Starting today, we’ll spend the next three weeks reading 1 & 2 Kings and Chronicles. That doesn’t look like all that much, but maybe it is because I tried to abbreviate a bit. To make it more intimidating I’d say: 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, and 2 Chronicles. Perhaps you still don’t see the big deal. Some weeks have had four books read in one week. That is true. But these books aren’t the minor prophets.
The way I’ve ordered the weeks for Year in the Bible is to have us average about 23 chapters a week. Some weeks push us more and then periodically we have a lighter week when we read fewer chapters. This week (week 7 of quarter 3) has us reading 47. You’ve been warned.
So why in the world would I do this? Well, sometimes I think it was a good idea. Other times I’m just not sure. But it’s too late now to change it! My thinking was that these history books can include a large number of lists and genealogies and more lists. We could stretch Kings and Chronicles out over 2 months and pace ourselves, but I think that if we did so it would bring us into a lull. Instead we’re packing it in. Bear in mind that these books are more of a narrative style of writing so it is a more straightforward read. It is not as slow going as Job or Jeremiah have been. And be positive about it–there are great stories in here. We heard one this morning in our sermon and there are plenty more where that came from.
The three weeks of the blitz are laid out like this:
1 & 2 Kings – 47 chapters
1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles 1-18 – 47 chapters
2 Chronicles 19-36 – 18 chapters
My advice is to do your best to read it as assigned, and if you need that third week to catch up a few chapters, do so. I’ve already invited you to start early, but you can also carry it on into a fourth week if you’d rather. The week immediately following the history blitz is 1 John with all of its five chapters. That’s all. My intent is for that to be a breather for us so we can slow ourselves and read a great little letter. But again, if you need to use that light week to continue to read Chronicles, please do so.
We’re all adults here. My reading plan is flexible. You can always make your own decisions.
I hope you enjoy. And if you’re bitter about being assigned 47 chapters, you can email me all your complaints. (But the time you spend writing me an angry email may be better used getting all that reading done!)
Hebrews 12 opens with a description of past saints in the faith as a “great cloud of witnesses.” We are not in this journey alone and thank God. We are in great need of the encouragement of others, past and present. This has been on my mind since I’ll be talking about it in a class tomorrow morning, but it can’t be said enough that we are called to be a blessing to one another. We need the help, but we are also empowered to be the help for others.
The chapter goes on to urge the reader to cast off what slows us down and trips us up. We need to rid ourselves of sin and distractions. I think we can read this great cloud of witnesses as a contrast to these obstacles. On the one hand all that weighs us down. On the other we have brothers and sisters that lift us up. It is quite the gift that God has called us to be a church; that he calls us out of the world but into a new body.
Throughout the book of Hebrews Jesus Christ is being linked to the practices and objects of the Old Testament. For example, Christ is the veil, he is the sacrifice, and he is priest. The ways of the old covenant find their improvement in Jesus Christ and the new covenant that he has instituted.
In chapter 11 as we read about the role of faith in the people of God, going all the way back to Abel, we read one line about Moses that continues to strengthen the link of Christ to the Old Testament. Verse 26 says:
[Moses] considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.
It doesn’t say that Moses considered the reproach of God, but rather the reproach of Christ as a greater treasure than all that could be found in Egypt. Verse 25 tells us how Moses chose to be mistreated with God’s people rather enjoy the sinful spoils of Pharaoh’s courts. In so doing he willingly took on scorn and suffering–the reproach of others, and did so, as the NIV says in its translation, “for the sake of Christ.”
Moses did not know the name of Jesus Christ, but he put his hope in God, and that hope is Christ. Jesus is Messiah, the one in whom all the hope of Israel was wrapped. Moses trusted the promises of God, looking ahead to the reward, knowing it to be better than any fleeting treasure or pleasure. So Moses endured reproach for what to him at the time was unnamed. But now the author of Hebrews looks back and calls it what it was. Moses enduring for the sake of Christ, the only hope we have now.
Likewise we now are called to endure reproach for his sake, and opportunities are not hard to come by. It may not be a Pharaoh seeking to kill us, but we are often given the choice between the fleeting pleasures of sin and Jesus. When we choose the latter we often choose hardship, as well.
As I mentioned last week, writings on Hebrews were slow going as I didn’t want to skip over the difficulty of Hebrews 6. But now that we’re in to the home stretch of the book, I didn’t want to altogether miss out on the amazing passages I’ve yet to focus on.
Chapter six opens with the challenges passage that makes us investigate our security in God, but then it ends with wonderful verses on the certainty we can have with God. He is one who can keep all the promises that he has made to us.
13 For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear,he swore by himself, 14 saying, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.” 15 And thus Abraham,having patiently waited, obtained the promise. 16 For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. 17 So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose,he guaranteed it with an oath, 18 so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.
Hebrews then goes on with a phrase that struck me so much when I noticed it a couple years ago that I have it written on a post-it and stuck to my wall. The certainty that we have in God is like a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul. What a reassuring picture of the hope we have in God? When all the world rages on like a storm around us, we have a hope that is fixed, immovable because of the great work of God for us in Jesus Christ.
Beyond chapter six we get the mysterious character Melchizedek mentioned in chapter seven, showing how Christ, like him, is not a priest like any other. He does not depend on his lineage nor does his ministry come to an end. He is a priest forever, always perfectly interceding for us.
