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Daily Bible Study

June 9, 2022 Bible Study — Government Power Is Limited In The Face Of United People

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  Esther 8-10.

I always struggle to understand how the edict Mordecai wrote managed to offset the one which Haman had written.  However, perhaps in a way I can.  Haman had written his edict ordering the government officials to attack the Jews, but Mordecai wrote his edict allowing the Jews to defend themselves.  So, those choosing to follow the edict from Haman would have had the force of government behind them, but the Jews would have had all who would choose to side with them.  It serves as a reminder of the principle that a government can only govern with the consent of the governed, or by dividing them up.  So, Haman’s edict worked in two ways.  First, it united the people against an abuse of government power.  Second, it gave those government officials not already committed to antipathy to the Jews an excuse to refrain from attacking them.  In many ways it shows us that it does not take much to stop evil, even government sponsored evil.  Yet, the Book of Esther also reminds us that we need to be willing to take risks to face down evil.  While things ended well for those who took the risks in this account, it does not always work out that way, but it is always better to take the risks then to stand idly by.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

June 8, 2022 Bible Study — Mourning And Fasting When Tragedy Threatens

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  Esther 4-7.

When the Jews in Susa, and then later in other parts of the Persian Empire, learned of the edict against them they went into mourning by fasting, weeping, and wailing.  Then, before Esther takes the risk of going before the king without being summoned, she asks Mordecai to have all of the Jews in Susa fast for her.  Nowhere in the Book of Esther does the writer mention God, or prayer.  Yet, I find it hard to believe that the writer did not mean to imply that the Jews were praying to God for deliverance when they mourned and fasted.  I am also convinced that when Mordecai told Esther that deliverance would come from somewhere else if she did not act that the writer meant us to understand that Mordecai was expressing his faith in God.  My main point is that deliverance came to the Jews because they fasted and prayed.  We live in a nation facing great problems brought upon us by those who rule over us.  As Christians within this nation, we need to fast, pray, and pour out our hearts in mourning before God for the wickedness around us and ask for His deliverance.  There is much more to this passage than this, but this is what calls out to me.  I fail to pray as I ought and fasting has rarely been part of my spiritual discipline.  I feel called out by this passage today to change that.  Perhaps it is time for Christians to fast before God in prayer, seeking His guidance in the face of the terrible violence which occurs around us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

June 7, 2022 Bible Study — Why Did Mordecai Refuse To Bow To Haman?

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  Esther 1-3.

I noticed a couple of things I find interesting today when I read the beginning of the Book of Esther.  In his anger after Queen Vashti refused his order to appear before him, Xerxes consulted his experts into the law to see what he could do.  That reads to me as if he was seeking an existing precedent in law to take action against her.  His advisers were unaware of any such precedent, but they wanted there to be one, so they gave Xerxes advice to create one.  I am unsure that there is any significance to that, just something I found interesting.  Also interesting, Haman did not notice that Mordecai refused to bow down or otherwise give him honor.  He only became aware of it when other officials reported it to him.  We do not know why Mordecai refused to give honor to Haman, but the writer seems to link it to him being a Jew.  Or, at least, the fact that Mordecai was a Jew was why the other officials wanted to see if his actions would be tolerated.  So, Haman felt it necessary to make Mordecai pay for failing to honor him, even though Mordecai never did so in a way which brought itself to Haman’s attention directly.  Not only that, but Haman wanted to punish all of the Jews for Mordecai’s refusal to honor him.  In doing so, Haman demonstrated an ambition which exceeded his grasp.  A wise official would have chosen to ignore Mordecai’s “insubordination” so long as they did not observe it themselves, an official who was not a fool would have satisfied themselves with bringing suffering to just Mordecai for the slight he had committed against them.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

June 6, 2022 Bible Study — How Easy It Is To Fall Into Sin

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  Nehemiah 11-13.

