For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    You cannot be devious and please God. God is pleased by those who are honest and act with integrity. Those who put on a show of righteousness in order to disguise their corruption will not find favor with God. God will reward those whose integrity and righteousness goes all the way to the depths of their heart.

    I will meditate on this psalm today. I will seek God and I will praise His name for as long as He gives me life. This psalm is a great meditation for focusing on God. I encourage you to spend a few minutes reading and re-reading this psalm. As you do so, make it your prayer.

    The ways in which Jesus was tempted in the wilderness represent three ways in which we can be tempted to have our ministry derailed from serving God. The first, turning stones into bread, is the temptation to make our focus on meeting the physical needs of those to whom we minister: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, etc. These are good things and they are things we should be doing. However, if we do that to the exclusion of teaching people to repent of their sins and turn to God, we are not fulfilling God’s will for us.
    The second temptation is to seek political power in order to fix the institutional ills of our society. In this one the danger is obvious. In order to gain political power, we need to compromise with those who are not seeking to do God’s will. Or, as the temptation puts it, we must worship the devil. In some ways the very idea of using political power to reshape the world is a repudiation of God. God is not just looking for people to stop doing wrong. He is calling us to do right. Political power is the power to coerce others. People can only be coerced to not do wrong. It is not possible to make a rule book (or a set of laws) which spell out the right thing to do in every situation. It is possible to make laws which list things which are always wrong, but it is not possible to write a rule book which covers what is the right thing to do in every situation. Ultimately, we need to call people to worship God and to seek to do His will.
    Finally, the third temptation is the temptation to completely avoid the first two things and focus exclusively on calling people to spiritual healing. It is not enough to preach the Gospel when people are hungry and/or oppressed. As I read this I am reminded of a ministry I have worked with in the past. The ministry in question works with the poorest of the poor in a Honduras. The leader of the organization was touched by the starving children there many years ago. She sought to alleviate that problem. She immediately saw that the problem could not be solved by just giving the people food. They needed to learn to provide for themselves and their children. They needed the transformative power of the Gospel. Almost immediately she also realized that it was not enough for the people to change their own behaviors, the society in which they lived trapped them in their poverty. The laws and government needed to change as well. As a result, she set up an organization which worked with all three phases. It worked to provide for the physical needs of the people. It preached the Gospel to the people in need. And it pressured the government to change the laws that kept the people trapped in their poverty. As I said, I am oversimplifying what went on here, but the point is that if we are to serve God we must address all three aspects of human life.

    I realized something as I read this, there is a difference between what is talked about here when it discusses vows and what we normally understand about what Jesus was talking about when He told us not to take any vows. I know that, in my case at least, we tend to think of “Swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” when we think of vows and oaths in the context of what Jesus said.
    In this passage, a vow is about promising to take a specific action, no matter what the costs or consequences. This is in contrast to in the ordinary course of things where we say, “I am going to do that,” meaning “I plan to do that, unless something I did not factor on intervenes.” I am not saying that Jesus was not referring to this sort of oath when He said what He said, merely that that is not normally what we think of when we read that passage.

For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    Evil people may gain wealth, but such wealth is only temporary. The rewards of godliness are eternal.

    Victory comes from God, so let us wait quietly before God. We will find rest in Him and if we faithfully and patiently wait for Him, we will not be shaken. No enemy will reach us if we rest in Him. This psalm gives me so much peace. Read the psalm and the psalmist says it so much better than I can.

    I am not one who gets much out of genealogies. Jesus was the descendant of King David and through David He was descended from several of the most important women of the Old Testament (Ruth, Rahab, and Tamar). All three of those women have interesting stories and their place in the history of faith is significant. Another interesting ancestor of Jesus is Zerubbabel, who governed the Exiles when they returned to Jerusalem.

    There is more to this passage than this, but this is what hit me today. As I read through these festivals I noticed it said in various ways that the offerings that were described were in addition to the regular offerings. That means that we should be making regular offerings to God and, in addition to those regular offerings, we should make special offerings to celebrate special events throughout the year.
    The other aspect of these festivals that came to my attention was that there were days within them where the Israelites were instructed to do no ordinary work. There are times when we should set aside our ordinary activities in order to focus on worshiping God.

For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    Those who are kind and gracious gain honour, respect and other rewards. Those who are cruel and ruthless gain only wealth, and, ultimately, ruin.

    John was a voice shouting in the wilderness that people should prepare the way for the Lord’s coming. Jesus has come, but we are still called to prepare the way for Him. Proclaiming the Gospel can still feel like shouting in the wilderness.
    It is not enough to be a voice shouting in the wilderness, John did not just shout, “Prepare the way!” He told people how to prepare the way. He told them that it is not enough to say that you have repented of your sins. You need to prove by how you live that you have repented and turned to God. When the crowds asked John to be more specific, he gave an answer that is still good today. “If you have two shirts, give one to the poor. If you have food, share it with those who are hungry.” There is the message we need to be preaching to those around us.
    Just as John’s message comes at the start of the Gospel of Luke, so this message is merely the start to preaching the Gospel. However, it is the start. You cannot preach the Gospel of Jesus unless you start here (and by starting here I mean doing this as well as preaching this).

