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Bible Readings for Tuesday January 18th, 2011 – The 2nd Week of Epiphany *Click on each bible passage to expand the text. Psalm 40:6-17 6. Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required.

7. Then I said, “Here I am; in the scroll of the book it is written of me.

8. I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.”

9. I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; see, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O LORD.

10. I have not hidden your saving help within my heart, I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation.

11. Do not, O LORD, withhold your mercy from me; let your steadfast love and your faithfulness keep me safe forever.

12. For evils have encompassed me without number; my iniquities have overtaken me, until I cannot see; they are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart fails me.

13. Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me; O LORD, make haste to help me.

14. Let all those be put to shame and confusion who seek to snatch away my life; let those be turned back and brought to dishonor who desire my hurt.

15. Let those be appalled because of their shame who say to me, “Aha, Aha!”

16. But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who love your salvation say continually, “Great is the LORD!”

17. As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God. Isaiah 53:1-12 1. Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

2. For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

3. He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.

4. Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.

5. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.

6. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

7. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

8. By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people.

9. They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

10. Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him with pain. When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the LORD shall prosper.

11. Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.

12. Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. Hebrews 10:1-4 1. Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who approach.

2. Otherwise, would they not have ceased being offered, since the worshipers, cleansed once for all, would no longer have any consciousness of sin?

3. But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sin year after year.

4. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

“Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him with pain. When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the LORD shall prosper.” – Isaiah 53:10

“For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” – Hebrews 10:4

God knows, has always known, we humans are our own worst enemy.

Fundamentalist churches across American love to warn the flock daily about the enemy, how it will infiltrate our lives, pervert our intentions, and drive us further away from God. The shattering truth is, the enemy is real. The enemy is flesh and blood. The enemy acts everyday in this world to destroy it piece by piece, promoting selfish fear-based instincts and lifestyles. Dividing us along lines of ideology and pettiness. Devaluing life and creating injustice across the globe. I can show you the enemy: do you want to see it with your own eyes? Look in the mirror.

It’s true. And still God loves us so much, despite our self-destructive natures.

That’s why God tried to show us The Way. First, through The Law, God tried to break through our selfishness, our greed, our arrogance by demanding a spiritual discipline that would require us to sacrifice something of tremendous value as a price for our sins (which means “to miss the mark”).

Through the required offerings of The Law, the intention was to drive home a realization that our actions have consequences. Whether ceremonially or in life, our actions and decisions carry a price. The offerings were meant to create a concrete association between actual cost and selfish, irresponsible living. This would become a deterrent and a lesson and we would wake up spiritually from our self-centered stupor and realize that this life is so much larger than just our petty wants and desires.

For most offerings (burnt offering, the grain offering, the sin offering, the guilt offering, etc), it was a perfect, spotless sheep or bull, or fine flour. In short, it was a valuable piece of property. It would be the same today as offering up a car, or computer, something else essential to your daily life. However, the offering was never for God’s sake, but for us. To teach us and to inform our hearts of his perfect will for us: to love God and to love each other as we would love ourselves.

However, offerings became less than a deterrent, it became mostly empty ceremony, and for many wealthy adherents it enabled them to behave with less responsibility because an offering became a small price to pay for temporary absolution for guilt and sin. Hence, the writer of Hebrews proclaims, “…the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year, [never] make perfect those who approach”.

We didn’t get it. Instead of hearing God’s pleas to “wake-up” and see the tragic cost of our lifestyles and choices, instead of turning back to God and The Way, we marched on emboldened. An army of our own worst enemy, launching salvo after self-centered salvo into the heart of creation, love, selflessness and humility. But God still loves us.

Therefore, God had to go further. He had to show us the writing on the wall. He had to show us there was another Way. So he became his vision for all of us: a man who loved selflessly and exemplified a grace-filled fearless life for all of us to emulate, where the “my and mine” is far inferior to “us and ours”. We all instinctively know what God knows and is desperately trying to teach us: the selfish, greedy, and callous choices we make while living apart from God’s will for us will eventually destroy all mankind through self-made calamity: be it over-population, dwindling resources, war, or climate change.

And so The Word became Flesh, and God became man, to live a life and show us not only The Way of Grace, but also to symbolically and prophetically demonstrate the calamitous truth of who we are by suffering at our hands on the cross: if we continue on this path of sin, we are going to destroy grace and love, then ourselves, and even God. And still God loves us.

And because we are now washed clean through Christ’s blood and set free to love fearlessly by grace, through God’s selfless sacrifice of exemplary love for our sake, not his, we might finally begin to understand and sing in our hearts what is written is the Psalm:

“6. Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required.

7. Then I said, “Here I am; in the scroll of the book it is written of me.

8. I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.””