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EVERY DAY

SEPTEMBER

SEP/OCT 2012

Minor Prophets: Part 2

OCTOBER

Ian Coffey

Philippians DAVID SPRIGGs

PLUS …

Weekend reflections on the Psalms, and the Big Picture by Philip Greenslade

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Ian Coffey Ian Coffey is Vice Principal and Director of Leadership Training at Moorlands College on the south coast of England. An ordained Baptist minister, he has been involved in church leadership for over 30 years. He has authored 14 books and speaks at conferences and events in many countries. Ian is married to Ruth and they have four adult sons and two granddaughters. In both writing and speaking his passion is to explain and apply the message of the Bible in everyday language.

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David Spriggs David Spriggs is a Baptist Minister who served in local churches for over 20 years before joining the Evangelical Alliance as the Secretary for Evangelism and Prayer.

From there he moved to become the Open Book Project Director for Bible Society, where he still works as Dean of Studies – which involves working with universities and colleges. He describes himself as an ‘Enabler with an evangelistic passion’.

His other passions include rugby and cricket, not to mention his wife, three adult children and their partners and five grandchildren. He loves writing on the Bible, prayer and Christian spirituality.

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Philip Greenslade Having originally trained for the Baptist ministry, Philip has over 30 years’ experience in Christian ministry. He has worked with CWR since 1991 in the areas of biblical studies, pastoral care and leadership. With his passion for teaching God’s Word, he offers a refreshing and challenging perspective for all those who attend his courses. Close to Philip’s heart are the long-running Bible Discovery Weekends. Course Director for CWR’s recent postgraduate programme in Pastoral Leadership, Philip is currently leading a Pastoral Care course focused on Christian identity and vocation. He is the author of several books including God’s Story, Voice from the Hills and Ministering Angles.

Copyright © CWR 2007, 2012 First published 2007 by CWR. This edition published 2012 by CWR, Waverley Abbey House, Waverley Lane, Farnham, Surrey GU9 8EP, England. CWR is a Registered Charity – Number 294387 and a Limited Company registered in England – Registration Number 1990308.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of CWR. Some extra copy provided by Philip Greenslade on Oct. 8, 9, 11, 12, 17, 23, 31.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture references are from the Holy Bible: New International Version (NIV), copyright © 2001, 2005 by Biblica. Used by permission of Biblica®. Other versions: ESV: The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, published by HarperCollins Publishers © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. NLT: Holy Bible New Living Translation, © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc. RSV: Revised Standard Version, © 1965, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. The Message: Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

AV: The Authorised Version.

Concept development, editing, design and production by CWR Cover image: istock/ooyoo Printed in England by Linney Print

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September introduction

Minor Prophets: Part 2 Ian Coffey I have a prayer partner called Nigel and we meet regularly to talk and pray.

At the time of writing these notes my friend is undertaking a part-time university course, which involves juggling heavy work and family responsibilities. I have been praying for him, especially as some aspects of the course are difficult and the late-night study has been an uphill struggle. In turn, he has prayed for me and my responsibility in writing these notes.

This month we are looking at the message of six Hebrew prophets: Micah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. There are some wonderful and inspiring passages in these books – and some which are mystifying and difficult to interpret! But Nigel and I have learned an important lesson in our separate tasks: matters that are difficult and challenging often prove to be rich and rewarding too. In studying these prophets I have learned some new things, and been reminded of truths that had slipped out of sight.

Probably what has stood out most is that these men all lived in difficult times. They spoke into actual situations with clarity and courage, and knew how to read the signs of the times with truly prophetic insight. This didn’t make them arrogant or ‘holier-than-thou’, but their passion for God and His ways caused them to have an influence on their society. And we have the privilege – hundreds of years later – of reading their words and thinking about how we might make a difference too.

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WEEKEND Psalm 147:1–11

Stars in His eyes This is the song of a people rejoicing on the other side of a terrible ordeal. Theirs was a community devastated by military invasion. Cities had been laid to waste, families decimated, lives shattered – such was the effect of the Babylonian exile of God’s people.

Post-traumatic stress disorder has become almost a fashionable psychological malady in the modern Western world for anyone suffering the slightest adversity. But in other parts of today’s world – and in Judah back then – it is and was a grim reality.

The psalm reflects the praise of those who have ‘been to hell and back’. The ‘brokenhearted’ and walking wounded among the returning exiles now rejoice because they have known the salvation of their God. The Lord binds up (vv.2–3), and bears up the humbled and afflicted (v.6). Moreover, it is precisely these bedraggled, dispirited few whom God will make the building blocks of His new community, for the lame shall become the nucleus of the nation, and the outcasts and marginalised the centrepiece of the new

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people of God (cf. Micah 4:6–7). No longer are these people to be statistical fodder for the Babylonian civil service; each one of them is personally known and loved, for if the Lord calls each star by name how much more His people (v.4)?

And this is no local deity with a few followers but the cosmic Lord of Creation (v.5). Yet we are not lost in the immensity of space for He who numbers and names the stars notices us. His provision is reliable (vv.8–9), and His pleasure – confounding conventional human wisdom – delights in those who risk all on the unfailing covenant love of God (vv.10–11).

No wonder praising such a God (v.1) is ethically right (‘good’), spiritually and emotionally satisfying (‘pleasant’), and aesthetically and theologically appropriate to the worthiness of the One being worshipped (‘fitting’). ‘Praise looks good on … those who aspire to look at the world unsentimentally … to see the world as God sees it’ (Ellen Davis). And His people are the stars in His eyes.

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Micah 1:1–2:13 Mon 3 Sep

It costs to care

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e know little about Micah other than that he was contemporary with Isaiah and came from a small town in southern Judah. He and Isaiah addressed the same dire spiritual rebellion, yet from different perspectives. Isaiah was known in high circles of power and was a city dweller.

Micah, however, was a countryman, and viewed the plight of the nation away from the bright city lights. But sin is sin, whatever your postcode, and neither of these faithful servants of Yahweh backed off from spelling it out.

Micah’s message encompasses both the northern and southern kingdoms of divided Israel, and their respective capitals of Samaria and Jerusalem (1:1,5). Their idols would be shattered in the coming judgment of the Lord (1:7), and although foreign armies would sack their cities, He was the One rising against His own chosen people (1:3).

Micah was a gifted preacher and used a series of puns to pin his message on the memories of his listeners.

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He plays on the names of various wellknown towns. This paraphrase of his announcement in 1:10–11 (Moffatt) gives us a flavour: Weep tears at Teartown … grovel in the dust at Dust town … fare forth stripped, O Fairtown …

Stirtown … dare not stir …

Sometimes when people are gripped by apathy you have to fight for their attention. It seems Micah was surrounded by preachers who spoke only about God’s love and never about His judgment (2:6–7). The kind of sermons these people liked to hear would be on the topic ‘Let the good times roll’ (2:11)! What a contrast to the pain of the message Micah carries as he contemplates the incurable wound of his people (1:8–9). Howling, moaning, going barefoot and naked are vivid images of a man who felt the pain of the message he was asked to deliver.

For Micah, it cost to care.

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Tues 4 Sep Micah 3:1–4:13

Peacemaking

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have been a preacher for over 30 years and most of my sermons are neatly filed where I can find them. Occasionally I will pull some notes from one file and mix them with another – but imagine someone trying to make sense of another person’s notes when they seem to have just been thrown together randomly.

I find that a helpful way to understand a book such as Micah. It is a collection of sermons preached over a period of years rather than a single thought-out argument. Interestingly, like most preachers, Micah is happy to quote other people’s material (compare 4:1–5 with Isa. 2:1–5). Which of the two prophets did the borrowing becomes irrelevant when we consider the wonderful prophetic picture of the consummation of God’s plan of salvation through the reign of King Jesus.

But this sermon sampler also contains an ugly picture of the present as Micah saw it. Leaders – both political and spiritual – had turned values on their heads and ended up hating good and loving evil (3:1–2). Prophets were telling lies about peace (3:5), and

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P politicians were feeding off people by denying justice (3:3). Bribery and corruption had become commonplace – indeed, things were so bad you could even rent a sermon or purchase a prophecy (3:11). But even the attempt to twist truth could not avert what Micah graphically describes as the total destruction of the city of Jerusalem (3:12). This occurred in 586 BC, and 100 years after Micah preached his message Jeremiah recalls his exact words (Jer. 26:18). The passage in Jeremiah suggests that Micah’s words did not fall on completely deaf ears.

His preaching, and that of his contemporary, Isaiah, prompted Hezekiah to seek God in penitence (Isa. 37:1ff.) and prevent an Assyrian invasion.

We are reminded that ignoring what is wrong is to allow things to continue unchanged. Micah’s boldness and courage opened the way for change.

Real love tells it like it is and refuses to opt for the quiet life. Remember, Jesus didn’t say, ‘Blessed are the peacekeepers’; rather, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ (Matt. 5:9, my emphasis). And peacemaking is a costly business.

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The Big Picture Philip Greenslade gives a glimpse of how the Minor Prophets and Philippians fit together in God’s story.

The Old Testament prophets and the apostle Paul both found themselves called into the service of Israel’s One Creator God, concerned on the one hand for the internal integrity and, on the other, for the external distinctiveness of the community of faith.

