Friday, July 18, 2014

18 July 2014 - hungry i come

18 July 2014 - hungry i come

His disciples were hungry

The Pharisees say they ought not be eating this food they find in the field of grain.  But they are following Jesus through this field.  Finding grain here right when they are hungry is providential. They experience the providence on which the birds of the air rely, "they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them" (cf. Mat. 6:26).  The Pharisees don't want to see this.  The want to keep God at a safe ritual distance.

The disciples eat regularly and yet they continue to hunger.  As they come to recognize the providential care of Jesus they begin to trust him to not only satisfy their physical hunger but also their spiritual hunger.  They are enabled to look beyond the images that surround them to deeper truths.

Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath
the priests serving in the temple violate the sabbath
and are innocent?
I say to you, something greater than the temple is here.

The care of Jesus in small ways opens their minds. Their whole symbolic frame of reference, all of the rituals and laws of their time, point to something beyond themselves.  The temple points to something even greater where the presence of God dwells.  The bread of offering points to an even greater bread, given by God himself.  There are many ways in which our expectations are wrong or partial as well.  The tender care of Jesus for us will help us to trust him as he asks us to look beyond what we know to what he wants to reveal to us.

Even death itself is not final.  God helps Hezekiah to see this in a partial way.

Thus says the LORD, the God of your father David:
I have heard your prayer and seen your tears.
I will heal you: in three days you shall go up to the LORD’s temple;
I will add fifteen years to your life.

Perhaps Hezekiah is not yet ready to know about God's plan that all the dead will rise one day. Perhaps eternity is too big of a concept for him to take seriously.  The LORD still wants to reveal to him that life and death are entirely in his hands.  He reveals this in a way that Hezekiah can appreciate and understand.  Maybe the idea of eternity is too big for us too.  Maybe we have trouble fixing our hearts on heaven because it seems to abstract.  Maybe we can't connect with that idea.  If so, let us approach the temple of the LORD to experience his providence.  As he cares for us our longing for him will grow until eternity becomes a necessity of our desire for him.

Those live whom the LORD protects;
yours is the life of my spirit.
You have given me health and life.

The LORD really is all powerful.  Time itself is in his hands.  And we, his people, are in his heart.  He wants to save, not just our lives, but our souls, that we may not die eternally.  As we see him work we become confident that "the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ" (cf. Phi. 1:6).  We begun to realize that even time, which seems inexorable, is really subject to the LORD of all creation.

See, I will make the shadow cast by the sun
on the stairway to the terrace of Ahaz
go back the ten steps it has advanced.”

Let us go to Jesus, the true temple.  Let us find in him the true bread from heaven.  If we just open ourselves to him, if we don't let the Pharisees get us down, he will feed us with the bread of heaven, the medicine of immortality, and the antidote to death.

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