Let us seek after understanding and insight as if they were valuable treasures, because they are. If you truly seek those two things you will learn to fear the Lord and gain knowledge about God. Knowledge of God and fear of the Lord are an integral part of understanding and insight. All too many people seek to find understanding and insight apart from God and reject any that involve Him.
Let us turn to God for protection, remembering that we will have to face the consequences of our actions. If we have sinned those consequences will be negative. If we do not repent of our sins, it will go even worse for us. It is only when we repent of our sins and turn to God that He will offer us protection from those out to destroy us.
The first two teachings in this passage can be summed up by saying, “Do not put on a show about being righteous.” We should not give to charity in order to be recognized for it. We should not do good deeds in order for others to say how good we are. In the same way, we should not fast so as to attract attention and receive recognition for how righteous we are. Rather, we should do our best to keep others from being aware of our good deeds and self-sacrifice. Whether others see it or not, God knows what we do and will reward us accordingly. There is a limit to how stringently we should follow this instruction, because there is value in being a good example as well.
Jesus then warns us against valuing and accumulating material wealth. If we put our efforts into acquiring wealth, we will make wealth the center of our universe. If we put our efforts into acquiring knowledge, we will make knowledge the center of our universe. If we put our effort into serving the Lord, the Lord will become the center of our universe.
We have another story where it would be easy to choose one or another of the people as victims of circumstance. We could blame Sarai for mistreating Hagar. We could blame Abram for not controlling the situation. We could blame Hagar for being contemptuous of Sarai. It is quite clear that all of the individuals in this story bear some of the blame for how it turned out. After Ishmael was born, Abram asked God to apply His promises to Ishmael. God responded that Ishmael would be blessed, but Sarai (renamed Sarah at this point) would bear Abram a son. It would be through Sarah’s son that God’s promises to Abram would be fulfilled.
This passage reminds us of the importance of being patient and waiting for God to carry out His promises. When we try to make things work out our way, we generate many problems we could have avoided by waiting for God to show us His plan.
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.
When Sarai was about 75 years old, she gave up all hope of giving Abram a son. So, she convinced him to have sexual relations with her maid servant Hagar. Hagar became pregnant. After some trials and difficulties, Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. This entire incident illustrates our human tendency to try to accomplish things on our own rather than wait for God to work it out according to His plan.
When Abram was 99 years old, God appeared to him once more. God told him that He would make a covenant with him. As part of that covenant God promised to make Abram the father of many nations and changed his name to Abraham. In addition God promised to be the God of Abraham’s descendants and give them possession of the land of Canaan. In response, Abram and his male descendants must be circumcised as a sign of the covenant. God changed Sarai’s name to Sarah. Then He told Abraham that He would bless Sarah and she would give Abraham a son.
Abraham had trouble believing that he would have a son when he was 100 years old or that Sarah could bear a child at 90. The idea caused Abraham to laugh to himself in disbelief. So, Abraham asked God to fulfill His promises through Ishmael. God responded that no, Sarah would bear Abraham a son. Abraham was to name this son Isaac, which means “he laughs”. God promised to bless Ishmael, but His covenant with Abraham would be fulfilled through Isaac. When God departed, Abraham gathered all of the men of his household and they were all circumcised on that day according to the covenant which God had made with him.
This passage shows us that God does things that we find hard to believe, things that make us laugh when someone suggests that they will happen. Nevertheless, God calls us to believe him. Abraham had trouble believing that what God was promising would happen, yet he acted in faith and followed God’s commands. I desire to do the same when God gives me direction.
