February 8: Of offense and defense, of sin and salvation

Exodus 28:1-43

Matthew 25:31-26:13

Psalm 31:9-18

Proverbs 8:12-13

A side note about last night's Superbowl - a wonderful game, with a twist.  Usually, offense wins the game - they score more points than the opposition.  Last night's game was different, though - the Broncos' Peyton Manning-led offense was ok at best.  It was the Von Miller-led defense that won the game, starting with the Cam Newton strip-fumble-Broncos touchdown in the 1st quarter.  The defense beat the offense.  More on this later.

The struggle I have with my own sinfulness is great enough.  The battle waged around me makes things even more difficult.  The world preaches a gospel of self - self centeredness, self gratification - and worse, it has gotten to the point the gospel of self is the new normal, and anyone who deviates from that definition of normal isn't merely left to labor under the seeming unfairness of a situation where the sinful are gratified because of their sinfulness, they are ostracized, they are persecuted, the world demands that they confirm to this new "normal".

The time Jesus lived in, those times weren't easy.  There weren't any of the conveniences we take for granted today; people ate, drank, lived by the sweat of their brow for the most part.  Giving someone something to eat, something to drink, took a lot more effort than picking up a value meal at the local fast food joint.  Consider what it took to draw water for a drink, even - no water coolers, no refrigerators filled with bottles of H20...no, one had to draw water from a well someone had to have dug...a task so costly that people fought for wells, and families were torn asunder even.  There were no sewing machines, no Uniqlo or Gap, and people didn't have 4 or 5 of everything, so clothing someone was a very tall order indeed.  So it must have been pretty controversial when Jesus told the parable of the goats and the sheep, and made it clear salvation  came to those who exhibited a very challenging degree of generosity.  And like the world that, even then, was preaching a gospel of self, Jesus was persecuted for it - we read the chief priests were already planning his death.

Where then lies our hope, any hope for the Christian struggling with his own sinfulness in a self-ish world?  The psalmist makes it clear - "Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and body with grief...Because of all my enemies, I am the utter contempt of my neighbors and an object of dread to my closest friends...They conspire against me and plot to take my life."  And then the psalmist's counsel, his example: "But I trust in you, Lord...my times are in your hands; deliver me from the hands of my enemies, from those who pursue me...Let me not be put to shame, Lord, for I have cried out to you..."

How wonderful to have the constancy of the psalm's reassurance: it was true when the psalm was written, it is true today: the world is self-ish...but we have our God and His Help.

...back to the Superbowl analogy.  How wonderful that, as we live in a world that tries to play offense on us, we have the defense of Christ that wins the victory.