Psalms 31,34,52,56,120,140-42, 1 Samuel 25-27

Just a few brief notes from some of the readings this week. Sorry for the shortness, but I was away most of the weekend.

• Ps 31 – David may have been melodramatic, but his life was way harder than mine. I need to keep a positive perspective about my cushy life
• Ps 34 – At first, this sounds like it’s health and wealth prosperity gospel. Then you get to verse 22, and you realize that the reward that’s being talked about is salvation
• Ps 52 – To me, this psalm just points out the utter ridiculousness of the unrighteous
• Ps 56 – It’s neat to see here how David finds in God a solid place to stand in the midst of terrible times
• Ps 120 – On top of having to run for his life, people are lying about him without any apparent cause
• Ps 142 – I love the humility in David’s requests. He knows he is absolutely nothing in himself.

1 Samuel 17-24, Psalm 7,11,27,59

In this week’s readings, David goes from a conquering hero to a man on the run. Saul is jealous of his success, and of his apparent future as king of Israel, and determines to kill him. We get a lot of insight into the character of David, and his relationship with God, along the way, not only from the narratives of his adventures, but from the psalms he writes as well. Here are a few, in no particular order:

• He trusts in God – one story that exemplifies this is when David has a chance to kill Saul, end his running, and fulfill God’s promise that he will get the throne, all in one fell swoop. Instead, he decides to spare Saul’s life, knowing that this is not God’s timing. This really struck home to me, though I’ve certainly heard the story before. David was quite confident in the knowledge of God’s timing, and willing to wait for it patiently.
• Leader – it seems like, everywhere David goes, he is considered a leader. Even in banishment, he manages to attract essentially a whole army. The guy was magnetic.
• Honest – the psalms I read this week really drove this home. David had no trouble telling God how he saw it, both good and bad. I think sometimes I think that I need to put on my best face for God. Like, I can’t tell God what He already knows. I can learn a lot from David in this regard
• God meets him where he’s at – I love how David walks into a town of priests, and asks for a weapon and some food…and gets it. Except, it’s not just a weapon and food, but sacred bread and a sword which was probably on display or something. Talk about God’s provision!

1 Samuel 5-16

If I had to pick a theme verse for this week’s reading, it would not be a verse from the text. Instead, I would pick 2 Timothy 3:5, which describes future unbelievers as “…having a form of godliness, but denying its power”.

I first see this in chapter 4. Israelite suffers a great defeat in battle at the hands of the Philistines. They decide that what they need to do to fix this, is to go to battle with the ark of the covenant. This is in stark contrast to Joshua 7, when Israel is defeated by Ai, and Joshua and the elders respond by repenting in dust and ashes.

Next we see this in the Philistines, who took the ark of the covenant. Again, it would seem that they have a form of godliness, having the very symbol of the presence of God with them. Yet, they clearly don’t have the power of the presence of God – at least, not in the way they think they do. Instead, they are struck with plagues.

I see this also in Israel’s demanding of a king. It is ironic that what Israel does in fact need is a King, but they already have one. However, they wanted to be like other nations and have a human king. So they settle for a form of godliness (having a visible king), but without the power of it (actually heeding God’s commands).

And, finally, I see this in Saul himself. Both in his unwise sacrifice (in chapter 13), and in his life in general, he seems to look like he’s following God, but he has his own agenda to fulfill. Again, the form of godliness, but lacking the actual power of it.

Of course, it’s hard to imagine me doing this in my own life….ok, maybe not. I must admit, have a strong tendency to try to do things that look spiritual – like, say, embarking on a 2-year intense Bible-reading program. And this certainly can have a good motive. But I think my motive fluctuates. Some days, I think that really is my intent. Sometimes I think I keep up with it because I think I would look bad if I didn’t.

May God give me a heart which truly seeks the power and privilege of honestly and fervently knowing Him.

Judges 19-21, Ruth, 1 Samuel 1-4

This week we had the opportunity to read through the book of Ruth. This was of course a brief reading, going through it in just two days, but I was struck again by what a beautiful story it was, so I thought I’d focus on that story for my blog entry this week.

It begins with three women, in a far-away land, hopeless and helpless without their providers. My heart goes out to these women. In that society, they were poverty-stricken, simply because they were women, and their men died. The striking similarity to the sinner apart from God is obvious. There was nothing they could do for themselves – utterly without hope.

