For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    The godly can look forward to good things in their future. The wicked will face judgment. Proverbs like this one are good reminders for us that if we do God’s will, He will reward us and those who mistreat others will pay a stiff price.

    No matter where we are on earth God will hear and answer our prayers. If we present our needs to God and place our hopes in Him, those needs will be taken care of. We have a choice, we can choose to come to God now, or we can come to Him when He summons us. However, everyone must stand before God to account for their actions.
    Yet another psalm where I cannot come close to expressing in words what it says to me as I read it.

    When the man with leprosy approached Jesus for healing, he had no doubt that Jesus was able to heal him. He just was not sure of Jesus was willing to do so. Jesus answered that He was willing and healed the man. God is willing to heal us, the question is, are we willing to be healed? I always struggle with understanding what to believe about God’s healing, but I think the two stories about Jesus healing in today’s passage provide us with some insight into how God heals.
    In the story about the man carried to Jesus, Jesus forgave the man’s sins before He healed him. I understand this to indicate that before God can heal us we need to accept His forgiveness. Of course, before we can accept His forgiveness we need to acknowledge that we need forgiveness. Part of acknowledging that we need forgiveness and accepting that forgiveness is recognizing that we need to change the behavior for which we are being forgiven (and being willing to change that behavior).
    Having said that, I do not understand why we in the Church do not see more of God’s miraculous healing. In some ways this brings me to another aspect of what I think this passage means. My understanding here is less complete. I believe that God has given all who call on Jesus’ name the same power to perform miracles which Jesus had (there are several places where Jesus tells His disciples that they will perform the same sorts of wonders He did). This story seems to me to suggest that we have the power to convey God’s forgiveness to people. We are empowered to say to people, “Your sins are forgiven.” There is a little more to it than that. It is clear, both from the Pharisees’ reaction and Jesus’ answer to them, that Jesus was forgiving the man at that moment. This means that when we offer God’s healing to people, we need to forgive them for their sins. Are we willing to forgive sinners? Even when they have not yet recognized that they are sinners?

    When the Israelites camped on the eastern side of the Jordan River as they prepared to enter the Promised Land, God instructed them to drive all of the people from the land as they entered it. Yet, we know from other passages that God encouraged them to welcome foreigners who chose to worship Him among them. The key to understanding the meaning of this is the sentence which immediately follows that instruction (and is actually part of that instruction). God tells them to destroy all of the idols and shrines where the people worshiped gods other than Him. The essence is of this passage is the opposite of “multiculturalism”. The Israelites were being warned to not adopt any of the cultural practices of the people living in the land because idolatry was so thoroughly integrated into their culture. We face the same problem today. As Christians we need to separate ourselves from the culture around us because so much of it has idolatry and sinfulness “baked in”.