For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
There are two aspects to the part of the proverb which says that those with unreliable friends will come to ruin. The first is that if you spend most of your time with unreliable people, whom you think are your friends, when trouble strikes you will have no one to aid you in dealing with your problems. The second is that if you hang out with unreliable people trouble will soon find you. However, there are people who will be your friend and stand by you when times are bad. Seek out such people.
This psalm reminds me of how great this universe is. Every time I look at the night sky I am reminded of the greatness of God. He made the moon, the planets, and the stars and put them in their positions. Yet, He nevertheless cares about individual people. He cares about each and every person. More than that, He has given people power over His creation that is subordinate only to His own. When I consider nature around me I am reminded that our God is majestic and powerful. Praise His holy name!
Everyone on the ship carrying Paul had been busy fighting the storm for several days, including the passengers. In that time, none of them had time to eat (it is not clear if they ate at all during the storm, but one would think they must have eaten at least a little bit). They were beginning to despair (that is me reading between the lines). Paul called them all together, reminded them that he had warned them against setting out, then he told them that God had revealed to him that everyone on the ship would survive the coming shipwreck. A short time after this, the sailors attempted to abandon ship in the middle of the night, leaving the passengers to their fate. Paul warned the Roman commander against allowing them to do so. Just as dawn was breaking, Paul reminded everyone that God had said they would all survive and got them all to eat. When the sun came up, they saw an beach and attempted to run the ship aground on it.
In this account, Paul’s reminder that he had warned against leaving Fair Haven was not an “I told you so.” Rather, Paul was reminding them of his previous, accurate prediction in order to lend weight to his current prediction. This is an important point. We should avoid telling people “I told you so,” except in circumstances where it is critical that this time they take our advice. Be very careful to listen to God before using this tactic.
This passage starts with the genealogy of some of those who returned from the Babylonian Exile. Here we come to understand why the writer has spent so much time on genealogies so far. He was setting up the record to show how those who returned from the Exile were able to trace their ancestry back to Jacob. The writer then concludes his genealogy with the genealogy of Saul’s descendants.
Then the writer begins telling the history of which most of the rest of this book is composed. He starts with the death of Saul. The part of this I want to highlight today is the response of the people of Jabesh-gilead to the Philistines displaying Saul’s remains. The first act of Saul as king was to mount a rescue of the city of Jabesh-gilead from an enemy who wanted to mutilate all the men living in that city. The people of that city showed their gratitude by mounting a raid to retrieve the remains of Saul and his sons. They then respectfully buried those remains. This shows us that despite his flaws, Saul did some good things as king of Israel.