The next thing we see is a clear decision to be made. Ruth and Orpah both need to decide whether to continue to stay with Naomi or not. Orpah leaves her, Ruth stays. I must say, it’s hard to know what to make of this. Clearly, there’s the very simple lesson of remaining faithful to those closest to you. And in that, it’s certainly a touching example

After this, Ruth and Naomi are merely trying to stay alive. And that’s when grace appears. I love the contrast between their complete inability to do anything for themselves, and the grace that was extended to them by Boaz. He gained nothing from it, but a relationship with them. Truly a beautiful picture.

And in return? Ruth goes and lays at Boaz’ feet. A strange reaction? Well, perhaps in our culture it would be. Yet, it seems like, in that culture, what was really saying was “I submit to you, and ask you to rule over my life.” Sound familiar? Sounds like a textbook example of what it means to turn to Christ in need.

And Boaz responds. He humbles himself to go and ask his kindred for permission, and then redeems them. They go from nothings, to being in the very line of Christ. Very simple, and yet so, so sweet.

Judges 7-18

Wow, Israel’s a mess. The book of Judges turns out to be chock-full of crazy stories that make you say “wait, the Bible really says THAT?”

I mean, they killed one man for mis-pronouncing “Shibboleth”. Another guy gets a huge stone dropped on his head by a woman, so he makes his servant kill him so that people won’t say that a woman succeeded in killing him. Samson gets obviously betrayed by his girlfriend 3 times, yet still tells her his deepest secret. Oh, and he also killed a thousand men with nothing but a bone. Who writes this stuff?

Err…well, ok, we know Who. But…why? My first impression of the story of Israel during the time of the Judges is that it’s a wild mess. It was a wild west thing, with everyone doing their own thing. Israel, as a whole, is certainly not serving God consistently. They have their spurts, I suppose, but clearly “every man did what was right in his own eyes” was a very accurate description. So…what’s the point?

That is, what’s the point for me? What does the state of a nation ruled off and on by judges have to do with my life? Well, here are a couple of thoughts:

• Human nature – clearly we see a lot of that in Israel. There is no tendency of mankind to better themselves. There’s no tendency to stay on track once they get there. The tendency is to forget, get into trouble, and then beg for forgiveness. Nice to know it’s not just me.
• Human leadership – in the long run, it doesn’t really help. Oh, many of the judges may have whipped the nation into shape for a while. But, each of the judges demonstrated clearly that they had their own personal problems. And even when they did succeed in getting Israel to behave, it never lasted for long.
• Human…weirdness – I heard someone say recently that we all think we struggle differently. An interesting concept. Certainly, I’ve never been faced with a predicament where I had to sacrifice my daughter to keep a vow. But in all of the many, many weird stories, there are many common threads of sin, and need. It seems we are all similar in out weirdness.

Joshua 19-Judges 6

In this week’s readings, we began the book of Judges. A few things stood out to me about this book so far, so here they are, in no particular order:

• The Israelite’s actually continued doing well without Joshua for a while. In the first few chapters, there is no single functional human leader, yet Israel continues to have some huge successes. They’re conquering land, winning battles, and generally continuing to kick butt. Eventually, though, they begin to fail. This seems to speak to being vigilant, carefully watching for roots of apathy to grow in my life. Which brings me to…
• Israel did not always completely drive out the enemy. I’ve mentioned this before, but it seems to bear repeating. They came so close. They only seem to leave a few here and there. Yet when Israel strays, it’s the Gods of those few people that they get distracted by. It’s easy for me to “cut corners” in my walk, to rationalize, and say “oh, that’s not so bad, I don’t absolutely have to change that area”. Which can lead to the next point…
• Eventually, God gets sick of Israel not destroying the enemy, and the text actually says that He begins to allow those people to stay there, to test Israel. This is a frightening idea, reminding me of Romans 1, where we are told that God turns (unbelieving) people over to their sin. May my life never come to this!
• At a high level, the cycle for Israel is: get lazy, begin to sin, get judged by God, cry out for forgiveness, get rescued by God, and repeat. I don’t know about anybody else, but I don’t feel like I see a clear cycle like this in my life. I certainly see all those elements, but the picture seems murkier to me. I don’t know, maybe some day I’ll be able to look back and see it more clearly. It doesn’t really matter, it’s just interesting.
• On a smaller scale, we get a “zoomed-in” view of Gideon as he begins to be called by God to judge the nation of Israel. What stands out to me is the dialog between him and God. This is not a one-time appearance from God which changes Gideon and makes him a leader. Rather, it’s an honest back-and-forth as God proves Himself to Gideon, and Gideon proves himself to himself. Very interesting stuff.

Joshua 7-18

Well, the Israelites have certainly made a lot of progress through the land of Canaan this week. They’ve been demolishing the enemy, and marking out and divvying out newly-conquered territory. In fact, much of the reading this week has been names of conquered territories and kings and geographic markers.

