Category: Year B

Isaiah 49:5-15

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            Restoration is a major theme in the prophetic books of the Old Testament.  In this passage of Isaiah, God speaks of bringing Israel back to her original calling and purpose.  This would be accomplished through not just one nation but in the Messiah.  The scope and vision of what the Savior would do is enunciated by God:  “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
 
            In other words, Messiah is not just for Israel – Christ is given to reach the entire planet.  Jesus did not come to earth only to gather the Jewish nation back together like some sort of Bill Gaither Homecoming tour.  Instead, Messiah’s place and power is so significant that it is to be shared with everyone in the world.  Although Israel was to be a holy entity and separate from the surrounding culture, they were always to be a light to the nations.
 
            This has great import for the church and every individual believer in Jesus.  The church is not just to be like a country club that caters to club functions and members.  Instead, a missional understanding of church is to be at the forefront of Christian theology and practice because it has always been God’s vision to reach the nations.  The Lord is not satisfied with only catering to a specific people; God wants everyone.  And until believers grasp this heart of God for all persons the church will not be what it is designed to be:  a missionary enterprise that is to put all its resources into shining the light of Christ to every nook and cranny of creation.
 
            It behooves each of us, then, to be taught, trained, and led into God’s missionary heart for all.  Let us build caring relationships and extend loving actions not just to those within the church but toward those outside our fellowship so that God’s intentions are carried out and his prophecy fulfilled in Jesus’ name.
            Restoring God, you bring us back to close relation and fellowship so that we might extend your gracious purposes throughout the world.  Revive us again, God, so that we can hear your call to the nations through our Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

1 John 1:1-9

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            It is day three in the twelve days of Christmas.  In the Church Calendar, Christmas in not only one day in which we celebrate the birth of Christ, but a season between December 25 and January 5 in which Christians express their joy over the incarnation of Jesus.  It is an intentional time of affirming the wonderful truth that Jesus is fully man and fully God; that Jesus has gone before us and brought salvation; that in Jesus our sins are forgiven.  And that, my friends, is reason to spend twelve days in celebration.  God has graciously come to earth for our deliverance from sin, death, and hell.
             The Apostle John began his first epistle telling us the reason he writes about Jesus is to make our joy complete.  With Jesus the light, the good news, has come.  If we enter the light and walk in the light, eschewing the darkness, we participate and have fellowship with God through Jesus.  Through Jesus, if we confess our sins God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all that is unrighteous and of the darkness.
             As a pastor who leads worship in a more liturgically oriented church, the gospel of Jesus is presented each and every Sunday through the liturgy.  My favorite part in the service, and my most joyous experience, is when, having confessed our sins together I declare the assurance of pardon from our God using Scripture.  Often I quote from this passage in 1 John.
             This is a time of year in which Christians can choose to praise the Lord for salvation from sin.  It is a season to reflect on the gracious reality that God has chosen to come near to us in Jesus.  These are days in which our reflection upon the person and work of Christ is to lead us to eternal praise as we glorify our Lord and Savior, Jesus.  Glory to God in the highest; peace on earth; and, goodwill to humanity on whom his favor rests!
             Gracious God, I praise your holy name for sending your Son, the Lord Jesus, to this earth in order to redeem humanity.  Help me so completely to confess my sins and accept your forgiveness that I glorify your name. May your good news of salvation permeate my life in both words and actions in the power of the Spirit.  Amen.

Luke 2:1-14

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            It is Christmas Eve.  Over the centuries since Christ’s birth we in the Western world have tended to so romanticize the Nativity that we have lost the scandal of grace.  So, in order to attempt a humble return to the original impact of Jesus coming to earth, I offer a contemporary version of Luke’s account of the shepherds and angels….
 
            In those days a law went out from the President that everyone in the country should be registered for the draft.  And all went to be registered, each to his own town.  And Joseph also went up from his hick small town to another small village called Bethlehem, because that is where his family was originally from.  He took his betrothed wife, Mary, with him and she was with child.  And while they were there, the time came for Mary to give birth.  And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in an old ratty blanket and laid him in a dresser drawer in the trailer they were staying in, because they could not afford the Motel 6.
 
            And in the same area there were truckers out at the local truck stop, sipping coffee with their semis all around them.  And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were afraid.  And the angel said to them, “Don’t be afraid because I am bringing you some really joyful news that is for everyone.  For your sake a Savior has been born tonight over in the trailer park, who is Christ the Lord.  And this will be a sign for you:  you will find a baby wrapped in an old ratty blanket and lying in a dresser drawer.  And suddenly there was with the angel a whole lot of other angels who together started praising God and saying:  “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
 
            The good news of Jesus coming to this earth is that he came not only for the educated, the wealthy, and the influential; he came for all kinds of people, especially those on the margins of society because the gospel is for everyone.
 
            This night not everyone will be within a church building celebrating with a candlelight service.  Some will be working and just trying to make a living.  Some will finally be with family after being on the road most of the year.  Some will just be happy to have a break.  They need Jesus just as much or more than we do.  Maybe by the grace of God an angel will show up and tell them where to find Jesus.  But if that doesn’t happen, let us be the ones who tell them the good news that Christ the Lord is born just for them.
            Gracious God, you have mercifully sent us your beloved Son to save us all so that we might live new and holy lives.  Help us so to be sensitive to your coming that the news comes joyfully out of us.  Amen.

Zephaniah 3:14-20

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            I grew up in the church.  Yet I must admit that I neither gained a true nor biblical view of God.  As a kid my concept of God was that he was an old white bearded guy who pretty much just twiddled his thumbs on a big ivory throne and occasionally looked down on the earth to see what was happening.  If he got involved at all, it was to take out some sort of divine BB gun and shoot random people in the backside just for kicks (yes, I know this says a whole lot about what kind of kid I was!).
 
            You may not have such a view of God, but just maybe God is a bit different than you have always conceived him to be.  The Old Testament prophets are conduits to showing us something of the pathos of God, that is, the emotions and heart of God.  Yes, I said emotions.  It could be that we do not think of God as feeling anything (except maybe anger) and portray him in our minds as some sort of big brain on a stick that never really gets excited about anything except disobedience.
 
            But in this wonderful little book of Zephaniah we get a portrayal of a God who is graciously giddy.  All the prophetic books of the Bible display a God who moves in waves of judgment and grace in response to a people who continually break covenant stipulations.  Yet God does not remain angry forever.  He is merciful and is in the business of not only forgiving people but restoring them and making them righteous. 
 
            There is a verse tucked away in Zephaniah that we might pass over because we do not tend to look at God this way:  “The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”  It is God himself that rejoices and sings.  Yes, God.  Perhaps we need to gain the perspective that God throws parties and celebrates.  Maybe we must begin to think the thought that God is not some divine curmudgeon that is constantly a sourpuss. 
 
            If God is this way (and he himself says he is) then maybe we ought to entertain the notion that hospitality, food, celebration, and loud rejoicing reflects God’s image as much or more than somber attitudes.  Maybe Christians are the people who should throw the best parties in the neighborhood.  Soon Christmas will be here, and the Church Calendar allows for and encourages a twelve day celebration of the incarnation, of God becoming human.  It is time to prepare for a party.  Let us do it with all the gusto that befits people created in God’s likeness.
            Joyous God, how thankful I am that you do not remain angry forever.  May your grace and mercy seep down into my soul to the point of bringing out loud singing and rejoicing.  May a watching world see that there is joy both in heaven and on earth.  Amen.