Bible Reading Challenge Blog

Red Bortzfield has entered hospice and he told me that he could relate to Job and the suffering that his body has undergone. There is a puzzling relationship between God and Satan where God almost wants to prove to Satan that no matter how far you push Job, he will always remain faithful, and he does. Even when he loses his property, his children, and his health, he remains faithful and loves the Lord with all of his heart mind and strength.

Paul in Romans also undergoes a whole variety of hardships, and yet remains the champion of the faith. He gives us the foundation of our faith as we read that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of the Lord. He lays out clearly for us that we are all in need of a Savior. Nothing can take the place of Jesus when it comes to salvation, not our efforts or our works, but only the blood of Jesus. Of this, he says, he is not ashamed to proclaim. He is not ashamed to declare that Jesus is Savior and that we are all in need of a Savior. Good way to start off the morning.

I was going to speak about the Gospel of Joy, which Philippians is described as, even though it is a letter from Paul. I was going to speak about the second chapter and the kenosis witnessed in Jesus emptying himself for our sake, allowing himself to suffer, even to the point of death on a cross. I was going to speak about Psalm 42 and the very well known psalm of lament that asks God where he is in the midst of suffering. But then Proverbs 20:30 caught my attention and distracted me. All of those other Scriptures are much more significant, they are words from God to live by, but vs.30 didn’t make any sense to me, in fact it was a bit of a bummer for me: “Blows that wound cleanse away evil; beatings make clean the innermost parts.”

I know that we are in the Old Testament and everything has to be taken within context, but it is still disturbing and not something that I would ever recommend that we pass on from generation to generation. How I make sense of it is this Proverb is all about discipline and how those who are undisciplined, and even disobedient, are not able to glean from what is harvested. There are repercussions to disobedience. This author reminds us that sometimes those repercussions reveal themselves in the physical. Let’s go with that.

Let’s consider who wrote Proverbs and who the Psalms. Solomon is attributed to writing Proverbs, which is a good thing because he was considered the wisest man who ever lived. God gave him a dose of wisdom because he asked for it, and so his sayings are true and worth considering. His sayings, as mentioned previously, contain the clear dualism between good and evil, correct action and false or harmful actions. It is important as we read Proverbs to recognize that there is nothing scandalous in these words, but there are truths that we often do not follow. This is especially true with wealth, which tends to be our, the Western world’s, golden calf. We worship wealth, we tend to pursue wealth at all costs.

The Psalms were written by the father of Solomon, so they would have been written before Proverbs, and this was King David. Now, many of them were written after he was anointed but before he entered into Jerusalem as the rightful king. Many were written while the king on the throne, Saul, was pursuing him, and God would deliver him time after time. But we see not just the poetry of the psalms, but also the stark honesty, and the bitter laments as David is known to be one who was a sinner, like the rest of us. Just that his sin becomes very public and has a deep impact upon his family and upon his future and the future of his family. We don’t see quite the same for Solomon, as it seems that he follows the Lord’s will without these times of sin that are so public and so egregious.

We bring the book of Nehemiah to a close and in it we find the people of God rediscover the law and have it read to them. At the reading the people say “Amen” and from there they begin to observe the religious festival days that had been relegated to history. Nehemiah also insists, and much of this book is written in the first person, that the people of God obey the Sabbath. So much so that when he sees merchants around Jerusalem selling goods he closes the city gates at the start of the Sabbath and does not open them until the Sabbath is completely over. I have often thought what it would look like to not shop for anything, on line or in person, on a Sunday. Nehemiah commands the people that they should have a walk with the Lord unlike that which their ancestors had, which led to them being in slavery.

I have to admit that I was not super familiar with this story but we were given a sneak preview in Chronicles which talked about Nehemiah being sent by the king and starting to rebuild the temple and the walls. So this is the story, we find a prophet of the Lord who was a cupbearer of the king whose heart was broken because Jerusalem was in complete disarray. He could not manage to imagine that he was living in Babylon in basic comfort while the walls of Jerusalem were in disarray and the city itself was razed to the ground. He asked the king for permission to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls and the city and the king gave him permission.

