For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    If you spend your time and money on pleasure when you should be working or saving you will end in poverty. If you are constantly spending your money on luxuries you will soon have none.

    If we faithfully follow Christ we too will experience what the psalmist references in this psalm. There will be those who will do evil to us in response to our good acts. There will be those who lay traps for us even though we did them no wrong. We will fast and pray for them when they suffer, but they will rejoice when we are in trouble. All of this and more we will face as we try to faithfully serve the Lord. However, if we are in that situation we can rely on God to oppose those who oppose us. He will give us victory. So, let us continue to pray for those who do not serve Him, for God will protect us if we do.

    In today’s passage Paul tells us that a man dishonors his head if he prays or prophesies with his head covered (the origin of the tradition of men removing hats and caps when the National Anthem is sung. I will come back to this.). He also says that women dishonor their head if they pray or prophesy without a covering on her head (the reason that women wore hats or some other kind of head covering until modern times). I do not fully follow Paul’s argument here.
    I follow the idea that women are supposed to cover their heads because the first woman was created out of the first man. Then Paul says something intended to make sure that men do not become arrogant about this and believe that this makes them overlords over women. He tells us that every man since the first man came out of women. So, the first woman came from man, but every man since that has come from a woman. And both come from God. The resulting teaching is that women are not independent of men, but then neither are men independent of women. We all need each other. There are men who say that they do not need a woman. They are wrong. They may not need a wife, but every man needs at least one woman in his life. Of course, there are women who say that they do not need a man. They are just as wrong. This is not about sexual relations (if you need sexual relations, you need a spouse of the opposite sex).

    Nehemiah had left Jerusalem for a time to return to the court of Artaxerxes. When he got back to Jerusalem he discovered that the men of Judah were working and doing business on the Sabbath, which they had vowed not to do. Nehemiah confronted them and got them to stop. In addition, Nehemiah discovered that some of the Jewish men had married women from the surrounding peoples and had failed to even teach their children to speak their language. In other words, rather than assimilate their wives and children into the people and worship of God, they were assimilating into the local people and pagan worship.
    This is an important lesson for us as Christians. We are called to bring people from our society into the Church. However, we must assimilate them into the culture and society of the Body of Christ, not allow ourselves to assimilated into the secular culture and society that is around us.

For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    Those who do what is right rejoice when society enforces justice, those who wrong are terrified by it. You can see this in people who encourage others to jump to conclusions before the facts are in and then do their best to suppress facts which run counter to the judgment they want people to make.

    The key to a good life is to be choose your words correctly. Do not speak evil, do not tell lies. This is the first step, if you do not follow this advice you will be unable to follow the rest. The next step is two-parter. Turn from evil and do good. It is not enough to not do evil, you must also do what is good. Of course, the best way to avoid doing evil is to fill your time with doing good. There is one more step to leading a good life. Search for peace and when you find it, do what you can to maintain it. As I read this, I think about the troubles I see around this country. There are some true problems which have led to these troubles, but the protests and riots are not going to make things better. There are times when protests are necessary, but currently the country needs someone to calm the situation and quietly address the real grievances.

    Paul makes several points in today’s passage, but I am going to focus on just one. Here Paul talks about our freedom in Christ. We do have freedom in Christ. We are free to do whatever we choose. The Christian faith does not bind us to a set of rules in the way that the Law of Moses binds those who follow the Jewish faith (or even the way the Koran binds those who follow the Muslim faith). So, we are indeed free to do whatever we choose. However, Paul tells us that we need to remember that not every course of action is good for us. Some courses of action are merely not beneficial (that is they do not harm us, but they also do not improve us). But some actions are actively harmful, either to ourselves or to others (I believe that actions which are harmful to others are almost always, if not always, also harmful to us). We should choose actions which are beneficial for both ourselves and others. Let us not only avoid actions which harm others and ourselves. Let us choose actions which make us all better off, not just the actions which bring us pleasure, but those which improve who we are.

    The leaders of the Jewish people lived in Jerusalem so that they could work together for the good of the entire people. However, in order for it to be viable for them to live there, other people needed to live there as well. The decision was made to choose those people by lot, allowing God to determine who, besides the leaders, should live in Jerusalem. And while they chose them by lot, the passage tells us that those who went to live in Jerusalem did so voluntarily. This is a reminder that we should never use something like the lot to select people for a task who are not willing to undertake the task.

For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    The foolish only change their behavior when they see someone get punished for that behavior. It is sufficient to inform the wise that you find certain behavior unacceptable. The wise will change their behavior out of respect for you.

    There is great joy for any nation whose people make God their Lord. God sees the whole human race and understand everything we do, even when we do not. It is not by our strength, our knowledge, our wisdom, nor our wealth that we will be victorious. It is God who will deliver us from defeat. It according to His will that those who fear Him will be successful in what they do. I will put my hope in God, not in my puny abilities. If my skill is sufficient to the tasks which God has given me, it is not to my credit, but to His. If my skill is insufficient to His tasks, I know that God will supply me with aid to make up for the lack.

    Paul first makes a point that those who preach the Gospel and those who teach others how to live according to God’s word are entitled to be supported by those to whom they preach or teach (or both). This is an important thing to remember. We should all be willing to pay the support costs of those who lead the local Body of Christ. However, Paul then goes on to make the point that he not only never demanded such support from the Church at Corinth, he actively rejected it. He did not do this because he was too good for them. Rather he did this because he felt compelled to preach the Gospel to them. It was only by doing so at his own expense that he felt he was doing something worth mention.
    I have struggled with what Paul says here because he sounds like he is bragging. However, I am convinced that Paul is trying to inspire some to imitate him in this way. I have become convinced that, while the Church should willingly support its ministers, the Church needs some leaders who refuse to accept a salary for doing God’s work. Some of the movers and shakers in the larger Church body need to be people who receive no human recompense for the time they spend doing God’s work.

    After they had completed the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem, the people gathered to hear the Law of Moses read. I find it interesting to read how they arranged for multiple speakers to repeat what Ezra said as he read the Law. Each speaker had a copy of the Law and they read along as Ezra read. As the people heard what the Law had to say, they began to weep. The leaders encouraged them to refrain from sorrow because the festival they were celebrating was one of joy. This first celebration was to praise God and thank Him for bringing them back to Jerusalem.
    A month later, the people reconvened to confess their sins and express their sorrow for those sins. First they celebrated the wonderful things God had done for them. Then they expressed their remorse and sorrow for their sins. I do not think this is always the order we should follow, but there is an important truth here. There are times when we are called to celebrate the joy we feel because of what God has done for us, and there are times when we are called to weep and mourn because of the pain we have caused God and others. We should not always be joyful and we should not always be sorrowful.