Nehemiah left Jerusalem and later returned.  Upon his return he discovered that the Israelites had neglected the Temple, failed to continue to provide support so that the Levites could spend fulltime ministering to God, started to do business on the Sabbath, and married women from among the people’s around them who did not worship God (and who had not given up their idolatry).  All of these things were a violation of the covenant they had entered into upon completing the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem.  The covenant they were violating was not the one that their ancestors had entered into at Mount Sinai, even though it was a reaffirmation of that covenant.  This was something to which they themselves had agreed.  This passage should serve to remind us of how easy it is for us to fall away from following God’s commands when the spiritual high is over.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

June 5, 2022 Bible Study — All Too Often We Turn To The Lord In Times Of Trouble Only To Return To Our Sins When The Crisis Has Passed

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  Nehemiah 9-10.

I wrote yesterday that when the people in rebuilt Jerusalem heard the Book of God’s Law  read to them they grieved, but their leaders instructed them to put aside their grief because they had assembled to celebrate God’s mercy.  They followed their leaders’ advice, but in today’s passage we are told that two weeks after that festival they assembled once more, this time to express their grief over their sins.  This time they fasted and prayed, and once more listened to the Book of the Law being read to them.   Then they listened to a litany of how their ancestors had cried out to the Lord when in distress, been rescued by Him, only to turn back to their sins as soon as the crisis had passed.  Once more they, as a people, were in  a situation of crisis and were turning to the Lord.  Are we too willing to admit that we cry out to the Lord when in trouble, only to return to our sins when the crisis has passed?  Are we willing, as these people were, to strive to make a break with out past and commit to following the Lord when the good times return?

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

June 4, 2022 Bible Study — Putting Aside Our Grief Over Our Sin In Order To Celebrate God’s Mercy

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  Nehemiah 7-8.

Once the walls had been restored, Nehemiah realized that relatively few people lived in Jerusalem.  In order to decide how to remedy this, Nehemiah had the people assemble in Jerusalem to register them according to their genealogies.  Actually, it seems to me that he got the idea of doing so after he discovered the genealogical records of the first group to return from Exile.  When the people assembled they had Ezra read and explain the Law of Moses to them (the wording of this passage allows one to think that the assembly for reading the Law was a different assembly than the one Nehemiah called to register people by their genealogy, but I think that is an artifact of translation).  As the people heard the Law being read, they became grief stricken.  The passage does not tell us why this happened, but I suspect their reaction was similar to that of King Josiah when he heard the Book of the Law read: they realized how badly they had fallen short of keeping God’s commands.  Nehemiah, Ezra, and the rest of those who had been familiar with the Law before this encouraged the people not to feel grief, this assembly was one to celebrate God’s goodness.  When we truly understand how we have failed to live according to God’s desire for us we will feel grief.  There are times when we should put aside such grief and celebrate God’s goodness.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

June 3, 2022 Bible Study — Nehemiah Refused To Take Special Privileges

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  Nehemiah 4-6.

I was going to write a completely different blog today than what I am writing now, but I found myself getting down into the weeds of the passage, writing about things you can read for yourself.  Then it struck me that the reason we read this book is because Nehemiah refused to back down.  When the people working on the wall were beginning to get overwhelmed by the effort, were beginning to feel that they weren’t getting anywhere with the project, Nehemiah stood up and laid out a plan.  And he did not just give them a plan, he put his back into the plan and worked alongside of them.  When people complained to Nehemiah about the rich oppressing them, he did not point the finger at other people and say that they needed to change their ways.  No, when he asked the rich to do more to help the poor, he asked them to follow his example, and he did more than he asked anyone else to do.  When he was personally threatened, he refused to take a defensive position not available to the common people because he was more important to the cause then anyone else.  He was, but he refused to let that justify giving himself special privileges.

I have written all of the above, and I think it is a pretty fair reading of the passage, but it fails to capture the thoughts behind it.  I have respect for how Nehemiah behaved as a leader of the people, but I cannot quite get it put into words.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

June 2, 2022 Bible Study — Taking Responsibility For Our Sins

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  Nehemiah 1-3.

