PSA Bible Reading Challenge 2025-2026

Let ‘s just begin by saying that this book of the Bible is very different from any other book of the Bible. It describes a king, Solomon, speaking about his beloved in fairly frank and overt tones. It describes her physical beauty, even those parts that we aren’t used to reading about in the Bible, they are mentioned. It is a beautiful description of two people who are in love and are having a hard time staying away from each other. There are two verses that I used periodically in weddings, and they are 8:6-7 which states quite plainly: “If one offered for love all the wealth of his house he would be utterly scorned.” There is no substitute for love that is mutually shared.

Chapter 3 of Colossians tends to be the key chapter and it has some of the memory verses that we can take with us. Look at 3:14 which tells us that above all things focus on love which binds all things together. That is a pretty powerful verse that we would do well to remember. The list given to us in 3:12 is also crucial as it lays out the way Christ is calling us to live: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. I think this is a good place to leave this for now.

I learned a few things about Ruth while I read this morning. I learned that this event took place during the reign of the Judges. That shouldn’t surprise me since Ruth is the mother of Jesse who then fathered David. So we are really close to the end of the time of the Judges since Saul and David close out that time as they become kings. I also learned that there was no scandal involved in the marriage of Boaz and Ruth. I had originally thought that there was so me conniving on the part of Ruth in order to get Boaz to marry her. But no, Boaz was completely upright and Ruth was an incredibly hard worker who worked day in and day out in the field from morning until evening without stopping. She seems to be portrayed as the hardest of workers.

The Psalms are pretty typical royal psalms which depict a royal wedding that takes place between two who are beloved. We don’t hear about the love that Boaz has for Ruth, just his duty. In fact, he offers Ruth to the closest of kin, and when he refuses her, he performs his duty according to the law and marries here. I wish we had something about love here, but alas, we do not.

Then Proverbs provides us with the classic verses on a godly wife. Much like Ruth she is described primarily as the hardest of workers, not willing to sit around and do nothing.

We find ourselves in the middle of the story of Samson and it is where he finds his wife Delilah. From the moment that they met, it seems, she has been trying to find out what it is that makes him strong. As readers on the outside we can see clearly that she only wants to destroy him so that she can reap the material benefits that would come from his destruction. Somehow, he doesn’t see it. The final story of him tearing down the building and so killing more Philistines in that one act than he did his entire life isn’t lost on me. But that is in some ways the last story of a judge that would reign over Israel. Everyone else that comes up isn’t really a judge, and the stories are a bit strange.

We find a lot of slaughter and bloodshed in these stories. We see the almost total destruction of the tribe of Benjamin because of their horrific act against a woman who was under the protection of an Israelite. Keep in mind that the Benjaminites were the beloved people of the tribe of Israel, but it seems as if they had lost their way. That is to say nothing of the virgin daughter and the concubine being offered as an appeasement to the men of the city. That was not right either. There is a lot that takes place in these verses that leaves us scratching our head and wondering what exactly were people thinking and why didn’t God intervene. We leave the book of Judges with that one recurring phrase which we would be good not to forget: “ In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.“

Who doesn’t love the story of Samson? But notice how he decides to marry someone who is completely out of God’s favor. He asks for and receives a Philistine as a wife, but we know that this is the foundational command of the Lord was to not be unequally yoked because when we marry outside of our religion then more likely than not we will be dragged away from our beliefs. This is so true within Italy and the Waldensian and Methodist church. It is so difficult to find someone who has married within the church because the church is so small. As a result the children of the marriage tend to gravitate toward the religion of the people, which in Italy would be Catholicism. As a result the Protestant Church in Italy gets smaller and smaller.

But back to Samson. We see the beginning of his life will be a reflection of his later life where he is not able to keep to himself the temptation to please the wife to whom he is married and so give away of himself that which the Lord has given to him. It will lead to his downfall twice, but we just read about the first time.

We begin to see the list of judges that come into power in the land of Israel and the cycle of disobedience, appointing of a judge, obedience, the death of the judge, and disobedience take place. Sitting and reading Judges one could ask the question how are they able to forget how God has been so faithful to them. Think about what happens when a judge rules for 20 or 30 or 40 years and who is around to remember what God has done. Once that judge dies then a new way of doing things takes over and inevitably, it seems but it doesn’t have to be that way, the way of God is forgotten. We see here that the people of Israel fall into slavery once a judge dies because they do forget what God has done and abandon the ways of the Lord and then they are subjected to slavery under very many different rulers.

