For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    It is natural for us to experience pleasure when others suffer, even when those others have acted against us or are our enemies. However, it is a mistake, and a sin, to take joy in their misfortune. God does not deal out punishment on evildoers because He enjoys seeing them suffer. He does so out of the desire to see them turn from their sin. We, likewise, should desire to see our enemies and those who have harmed us turn to God more than we desire to see them suffer.

    In a way this psalm seems to be counter to the proverb we just read. The psalmist seems to be rejoicing in the fact that God will bring judgement against the wicked, and indeed he is. However, the psalmist is not rejoicing in the suffering of the wicked, rather he is rejoicing that God will bring justice. Let us rejoice in the knowledge that God will not allow the wicked to prosper indefinitely. He will break their power to cause others to suffer and strengthen the ability of the godly to alleviate suffering. Let us praise God and use the strength He gives us to help those who are suffering.

    Paul makes it a point in his letter to beg two women who had worked with him to spread the Gospel to resolve their differences. This is a message to us if we are at odds with any of our fellow believers. Let us seek to put aside our differences and work together to further the Kingdom of God. I think that what follows is in part advice for how we can overcome our disagreements. We should put aside worry and pray. If something causes us to worry, rather than let it fill our minds with worry, let us pray about it. Our prayers should not just be about what is worrying us. They should be about everything. Let us tell God in prayer what we need and thank Him for what He has done. If we follow that advice carefully, we will experience God’s peace. He will take our worries from us.
    Paul then gives us some of the most important advice about how we can most successfully serve God and avoid sin (and perhaps further advice for avoiding worry). He tells us to fix our thoughts, to focus on, what is true, honorable, right,, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and worthy of praise. If our mind is full of such things, we will not have time to be worrying about what might go wrong. In addition, while we are thinking about such things, we will not be thinking about sinful things, nor will we be tempted to do that which is wrong. If we fill our thoughts with those things and our time with doing those things, we will not have time to give in to our sinful desires (easier said than done).

    God knew us before we were born. He had already decided what He had planned for us before we were conceived. Knowing this is both comforting and frightening at the same time. God has put His words in our mouths and sent us to the place we are to be. The situations we find ourselves in did not come about by accident. God put us there to accomplish His purposes. He has given us words to speak to people. Some people we are to build up and help grow. Others need to be uprooted and torn down. Let us not be afraid to speak the words which the Spirit gives us just because they are not “nice” (although, let us be careful that when we speak words which are not nice that they are words which come from the Spirit and not from ourselves).
    This passage goes on to speak against society as a whole. God brought the people into a bountiful land. Yet, instead of seeking God and praising Him, they defiled the land. Rather than serve the Living God they chose to seek out and worship idols of various sorts. Time and again God called them back to Him. The people responded for a time, but soon began worshiping those idols again. All the while claiming to worship God, while in reality they were serving greed and their own pleasure rather than God.

     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.

     Jeremiah tells us that when God called him, his response was that he was too young. God told him not to say that he was too young because God was sending him. God said that he must go wherever He sent him. When God sends us, we must go. There is no, “I am too young,” “I am too old,” “I am too…”. God knows who and what we are when He calls us. Chances are good that whatever it is we think disqualifies us from going where God is sending us, speaking what God is telling us to say, is why God chose us in the first place. God told Jeremiah, “I have put my words in your mouth.” This is very similar to what Jesus told His disciples when He sent them out to preach. He told them not to worry about what they would say because the Spirit would speak through them. I pray that I will have the faith to allow God’s Spirit to speak through my mouth.
     The first prophecy which God gives Jeremiah is to confront the people with their choice to turn from Him to things which cannot do what He can do. One of the metaphors used struck me as very telling. He said that the people turned away from a fountain of living water and instead dug their own cistern, one with cracked walls that cannot hold water. There are two aspects to this metaphor. The first is that turning from God to something else is like turning from a fresh mountain spring to a cistern. I have drunk water from a mountain spring. The taste is wonderful and refreshing. I have also tasted water from a cistern. The taste is stale and somewhat muddy (that’s not quite the right way to describe it, but I am not sure how else to do so). But in this case, these people have turned from a fresh mountain spring, not just to a cistern, but to one that won’t hold water. So, the question is, what cracked cistern am I tempted to turn to rather than getting refreshing water from the living fountain which is God?

     The first thing I saw in this passage was the importance of putting aside our personal feuds in order to serve the Lord. As important as that is helping our fellow believers to resolve their conflicts. We must not let personal animosity divide us, nor let it interfere with doing the Lord’s work.
     Paul tells us how to avoid getting into feuds with our fellow believers. If we spend our time rejoicing in the Lord, we will not have time to be fighting with one another. And how do we manage to rejoice in the Lord all the time? By not worrying about anything. How do we keep from worrying? By praying in every situation we find ourselves in. In particular, by going to God with humility and thanksgiving with petitions and requests for everything that happens in or lives. If we do this, we will find our hearts and minds filled with God’s peace, a peace and calmness which will baffle everyone we meet.
     Then Paul comes at it from a different direction and tells us that we should limit ourselves to thinking about only certain classes of things. Here is the list of things we should limit our thoughts to: whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable (and here he even defines what is admirable by telling us that it is things which are excellent or praiseworthy). Those are the things which we should think about. If we limit ourselves to thinking about only about these aspects of our fellow believers, we will find that we do not have anything to fight about.

     I will thank God because He is always near at hand. I will praise His name for all He has done. I will warn the proud not to boast of their accomplishments. Those accomplishments are a gift from God. I will warn the wicked not to defy God, because their success is according to His will and when the time is right He will judge them for their actions. The wicked will not be able to escape the consequences of their actions indefinitely. The time will come when they will be forced to experience the full weight of God’s displeasure.
     I will proclaim God’s wondrous power and the great things He has done for me.

     This proverb warns us against epicaricacy (the actual English word for schadenfreude). It is wrong to take pleasure in other’s misfortune, even when they have done us wrong in the past. To some degree, epicaricacy is a form of envy. We feel pleasure in other’s misfortune because we envy them. We should not envy the wicked because they will face God’s judgment (and we should not envy the righteous because they are using their good fortune to help others).