    Once the census had been taken of the warriors, the men over the age of 20 in each of the tribes except the Levites, Moses took a census of the Levites. The census of the Levites was of every male one month and older. None of the people on the earlier census which Moses had taken just after the Israelites left Egypt were on either of these lists (except for Joshua and Caleb. The Israelites had spent an entire generation in the wilderness.

For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    Only a fool talks smack, or otherwise speaks negatively, about his neighbor. The sensible person keeps his mouth shut if and when he thinks such thoughts. There is nothing to be gained by criticizing your neighbor (and we know who Jesus tells us our neighbor is).

    This psalm tells us that the majority of rulers, the majority of those who wield government authority, have no understanding of the meaning of the word justice. They have no interest in upholding it. Rather they plot injustice. They are the type of people we call congenital liars. It seems as if they have lied from birth and are incapable of telling the truth.
    Despite this fact, God will sweep them aside causing the godly to rejoice. Everyone will see that God is indeed a God of justice and that He will bring just judgment upon the earth.

    This passage just strengthens my belief that Luke’s source for this was primarily one or more disciples of John the Baptist. I was struggling with what to write about this passage. Then it hit me. Zechariah’s prophecy makes this a scene from a musical. Picture the scene: the people gathered around the mother, she is clearly a bit old to be a new mother. The man officiating says something along the lines of, “And his name is Zechariah,” as he begins the ritual. Elizabeth immediately shouts out, “No, his name shall be John.” At this a hubbub arises among all the people as they try to talk her out of it. Zechariah struggles to get everyone’s attention. Finally, they notice and bring him a tablet. Someone tells Elizabeth, “See, even he agrees that the boy should not be John.”
    Zechariah writes on the tablet (something large enough for the audience to see). He holds it up to the audience who read out loud (perhaps there are a couple of plants in the audience to get people started), “His name is John!” Immediately following that Zechariah bursts forth in song”

    God had told Balaam to go with the emissaries of Balak, yet He was angry with Balaam for doing so (I discussed the reasons for God’s anger yesterday). In light of that, what struck me in today’s passage was this:

“But I am the same donkey you have ridden all your life,” the donkey answered. “Have I ever done anything like this before?”

This is a lesson for us, when something happens out of the ordinary (such as the donkey we have ridden our entire life refusing to obey commands in a way it never has before) we need to look for the hand of God in what is going on. I was looking for a way to express the idea more clearly, but, after thinking about it, I believe that most people can read this passage and understand the point I am trying to make.

For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    The wicked destroy others by what they say. It is interesting that the proverb writer tells us that the righteous escape such destruction through knowledge, which tells us that the wicked destroy others through lies and deceit. Reading this reminded me of a friend who has been struggling lately. Their posts suggest that their struggles are the result of things others have said about them. The friend I am speaking of is being destroyed by words spoken by evil people.

    My first thought on reading this psalm was, “Another psalm on crying out to God for protection. A wonderful message, but what can I write about this psalm that I have not already written, more than once, in the last few days?” Then I read this verse:

    In response to Gabriel’s message Mary replied, “I am the Lord’s servant.” The message Mary received indicated that she was being called to a very difficult task. She is unmarried and a virgin. The angel has just told her that she is about to become pregnant, in a society that treats women who bear a child out of wedlock poorly. Yet her response is the Magnificat, a song of praise to God. Do we respond with similar joy to the tasks which God sets before us? Do you really think the task which God has set for you is harder than the one He gave Mary?
    Let us make our response to God’s message be the same as Mary’s. When God calls us to a task, let us respond, “I am the Lord’s servant.” And rather than worry about how hard the task is, let us rejoice in God our Savior.

    Balak the king of Moab, having seen how the Israelites defeated his neighbors, sent messengers to offer Balaam money to come and curse them. Balaam consults with God and is told that under no circumstances is he to curse the Israelites because they have been blessed. In the morning, Balaam sends them home, rejecting the task they had offered him. Balak sent a second group of emissaries to Balaam offering even more money. Instead of rejecting them on the basis of the message God had already given him, Balaam asks them to spend the night to see if God has some other message for them this time. This time God tells him to go with them, but to only do what He tells him to do.
    From what is written in tomorrow’s passage, we know that Balaam had done something wrong at this point. I have struggled to understand what Balaam had done wrong. I realized that the answer is that what Balaam told the emissaries (both groups) would have been seen by the emissaries as a negotiating ploy. First Balaam said no, then, when asked again, he left open the possibility of doing something for them. God had told Balaam that the people the emissaries wanted cursed were blessed. Nevertheless, Balaam looked for a way to give Balak something for his money.
    For me, one of the most interesting points of this passage is the indication that there were people, other than the Israelites, who worshiped and served God. We have very little information about them, but from time to time there is a reference to someone who was a prophet, or priest, to the same God whom the Israelites worshiped.