reading for: 12 January

John 2:1-11

• READ

Someone once said, “Weddings are accidents waiting to happen. Something almost always goes wrong at a service of holy matrimony.” Well, something is definitely going horribly wrong at this wedding in Cana.

In those days, the bride and groom celebrated the marriage not with a honeymoon but with a seven-day wedding feast at the groom’s home. This celebration is in trouble, because the wine is finishing before the party is over. The situation constitutes a crisis for the family who shoulders the responsibility of hospitality. It is the mother of Jesus who notices. She provides the leadership for this miraculous sign by observing the difficulty and taking action to help. Jesus stands in the background as someone who also had been invited and seems content to keep his distance at first. When his mother tells the servants to do whatever Jesus says, Jesus performs one of his most understated mighty acts, “Fill the jars with water….Now draw some out, and take it to the master of the feast” (v7–8). The best wine is now served to keep the party going. The servants know what has happened, the chief steward is amazed, and the disciples believe in Jesus. Most importantly, the joyous feast has been saved.

A question we might ask is, “Why would the first miracle of Our Lord, be for a wedding party to continue? For eating and drinking, laughter, singing and dancing to carry on?” I believe that Jesus “began with the end in mind.” Jesus was bringing a taste of heaven, down to earth for the first disciples to see. The marriage covenant that God initiated with his people on Sinai (Exodus 19 – 24), through Jesus, would now find a fitting and proper climax and end. This end is a great marriage banquet, described as the Marriage Feast of the Lamb in Revelation 19:6-9. Hence the endpoint of all of Jesus’ work – his incarnation, his miracles, healings, deliverance, resurrections, his going to the cross, his resurrection and ascension – all serve to bring us into joyous communion with the Father and with one another in a great big banquet on the Day of the Lord. And so this ‘temporary’, ‘earthly’ miracle at Cana was to give us a foretaste of what God was about to do through His Son. This is the Good News of the Gospel.

• REFLECT

  This new year/Chinese New Year, as we feast and visit and have reunion dinners or share meals with family and friends, let us enjoy friendships and relationships as a taste of heaven. In order for us to do this well, we may need to prepare our hearts even as we prepare our homes. Perhaps, reconciliation and forgiveness is needed. Perhaps clearing up misunderstandings is necessary. Ask the Lord to show you what you need to do to prepare well in these few weeks.

reading for: 13 January

Isaiah 62:1-5

• READ

  A major theme of the Book of Isaiah is of God freeing his people from captivity. In chapters 40–55 of Isaiah, the prophet announces God’s intention to bring about the defeat of the Babylonians and the return of the exiles. In chapters 56–66, those events have taken place, but all is still not right. The Babylonians may be defeated, but the restoration and rebuilding of Jerusalem have met obstacles and delays. In Isaiah 62, the prophet is addressing a people who have been full of hope but now must battle the weakening morale caused by broken dreams and crumbling faith. The people wonder if God is powerless to fulfill the promises made during the era of exile —or if God doesn’t care anymore about the suffering of His people.

  Here in 62:1–5 the prophet describes the good news of God’s vindication of Jerusalem. Paired with yesterday’s reading of John’s account of Jesus turning water into wine at Cana, today’s passage focuses on yet another dramatic manifestation of God’s power.

  However, before the good news of changed names and weddings, the prophet calls for God to set things right. These five verses begin as a lament.

  Isaiah begins by demanding that God must do something about the situation: “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch.”

  Part of the power of the Bible is the good news it has to offer to people who desperately need to hear such news, but the other part of the Bible’s power is its ability to name the reality that we are facing.

  Our Father knows how we feel: this is the power of Isaiah 62:1 for the discouraged returnees and for anyone dealing with the feeling that God has turned away in indifference. For us to follow the prophet’s example, we need to acknowledge the reality faced by those dealing with defeat and broken dreams before we move to words of hope and new beginnings. Otherwise, the good news we bring them can feel empty and even untruthful.

  Isaiah 62 also gives us a model for honest prayer when life is difficult and God seems distant. We dare to follow Isaiah’s lament and bold protest because those are elements of the prayers of God’s people just as much as words of thanksgiving and praise. Isaiah’s protest to God reminds us that in our prayers, as Walter Brueggemann says so aptly, “there is nothing out of bounds, nothing precluded or inappropriate. Everything properly belongs in this conversation of the heart. To withhold parts of life from that conversation is in fact to withhold part of life from the sovereignty of God.”

• REFLECT

  Are your prayers ‘conversations of the heart’? Do you bring everything before God? Your worries and fears, your ideas, dreams and desires, your pain, frustration and even numbness? And are you able to sense how God cherishes you, as ‘a royal diadem in the hand of your God’ or his delight and rejoicing over you as his son or daughter? Take time to meditate and rest in Him. 

  In conversation with others, step into their shoes for a few minutes and hear their heart’s cry before God and also celebrate His love over them.

reading for: 14 January

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

• READ

  In chapters 11-14, Paul is addressing various issues that are concerned with communal worship of the Corinthian church. In today’s passage, he answers a question on the nature of spiritual gifts and their exercise in the public assembly. However, at the core of it, Paul is really addressing the issue of a ‘self-indulgent spirit’, in the name of ‘Christian freedom’ manifesting itself through spiritual gifts, and producing selfishness and disunity (12:7, 25; 14:4) and chaos in the worship gatherings (14:23, 33, 40).

