David Bahn – Reflections

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These devotions are part of the Follow the Word Bible reading program at St. John Lutheran Church in Cypress, Texas. This year we are reading through the Scriptures together, listening for how God speaks through his Word day by day. I hope you will join me on this journey.

Today’s readings are Isaiah 28-30, Psalm 39.

Isaiah 28:14-18

Therefore hear the word of the LORD, you scoffers,
    who rule this people in Jerusalem!
¹⁵ Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death,
    and with Sheol we have an agreement,
when the overwhelming whip passes through
    it will not come to us,
for we have made lies our refuge,
    and in falsehood we have taken shelter”;
¹⁶ therefore thus says the LORD God,
“Behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion,
    a stone, a tested stone,
a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation:
    ‘Whoever believes will not be in haste.’
¹⁷ And I will make justice the line,
    and righteousness the plumb line;
and hail will sweep away the refuge of lies,
    and waters will overwhelm the shelter.”
¹⁸ Then your covenant with death will be annulled,
    and your agreement with Sheol will not stand;
when the overwhelming scourge passes through,
    you will be beaten down by it.

God speaks to the people of Israel who mocked his word through Isaiah. In the previous verses it is clear that they had little use for God’s word. They didn’t just ignore it. They mocked the word itself. They said:

For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept,
line upon line, line upon line,
here a little, there a little. – Isaiah 28:10

The Hebrew of that verse is “sav lasav sav lasav / kav lakav kav lakav.” This is possibly meaningless sounds, mimicking the prophet’s words. So God responds, in essence, “OK. Let it be precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.” God will not be mocked and he will stand by his prophet – whether his word is received or not.

Then comes what to us who are being saved a word of great comfort. God will lay a cornerstone upon which true life can be built. It is solid. It is polished. It is straight and true. It will not be moved. Just as God’s word is all these things, One is coming who will be that for all people. This finds its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus – no surprise here!

I love Martin Luther’s quote about this stone: Christ is a tested stone, that is, distressed and afflicted, or He is a testing stone, that is, a stone by whose shape all other stones are tested, so that we may be conformed to the image of the Son of God (Rom. 8;29). …Christ was polished, hewn, and squared by the promise, by death and the cross. (As quoted in the Lutheran Study Bible, CPH, © 2009)

There is warning and comfort here. The warning comes from Jesus himself, “Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.” (Luke 20:18). Jesus is the stone that the builders (the church leaders of his day) rejected. But he is the chief cornerstone, shown by his resurrection from the grave.

This is why we must take heed, lest we become the ones of whom Isaiah speaks in 29:13:

And the LORD said:
“Because this people draw near with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
while their hearts are far from me,
and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men.”

Jesus also quotes this passage in Matthew 13. This is all about Jesus. The comfort is that when we build our lives on the cornerstone of Jesus Christ we will know what is true, dependable, right, and immovable. Whatever other wisdom, knowledge, insight, or understanding we may gain from the world must take a back seat to the truth of God’s Word – a precious cornerstone of grace and truth centered in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Click here for an audio version of this blog post.

These devotions are part of the Follow the Word Bible reading program at St. John Lutheran Church in Cypress, Texas. This year we are reading through the Scriptures together, listening for how God speaks through his Word day by day. I hope you will join me on this journey.

Today’s readings are Isaiah 28-30, Psalm 39.

Isaiah 28:14-18

Therefore hear the word of the LORD, you scoffers,
    who rule this people in Jerusalem!
¹⁵ Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death,
    and with Sheol we have an agreement,
when the overwhelming whip passes through
    it will not come to us,
for we have made lies our refuge,
    and in falsehood we have taken shelter”;
¹⁶ therefore thus says the LORD God,
“Behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion,
    a stone, a tested stone,
a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation:
    ‘Whoever believes will not be in haste.’
¹⁷ And I will make justice the line,
    and righteousness the plumb line;
and hail will sweep away the refuge of lies,
    and waters will overwhelm the shelter.”
¹⁸ Then your covenant with death will be annulled,
    and your agreement with Sheol will not stand;
when the overwhelming scourge passes through,
    you will be beaten down by it.

