I am using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study. For today, One Year Bible Online links here. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them.
This passage begins with David seeking to find anyone left of King Saul’s family in order to honor his oath with Jonathan. He receives a report that Jonathan’s son, Mephibosheth is alive. Those who report this make sure to mention that Mephibosheth is crippled and therefore not a contender for the throne. David summons Mephibosheth to his court and gives him the properties that had belonged to Saul. The passage tells us that David had Mephibosheth eat at his, David’s, table. This would have been similar to how the sons of tributary kings held as hostages for their fathers’ good behavior would have been treated. However, since Mephibosheth’s father was dead, this would have been more of an honor than a hostage situation.
At some point after this a king of the Ammonites who had treated David well died. David sent ambassadors to his son, now king of the Ammonites, to express sympathy. The Ammonite king’s advisers convinced him that David’s ambassadors were actually spies, so the king humiliated them. David was infuriated and goes to war with the Ammonites. However, instead of leading his armies himself David sends them out under the command of Joab and remains in Jerusalem. When Joab is successful in his initial encounters with the Ammonites, they ally with the Arameans. The Arameans send a large army to relieve the Ammonites. This causes David to mobilize all of the fighting men of Israel and lead them to war. David goes out and decisively defeats the Arameans.
The passage next tells us that at the time of the year when kings normally go out to war, David sent Joab and the army out to fight the Ammonites while David remained in Jerusalem. It is not clear if this is the same war as the previous passage, or another one. Whichever is the case, David has left himself open to temptation. While he is taking a leisurely stroll on his palace rooftop, he sees a beautiful woman taking a bath, Bathsheba. He sends to find out who she is. He discovers that she is married to one of his soldiers, in particular one of his “mighty men”, Uriah the Hittite. Even though she is the wife of one of his most loyal supporters, David sends for her and sleeps with her. When Bathsheba informs David that she is pregnant, David sends for her husband Uriah. David attempts to get Uriah to go home and sleep with his wife, but he refuses to do so since his fellow soldiers are in the field. David then writes a letter instructing Joab to send Uriah to the most dangerous part of the battle and ensure that Uriah is killed. When David learns that Uriah is dead and Bathsheba completes the period of mourning, David marries her. This passage is a perfect commentary on how sin seeps into our lives. First David sets himself up for temptation by not doing something that he ought. Next, David succumbs to temptation. Then after he sins, he compounds that sin by further sins. This often happens to us today. We set ourselves up for temptation by not doing things which we know that we should do. In the same way that if David had been doing what he should have been, leading the army in war, he would not have been tempted, we, also, would avoid most temptations in our lives if we were doing the things that we should be doing (whether that is a Church activity or just chores around the house). Additionally, one sin often leads to another in a futile attempt to cover up our initial sin. Of course the converse is true as well, as we do the things that we know God is calling us to do, we find we are less exposed to temptation and sins which were controlling our lives lose their power over us.
Here Jesus uses the allegory of the grapevine to describe our relationship with Him. Just as the gardener will prune away from the grapevine those branches which are not fruitful, so God will prune us away from Christ if we do not produce fruit. And just as branches that are not connected to the main vine will whither and die, so we shall whither and die if we do not remain in Christ. Of course, Jesus further tells us that if we remain in Him we will be fruitful. The thumbnail I am using is a picture of some basil mint I am growing. Last summer I got a couple of varieties of mint to grow in our yard. I decided to put the pots in the ground and allow the runners that came out from the plot to root around the plant and start my mint garden. This worked well for one of the varieties, but for the basil mint it did not work so well. The basil mint I had gotten had become root bound in the pot and while it did ok last summer, it did not come up very well this spring and none of the runners rooted. So this spring I pulled the pot out of the ground and removed the basil mint from the pot and placed it in another pot with more soil. I was not sure if it was going to make it. I decided I would give it a few weeks and see how it progressed. If it had not I would have thrown it away. I am still a little disappointed in its growth, but it is coming along. This is how God often treats us. He puts us into the place that He wants us to flourish, but sometimes we are too bound up by our own issues that we cannot see how this situation will allow us to flourish. So God, as a loving gardener, will transplant us to another location where He can tend to our needs more thoroughly and bring us out to be the fruitful creation that He created us to be. Now, in the case of the basil mint, its failure to thrive in its initial location is my fault. I should have recognized that it was too root bound in the pot I got it in and addressed that, but I am an inexperienced gardener. This is not so in the case of God and His placement of us. Our failure to thrive in the place that God plants us is our fault, not His. We become caught up in other interests, or afraid to reach out and are unproductive. But God is a loving gardener and He will transplant us to a different setting giving us the opportunity to thrive. Showing us how we are letting our fears and concerns interfere with being fruitful. Like with plants, some of us thrive when we are uprooted and placed in new settings while others shrink into themselves and suffer for a time until they become fully acclimated to the new location. We need to recognize that God has placed us where He has because He knows it is a place where we can thrive.
Once again I am blessed by today’s psalm.
but I do not turn away from your instructions.
I meditate on your age-old regulations;
O Lord, they comfort me.”
How true this is. Many times people will look at me as a fool or someone not very bright because I insist that the Bible means what it says and has been understood to say for thousands of years. I have been led astray by my attempts to be seen wise by people like this in the past, but I have learned to trust the Bible over my own judgement. There have been times when I have thought I understood God’s will better than those who followed the traditional understanding of biblical teaching, but every time I have been proven wrong. This does not mean that I am now right on every position I take on biblical issues where Christians agree. Some of those disagreements go back to the first century, so there are traditions interpreting scripture on each side of some of those. However, whenever an interpretation is presented as a new understanding that displaces and contradicts traditional biblical understanding, I know which side I am going to come down on. For the most part one discovers that this “new understanding” is something that was addressed and rejected by biblical writers. I am blessed by studying the Bible and find new meaning for my life daily in its age-old instruction. Today, this is my prayer:
teach me your decrees.”
These proverbs tell us that while we are free to make our plans according to our own will, we will be more successful if we commit ourselves to taking action according to God’s will. The middle one also tells us that God knows our real motives for doing things. This is true even when we lie to ourselves and convince ourselves that we are doing something for noble motives when in fact we are doing so to satisfy our own sinful desires. The message of this proverb is more than that. I think it tells us that we need to examine ourselves closely to see if we are indeed doing things for the reasons we think we are. I know there have been times in my life where I did something for what I thought were selfless motives, even godly motives, where later I realized that my real reason for doing it was something I hid from myself, where my real reason was for my own benefit. It is important to remember that just because we are doing something for our own benefit, it does not mean that it is wrong. There are times when we do something for our own benefit where we tell ourselves, and others, that we are doing it solely for godly motives, where if we had been truthful about our motives we may have succeeded, but, because of our dishonesty, we failed. If we wish to commit our actions to the Lord, as this proverb advises, the first step is to be honest with ourselves about our motives. It is only when we admit that we wish to do something in order to satisfy our own desires that we can judge whether it truly serves God for us to do it.