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.

     Moses was not done questioning his ability to carry out the task that God had assigned him. God told Moses the throw his staff on the ground, where it immediately became a snake. God then told Moses to grab the snake by its tail. Now, I know that you should never grab a snake by its tail, it will twist around and bite you. I am quite confident that Moses knew this as well, but he reached out and grabbed it anyway. God then gave Moses two more signs to perform to prove that he was sent by God. However, Moses was still not done questioning his fitness for the task. Now that his other objections had been met, he tells God, “But I’m not very good at talking in front of people. I don’t speak well.” God responds by telling Moses that He is the one who gives people the ability to speak and to hear and to see. He will be with Moses and help him speak, teaching him what to say. Moses still asks God to send someone else. God at this point was angry with Moses. God told him that his brother Aaron was a good speaker and at that moment was on his way looking for Moses. God would tell Moses what to say and Moses could tell Aaron, who would speak for him. It is heartening to see that Moses was so much like I am when it comes to responding to God’s call. Now if only I could be more like Moses.
     So, Moses returned to Egypt. In the meantime, God appeared to Aaron and inspired him to go into the wilderness to find Moses. When they met, Moses told Aaron all that God had told him and together they returned to Egypt and spoke with the leaders of the Israelites. Once Aaron spoke to them and Moses showed them the miraculous signs they were convinced that God had sent Moses and Aaron. After speaking to the Israelite leaders, Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh, Pharaoh told them to be quiet and get back to work. Pharaoh then made the job demanded of the Israelites harder. There is an important lesson for us here. When God begins to work to relieve us of the hardship we have cried out to Him about, it often gets worse before it gets better. When the people of Israel cried out for relief from the suffering they were experiencing in Egypt, God sent them Moses. But when Moses arrived, the immediate effect was that Pharaoh increased their workload and things got worse.

     The disciples came to Jesus to ask who would be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. The disciples were looking to find out what they had to do to become the bigwigs in the Kingdom. Jesus told them that the ones who truly counted in the Kingdom were those who did not consider themselves anything special. If we want to be important in the Kingdom of Heaven we need to become like a child. For that matter, if we even want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven we need to become like a child. We must learn to trust God the way that a child trusts his parents. I am not sure what all Jesus was telling them when He said this, but at least part of what He was talking about was the naive innocence of childhood, the way when we were children we readily believed what we were told. Jesus then goes on to warn against causing these innocents who believe in Him to stumble. He says that it will happen, but those who cause it would be better off to be tied to a rock and tossed into the sea. Jesus goes on to give us the parable of the 100 sheep where one wanders away. He tells us that the shepherd will expend enormous effort to find the one that wanders away. In the same manner, God will act to bring those who are innocently mislead back to Him.
     Jesus then gives us the model for dealing with Church discipline and for how we should confront those who claim to be followers of Jesus who sin. He tells us that if we see someone sin, we should go to them privately and talk about what we observed. If they respond, that is great. If not, take two or three witnesses with you, so that there are independent witnesses to the conversation. If they still do not change, place the matter before the assembly of God’s people. If they refuse to listen to the assembly, treat them as a tax collector or a pagan. I think if we look at this we see a little more to this than what is on the surface. Why should we first go privately? Well, I think there are two reasons. The first is so that we do not embarrass them in front of others. But the second is to give the person an opportunity to explain why they did what we understood to be sin, perhaps we misinterpreted what we saw and the action was not a sin after all. This is also the reason for bringing the witnesses the second time, perhaps other people will hear the person we are confronting differently than we did. At every stage of this process there should be an openness to the possibility that the person being confronted was not sinning. That does not mean that there is debate about what constitutes sin, just that very rarely do we actually witness someone committing a sin unless we are committing the same sin. An example I like to use is this. There is a strip club I used to drive past every day. Now if I drove past and saw the car of someone from my congregation in the parking lot (and perhaps even saw them), it would be my duty as a brother in Christ to speak to them about it. However, it is possible that the reason they were there was because their car broke down and that was the closest place to get it off of the road. When I confront my brother in Christ about a perceived sin, I should be open to the possibility that I misinterpreted what I saw.

     Today is the second half of Psalm 22, the psalm which Jesus referred to while on the cross. The first half was a description of despair and suffering. It was a cry to God for deliverance by someone who felt abandoned by God. The second half of the psalm has a completely different feel. Today in the second half we read the account of someone who is confident that God will save them from their trials. Here the psalmist is praising God and extolling the fact that He responds to the needs of those in desperate straits. Despite the desperate situation that Jesus was in on the cross, when He cried out “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” this was not just a cry of despair. It was also a declaration of faith in God because the psalm Jesus was calling upon ends with by saying that future generations will declare that God has done it. Before that the psalm declares that God has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one, but has listened to his cry for help. Jesus, on the cross, was declaring that God had listened to His cry for help. Let us remember that He will listen to our cry for help as well.

     The writer emphasizes the importance of staying faithful to your wife. Do not pursue other women.