DAY 13 MORNING Read John 12:27-36
HOSEA: JESUS CHRIST DRAWS US WITH KINDNESS AS A BROKEN-HEARTED HUSBAND
Through Hosea the Lord said to Israel “I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love” Hosea 11:4. Christ drew us with chords of kindness when he became a man and died for us. John writes “But I, when I am lifted up will draw all men to myself ” John 12:32. Hosea’s main message is that God hates idolatry. He considers Israel’s unfaithfulness like that of a prostitute. He declares that he will judge Israel and destroy it and lead it into captivity to Assyria, which happened in 722 BC. The Lord commanded Hosea to take a prostitute for his wife. This act powerfully communicated to Judah the unfaithfulness of Israel. Israel had been unfaithful to God as a whore is unfaithful. Judah would have known that Israel were God’s people. This would have been very sobering to hear, that the prophet was saying that the children of Abraham were “not my people”. This lament moves from desperation to hope. The depth of the love of God for Israel will draw them back from depravity to faithfulness. Israel is like a stubborn heiffer as it takes a position to go against the will of God. Israel’s sin is spiritual adultery. God likens Israel to a heated oven. The consequences of Israel’s sin would be quickly visited upon them like a whirlwind. They would be swallowed up by Assyria in 72BC. Hosea declared that destruction would follow its spiritual adultery. Israel would go into captivity. Hosea warns Judah of the dangers that will befall them if they do not change their ways. Israel will be taken captive. The Lord uses powerful provocative language of a parent’s tender love for his child to demonstrate how painful it is to the Lord that his child should go into captivity. The tenderness and compassion is stirring when contrasted to the stark reality of judgement. Hosea challenges Judah not to be like Israel and try and “herd the wind.” Ahaz had foolishly made a treaty with Assyria early in his reign. The consequences of Israel’s idolatry are that Israel will be totally destroyed.
Ultimately Jesus Christ is able to redeem and ransom Israel. Jesus Christ will swallow up death in victory. God will restore, and his covenantal love is described in Hosea as an evergreen cypress tree.
MISSIONARY MONKS: AIDEN 590-651[1]
Aiden was part of Colomba’s monastery in Iona. King Oswald of Northumbia had been in Iona for 20 years in exile, where he converted to Christ. He returned to Northumbia and was keen to teach the people of Northumbia the Christian faith, and to receive Christian missionaries and Aiden was invited to come from Iona and was given Lindisfarne to be a missionary/ monastic base for his ministry. Oswald, who had learnt Irish in Iona, became Aiden’s personal translator, when he preached publicly. Aiden was a humble man and chose to travel by foot and not by horse. He was a peregrini or “wanderer for Christ” which meant he was able to relate to the people of Northumbria. The historian Bede says that Aiden was remembered, as he was “kind and generous to the poor and the strangers,” giving “tenderness in comforting the weak, in relieving and protecting the poor.” He noted his credibility as a result of his “abstinence,” self-control”, and “he neither sought after nor cared for worldly possessions.”[2] Miracles accompanied his ministry and by 663, “the greater part of England had become permanently Christian under the influence of the Celtic mission, and was being served by preachers and bishops who were trained under Irish teachers at Lindisfarne.”[3]
CLICK ON BOLD and you will be directed to Joshua Project website with more information for prayer.
PRAY for “the Albanian, Macedonian in North Macedonia the tenth largest unreached people group in Europe, whose language is Albanian, Gheg and whose primary religion is Islam. There are 521,000, 0.0% Christian and 0.0% evangelical. ”[4] The Macedonian Albanians are a people struggling to find their identity, excluded from living in many areas. Aiden was kind and generous to the poor and the strangers. Lord reveal your kindness and tenderness with an indigenous expression of your humble love and compassion for the Albanians in North Macedonia we pray.