God speaks to the people of Israel who mocked his word through Isaiah. In the previous verses it is clear that they had little use for God’s word. They didn’t just ignore it. They mocked the word itself. They said:

For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept,
line upon line, line upon line,
here a little, there a little. – Isaiah 28:10

The Hebrew of that verse is “sav lasav sav lasav / kav lakav kav lakav.” This is possibly meaningless sounds, mimicking the prophet’s words. So God responds, in essence, “OK. Let it be precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.” God will not be mocked and he will stand by his prophet – whether his word is received or not.

Then comes what to us who are being saved a word of great comfort. God will lay a cornerstone upon which true life can be built. It is solid. It is polished. It is straight and true. It will not be moved. Just as God’s word is all these things, One is coming who will be that for all people. This finds its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus – no surprise here!

I love Martin Luther’s quote about this stone: Christ is a tested stone, that is, distressed and afflicted, or He is a testing stone, that is, a cstone by whose shape all other stones are tested, so that we may be conformed to the image of the Son of God (Rom. 8;29). …Christ was polished, hewn, and squared by the promise, by death and the cross. Confidence is to be placed in Christ’s intercession because this alone has God’s promise. (As quoted in the Lutheran Study Bible, CPH, © 2009)

There is warning and comfort here. The warning comes from Jesus himself, “Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.” (Luke 20:18)

This is why we must take heed, lest we become the ones of whom Isaiah speaks in 29:13:

And the LORD said:
“Because this people draw near with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
while their hearts are far from me,
and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men.”

Click here for an audio version of this blog post.

These devotions are part of the Follow the Word Bible reading program at St. John Lutheran Church in Cypress, Texas. This year we are reading through the Scriptures together, listening for how God speaks through his Word day by day. I hope you will join me on this journey.

Today’s readings are Hosea 3-5, Psalm 35.

Hosea 3:1-5

And the LORD said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.” ² So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley. ³ And I said to her, “You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you.” ⁴ For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods. ⁵ Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the LORD their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the LORD and to his goodness in the latter days.

I have often said that the Old Testament is one giant object lesson on what does not work. That’s an overstatement, of course, but there is an important truth behind it. It isn’t that God’s ways fail. Rather, sinful people repeatedly reject even God’s greatest gifts.

God walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. They still rebelled and brought sin, death, and decay into the world. God led Israel by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Yet while Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments, the people fashioned and worshiped a golden calf. They demanded a king like the nations around them, and we’ve been reading for weeks how that turned out. Again and again, God’s people abandoned him to worship the false gods of the nations.

The overarching story of the Old Testament teaches us that something greater would be needed if God’s people were to live as he intended—for their good and for the blessing of the nations.

Today’s reading begins with another object lesson. God commands Hosea to redeem his unfaithful wife, Gomer. There is much to grieve in this account. Gomer has been unfaithful, yet Hosea purchases her back. The price he pays is only half the normal price of a slave, and he calls her to faithfulness as they begin life together again.

Through Hosea, God promises that although Israel will go into exile because of her unfaithfulness, he will not abandon her. He himself will redeem her and bring her home.

This is the story of the Gospel. We, too, have been unfaithful in countless ways. Yet Christ has purchased us—not with silver or gold, but with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death. As Luther beautifully explains in the Small Catechism, Jesus is our Lord because he has redeemed us. He is not our Lord because he has exercised his great power over us, but because he has bought us back from sin, death, and the power of the devil.

We are his. And he is our Lord.

Click here for an audio version of this blog post.

These devotions are part of the Follow the Word Bible reading program at St. John Lutheran Church in Cypress, Texas. This year we are reading through the Scriptures together, listening for how God speaks through his Word day by day. I hope you will join me on this journey.