The question becomes, so what? Why does it matter that the king of Jokneam was one of the conquered kings, or that one of the borders of Ephraim was Ataroth Addar? How does this make me more conformed to the image of Christ? I’ve talked in the past about wanting to be more “strategic” in my growth, and I want to take this week’s blog post to sort of think out loud about more specifics about this.

One thing that impresses me about Israel’s conquering of Canaan was how decisive they were. There was no wavering, no “should we go destroy X, or should we destroy Y first?”. They made their decision, and they moved. I can only imagine what that would do to my Christian walk. I think I do a lot of wavering, in terms of “well, I should probably improve in this area, sometime, somehow, that’d be great”. I need to take advantage of these opportunities, while of course considering them carefully at the same time.

Another thing that occurs to me is that of occupancy. They didn’t destroy a city and then just move on. They destroyed it, and then occupied it. They sat on it. As I consider areas of my walk, there are some areas where I’ve grown, and then gotten lax again, essentially evacuating that area to the enemy again. I think I need to keep a map or log of the places that I “occupy” and regularly revisit them to see whether I still occupy them.

They also seem to have done it in small, attainable chunks. They clearly didn’t attack every city at once, but one at a time, systematically, in a sensible order. Seems like an excellent plan for my own growth – methodical, prayerful, but systematic, concrete, and in priority order.

As I ponder this, it seems like the biggest question left to answer is still a difficult one. How do I identify a specific, concrete area to move into next? In some sense, I feel like God more tangibly led Joshua and the Israelites to where to go next. I “merely” have the Word of God. In this matter, it seems like the simplest way to proceed would be to just choose practical Scriptural principles, in areas where the Spirit is leading me to grow, and apply them, one at a time.

Piece of cake, right?

Deuteronomy 31-Joshua 6

Last week, in the last point, I touched on the struggle of the Christian life. I said that I believe that Israel’s fight to take the promised land is partially symbolic of our daily struggle to live that life. This week, we see Israel begin to take on this fight. The parallel seemed to become even more clear, the more I read:

In chapter 1, the Lord is preparing Joshua for the fight. He repeatedly orders him to “Be strong and of good courage”. Joshua is reminded that his focus is to be on God and His Word, and not on the madness around him. Such real-life advice! This is exactly what I need to keep in mind for my daily fight as well.

Next, spies are sent into the land. This is interesting to me. God certainly could have knocked the inhabitants flat (see Jericho in chapter 6), without spying it out. But He decides to go about it more strategically. Somehow, it seems like this must have been for Israel’s benefit, and for the reader’s. As I pondered this, it occurred to me that I’m sometimes not very strategic when it comes to sin in my life. I tend to think that if I pray about it, and will it hard enough, I will succeed. But sometimes I need to be strategic in setting myself up for success.

The next scene is a triumphant one, as Israel marches with ease through the biggest obstacle to getting into the land – the Jordan. The lesson I take from this is faith in God. The incredible faith that they showed to step into a raging river is impressive. I need to do a better job of expecting great things from God, in faith.

As soon as they did this, they took great care to lay down memorial stones. I touched a few weeks ago on the value of being willing to look backwards and learn. This is a necessary precursor – when God does do things, set aside specific ways of remembering what He did for myself to look back on in the future. A fascinating idea.

In a further step of obedience, Israel circumcises all their people. Remember that they are essentially in enemy territory when they made themselves vulnerable in this way (remember Genesis 34?). Yet this was important enough that they took time (and pain) to do it. Certainly I can make more of an effort to sanctify certain times and things in my life for the work of God in my life.

The Israelites have been very obedient in these chapters. And in chapter 6, their obedience culminates in a great victory. God miraculously shows up, stomping out the inhabitants of Jericho in perhaps one of the greatest displays of strength in Scripture. This is certainly something to take note of as I seek to take the battle to the enemy in my own life.

Deuteronomy 19-30

In these chapters, more laws are given and re-hashed, blessings are promised as reward for obedience, and curses are assured for disobedience. The Pentateuch is coming to a close, and soon the Israelites will be entering the promised land. Thus, I thought this week would be a good opportunity to reflect over these first 5 books, and their significance to the 21st-century believer.

So what has happened in these nearly 200 chapters? In Genesis, God creates a perfect universe and establishes a perfect relationship with mankind (chapters 1-2). Mankind immediately and repeatedly rebels against God, destroying that relationship (3-11). God responds by setting aside one family line for His purposes (the rest of the book). He then rescues Israel from slavery and hands them a long set of laws which they are to follow as His people (Exodus and Leviticus). Throughout all this, He has been promising to take them to a prosperous land, but as they travel there they continue to rebel, and must be continually reminded of the laws (Numbers and Deuteronomy).

