Third, what about the puzzling business of “striking the ground” with the remaining arrows?

Jehoash does exactly as he is told – only for Elisha to tell him off angrily for failing to do it hard enough. I think we may assume that Jehoash and Elisha had built up a relationship over the preceding years (“My father! My father!” certainly implies that) and had had many conversations together. Perhaps Elisha had, over the years, sensed in Jehoash a half-heartedness which he detected here. Hence his anger.

Does that help? I hope so. But we are looking back to a place, a time and a whole religious culture which are very alien to where we are today. So to some extent we need to just let the puzzles be; they are not for us to fathom fully.

But I think there is something we can reasonably speculate on: the fact that there was a close relationship between the godless king on the one hand and the godly prophet on the other. It seems that Jehoash certainly wasn’t by any means anti-Elisha. He couldn’t help but be impressed by him and the prospect of his approaching death alarmed and even frightened him (“… he wept over him”). He had come to depend on him for his wisdom, even if he didn’t always follow it.

To me this has something to say to us about what we might call religious superstition - which is as much a reality today as it was nearly a thousand years before Christ.

Jehoash wasn’t a “godly” king; his “faith”, such as it was, seems to have emotional and superstitious rather than true; but the bond between the two men seems to have been genuine, and Elisha didn’t dismiss it.

Surveys tell us that most people pray, even if they are not involved in any kind of religious organisation or activity, and even if they say they don’t believe in God. The most recent surveys tell us that growth in outlandish views is accelerating, not least among younger people.

It’s as if we human beings are hard-wired to have a “religious” streak which surfaces especially at times of crisis or difficulty.

If this is right, what does it mean for us? I think at least this: that we needn’t be overly pessimistic when people dismiss our faith and convictions out of hand. We don’t know what is going on inside them -  God may be very much at work in ways we would never guess. Our business, especially if overt evangelism isn’t appropriate, is simply to live as Christlike a life as we can, and to pray that he will be seen even in us.

Even a shallow and superstitious faith may deepen and mature into the real, Christ-centred thing! The question is: are we offering the right kind of example and guidance?

Father God, let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me. I don’t know what may be going on deep down in the heart of my unbelieving neighbour, but I pray that even my poor, imperfect witness may have the effect of drawing them to Christ. Amen.

A man who spoke truth to power (2)

²² It was the ninth month and the king was sitting in the winter apartment, with a fire burning in the brazier in front of him. ²³ Whenever Jehudi had read three or four columns of the scroll, the king cut them off with a scribe’s knife and threw them into the brazier, until the entire scroll was burned in the fire. ²⁴ The king and all his attendants who heard all these words showed no fear, nor did they tear their clothes. ²⁵ Even though Elnathan, Delaiah and Gemariah urged the king not to burn the scroll, he would not listen to them…

²⁷ After the king burned the scroll containing the words that Baruch had written at Jeremiah’s dictation, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: ²⁸ “Take another scroll and write on it all the words that were on the first scroll, which Jehoiakim king of Judah burned up…” And many similar words were added to them.

Jeremiah 36:22-32

Last time we looked at the rather bizarre process by which the godless King of Judah, Jehoiakim, attempted to silence the prophet Jeremiah - he brazenly burned the written account of his utterances. Jeremiah’s prediction, remember, was that Judah would fall to King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, so the wise thing to do was to surrender.

Once Jehoiakim had done his burning act, Jeremiah’s response to his cynical disobedience was not to shrug his shoulders and say “Oh well, we did what we could”, but to write the words out a second time and send his friend Baruch out to read them to the people. Not one to give up, Jeremiah!

We saw in these events an insight into how some of the books of the Bible, especially of the prophets, may have first come to be written – disciples copied and preserved an early stage in the various writings, to await the time when the whole “Bible” would be formed.

The story – portraying God’s people at crisis point - prompts a number of thoughts for us today – warnings, challenges and encouragements.

First, we need to take serious notice of Jehoiakim’s sinful attitude.

To disregard God’s word – even though in this situation it wasn’t yet generally recognised as such – is folly indeed. This applies to all of us who, through hearing the preaching or the teaching of his word, or through personal reading – arrogantly fail to take it to heart.

How many of us are attempting to silence God’s voice through inattention, stubborn disobedience or just plain indifference? Assuming that the gruesome prophecy of verses 30-31came true, it’s clear that Jehoiakim came to what is sometimes called “a bad end”. Our circumstances are of course very different, but we are wise to take it as a warning that we trifle with God’s word at our peril. Are any of us knowingly living in disobedience to God’s will? Is it time for a serious rethink?