Today’s readings are 2 Chronicles 31, Hosea 1-2, Psalm 34.

Hosea 2:11-15, 21, 23

I will put an end to all her mirth,
    her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths,
    and all her appointed feasts.
¹² And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees,
    of which she said,
‘These are my wages,
    which my lovers have given me.’
I will make them a forest,
    and the beasts of the field shall devour them.
¹³ And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals
    when she burned offerings to them
and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry,
    and went after her lovers
    and forgot me, declares the LORD.

¹⁴ “Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
    and bring her into the wilderness,
    and speak tenderly to her.
¹⁵ And there I will give her her vineyards
    and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth,
    as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.

²¹ “And in that day I will answer, declares the LORD,
²³ …I will have mercy on No Mercy,
    and I will say to Not My People, ‘You are my people’;
    and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’”

Have you ever had to make a sudden U-turn? I did—just today, in fact. And it almost didn’t end well. After completing the U-turn, I started back onto the road I was supposed to be on and nearly got hit by an oncoming car! I’d like to blame the tall grass that blocked my view, but that wouldn’t have been a problem had I not needed to make the U-turn in the first place. I had taken a wrong turn that required not only a U-turn, but another turn to get back on course. My bad. My very bad.

I was reminded of that incident when I read the seemingly sudden change of heart recorded by Hosea:

“And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals…

Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.”
(Hosea 2:13–14)

One verse God is promising to punish his wayward and unfaithful bride. The next he is speaking tenderly to her. Why this sudden reversal? What made God change his mind? Where did those tender words of kindness and grace come from?

They came from the heart of God. They were always there.

Jeremiah puts it this way:

“Though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men.” (Lamentations 3:32–33)

God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He delights in mercy and rejoices with all the angels of heaven when one sinner repents.

In Hosea, God is promising to bring Israel to that place of repentance. He’s describing the great reversal that many lifelong Christians know little of. It’s the stuff of death-row conversions, the thief on the cross, and the centurion standing at the cross of Jesus. There are moments when we come face to face with the depth of our own sin and realize how poor and miserable we truly are. We see our desperate need for God’s mercy and forgiving grace, and we turn to him by the power of the Holy Spirit.

God is always waiting there when we make that moral U-turn. It’s called repentance. It begins with sorrow over our sin and is completed by faith in Jesus. Then comes the fruit of repentance (Matthew 3:8). The reversal that is needed is not God’s, but ours.

Martin Luther opened his Ninety-five Theses with these words: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent,’ he willed that the entire life of believers should be one of repentance.” And God is even more ready to receive us with joy than we are to return to him. He delights to call us his children, to forgive our sins, to lavish his grace upon us, and to hold us close in his steadfast love.

Click here for an audio version of this blog post.

These devotions are part of the Follow the Word Bible reading program at St. John Lutheran Church in Cypress, Texas. This year we are reading through the Scriptures together, listening for how God speaks through his Word day by day. I hope you will join me on this journey.

Today’s readings are 2 Kings 18, 2 Chronicles, 29-30, Psalm 33.

2 Chronicles 29:31-36

Then Hezekiah said, “You have now consecrated yourselves to the LORD. Come near; bring sacrifices and thank offerings to the house of the LORD.” And the assembly brought sacrifices and thank offerings, and all who were of a willing heart brought burnt offerings. ³² The number of the burnt offerings that the assembly brought was 70 bulls, 100 rams, and 200 lambs; all these were for a burnt offering to the LORD. ³³ And the consecrated offerings were 600 bulls and 3,000 sheep. ³⁴ But the priests were too few and could not flay all the burnt offerings, so until other priests had consecrated themselves, their brothers the Levites helped them, until the work was finished—for the Levites were more upright in heart than the priests in consecrating themselves. ³⁵ Besides the great number of burnt offerings, there was the fat of the peace offerings, and there were the drink offerings for the burnt offerings. Thus the service of the house of the LORD was restored. ³⁶ And Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced because God had provided for the people, for the thing came about suddenly.

