For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
God’s commandments teach us how to lead a healthy and happy life. Those who despise His commandments will follow a lifestyle which leads to an early death. There have been multiple studies over the years which show how those who reject God are more likely to smoke, abuse alcohol, and abuse other drugs.
Until I started working on this blog and reading through the Bible each year I never realized how much those who wrote the psalms dealt with depression. Nor did I realize how much the various psalms offer a suggested antidote for depression. Today, the psalmist asks God how long he will struggle with anguish and sorrow, how long he will struggle with depression. Then he declares that he will trust in God’s unfailing love, he will sing to the Lord.
Throughout the psalms we are told that the answer to depression is to place our trust in God and to praise Him for His goodness. I have never suffered from depression, but I know that this will work. It is not easy and requires self-discipline. I do not offer this as condemnation of those who struggle with depression. Rather I am suggesting it as an avenue to finding release from that depression. Seek the Lord, trust in Him, praise His name. Depression makes it harder to do those things, but doing those things will hold depression at bay and in time will drive it away. There is hope in the Lord for overcoming depression.
Paul illustrates his point about no one earning righteousness by their actions by referencing Abraham. Abraham was counted as righteous, not because of what he did, but because of his faith. Abraham did not earn his righteousness, it was a gift from God. In the same way, we cannot earn righteousness through our actions. We must accept it as a gift from God. Just as Abraham was circumcised as a sign of his faith and as a result of the righteousness which God gave him, so we follow God’s instructions as a result of the righteousness which God has given us. We do not follow God’s instructions in order to become righteous. We follow God’s instructions because He has made us righteous.
This passage has a long list of various groups of priests and Levites and the tasks they were assigned in the Temple. Which makes it easy to overlook an important insight contained within it. In order to avoid favoritism, or the appearance of favoritism, the duties of these various groups were assigned by lot. Those who were chosen to serve in each role were chosen irrespective of skill level, experience, or age. They were each chosen by lot (a form of random assignment) as directed by God. This is something we should take a lesson from in our congregations today. There are times when we should choose those given desirable appointments by some form of random assignment so that no one can claim that the person so chosen was chosen because of favoritism on the part of leadership.