(What makes Jehoiakim’s story doubly sad is that he was the son of King Josiah, the boy-king who had reigned for thirty-one years. When he was twenty-six Josiah had set about repairing the temple, during which task “the Book of the Law of the Lord” (presumably part of Exodus) was discovered. Alarmed by what he read, he embarked on a cleansing of the spiritual life of the nation, and is remembered as a king who “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord” (2 Kings 22:2).

One king honours and humbles himself before God’s word; the other, even though his son, cynically tosses it into the flames. How this would have broken Josiah’s heart if he could have foreseen it! - a reminder to us, if we need a reminder, that true godliness is not passed on in our family tree...)

Second, Jeremiah 36 reminds us that faithfulness to God’s word can be a painful and costly business.

Like many men and women of God throughout history, those who have “taken up their cross to follow Jesus” in a pretty literal sense have known suffering such as many of us can only imagine. This certainly applies to Jeremiah. It’s no exaggeration to say he was a tormented soul. In chapter 15 verse 10, for example, he expresses the wish that he had never been born; in 20:14 he literally curses that day: “Cursed be the day I was born! May the day my mother bore me not be blessed!” (Strong shades there of poor Job in his agony).

The life spent following Jesus is wonderful indeed: he promises us “life to the full” (John 10:10). But let’s make no mistake: that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy. The call to take up our cross to follow him may not be a literal call for us: but it has been for many down through history, and still is today for some. This is a lesson Jeremiah can vividly teach us.

How did Jeremiah die? There is, it seems, no authentic written record, but there are legends that he was carried off to Egypt at the time of the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar, where he continued to preach to other Jewish refugees – and ended up being stoned to death. If these stories are true there would be a certain fitness to them – he endured a tortured end to a tortured life, and was a fitting precursor to Jesus.

As Christians, have we ever seriously “counted the cost” of following Jesus?

But, third, we must finish on a positive note: Jeremiah 36 teaches us that ultimately the word of God cannot be silenced or destroyed.

All right, King Jehoiakim systematically sliced up those scrolls of Jeremiah’s writings and put them in the fire. Whereupon Jeremiah and Baruch shrugged their shoulders and heaved a sigh?… No! they simply repeated the process.

Truth ultimately prevails. How can it not, if our world is indeed governed by the God of truth? Jehoiakim is lost in ignominy. And Jeremiah may have died a wretched death far from home. But we can be sure he has gone to his heavenly rest – and we can, in the year 2025 AD, still open our Bibles and read “the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah”.

Father, we think of your servant Jeremiah as a spiritual giant, truly a precursor of Jesus. but  we read of his doubts and agonisings and realise he was made of the same stuff as us today. Please help us to stand bravely for your truth in all our daily circumstances. Amen.

A man who spoke truth to power

²² It was the ninth month and the king was sitting in the winter apartment, with a fire burning in the brazier in front of him. ²³ Whenever Jehudi had read three or four columns of the scroll, the king cut them off with a scribe’s knife and threw them into the brazier, until the entire scroll was burned in the fire. ²⁴ The king and all his attendants who heard all these words showed no fear, nor did they tear their clothes. ²⁵ Even though Elnathan, Delaiah and Gemariah urged the king not to burn the scroll, he would not listen to them…

²⁷ After the king burned the scroll containing the words that Baruch had written at Jeremiah’s dictation, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: ²⁸ “Take another scroll and write on it all the words that were on the first scroll, which Jehoiakim king of Judah burned up…” And many similar words were added to them.

Jeremiah 36:22-32

Have you ever wondered how the Bible, as we know it today, came to be? “Well, God inspired it”, you might say, and so indeed he did. But how exactly?

I wouldn’t blame you if it’s something you have never really thought about. After all, many of us were given Bibles either as children or at the time of our conversion. We were told, in effect, “This is the Bible, the word of God – read it, believe it, obey it, enjoy it”: and that’s what we’ve tried to do. For all we knew, it descended directly from heaven, nicely printed and bound, and, as they say, ready to go… “The Holy Bible”. We held God’s word in our hands and have tried to do as we were advised.

But of course it happened nothing like that. Our excuse (not that we need one) is that this is really a matter for experts, for people who know about ancient history and the languages of the Bible, Hebrew and Greek.