It would be good if the challenge facing our church body were because too many people wanted to worship God and we simply needed to re-consecrate pastors who had been disengaged from their pastoral calling. That, however, is not the case. More about that later.

But that was the case in the days of Hezekiah. The king had instigated a significant revival of the faithful practices of David. He was diligent to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to do so in the forms that had been prescribed in the Law of Moses. But it proved to be a sudden need. People were coming to Jerusalem at Hezekiah’s urging. They desired to honor God faithfully at the Temple. But there were not enough priests to make all the sacrifices.

So they did an extraordinary thing: they enlisted the Levites to help with the Temple sacrifices. And this even before all the priests were fully consecrated. This is noted in 2 Chronicles 30:17-19:

Therefore the Levites had to slaughter the Passover lamb for everyone who was not clean, to consecrate it to the LORD. ¹⁸ For a majority of the people, many of them from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet they ate the Passover otherwise than as prescribed. For Hezekiah had prayed for them, saying, “May the good LORD pardon everyone ¹⁹ who sets his heart to seek God, the LORD, the God of his fathers, even though not according to the sanctuary’s rules of cleanness.”

The episode ends with this summary:

So there was great joy in Jerusalem, for since the time of Solomon the son of David king of Israel there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem. ²⁷ Then the priests and the Levites arose and blessed the people, and their voice was heard, and their prayer came to his holy habitation in heaven.
2 Chronicles 30:26-27

Our challenges today are similar. We do not have enough pastors to serve God’s people in the congregations of our LCMS church body. This is true in many other church bodies as well. There is a near crisis of the shortage of pastors. I know this because I work with churches that are seeking to call a pastor. Jesus’ words ring clear: “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few.”

My preferred solution to this crisis is to find more ways to train faithful pastors. This is a controversial idea for some (many?) in our church body, and I won’t go into all the reasons for my conviction here. But wherever people fall in that debate, we all agree on this: we must pray that the Lord of the harvest will send laborers into his harvest fields.

Why does Jesus call us to pray for laborers? Because he has not saved us merely so that we can go to heaven. God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. That truth is wonderfully simple: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” His Son also told his disciples, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And he has promised, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Let the blessings flow. Let the people hear. Let God be praised!

Click here for an audio version of this blog post.

These devotions are part of the Follow the Word Bible reading program at St. John Lutheran Church in Cypress, Texas. This year we are reading through the Scriptures together, listening for how God speaks through his Word day by day. I hope you will join me on this journey.

Today’s readings are Isaiah 25-27, Psalm 32.

Isaiah 25:6-12

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples
    a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
    of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
⁷ And he will swallow up on this mountain
    the covering that is cast over all peoples,
    the veil that is spread over all nations.
⁸     He will swallow up death forever;
and the LORD God will wipe away tears from all faces,
    and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
    for the LORD has spoken.
⁹ It will be said on that day,
    “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.
    This is the LORD; we have waited for him;
    let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

Isaiah 25–27 comes as an unexpected relief and a delightful respite from the previous chapters. Those expressed chapter after chapter of judgment against Judah, Israel, and the nations—and then after describing God’s judgment upon the whole earth—Isaiah suddenly points his people toward the future God has prepared for his people.

The devastation of sin and rebellion will not have the last word. Death will be swallowed up forever. Every enemy of God’s people will be defeated. Hopelessness will give way to joy. Exiles will be gathered home. A great feast of celebration will be prepared on God’s holy mountain.

These are breathtaking promises! They are not wishful thinking, but the sure and certain future God has prepared for all who trust in him.

Some think the answer to suffering is euthanasia. But that is not God’s answer. His answer is not to hasten death, but to destroy it. He promises to swallow up death forever. He will wipe away every tear and heal every wound. He will redeem, restore, and rescue his people from every enemy—physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental. His answer is to dwell with his people forever, surrounding them with the abundance of his grace, love, comfort, and salvation.

