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 This was the allotment for the tribe of Manasseh as Joseph’s firstborn, that is, for Makir, Manasseh’s firstborn. Makir was the ancestor of the Gileadites, who had received Gilead and Bashan because the Makirites were great soldiers. ² So this allotment was for the rest of the people of Manasseh—the clans of Abiezer, Helek, Asriel, Shechem, Hepher and Shemida. These are the other male descendants of Manasseh son of Joseph by their clans.

³ Now Zelophehad son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Makir, the son of Manasseh, had no sons but only daughters, whose names were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milkah and Tirzah. ⁴ They went to Eleazar the priest, Joshua son of Nun, and the leaders and said, “The Lord commanded Moses to give us an inheritance among our relatives.” So Joshua gave them an inheritance along with the brothers of their father, according to the Lord’s command. ⁵ Manasseh’s share consisted of ten tracts of land besides Gilead and Bashan east of the Jordan, ⁶ because the daughters of the tribe of Manasseh received an inheritance among the sons. The land of Gilead belonged to the rest of the descendants of Manasseh. (NIV)

Here is an illustration of claiming God’s Word by faith. Such praying is not random, but definite asking based upon what the Lord has clearly said. He says what He means, and He means what He says. We can implicitly trust Him. Zelophehad’s daughters knew what God had said and laid claim to what He had promised. Obviously, they were talking to men who were in a position to give them what they desired. But this same principle applies to prayer.

I remember devouring the biography of George Mueller, who was a great example of the life of faith. R.A. Torrey said about him, “George Mueller never prayed for a thing just because he wanted it, or even just because he felt it was greatly needed for God’s work. When it was laid upon George Mueller’s heart to pray for anything, he would search the Scriptures to find if there was some promise that covered the case … And then when he found the promise, with his open Bible before him, and his finger upon that promise, he would plead that promise, and so he received what he asked. He always prayed with an open Bible before him.”

Andrew Murray’s comment is also instructive:

‘When God wishes anew to teach His Church a truth that is not being understood or practised, He mostly does so by raising some man to be in word and deed a living witness to its blessedness. And so God has raised up in this nineteenth century, among others, George Muller to be His witness that He is indeed the Hearer of prayer.’

For the director of music. According to mahalath. A maskil of David.

¹ The fool says in his heart,
    “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, and their ways are vile;
    there is no one who does good.

² God looks down from heaven
    on all mankind
to see if there are any who understand,
    any who seek God.
³ Everyone has turned away, all have become corrupt;
    there is no one who does good,
    not even one.

⁴ Do all these evildoers know nothing?

They devour my people as though eating bread;
    they never call on God.
⁵ But there they are, overwhelmed with dread,
    where there was nothing to dread.
God scattered the bones of those who attacked you;
    you put them to shame, for God despised them.

⁶ Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion!
    When God restores his people,
    let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad!

I think it is in one of Dostoyevsky’s novels that a character exclaims, ‘If God is dead, then everything is permissible.’ The ultimate in sin is to live without reference to God. It is to disbelieve in Him (or say you don’t believe) and then act accordingly. Bad believing leads to bad living. This point is underlined in Psalm 53. Bad theology has practical consequences. Wrong believing does not produce the fruit of right living.

Psalm 53 paints a picture of practical atheists who think they can live as they like and get away with it. They believe they are accountable to no-one, and so they persecute and oppress the people of God. David shows how wrongheaded they are.

Here is Eugene Peterson’s vividly fresh rendering of this psalm:

Bilious and bloated, they gas,
    “God is gone.”
It’s poison gas—
    they foul themselves, they poison
Rivers and skies;
    thistles are their cash crop.
God sticks his head out of heaven.
    He looks around.
He’s looking for someone not stupid—
    one man, even, God-expectant,
    just one God-ready woman.

³ He comes up empty. A string
    of zeros. Useless, unshepherded
Sheep, taking turns pretending
    to be Shepherd.
The ninety and nine
    follow the one.

⁴ Don’t they know anything,
    all these predators?
Don’t they know
    they can’t get away with this,
Treating people like a fast-food meal
    over which they’re too busy to pray?

⁵ Night is coming for them, and nightmare—
    a nightmare they’ll never wake up from.
God will make hash of these squatters,
    send them packing for good.

⁶ Is there anyone around to save Israel?
    God turns life around.
Turned-around Jacob skips rope,
    turned-around Israel sings laughter.

 The very next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and yelled out, “Here he is, God’s Passover Lamb! He forgives the sins of the world! This is the man I’ve been talking about, ‘the One who comes after me but is really ahead of me.’ I knew nothing about who he was—only this: that my task has been to get Israel ready to recognize him as the God-Revealer. That is why I came here baptizing with water, giving you a good bath and scrubbing sins from your life so you can get a fresh start with God.”