But to delve a little into these questions can enrich and deepen our faith, helping us to see that while the Bible is indeed divinely inspired, it is also humanly written. Jeremiah 36 gives us a fascinating glimpse into the process by which one particular part of the Old Testament came to be. (It even has a grimly comical element to it.)

So… why not read the whole chapter right through, then we’ll summarise the main events, and next time we’ll draw from it some lessons which can still benefit us today…

It’s roughly 600 years before Christ, and the little kingdom of Judah – all that’s left of “the people of Israel”, long fallen from their glory days under David and Solomon 400 years earlier – is in serious trouble. They are ruled by a grossly ungodly king, Jehoiakim; the mighty Babylonians have defeated the Egyptians to become the new super-power; and they and their ferocious king, Nebuchadnezzar, are outside the walls of Jerusalem and threatening to destroy God’s holy city.

Jeremiah, God’s stern and uncompromising prophet, is in a difficult position - for God has told him that this is exactly what will happen as a judgment on their falling away from him. Not what you would call a popular message! Not a message King Jehoiakim would be keen to hear!

But Jeremiah has no choice: to use a modern expression, his job is to “speak truth to power”, whatever the consequences might be. (Imagine if a politician in Ukraine today were to advocate total surrender to Russia.)

But Jeremiah has a problem: he has been banned from the temple, his main preaching-place. So how can he get his message across? Answer: God tells him to write his prophecies out on a scroll so that his friend and supporter Baruch can read them in his place. This becomes known to some of the leading men of Jerusalem who, to their credit, take it seriously and decide that the king must be made aware of Jeremiah’s message.

And so we come to the heart of chapter 36…

The  king agrees to listen to the scroll, and a man called Jehudi is given the job of reading it to him. It’s winter time, and King Jehoiakim is sitting in his apartment with fires burning. Every time a section of the scroll is read – well, what better way of keeping the heat nice and cosy than to slice that bit off and toss it into the flames? Suits me, says Jehoiakim. He is completely cynical, as if to say “Why should I bother myself with this crazy fanatic Jeremiah? The word of God, indeed. Pah!”

So what’s to do? Should Jeremiah shrug his shoulders and say “Oh well, at least we did the best we could”. That perhaps would be understandable. But that isn’t the kind of man Jeremiah is. No: he moves to Plan B: he just repeats the whole process, with Baruch again acting as scribe. And this time he adds still more words that God has given him (verse 32), as if to say, “You’re getting it all again - but this time with interest”.

I hope that’s a reasonable summary of this chapter.

Of course, we have no way of knowing how much of what we now call “The Book of the prophet Jeremiah” in our complete Bibles was included in these scrolls (such scrolls weren’t that long, and the final book runs to 52 quite long chapters). But it confirms the idea that the Old Testament prophets were likely to have scribes who remembered and wrote down their messages (Paul, of course, in the New Testament, also had a scribe who pops his head up out of nowhere in Romans 16 - though we don’t know how often he may have used him: I trust you’ve noticed Tertius?). All sorts of other intriguing questions arise. In days before electronic recording, how were the gospel stories remembered? What about a book like Jonah? It’s far more about him than by him, so who wrote it down?

Perhaps we will never know. But the point is worth noticing: suddenly we find ourselves dealing with real, live men and women, not just distant, ancient names which have become revered as “holy” (or the opposite).

But space has run out! Please join me next time as we delve a little deeper…

Thank you, Father, for your servant Jeremiah, who had the courage and faith to speak truth to power, whatever the cost. Thank you for people in our modern world who do the same, whether in terms of religion or politics. Please give me also that same courage and faith. Amen.

Need prayer be hard work?

Jesus said, When you pray, do not keep babbling like pagans… Matthew 6:7

Then [the prophets of Baal] called on the name of Baal from morning till noon… so they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears until their blood flowed. I Kings 18:24-29

How should we, as Christians, pray?

That is, of course, an impossible question: prayer is infinitely varied. We might offer prayers that have been written in advance, or simply pray spontaneously from the heart. We might offer long, detailed prayers, or just a few short words.

We might sing prayers in the form of songs or hymns or even use a tongue which is strange to us. We might pack our prayers with requests, or simply sing a song of praise to God. We might give vent to our frustrations and disappointments on God. The possibilities are endless.

But one thing we mustn’t do: we mustn’t “babble like pagans”, as Jesus puts it here. The word he used literally refers to “idle repetition” or “empty words” - perhaps we find an extreme example in the dramatic confrontation between Elijah and the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18: “so they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears until their blood flowed”. Sounds like hard work!