As to internal integrity, Micah, for example, exposes the hypocrisy of a nation which refuses to ‘walk the talk’, worshipping while practising injustice.

Even as he brings dire warnings of judgment, however, he raises hopes, albeit long-distance, of a day of international peace (4:3), of a radically reconstituted nation (4:6–7) under the aegis of a royal deliverer born in Bethlehem (5:2).

After the return from Exile, the prophets Haggai, with blunt practicality, and Zechariah with extravagant visions, both seek to conform the community to the covenantal shape God desires.

As to their relationship to the wider world, its external distinctiveness,

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Habakkuk memorably wrestles before the Exile with the vexed issue of how God can use a pagan Babylonian empire to bring judgment on His own people. By enduring such problematic events, says Habakkuk, the ‘just shall live by faith’, reassured by knowing who the world’s Lord really is and whose the glory (2:4; 2:14,20).

According to OT scholar Donald Gowan, the unifying theme of all the prophets was the ‘death and resurrection of Israel’, most graphically ‘enacted’ by the departure to, and return from, exile.

Now the shape to which God’s people need to be conformed is cruciform.

Paul, for his part, is convinced that the ‘real thing’, the real ‘dying and rising of Israel’ has finally taken place in the death and resurrection of Israel’s Messiah, Jesus, who incarnated Israel’s God and embodied Israel’s destiny (cf. Phil. 2:5–10). Paul writes in the full afterglow of the Easter events and the life-changing impact they have made

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on him personally which have made him ‘sold out for Christ’ (Phil. 3:3–11) as His bondservant and apostle (Phil. 1:1,21). What it might look like for Israel to pass through the crucible of the cross is exemplified in Paul’s own journey into Christ, so that Philippians 3:3–11 is the mirror image of 2:5–11. This means for Paul that the internal integrity of the Church depends on believers sharing and living out the ‘mind of Christ’ in the way they treat one another.

Since Jesus who existed (and never ceased to exist) ‘in the form of God’ was humbly obedient to death by crucifixion, then, as Paul saw, a startling new light is shed on what it means to be God and to be Godlike. Now the shape to which God’s people need to be conformed is cruciform.

As to the Church’s external distinctiveness, Paul urges the Philippians to be true to their heavenly citizenship, living as a ‘colony of heaven’ in the most ‘Roman’ city outside Italy (Phil. 3:20), a counter-cultural community acting out the values and story of another kingdom under the noses of Imperial Rome.

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The very titles ‘Saviour’ and ‘Lord’, hijacked by Caesar as invoking quasidivine status and universal adulation, are rightly re-applied to Jesus. The eagerly-awaited arrival (‘parousia’) in town of an imperial delegation, or even the Emperor himself, is to be upstaged by the glorious ‘coming’ of the Lord Jesus. No expectation can match that. we can rejoice amid the loss of all things at the gain of knowing our true Saviour and Lord Meanwhile, Rome’s ‘peace’ (the ‘pax Romana’) is exposed as a fraudulent protection racket enforced by military oppression, eclipsed by a ‘peace’ that far surpasses political calculations in reconciling us to God’s rule in our hearts. No wonder we, like Habakkuk (3:17–19), and with even greater cause, Paul, can rejoice amid the loss of all things at the gain of knowing our true Saviour and Lord.

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October introduction

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Philippians David Spriggs Philippians is one of Paul’s best-loved letters, a wonderful mixture of the personal and the doctrinal. We have ethical teaching, and an amazing hymn to Christ. We step right into Paul’s prison cell as he wrestles with his own hopes for his future, awaiting trial before Caesar. He also provides momentum, immersing us in his energetic and focused striving to run towards Christ. Then there is the richness of Paul’s relationship with the Philippian Christians. Its origins were both heroic and miraculous (see Acts 16:6–40), and this letter shows a continuing relationship of substance.

This letter finds its way into many Christians’ ‘favourites’ list, perhaps above all because of its dominant theme of joy. Somehow, reading and rereading it lifts our own spirits. Nevertheless, we should not underestimate the serious challenges and insights which this letter brings to us today – not least, to grow in our capacity to live in changing circumstances with discerning love.

I suggest that Philippians 1:9–10 are key verses. Here Paul tells us that his prayer is not only for more love, but for a more insightful love. This love will enable Christians to see more deeply, respond more wisely and produce a more fruitful Christian life. And Paul writes to stimulate what he prays for.

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Philippians 1:1–6 Mon 1 Oct

Excitement with joy!

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n Philippi, around AD 65, a letter from Paul delivered by hand, almost certainly by Epaphroditus (see 2:25–30), would be very special.

Many knew about the founding of the church there by Paul, and others would be concerned for him personally. The way Paul opens this letter shows us immediately what a remarkable change the gospel has brought about in human relationships. Usually leaders lord it over servants; usually ‘saints’ are the larger-than-life people who overawe the rank and file. But the gospel reverses this. Here the leaders are the servants, writing to meet the needs of the saints!

