PSA Bible Reading Challenge 2025-2026

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.

It is nice to have passages that talk about the obedience of the people of God, specifically a leader who then sets the stage so that the people of God can worship God in a way that is worthy and acceptable. I love how we have chapters devoted to the people of God preparing themselves for worship, preparing the location for worship, and then the worship itself. There have been so many generations that did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, including sacrificing their children to the foreign gods, that it is nice to see a leader bring his people to a place where they want to worship God. What a great way to start the morning with the sun shining off the snow.

Did you know that every year the people of Israel had to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in order to be there for Passover? This is not unusual in religions. Every year, or at least once in their life, the followers of Islam should make their way to Meccah. Once a year there is a very large pilgrimage for Hindus called the Kumbh Mela which is called the largest religious gathering in the world on a yearly basis.

It is unusual for a religion to not have a mandatory gathering for all of its adherents, but that is now the nature of the globalization of religion. Everyone is everywhere, so there is not practical way to gather everyone. But followers of Christ never felt the need to associate a specific location to the actual presence of God. God, through the Holy Spirit, is present in all places and through all people so that no matter where you are the Holy Spirit can choose to descend like tongues of fire, or a raging burning bush, or a still small voice. That is the way of our God.

Psalm 121 is a psalm that was used by pilgrims as they saw the hills of Jerusalem and rejoiced that they had arrived at their destination. I lift up mine eyes to the hills was a recognition that they had arrived at the house of God, which was Jerusalem, the city of David.

We find ourselves in a rehashing of the kings of Judah with them being unfaithful and then them teaming up with each other. It doesn’t work out, except for the fact that the king of Israel, who disguised himself so that no one would target him, dies from an arrow, and the king of Judah, in all his regalia, is ignored simply because he is not the king of Israel, and survives. Proverbs 14 is a better known Proverb and has the quote that we should know by now: “those who walk uprightly fear the Lord.” There is then a whole series of back and forths on what to do and what not to do. As I have said in another context, you know the terrible stereotype of the mother-in-law. Well I heard one theologian say that reading Proverbs is like driving a cross country trip with your mother-in-law. That’s not very nice.

We continue along in the life and times of the kings of the divided kingdom: Judah and Israel. We see what happened immediately after Solomon passes away and it seems like from there things begin to get wonky. I have sympathies for Asa, he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, but what was not appreciated by God was that he sought out military alliances from those around him. They were the same nations that his family had sought out as allies for a variety of reasons, primarily to build the temple. But this time he asked a local nation to take out Israel, since they were closer, and they did. God said that since Asa did not seek him out, instead sought out an ally, that he would no longer be with him. That’s too bad.

There is a bit of a whiplash in Chronicles as it takes us to the nations of Israel and Judah who both go into exile at the hand of the Babylonians, and then it goes back into time and gives us the death of Saul and his son Jonathan, the beloved of David. There is no real rhyme of reason for the going back and forth in time from when Solomon took over and built the temple to going back to after the reign of Solomon, to then before the reign of his father, David. Maybe we needed to see that Solomon had surely been established as the king and that the kingship had been taken out of the hands of Saul’s family and into David’s family. Yeah, maybe that’s it.