What matters is that our prayers are meaningful, from the heart, and offered with true humility and childlike faith. That sounds easy enough. But I think there is a danger, a risk that we subconsciously pile conditions on ourselves – we get into the way of thinking that our prayers may not be fully acceptable to God because somehow we “didn’t get it right”. Do you know that feeling?

The devil loves to tempt us to discouragement – “Of course that prayer hasn’t been answered! It was such a feeble effort on my part! Did I say ‘Amen’? Was I praying on auto-drive, not really thinking or feeling what I was saying? That person I heard was sick, did I really make an effort to feel what he is experiencing? Did I neglect to add the key words ‘I ask these things in Jesus’ name’ at the end (as if I might ask them in any other name!)”?

It embarrasses me to remember times in my Christian life when I virtually prayed with my eye on my watch: “I managed 25 minutes yesterday – I need to keep going  for at least another ten minutes…” We were encouraged to think of ourselves as “prayer warriors” (my wife has been heard to refer to “rottweilers of prayer”) which certainly means taking prayer very seriously, but isn’t exactly restful.

In a word, there’s a danger that we forget that God is our loving heavenly Father and treat him as if he is a rather demanding head-teacher.

Part of the problem is the sheer routine of life. Life is so ordinary that, let’s be honest, unusual, special things rarely happen. And if you’ve already prayed for a particular topic a hundred – perhaps even a thousand – times, it’s hard to maintain any kind of enthusiasm.

But what matters is that God looks down from heaven with a loving, fatherly eye and says, “My dear child, relax, that’s not what matters! I see you struggling to pray, and my heart goes out to you! I see the frustration and the dryness and I do not forget what I have seen. Your prayers may be feeble, but they are important to me! Yes, your little prayers are important to the God of all creation…”

So, yes, there are certainly times when prayer should be a sustained discipline: times too, perhaps, when we need to combine it with fasting. But the point is that in our daily lives, in the ordinary humdrum routine of things, it can also be a refreshing thing. We can rest in the presence of God, using few or many words. He knows even our grunts and groans, our pathetic “O Lord’s!” (Do we take seriously Romans 8:26?) He even hears our pleas “Lord, I’m so tired! I’m just struggling to cope. Help me!”

I joked about the prophets of Baal: their hours-long prayers, their dancing, their gyrations, even their self-mutilation. It sounds like hard work! Yes, indeed. And of course that is an extreme example. But we Christians need to be careful. Prayer can and will sometimes be hard work; but it can also serve as a peaceful, joyful thing.

Jesus saw at one point that his disciples had got into a pretty frazzled state, what with John the Baptist being beheaded, the crowds flocking round, and endless demands being made on Jesus, so he gave them an invitation: “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest” (Mark 6:31).

Our “quiet places” may be only for a few minutes, with our eyes closed and in a noisy place: but let’s take full advantage of them.

Dear Father in heaven, help me to grasp that I don’t need to prove myself to you; you know me through and through, you have forgiven my sins, and you love me with an undying love. Please teach me how to rest in you day by day. Amen.

God's all-seeing eye

The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good. Proverbs 15:3

I used to visit a home where, the first thing you saw when you went in the front door, was a plaque on the wall: “Christ is the head of this house: the unseen guest at every meal; the silent listener to every conversation” - as if Jesus was some kind of ghostly presence, lurking in shadowy places, quite unlike the Jesus we meet in the Gospels.

I was only a child at the time, but I used find this – well, it would be too much to say spooky, but certainly slightly unsettling. When, later, I read George Orwell’s novel Nineteen eighty-four, with its frightening slogan “Big Brother is watching you”, I couldn’t help but be reminded… And the same thing applied when I first read Proverbs 15:3 and other similar Bible verses.

God’s “all-knowingness”, known technically as his “omniscience”, has been part of the church’s faith since the beginning. A simple question arises: Are verses like Proverbs 15:3 good news or bad? to be welcomed or frightened by?

Well, a lot depends, of course, on where (as they say) “you’re at” in your life.

If I’m living a life of conscious, knowing disobedience to God, then certainly there’s a lot to be troubled by. “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”, we read in Hebrews10:31, reminding us that God is far from being a kind of all-indulgent grand-father-in-the-sky. He is burningly holy, perfect in every respect, and ultimately our judge. Our verse makes clear that he ”keeps watch on the wicked” as well as on the good.