One interpretation of this over-all story would be to take this as symbolic of a believer’s life. Because of sin, we are born into slavery, God rescues us and expect us to live worthy of our calling. We fail, time and time again, but God is faithful. But what, then, is the land of Canaan symbolic of? From the descriptions of great prosperity and blessing, one would be tempted to equate it with Heaven. But that doesn’t make sense – we know that Israel will continue to rebel and do evil after entering the land. So what was the point of these books? What is this culmination of hundreds of years of God’s working?

This would seem to be a very important question. After all, most of the Old Testament, two-thirds of the whole text of the Bible, is dedicated to talking about Israel. Surely, then, God wants us to know the significance of His plan with them. I don’t know His full purposes, but here are a few things which have been clearly re-enforced in my brain over these last few months about Israel:

• The utterly wicked heart of man. Time, and time, and time, and time again, Israel has acted out. They have stared at incredible miracles, and ignored them. They have whined and thrown temper-tantrums and flat-out disobeyed. Clearly, they are not upheld as a model for us to live by, but for us to avoid acting like them in our lives.
• The faithfulness of God. Yes, there are difficult things in these books. Many times God strikes them with plagues, and kills thousands in anger. He puts in place terribly arcane laws and insists that they be upheld strictly. Sometimes He even seems to be capricious and self-contradicting. But, through it all, He stays with the people of Israel, and leads them to the promised land. Clearly, He is doing something vast and incredible here, and will not be deterred.
• The holiness of God. We have it so easy in the 21st century. We are indwelt with the Holy Spirit, so we consider God just our big Buddy in the sky. We have lost the awe and the fear and the reverence that Israel lived under on a daily basis. It transformed their entire lives.
• The longevity of the struggle to live the Christian life. By this I mean that we must tirelessly, determinedly, daily, fight, every day for the rest of our lives to live the Christian life. Israel didn’t “arrive” when it left Egypt. It didn’t stop at Sinai, or at Kadesh-Barnea, or even when they took the land. Even after they take the land, we know that their fight to be a truly Godly nation went on through the time of the judges, the kings, the exiles, and so on. I must be prepared to dig in, and take the fight to sin.

Deuteronomy 7-18

More laws and cautions are given to the people regarding their behavior as a nation after entering the land. Some of these are expansions of previous laws, some are more like repetitions, some are brand new. One particular discussion caught my eye, and I’d like to focus on that one this week.

In Deuteronomy 17, rules and qualifications are given for when Israel chooses a king to rule over them. This occurs many years before they actually do so, and they are never actually commanded to take a king. Why, then, did God feel the need to set up these rules in advance? Was this a just-in-case scenario?

One of my pastors, Mike Minter, is fond of saying that the Bible exists to give us insights we would not know otherwise. That is, the Bible teaches us things about ourselves, and about the world, that the world itself cannot teach us. Indeed, Mike is known for having great insight into the human soul, by virtue of his studies of Scriptures.

I believe we can take one of those kinds of insights from this passage. My feeling from this passage is that God was predicting Israel’s choosing of a king, long before they themselves had any inkling that that’s what they were going to want. This leads us to some interesting conclusions about mankind in general.

For one thing, it would seem to indicate that we desire a ruler over us. This is interesting indeed. We know that one of our biggest flaws is that of pride. Pride and its close cousin of self-sufficiency would seem to be quite in contradiction to the desire for a ruler over us. So, what gives? Here, I think the key is that God predicts that the motivation would be to be like other nations. So, in this case, self-sufficiency is still motivating them, but it’s self-sufficiency on a national level, not an individual level.

I suspect there’s something else, here too. I think that mankind, in its likeness of God, has a built-in desire for moral justice. We believe that we, as humans, can truly enforce moral justice, if we just get our act together. This is why you see big government, humanism, and talks of ideal utopias in mankind’s future, and why they all fail miserably.

So, what about me in this? I think that for me, I may not try to set up a king external to me to rule and to enforce moral justice, but this self-sufficiency and desire for moral justice do get in the way. In fact, I think that many times, my life is more about moral justice than it is about God. I take the rules that He’s established, and cling to them. I try to keep them, and beat myself up when I don’t. What I forget is that these rules are not a king over me, but that God is. I am not self-sufficient, but need to submit myself to a deep, enchanted relationship with God, and only in that will I find morality and true justice.