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Tuesday 30 June 2020

Daily Devotions for Difficult Days [105] Sonnet of Love (15) Love always Trusts



Love Believes All Things?

More about Bible translations.

There are two kinds of Bible translations. At the literal end of the spectrum are the "word to word" translations like the ESV and the NKJV. The translators have taken the view that the reader is best served by a word to word translation - though they themselves would acknowledge that there is rarely a word in one language which completely captures the meaning of a word in another.

At the others, paraphrase end of the spectrum are those translations which take a thought, or unit of sense, in the Greek or Hebrew original and translate that thought or unit of sense into an equivalent English thought.

A wonderful example is the translation of Isaiah 1:18 into the language of the Wanani tribe of Ecuadar. This tribe had never seen snow, so how were they to understand:  "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool."

The translators tried this:

"Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as pure as the sky when it has no clouds in it; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool."

In Wanani culture a cloudless sky was their image of purity. Thought to thought rather than word to word.

Today's line, the twelfth element of divine love, when we render it word for word, reads like this: "Love believes all things."

But if we love someone must we believe all the things they say?  Is a mark of our love that we take on board every single word they speak? If we doubt them we don't love them?

A common relationship error

If we understand the sentence literally then that is what Paul is saying - believe whatever that person says.

True love, however, does not always believe what the beloved says. True love pushes back, true love questions, true love challenges error.

We have all come across marriages where the one leads the other astray. Adam allowed Eve to lead him astray. He did not question the eating of the fruit. He should have. True love would have said "I do not believe what you are saying, I will not eat that fruit."

One of the biggest mistakes we can make to is believe lies from those we love. It's why Scripture forbids marrying an unbeliever. Solomon marries (another) foreign wife. She tells him how wonderful her gods are. Instead of saying, "wife number 699 you are wrong, your gods are false lies" he was led astray and allowed another idol into the palace.

Across the bond of love both good and evil can pass. And here is the point, evil can so easily pass unnoticed - unless challenged.

Paul is not saying that love always believes what the beloved says. Husbands must lovingly challenge their wives and wives should respectfully challenge their husbands!

It is pure manipulation to say "if you don't believe me you don't love me!"

What do the translations say:

Literal:
"Love believes all things"
"Love believes all things"

Paraphrase:
"If you love someone, you will always believe in him"
"Love believes all things [looking for the best in each one]"
"Love knows no end to its trust"

What Paul means, surely, is that if you love someone you will always maintain trust in them as a person. You will believe IN THEM. They may say things to you that you disagree with and you may have to tell them that, but you will never abandon believing in that person.

To do the opposite is to lose trust, to drift away from that person, to mistrust them. And mistrust breeds mistrust; before long the relationship has broken down.

Summing it All Up

"Love always trusts" means that we continue the vital component of trust that every relationship is founded upon, and we do so even when we pass through a challenging time in our relationship with that person.

"Love always trusts" means that we never mistrust them - even when we don't believe what they have said or what they are doing.

"Love always trusts" means that we signal to that person after the most difficult disagreements that we still love them.

"Love always trusts" means that we keep going with the friendship.

Is that not what Jesus did with Peter? He did not believe in what Peter had done, but he maintained the friendship and restored him in due time.

And surely that is what the Lord does with us. He continues with his steadfast love though "perverse and foolish oft we've stayed." His love is a covenantal, never ending love. And so must ours.

Is there someone of whom you are saying, "I'm finished with them?" You cannot say that, for love "always believes." Ask the Lord how you can show them continuing love and kindness.

Continuing to love in this season of church life is especially important, where communications are more fragile and misunderstandings more probable.

Just keep on trusting!

A SONG FOR THE DAY
Our song is the same as yesterday's and reminds us of the never-failing love of the Lord for us.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
His mercies never have come to an end;
They are new every morning,
New every morning:
Great is Thy faithfulness, O Lord,
Great is Thy faithfulness!

You can sing along HERE.

A PRAYER FOR THE DAY

Our ever-loving Father in heaven,

We thank you that though the world is filled with people who fail to thank you, who turn their face against you, who take your name in vain and who worship false gods, you still send the rain and the sun each day.

Teach us what it means to always trust in those who have not treated us well. Help us always to trust as you do.

We thank you for your covenantal never-ending love for us, forged through the blood of your precious Son,

in whose name we bring our prayers,

Amen.

Monday 29 June 2020

Daily Devotions for Difficult Days [104] Sonnet of Love (14) Love always Protects


A Lesson in Greek

My Greek teacher got the class to read through Mark's Gospel, one student chapter after another. When we were struggling with pronunciation she said that she did not mind how we pronounced a word as long as we were consistent.

