For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

Proverbs 1:24-28

    Wisdom is there for us if we are willing to listen. If we seek wisdom, we will find it. However, it is too late to seek wisdom once things have gone wrong. If we wait until we are in trouble to seek wisdom, no amount of wisdom will allow us to escape our problems. Seek to act wisely before things go wrong, otherwise it will be too late.

Psalm 5:1-12

    If we wish for God to hear our prayers and listen to our cries we must be sure to pray to no one, and nothing, but Him. He takes no pleasure in wickedness and will not tolerate sin, neither should we. I was going somewhere else with this, but that caught my attention. In our world today there is a lot of talk about tolerance, and the importance of being tolerant. There is something to that. We should be tolerant of others. However, we should not be tolerant of sin.
    Back to discussing how this psalm applies to our lives: God will destroy those who tell lies and detests murderers and deceivers. If we do not put such things away from us we will be unable to approach God. Fortunately, because of God’s great love we can enter His House and worship Him. And verse 8 will be my prayer:

Lead me in the right path, O Lord,
or my enemies will conquer me.
Make your way plain for me to follow.
I struggle to see the path which God wants me to follow, but I know that He will make it plain to me if I but trust Him. God will drive away those who are too proud to admit their sins and turn to Him. But He will spread His protection over those who turn to Him for refuge. I will sing joyful songs of praise to Him.

Matthew 5:1-26

    This passage contains the Beatitudes and I am not going to write much about them today. Except to say that I like the way the NLT translates them as a change of pace from the way we usually read them, “God blesses…”. It reminds us that all blessings come from God. However, I generally prefer the traditional way of translating them, “Blessed are…” because it reminds us that being blessed for those things is built into the Universe.
    What I really want to focus on are the teachings which come after the Beatitudes. Jesus uses the example of salt for how we should live several times. It really is a great metaphor for being a Christian. If we, as Christians, are not different from those around us, what good are we? But it is not enough to be different. We need to be different in a way which transforms the people around us into something better than they would be otherwise. You should observe your non-Christian acquaintances behaving in a better, more “Christian”, way the more time they spend with you. This will only happen if you are open about your faith and how it governs your behavior. In order to maintain our “saltiness” we must let our light shine. We cannot serve the Lord by hiding that we seek to serve the Lord.
    Jesus goes on to tell us that the Law of Moses is not going away. God’s basic laws are here to stay and if we want to have a good life we need to follow them. Those laws exist for a reason and ignoring them because we don’t like them will end no better than ignoring the oil in our car because we don’t like it. However, we cannot obtain righteousness by making a big show about how much better we are than others. The purpose of the law is not to distinguish who is better than who. Rather the purpose of the law is to teach us how to have a good life and avoid pitfalls and unhappiness.
    Finally for today, Jesus gives an example of what He means about the Law. The Law says that someone who kills someone else is subject to judgement. Jesus tells us that if we allow our anger to control our actions we are no better than a murderer. If we are in the midst of worshiping God, or anything else, and realize that someone has a gripe with us, we are to drop what we are doing and go resolve the issue.

Genesis 11-13:4

    I have heard many interpretations of the story about the Tower of Babel. Several of them made good sense to me. However today when I read it two things struck me (I find it interesting that I seem to usually break things down into two parts). The first thing is that if people work together and communicate with each other effectively, they can accomplish anything to which they set themselves. That looks like two things, but they are really two parts of the same thing. A group will not remain united if its members do not communicate with each other. Nor will its members continue to communicate with each other if they stop being united in purpose.
    The second, and more important, lesson is that if we attempt to do this without putting God at the center, our communication and unity will fail. If our focus is not on serving God, no matter what other common goal we share, we will seek to advance OUR understanding of that goal and OUR personal interests, rather than the goal as shared by everyone. As that happens we will start to interpret what others say as agreeing with our understanding, rather than actually listen to what they say. In addition, we will start to word what we say so as to disguise how what we say goes against what the other person wants.

     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 in advance. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them.

