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.
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.
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.
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.
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.