Jesus tells us not to do our good deeds in order to receive acclamation from other people. Nor should we do things in order to cause others to think we are religious people. When we pray our purpose should not be to impress other people with our righteousness, but rather to communicate with God. Further when we pray Jesus tells us not to babble and talk on and on, repeating ourselves. God knows what we need. Jesus then gives us an example of how we should pray. The prayer starts with acknowledging God’s greatness and asking for His will to be done, a recognition that what our wishes are subordinate to God’s will. Then the prayer asks God to meet our basic needs. The next clause asks God to forgive us our sins in the same way and to the same degree with which we forgive others. Finally, the prayer asks God to keep us from falling into temptation and to deliver us from evil. When He is finished giving the prayer, Jesus points out to those listening that if we forgive those who sin against us, God will forgive us. But if we do not forgive those who sin against us, God will not forgive us our sins.
The passage concludes with Jesus telling us that material wealth is temporary. He tells us that we will be better off if we put our focus on things with spiritual value, things which will never lose their value. If we focus on material wealth, our hearts and minds will be focused on this world. If we put our focus on spiritual wealth, our hearts and minds will be focused on God and doing His will. We have to choose, one or the other. No one can serve both God and money (or anything else). If we do not choose, we will find ourselves hating one and loving the other, or vice versa. Notice, that Jesus is telling us that it is not a good thing for us to hate money any more than it is a good thing for us to love money. Jesus does not teach us to despise money, nor to hate it. He teaches us that we must not worship it, we must not make it the center of our lives.
The psalmist turns to God for rescue from his enemies. He calls on God to protect him from those who pursue him, but only to the extent to which their anger against him is unjustified. This psalm is an important lesson for us, we can count on God to protect us from evil and from the troubles which beset us. However, we must acknowledge our sins and repent of them. God will not rescue us from the consequences of our sins. If we have sinned, we have to be willing to accept the consequences. If we repent and turn from our sins, God will forgive us and provide us with relief going forward. If on the other hand we continue in our sins, we will continue to experience the escalating consequences of those sins until we face utter destruction. God is just and will allow the traps the wicked set for others to rebound upon them and bring them destruction.
If we want to be successful servants of God we need to seek out wisdom and knowledge, understanding and insight. If we seek wisdom and insight with all of our being, we will come to a true understanding and fear of God. Anyone who seeks wisdom and understanding with all of their being will come to fear the Lord and gain a deep knowledge of 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. 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.
Sarai realized that she was getting old and had been unable to give Abram a son. In order to give him a son, Sarai encouraged Abram to take her servant Hagar as his wife. Abram did as Sarai suggested and Hagar became pregnant. When Hagar realized that she was pregnant, she began to treat Sarai with contempt. Sarai went to Abram and demanded that he do something about it. Abram responded that Hagar was Sarai’s servant and Sarai should do to Hagar whatever she thought necessary. Sarai treated Hagar so harshly that Hagar ran away. An angel of God came to Hagar as she was by a spring near the desert and told her to return to Sarai and to submit to her. The angel told Hagar that she would have a son and that her son would have many descendants, but that he would live in hostility to all of his relatives. So Hagar returned and bore Abram a son who Abram named Ishmael.
We have two lessons here (perhaps three). The first is that Sarai knew that Abram wanted a son that she had been unable to bear. She tried to solve the problem by giving him her servant as his second wife. Rather than being satisfied with her marriage and trusting in God to work things out for the best, she tried to make her husband happy by allowing him to have another woman as wife. Then we have the second mistake. This one was by Hagar. Because she was able to get pregnant and Sarai had never been able to do so, she thought her position had become elevated so that she could mistreat Sarai. Hagar thought that she now had an in with Abram over his wife of many years. It turns out she was wrong, Abram loved Sarai very much and wanted her to be happy. But this is where we see what is perhaps the third lesson here. Abram failing to deal with things as he ought to have. When Sarai offered him Hagar, he should have told her no, she (Sarai) was enough for him even if she did not give him a son. Then he compounded this by telling Sarai to deal with the problem of Hagar rather than dealing with it himself.
