Stephen spoke tonight from Hebrews 3:1-11, starting by quoting from Richard III: ‘now is the winter of our discontent/ Made glorious summer by the sun of York.’ We may well feel that the idea of a ‘winter of discontent’ is apt for us in lockdown, and whilst we hope for a glorious summer without restrictions, it is all too easy to be like the Israelites, and in times of trouble and testing to start grumbling and losing our focus on God. Heb 3:3 urges us to ‘fix your thoughts on Jesus’, and this is good advice to us at all times, whether in freedom or in lockdown.

Sometimes, life’s situations put us in a position where we can be constantly grumbling, like the Israelites in the wilderness. There, God led them day and night and provided for them in miraculous ways (producing water from a rock, for example, and providing manna by miraculous means to feed them each day.) They lacked nothing in the wilderness, but still kept harking back to the ‘good old days’ of slavery in Egypt where they had a wide variety of food to eat. Ex 17:7 reminds us that Moses named the place of discontent ‘Massah and Meribah’, meaning ‘quarrelling’ or ‘testing, for essentially the people doubted God’s goodness and presence, asking ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’

We can feel like this too, asking if God is among us now in our trials and difficulties, but we need to ensure that our hearts do not become hardened and put God to the test. Heb 3:1-11 is a sobering warning to us not to be like the Israelites, not to test God or doubt Him, but allowing Him to touch and soften our hearts so that they are malleable, like the clay in the hands of the Poter. Our discontent, when surrendered to God, can become something beautiful in His hands. If we honour God with everything and in everything, trusting Him and keeping our eyes, minds, hearts and thoughts fixed on Him, then we can look forward to a glorious summer… not because of the sunshine or even because of the lifting of restrictions, but because of the Son whose love and light transform our situations and who gives us hope always.

Garry spoke this morning about how Joseph and Jesus were both sold for silver. Selling a person seems abhorrent to us; although modern slavery still exists, it goes against all our values to see a human being sold for a price. Joseph was sold for 20 shekels of silver to Ishmaelite traders; Jesus was betrayed by Judas for the price of 30 pieces of silver (Matt 26:14-16), which was the price laid down for a slave.

We struggle to understand the level of betrayal involved in both these cases. Brothers are meant to be close friends and allies, not enemies. The disciples of Jesus were his closest friends, like family to him. We wonder how these people can have come to the place of betrayal. Clearly, Joseph’s brothers were jealous of their father’s favouritism and irked by Joseph’s youthful arrogance. Their hatred had simmered for a long time and they fed off each other’s animosity. Later, they would suffer great remorse as they saw their father’s anguish and grief and lived with the consequences of their actions.

We know very little about the motivation of Judas Iscariot, but it seems, like most people, he expected the Messiah to be political, someone who would throw off Roman oppression and establish the kingdom of God on earth with force. He had experienced spiritual power (see Matt 10:1-4), but he was clearly interested in money and the power it brought more than he was in doing things God’s way. Later, he too experienced remorse, realising that Jesus was not going to fight off his arrest and establish a military kingdom, but for him, this never led to repentance and he committed suicide. (Matt 27:3-5)

Betrayal goes against the trust and love which are the foundation of all human relationships. Both Joseph and Jesus show us, however, the power of forgiveness when betrayed and wronged and how to keep on loving those who betray us.

Garry continued his series looking at Joseph and the parallels in his life with the life of Jesus. In Genesis 37, we see how Joseph’s brothers saw an opportunity to get rid of him. They hated him because of Jacob’s favouritism and because of the dreams which seemed to them outrageous and humiliating. We need to be careful not to reject truth just because it comes from people we don’t like or who don’t like us; truth is truth, no matter who the messenger may be, and in this case, Joseph’s dreams definitely came from God.

The deep-burning anger of Joseph’s brothers was not like the red-mist anger which sometimes causes us to do things we later regret. They were serious about their desire to kill their brother (as Reuben’s intervention indicates) – and in the same way, we see how Jesus was hated by many (see John 1:11, John 7:3-5, Matt 12:11-14, Mark 11:15-18). Both Joseph and Jesus were pursued by people who hated them, but the malicious, malevolent plans of other people were subverted by God’s merciful plan in both cases. Matt 16:21 indicates that Jesus knew His death was part of God’s salvation plan and Gen 50:20 reminds us that Joseph reached the same conclusion.

Jesus died for our sins because we could never, through our own goodness and effort, be good enough to reach God’s standard (see Is 59:1-2, Rom 6:23, Heb 9:14, Luke 18:9-14). God’s mercy and justice are both satisfied through the cross. Everybody can be saved, but we are required to call on God in order to be saved. Joseph was rejected and condemned by his own brothers and Jesus too was rejected and condemned, but through their suffering, God worked good. Both Joseph and Jesus were also sold for silver, and it is difficult for us to fathom the motives of both Joseph’s brothers and Judas in selling the life of a person, but we are aware ultimately that it was through the precious blood of Christ that we are redeemed. Human values so often can’t compare with the values and price God puts on human life.