I wonder what parallel we can draw to today and how God is obeyed at times faithfully in the church, and then there are times that God is forgotten and obedience is not present for a season. The challenge of the church is always to return back to God after that season of disobedience. I guess the challenge would be to have no seasons of disobedience, but seeing what happens in Judges reminds us that it is often out of our hands and the disobedience follows almost inevitably.

This may be the most difficult time in the life of the people of Israel outside of any of the times that they were taken into captivity, like Egypt, and Babylon, and Assyrian. Even in these instances we see that they are taken captive by the Canaanites and forced into slavery. But it seems like every generation God would raise up a judge who would be ruler over the nation and then there would be peace in the land and their hardship would cease for as long as that judge was alive. But once that judge dies then the mantra we find is: everyone did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. This happens after every single judge that comes and rules the land.

My favorite judge is Deborah who is mentioned here because she is definitely unique. Not only as a woman judge but as someone who has a commander under her who will go to battle unless she goes to battle first. As a result he doesn’t get to the the most fun part of battle, which is killing the opposing side’s commander. Sisera is eventually killed by a woman just as Deborah had predicted. But still, Barak and Deborah are able to sing together a victory song, so we have that.

We finish up with the story of Paul in the Bible. He is brought to Rome after a very circuitous route. He should have lost hundreds of people on the ship with him, but he saw a vision where the Lord told him not one would be lost. As a result he was able to lead even as he was a prisoner himself. He gets to Rome and explains what his situation is, but the book of Acts ends in a way that does not really give us any answers as to what happens to Paul. We assume that he dies in Rome, although we do not know that for sure and it is not mentioned anywhere in Scripture. Remember, Paul is the one who wrote most of the New Testament. He is a significant figure in Scripture not because he is in any way the Messiah, or even a leader in the church, Peter would have taken that role, but because he was so assiduous in his faith and in his planting of the churches.

Psalm 2 and the chapter in Proverbs gives us insight to important guidelines on how we should act. It is filled with moral teachings on how our ethics ought to reflect the ethic that we find in Scripture. Paul’s teachings remind us of the importance of a personal relationship with Jesus. The teachings in Psalms and Proverbs remind us what that looks like.

We find ourselves at the end of the life of Joshua and he recounts how it was God who fought the battles of the Israelites, and not him, although it was obvious that he was a primary leader in all of the battles in which the Israelites participated. He is at the end of his life and he wants the Israelites to rededicate themselves to the Lord. But in the midst of this there is a problem, someone sees an altar that has been made by a tribe of the Israelites. God is furious and the people are furious, but those who built the altar have a great reason. They say this is a memorial to our God. They lived on the other side of the Jordan than the other tribes and so if the day came when those on the other side of the river forget their tribes and forgot that they were the people of God, if they were to come on the other side of the river to conquer them they would see the altar and be reminded that these are also people of God. That satisfied God, Joshua, and the people of Israel since it was not a false idol.

In Acts we find Paul who is in chains and bound and is about to be beaten but then he appeals to Rome and they whisk him away from a plot against his life, but he is still bound. He meets some of the muckity mucks who are expecting a bribe from him, but he doesn’t give him, but they still protect him. We see that Paul is still in chains for his faith and he doesn’t hesitate to preach the Gospel even while in chains. He is worried about less protecting himself and more about pronouncing the Gospel to anyone who would hear. What a great lesson for all of us.

We finish the section in Acts with a tease. Paul gets up to speak and our reading ends there. Joshua recounts the giving not only of the land but also of the livestock to the priests who were promised no land but were promised to be taken care of by the people of Israel. We also find mentioned the city of refuge for the person who killed someone but by mistake, he could then flee to a city of refuge and not be killed by the avenging family. It sounds like this may have happened a lot since this isn’t the first and only time that it is mentioned and since there were quite a few cities that carried this moniker.

Paul continues on his journeys on boat finding himself surrounded by mobs here and there and by disciples who would protect him from those said mobs by telling him which way to go and which city he was and was not to enter. But the underlying theme in all of this is the church grows, and grows, and continues to grow. The blessing of the Holy Spirit is not relegated to the first century. We see growth of the Christian church in most places in the world except, maybe, in the Western World. I believe there is a message there to the church in the Western World, in the developed world.