What can I say about this reading other than the chapters were short? 🙂
There was one phrase that I loved after Job’s explanation of God’s works,
“Behold, these are the fringes of His ways;
And how faint a word we hear of Him!
But His mighty thunder, who can understand?” -Job 26:14
I love that first line,
“Behold, these are the fringes of His ways”
I think when I question what God is doing it would be good to go out look up at the stars (harder to do here in the DC area 🙂 ) and remember “these are the fringes of His ways” and then just trust!
Tomorrow’s Reading: Jeremiah 1-6
Oh that I could go back and advise my teenage self of this and he would listen,
“Be not envious toward wrongdoers…Trust in the Lord and do good;
Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.
4 Delight yourself in the Lord;
And He will give you the desires of your heart.” -Psalm 37:1b, 3, 4
I know I did and many others are envious towards wrongdoers because they believe the wrong is what will ultimately give them the desires of their hearts. Oh how mistaken I was!
How true this is…
“Do not fret; it leads only to evildoing.” Psalm 37:8b
Psalm 38 has some interesting lines and it shows that yes the righteous, the saved, those that walk with God still struggle with sin…
“For I am ready to fall,
And my sorrow is continually before me.
18 For I confess my iniquity;
I am full of anxiety because of my sin.” -Psalm 38: 17, 18
But then…
“But my enemies are vigorous and strong,
And many are those who hate me wrongfully.
20 And those who repay evil for good,
They oppose me, because I follow what is good.” -Psalm 38:19, 20
So which is it?
Sinner or you follow what is good?
Maybe both.
And now a quick music video from my youth based on Psalm 36
Tomorrow’s Reading: Job 25 & 26
I wonder what the time frame was of the stories in 1 Samuel 11 to 1 Samuel 13 because Saul went from,
“But Saul said, “Not a man shall be put to death this day, for today the Lord has accomplished deliverance in Israel.” -1 Sam. 11:13
to this,
Samuel said to Saul, “You have acted foolishly; you have not kept the commandment of the Lordyour God, which He commanded you, for now the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. 14 But now your kingdom shall not endure. The Lord has sought out for Himself a man after His own heart, and the Lord has appointed him as ruler over His people, because you have not kept what the Lordcommanded you.” -1 Sam 13:13,14
Very quickly it seems by the narrative.
Saul illustrates how quickly power can corrupt. He went from a man that didn’t even want the position to a man that felt he could pick and choose which parts of God’s instruction were absolutely necessary…he went from a man giving God all the credit to a position of not even realizing when he was making himself god over God!
Tomorrow’s Reading: Psalms 36-38
We’ve come to the end of the wonderful book of Genesis. One of my favorite books in all of the Old Testament. All the great themes of love and redemption are found in this book along with many of the great struggles that we would see and do see repeat themselves in the history of humanity.
In this reading today two things really caught my attention:
The reaction of Joseph’s brothers after their father’s death. Joseph had long ago forgiven them, he had already shared with them that he believed God used their wrong to actually save lives, yet they still feared he would hold revenge against them. Their fear and misunderstanding of his character so hurt Joseph the Bible tells us,
“And Joseph wept when they spoke to him.” Genesis 50:17b
Joseph though did not get angry, he told them to not be afraid and “he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.” (50:21b)
I see in this a type of Christ. How many misunderstand the character of God and through Christ we see in fact the true character of love and forgiveness. Also just as we put Jesus on the cross with our sins, God used this act to save many lives…all that will accept the gift. Joseph is a pre-cursor to just such a truth,
“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.” -Gen. 50:20
The second thing that stuck-out to me in my reading was what Joseph asked of his family just prior to his death,
“Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, “God will surely take care of you, and you shall carry my bones up from here.” -Gen. 50:25
No matter what success Joseph had in Israel which was just about the most human success a person could have. Joseph never forgot where his true home was. May we no matter our blessings and successes on this earth, never forget where our true home is…not this wicked world!
Tomorrow’s Reading: 1 Samuel 11-15
So the great theme of these two chapters can be summed up in this:
Paul’s life was about one thing…helping people to be saved by Jesus!
That is it!
Do our lives have the same theme?
Why do we still tithe? A very clear answer is in 1 Corinthians 9:14…
“So also the Lord directed those who proclaim the gospel to get their living from the gospel.”
And who is to support the work of ministry and those who are working for the cause of God. Again a very clear answer…
“If we sowed spiritual things in you, is it too much if we reap material things from you?” -1 Cor. 9:11
Every Christian should then ask themselves, are they supporting those materially (tithes & offerings) who are feeding them spiritually?
Read 1 Corinthians 10:1-5 again…
Wow!
A reminder that just because we go to the church every week and maybe even read religious material and hang-out with religious people means we’re more likely to get into heaven than another…
Paul points out all these areas in which the children of Israel were under the blessing of God…”the rock was Christ” but…
“Nevertheless, with most of them God was not well-pleased; for they were laid low in the wilderness.” -1 Corinthians 10:5
Again…WOW!
Let us then heed verse 12!
Tomorrow’s Reading: Genesis 48-50
Some highlights from my reading on Mark 3 & 4:
Some people in the world and even in the church are critical of Christians when they get angry, “you’re a Christian you’re not supposed to get angry.” Mark 3:5 clearly illustrates that Jesus who was perfect had at times anger. Anger is not the problem, there is an acceptable type of anger. To know what anger is acceptable or not two questions must be asked:
I will not speak for you but I know most my anger is self-protective or selfish. What I mean by that is that I get angry to protect myself or in defense of myself this is most often (some instances like abuse of some nature it is acceptable) not a good reason to be angry. Because many times that anger is because of insecurity or because we place our self worth in the hands of our fellow man. Or my anger is because I am selfish. Someone doesn’t do what I want! Those two types of anger are not acceptable. And how one’s anger is manifested is hopefully obvious to most.
I love the succinctness of Mark’s account of the calling of the disciples (3:14). He called twelve to be with Him (Jesus) and then go out and work for Him. That simple! We are first with Jesus we then go out as witnesses/workers for Jesus. Wow! And yet we seem to make it so tough so often.
I never realized before or it never struck me that Jesus gave James and John their nickname, “Sons of Thunder” (3:17)
In the parable of the Sower and the Soils (4:1-12) most sermons I’ve heard on this and that have I have preached focus on the soils as the focus of the illustration. When I read through this parable my eyes this time saw it from another perspective, that of the sower…a lot of churches and organizations talk about where to go for the right climate of ministry. In fact some churches don’t hold evangelistic meetings because they say, “the soil in our area is not right” in other words people won’t come, I noticed as I was reading this, the sower just sows and doesn’t worry about which soil the seed falls on. I also noticed Jesus doesn’t condemn this, in fact in Jesus’ explanation there is a powerful verse,
“The sower sows the word.” -Mark 4:14
That’s it Christians just sow and let the Trinity work out the hearts (the soil).
Again something similar caught my eye in the parable of the mustard seed. We often focus on the size of the mustard seed at the beginning and the end and I realized when I read 4:32, none of it would have matter…neither the size at the beginning or the size at the end, if the seed hadn’t been sown! It is really that simple.
SOW SEEDS Brothers and Sisters!
Tomorrow’s Reading: 1 Corinthians 9 & 10