^32-34 John clinched his witness with this: “I watched the Spirit, like a dove flying down out of the sky, making himself at home in him. I repeat, I know nothing about him except this: The One who authorized me to baptize with water told me, ‘The One on whom you see the Spirit come down and stay, this One will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ That’s exactly what I saw happen, and I’m telling you, there’s no question about it: This is the Son of God.” (The Message)

Jesus is the ultimate answer to Isaac’s question, ”…where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” (Genesis 22:7). Jesus is ”the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (29). Over the centuries, many, many imperfect sacrifices had been offered to God. But John is convinced that Jesus is the perfect sacrifice, who not only covers over sin, but who actually takes it away. Furthermore His sacrifice is not only for Jews, but also for the whole world.

Notice, though, that God’s supernatural revelation is key in coming to see who Jesus is. It was so for John, and it is for us. We will never come to faith in Jesus, and trust His saving Work on our behalf, without the Holy Spirit ‘operating’ on the ‘eyes of the heart’ (Eph.1:18) and giving us sight.

‘See him taking away sin, and let that increase our hatred of sin, and resolutions against it. Let not us hold that fast which the Lamb of God came to take away: for Christ will either take our sins away or take us away. Let it increase our love to Christ, who loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, Rev 1 5. Whatever God is pleased to take away from us, if withal he take away our sins, we have reason to be thankful, and no reason to complain.’ Matthew Henry

 When Jews from Jerusalem sent a group of priests and officials to ask John who he was, he was completely honest. He didn’t evade the question. He told the plain truth: “I am not the Messiah.”

²¹ They pressed him, “Who, then? Elijah?”

“I am not.”

“The Prophet?”

“No.”

²² Exasperated, they said, “Who, then? We need an answer for those who sent us. Tell us something—anything!—about yourself.”

²³ “I’m thunder in the desert: ‘Make the road straight for God!’ I’m doing what the prophet Isaiah preached.”

^24-25 Those sent to question him were from the Pharisee party. Now they had a question of their own: “If you’re neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet, why do you baptize?”

^26-27 John answered, “I only baptize using water. A person you don’t recognize has taken his stand in your midst. He comes after me, but he is not in second place to me. I’m not even worthy to hold his coat for him.”

²⁸ These conversations took place in Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing at the time. (The Message)

In order to fulfil God’s purpose for your life, you need a clear sense both of who you are and who you are not. John knew who he was (and wasn’t), and his sense of identity was shaped by Scripture. He saw himself through God’s eyes, and this is so important for us all. We don’t want the world around us to be dictating our self-image (or, for that matter, to be constructing it for ourselves). John had a ‘positive self-image’ in that it was God-given.

As we have seen before, John never confused himself as the messenger with the Message. His message was Jesus. He humbly proclaimed the Christ and glorified Him. We are going to see this repeatedly in the early chapters of this gospel. John’s was a ministry of utter humility. No wonder Jesus described John as ”a burning and shining light” (John 5:35).

I seem to remember someone saying something like this: ‘You cannot, at one and the same time, give the impression that Jesus is a great Saviour and that you are a great preacher.’ John was a great preacher, but he wasn’t trying to impress anyone. He wasn’t great in his own eyes. His greatness lay in his resolute commitment to glorify Christ.

PRAYER: Lord, please give to all who preach your Word the same burning heart John had, for your glory.

John pointed him out and called, “This is the One! The One I told you was coming after me but in fact was ahead of me. He has always been ahead of me, has always had the first word.”

^16-18 We all live off his generous abundance,
    gift after gift after gift.
We got the basics from Moses,
    and then this exuberant giving and receiving,
This endless knowing and understanding—
    all this came through Jesus, the Messiah.
No one has ever seen God,
    not so much as a glimpse.
This one-of-a-kind God-Expression,
    who exists at the very heart of the Father,
    has made him plain as day. (The Message)

These verses point to:

• The supremacy of Jesus (15): In terms of lineage, John the Baptist was born before Jesus; but in terms of eternity, John knew that Jesus was before Him (see vv.27/30);
• The grace of Jesus (16): All who come to Jesus enter a life of sheer abundance. It’s not one based on earning (by law-keeping), but one of gift upon gift from start to finish – in other words ‘grace’;
• The divinity of Jesus (18): Jesus is to say to Philip: ”“Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” (14:9) As Michael Green said, ‘Jesus is the window into God.’ This eighteenth verse reads in the New King James Bible: ”No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” In the New International Version it says: ”No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” I understand the idea is that Jesus is the perfect exegete of God.

The Word became flesh and blood,
    and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
    the one-of-a-kind glory,
    like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
    true from start to finish. (The Message)

This, of course, refers to the unique, unrepeatable event we call ‘the Incarnation’, in which God entered the world as a Man, in the Person of His Son, Jesus. But, inspired by Eugene Peterson’s rendering of verse 14, I do want to suggest that there is a sense (and it is a limited sense, but a real one) in which Jesus moves through our ‘neighbourhoods; in our bodies, and people can see something of His glory in us. There is a sense in which every sermon can be ‘made flesh in believers, and be walked out of church into the world in our bodies.

