For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
This proverb tells us that the godly behave with integrity. Integrity means more than being honest and truthful. It means being internally consistent. It means that if you say it is wrong to hunt animals in order to harvest ivory, you do not buy ivory or things made with ivory. True integrity means that if you say it is wrong to have sex outside of marriage, you do not fantasize about sex outside of marriage. Parents who live such a life are leaving their children a legacy of inestimable value.
This is the beginning of the psalm which Jesus referenced while He hung on the cross, just before He died. We can look at it to see how it applied to Jesus as He died. I have done that in the past and will probably do it again in the future. However, today I want to look at how we can take lessons from it for our walk with the Lord.
The psalmist expresses utter despair about a life where things have gone wrong. He cries out to God, but has not received an answer. He knows that God is holy. He knows that others have cried out to God in the past and God has rescued them. He has reached the limit of what he can endure. Yet he still has faith in what God has done for him in the past and believes that God is just and righteous. In the depths of our despair let us have a similar faith, a similar trust that God is working for the good of those who love Him.
In today’s passage Paul addresses those who are Christians and hold animosity towards Jews. He reminds us that the Jews are still God’s chosen people, even if many of them have rejected Jesus. God still desires that they turn to Him. Earlier in this letter Paul said that God chooses to whom He will give mercy, suggesting that whether or not someone comes to faith in Jesus is decided by God. In today’s passage, Paul indicates that the people of Israel, the Jews, have the choice of turning to God and accepting His grace through Jesus. Further, he suggests that those of us who have accepted God’s wonderful grace could choose to turn from God and lose that grace. These two things seem contradictory and are examples of how our limited minds struggle to understand God’s plan.
I will strive to explain what I understand Paul to be saying. On the one hand, the fact that we have chosen to believe in and obey Jesus does not give us any room to boast that we are better than those who have not done so because it was God’s action which caused us to make this choice. On the other hand, each and every day we have the choice of doing God’s will. It is our obligation to make that choice.
Jehoshaphat died and the Kingdom of Judah paid the price for his friendship with King Ahab. Jehoshaphat had arranged for his son, Jehoram, to marry Ahab’s daughter. Jehoram followed the example of Ahab. His first action as king was to kill all of his brothers. He followed this by building pagan shrines and encouraging the people to worship idols. His son, Ahaziah, was not better and died after only a short reign. At which point Jehoram’s wife, Ahab’s daughter, Athaliah, seized the throne. She attempted to kill all of the remaining members of the House of David, but her daughter took her grandson out of the nursery and stole him away to the Temple. When the boy was seven, the high priest led a rebellion against Athaliah and put him on the throne.