Bible Reading Challenge Blog

It is within these scenes of the story of Jacob where we see the hand of God at work in a way that should be didactic to us. Look at 45:8 where Joseph tells his brothers it is not you who sold me here, but it was God so that a heritage could be established for my father’s house. The evil that the brothers did was turned into the deciding factor for how God was going to save His people as the years progressed. Can you imagine Joseph being able to not only forgive his brothers but to actually place them in a position where they were given the choicest land and given an opportunity to not only survive but to thrive? This is what happened.

In no way is this meant to justify sin. What the brothers did was not only sinful but also cruel and vicious. Let’s look at a real life example. The Holocaust was one of the most horrific modern day events. The cruelty and the evil that it took to allow that to happen and to make that happen is unfathomable in our eyes. But as a result of this historical evil it most probably launched the world opinion in order to create a land for the people of Israel in the modern day. The nation of Israel was created by the United Nations in large part because of the atrocities that the Jewish people experienced. It is almost like a modern day Joseph story. Joseph was able to reign over Egypt and so provide a home for his family because of the evil under which he was subjugated.

Now, unfortunately, not every people group who has experienced wrong and genocide gets their own land or is rewarded later in history. There should always be some kind of historical recompense for those who have suffered. We have our own story of suffering and subjugating people within our own country. We started with the Native Americans whose land we took. We moved on to the African whom we enslaved. All of this is not ancient history, it is our history and we have not done that which is righteous as a result, and we should. We still have time.

We find ourselves today entering the weekend with two of the most powerful and arguably most important Scriptures that we have read so far. The story of Joseph is easily applied to our everyday lives as we reflect upon how God is able to do the impossible in our lives when things seem so out of hand and out of control. Think of what Joseph had to overcome and yet each step along the way he tells anyone who would listen: it isn’t me, it is the Lord who is able to do all things. From a favored child to a brother about to be slaughtered in a pit. From a slave to the head of a household. From a prisoner long forgotten, to the head of the most powerful country in the world. The changes Joseph experiences reminds us that nothing is beyond God’s ability to redeem and transform into His purposes. What impossible situation is confronting you today? God is able to take it and make it something that works into your and His purposes. This becomes even more clear and is said in black and white later in this story as Joseph’s brothers come and the entire nation is saved because Joseph finds himself in the position in which he is because of the evil that his brothers did to him. But as a result Israel is able to be saved. It is to our advantage to follow Jesus knowing that we believe in the end of the story and so our present life will be based upon the ending which is our redemption. Then all things become possible.

The story of Jesus’ resurrection in John is filled with details and stories that none of the other Gospels have. The rehabilitation of Peter is crucial for anyone who has lived life in such a way that they think that they are beyond God’s saving. Can you think of doing anything worse than denying God right in the presence and in the face of Jesus? Now, of course God is always present, and anytime we do anything God is in our midst. But Peter denies Jesus and then goes back to fishing assuming that his journey with Jesus as a disciple and a follower is over. But Jesus returns and rehabilitates him as he does for each one of us. We are never beyond God’s redemption just as our life situation can never be beyond God’s redemption. This is the joy that we have in our salvation in Jesus.

While there is much to be said about the Scripture that is before us, today, September 11, is an important day that should go noticed. It was on this day 24 years ago that a small group of men changed the world by their actions in airplanes that killed thousands of people. Our world has not recovered, our nations has not been the same since, and fear and anger have pervaded the lives of our culture in ways that they did not earlier. September 11 was the most pivotal moment in my life in regards to how we live our lives within our society and our culture. This has an impact on our faith, because our faith seems to make little headway against the tide of culture. My prayer in our time is that we would see ourselves as disciples of Jesus Christ first and then as people of this culture, this society, this nation, second.

Israel, aka Jacob, was building a nation and he didn’t even know it. He was about to come face to face with a brother that he had betrayed and who potentially was on the war path to take him out. But when they met the exact opposite happens. They embrace as if they were long lost brothers, and maybe because they were long lost brothers. Israel has a final son who is Benjamin and makes it all the way home to be present for when his father, Isaac, dies. We are squarely in the time of the patriarchs.

The Gospel presents us with a nation that is in control and is the only one who was able to enact capital punishment against a political prisoner, the son of a carpenter, a rabbi, a religious leader, a man named Jesus. We often forget that Jesus was crucified as a result of the ruling power feeling that they had to quash whatever he was selling by killing him just like they killed John the Baptist. Both Jesus and his cousin were killed by the nation, by the country’s rulers of that day. The burden on Mary and Elizabeth must have been heavy. That is the family where two members were killed by Rome because of their rebel rousing.