So it sounds as if Proverbs 15:3 is really not good news at all, not, that is, for the wicked. And yet can we not see even that in another way: may those words not also be a generous warning? The Bible tells us that “God is not willing that anyone should perish, but that everyone should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). He wants us to become sensitive to the reality of our sin, so that we have opportunity to turn around and make a fresh start – what Jesus called “being born again”, in fact. And if passages like Proverbs 15:3 shake us out of our carelessness and sin, shouldn’t we be thankful for them?

God loves sinners. How easily we forget that greatest of all truths! I remember the first time somebody pointed out to me (I had somehow simply never noticed it before) that while Jesus could, and did, display quite ferocious anger, it was always with those who he felt were misleading the people, the religious leaders, and never (literally never, according to all four Gospels) with the “ordinary people” themselves.

Think of Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well. He saw right through her; he knew her life was one dominated by sin. Surely a fierce blast of condemnation would have been appropriate? But no: he treated her with patience and compassion.

And what about those large crowds that flocked to hear him? They will have had their quota of liars and thieves, of cheats and adulterers, won’t they? Yet what do we read about Jesus’ feelings for them? Here is one of the most beautiful verses in the New Testament: “When he saw  the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Mathew 9:36). Sinners, yes, like all of us; but loved by Jesus.

So even for the worst of sinners Proverbs 15:3 can be seen as good news: God loves us enough to sound a serious warning: the question is, Am I wise and humble enough to change?

We should add too that many of those who were out of step with God were like that largely because they had never been taught. They weren’t, as I put it earlier, “living a life of conscious, knowing disobedience to God”, they were simply ignorant, “like sheep without a shepherd”: they were lost souls. How things stand with the untold millions who are like that today we can only guess. But we know that God is not only a holy, judging God, but also a merciful God. (The tricky passage Romans 2:12-16 throws some light on this.)

I’ve focussed on the fact that God “keeps watch on the wicked”, possibly bad news, possibly good, depending on how we respond.

But of course the other part of Proverbs 15:3 is nothing but good news: he also “keeps watch on the good”. Those who are in a relationship of love, faith and obedience with God can be assured that his eyes are on them every moment of day or night, whatever their circumstances may be. It may not always feel like that, especially at times of sickness, sorrow and other forms of suffering. But that is where we have to muster our childlike faith and commit ourselves into the hands of our loving heavenly Father.

In our worst times we may be inclined to doubt, even to be bitter: “If God sees what I’m going through, then why doesn’t he do something?” To which, of course, there is no simple answer: we simply don’t know the mind and purposes of God. But we cling on, fortified by the solid faith of someone like Paul (who knew a lot about suffering): “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).

Yes, those can sound like easy, shallow words. At times like that, may God help us to see with new clarity the reality of Jesus’ horrifying death on the cross – and the glory of his rising again.

Remember, Christian… “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived – the things that God has prepared for those who love him – these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

Lord, thank you for the assurance that even in the worst times of my life, your loving, fatherly eye is upon me, and give me faith to believe that you have in store for me wonders beyond imagining. Amen.

Good out of bad

Before I was afflicted I went astray… but it was good that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. Psalm 119:68-71

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children… Hebrews 12:7.

O the joy of being laid low!

Those are the words I would like to have started this message with. But alas, they would have been the words of a hypocrite. Why? – because I have recently been laid low, and I’m afraid it’s been anything but a joyful experience, however much I aim to trust in God.

I’ve had a couple of quite nasty falls, followed by an unpleasant couple of nights in hospital. Now my back is extremely painful and I can barely move. Further doctor’s visits are ahead. O poor little me!

This is where a lifetime of reading the Bible, even when you may not experience a particular blessing at the time, makes a difference. As I tried to adjust to my new situation, a couple of scripture verses emerged from the mists of memory, linked to the idea of “affliction”.

In Psalm 119:68 the psalmist tells us that “before I was afflicted I went astray”; then in verse 71 he follows that up in positive mode with “it was good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes”. All right, that’s not exactly being joyful, but he is certainly seeing things in a new light, the light of faith and trust in God. That challenged me.

When the psalmist talks about “learning God’s statutes” I don’t think he means taking a refresher course in the ten commandments or some other part of Old Testament law; it’s more like an umbrella term for “the way God does things”. Whatever, that was the way it seemed to apply to me. So, what are some of the things I have been learning during this decidedly unwelcome experience?