Why was she not bothered? Because no-one today knows how the Greek word was pronounced 2000 years ago! There can be no "right" or "wrong" pronunciation.

Today we're in a Greek predicament of  a different kind.

As we make our way through Paul's Sonnet of Love, the NIV  says "Love always protects." But the NIV is pretty much on its own, because most translators say this:

"bears all things"
"love never gives up"
"love bears all things"
"love bears all things"

rather than the NIV's

"Love always protects"

What do we do when translators disagree with each other? I know this is a devotional, dear reader, but we shall have to pause for a moment to ponder this pickle.

One approach is to lift one translation to the status of judge of all the others. For example, we could call the NIV the "Nearly Inspired Version" and condemn the others as being "wrong." "Love always protects" is right, "love bears up" is wrong.

But all the other translations quoted above have come from Bible-believing evangelical, faithful, confessional stables. Not a half-soaked liberal in sight. So this "my translation is best" approach is completely unaceptable - translation is always a human effort; only the original is divine, no translation ever produced can claim perfection or priority, though no doubt some are better than others.

The other approach is to compare how the same word is translated in other parts of the Bible.

The Greek word used in 1 Corinthians 13:7  is stegei, which means "to cover closely (so as to keep water out)." It can mean "I cover, conceal, ward off, bear with, endure patiently."

The word is only used four times in the New Testament, here in 1 Corinthians 13 and....

1 Corinthians 9:12, "If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more? But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ."

1 Thessalonians 3:1, "So when we could stand it no longer, we thought it best to be left by ourselves in Athens.

1 Thessalonians 3:5, "For this reason, when I could stand it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith."

Clearly, in the other three passages, the word has been translated as meaning "bearing up or putting up for a long time."

So we can understand all those translations that say "love bears all things."

But persevering bearing up love appears on its own later in Paul's list, "love always perseveres," so it could be that the translators of the NIV thought, "If we translate stegei "bears up" here, then isn't Paul repeating himself?"

And so they chose the other - perfectly legitimate - translation, stegei means "love always protects." After all, the word does mean to cover something up, protect it. 

Love always Protects

One of my former pastors rebuked a Christian lady in public. We were all getting on a bus (do you remember those now-quaint church picnic outings?)The lady - in front of everyone - criticised her husband sharply. My former pastor rebuked her for disrespecting her husband in public.

My pastor was right, for "love always protects." Should he have done it "in public" for all in the vicinity to hear? Yes, because the offense was in public and my pastor did not want his flock to think that rebuking your spouse in public was acceptable Christian behaviour.

What "protect" does not mean

So what does "love always protects" mean? If a wife endures physical abuse (or a husband endures verbal abuse - it happens) and they do nothing about it because they are "protecting" the abuser, that is not what Paul has in mind.

Husbands are called to love their wives and wives are called to submit to their husbands, and help ought to be sought when flagrant breaches of that covenant persist either way.

If an individual or a family cause consistent trouble in a church, overlooking that individual or family is not obeying "love always protects."

What "protect" does mean

So what does it mean, "love always protects?" Do you remember how Jesus handled Peter after his thrice-failure? In the company of all the disicples, after a meal, Jesus did not say, "Peter you let me down three times." Instead he gently said to him - three times so that Peter got the point - "Do you love me?"

What a beautiful example of love's protection. My guess is that no-one but Peter knew what was happening; Jesus protected Peter because he loved him.

To protect someone is not to expose or parade their weaknesses, foibles and mistakes, but to hide them, put up with them and to bear with them.

We must protect others in our speech and on social media too.

Does not the Lord do that with us? How often we fail him but he does not emblazen our faults in the sky or text our weaknesses to our friends.

A SONG FOR THE DAY

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
His mercies never have come to an end;
They are new every morning,
New every morning:
Great is Thy faithfulness, O Lord,
Great is Thy faithfulness!

You can sing along HERE.

A PRAYER FOR THE DAY

Our loving Father in heaven,

Thank you that you always protect us. When the prodigal returned home, we read, the father did not publicly list all of his sins, as the older brother did, but protected him and forgave him freely.

This is what you do with us, you do not parade our sins in public but hide them in the depths of the sea.

How wonderful is your love for us!

Forgive us for our failure to love like this.

Teach us to love others in the same way, to always protect them, to never expose their weaknesses, but to speak only what is good about them.

We ask you this in the name of Jesus

Amen

Sunday 28 June 2020

Daily Devotionals for Difficult Days [103] Living Hope

Living hope

 Today's Guest Devotional is written by Mike Loveridge, assistant pastor of Manor Park Church

The song for this week is ‘Build my life’ by Phil Wickham. You can listen to the song here. Like previous weeks, I suggest you listen to the song, dwell on the words and then read through my brief comments. I hope this song blesses you as it has me.