   

  Paul begins chapter 12 in an indirect way. He first establishes the confessional framework into which his later instruction fits. For Paul, how to determine whether something is genuinely spiritual, that is, from the Holy Spirit of God, is its direct linkage to the confession “Jesus is Lord” (v. 3). This simple statement is commonly understood to be the earliest Christian confession of faith, one that represented a radical commitment of exclusive allegiance to Christ. Since the Holy Spirit is the only source for such allegiance, any prophetic speeches that come after are authentically spiritual as well. On the other hand, if someone’s spiritual words stand apart from or in opposition to the confession of Jesus’ lordship, then the persons, instructions, and/or utterances are not of the Holy Spirit and are not truly spiritual.

   

  In the rest of the passage, Paul stresses the Holy Spirit as the singular Source and Unifier of all the diverse spiritual gifts. “but the same Spirit… manifestation of the Spirit…..given through the Spirit….the same Spirit…by one and the same Spirit….” (v.4-11). The oneness of God here stands in stark contrast to the Corinthians’ multiplicity of idols (v. 2) and gods that stood prominent in their spiritual matters.

   

  Not only did the gifts have a unity in source (v. 4-6), and they also had a unity in purpose. They were given, not for personal enrichment (cf. 14:4; 1 Peter 4:10), but for the common good of the body of Christ, the building up of others (1 Cor. 10:24; 14:12).

   

  1.       Wisdom refers to insight into doctrinal truth. Paul exercised and expressed this gift in this letter (e.g., 2:6).

  2.       Knowledge refers to the ability to apply doctrinal truth to life. Paul also exercised and expressed this gift in this letter (e.g., 12:1-3; 11:3). Note the recurrence of the phrase “Do you not know” in 3:16; 5:6; 6:2-3, 9, 15-16, 19; 9:13, 24; also cf. 8:1-3, 10-11).

  3.       Faith as a spiritual gift is probably an unusual measure of trust in God beyond that exercised by most Christians (e.g., 13:2).

  4.       Healing is the ability to restore health (e.g., Acts 3:7; 19:12) and also to hold off death itself temporarily (Acts 9:40; 20:9-10).

  5.       Miraculous powers may refer to exorcising demons (Acts 19:12) or inducing physical disability (Acts 13:11) or even death (Acts 5:5, 9).

  6.       Prophecy is the ability, like that of the Old Testament prophets, to declare a message of God for His people (1 Cor. 14:3).

  7.       Ability to distinguish between spirits is the gift to differentiate the Word of God proclaimed by a true prophet from that of a satanic deceiver (cf. 2 Cor. 11:14-15; 1 John 4:1). If the Corinthians possessed this gift (cf. 1 Cor. 1:7), it was not being put to good use (cf. 12:1-3).

  8.       Tongues refers to the ability to speak an unlearned, living language (e.g., Acts 2:11).

  9.       Interpretation was the ability to translate an unlearned, known language expressed in the assembly (1 Cor. 14:27).

• REFLECT

  Do you see spiritual gifts at work through Life Group members or CNLers in church? Discuss how you’ve observed some spiritual gifts at work and how they help us Eat, Pray & Grow.

reading for: 15 January

Psalm 36:5-10

Jesus is God’s Voice

• READ

  Verses 5–9 vividly and powerfully depict God’s steadfast love, faithfulness, righteousness, and judgment by means of a series of images: These divine qualities extend into the heavens, reaching the clouds. They bear comparison with mighty mountains and the great deep. Psalm 103 uses similar images: “For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is [God’s] steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us” (Ps. 103:11).

  “You save humans and animals alike, O LORD” (36:6c). The poet claims not only that God the Creator cares for animal life, along with the rest of creation (see Ps. 104), but also that God’s steadfast love, faithfulness, righteousness, and judgment enrich both animal and human life.

  The closing lines of the hymn (v. 7–9) bear comparison with other psalms portraying God’s intimate love and presence (see Pss.23, 73, 139). The steadfast love of God is “precious” or highly prized. Proverbs 3:15 declares Wisdom to be more highly prized, or rarer, than jewels, beyond all other possessions in value. God’s love is likewise beyond compare. God’s love provides security for all people under the shadow of God’s wings. Psalm 17:8 connects the two thoughts found here in 36:7: “Guard me as the apple of the eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings” See also Psalms 57:1 and 63:7. The wings of God bore the Israelites from Egypt across the dreaded desert to God—“to me” (see Exod. 19:4). Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem shows the same degree of intimacy conveyed by a similar expression: a mother hen gathering her brood under her wings. (See Matt. 23:37 and Luke 13:34.)

  In the following verse (v. 8), this intimacy between God and the human community appears in the imagery of food and drink. The use of the term “all people” in verse 7 means that eating and drinking at God’s table refers to God’s love extending to all; God’s protection is for all, and all have access to the table God spreads.

  “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light” (v. 9). This line, familiar from the prayers and liturgies of the church, sees God not only as the Creator. God continues to give life

  and light at every moment. Psalm 104:30 has a similar assertion.

  Human breath depends on God’s breath or spirit. Should God’s spirit be withdrawn, death follows, but God’s spirit recreates the self over and again. Continuous creation! Light here means life (see Job 3:16; 33:28; and Ps. 49:19).

• REFLECT

  Reflect and share with one another how God has been with you through the week. Consider how privileged we are to be children loved by God and called out of slavery to serve Him. Sing to Him a song of praise or sing along as an LG with Mac Powell: