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. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them. I hope that the Spirit is moving in others through these posts as the Spirit has definitely been convicting me.

     This passage starts off by telling the people of Israel that animals given to the Lord as sacrifices must be without defect or mutilation (which specifically included castration in this case). That which we offer to the Lord must be from our best, not from our cast-offs. Then the passage gives the holy festivals the people are to celebrate. The first of these is the Sabbath, which is a day of rest and worship on the seventh day of each week. Then there are the once a year festivals. There is Passover, which is a seven day celebration. The first and seventh days of Passover are days dedicated to assembling to worship God and honor His name. They were, however, to offer sacrifices on the other five days.
     There are two harvest festivals. The first is the offering of first fruits. They were to present an offering of the very first items harvested each year. No grain grown that year was to be consumed until after they had presented the offering of the first grain harvested each year. At the end of the harvest they were to present an offering celebrating the entire harvest. The date of these two festivals will vary from year to year as the first one is to occur when each individual harvests the first grain from his fields and the second of these two is to occur fifty days later. As I read this passage these festivals would occur on different dates for different people, since the date of first harvest varies from location to location (even such things as being on opposite sides of a hill can effect when the grain is first ready for harvest).
     Finally there are three festivals that are to occur in the seventh month of the calendar they used. The first is a day of assembly on the first day of the seventh month, when the people are to present a food offering. The second is the Day of Atonement on the tenth day of the seventh month (earlier the rites for the Day of Atonement had been described). Finally is the Festival of Shelters which is to begin on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. They were to start it with a day of assembly on which they were to do no regular work. During the following week, they people were to live in temporary shelters offering food offerings to God each day. This celebration ended with a day of assembly on the twenty-second day of the month (the eighth day of the festival) where the people were also to do no regular work. They were to conduct these festivals to remind them of the things that God had done for them as a people.

     Jesus left the region He was in at the end of yesterday’s passage and traveled through Galilee with His disciples. He kept a low profile so that He could have time with His disciples teaching them. In that time He told them again that He would be killed and after three days rise from the dead, but the disciples did not understand what He meant and were afraid to ask Him. I am guessing that they thought He was telling some kind of parable and were afraid that if they asked Him what it meant He would berate them for their lack of understanding.
     Meanwhile they were arguing amongst themselves which one of them was the greatest of His disciples. When they got to where they were going Jesus asked them what they were arguing about, but they were embarrassed to tell Him. Jesus proceeded to tell them that in order to be the greatest, one must be the servant of others. He brought a young child into their midst and told them that anyone who welcomes a child in His name welcomes Him.
     John interjects here that they saw someone driving out demons in Jesus’ name. They stopped him since he was not one of Jesus’ disciples. Jesus told them that they should not have stopped him, since no one who does miracles in His name could turn around and bad mouth Him. Jesus told them that anyone who was not against us is for us (which is interesting since elsewhere He tells them that anyone who is not for Him is against Him). Anyone who gives even so simple a thing as a cup of water to them in Jesus’ name because they are Jesus’ disciples will receive a reward from God.
     Jesus then returns to His metaphor of the child-like believer (although I believe it is more than just a metaphor). He tells them that anyone who causes one of these little ones who believe in Him to stumble would be better off dying a horrific death. Jesus then goes on to tell His disciples (and us) that we should do everything in our power to avoid those things which cause us to sin, even to the point of self mutilation. We should avoid things that cause us to sin, even if they otherwise bring us benefit. If Jesus tells us that we should pluck out our eyes to avoid sin, doesn’t that mean that we should avoid television if it causes us to sin? On the other hand, if we avoid TV because it causes us to sin we should not judge others, perhaps the temptations that TV presents do not cause them to sin (personally, I do not watch TV because I would rather do other things rather than because of the temptation it presents).
     Jesus left that area and traveled to Judea where He taught the crowds which gathered. Some Pharisees came to Him and asked Him about divorce (divorce was a subject of much debate among the rabbinical schools of the day). Jesus asked them what Moses commanded on the subject (the way Jesus asked the question and the way they answered indicated which side of the debate His questioners adhered to). Jesus went beyond either side in the debate (one side held that a man could divorce his wife for even very trivial reasons, the other side held that a man could divorce his wife solely for marital infidelity). Jesus told them that divorce always went against the will of God (when Matthew recounts this same discussion he says that Jesus offered a slight caveat to His teaching against divorce). There are times when it is not a sin for a Christian to get a divorce, but a Christian should never initiate a divorce (some divorces are initiated before the legal proceedings begin).

     I am going to try something difficult that I’m not sure I have enough space and time to do correctly. I am going to talk about how this psalm could be applied to the U.S. and Canada. When those Europeans who settled the majority of lands that became the U.S. and Canada arrived in those lands they found them largely depopulated. It was as if God had cleared a space for those people to settle. Despite what we have been told, they did not succeed in displacing those who lived there before them because of superior technology. They did so because the populations of those peoples had been devastated by disease (disease that spread from the lands south of these that had been conquered by the Spanish previously). Some of those arriving settlers remembered that God’s providence had provided for their well-being (even if they were unaware of the method involved) and acted according to His will (look at William Penn’s interaction with the Native Americans). Unfortunately, all too many ignored God’s role in providing them with a place to flourish and took pride in driving the native peoples from the land. Others took God’s action as a justification to mistreat and drive the native peoples out.
     My point is that the European settlers did not conquer the lands that are now the U.S. and Canada because of their military strength, but because the native populations had been decimated before their arrival. I will not attempt to defend the evil that many of them committed in order to secure control those lands, but I will praise God for providing them with a place that they could have settled without resorting to that evil. Every analysis I have seen suggests that the areas that are now the U.S. and Canada would likely not have been conquerable by the arriving Europeans if not for the disease that preceded their arrival. As Christians we need to both praise God for His wondrous deeds in providing a place for those early settlers to live and acknowledge the evil they committed once they arrived. How much greater might these two countries have been had the people who founded them been more faithful to God?

     I looked at a couple of different translations of today’s proverb and find two different (but not contradictory) understandings of the meaning. The first says that if you talk too much it will inevitably lead you to commit sin. The second says that no matter how much you talk you cannot make your sins be anything but sin. No matter which way you look at the first part of the proverb, the second part advises that it is prudent to hold your tongue and not speak more than you need to. That is advice that I have difficulty following. I like to talk.