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.

For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    The hard worker will have enough to eat and the person who is trustworthy will be richly rewarded, but those who seek a shortcut to success will end badly.

    I will dedicate myself to obeying God. In order to do so I must stay away from those who halfheartedly follow his commands. I will meditate on God’s decrees and instructions. If we do what is right and just we have no need to tremble in fear of our enemies. If we faithfully serve God, He will teach us His decrees and deal with us from His unfailing love. I will love God’s commands more than wealth, or fame. God’s commands are right and every other way is false.

    Peter warns us against false teachers and gives us information on how to recognize them. They are greedy and sexually immoral (note how Peter links these two types of sin, just as Paul does). They make up lies in order to get people to give them their money. They brag about themselves…and if you look closely at what they are bragging about there is nothing to it. False teachers use sexual immorality to lure in the unstable, trapping those who were just beginning to escape from a life of sin. They are arrogant and scoff at the supernatural, claiming to have the power to compel demons. They refuse to acknowledge the sin in their own lives while joining in “fellowship” with believers and calling for “unity” (by which they mean not calling attention to their sins, while they call attention to yours). It is worth noting that we should both avoid false teachers and watch out for signs that we are exhibiting some of the characteristics of false teachers.

    This is the passage from which we get the idiom, “read the writing on the wall.” The main point of this passage is that by the time the writing on the wall appeared it was too late to do anything about the coming doom. The people at the banquet knew their history, but paid no attention to it. They arrogantly thought that they were in control of their own destiny, when their predecessors who had built the empire they controlled had been forced to acknowledge a Power greater than themselves. If we have not learned the lessons of history and turned to God before the writing on the wall appears, it will be too late. Not only will it be too late, but we will not understand the writing on the wall when it appears either.