The ‘need-to-know’ basis in politics and other areas of business refers to telling someone the facts they need to know at a particular time and nothing more. In politics, civil servants often use this as their rationale for not revealing potentially incriminating information to MPs, though they like to know everything, as this exchange from ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ between two civil servants makes clear!

• Bernard Woolley : But you only need to know things on a need-to-know basis.
• Sir Humphrey Appleby : I need to know *everything*. How else can I judge whether or not I need to know it?
• Bernard Woolley : So that means you need to know things even when you don’t need to know them. You need to know them not because you need to know them but because you need to know whether or not you need to know. If you don’t need to know, you still need to know so that you know that there is no need to know.
• Sir Humphrey Appleby : Yes!
• Bernard Woolley : That’s very clear!

In the Bible, there are many things we would like to know. The tantalising information that it was Paul’s nephew who thwarted yet another plot to kill him (Acts 23:12-22) is one such snippet; we have many questions about this news. Was he a believer? Did he have any association with Jewish leaders which gave him access to this information? How did he get access into the barracks so easily, especially if he was quite young, as the text implies? What was his relationship with Paul like? None of these questions are answered at all, which we may well find infuriating, but the truth is that Scripture contains all we need to know. Unlike politics, this is not because God is keeping vital information from us out of churlishness or spite; the Bible declares Him to be a God of revelation (Daniel 2:8 tells us ‘there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries’ and Amos 4:13 tells us God reveals His thoughts to mankind.) We may not get all the answers we want in the Bible, but we do get all the answers we need. In it, we find all we need to live life as God intended it and to be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Tim 3:16)

The Charge of the Light Brigade was a failed military action involving the British light cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. Lord Raglan had intended to send the Light Brigade to prevent the Russians from removing captured guns from overrun Turkish positions, a task for which the light cavalry were well-suited. However, there was miscommunication in the chain of command and the Light Brigade was instead sent on a frontal assault against a different artillery battery, one well-prepared with excellent fields of defensive fire. The Light Brigade reached the battery under withering direct fire and scattered some of the gunners, but they were forced to retreat immediately, and the assault ended with very high British casualties and no decisive gains. The battle has been immortalised in Tennyson’s poem of the same name:

“Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns’ he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’
Was there a man dismay’d ?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.”

The military life is all about what some would call blind obedience to the chain of command. Tom Wright comments on this when writing about Acts 23:23-35, saying of the Roman deputation transferring Paul from Jerusalem to Caesarea that they went from tying him up and preparing to flog him one day to mustering 200 soldiers, 70 horses and 200 spearmen to escort him to safety the next, but ‘soldiering is about doing, not knowing, and doing is what the Romans do best.’ (P 177)

Such blind obedience may be considered laudable or foolhardy, depending on one’s perspective, but there is no doubt that obedience to God is a key element of any disciple’s journey. God told the first king of Israel that ‘to obey is better than sacrifice’ (1 Sam 15:22), and walking in obedience is a key element of success in the Christian life (see Deut 5:33, 2 Cor 9:13). It’s not always easy for us to obey God when we do not understand His ways or see the point of what He is asking us to do, but we have the assurance that He is in sovereign control and, unlike the officers who authorised the Charge of the Light Brigade, is never going to command something which will ultimately harm us.

Providence is defined as ‘the protective care of God’, and this is seen clearly in Acts 23:12-22, when a plot to kill Paul is thwarted by his nephew. Some 40 fanatical Jews wanted to get rid of Paul once and for all and they plotted to kill him, partnering with the chief priests and the Sanhedrin to try to get Paul in a vulnerable position where he could be attacked en route for further questioning. This plot was thwarted by Paul’s nephew, a young man about whom nothing more is known, who heard of the plot, went to tell his uncle directly about it and then, on Paul’s command, told the centurion in charge what he knew. As a result, Paul came once again under the protection of Roman law and ended up being transferred from Jerusalem to Caesarea.

Whilst this passage leaves us with many more questions than answers (we want to know all about Paul’s sister and nephew, how he learned of the plot (‘careless talk costs lives’ is presumably the lesson we can learn here!) and how he managed to have the kind of access to the barracks that he did), it clearly demonstrates for us that God’s hand is on Paul and that He has a plan for him to be His witness in Rome, no matter what other people feel about this situation. Job, after much suffering and many questions, finally came to realise something of God’s sovereignty, saying, ‘I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted.’ (Job 42:1) This may well leave us feeling like mere pawns in God’s great chess game, but actually, there is something tremendously reassuring and exciting to know that we are part of God’s great plans and purpose, and that His hand of providence is ‘guiding us through choices that we make… reaching out to help us on our way.’ (‘Providence’, Michael W. Smith) Paul’s experience of God’s providence and protection can be ours too. As Isaiah put it, ‘no weapon forged against you will prevail.’ (Isaiah 54:17) God’s purposes will prevail.