The story of Jacob an Rachel (and Leah) is one that is legendary. A person works for 14 years for a father-in-law until he is able to marry the woman that he loves. There is so much distance between what was accepted and expected in the days of the patriarchs that it is hard to wrap our head around tricking a son in law by giving him your older daughter in marriage and then giving him your younger daughter. At the end of the day you have both of your daughters situated, but it seems horrific in our day and age.

The story of the patriarchs is filled with deceit and cunning. Jacob steals the birthright from Esau, Laban tricks Jacob, Rachel steals from her father the household gods. We haven’t arrived there yet, but we are getting close to it, but it seems as if Esau is the only honest one out there. We’ll get to that tomorrow. It is crucial to understand the history of Israel to understand that this name comes about as Jacob wrestles with God and refuses to let him go and so God blesses him and calls him Israel. Joseph is one of his children with Rachel and so the story will evolve moving forward of Joseph bringing his family to Egypt and then then family becoming enslaved and then the family leaving Egypt for the promised land. It all starts here.

John 17, as I alluded to yesterday, is a whole chapter of Jesus praying to His Father about how much he wants his disciples to be one. This prayer still has not come true. Our separation as denominations and as brothers and sisters in Christ is tragic and without excuse. The most visible sign of our division is the inability for all denominations to either take communion together or to recognize each other’s baptism. While here in Strasburg we are able to take communion together, not all of us recognize each other’s baptism. This is a stumbling block and a direct disobedience of these words that, as Jesus states: “They may be one.”

There is a clear overlap with both of these Scriptures, but it can seem somewhat elusive. God clearly blesses His people both with what happens with Isaac and with what Jesus promises his disciples. The story of Esau and Jacob can be disturbing because Jacob, who later becomes Israel, receives his blessing through hook and crook. But that was predicted earlier. The wealth of Isaac is highlighted and the assumption in the blessing of Jacob is that he would inherit that which his father had accumulated.

When Jesus in John 14 promises the counselor he expands on that in the following chapters. We often use John 14 in funerals to describe the blessing that is promised us when Jesus is no longer on this earth. The Holy Spirit comes and strengthens us even in the absence of the Son. Besides the presence of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, which is a fulfillment of this promise here in these chapters, these verses are perfectly suited to understand what the gift of the Holy Spirit is all about.

Thomas and Philip both ask questions that could be seen as fair questions and ones that we might ask: “Lord, we do not know the way.” “Lord, show us the Father.” Jesus responds to Thomas by saying that he was the way, the truth, and the life, no one gets to the Father except through him. The Father is manifested perfectly in Jesus , especially later on in chapter 17 when Jesus prays that the disciples would be one just as Jesus and the Father are one.

The birth of Isaac comes along with also the death of Sarah. You don’t often see the love that a patriarch has for his wife in their passing, but with Abraham and Sarah it does seem like something a little different. The sacrifice of Isaac, or the attempted sacrifice, is a Scripture that resonates powerfully with the story of Jesus. The only difference, and it is not insignificant, is that Isaac plays the role of the victim in this story. With Jesus, he chose to die for our sake, he was not forced to give himself upon the cross. So the whole theory of atonement and the Isaac story only works so far. Not in so far as Isaac was told what to do, even forced to do it, while Jesus did say take this cup from me, but then quickly followed it up with: Not my will be done, but thine.

The washing of the feet in John takes the place of the institution of the Lord’s Supper. Notice that Judas is present during this experience and he has his feet washed along with the other disciples. We also see the “new commandment” that Jesus gives, the mandatum novum, which is that we should love one another. It really wasn’t all that new, just new in practice, maybe.

Once again God establishes a covenant with Abraham and this time there is a visible sign of God’s invisible grace which is circumcision. This act of cutting off the foreskin becomes the marker for the people of Israel to separate them from those around them. Now, the separation was also that they worshipped the one and only true God, but circumcision served as the sign of the covenant that God establishes with Israel.

Today that is no longer the covenant sign that God has with us through Jesus Christ. The covenant sign that God has with us through Jesus is that of baptism. No longer is it reserved just for the males of God’s people, but rather for all people. This act of baptism is much less brutal, no blood is required to be shed, and it is something that Jesus himself endured, similar to circumcision, as a child.

As Presbyterians we do not shy away from infant baptism, and we believe that baptism is necessary and important as a marker of being a child of God. Infant baptism, like circumcision, is the marker of being a child of God and it demonstrates that God has chosen us even before we could choose God. This is the beauty and the power of predestination. God has predestined us to be His children, not by our choice, but by his grace. This is the difference between a believer’s baptism and infant baptism, the emphasis is on God in the latter and on our action in the former. God’s choosing us is what is important, and our response ought to be us choosing him.