When Abram was 99 years old, God appeared to him again and told him that He, God, would give him, Abram, countless descendants. Further God made a covenant with Abram that He would give Abram’s descendants the land of Canaan and it would be their possession forever. On the other side of the covenant, Abram and his male descendants obligation in the covenant is to be circumcised. God then changes Abram’s and Sarai’s name. Abram becomes Abraham. Sarai becomes Sarah. God then tells Abraham that Sarah will give him a son. Abraham thinking of his, and Sarah’s advanced age (he was almost 100, Sarah was almost 90) asked God to grant the blessing through Ishmael. God replied that he would bless Ishmael and make him the father of a great nation, but that the covenant would be through a son to be born to Sarah, whom Abraham was to name Isaac. Abraham followed through on the covenant by taking Ishmael and all of the men of his household and having them all circumcised.
An unspecified time after this (although it could not have been long), Abraham saw sitting in the entrance to his tent when he saw three men standing nearby. He immediately went to them and offered them hospitality (food and refreshment from their journey). When the food was prepared, Abraham served it to the men. While they were eating, the men asked Abraham where his wife Sarah was. Abraham told him that she was inside the tent. One of the men replied that he would return about that time next year and by then Sarah would have a son. Sarah was eavesdropping (not hard to do when all you have between you and the conversation is a tent wall) and laughed silently to herself, thinking that there was no way a woman of her advanced age could have a child to a man as old as Abraham. Then the Lord asked Abraham why Sarah laughed did the two of them not believe that with God anything is possible.
Both Abraham and Sarah believed that their days of being productive were over. It was time to relax, rest on their laurels and live out their days. God responded that no, all things were possible for Him and that if He decided that a 100-year-old man with a 90-year-old wife were the people for the responsibility of raising a child to walk in His paths, then that would come to pass. We are never too old (nor too young) to accomplish the tasks to which God calls us. If God is calling you to something, do not think that the time is past for you to do whatever it is, even if it is something that is normally the province of the young.
Jesus continued His Sermon on the Mount by talking about doing things to look righteous. When we give to those in need, we should do it in order to help them, not to make ourselves look good. In fact, in order to keep our motivations honest, we should not tell anyone what we are doing. The same is true of prayer and fasting. We should pray and fast in order to become closer to God. In order to prevent ourselves from doing acts of righteousness for the purpose of appearing righteous, we should perform those acts privately. Jesus is not teaching that we should hide the fact that we fast and pray, rather we should avoid being ostentatious about it. A good example is found in Daniel. Daniel went into his upstairs room and prayed three times a day. Everybody knew he did it, but he did not do it out in the public square to make sure that everyone knew how righteous he was. We should behave the same way. Don’t act righteous, be righteous.
Jesus goes on to say that rather than attempting to gather material possessions we should serve God and acquire spiritual capital. If we focus our attention on acquiring material possessions we will make the material world the focus of our lives. If, on the other hand, we make pleasing God the focus of our attention we will receive the fulfillment of acquiring eternal riches. We cannot serve both God and the material world. We have to choose where we will seek to focus our attention. I constantly struggle with turning my focus away from physical desires and pleasures and turning it to doing the will of God.
Like the psalmist I will turn to the Lord for protection. So many of the problems in this world would be solved if more of us would be willing to trust God to provide our protection. Of course, this means be willing to recognize that sometimes we will suffer consequences for our bad decisions, or that we have to give up things we want in order to serve God. What we fail to recognize is that we will suffer the negative consequences of our bad decisions, when we attempt to avoid those consequences we only make matters worse. God is just and I will praise His name. I will turn from my sins and take the punishment He metes out for my past failures. I will throw myself on His mercy and rely on His love to avoid the suffering that I surely deserve.
The last two days we have read of the consequences of ignoring common sense. Today the writer advises us to go beyond common sense and seek for wisdom and understanding. Let us strive to expand our knowledge and understanding so that we know what to do in order to please God. All too often I settle for what comes easy to me, rather than seeking even greater knowledge and understanding.
