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.
Joy will come to those who pay attention to the wise course and then follow it. Those who find wisdom will live and find favor with God. Those who fail to do what is wise are hurting themselves and following a path which leads to death.
It is appropriate when those sing praises to God. Let us constantly seek new ways to praise God because His word holds true. God will display His faithfulness in everything He does. God merely spoke and the universe was created. Everyone on the earth should fear and be in awe of Him. I fear the Lord and am in awe of His majesty. God’s plans will stand firm and cannot be shaken, but when people and nations make plans contrary to His will He disrupts them.
The story of Peter denying Jesus is one which should give us hope. If Peter could be forgiven for denying Jesus three times that night, than I know that I can be forgiven for the times when I have allowed fear of embarrassment lead me to deny my faith in Him. In a way, this passage compares and contrasts Peter’s betrayal of Jesus with that of Judas. Peter went away and wept bitterly over having betrayed Jesus, Judas went out and killed himself. While one can argue that their level of betrayal was different, an important lesson here is that Judas preemptively decided that his sin could not be forgiven and removed the possibility of forgiveness being offered. This is certainly one form of the unforgivable sin which is mentioned several times in the New Testament.
I am torn about what to write about this. The people of Israel turned away from God because they did not receive guidance from God through Moses for an extended period of time. This happened because God had called Moses into His presence. When Moses was absent for longer than they expected, the people of Israel sought guidance from sources other than God. The people of Israel lost patience in waiting for Moses to return. Then they turned to Aaron and told him to make them gods to follow. Notice that they did not ask Aaron to tell them what God wanted them to do. They told Aaron what they wanted him to do. How often do we make this mistake? The mistake of telling our spiritual leaders what we want, rather than asking what God wants of us. Aaron made the companion mistake of doing what the people asked him to do rather than asking God what he, and they, should do.
How often do we do like Aaron and the people of Israel did when they lost (or thought they had lost) their spiritual leader? Do we start to tell our remaining leaders to “make us a god who can lead us”? Or do we call out to God for guidance? If we are in a position of leadership, do we do as the people request? Or do we call them to continue following God? It is much easier to follow a leader who tells us what we want to hear than it is to wait for God’s direction and follow that. And it is much easier to control a group of people when you tell them what they want to hear than if you tell them what God wants them to hear. Let us choose the harder path.