 

First, the wonderful nature of the church.

 

Of course, the Christian church is anything but perfect, and the local churches to which we belong often seem, well, ordinary at best. But never mind! I have been almost overwhelmed by the avalanche of support and kindness, both starkly practical (hey, where did those grab-rails in the bathroom appear from, or that walking-aid?) and more strictly “spiritual”. Assurances of prayer and offers of help, plus little gifts and messages from near and far, from friends new and old, have made me aware of how adrift we would all be without the people of God. The person who says “I believe in Jesus, but I don’t need the church” is in fact tragically out of step with Jesus. Did he found the church for fun? for us just to stand outside it and criticise?

 

Second, a deeper understanding of marriage.

 

Nina and I have been married for over forty years – not perfect years, of course; but we are learning in a new way the deep meaning of those serious, serious words in the marriage service, “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health”. (Nina has always been, quite simply, wonderful beyond words, and at no time has she proved that more than over the last couple of weeks.)

 

I am aware that there will be some reading this who have lost, or never had, a husband or wife to share your troubles with, for reading this can only cause pain, and I regret that. But I cannot help but testify to the rich, practical wisdom contained in the Christian ideal of marriage. I can only encourage us, whatever our “situation in life” may be, to unashamedly uphold that principle in a world that is tragically scrabbling around to invent some new kind of sexual morality: where marriage itself seems little more than a joke, and “till death parts us” simply laughable. Can they not see that only new and more complex ways of being miserable are being concocted?

 

Third, a strong sense of the providence of God in what has happened.

 

For those who trust in God there is no such thing as mere “coincidence”. And so it has seemed to us this last couple of weeks.

 

Shortly before our “affliction” began our son Mark arrived home unexpectedly from a teaching adventure in Japan. Temporarily homeless, we gladly took him in, of course – not having the remotest idea of how helpful, both practically and psychologically, his presence with us would prove. What would we have done without him! (Not yet being a believer, I suspect that he would find the idea of being a “godsend” to his parents a bit hard to take – but, well, I’m afraid that’s just tough, Mark!)

 

There’s far more I could say, but space is running out, so let me just add two little comments that seem relevant.

 

First, while so much of the love we have received has come from Christians, it’s only right too to recognise the help we have received from those who are not, as far as we are aware, believers. I mention this to help safeguard us from the arrogance of imagining that we Christians have a monopoly on goodness. Don’t our non-Christian neighbours and  friends sometimes put us to shame? (Never forget who invented the character of the good Samaritan…!)

 

Second, in the last few days I have found myself thinking more than ever about the stark reality of pain, not least sheer physical pain, and how protected from it many of us have been throughout our lives. How shallowly I have read, say, missionary reports of Christians (and others) subjected to infinitely greater and crueller afflictions than I can even imagine. For them it is a normal reality of everyday life – and often with no end in sight in this earthly life. O Lord, forgive my wimpish self-pity!

 

During these recent days Nina and I seem to have received almost daily news of new troubles afflicting many, such as people falling sick, sometimes just small children, thus putting serious strain on whole families. Lord, help me to be truly grateful for the easy ride I have had over my 78 years!

 

Lord God, you invite us to call you Father, who only allows troubles in our lives in order to test and strengthen us. Please forgive my tendency to self-pity; please help me to stand the test. And please give me Jesus’ heart of compassion for the many millions of men and women and boys and girls whose troubles are so much greater than my own. Amen.

Too good to be true? (2)

 

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—

    where does my help come from?
² My help comes from the Lord,
    the Maker of heaven and earth.

³ He will not let your foot slip—
    he who watches over you will not slumber;
⁴ indeed, he who watches over Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.

⁵ The Lord watches over you—
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
⁶ the sun will not harm you by day,
    nor the moon by night.

⁷ The Lord will keep you from all harm—
    he will watch over your life;
⁸ the Lord will watch over your coming and going
    both now and forevermore. Psalm 121

The big question last time, looking at this beautiful Psalm 121, was: Is it too good to be true? Do the words “The Lord will keep you from all harm” promise more than they deliver; are they just empty words? We must be realistic and recognise that many non-Christians would be likely to smile cynically and dismiss it out of hand: “Pie in the sky…”

I want to suggest three things we need to do to answer this kind of objection…

First, gladly recognise that the poetry of the psalms is full of language that is figurative, that is, non-literal.

