For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    The proverb writer continues his advice on choosing our words with care. Soothing words can bring life to someone on the edge, by saying the right words at the right time we may keep someone from committing suicide. Even if things are not so desperate, well chosen words may lift them from despair into life. On the other hand, perverse, uncaring words may break someone’s spirit so that they lose the desire to go on living. Let us choose our words to be fountains of life, not sources of despair.

    It is with God’s help that we obtain victory over our foes, whoever, or whatever, they may be. If God is not helping us human help will do us no good. I will put my confidence in God and sing His praises.

    Jesus’ brothers tried to convince Him to go up to Jerusalem for the Festival of Shelters. Their reasoning is not clear, but it has long seemed to me that they wanted to bask in the glow of being the brothers of a man the crowds were flocking after. Jesus told them to go on without Him, implying that He was not going to go to Jerusalem for this Festival (the English reads as if He outright said He was not going, but I have always suspected that the Greek is more ambiguous). After His brothers had gone to Jerusalem, Jesus also went, but quietly so that no one knew He was there at first.
    The crowds at the Festival were buzzing about Jesus, probably more than they would have been if He was there. There was a lot of disagreement about who Jesus was and what type of person He was. Some said He was a good man, while others said He was a fraud. Then comes the line that reminds me of the world I see around me, “no one had the courage to speak favorably about him in public, for they were afraid of getting in trouble…” While we are not quite there today, I keep seeing efforts to create that sort of atmosphere in our society.
    When Jesus finally began teaching at the Festival, everyone was initially surprised at how knowledgeable Jesus was because He had not been trained by any of the respected scholars (or, in modern understanding, because He did not have a degree). I think this is an important reminder that we often put too much credit in human credentials. It is important to note that this was not a case of the country bumpkin confounding the scholars. This was the case of the self-taught (and God trained) Man demonstrating greater knowledge than the people who had been trained by the system and had the credentials. Jesus did not confound the teachers of religious law with “country wisdom”. He confounded them because He had greater knowledge in their area of specialty than they did.

    When Samuel completed Saul’s re-coronation he told the people of Israel not to rebel against God’s commands. If they failed to listen to God’s commands, His hand would be heavy upon them. Further Samuel told them to worship God with all of their hearts and not turn their back upon Him.
    Shortly after this Saul summoned the Israelite army to battle against the Philistines. Saul waited with the army at Gilgal for Samuel. While they waited for Samuel to come, the men became fearful of the Philistines and began to slip away from Saul. After seven days, Saul became afraid that he would lose his entire army, so he offered sacrifices to God himself. One thing I never noticed before is that the people, the men of Saul’s army, stopped listening to God’s commands before Saul did. They had asked for a king, and had accepted Saul as that king. Therefore Saul had God-given authority over them. They lost their faith in both Saul and in God. Saul then went against the instructions he had received from Samuel because he did not believe that God could grant him victory if he waited any longer to act. The failure of Saul’s kingship was a failure of both the people and of Saul. If the people had remained faithful, Saul’s faith would not have wavered. If Saul had remained faithful he would have been able to lead the people back to faith. Most failures of leadership are like this.