For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    Everyone wants to be friends with the rich, but everyone looks down on the poor. There are those who think that if only the poor would apply themselves they would no longer be poor. But far worse are those who think the poor are like children who need to be looked after and taken care of by their betters. It is a sin to despise your neighbor (and remember who Jesus says your neighbor is). This translation says that those who help the poor will be blessed. I prefer the NIV for that part. There it says that those who are kind to the needy are blessed. The difference being that one can “help the poor” in many ways, but being kind requires direct interaction and involves responding to the specific needs/wants of a specific individual.

    This psalm continues the theme of letting all that I am praise the Lord. This psalm speaks of God’s grandeur and of how all of His creation is wonderfully made. I will not try to summarize nor comment on it here. This psalm does too good and beautiful of a job for that. Please read it for yourself. The only thing I will add is that the psalmist is telling us how God set the entire world up as a feedback system to maintain itself and correct for things getting out of balance.

    We are all the products of what has happened to us in the past. How are parents treated us. What we learned from those around us, often lessons which no one intended to teach us. Obviously the largest influence on who we are as people is our parents, whether that is through the way they raised us, or through their abdication of that responsibility to others. However, there are other influences as well, our teachers in school, the friends and acquaintances we have made and met over the years, events going on in the world around us. All of these things shape us, both for good and for bad, starting at our birth. Their were people and events which occurred before we have any memory which have shaped who we are today.
    In today’s passage, Jesus tells us that we must be born again. What He is telling us is that we must allow the Holy Spirit to erase those influences. In order to enter into the Kingdom of God, we must be willing to let go of the lessons we have learned over our life time. We must learn new lessons and be shaped into new people. The Holy Spirit will undo the events of the past to transform us, if we allow it to happen. We need to let go of the negative things which happened to us in the past. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to transform us so that we can live as if those things never happened.

    The lesson of this passage is summed up by verse 6, “all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.” Micah stole from his own mother and returned the money to her to avoid her curse. She took the returned money and commissioned an idol. Micah set up a shrine for the idol and installed one of his sons as a priest. Then, he convinced a Levite to take over as priest in his shrine. Micah was convinced that because he had a Levite as priest in his shrine that God would bless him. It never entered his head to consider that neither he, nor his priest, were worshiping God. He did what he thought was right.
    One day, some members of the tribe of Dan came upon Micah and met his priest. They recognized that the priest was a Levite and questioned him about what he was doing there. After completing their scouting mission, they came to Micah’s house with a large number of warriors and stole the idols and implements from Micah’s shrine. When the Levite confronted them, they offered him a better position with them than with Micah. He accepted and they went on their way. When Micah came after them to recover his stolen property, they made it clear that they had sufficient force to prevent him from taking back what was his. They did what they thought was right. They believed that God would bless them because they had the idols which Micah had made and the Levite to act as their priest.
    How often do we check our actions against what God has said in Scripture, or with our fellow believers? Certainly as we look at society around us we can see how many people do what is right in their own eyes. And in many cases, we can see how it is wrong, but what about us? Do we do what is right in our own eyes? Or what is right in God’s eyes?

For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    I always read this proverb as saying that no one wants to be friends with the poor, but everyone wants to be friends with the wealthy. The second verse today is an important follow up. It tells us that it is a sin to despise our neighbors, even if they are poor. Blessings come to those who are kind to the poor and help the needy.

    If we look at the world around us, we will discover that God is truly great. I cannot hope to improve on the psalmist’s words here. I read this psalm and it reminds me both of the beauty and power of nature, which God created. I will praise the Lord.

    When Nicodemus came to Jesus, he had trouble understanding what Jesus was saying to him. We received physical life from our mothers, but the only way to receive spiritual life is for the Holy Spirit to enter into us. We cannot explain how it works, that is why we see some sinners struck down like Saul on the road to Damascus, while others continue without such intervention. Jesus goes on to discuss how those who do right do not attempt to hide what they are doing from others, instead they choose to do their work in the open and full light of day where anyone can see that they are doing what is right. On the other hand, those who do evil seek to hide in the shadows and avoid the light so that others cannot see what they are doing. Do I seek light to do my work, or do I try to hide my actions from others? Am I afraid to let others see what I am doing?

    This story takes place a long time after Joshua, yet the tribe of Dan had not yet settled into the area allotted to them. It starts out by telling us about a man named Micah who lived in the hill country of Ephraim, although the passage does not tell us whether or not he belonged to the tribe of Ephraim. Micah stole a large number of coins from his mother. When she cursed the person who had stolen the money he returned it to her. She took the money and had an idol made for her son (I truly do not understand her motivation here). Micah set the idol up in his own house and began to worship it, going so far as to recruit a member of the tribe of Levi to be his priest. Micah was sure that now that he had his own god with a Levite priest that he would be blessed. After a short time, a group of men from Dan came and took the idol from him, convincing the Levite to go with them and be their priest. Micah was devastated by his loss.
    Micah experienced what everyone who gives their allegiance to something other than the true God. That something will be taken from them and they will be left with nothing. Is there something I am setting up in place of God?