How great the chasm that lay between us
How high the mountain I could not climb
In desperation, I turned to heaven
And spoke Your name into the night
Then through the darkness, Your loving-kindness
Tore through the shadows of my soul
The work is finished, the end is written
Jesus Christ, my living hope

Who could imagine so great a mercy?
What heart could fathom such boundless grace?
The God of ages stepped down from glory
To wear my sin and bear my shame
The cross has spoken, I am forgiven
The King of kings calls me His own
Beautiful Saviour, I'm Yours forever
Jesus Christ, my living hope

Hallelujah, praise the One who set me free
Hallelujah, death has lost its grip on me
You have broken every chain
There's salvation in Your name
Jesus Christ, my living hope

Hallelujah, praise the One who set me free
Hallelujah, death has lost its grip on me
You have broken every chain
There's salvation in Your name
Jesus Christ, my living hope

Then came the morning that sealed the promise
Your buried body began to breathe
Out of the silence, the Roaring Lion
Declared the grave has no claim on me
Jesus, Yours is the victory.

This song is really a story. It takes us step by step through God’s great gospel. So that is what I want us to do today: to go, step by step, back over the good news of the gospel, God’s salvation plan for his people!

The great need of humanity

The gospel begins with a problem – our sin! This song describes it as a great chasm between us and God. A chasm that no human being can cross or a mountain that none can climb. The Bible puts it like this in Romans 3:23 – for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. It is all of our wrong thoughts, actions, and deeds that have created the chasm between us and God. Whilst standing on the wrong side of the chasm we were living in darkness, satisfying our cravings and desires in the things of this world. But there is hope, as this song points out. God reached down into our mess and dealt with our sin. The Bible says a little later in Romans 5:8, ‘Whilst we were still sinners, Christ died for us’. Whilst we were still in darkness and sin, Jesus dealt with it.

   God’s grace reached down to us

So, after a fairly sobering start, the story of the gospel takes a dramatic turn. The God of eternity stepped down to earth and entered history as the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus left His heavenly throne and walked this earth just like we do. He lived and was tempted yet didn’t sin, he was rejected, tortured, lied about, disowned all so that He can then empathise with us as we live our lives here on earth. Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet he did not sin.” Through all of that Jesus had one purpose and mission: His death upon the cross. Through the cross He took our sin and shame upon His shoulders. The result of the cross is that we are 100% forgiven of all our wrongdoing through faith in Jesus. We now have the wonderful truth that we are called His own, we are children of the King. Because of Jesus’ death upon the cross we are children of God with an inheritance that will never spoil, perish or fade.

 The result for us today

How then does the story end? Well it hasn’t ended yet! The same Jesus who died on the cross is alive once more and is now back in heaven at the right hand of the father interceding for us. He is praying for us and presenting us as worthy before the Father. Because Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, we have a living hope – right here and right now.

And one day, if we trust in Jesus, we will join Him in heaven. The great message of the cross is that we are forgiven and free. Death is no longer the end but the beginning of eternity in the full presence of God. Jesus conquered the grave and in doing so won the victory over Satan, breaking every chain. In this life we may not feel that to be true as we daily battle the chains of sin that so easily entangle us. But the reality is that when we become Christians God puts His Spirit to dwell within us and through the power of the Spirit we have the power to daily break those chains and live in the freedom God has given us through His Son. Romans 6:18 says we have been set free from sin. How? Through the death and resurrection of Jesus. Its past tense. The victory is won and we are free.

So, the question is will you live in that freedom today? Let’s set our hearts on Christ and praise him for the good news of the gospel. Why not use the words of this song to thank him for all he has done? He is the one who has set you free. He has broken every chain. He offers the free gift of salvation. He is our living hope!  

Prayer for today

Heavenly Father,

We come before you today and thank you for Jesus. Thank you that you sent him into this world to walk in our shoes, so that he can now empathise with us. Thank you that through Jesus we can be fully forgiven.

We ask today that you well help us to throw off the chains of sin that so easily entangle through the power of your Spirit within us. May we daily increase in our love for you and our hatred of sin.

We ask that you will give us the desire to share this amazing, life transforming gospel with all those who don’t yet know it.

It’s in your glorious name we pray,

Amen

Photo from Unsplash by Marc-Olivier Jodoin




Saturday 27 June 2020

Daily Devotions for Difficult Days [102] Sonnet of Love (13) Love does not delight in evil


Salt-cellar Doldrums

I am told that when a husband and wife are divorcing, absolutely everything becomes a bone of contention. One party "cannot put the salt-cellar on the table in the right place without a complaint from the other" is the image used to describe this sin-cursed malaise.

