For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    Let us never forget the teachings we find in the Bible. If we practice loyalty and kindness in all of our dealings we will earn favor with both God and man. The next stanza of this proverb is most important:

    I beg of God that He save me from the troubles that I will face. I beg this of God so that I can praise Him. The reason I wish to be rescued is so that I can continue to do His will. The wicked seek only to accomplish their own will and will be trapped by the troubles their actions bring them. Those who seek only to do as God wishes will be rescued by God. Let us praise Him for all He has done.

    Today’s passage is three stories of Jesus healing people. Later in the Gospels Jesus tells His disciples (and through them us) that they will perform the same sorts of miracles He did and more. Yet, I do not see healing happening very often in the Church today. I do not know why, but I am convinced that our failure to see more miraculous healing says something is wrong in the Church today. I am convinced that part of the problem is that we do not really expect to see miraculous healing. Another part of it is our failure to discern the Holy Spirit’s leading. This is an area I struggle with.

    There are a lot of things in this passage about trusting God and how God will provide us guidance. However, what struck me today was Abraham’s vehement insistence that Isaac not return to the land of Abraham’s ancestors. There are hints throughout the story of Genesis that Abraham came from a community which shared worshiped God, but there are also suggestions that there was something “wrong” with that community.
    We have Abraham sending his servant to his relatives back where he came from to get a wife for his son from among his relatives. This suggests that there is something about them that makes them a better match for Isaac than the local people (this theme is brought up again with Jacob and Esau getting married). However, there is something about them that leads Abraham to not want his son to live among them. I am not sure what this means for us, but it is something I think is worth some thought.

For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    It is wisdom that will keep you from entering into a sexual relationship with an immoral man or woman. If they were willing to break their promises to former promises, what makes you think they will keep their word to you? That lifestyle leads to loneliness and death. Instead of following after the immoral, follow the example of the righteous. It is the righteous who will live a good life, dying surrounded by those who love them.

    I will sing praises to the Lord and tell anyone who will listen about the marvelous things He has done. God will shelter the oppressed and offer refuge when trouble comes. Whatever troubles you face, God will offer you a refuge and solace for your sorrow. This psalm words it so well. I cannot do it justice.

    Jesus tells us that we can identify false prophets by their fruits. This passage is often used to say that we should judge people by their actions, not by their words. While I agree that we should judge people more by their actions than their words, that is not what I see Jesus as saying here. I believe that Jesus is telling us that we should judge people, especially those who preach and teach, by the results they produce rather than the intentions they claim. And when it comes to judging a preacher, this is not just a matter of judging the results of their actions, but the results of the actions of those they acknowledge as their disciples. If someone claims to preach peace, but numbers from among their followers keep turning to violence, we can judge that they are not really teaching peace (at least, not the way most people define peace).

    We know that Abraham was a man of great faith. Yet on two occasions, he was afraid that the local ruler would kill him so as to take his wife Sarah. This passage recounts the second of those occasions, when Sarah was 90 years old. Rather than trust in God’s protection, Abraham told the partial truth, that Sarah was his sister (actually, she was his half-sister). As a result, the local ruler, Abimelech took Sarah to be one of his wives. Despite Abraham’s lack of faith in this instance, God intervened to return Sarah to him completely unharmed. This is a reminder to us that everyone has shortcomings, even Abraham did. Yet, God will act on behalf of those who love Him and seek to serve Him.

     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, or more. in advance. My work schedule has recently changed, meaning that I may not have time every day to complete these. As a result, I am trying to get several days ahead. I hope this does not negatively impact the quality of these posts (if that is possible). If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them.

     After the death of Sarah, Abraham sent his most trusted servant to find a wife for Isaac among the people of his father who still lived in Haran (or nearby). The servant followed Abraham’s instructions. What Abraham’s servant did when he arrived at his destination is a model for us to follow when we are attempting to follow God’s guidance. He asked God for a sign, but the sign was not arbitrary. The sign he asked for was one which would reflect the character of the person who carried it out.
     The servant believed that God had chosen a woman in the town he had just arrived in to be Isaac’s wife, but he did not know who she was, nor did he have any good ideas as to how to find her. He did however know a few things about her. He knew she would be a relative of Abraham, but he did not know how to find Abraham’s relatives in this town. He knew she would be courteous and hospitable to strangers, partly because he knew that was what God (and Abraham) would want in a wife for Isaac, and partly because he knew that Abraham’s relatives would raise their daughter to be that way (that was at least part of the reason Abraham wanted Isaac to marry a woman from his father’s people).
     Now, the servant had a plan that would tell him if a woman met the second criteria, but he had no way to know if she met the first. So he asked God that the first woman he met who met his test be one who met the first. Abraham’s servant laid out his “fleece” (it is kind of funny to call it that, since Gideon had not yet been born at the time of this story). And the first woman he approached did as he had hoped. She not only eagerly offered him water when he requested a drink, as he was drinking she drew more water in order to water his thirsty camels. When she did this, he acted on faith and presented her gifts, which in light of his next question, she would have interpreted, correctly, as “courting” gifts (that he was trying to convince her to marry, and her family to allow her to marry, someone he was representing). When he asked her whose daughter she was, she told him that the daughter of Bethuel and the granddaughter of Nahor.
     Abraham’s servant made a request of God for a sign. When he got the sign, he acted. He did not fail to follow up and confirm that the sign was correct, but he also did not wait until he had incontrovertible proof before he began to take action. God makes His intentions clear to us if we are paying attention.