We know for a fact that even the most spiritually-minded child of God may sometimes have “a foot that slips”, even to the point of breaking bones, and is not always “kept from all harm” (just the opposite, in fact!). While the psalmist obviously expects wonderful things for God’s people in this life, he deliberately uses exaggerated language to make his point. And, more to the point, his readers will be perfectly aware that he is doing this.

This is a figure of speech called “hyperbole”, which is basically “exaggeration which everyone recognises as such”, and so is not deceived by. And it’s not just in the psalms; it was written of Saul and Jonathan, for example, that “They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions” (2 Samuel 1:23), and I don’t think anyone will have protested “Oh, don’t be ridiculous - that’s impossible!”, though literally speaking that’s the case.

Non-literal language is so much part and parcel of the way we speak and write that usually we simply don’t take any notice it, or if we do we’re in no doubt that it’s not be taken at face value. We had a friend who, if you asked him if he would like a drink, was likely to say, “Oh yes please – I could murder a cup of coffee!” We would just smile sweetly and say “That’s John!” And who has never put down a heavy bag and exclaimed “That weighs a ton!”

The point is that such non-literal language is widely used in the Bible, especially, but not exclusively, in the poetic books. Didn’t Jesus say that “faith like a grain of mustard-seed can move mountains” (Matthew 17:20), which was his picturesque way of saying that by faith even things that seem impossible can be changed? Didn’t he say that just as a camel cannot go through the eye of a needle, no more can a rich person enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 19:24)? To take such arresting figures of speech as literally true borders on the ludicrous: their truth (and they are true!) lies in a completely different direction. Jesus was a teacher of truth – and he knew how to make an impact.

(I remember a poem about a highwayman I learned at school – all mysterious and slightly spooky – which contained the line “The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas”. Utter nonsense? Certainly, if you insist on taking it literally. But I knew exactly what it meant; and it has lodged in my memory for a whole life-time – much better than if it had said “the moon looked like an abandoned ship being tossed about on the clouds”. A good example of the richness of human language.

Another example: Are the Narnia stories true? Of course not! – they are about fawns and elves and a witch and a rather wonderful lion. And yet… they are true, aren’t they? C S Lewis made up this fantasy world to teach the truth about Jesus.)

Enough! We’ve come a long way from Psalm 121! But I hope it makes the point clear. The world of writing swarms with non-literal language, and that includes the Bible, but it serves the purpose of making the truth interesting and arresting, of emphasising things that might otherwise be missed or glossed over.

The second thing we must do is to bear in mind that the Bible is a very big book, and that we need to take it as a whole in order to get anything like a full picture, and not just pluck out individual verses or short passages. If Psalm 121 is indeed too good to be true I suggest we take a look at the grim and unrelenting Psalm 88: “I am overwhelmed with trouble … I have borne your terrors and am in despair… darkness is my closest friend”. Yes, that’s in the Bible too!

Indeed, I suggest we take a good, long look at the crucifixion and digest the terrible words of the dying Jesus: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me…?” Personally, I don’t think Psalm 121, properly understood, needs any kind of corrective – but if it does, where better (or should I say worse?) to look?

Third, and most important of all, we must remember that the Bible takes  us on a story, and that story is – well, we don’t know how near the end.

It  takes us from the Garden of Eden, through the fall into sin, the founding of Israel, the people chosen by God to make his name known, through the captivity in Babylon and the subjection to the Roman empire, to the ministry of Jesus, his death and resurrection and the coming in power of the Holy Spirit… and which will reach its climax in the new, heavenly Jerusalem where (wait for this) God “will wipe every tear from their eyes and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain…” This, and nothing less, is the hope and expectation of those who have looked to Jesus for forgiveness and salvation.

And when that day comes, the glory will be so wonderful that passages like Psalm 121, beautiful though they are, will seem like nothing!

Father, thank you for passages like Psalm 121. Thank you for the promises of a sin-free world and fulness of life for everyone who puts their trust in the risen Christ. But thank you too for the realistic focus on sin, death and pain. Please help me to blend these twin realities as I seek to make the victory of Christ known. Amen.

Too good to be true?

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—

    where does my help come from?
² My help comes from the Lord,
    the Maker of heaven and earth.

³ He will not let your foot slip—
    he who watches over you will not slumber;
⁴ indeed, he who watches over Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.

⁵ The Lord watches over you—
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
⁶ the sun will not harm you by day,
    nor the moon by night.