This story is about him gathering all of the Jews who were still in the region and rebuilding the walls of the city. Now, as you can imagine, those who were not Israelites in the region saw this as a threat to their well-being, but since Nehemiah was sent by the king of the land there was not much they could do about it. We see the Nehemiah succeeds in building the walls, even if he has to keep a sword by his side.

So this is where you read the famous phrase: pride comes before the fall. I do find that both psalms and proverbs are very black and white. You are either evil or you are good. You either pursue evil and then things will happen to you that are not very good, or you will pursue the good and your life will be somewhat smooth sailing. I know that there is a Scripture in Matthew where Jesus says that God allows the rain to fall both on the evil and the good, but for the most part Psalms and Proverbs is prescriptive: if you do this then God will respond in kind.

We do know that this is not necessarily the case. We do not experience in this life rewards for clean living or punishment for evil. We can safely say that those whose primary concern are finances and their lives reflect that in how they treat other people do not necessarily live a life that is tragic or terrible. The converse is true, those who dedicate their lives to justice and righteousness do not necessarily live lives which reflect wealth or blessings. I can tell you of a number of people I have in mind whom I would consider righteous and yet their lives look more like Job than they do Solomon. The black and white of Scripture is not played out in life, but I do believe that there is some real truth to be told in how we perceive life and how our lives are experienced in regards to these words. If we pursue evil do we really feel a peace that Christ can offer. I would argue no. The converse is also true.

We are introduced to Ezra who is appointed by the king to go to Jerusalem from Babylon. We should have some hesitation for a prophet who is appointed by a foreign king to go and kinda take over the religious duties of Israel on behalf of that king. It seems more like a puppet ruler in most cases, but it doesn’t seem to be the case here. Instead he goes and puts things in order, brings the Word of the Lord with him, and they get ready to make sacrifices and to worship the Lord. But there is a problem. He has discovered that the vast majority of the priests have married or have gone into foreign women and as a result have children from them.

He goes into mourning and refuses to offer any sacrificed, and really puts the religious life of Israel on hold, until they give up their wives and send them and their children away from Jerusalem. It feels icky, but that is what happens. He gathers all the people of Israel, he gathers especially the priests and the religious leaders who were responsible for leading the people in worship, and tells them to rid themselves of all that which would separate them from God, including their foreign wives and children.

We have been following all along the rise and the fall of Israel. The rise was with David and Solomon, the fall was with the divided kingdoms of Judah and Israel. There were times when the kings of Judah had been righteous and had followed the way of the Lord, all the way even to the last couple of kings before the great Babylonian exile. So the people of Israel find themselves in exile for generations. Jerusalem has been utterly destroyed, razed to the ground. Along comes a king and says, so, if you want, you can go back and rebuild the temple, but only if you want.

Over 40 thousand people sign up for that project and the construction begins, but then is order to stop, but then it goes on again until the temple is finally rebuilt. That is where we find ourselves, we see the result of perseverance in the Lord.

Once again we find ourselves in a time where the people of God, for the most part, follow God in a way that is acceptable and pleasing to God. I want us to see how important it is that the ruler of the people of Judah follows God so that the people would follow God. I don’t believe we can put too much emphasis on the role the leader plays in how the people of God will act and react. I say this knowing that in churches there are times when the leader, the pastor, might want to lead the people away from the denomination, for example. For example, those churches who have moved away from the PC(USA) have done it through the influence of their pastor who wants to move away from the denomination. It is not a grass roots movement that convinces the church it is time to move, it is the pastor.

I don’t think there is anything more harmful than to emphasize where it is denominationally. I am a stayer, I don’t move. There will always be some issue that comes up for which I disagree, so why would I encourage fracture when God demands peace and unity. But, the influence of pastors over their congregation is no joke, I realize that, so that influence must be used to bring about healing and peace, not division and fracture. The rulers of Judah were able to do that and to bring the people of God together to worship in a way that was pleasing to God.