     This passage contains two stories of Jesus healing people that have some similarities. Both stories demonstrate great faith on the part of those requesting Jesus to heal. The first man is a leper who tells Jesus, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Notice the man did not say, “you can heal me.” He said, “you can make me clean.” He recognized that he needed more than just healing, although he needed that as well. He needed to be made clean. We, also, need to be healed and made clean. Every single one of us is struggling with something of which we need to be both healed and cleaned (except for a few who have already be healed and cleaned by Christ). Jesus’ answer is quite instructive, as well. He simply said, “I am willing. Be clean.” He then instructed the man to follow God’s commands for demonstrating that he had been cleaned. If we are willing to go forward according to God’s will, Jesus is willing to heal us and cleanse us. Actually, Jesus is willing even if we are not, the problem being that if we do not go forward according to God’s will, we will not stay clean and healthy.
     The next story is that of a Roman soldier, an officer. This man came to Jesus on behalf of his servant, who was paralyzed and suffering. When the man approached Jesus, Jesus said that He would come at once. The Roman officer answered that he was unworthy to have Jesus come to his home and there was no need for Jesus to do so. He knew that if Jesus wished to heal his servant, He could do it from where He was. The Roman officer understood that Jesus had authority over disease. He knew that Jesus did not heal with potions or medicines and neither did Jesus heal by reaching out and comforting the mind of those who were suffering, although those are both fine ways of bringing about healing. Jesus healed by using the power of He who had formed the first man out of the dust of the earth. Do we have the faith to believe that God can and will heal us, or our loved ones, without needing to make use of human hands? This is not to take away from those who work to heal those who are sick in the world around us. I do believe that some of us are called to that. But we are all called to recognize that God does not need that in order to heal our broken world.

     I will call upon the Lord to have mercy upon me for I know that the wicked will be caught in the trap which they set for themselves. It may seem that the needy are being ignored and the poor crushed, but God will stand by them and bring justice to their oppressors.

     The proverb writer tells us to trust in God and warns us not to rely on our own understanding. If we seek to do God’s will, He will show us the path to take. If we follow that path we will find favor with God and with people.

     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, or more. in advance. My work schedule has recently changed, meaning that I may not have time every day to complete these. As a result, I am trying to get several days ahead. I hope this does not negatively impact the quality of these posts (if that is possible). If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them.

     We are told again and again throughout the Bible that Abraham was a man of faith and a man of God. Yet here in this passage (and in others) we see how his faith and his actions fell short of what we should admire. People often forget that just because Abraham and others are held up in the Bible as persons to be emulated, that does not mean that the Bible is telling us that everything they did was good. Rather, we are to recognize that as flawed as they were, they still strove to serve God. In this passage, Abraham deceived Abimelech about his wife Sarah, telling him that she was his sister and leaving out that she was his wife. Later in the passage, Abraham turns out Hagar and his son, Ishmael, to appease Sarah, who was angry over Ishmael’s attitude towards Isaac. In both cases, God acted to prevent Abraham’s actions from causing harm to others.
     Up until here, God has repeatedly told Abraham that His various promises to Abraham will be fulfilled through Isaac and his descendants. In this passage, Abraham feels led by God to take Isaac and offer him as a burnt sacrifice to God. Offering a son as a burnt sacrifice was a common practice among the people who lived in the area where Abraham was now dwelling. They would have thought that if Abraham was truly as devoted to his God as he claimed, he would offer up his son as a burnt offering. When Abraham arrived at the mountain where he felt such a sacrifice should be made, he built an altar and prepared the wood of the sacrifice. As he was about to sacrifice Isaac, he became aware of a ram caught by its horns in the thicket nearby. He offered that ram instead of Isaac.
     I am downplaying the moments when the account mentions God speaking directly to Abraham because I think there are lessons for us to learn from reading the passage in this manner (I am not saying that there are not lessons to be learned from paying close attention to God’s direct words to Abraham, just that another lesson can be more readily seen when we pay less attention to them). I see this passage as illustrating, for all time, that God does not desire human sacrifice. The passage also demonstrates Abraham’s willingness to surrender the thing which was most valuable to him, his son Isaac, if that was what God required of him.

     Jesus continues His sermon by warning us against false prophets, against those who claim to speak in the name of God and goodness but are really speaking for their own interests. He tells us that we can recognize them by looking at the results of their actions. We are not to judge people on the basis of what they claim is their motivation, rather we are to judge people on their results, on their fruit. You can claim that something is a grape vine, but if it does not produce grapes and makes me itch when I touch the leaves, I will know that it is poison ivy. You can claim that something is a thistle, but if it produces wine-berries (similar in appearance to raspberries), I will know that it is a good plant. In the same way, someone can claim to want to help the poor, but if their actions only enrich themselves, or their allies, while making life harder for the poor, I will know that they are not working to help the poor. Do not judge people by what they claim about themselves, nor by what others claim about them, judge them by the results of their actions.
     Jesus continues by telling us that it is not enough to claim that we are acting in His name. We must actually do the things which God directs us to do. If we want to build something which will last for eternity, it is not enough to listen to Jesus’ teaching, we need to also put it into practice. You can put up a quite beautiful appearance by parroting Jesus’ teaching and putting on a facade of righteousness, but when trouble arises, your life will collapse around you.

     I will praise the Lord with my whole heart. If you want to be filled with joy, tell others about the marvelous things which God has done. He rules the world and judges everyone with justice. He avenges murder and aids the helpless. He will take action in response to the cries of the suffering.

     Wisdom will save you from the immoral and the promiscuous. Sexual immorality will lead to death and destruction. It will undermine any other good which you may have accomplished. Stay away from those who practice it. Instead follow the example of the godly and walk in the path of righteousness. Such a course will lead to a long and productive life.