For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    This proverb tells us that the godly behave with integrity. Integrity means more than being honest and truthful. It means being internally consistent. It means that if you say it is wrong to hunt animals in order to harvest ivory, you do not buy ivory or things made with ivory. True integrity means that if you say it is wrong to have sex outside of marriage, you do not fantasize about sex outside of marriage. Parents who live such a life are leaving their children a legacy of inestimable value.

    This is the beginning of the psalm which Jesus referenced while He hung on the cross, just before He died. We can look at it to see how it applied to Jesus as He died. I have done that in the past and will probably do it again in the future. However, today I want to look at how we can take lessons from it for our walk with the Lord.
    The psalmist expresses utter despair about a life where things have gone wrong. He cries out to God, but has not received an answer. He knows that God is holy. He knows that others have cried out to God in the past and God has rescued them. He has reached the limit of what he can endure. Yet he still has faith in what God has done for him in the past and believes that God is just and righteous. In the depths of our despair let us have a similar faith, a similar trust that God is working for the good of those who love Him.

    In today’s passage Paul addresses those who are Christians and hold animosity towards Jews. He reminds us that the Jews are still God’s chosen people, even if many of them have rejected Jesus. God still desires that they turn to Him. Earlier in this letter Paul said that God chooses to whom He will give mercy, suggesting that whether or not someone comes to faith in Jesus is decided by God. In today’s passage, Paul indicates that the people of Israel, the Jews, have the choice of turning to God and accepting His grace through Jesus. Further, he suggests that those of us who have accepted God’s wonderful grace could choose to turn from God and lose that grace. These two things seem contradictory and are examples of how our limited minds struggle to understand God’s plan.
    I will strive to explain what I understand Paul to be saying. On the one hand, the fact that we have chosen to believe in and obey Jesus does not give us any room to boast that we are better than those who have not done so because it was God’s action which caused us to make this choice. On the other hand, each and every day we have the choice of doing God’s will. It is our obligation to make that choice.

    Jehoshaphat died and the Kingdom of Judah paid the price for his friendship with King Ahab. Jehoshaphat had arranged for his son, Jehoram, to marry Ahab’s daughter. Jehoram followed the example of Ahab. His first action as king was to kill all of his brothers. He followed this by building pagan shrines and encouraging the people to worship idols. His son, Ahaziah, was not better and died after only a short reign. At which point Jehoram’s wife, Ahab’s daughter, Athaliah, seized the throne. She attempted to kill all of the remaining members of the House of David, but her daughter took her grandson out of the nursery and stole him away to the Temple. When the boy was seven, the high priest led a rebellion against Athaliah and put him on the throne.

For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    The godly live their lives with integrity. The fact that they do so will be a blessing to their children, who will be even more blessed if they follow their parent’s example.

    The first thing I am reminded of when I read this psalm is that it was this psalm which Jesus quoted when He was on the cross. As I read it today, I realized that there will be times when we may experience something like what inspired the psalmist to write this psalm. There will be times when our troubles seem more than we can bear, when we cry out night after night and God does not bring us relief. There will be times when we feel like we have been abandoned by God. However, let us always remember that Jesus felt the same way when He hung on the cross, so we know that we are not alone.

    This passage is one of the most thorough counters to the idea that it is consistent with Christian faith to hate the Jews. Yes, some Jews rejected the Gospel and as a result the Gospel was preached to the Gentiles and those Gentiles who believed were grafted into God’s family to replace those Jews who rejected God’s saving grace. However, this should not make those of us who are not of Jewish heritage proud and arrogant. We must remember that while we were blessed in part because those Jews rejected God’s message of grace, we will be blessed even more when they finally turn to God and accept His grace. Rather than hate the Jews and seek their destruction, as some do, we should love them as God’s Chosen People and seek their reconciliation with God (something we should seek for all people who do not yet know the Lord).

    When Jehoshaphat died, his mistake in allying himself with Ahab by arranging for his son, Jehoram, to marry Ahab’s daughter is fully revealed. Upon his father’s death, Jehoram became king and killed all of his brothers. Jehoram followed the practices of Ahab’s family and re-established places of worship in the high places, where pagan practices were followed. About his death the passage tells us one of the saddest things that can be said about anyone, “No one was sorry when he dies.”
    Ahaziah, Jehoram’s youngest son became king upon his father’s death, because all of his older brothers had been killed by marauding bands of Arabs. Ahaziah accepted members of Ahab’s family, his mother’s family, as advisers. These advisers encouraged him to continue the evil practices of his father. We get a good idea of just how evil Ahab’s family was upon Ahaziah’s death. At that point Ahaziah’s mother proceeded to kill all of the royal family she could lay her hands on, including her own grandsons. Only one of them escaped because his aunt, a daughter of Jehoram, spirited him away to the Temple and put him in the care of the high priest. I find it hard to imagine a depravity any greater than someone who is willing to kill their own grandchildren in order to further their own desire for power.