I know I have mentioned my main topic about this passage today before, but it plays a key role in truly understanding the Book of Nehemiah.  Until I started this blog, I understood that the state of Jerusalem described at the beginning of this book was a result of the destruction by the Babylonians when they took the people of Judah into Exile.  However, after reading the Book of Nehemiah repeatedly I have come to realize that the Exiles had partially, or perhaps mostly, rebuilt Jerusalem’s walls and what is described here was the destruction of those rebuilt walls.  Further, as I read today’s passage I realized that destruction had been carried out by the enemies Nehemiah talks about here, or their immediate predecessors.    I have come to believe that these individuals were government officials of the Persian Empire who used the state of Jerusalem to bypass Persian taxes.  Which brings me to Nehemiah’s prayer.  Nehemiah prayed confessing his own sins and the sins of his people.  He acknowledged that the state of Jerusalem was a result of those sins.  He did not place the blame for the destruction of Jerusalem’s walls and gates on those outsiders who had actually destroyed them.  He placed the blame on the failure of the Israelites to faithfully do God’s will.  Those living in Jerusalem were guilty because they went along with the sinful, unlawful acts which were facilitated by the sorry state of Jerusalem’s defenses.  Nehemiah himself was guilty because he had failed to act, despite being in a position of authority which would allow him to act, to change things.  Having confessed his sins, Nehemiah made plans to change the state of affairs.

In a similar way, we need to acknowledge the degree to which our sins have resulted in the sorry state of affairs in the world today and act to change that state.  Not many of us are called to the sort of actions which Nehemiah undertook, but all of us are called to turn away from our sins and towards doing God’s will.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

June 1, 2022 Bible Study — Separating From The Detestable Practices Of Those Who Do Not Worship God

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  Ezra 9-10.

When reading today’s passage I have often been bothered by the fact that the writer emphasizes the sin of the people of having married foreign women.  After all, why would it be wrong to bring women into the family of faith?  As I have been writing off and on this spring, that is because that is not quite what the passage is telling us.  In order to understand what is going on here you have to start with what those who brought the problem to Ezra’s attention told him.  They told him that the people of Israel had not kept themselves separate from the detestable practices of the people around them.  One can easily misread what they said to think they were upset with the interaction with the people around them, but a careful reading of the entire passage shows there is more to it than that.  When the Returned Exiles gathered to address the issue, they agreed that those who had married “foreign women” needed to send those wives away, but they said it would take more than a day or two to accomplish this.  Why would it take more than a day or two to settle this if it was just a matter of all the men who had married a woman not of the group of Returned Exiles putting aside their wives?  To me, this says that they had to evaluate whether these wives had continued in the detestable practices of their people or had embraced the worship of God and all that entailed.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

May 31, 2022 Bible Study — All Who Separate Themselves From The Unclean Practices Of Their Neighbors

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  Ezra 6-8.

The first thing I wanted to write about is the way in which the style of writing changes in today’s passage.  Up until this point, and for the beginning of this passage, the writer appears to be an anonymous third party.  However, in chapter 8 the tone changes to that of Ezra writing in the first person.  I would love to know what led to these two approaches being combined into one document.  I mean it seems pretty clear to me that Ezra wrote an account of his travel to Jerusalem and his actions once there and that someone decided to add some background information, but why did they do so?  It is not particularly important, but I am curious.

Having written the above, I want to focus on what is written in verse 21 of chapter 6:

So the Israelites who had returned from the exile ate it, together with all who had separated themselves from the unclean practices of their Gentile neighbors in order to seek the Lord, the God of Israel.

It is very easy to miss the significance of this verse.  Repeatedly throughout Ezra and Nehemiah we see passages which talk about the Returned Exiles separating themselves from those living around them.  The passages about that separation read as being very draconic and absolute.  However, we also have passages like this one which help us put those passages about separation into context.  The Returned Exiles had rejected the assistance of their neighbors in building the temple because those neighbors followed unclean practices and had no intention of giving them up.  Later, when they demanded that none of their number marry any of the women from the neighboring peoples it was once again about women who continued in the unclean practices of those neighboring peoples, not about women who chose to fully embrace the worship of God.  Here that is made clear, they ate this first Passover after rebuilding the temple with “all who had separated themselves from the unclean practices of their Gentile neighbors.”  Let us also embrace all who separate themselves from the unclean practices of those around us in order to serve the Lord.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.