For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
Everyone wants to be friends with people who have wealth, while those same people avoid those who are poor. Are we willing to make the effort to break this rule?
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When God has delivered us from troubles, or saved us from harm, do we publicly praise Him? Or do we just go about our lives as if His salvation was our just due? Let us never forget that the wicked are trapped by their own actions. It is only by the grace of God that we do not join them. Let us praise Him and rejoice when we see His justice served around us. Even more so let us celebrate when He shows us His mercy.
Paul starts by summarizing the Gospel he preaches:
- God promised it through the prophets (we can read what they wrote about it)
- Jesus was biologically a descendant of David
- The Holy Spirit used its power to declare Jesus the Son of God by raising Him from the dead
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From there Paul goes on to describe his calling and the purpose for preaching the Gospel. Paul invited/enjoined/requested those who had no real understanding of God to a faith in Him which led to obedience to Him. I think this is a something we all to often forget. The purpose of preaching the Gospel is to convince people to have faith which leads to obedience. It is not just to get people to affirm that Jesus is the Son of God. We preach the Gospel (or at least, I do) in order to convince people to act upon that belief.
Paul wanted to go to Rome so that he could, in some way, help them become stronger in their faith, so that he could help them become better Christians. However, he recognized that this goes both ways. I cannot help you be a better Christian unless I am open to you helping me become a better Christian. If we think that we are so much better than another that God cannot use them to strengthen us than we badly overestimate our faithfulness to God.
It is interesting that this passage suggests that some men defected from Saul’s army to join with David when they thought David was about to join the Philistines in attacking Saul. The Philistines refused to allow David and his men join them in the battle against Saul. However, after the battle many other warriors from various tribes joined David with the intention of making him king over Israel in place of Saul’s remaining son. I am convinced that the fact that David did not take part in the battle where Saul died contributed mightily to his strength as king.
The description of what happened when David first attempted to move the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem tells us something about how God works. David had the Ark put on a cart to transport it. When someone reached out to steady the Ark, they were struck dead. Two generations earlier, the Philistines had returned the Ark to Israel in a similar fashion and nothing bad happened. In some ways these two stories show us that God holds those of us who should know better to a higher standard than those who have never heard His commands.
In Exodus, God had given the Israelites instructions on how to transport the Ark. The Philistines had never heard those instructions, but David and his men should have been aware of them.