Why not, presuming you are able, take a prayer walk around your neighbourhood soon, praying for the homes you pass; praying by name for the people you know? Ask that your neighbours will come to see the reality of Jesus in you, and in the lives of any other Christians the Lord has planted in your area.

PRAYER: Lord, cause me to shine with your light in the place where you have set me down

The Life-Light was the real thing:
    Every person entering Life
    he brings into Light.
He was in the world,
    the world was there through him,
    and yet the world didn’t even notice.
He came to his own people,
    but they didn’t want him.
But whoever did want him,
    who believed he was who he claimed
    and would do what he said,
He made to be their true selves,
    their child-of-God selves.
These are the God-begotten,
    not blood-begotten,
    not flesh-begotten,
    not sex-begotten. (The Message)

It is ironic that the God who made the world was largely unwanted by that world when He came into it as a Man; and more specifically, that He was rejected by His own prepared people, when He came among them as a male Jew. The picture of unwantedness painted here is stark.

But, this was not true of everyone. There were those who:

”…did want him”

They got to see reality. He brought them ”into Light”. They could now see things as they really are from their new perspective as children of God. They entered ”Life”.

What is on my heart today is to pray for certain people in my orbit, that they will move from not wanting Jesus to wanting Him.

Whenever I hear someone’s conversion story, there is almost invariably a believer (or two, or more) in the wings of that testimony, faithfully praying. Oh that I might be a prayer-er in the wings of some soul’s journey to faith.

PRAYER: Lord, I bring to you ______________ (fill in the blank) and I ask specifically, definitely, that they will want Jesus. Give to them an unquenchable desire to know that truth which sets free.

There once was a man, his name John, sent by God to point out the way to the Life-Light. He came to show everyone where to look, who to believe in. John was not himself the Light; he was there to show the way to the Light.

The Life-Light was the real thing… (The Message)

”There was once a man…” He had a name. His name was ”John”. But he was not about his own name, rather the Name of another.

He ”was once”, but is no more as far as life in this world is concerned. We each of us get only one shot at life. But John’s legacy lives on. His influence still affects us. We are reading about him today, are we not? Like Abel, he:

” still speaks, even though he is dead” (Hebrews 11:4)

John demonstrated (demonstrates!) the essence of Christian witness. It is to be a signpost to Jesus. It is to point away from ourselves to our Lord. It’s in Jesus that people will find ”the real thing”. John, as a humble messenger never confused himself with the message. Our lives can endorse and authenticate the message. But we are not the message.

”For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor.4:5)

Later in the chapter we will hear John adamantly asserting again that he is not the Messiah; he is merely His prophesied forerunner.

John shone like the moon at night, with reflected light, but he never thought he was the Sun.

A modern day John (Stott) prayed this prayer before he preached:

‘Heavenly Father, we bow in your presence.
May your word be our rule,
Your Spirit our teacher,
And your greater glory our supreme concern.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

PRAYER: Oh Lord, cause me to shine with your light, as John did. Enable me to be a signpost to you by life (even when I’m not aware it is happening) and by lip. Grant that ‘your greater glory’ will always be my ‘supreme concern’. For your Name’s sake. Amen.

^1-2 The Word was first,
    the Word present to God,
    God present to the Word.
The Word was God,
    in readiness for God from day one.

^3-5 Everything was created through him;
    nothing—not one thing!—
    came into being without him.
What came into existence was Life,
    and the Life was Light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;
    the darkness couldn’t put it out. (The Message)

It is so good to know that ”the darkness” could not overcome the ”Light” that is Christ. His resurrection demonstrates this. All the hatred in the world could not extinguish the Light of Christ. But it wanted to. It tried to. It still tries…and tries…and it will until the end of time. But it tries and fails, and will until the end of time!

We should not be surprised that persecution (often violent in nature) is the lot of the church, the body of Christ, in this world. The darkness inevitably wants to blow out the Light. This is the age old hatred of Satan for God – the God who became man in Jesus; who is the true ‘Word’ all men need to hear, and see, and believe.

But one day this persecution will end, because the ‘big picture’ Bible story is that the Light wins. The older I get, the more I see that the Bible makes sense of everything. It helps me to understand the mess I see around me, and still have hope. Jesus, and His church, though bitterly hated, and violently opposed, cannot be defeated.

Meanwhile, believers, who see in Jesus the Creator God, can sing with an old hymn:

‘Heaven above is softer blue,
Earth around is sweeter green;
Something lives in every hue
Christless eyes have never seen:
Birds with gladder songs o’erflow,
Flow’rs with deeper beauties shine,
Since I know, as now I know,
I am His, and He is mine.’ (George Wade Robinson)

Although the world, the universe, is deeply damaged by sin and evil, Jesus shines through every atom and molecule.

PRAYER: Lord, please penetrate the darkness of our lost souls with your blazing, indestructible Light