So Paul greets the saints, but he is soon revealing the issue that truly matters to him. This is primarily neither his sufferings nor his imprisonment, even less recounting his ‘extreme’ adventures for Christ. No, essentially it is people, especially those who have joined with him in ‘partnership in the gospel’.

In verse 5, the word koinonia is often translated as ‘fellowship’, but in origin it was a business word. So it is par-

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ticularly the people who have invested their time, energy and resources, and risked much to share the good news of Jesus, who swell Paul’s sense of joy.

But in one sense, something even more thrilling and satisfying than recalling those who share the gospel journey with us is knowing where we end. It is because God can be relied upon completely to deliver what he promises in the gospel that Paul’s joy is so strong. In every Christian Paul discerns the recreating work of God. In every Christian Paul also sees an unfinished ‘symphony’. But unlike those which were never completed by the master composer, either because he died or even because he discarded one manuscript for a better theme, God will see the work through. He does not die and He will never drop us, however tough the transformation process might be. So Paul’s heart travels from the richness of the people he knows, through the passion he shares for the gospel, and right into eternity where God’s glory will be seen in each of us.

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Tues 2 Oct Philippians 1:7–8

Real affection: ‘to have and to hold’

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he good news of what God has done through Jesus Christ is Paul’s overriding obsession.

For the sake of the gospel Paul risks life and limb, and he is now imprisoned and facing possible death. But his feelings are not bound up with his own plight. Paul’s passion for the gospel is matched only by his affection for the Philippians. He ‘fathered’ the church in Philippi, and like every caring parent he has spent time examining his attitudes. Having shared with the Philippians how he always prays with joy, he says: ‘It is right for me to feel this way’ (v.7). Such comments usually imply a response to criticism, either other people’s or our own selfassessments. Here, it is probably other people’s critiques. Some Philippians, who did not know him well, might have wondered whether his attitude was healthy. He says it is.

First, he claims that he has the Philippians in his heart. The heart is the deepest level of human awareness and affection, the centre of the will as well as the emotions, the place of decision-making and memory. So Paul

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is affirming that his language is not simply rhetorical, describing a special relationship with the Philippians for good effect.

The reason he holds them so dear and so deeply is that they ‘share in God’s grace with me’ (v.7 – at the end). The verb translated ‘share’ is a compound word from the same root as ‘fellowship’ (see yesterday’s notes).

Paul is probably not simply saying here that they are ‘fellow Christians’ or even that they are ‘co-heirs with him in Christ’, important as that would be, but rather that they are people who have enabled him to make God’s grace known through supporting him in the proclamation of the gospel.

The third reason for his deep joy and thankfulness is that he longs for them ‘with the affection of Christ Jesus’ (v.8).

Probably Paul feels that his aching for his friends is an experience which, through God’s Spirit, is an aspect of ‘fellowship’ – he is experiencing what Christ feels for them.

How deeply do we care for our Christian friends?

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Philippians 1:9–11 Wed 3 Oct

Get praying

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e come now to consider Paul’s prayer for the Philippians. Prayer for the churches is a major priority for him, and a characteristic way of starting his letters. Here and elsewhere (especially in Ephesians) we have a master class in prayer. Recalling his Christian friends in Philippi stirs up great joy in Paul, and also impels him to pray for them. The centre of gravity of his prayers is not their physical wellbeing, although we know that such concerns matter to him. Rather, Paul’s priority is their spiritual development and protection.

He wrote to the Corinthians that love was the greatest gift or virtue, and here he prays first that the Philippians’ love may flourish. Is this their love for God, or their love for one another, or even for Paul? I suspect he would have found this a puzzling question. If your love for God abounds, then your love for your fellow Christians will grow too (see 1 John 4:20, GNB). Perhaps we can paraphrase Paul’s prayer as meaning ‘your capacity to love’.

But love is a slippery word! So Paul

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qualifies the kind of love he is praying for as love ‘in knowledge and depth of insight’(v.9). Again, he does not specify whether this is knowledge of God or of other Christians, self-knowledge or general knowledge. But he makes clear that the sort of love he longs for is not only emotional or comforting, but also informed and effective. It leads to a deep understanding which will not react without thinking through the consequences, or judge people superficially, or respond without care and tact. It is the kind of discerning love which parents give to their children, helping them to mature, rather than the sort which panders to their needs or overprotects. It is a strong love. It is love that will not rush to criticism, or be easily deflected.

Such love enables us to choose the right course of action to help others, and to foster continuous Christian growth throughout the Church. It isn’t easy, so Paul prays for it!

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