Other comments on this day's readings can be found here.
Reading 1 - 1Ch 17:16
"Then King David went in and sat before the LORD, and he said:
'Who am I, O LORD God, and what is my family, that you have brought me this
far?' " (1Ch 17:16).
"When we take the lowest place and 'seek not high things' we
need have no fear of falling. Pride is the destroyer of men's souls. We rise in
the balloon of our own self-esteem, only to fall to earth when our vanity is
punctured. Most of our 'taking offence' and our super-sensitivity at criticism
are but flowers which thrive in the garden of pride. The Man who became the
world's outcast and bore the scorn of a people who should have reverenced him,
had no pride to lose. He took no offense. Having become the servant of all, he
had taken the lowest place. From the height of heaven the Spirit of God came to
his lifeless body in the tomb of Gethsemane and called him to come forth.
'Friend, come up higher,' the words of the Lord's own parable, were exquisitely
fulfilled in the Master himself. Exalted and given a name which is above every
name, he received the blessing of immortality and was caught up to heaven to the
presence of God the Father" (Harry Tennant, "The Man David" 35).
Reading 2 - Eze 29:3,4
"Speak to him and say: 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says:
I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, you great monster lying among your
streams. You say, The Nile is mine; I made it for myself' " (Eze
29:3).
Like the king of Tyre and his people, Pharaoh and Egypt had
also been guilty of pride. He had become like a great river monster (Heb
"tannim", probably a crocodile of which there were many in the Nile) because he
had taken credit for the Nile River, the lifeblood of the nation. Rather than
giving God thanks for this resource, the king had proudly claimed responsibility
for it.
"This was [Pharaoh] Hophra's [Gr 'Apries'] arrogant
self-image. Herodotus implied that Pharaoh Apries was so strong in his position
that he felt no god could dislodge him. In his reign he sent an expedition
against Cyprus, besieged and took Gaza (cf Jer 47:1) and the city of Sidon, was
victorious against Tyre by sea, and considered himself master over Palestine and
Phoenicia... This arrogance had also shown itself in an attempt to interrupt
Babylonia's siege of Jerusalem -- an attempt thwarted by God" (Expositors'
Bible).
"But I will put hooks in your jaws and make the fish of your
streams stick to your scales. I will pull you out from among your streams, with
all the fish sticking to your scales" (Eze 29:4).
The LORD promised to remove Pharaoh and his lieutenants and
subordinate princes (the lesser "fish" clinging to him) from their land, as a
fisherman pulls a crocodile out of the water with hooks. Normally people caught
crocodiles by placing hooks in their jaws and then dragging them onto land where
they killed them. In the delta region of Egypt, the Egyptians worshipped the
crocodile as a god, Sebek, which they believed protected their nation (cf Eze
32:2; Psa 74:13; Isa 27:1; 51:9). Thus God promised to destroy Pharaoh, Egypt,
and the god supposedly responsible for their protection.
Reading 3 - Gal 3:13
"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a
curse for us, for it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.'
[Deu 21:23]" (Gal 3:13).
"Redeemed" is the Greek "exagorazo", which literally means 'to
buy out of the agora, or marketplace'. This is one of the most powerful
pictures, or parables, in the New Testament: that of the sinner as a "slave to
Sin", where "Sin" is personified as the powerful but ruthless Master to whom
allegiance is owed -- who brutalizes his "property" and gives it at last only
"death". "I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin" (Rom 7:14). In this metaphor
Paul is recalling the words of Jesus: "Everyone who sins is a slave to sin" (Joh
8:34).
"But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to
sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted.
You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness" (Rom
6:17,18). Christ has come into the "agora", or marketplace, and purchased the
sinner out of his bondage; now he has a new Master (Christ himself), and a new
life.
"Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law." In
addition to being redeemed from sin and wickedness and the world and men (Tit
2:14; Heb 9:15; Rev 14:3,4), man was also redeemed from the Law of Moses (Gal
4:5), and from the "curse" of that Law (Gal 3:13).
But the Law itself was not evil (it was holy and just and
good: Rom 7:12-14). However, the Law brought into focus and highlighted man's
sin -- in effect, making him a "sinner". Thus it came to stand -- by metonymy
(putting the cause for the effect) -- for his sin.
By coming under the curse of the Law -- more or less
artificially, and in the manner of his death only -- whilst living a perfectly
righteous life... Christ effectively removed that curse, and made it
meaningless. And thus he did the same for those who are "in Christ"
also.