The epistle for Trinity 14 in Year A is Romans 13:8–14. It is a further bundle of practical teaching in the light of God’s grace, but clusters around two ideas.
The first is love as the fulfilment of the law, and in emphasising this, Paul is echoing strongly the teaching of Jesus, without actually quoting it.
The second idea is keeping awake and putting on the clothing of the light, which is being clothed in Jesus. Again, this echoes Jesus own teaching, and offers a dramatic metaphor with practical value.
The Grove booklet on Rural Resource Churches can be found here.
The gospel reading is Matt 18.15–20, on holding one another to account in the community of faith. The written commentary can be found here.
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What does it mean “to be Awake”? Isa. 52:1
or Asleep ? Isa. 56:10
“Wheresoever we lift up the cry, ‘Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord,’ there follows, swift as the thunderclap on the lightning flash, the rousing summons, ‘Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem!’ Wheresoever it is obeyed there will follow in due time the joyful chorus, as in this context, ‘Sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem; the Lord hath made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.’ [ McLaren ]
The Law is FOUNDATIONAL as we are all aware.
But we have a more sure word of prophecy
Be clothed with Christ ,His mind and His walk
Put on His Glory – essential nature and essence of being
Put on His strength His glorious garments – His Beauty of Holiness, His gentleness that makes us great.
The prayer life of Nehemiah is something to study.
An Action Man, not just shouting from the side-lines on how the game
should be played.
“Then there is the matter of taking action; the action which Nehemiah took.
He did take action, and that is something to take account of.
There are many people who have burdens and concerns, but who never do any more than bemoan the situation as it is; who never get beyond deploring things. They are everlastingly talking about the bad conditions. Their whole conversation is concerning how wrong things are, and so they go about bemoaning the state of affairs; talking and never doing any thing.
Nehemiah was not like that. Nehemiah was very keenly alive to the situation and took it very much to heart, but he did not simply bemoan it, and he did not merely preach about it. We must not fall into a way of criticizing the Lord’s people who are not where we think they ought to be; who do not know what we think they ought to know; who have not arrived at the place at which we have arrived, and therefore we consider them as being down there, and we talk about them thus: ‘They have not the light, you know’. ‘They have not entered into the truth, you know’.
Yes, we might even go beyond that, and denounce them for their backwardness; denounce them because they have not the light. It is easy to get into a way of condemning, to develop a spirit of condemnation, of judging.
All that does not cost anything.
The real question is: ‘What Action are we taking ? what doing about it?’ Nehemiah with all his perception and discernment of things, and all his heartache, did not go to the people and say: ‘Look here, you are all wrong, you are all out of the way, you are in a bad state’; he went to them and said:
‘We are in a bad state; we are in a bad way’. He got down by the side of them as though he were where they were, and he was going to help them up
to where he saw they ought to be, and to the place where he himself in spirit, already, was.
Now this is a matter we must recognize.
You see here one of those laws of what is called the Church, the Body, and the physical body is taken in the Word as an illustration of the Church, which is Christ’s Body.
“The body is one”. You cannot separate two or three of your limbs from your body, and put them in one place and the rest in another and still have a complete body.
No, the very fact of the organism means that you are one body, and if one member suffers all the members suffer with it. Being an organism, and not an organization, every member – although its condition may not be as bad as some other members – is involved by its very life in the state of the other. The body has one life, it has one nerve system, it is a corporate whole. That principle is here – “We” – and the law of the Body is this, that if there are those who are out of the way, who have not light, truth, life, as we think they ought to have, being a body, beloved, we cannot live in detachment from them. We are by the very fact of being an organism spiritually bound to them, a part of them; and the Lord is not going to cleave this Body down the centre and cut off that half which is more backward than the other.
Oh, no! That is not the Lord’s way. The Lord does not divide the Body, the Body is a whole; and you will notice all the way through the Lord’s Word, that the Lord brings some members into real concern for the others, in order to bring the others to a place where He would have them. And Nehemiah, although spiritually far above these people in his state, far beyond them, comes down there and says: “we”.
Now do believe me, I feel so strongly that what the Lord wants is that there shall never be the sign of that division which is the fruit and outworking of any kind of superiority of light and knowledge and truth, that puts others who have not that light and truth in an inferior place; relegates them to another quarter, and regards them as something apart from the Lord’s people.
That must not be, and our attitude, the attitude of any who may have been given more light for ministry purposes – not only for themselves – to the whole Body, the attitude of such to others must be that of being in the place where they are, to help them on, and not to judge, to criticize, to condemn.
[ Nehemiah – A Living Message for God’s People Today by T. Austin-Sparks ] an End Time Message.
David Wilkerson of “The Cross and the Switchblade” has an engaging sermon on this – “Awake and Shake”
@ https://sermonindex.net/speakers/david-wilkerson/awake-and-shake/ . Shalom.
Nakedness and Clothing is a fascinating motif In Scripture.
God was the first clothier – in Eden, to cover shame
The Laws of priestly clothing were quite exact, e.g.
No mixture of wool and linen – nothing that causes sweat.
The Law, as Jesus remarked is a law of Love, as the Psalmist says it is ordered, in order to live an acceptable [ with God ] life, an orderly Life
The Rich young ruler lived an orderly life but lacked one essential thing, Abandonment to Christ
In Revelation there was a church that thought that it was fairly rich
in Sardis “ These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead. [But] 3:4 Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy.
3:5 He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.
And of the the Laodiceans-
…thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:
3:18 I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.
3:19 As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.
Jesus is seen by John as clothed with a garment down to His feet
He had clothed himself as a servant, now clothed in
Glory and Honour.
To be naked is to be shameful God in mecy provides a garment
That we are instructed to put on
Eph 4:24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
Eph 6:11 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
Col 3:10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:
Col 3:12 Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering;
Col 3:14 And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. Shalom.