This continues the theme that what Christ has done and who Christ is make him the bringer of a new and better covenant. Chapter eight talks of how those old things were copies and shadows of what is real and they looked ahead to Christ’s coming. Jeremiah 31 is quoted to show they longing and to communicate that this future day Jeremiah spoke of has found its fulfillment in Jesus.
I think Hebrews is a wonderful book that helps us to couple Jesus Christ with phrases like “better than”, “how much more,” and “greater than” as we compare him and all he has done to everything that has gone before.
We’re finishing Job having now spent three weeks going through its 42 chapters. There is a lot to digest from it, and not only because of its length. It is a weighty book dealing with questions of God’s role in the world and suffering.
We were blessed at church to have had a sermon two Sundays ago that took on the minor task of preaching on the entirety of the book. Often as we preach from the texts we’re reading we preach on some of the texts. But as this tries to sum up the whole, I thought I’d link to it here and offer it up as a good word on this deep book.
For those of you out there who really like to have a plan, I want to remind you that next week is when we throw it into high gear. You might wonder, “I thought reading the Bible in a year was already high gear.” Well, you may be right. But we begin our history blitz in week 7 and that means reading about twice as much as usual for three weeks.
I’ll get into the why next week, but I bring it up now because I wanted to draw your attention to the amount of reading we have currently. We finish up Job and Hebrews and toss in a few Psalms. This makes it a lighter load. So, if you look ahead and your knees shake at the thought of so much of 1 & 2 Kings and Chronicles, feel free to get a head start. (Also, look ever further ahead and notice the week following our history blitz is especially light, so you always spill over into that week).
I figured it is no use telling you that this is a good week to think about reading extra once the week is over.
Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits.For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come,and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. Hebrews 6:1-4
REM – Losing Religion back in the 90s
I must confess I have slowed in my readings (and writings) of Hebrews this week for two reasons. One – because I was away on study leave enjoying teachings of NT Wright and the beauty of fall in Princeton, NJ. Two – because we began with this extremely troubling passage. I wanted to find some more time this week to study it, but here we are on the eve of week six and I wanted to say something.
It appears as though this passage is saying that someone can come to Christ, be “saved”, and then fall away. If this were to happen, there’s no turning back. Almost like saying you can come and be forgiven for any sin, but only once.
So this is troubling for all the worry it would cause if we can lose our salvation. It would change where I stand before God from solid rock to shifting sand. These verses are also troubling because we read elsewhere passages like (and this is just a small sampling):
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish;no one will snatch them out of my hand. John 10:27-28
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:6
So how do we reconcile these passages? Some of the ways I’ve seen this described go like this:
This hypothetical person can’t be forgiven because they do not want it. They have turned their back and it isn’t so much that they can’t, but that they won’t be forgiven. This still has the issue of the possibility of falling away, but the argument can then continue by proposing that no one who would turn their back on Christ would have been a true Christian in the first place. The description of being enlightened, tasting heavenly gifts, and so on are descriptions of enjoying certain corporate benefits of the church. Or maybe it is some individual understanding, but it is not the same as being gifted the saving faith in Jesus Christ.
Quick review: So far the possible readings are that you can’t be forgiven because you don’t want it, or (with some possible overlap) that this hypothetical person hasn’t truly fallen away because that’s impossible and they were not a Christian to begin with.
Another take on this passage that tries to hold on to the witness of other parts of Scripture is that this passage is describing a non-sensical if-then statement. If a person were to fall away then for them to repent and come back would mean Christ is recrucified. But Christ can’t be recrucified. Hebrews itself has already talked of Christ’s once for all sacrifice and how his death on the cross was completely sufficient. If that is the case, and he’s now been raised from the dead, how could he and why would he be crucified again? So if Christ can’t be recrucified, such as it is an impossibility, then the circumstances that would lead to it are also an impossibility. If Christ has died for your sins then you would never have need for him to return to the cross again. If you’ve been redeemed, then you can’t reverse the process and this is in fact an argument against the mere possibility of falling away.
Those are some of the interpretations out there. Again, some just read it as though you can lose your salvation. But I don’t believe that God’s plans can be foiled. If he has chosen you and me, then he has the power keep us in his grasp. I wish I had a plainly obvious way of reading this that would just click. We must read Scripture in light of other scripture which can make things complicated But I believe the greater theme is that of God’s sovereignty.
What I do try to take away is a challenge to remain vigilant. We ought to keep ourselves committed to Christ and to following after his call. We need to be ever vigilant, while also resting confidently in the security that the work of our salvation is thankfully a work wholly of God.
Job 19 includes what are probably the most familiar lines from the whole book. Verse 25 says, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.” It is a powerful line and in it we see the hope, similar to what I wrote last week, of Christ. But it is all the more powerful given the context. Job boldly says that he does have a redeemer. He says this redeemer lives and this redeemer is spoken of in relation to Job one day seeing God. But all this he says in his dire circumstances. Earlier in the chapter Job has said this:
All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me. My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! Why do you, like God, pursue me? Why are you not satisfied with my flesh?
Life has been bitter to Job. He has called out hoping to meet death, wishing the day on which he was born was taken from history. The ones who should be close seem far, the ones who should love hate, and Job says even children despise him. Yet even as his world seems to crumble Job is able to find the strength to say, perhaps the strength to believe, that there truly is a redeemer. He does not let his circumstance dictate truth. God is God even when life is painful. We have hope even when there seems to be no hope for us. Even in the midst of sin and death we have one who redeems us from such slavery and who will usher us into the presence of God.
Year in the Bible 