I do not set an alarm. If my bio-clock has not stirred me by 5:00, my canine’s clock will. When I cycle to work, the commute is 9.85 miles. If I ride, say, 15 miles on a weekend jaunt (cyclists: please refrain from expressing your thoughts; I know my rides are paltry), my body tells me something’s wrong, that I should be done, just before 10 miles. At 11:35am and 5:05pm my stomach holds my brain hostage for food.
As judges rule Israel in Canaan, the cycle of obedience, forgetfulness, rebellion, and repentance, might persuade us the nation’s identity is oscillating between dutiful son and wandering prodigal. In truth, as the Old Covenant’s story and the New Covenant’s solution testify, they are not wavering at all. The consistency of the cycle reveals a selfish, sinful, natural nation meriting judgment even when receiving mercy.
But the cycle reveals God’s nature, too, in his faithfulness and grace to the unworthy nation—first, with judges who bring them to temporary obedience; but finally, through fulfillment of the promise to Abraham (a patriarch whose own obedience is constantly tainted by failure), in the faithfulness of the Leader who arrives two millennia later, Christ.
Each admonition for believers to deny self is a reminder that the old self would rise every morning; the insistence that we resist temptation a notice that we would succumb to it; the commission to walk in the Spirit an offer to escape the flesh which would otherwise hold us hostage, and not just at 11:05 and 5:05. Our default is the old nature. Paul’s words to the Galatians are not just that we live by our faith in the Son of God, but by the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us.
This week, then, per Hebrews, let us with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of [our all day every day] need.