Tag Archives: Proverbs 11:20-21

March 20, 2015 Bible Study — Temptations For Those Who Seek To Do Good

For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

DSCN5888

Proverbs 11:20-21

    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.

DSCN5895

Psalm 63:1-11

    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.

DSCN5896

Luke 4:1-30

    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.

DSCN5898

Numbers 30-31:54

    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.

March 20, 2014 Bible Study — Oh God, You Are My God

    I am using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study. For today, One Year Bible Online links here. I have found that by writing this daily blog of what I see when I read these scriptures, I get more out of them. I hope that by posting these ruminations others may get some benefit as well. In order to make that possible I read the passages and write my thoughts a day, or more. in advance. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them.

DSCN5263

Proverbs 11:20-21

    God detests those who wallow in perversity, whether it be sexual or otherwise, no matter how much they claim to love Him. On the other hand, God loves those who serve Him with integrity.

DSCN5241

Psalm 63:1-11

    I want to make this psalm my own. This psalm gives great advice for seeing our way through this life. I will praise God as long as I live. I desire Him with all of my being. Let me not become distracted by the pleasures this life brings. When I lie awake at night, I will bend my thoughts to God. I will meditate on His will through the night. I will cling to God because it is only by His strong arm that I can make it through this life.

DSCN5359

Luke 4:1-30

    There are no shortcuts to serving God. We do not spread the Gospel by feeding the poor. We do not advance God’s will in this world by compromising/working with those who oppose the Gospel. We do not perform wondrous acts in order to bring attention to ourselves. I am not sure where I am going with this because one can take this lesson too far. Feeding the poor is something we should do in service to God. We should be willing to work with any who will work towards advancing God’s will (“Anyone who is not against us is for us.”). God has given us the power to perform wonders in order to spread His Word. However, this passage reminds us that all of these can be temptations. We can become caught up with feeding the physical hunger of the poor and forget to feed their spiritual hunger. We can get caught up in our attempts to make the world a better place and start to worship the powers of this world. We can allow the attention that comes to us when we perform God’s wonders to go to our heads and forget to turn that attention away from ourselves towards God. Let us never forget that our first mission in this life is to introduce those around us to Jesus.

DSCN5340

Numbers 30-31:54

    When we last saw Balaam he was blessing the people of Israel even though his employer desired him to curse them. He refused to say anything other than what God commanded him to say. Yet now, when God sends the Israelites to extract vengeance against the Midianites for leading the Israelite men into worshiping false gods and other sins, we find Balaam still among the Midianites. We discover that it was Balaam who had advised the Midianites to have their women seduce Israelite men into worshiping the Midianite idols. How did Balaam go from being a man who would only say what God commanded him to say to a man who advised Israel’s enemies in ways to defeat them? This passage does not tell us, but we have hints from the earlier passage. He was tempted by the wealth offered him. When he could not gain that wealth by cursing the Israelites outright, he came up with a plan to get it by other means.

March 20, 2013 Bible Study — The Temptation of Christ

     I am using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study. For today, One Year Bible Online links here. I have found that by writing this daily blog of what I see when I read these scriptures, I get more out of them. I hope that by posting these ruminations others may get some benefit as well. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them. I hope that the Spirit is moving in others through these posts as the Spirit has definitely been convicting me.

The Ladies fence
The Ladies fence

Numbers 30-31:54

     God instructed Moses that as a final act he should lead the Israelites to take revenge against the Midianites for leading them into idolatry. 1,000 men were chosen from each tribe, for a total of 12,000 men, to go into battle against the Midianites. They attacked the Midianites and killed all of the men, including the five kings of the Midianites. Among those who were killed was Balaam. The army then captured the women and children and all of the Midianites wealth as plunder. When they brought all of this back to Moses and the rest of the Israelites, Moses was furious that they had allowed the women to live. The women were the one’s who had followed Balaam’s advice and led the Israelites into idolatry. Moses instructed them to kill all of the boys and any of the women who were not virgins. Moses and Eleazar, Aaron’s son and successor as high priest, instructed the men from the army to purify themselves and the plunder before reentering the camp.
     At the Lord’s instruction, Moses, Eleazar and the tribal leaders counted all of the plunder and divided it so that half went to all of the people of Israel and half went to the army. The army was to give one of every 500 of the prisoners and livestock to the Lord from their share of the plunder. One in every five of the prisoners and livestock from the share of the plunder for the rest of the people of Israel was to be given to the Lord.
     After an accounting was made of all of the plunder and it was divided, the generals came to Moses and Eleazar and told them that not one of the men who went out to battle was missing. In thanks for this blessing from God, the generals gave to God all of the gold items from their share of the treasure.