DAY 13 EVENING Read Psalm 61-65. Re-read Psalm 61
PSALM 61: JESUS IS THE ROCK, HIGHER THAN I
Psalm 61:2 “From the ends of the Earth I call to you. I call as my heart grows faint, lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” Paul very clearly states that Christ is the spiritual rock. He wrote [5] “They were all baptised into Moses, in the clouds and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them and that rock was Christ”. How did Paul say so definitively that Jesus was the spiritual rock that Israel drank from in the wilderness? How did he make that jump? [6] Richard Hays, has dismissed the idea that Paul had any systematic hermeneutical principles, but rather used Christocentric figurative interpretation, using his imagination. This is why Richard Hays wrote “The conversion of the imagination,” [7]Is this true did Paul really have no method of interpreting the Old Testament…just a good (Holy Spirit inspired) imagination?
Augustineread the psalms in the light of the insights of Paul about Christ’s crucified human humility, and Scripture opened up to him, but he insistently sought to show that his proclamation of the gospel was grounded in the witness of Israel’s sacred texts. This is not the way that theological departments and bible colleges read the Old Testament today. Pick up any bible commentary today and you will find it is primarily focussed on [8]trying to understand what the original author meant to communicate to the original audience in the original situation. This is very different from the way that Paul read the Old Testament. So how did Paul read the Old Testament? Matthew Bates suggests, that [9]the way Paul read the sacred texts, that we call the Old Testament was through the received “apostolic proclamation”. That was his filter … through which he read the ancient texts. Matthew Bates contends that Paul’s own declarations about the Scriptures suggest that he read everything through the lens of Christ. More specifically, Matthew Bates contends [10] that Paul looks at the Old Testament through, what he calls a “protocreed,” that is 1 Corinthians 15:3-5, 8, 11. “ For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve….And last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. Whether then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.” Paul looks at the Old Testament and clearly he is very open to use his imagination, figurative interpretation, and the use of metaphors or “types.”
This brings us back to Psalm 61:2. Let’s look to the rock. Alec Motyer a conservative scholar, wrote, “Look to the rock” [11]which focussed on the Old Testament background to the understanding of Christ. We do not need to have any inhibitions reading this Psalm, (as Augustine did) as a Psalm pointing to Christ. If Paul could compare Christ to a Spiritual rock, so can we. Let’s drink deeply from Jesus our spiritual rock, the rock that is higher than I, reminded that the children of Israel, drank from a rock in the wilderness. Jesus said: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’ (Matthew 4:4). The original expression meant ‘is continually coming out of the mouth of God’; it is like a stream pouring forth and, like the stream of a fountain, it is never static.”(9)[12] How hungry and thirsty are you for Jesus the Living Word. If you are in a spiritual wilderness then feed on Him and drink deeply from the Living Word. Let’s unblock the well and drink from Jesus our spiritual rock.
PRAYER Lord Jesus I look to you today, my spiritual rock. I am thirsty for you Lord. Fill me up Lord, I pray.. with a stream of living water today
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[1] Smither, E.L. Missionary monks, Cascade books, 2016, 73-76 (summary).
[2] Bede Ecclesiastical History, Penguin, 1990,3.5; 3.17 quoted in Neill, S. The history of Christian missions. Penguin, 1964
[3] McNeill, Celtic churches, University of Chicago Press, 1974, 108.
[4] Data provided by Joshua Project https://joshuaproject.net/people_groups/21527/MK
[5] 1 Corinthians 10: 2 -4, NIV.
[6] Hays, R Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as an interpreter of Israel’s Scripture, William B. Eerdmans 2005.
[7] Bates, M. The hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation, Baylor University Press, 2012, 25-32.
[8] Carter, C.A Interpreting scripture with the Great Tradition, 205.
[9] Bates, M The hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation, Baylor University Press, 2012, 25-32.
[10] Bates, M The hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation, Baylor University Press, 2012, 60-61
[11] Motyer, A. Look to the rock: Old Testament background to our understanding of Christ, IVP, 1996.
[12] Gumbel, N. The bible with Nicky and Pippa Gumbel, Hodder and Stoughton, 2018, Day 41.
UNBLOCKING THE WELL OF THE LIVING WORD 
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