⁷ The Lord will keep you from all harm—
    he will watch over your life;
⁸ the Lord will watch over your coming and going
    both now and forevermore. Psalm 121

Last time I reflected on the sheer misery of Psalm 120, the psalm of a man who feels that he is in an alien land, a barbaric land, a land of lies and violence, and how he “calls on the Lord in my distress”. It’s a sheer delight, then, to move on to Psalm 121, for this is totally different, all about assurance and confidence. The basic message is as simple as could be: the man or woman of God is safe in his loving arms, whatever life may throw at them.

Two main thoughts strike me about the psalm as a whole…

First, it is in essence a simple statement of faith in God: “My help comes from the Lord”.

Very likely the writer is a worshipper on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and as he approaches the holy city he is awe-struck by the mountains around the city. (I wonder if he is the same person as the one who wrote Psalm 125, just a little further on: “As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people both now and for evermore”?)

To the people of Israel mountains could be a reason for fear: they might be the place of false gods, where people who were disobedient to the one true God would set up their altars, their pagan “high places”; and they were certainly places where there was the danger of attack from brigands, especially if you were travelling alone. Their very remoteness might make you a little nervous.

But to the psalmist, a man of faith, they speak of the power and majesty of almighty God, and the fact that he is both the awesome creator of all things and also the loving protector of his own people. Going back again to Psalm 125:2: “As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people, both now and for evermore”. No less than six times in Psalm 121 (and it’s only eight verses) do the words “watch over you” and “keep you” occur. He obviously enjoys dwelling on this wonderfully reassuring theme.

But this is where the second thought strikes me, and it takes the form of a question: does he in fact promise more than he can deliver?

In verse 3, we are told that God “will not let your foot slip”. In verse 5, that he will ensure that “the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night” (whatever that may mean). In verse 7, that “the Lord will keep you from all harm”, that “he will watch over your life”, that he will “watch over your coming and going both now and for ever more”.

At face value this seems to suggest that the child of God is guaranteed a happy and trouble-free life. No stumbles, broken bones or grazed elbows; no sunstroke or skin cancers; no “harm” in any area of life; clear leading and guidance every minute of every day. Wonderful!

But isn’t it too good to be true? We slightly shake our heads and say “But life just isn’t like that!”

I read some years ago about a Christian organisation that planned a “healing mission” in a place where Jesus was virtually unknown. Such was the zeal of the people running it that they advertised it with glowing promises: “Come and be healed!” they proclaimed on posters and leaflets, and people from far and wide dug into what small savings they had, even selling precious farm animals they could never replace, in order to get there. But the hype, even if sincere, was way “over the top”: and the “results”… non-existent. All that was left behind was a legacy of bitterness, anger and confusion as the would-be “healers” were run out of town.

(Before we rush to condemn and shake our heads let’s call to mind the times we too may have brought the church and the name of Jesus into disrepute, with genuine but misguided zeal.)

Once you focus on this reality of the Bible, you’re bound to ask how we should explain it, especially to sceptical non-Christians who use it as an excuse to reject Christianity: “Oh, your faith is just pie in the sky when you die! It isn’t in touch with the harsh realities of life”. I’ll suggest three possible answers we can give, but as I’m running out of space I’ll give them as headings now so that then if you’re interested you can come back next time for a fuller explanation.

First… we need to recognise that poetic verse, both in the Bible and otherwise, depends very much on non-literal language. This is particularly true of the psalms, the proverbs, the prophetic books and, of course, the “vision” books such as Daniel and Revelation. This is something we needn’t be embarrassed about or ashamed of. Christians who insist that all Bible truth is literal truth very soon get into a tangle.

Second, we need to remember that the Bible is a very big and varied book – or, to put it more correctly, collection of books. This means that we make a big mistake if we pluck any particular verse or passage out of context (such as “he will not let your foot slip” or “he will keep you from all harm”) and treat it a universal truth in any and every situation. Scripture needs to be balanced with scripture.

Third, and most important, all such passages in their different ways are pointing towards a day when all sorrow and pain will be once for all banished, when God will “wipe every tear from our eyes”, and even death “will be no more” (Revelation 21:4).

When that day comes, I don’t think anybody will be talking about “too good to be true” any more!

Father, help me to be an honest reader of your word, honest when I simply don’t understand it, honest when it seems to contradict reality, and grant that by the work of your Holy Spirit I will be enabled to grasp the deep and life-changing truths of Jesus. Amen.