Tuesday • 6/28/2022

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 120; Psalm 121; Psalm 122; Psalm 123; Numbers 22:21-38; Romans 7:1-12; Matthew 21:23-32

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93) 

An audio or video version of this devotional can be found here: Apple Podcast, Spotify Podcast, YouTube

Three insights today on how important the heart is. Balaam’s behavior may be restrained by external restraint, but his wayward heart is untouched. Paul reflects on the powerlessness even of God’s good law to restrain sinful passions. Jesus calls out the folly of professed faith that proves faithless, and commends honest resistance to faith when it turns into true profession and discipleship. 

Balaam’s “bit & bridle.” Balaam’s is a cautionary tale. He knows enough to do as he’s told. Yahweh has instructed him to accept Balak’s summons to court. Moreover, we will discover that, at God’s command, Balaam will not offer the curse on Israel that Balak demands. Yet God knows that Balaam’s “way is perverse,” that is, his heart does not belong to him. Balaam only does as much as he’s told, and no more. He will be a mouthpiece, but he will not give himself to be a follower of the Lord. All along, Balaam will be shrewdly looking to his own interests. 

It is richly ironic that it is by means of a donkey that the Lord channels Balaam’s behavior and then speaks to him. “A whip for the horse, a bridle for the donkey, and a rod for the back of fools,” says Proverbs 26:3. And Psalm 32:9 cautions, “Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding, whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not stay near you.” In Balaam’s case, the donkey is the smart one, and the human is the one without understanding who needs bit and bridle. Even with the bit and bridle of the donkey’s turning from the path and speaking on Yahweh’s behalf, Balaam yields merely external, behavioral obedience. 

When the human heart is dead to the Lord, it doesn’t matter what circumstances or what voices the Lord uses. Unless the Lord makes the dead heart live, the response will be one of a dead person—the walking death of spiritual death. 

A good divorce. In this, the first paragraph of Romans 7, the apostle Paul reflects on the way that, holy as it is, God’s law is unable to solve the problem of spiritual death. Ultimately, the law is unable to put an effective bit and bridle on “sinful passions.” To the contrary, by forbidding them, the law makes them more attractive and more powerful, accentuating the need for a completely new start, a completely new set of desires. 

Paul employs two images—first, the image of a divorce by which one person becomes as dead to the other. It’s a nuanced metaphor—in this metaphor we are the wife trapped in a bad marriage; and we are released when “the husband dies” (understood, becomes dead to us through divorce — Romans 7: 3). In the rest of his epistle, Paul makes it clear that his point here is limited: in Christ, we actually become keepers of the law in its deepest sense, for now we have the capacity to love God (Romans 5:5; 8:28) and our neighbor (13:8-10). The law’s death-sentence against sin and disobedience has been satisfied in God’s setting forth his Son as propitiating sacrifice (Romans 3:25). In this sense, the law is now dead to us. And we are dead to any claim of condemnation that the law would otherwise have over us (Romans 8:1-4). 

It’s to this effect that Paul uses his second image in this paragraph: the law killed us by provoking in us the desperation of our hearts (“all kinds of covetousness”) that made the need for the cross so apparent. Thus, we have been divorced from the law (the law is dead to us) and we have died to the law (our old, guilty self was crucified with Christ on the cross). With our old husband (the law) dead, we are as though raised from the dead ourselves. We have entered a new marriage, a marriage to Christ Jesus. In this marriage, we are able to live by the Spirit, obey gladly and from the heart, and “bear fruit for God” (Romans 7:4). 

Praise be that the law has done its work of pointing up the need for a blood-soaked cross. Praise be for the living Christ who now lives, by the Spirit, in us to reproduce his life through us. 

Two sons. Then there are the two sons of Matthew 21. One declares obedience to his father, but never follows through. That son is the embodiment of the religious leaders who profess loyalty to Israel’s God, but who can muster up only a slothful and faithless, “We don’t know,” when God’s Son demands they deal with him and his mission. The other son says he’s not interested in doing the father’s will, but reconsiders. This son is the embodiment of the sinners and tax-collectors and prostitutes and ne’er-do-wells who repent and follow Jesus. 

Better the honest “Not interested” that reconsiders its rashness than the dishonest “I’m all in!” that is, and remains, mere lip service. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

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