Jesus’ raising of Lazarus is one of those stories that contain so many important theological truths. We find Martha professing that Jesus is the Messiah. We see Jesus telling Martha that he is the resurrection and the life, something that we all need to remember as the resurrection is one of those necessary doctrines which is not fungible. We will be raised from the dead as Jesus was raised from the dead.

I love seeing and reading about Jesus weeping. It makes me think that maybe I don’t have things as wrong as I think I do when I find myself somewhat overcome with emotion.

We see the covenant that God establishes with Abram. Abram becomes rich as a result of his lying to Pharaoh about Sarah who goes into the Egyptian court for who knows how long. It turns out poorly for the ruler and Abraham eventually get back his wife, but I had forgotten that Pharaoh in this version of the story actually has Sarah in his court for quite a bit of time. It is obvious that he considers her now his wife until she is given back to Abraham. The horror that she must have been under because her husband forced her to pretend that she was his sister.

But let’s look at my favorite verse in the entire Bible. With children you don’t have favorites, but with Bible verses, I think it is okay to have favorites. If you look at John 8:32 you will find my favorite: “You will know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” the desire for freedom is ingrained in all of our lives, and certainly is one with which I resonate. The freedom that we have in Christ is something that is unparalleled in this world. Jesus tells us in these verses that while we pursue sin in our lives we may think that we free, but in fact we are bound to the actions and the results that come about as a result of our sin. We become slaves to sin and its impacts on our lives.

When we choose to follow Jesus then he is our Lord and we live with the repercussions of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. Those repercussions translate into a freedom that we cannot imagine. We often think that being a disciple of Jesus means living a rigid legalistic life. No, that is what Jesus came to fulfill, not institutionalize. Being a follower of Jesus is not being a follower of rules. It is being a follower of the one who gives life and life abundantly. That is what happens when we follow Jesus we see our entire life stretch out before us in a way that leads to life. This is the amazing thing about who Jesus is, he gives us life and freedom. It is that freedom that I will always want to pursue.

We find ourselves in the midst of some of the favorite Bible stories that we all know. The story of Noah and the ark in which we find the introduction of the rainbow as the sign of a covenant between God and his people. God will never again destroy the earth because of the disobedience of the people. In case we think that things are getting so bad on this earth that God is going to give up on us and destroy us Noah style, well, all we need is a sun shower to dispel that notion. The rainbow has been coopted so many times within our society and culture to represent something quite other than what it was originally intended. The rainbow found its origin in a promise from God to all people. It is a sign of love for all people.

That then takes us to the story of the tower of Babel where we see those who have been newly saved from the flood making a name for themselves by building a tower that is able to reach to the heavens. The key to these verses is that they are making a name for themselves. God never wants us to make a name for ourselves, He wants us to make a name for Him. There is nothing more simple than that and nothing more textbook than our desire to make a name for ourselves. Isn’t that what led us to eat an apple? This sin seems to keep repeating itself over and over again.

We are then introduced to Abraham and Sarah in their pre-newname phase of Abram and Sarai. The story of Israel really go from there.

John gives us Jesus who is consistently talking in the temple and telling anyone who would list who he actually is. We can’t skip over the feeding of the 5,000 and the providing of the bread and fish by a boy. This is John’s communion. We don’t see Jesus at the table with his disciples at the end of John at a meal with the institution of the last supper. We see them at a table and then Jesus washes their feet, but not the institution of the Lord’s Supper like the other Gospels have. Here we see Jesus takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, and distributes it. That is the formula for communion and it happens here and it is all initiated by a child. Isaiah couldn’t have been more right when he said: “And a little child shall lead them”.

We then see Jesus give what his disciples say are a difficult teaching, which again refers back to communion. Jesus gives meaning to the bread and the wine which are his flesh and his blood. It might be the right time to explain our Presbyterian belief about communion. We know that there are two opposite ends of the spectrum in relationship to what churches believe happens in communion. Every church believes that Jesus is present in communion. The difference is how Jesus is present. I the less sacramental churches, for example non-denominational and anabaptist, communion is something that we do to remember what Jesus did for us. It serves as nothing more than a memorial for his sacrifice. This is important to remember it, but there is more to it than that for some.

The other end of that spectrum are the literalists who believe that the bread and the wine are literally the body and the blood of Jesus. With the words of the priest the elements are transubstantiated and turned into a physical flesh and a physical blood. These verses in John provide some Scripture for support. For Presbyterians we are somewhere in between where we find ourselves believing in the real spiritual presence of Jesus not in the elements themselves, but in the community of believers who are gathered. We believe that the Holy Spirit is present in communion within the faithful in a unique way which finds its power in the Holy Spirit.