Another shot of the ladies fencing
Another shot of the ladies fencing

Luke 4:1-30

     After being baptized by John in the Jordan, Jesus went into the wilderness to fast and pray about His ministry and how He should go about accomplishing His mission (at least that is how it reads to me). He was in the wilderness fasting for 40 days. It is only since I started doing this Bible Study blog that I realized how significant the number 40 is in the Bible. Forty seems to be the number associated with testing and trial, as well as preparation for divine action. During the flood it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. Moses spent 40 years in the desert tending flocks before God called him to lead the people of Israel our of Egypt. Moses was on Mount Sinai for 40 days receiving God’s Law for the people of Israel. These are only a few examples, there are more. Here Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness praying and fasting.
     Towards the end of Jesus time in the wilderness we have an account of three temptations that He experienced. These three temptations represent the three temptations that anyone who wants to make a difference in the world faces. The first temptation of Jesus is to miraculously make bread to feed the hungry. This represents the temptation to focus strictly on meeting the needs of the poor. We see this in ministries which downplay or avoid preaching the Gospel message because if they do they are afraid that it will interfere with their ability to meet the physical needs of the poor. There may be times and places for taking this approach, but we should be very cautious about this. Jesus’ answer to this temptation is very enlightening. He quoted Deuteronomy 8:3 to Satan, “People do not live by bread alone.” The rest of the verse says, “rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” I think that Jesus’ response to this temptation tells us that it is as, if not more, important to preach the Word of God as it is to meet the physical needs of those in poverty. The fact of the matter is that many times those who are suffering poverty need to be shown and taught how to change their lives in order to escape from that poverty. It is important to remember that it is only through the grace of God that we have learned the habits necessary to avoid poverty (if we have indeed learned those habits).
     The second temptation is to turn to the political machinery to accomplish His mission. This also is something I see in the world today. Rather than doing the hard work of reaching people and changing hearts, too many Christians want to change the law. They want to harness the political machinery to change the world. The problem is that here is twofold, first is that the government always sets itself up as the final arbiter of what is right and wrong. The second is that when we start using the government to change people, WE put government in the place of God. Jesus’ answer is categorical, “Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.” The government cannot save people from themselves, only God can do that. I will use abortion as an example. I think abortion is the killing of a human child. I think that abortion should be illegal, but more importantly, I believe that no one should wish to kill a human child (before or after birth). It is only by the intervention of the Holy Spirit that people can be changed so that their will matches that of God. I am sure there are places where my choices do not match God’s desire. I pray that He make those changes in me.
     In the third and final of these temptations, Satan suggests that Jesus perform a mighty miracle at the center of religious authority. This is the temptation that I have the hardest time putting my understanding into words. In some ways it is the opposite of the first, rather than meet people’s physical needs it is the temptation to focus all of one’s mission on the spiritual side. It is the temptation to focus on preaching the “Gospel”, but do nothing about the physical needs of the poor. This is as wrong as those who work to meet the physical needs of the poor without sharing the Gospel message with them. But it is more than that, it is the appeal to authority. It is the temptation to say, “You should listen to me because I perform wondrous miracles and have the imprimatur of the religious leaders.” Rather than meeting people where they are and learning what their needs and troubles are, those who have succumbed to this temptation have all the answers and don’t need to listen to others. In response to this temptation, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:16, “You must not test the Lord your God…” Which continues, “…as you did when you complained at Massah. You must diligently obey the commands of the Lord your God—all the laws and decrees he has given you. Do what is right and good in the Lord’s sight…” It is not enough to preach the Gospel, we must also do the acts that are good and right in the Lord’s sight.

The ladies lay on
The ladies lay on

Psalm 63:1-11

     Another great psalm that touches my heart today. I strive to make the first stanza of this psalm the way I live my life:

O God, you are my God;
I earnestly search for you.
My soul thirsts for you;
my whole body longs for you
in this parched and weary land
where there is no water.

I know that the only route to true happiness is to search for God with my entire being. IF we strive to find God in the way that we would strive to find water in a hot, dry place we will find our way to happiness and contentment. AS the psalmist says, I have seen God in His sanctuary and seen His power and glory. I will praise God as long as I live. Others may belittle me for it, but I will cling to God, for His hand supports me.

This cake is not a lie
This cake is not a lie

Proverbs 11:20-21

     God detests those who hide their motives and mislead others as to their intentions, but He delights in those who deal with others with integrity. We know that evil people will be inevitably punished, but the children of the godly will experience freedom.