What the Angel Said

Thursday, March 26, 2020

From the depths of despair, O Lord, I call for your help.  Hear my cry, O Lord.  Pay attention to my prayer.  Lord, if you kept a record of our sins, who, O Lord, could ever survive?  But you offer forgiveness, that we might learn to fear you.  I am counting on the Lord; yes, I am counting on him.  I have put my hope in his word.                             Psalm 130:1-5

The readings for this day include passages from Ezekiel and Revelation, both of which have the small scrolls as centerpiece.  Both the prophet and the beloved apostle are told to eat the scroll; both remarked that it tasted as sweet as honey.  In Ezekiel’s vision the message is a funeral kind of dark:

Then I looked and saw a hand reaching out to me.  It held a scroll, which he unrolled.  And I saw that both sides were covered with funeral songs, words of sorrow, and pronouncements of doom.  Ezekiel 2:9-10

In John’s meeting with the angel the message is even more foreboding; for him, once the sweet-as-honey scroll is eaten, it turns his stomach sour:

[the angel] said, “There will be no more delay.  When the seventh angel blows his trumpet, God’s mysterious plan will be fulfilled.  It will happen just as he announced it to his servants the prophets.”  Revelation 10:6b-7

Both the apostle and prophet speak of God’s judgment.  And the Psalm for today connects each of us with that coming judgment; our dilemma is that every person is accountable for our behavior before Almighty God:

Lord, if you kept a record of our sins, who, O Lord, could ever survive?  Psalm 130:3

Who could ever survive God’s judgment?  It’s a very good question; it’s a question with only one answer – nobody survives the holiness CT scan.  

Frankly, if you see a guy on the street corner holding a sign that says REPENT, what do you think; what do you do?  For most of us, you almost don’t see the guy or his sign.  In complacency we shed messages like that and move along to the dental appointment or trip to the mall.  But Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet, as well as Paul, the New Testament apostle, tell us God scans the entirety of our lives, including what we do, say, or even think[1].  Every attitude and action of rebellion against God’s will is written on those scrolls.  Every time God brings a message across the screen of our lives, and we fail to remember, like the Psalmist remembered and repented, that we are imperfect creatures, not perfect Creator, another entry shows up in the log.  No one survives such scrutiny!

But the Psalmist holds the one thread of hope in all that; God offers forgiveness!

Lenten season is a time for that hope’s renewal, a time to remember who we are, and that to which we’re called to be – children of the Most High God.  It is a time to be penitent and be renewed, trusting in God’s promise to save those who reject evil in all its forms, turning to the Christ of the cross in faith.

Repentance is not a popular pill to swallow.  It tastes bitter and goes against the grain of our sin nature to confess we are not God.  But true repentance is unlike Ezekiel and John’s little scrolls – honey to the taste, but when it was all settled into the fabric of a man’s being, it turned their whole existence sour!  True repentance may be a little bitter going down, but it opens up an eternity of health lived in sweet reunion with God.

For You Today

Like addictions of any kind, it is the sweet (but false) promise of the next dose of our sins that keep pride in the way of our repenting, and having a joyful, forgiven, free-to-love and serve life.  Sweet and sour are both on the menu; as always, which one will we choose?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For another post on Romans 3:  see A Light Shines in My Heart or The Scroll

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[1] See Isaiah 53:6 and Romans 3:10

The Scroll

[i][ii]

Thursday, May 9, 2019

Then I saw a scroll in the right hand of the one who was sitting on the throne.  There was writing on the inside and the outside of the scroll, and it was sealed with seven seals.  And I saw a strong angel, who shouted with a loud voice: “Who is worthy to break the seals on this scroll and open it?”  But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll and read it.  Then I began to weep bitterly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll and read it.  But one of the twenty-four elders said to me, “Stop weeping!  Look, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the heir to David’s throne, has won the victory.  He is worthy to open the scroll and its seven seals.”  Then I saw a Lamb that looked as if it had been slaughtered, but it was now standing between the throne and the four living beings and among the twenty-four elders.  He had seven horns and seven eyes, which represent the sevenfold Spirit of God that is sent out into every part of the earth.  He stepped forward and took the scroll from the right hand of the one sitting on the throne.  And when he took the scroll, the four living beings and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp, and they held gold bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of God’s people.  And they sang a new song with these words:  “You are worthy to take the scroll and break its seals and open it.  For you were slaughtered, and your blood has ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.  And you have caused them to become a Kingdom of priests for our God.  And they will reign on the earth.”  Revelation 5:1-10

It's a moment long-hoped-for; it’s that which you know deep down is going to happen, but it’s been so long since first that hope entered your mind, and then seeped down into your soul.  It’s surreal, strange, odd, and dreamlike, this hope of all things becoming new…stepping-into privileged, rarified air.

John’s vision carries him to God’s throne room, where the scroll of God is playing central role.  Throughout the ages of humanity, no person has been, or is worthy to open that scroll; not Moses, Elijah, nor any of the prophets, patriarchs, apostles or politicians have the resume’ to even approach the throne, let alone handle the eternal record of humankind’s sin. 

And John weeps!  He weeps for his own sins, and ours.  If sin cannot be cleansed, washed away in a flood of righteous mercy, there is nothing else but judgment in which all will perish, for there is none righteous, no, not one![iii]  But, one of the 24 elders, perhaps Peter, or Andrew, maybe Joseph or Abraham, steps forward and bellows, stop the weeping…there IS one…ONE!

And, suddenly, the moment is electric with hope fulfilled.  The Lamb, Jesus Christ steps forward to receive and fulfill the words written in the scroll of God.  Hope will not only be eternal, it will be lived, because the incontestable promise of God is here; it is now, not someday!

The long haul of daily living and hoping for the realization of a long-held dream to be now, not then, is something placed inside us as a hard-wire.  We humans are, above all else, people of hope.  Prisoners of the holocaust speak of losing hope.  When every shred of life had been sucked-out of one of their comrades, they would give away their possessions, smoke their last cigarette, climb into their bed, turn to the wall…and never wake up.  That is why John wept; if there was no worthy person to save us, hope was just a mirage, an illusion that would vanish like the morning mist.

But this drama in Heaven is better than any Hollywood movie ending, because this is not an ending…it’s the opening of eternity.

For You Today

Is your “hope-tank” running on empty?  Look up; your redemption is close…and it’s certain…it’s written in God’s scroll!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[i] Title Image:   Pixabay.com

[ii] Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©

[iii] Romans 3:10