Today's Gospel passage is Luke 6:13:  "At daybreak he called together all of his disciples and chose twelve of them to be apostles. Here are their names..."

RM: It was not until I learned to see the Covenant view of the Old Testament and the Covenant of Grace as the interpretive key to understand how the new is the fulfillment of the old, and with that then how to interpret the book of Revelation. And in the pictures you get in Revelation, if you understand it in the Amillennial way, the Reformed theological, covenantal way, that's when you can appreciate the meaning of it in this way, and when you see the symmetry involved of having 12 representatives of people before Christ comes and then 12 continuing representatives of God's people after Christ comes. ...24 in all, which represents the totality of the fullness of the 12 before and the fullness of the 12 after which is the one full and complete story of Redemption.

That being the case, you have here in this recording of this setting and point in history, standing around without much awareness of their significance, 12 unsuspecting individuals who have just been chosen by this mysterious character, not realizing that they are indeed the twelve pillars upon which the rest of human history shall be represented, just as you had the 12 sons of Jacob before.

That's exciting because what it means is that Jesus very fully and totally understood the significance of the number of 12, that these 12 chosen by him were the symbolic 12 pillars and 12 representatives, of all of God's people from this point on until the end of time. Surely at this point they would not have understood the total significance of all that they were representing, in being 12 in number. They could not have fully appreciated that they were the fulfillment of the final age of God's people and the continuation of ALL that Israel was in the past and even more. That they were the headway and beginning of the last and greatest manifestation of Israel, the continuing Israel in the New Covenant era.

​How exciting it could be if we could time travel back to this point knowing what we know now and could have been there with them, knowing the excitement and honor just bestowed on them, that they were the ones replacing the 12 tribes of Israel to become the new 12 tribes of Israel continuing in a more fulfilled, simpler version but a more final and universal version of Israel. How excited they would have been if only they could have known!

Today's Old Testament daily lectionary reading is 
Numbers 13:27-31:
This was their report to Moses: “We entered the land you sent us to explore, and it is indeed a bountiful country—a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is the kind of fruit it produces. But the people living there are powerful, and their towns are large and fortified. We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak!
. . . But Caleb tried to quiet the people as they stood before Moses. “Let’s go at once to take the land,” he said. “We can certainly conquer it!” But the other men who had explored the land with him disagreed. “We can’t go up against them! They are stronger than we are!”

See also. . . 
Matthew 19:11 - “Not everyone can accept this statement,” Jesus said. “Only those whom God helps."

RM:
This Old Testament verse is interestingly coupled with Matthew 19:11 on the Daily Lectionary, where Jesus points out that Spiritual realities (such as this crazy idea of simply embracing a confident certainty and trust which would say something like, .... "of course God will supernaturally take care of all of our impossible obstacles and dangers for us! Of course!! ...easily!" ) simply can't be understood, nor lived out, by people who don't have the holy Spirit giving them the ability to come awake to and see and think like people whom God makes spiritually awake, which would then naturally give them the eyes to see and therefore have the motivation and courage to live a God trusting kind of life.

That's why natural humans do not have the ability to accept God's things and ideas (as the people in this passage couldn't fathom going into a land with giants). Unless God helps us by supernaturally opening the heart and eyes, we CANNOT accept it because we haven't yet seen God's revealed reality for ourselves. That's why Caleb, Joshua, and Moses we're voting, yes, to going into the land, and everybody else was voting, no.

Whoever you are, today, right now, stop what you're doing and talk to God.  Humble your heart, even if you've been a Christian for years, and ask God to give you "eyes to see him" and ears to hear and a heart to understand.  Only then can we have the supernatural motivation to do the impossible, to walk on water, to see his reality so certainly that it would motivate us to live what others would call radical, but God calls normal.  I believe he wants to give us his Holy Spirit like this, but we must ask. Let's all ask today. Amen.

Acts 10:34-35 So Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him."

What does the word ‘fear’ mean in this verse? The Bible often uses this word to mean wanting someone’s approval. Like when the Bible challenges us not to give in to the “fear of man”(Proverbs 29:25). This doesn’t mean being afraid of people. It means being “awe inspired” by their approval. It means wanting someone’s approval and the Bible is challenging us not to care too much about our reputation and appearance. That's what the phrase “fear of man” means in the Bible.So then, for us to have a “fear” of God, would mean, instead, to have the feeling of wanting to be approved by God and wanting his affection and his love, his fatherly delight in us. This is what Galatians 4:4-7 and Romans 8:15 means when the Holy Spirit brings us to spiritual life and causes us to cry out, “Abba!” This is what the “fear of God” is referring to.

In this passage, Luke records Peter, as Peter is reflecting on all of the implications of God bringing salvation to this Gentile named, Cornelius. Peter is thinking of all the potential future believers in far away places. And Peter is realizing in this moment, that anyone, in any non-Jewish country or foreign culture, no matter where or when, can still be just as close to God as any Old Testament Jew ever was, as long as he or she simply LOVES God. That’s what Peter is saying in these words.But he uses the word ‘fears’ God. Why does he use ‘fear’ when he essentially means ‘love’? How does ‘fear’ mean ‘love,’ while also meaning something slightly more specific?He uses it because the word ‘Love,’ by itself, can mean something possibly too casual or light for Peter’s meaning; while ‘fear’ clarifies that he means something far deeper, more deeply needed, and more life giving for a person.

The word ‘fear’ means love, but it also carries all of this other meaning of deep dependency as well.So Peter is saying to us in this verse that anyone who wants God’s affection, as your ultimate desire of life, can know that you are in a right and legitimate relationship with God.However, we also know, because of the supporting teaching of the rest of the Bible, that Grace is the only way to truly have this.

The Bible also teaches us that without an understanding of Grace, our naturally sinful, “orphan” spirits will always operate in a self-reliant way, to secure happiness in this life. And the human soul has no ability to escape this self-reliant tendency. That is, it doesn’t until God, from the outside, breaks in with this concept of Grace.Every human conscience innately has no way for the human soul to securely trust in God’s approval and affection. We all have a conscience. And, deep down, that conscience knows what our true standing is before a holy God.We simply can’t, naturally, achieve a security strong enough to trust that we have God’s approval. That is, not until we come to see the basis of God’s offer of a free gift, without any achievement or deserving on our part, from the Bible itself.

Naturally speaking, the human soul has no way to be secure enough to be certain of God’s love.The only basis than can achieve this, is the the basis of a free gift on God’s own initiative. This he achieved by becoming one of us in order to die the death we should have and live the life we should have. When this basis, of Grace, finally comes clear and dawns on us, it resolves this natural, human fear of God and sets us free in our psyche to finally relax, securely, and know with certainty that God delights in us and cherishes us.This...and this alone...is what enables us to enjoy God’s affection, without any fear, at the deepest level, which finally satisfies the soul as it was intended.Until Grace brakes in to our psyche and changes our natural orientation, no true ‘fear’ of God, in the sense that Peter is referring to, is possible. Hence, the desperate need for humble, local, ordinary people to act as missionaries and share these concepts with the rest of us.

​The world needs quiet, normal, humble people to share this unlooked-for liberation of the human spirit with others who have not yet found it.This is what Peter had in view as he reassured these Gentile believers of God’s acceptance and his desire for others to know God’s fatherly approval and this wonderful ‘fear’ of God.