Its an apt image: Something as insignificant as the geographical location of a salt cellar becomes an issue of monumental significance.

Molehills, we say, have become Mountains.

The one sees nothing but evil in the other: evil motives, evil words, evil actions. The other, once a friend and lover, is now the devil incarnate.

A more illuminating image of hatred could scarcely be found! Where once "love covered over a multitude of sins," now every wrong, more imagined than real, is piled against the other.

Which brings us to today's line in Paul's sonnet of love:

"Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth."

Let's hear it from a few other translators:

"It is never glad about injustice, but rejoices whenever truth wins out."

"Love is not happy with evil, but is happy with the truth"

"..it isn’t happy with injustice, but it is happy with the truth"

"..it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth"

"..does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth"

The setting here is love between brothers and sisters in a church, rather than marital love. The moment two believers fall out, they no longer overlook the (numerous!) faults of the other, but begin to list them one by one. All the good points, the strengths, the graces, are swept away in this foolish and relentless torrent of silly half-foibles!

I remember a former pastor of mine saying that if his wife were to list his faults to me, she'd be able to go on for ages "without repetition, hesitation or deviation!"

But she wouldn't, of course, for love always protects!

People who fall out with one another find fault with one another.

But it gets worse.

Rejoicing in the wrong things

When they hear bad news happening to the other they actually rejoice! (And perhaps when they hear good stuff happening to the other they are sad!)

It is a sure sign that you are falling out with someone, when you begin making a list (and checking it twice) of all the other's faults.

It is a sure sign that you are falling out of love if you (secretly of course) rejoice when bad things happen to them.

It is a sure sign that you are all out of love when you do not rejoice when good things happen to that person.

Divine Love

If this is the way the world twists, it's not the way God's people are to behave. Paul says: "Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth." Love never delights in evil, wherever it happens, and love always delights in good wherever it is to be found.

You know you're advancing on the forgiveness journey when you rejoice when the offender rejoices and mourn when they mourn.

Can I share a personal story?

Many moons ago, some believers deeply hurt me, you don't need to know any more, and I shan't tlel you if you asked for love keeps no record of wrongs. I had to work towards forgiveness by praying as Jesus taught me to pray,  "Forgive me my sins as I forgive them what they have done against me."

Years rolled by.

Were the prayers "working"?

I heard that one of these believers lost her husband to cancer, here was the acid test. How would my heart respond? If there was an ounce of hatred in my heart, I would have secretly rejoiced with a "serves her right!"

But God had indeed  done a marvelous miracle in my heart (without me scarcely knowing it) and I felt nothing but compassion for her and wrote to offer our condolences.

Nothing to do with me, and everything to do with God's hate-destroying love in the heart of one of his weak children.

Summing it All Up

Whenever we hear of good, righteousness and truth we should rejoice in it. And whenever we hear of evil, injustice or tragedy we should weep.

And if we do, that is because God's wonder-working power is alive in our hearts to reproduce the love of Christ, who loved hell-deserving and hell-bound wretched sinners like us. 

A SONG FOR THE DAY
When Jesus began his life-giving ministry he did so with the words of Isaiah 61, which describes a God who gives to people who are already down and mourning (ashes), not more hassle, but a crown of beauty.

He gives beauty for ashes
Strength for fear
Gladness for mourning
Peace for despair

When sorrow seems to surround you
When suffering hangs heavy o'er your head
Know that tomorrow brings
Wholeness and healing
God knows your need
Just believe what He said

When what you've done keeps you from moving on
When fear wants to make itself at home in your heart
Know that forgiveness brings
Wholeness and healing
God knows your need
Just believe what He said

I once was lost but God has found me
Though I was bound I've been set free
I've been made righteous in His sight
A display of His splendor all can see

You can hear it or sing along right HERE.

A PRAYER FOR THE DAY

Our loving Father in heaven,

The hot sun of this past week has reminded us of your mighty life-giving power. Thank you for the sun which rises each day and gives light to all the world.

We thank you more for the Son of Righteousness who has risen in our hearts with healing and forgiveness.

How poor we are at love! We read these words of Holy Scripture today and wonder if we have ever loved! Forgive our foolish and sinful ways and teach us to love our brothers and sisters as you love us.

Help us never to rejoice in evil and teach us always to rejoice in the truth.

And do this, not only for our spiritual liberty but for the salvation of the world who will then see unhuman love, even divine love, among your people.

In Christ's name we pray these things,

Amen