Genesis 11-13:4

     This may be a stretch and reading my own thoughts into the passage, but I believe that the story of Babel is about how there is a limit to how large of a group of people can work together to do good things. When a group becomes too large there will, inevitably, be miscommunication between different parts of the group leading to problems. It does not matter if the people all speak the same language or not. Communication for projects requires more in-depth communication than just exchanging words. It requires that those attempting to communicate actually know each other.
     We have here the story of how Terah, Abram’s father, began moving with his family from Ur towards Canaan. Meanwhile, Abram’s brother, Nahor, did not go with them. The passage implies that Nahor had a family by this time, while Abram had no children, but was raising his nephew Lot, whose father, another brother of Abram and Nahor, had died. Terah only moved as far as the city of Haran, which is the same as the name of his deceased son, Lot’s father (this seems significant to me, but I have never figured out what the significance is). Terah settled there for a period of time and there he died. After Terah’s death, Abram received a call from God to continue the journey. The passage makes it clear that Haran was occupied by Abram’s relatives, just as Ur had been. Abram was called to leave the people and culture he had known his whole life. Are we willing to do the same?

Matthew 5:1-26

     Today’s passage is the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, which is chock full of things for us to heed. It starts with the beatitudes. For me they break into three groups. The first three address how we view ourselves. They tell us that those who view themselves in a certain light will be blessed. First comes the poor in spirit. These are people who recognize that material wealth is not true wealth, that if we do not have God’s Spirit, we are truly poor, that we have nothing that was not given to us by God. Second, are those who mourn. These are people who look at the suffering in the world and feel sorrow that it exists, who desire nothing more than to see suffering relieved. Third is an attitude of meekness. Jesus tells us that those who do not put themselves forward to demand their “just due”, but rather wish to see others as being more important than themselves, will inherit everything.
     The second group of beatitudes is about what motivates us to act. Jesus tells us that those who seek righteousness the way a starving man seeks food will not only find it, but be filled with it. Let us seek to do what is right. If we recognize our need to be shown mercy, we will show mercy to others. It is only by our willingness to show mercy to others that we can receive mercy ourselves. In order to see God, we must be pure in our hearts. The pure in heart are those who see the best in others. When things go wrong, their first assumption is that it was an honest mistake, not that it was caused by someone seeking to benefit at the expense of others. They recognize that people make innocent mistakes.
     The last of this set has us working to bring about peace between those who are in conflict. We can only truly be peacemakers if we encapsulate the preceding attitudes:

• In order to make peace, we must be willing to surrender our material wealth, recognizing that true riches are not material in nature.
• In order to make peace, we must feel sorrow and mourn about the suffering experienced in the world.
• In order to make peace, we must put other’s needs ahead of our own, and other’s wants ahead of our wants.
• In order to make peace, we must seek to do what is right with our entire being.
• In order to make peace, we must be willing to show mercy.
• In order to make peace, we must see the best in others.

     Then comes the final two beatitudes, which tell us how the world will react to us if we follow the previous ones. If we follow Jesus’ teaching we will probably be persecuted, we will certainly be insulted and slandered. But even that will bring us a blessing if we do not allow the insults and persecution dissuade us from doing what is right. Throughout all of history those who chose to be God’s servants have been insulted, slandered, and persecuted. God will reward us for doing what is right. If we do what is right without reservation, we will experience joy and God’s presence in our lives, both now and in eternity.
     The passage goes on to talk about being salt and light, avoiding hypocrisy, rejecting our right to be angry over being wronged, and making right the wrongs we have done to others. All topics that could be full devotionals all by themselves.

Psalm 5:1-12

     Am I willing to be like the psalmist and lay my requests before Him first thing each morning? I desire for God’s Spirit to transform me so that my first priority is to seek God’s guidance for even the smallest actions I may take. The psalmist tells us that God hates the wicked and cannot tolerate sin. As a result, the proud cannot stand in His presence. We have all sinned and the only way that we can come into God’s presence is to humbly acknowledge that it is only through Christ’s death and resurrection that we can overcome those sins and enter into God’s presence. It is only because God loves us that we are able to worship Him. It is only by relying on God that we can know true joy.

Proverbs 1:24-28

     Yesterday’s proverb pointed out that wisdom is there for the taking for anyone who desires it. If we reject the wise course of action, it is too late to avoid the consequences when things start to go wrong. No amount of wise advice will help us once our actions come to fruition. We will have to struggle through our troubles, seeking to take the wisest course left to us. There are no shortcuts around the problems which result from not making wise decisions.