Tag: christianity

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Welcome to the Start of the History Blitz

History Blitz! – So it begins.

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!)

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Cloud of Witnesses

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.

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Moses and Christ, Hebrews 11

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.

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Catching Up a Bit on Hebrews

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.

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Job in 25 minutes

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.

The Patience of Job, Lauren Taylor, October 21, 2012

 

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Job’s boldness to cry out “my Redeemer lives”

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.

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Are Job’s friends right or wrong?

As we continue to read into Job we have the problem of what to make of the words of Job’s three friends. It seems at times that their words are true and their conclusions right. They talk of the punishment that comes upon the wicked, but they then relate this to Job’s situation, and there it falls apart. The picture we are shown is one in which Job is innocent and that the distress that has come upon him is not a direct punishment for something he has done. So are his friends right or wrong?

It is a little more complex and a word that has helped me in reading it is “appropriate.” Whether one of the friends speaks something that is true, is it also an appropriate statement to make? Is it fitting to the situation and applicable for Job? I felt torn wanting to quote some of these friends when I came across some powerful verses knowing that they’re not quite in the right in their speech. Would I be quoting them out of context?

Again it is good to remember just because someone says something in the Bible doesn’t mean it is “biblical.” Characters from the Bible are not always the examples we remember them to be and the wisdom of Job’s wise friends is not always good. But there are instances where even the naive speak great truth without even knowing it. So ultimately, these three may say some insightful things, but use discernment in judging their words. The only one who is without fault in speech is God, who we’ll get to at the end.

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The Despair of Job is Now a Hope We Have In Jesus

If you follow along with the focus passages that are available each week, then perhaps by now you’ve already looked closely at a passage from Job 9. If not, there is a section in the book of Job where Job complains. In fact–there are many such sections. But in this one part specifically Job cries out about his own inability to come before God and defend himself. He doesn’t believe that he could stand up to the bigness of God and prove himself innocent. Humans are nothing in comparison to the majesty of a God who forms mountains and places the stars into constellations. Recognizing this Job says:

There is no arbiter between us, who might lay his hand on us both.

The good news we have in the New Testament is that we know such an arbiter. We know that Jesus Christ is the one who, being both fully God and fully human, is able to perfectly represent us before the Father. He intercedes for us and he is the one who has made us innocent. We can have hope to enter boldly into God’s presence because of the all-sufficient work of Jesus.

Hebrews goes into the priestly work of Jesus and how he has done everything we need, and emphasizes how what he has done is so much greater than anything that has gone before. Jesus is a greater priest than the priests of old. Jesus is greater than angels and greater than Moses. Jesus while still being the priest is also the sacrifice, and again is a greater sacrifice. What Christ has done for us has once and for all paid the price for our sin and has made us right before God.

In Jesus Christ the plea of Job comes to be fulfilled and we can rejoice now knowing such good news. The suffering of Job continues into our day, but we know that our God entered into such suffering, taking on more than we ever could in bearing our sins, and in so doing has secured salvation for us.