These are the promises fulfilled in Jesus.

I use these words often in Christian funeral services. I love the imagery of the feast of fine meats and choice wines. Death is painfully real, it is not the end of the story. Christ has conquered death, and the day is coming when it will be swallowed up forever. There is a feast of victory awaiting us. That’s the hope we proclaim at every Christian funeral.

I think of these promises in another setting as well. When I have the privilege of dismissing God’s people after the Lord’s Supper, I love to remind them, “The Lord is with you.” That’s more than a promise of his presence. It is a promise of his favor, protection, comfort, and love. Every celebration of the Lord’s Supper is a foretaste of the great feast Isaiah describes, where one day we shall be with the Lord forever.

Paul also echoes Isaiah’s words in 1 Corinthians 15, the great resurrection chapter, where he proclaims Christ’s victory over death. And on the Great Last Day, we will join Isaiah and all the redeemed in saying:

“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.
This is the LORD; we have waited for him;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” (Isaiah 25:9)

Click here for an audio version of this blog post.

These devotions are part of the Follow the Word Bible reading program at St. John Lutheran Church in Cypress, Texas. This year we are reading through the Scriptures together, listening for how God speaks through his Word day by day. I hope you will join me on this journey.

Today’s readings are Isaiah 22-24; Psalm 31.

Isaiah 22:5-13

For the LORD God of hosts has a day
    of tumult and trampling and confusion
    in the valley of vision,
a battering down of walls
    and a shouting to the mountains.
⁶ And Elam bore the quiver
    with chariots and horsemen,
    and Kir uncovered the shield.
⁷ Your choicest valleys were full of chariots,
    and the horsemen took their stand at the gates.
⁸ He has taken away the covering of Judah.

In that day you looked to the weapons of the House of the Forest, ⁹ and you saw that the breaches of the city of David were many. You collected the waters of the lower pool, ¹⁰ and you counted the houses of Jerusalem, and you broke down the houses to fortify the wall. ¹¹ You made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool. But you did not look to him who did it, or see him who planned it long ago.

¹² In that day the LORD God of hosts
    called for weeping and mourning,
    for baldness and wearing sackcloth;
¹³ and behold, joy and gladness,
    killing oxen and slaughtering sheep,
    eating flesh and drinking wine.
“Let us eat and drink,
    for tomorrow we die.”

God’s word through the prophet Isaiah (22:11) is a powerful indictment of misplaced trust. A day of calamity, tumult, and confusion was coming upon Jerusalem, and the people strengthened their walls and built reservoirs. Yet instead of turning to the LORD in repentance and seeking his mercy, they entrusted themselves to their own resources. The LORD says,

“But you did not look to him who did it, or see him who planned it long ago.”

Jerusalem wasn’t condemned for building a reservoir. They were condemned for trusting the reservoir instead of the God who provides the water. Rather than seeking his mercy and help, they pushed him so far into the background that he was scarcely a factor in their lives, even as calamity approached.

Every generation builds reservoirs.

We who follow Jesus are no different. Do we worry more about health insurance than seeking God’s healing hand? Are we more concerned about retirement accounts, politics, medicine, military strength, or technology than the God who gives these gifts? There is nothing wrong with any of these provisions. The danger comes when we begin trusting the gifts more than the Giver.

Misplaced trust eventually leads somewhere. God had called his people to weep and mourn, but instead they chose to “eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” This is the hopelessness of life without God. It is the philosophy of people who have placed their hope in themselves rather than in the One who alone can save.

Christians live differently because Christ has come to redeem us. He gave his life to save us and rose from the dead to give us a living hope. Yet there are times when the Lord uses calamity, tumult, and confusion to turn our eyes away from ourselves and back to him. When we finally discover the limits of our own reservoirs, we also discover the abundance of his grace. He delights to come to our aid and provide a far greater salvation than anything we could ever provide for ourselves.