For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
Some people are stingy out of a desire to grow rich. Such people are poor, even if they accumulate great wealth (because they only ever spend their wealth grudgingly).
The psalmist continues to make clear the benefits of following God’s word. He reminds us that God’s word is clear, so that even the simple can understand it (often, the simple find it easier to understand God’s word than those who think they are bright). God’s laws are always right…if you think differently it is you who are mistaken.
Peter tells us that people will mock God’s truth, asking why it is taking so long for Jesus to return. However, there are two things which those scoffers do not understand. First, God’s perception of time is different than ours. Many people try to use Peter’s statement that, “A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day,” to apply to prophesies in the Bible, but when they are doing so they are missing the point. The point is that God does not distinguish between years and days. The point is, no matter how we try to figure it out, the day of Jesus’ return will not be known until it arrives. We need to be prepared for every day to be THAT day.
The second thing which the scoffers do not understand is that God has delayed Jesus’ return because He is patient. He is delaying THAT day in order to give more people the opportunity to respond to the Gospel message. It is up to us not to waste the time which God has given to us. We need to use this time to preach the Gospel to as many people as we can.
Those who were jealous of Daniel got a law passed which targeted his religious practices. A law which Daniel could not obey and remain true to God. Daniel had three choices. He flat out rejected the first, which was to abandon his faith. His second choice was to take his faith underground and only pray in secret. His third choice, and the one he took, was to continue his practice of praying openly. It is worth noting that he neither hid his practices, nor did he flaunt them in front of everyone. His enemies needed to seek out evidence of his “crime”, but he made no effort to hide it.
I think it is worth examining the second option a little bit. There have been times when people of faith have followed that option. However, in most of those cases, they were people who came to faith AFTER the faith had been made illegal. Daniel, on the other hand, was a prominent person of whom it was well-known that he was a person of faith. If he had hidden his prayer times, others would have taken it to mean that he had set aside his faith. This passage is a call to some of us to stand up in the face of persecution and declare our faith. It is a reminder that when we do so, God is capable of rescuing us from the punishment which the persecutors intend to deliver. More importantly, if we publicly display our faith in the face of threats of persecution we will show others that God matters more to us than anything else.