Contemplative Bible Reading

Isaiah 56:1 (New Living Translation)

This is what the Lord says:

Isaiah 55:8-9 (New Living Translation)

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
⁹ For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

How much higher are the heavens than the earth? Where does the earth end and the sky begin? If I jump off the ground, am I in the sky? I suppose some philosophers will debate these questions endlessly. Maybe there is merit in those debates; maybe not.

For me, the earth and the heavens are two different places. Like a one-zero situation (I’m a computer person). You are in one of the places or in the other. You don’t move between them. They are simply different.

These are the LORD’s thoughts compared to mine. The LORD’s thoughts are not higher than mine, not better, not deeper. The LORD’s thoughts cannot be compared to mine. They are simply different. I can’t go there; I can’t imagine them.

Still, the LORD knows me, loves me, and has provided for me. Thank you LORD.

This post is a little different. Instead of noting a scripture, I will write about teaching and what may be happening in the class you are teaching or what may be happening with the people in the audience when you are preaching.

Speakers: Please note that your message may not be the most important thing in the life of the listeners. Their mind may be consumed by something else that is far more important to them.

A few obvious examples:

• Their grandmother is at home about to die of heart failure
• Their elderly parent is at home slipping quickly into senility
• Their son is dodging bullets in the Middle East
• Their best friend from high school is on life support after an auto accident

It is pretty easy to list other examples of things that would draw someone’s mind away from your speech.

Listeners  in a church setting are far more prone to be somewhere else in their heart and mind than in other settings. This is because in a church setting we discuss topics that are deeper than in other places.

For example:

We preach about loving that person at work who is hard to love. During such a sermon, I would hope that people listening would shut off their ears and concentrate their heart and mind on that person at work who they haven’t been loving.

We preach about ministering to the poor. During such a sermon, I would hope that people listening would shut off their ears and concentrate their heart and mind on that homeless person that they have walked past and ignored for weeks.

Hence, if you are preaching or teaching, don’t worry if someone in the attendance doesn’t remember the last three quarters of your message. You have said something that turned off their ears and turned on their heart and mind. And those latter things are far more important.

3 John (New Living Translation)

⁹ I wrote to the church about this, but Diotrephes, who loves to be the leader, refuses to have anything to do with us. ¹⁰ When I come, I will report some of the things he is doing and the evil accusations he is making against us. Not only does he refuse to welcome the traveling teachers, he also tells others not to help them. And when they do help, he puts them out of the church.

Here we have Diotrephes. He:

1. Makes evil accusations
2. Refuses to welcome traveling missionaries
3. Tells others to refuse to welcome traveling missionaries
4. Puts people out of the church who do welcome traveling missionaries

Also note this – Diotrephes is a Christian brother. He is a member of the church (how else could he put people out of the church if he was not in it?).

In John’s three letters, he often writes about people who deny that Jesus is the Christ, i.e., the one anointed to take away the sins of the world. John writes to have nothing to do with those people. Note that Diotrephes does not teach that false teaching.

So, you are a Christian brother. What would you say to Diotrephes? What kind of conversation would you have with our Christian brother?

Ezekiel 43:12 (New Living Translation)

And this is the basic law of the Temple: absolute holiness! The entire top of the mountain where the Temple is built is holy. Yes, this is the basic law of the Temple.

My eyes focus on verses like this one. Verses that proclaim things like

this is the basic law of the Temple

and

this is the sum of the law and the prophets

and

the Lord’s will is this

For His Temple, the LORD wanted absolute Holiness. So what is Holiness? There are several answers. One is that something that was Holy was set apart for the LORD. The Temple was set apart for the LORD. No thing else and no one else was to be honored at the Temple. Only the LORD was to be honored and worshiped there.

Well, the people didn’t quite hold to that. They put statues of other gods in the Temple. They put images of other gods in the Temple. They performed worship ceremonies of other gods in the Temple. The Temple was not set apart just for the LORD. It was not Holy.

2 Chronicles 36:21 (New Living Translation)

So the message of the Lord spoken through Jeremiah was fulfilled. The land finally enjoyed its Sabbath rest, lying desolate until the seventy years were fulfilled, just as the prophet had said.

The people of Judah were taken captive to Babylon. No one was left to farm. What happened to the land? It rested.

The concept of the Sabbath (1/7th) rest was not just for the LORD’s people. It extended to the land that the LORD gave His people. Greed, however, caused the people to forget about letting the land rest. If the land was producing crops, why let it lay? Why give it a rest? It was just a bunch of dirt.

The LORD gave the land a rest, and the rest was not what the people wanted.

Guess what? The LORD will have His way. We can obey Him in His way or we can disobey Him. The result will be the same. We can be blessed in His way or we can suffer in His way. The choice is ours.

Drunkenness, cheating on my spouse, hating my neighbor. I can do this things if I want as God gives me that choice. I can be blessed in His way (avoiding these things listed) or I can suffer in His way. I can do these things all I want and suffer through them.

The LORD told His people to let the land rest because that is what was best. The LORD tells me how to live because that is what is best. I can listen or ignore.

Micah 6:8 (New Living Translation)

No, O people, the Lord has told you what is good,
and this is what he requires of you:
to do what is right, to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with your God

This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. I ran across it again in the annual Bible reading. This time in the New Living Translation. It reads much the same, still fabulous.

Jeremiah 22:1-3 (New Living Translation)

This is what the Lord said to me: “Go over and speak directly to the king of Judah. Say to him,² ‘Listen to this message from the Lord, you king of Judah, sitting on David’s throne. Let your attendants and your people listen, too. ³ This is what the Lord says: Be fair-minded and just. Do what is right! Help those who have been robbed; rescue them from their oppressors. Quit your evil deeds! Do not mistreat foreigners, orphans, and widows. Stop murdering the innocent!

The LORD has a message for the king of Judah. What do you think it is?

Ensure the priests put the blood on the right thumb and the big toe of their right foot and their right ear lobe
Ensure the people bring exactly one tenth of their possessions
Post a lookout to see exactly when the sun sets to begin the Sabbath day

If you guessed any of the above, you were wrong. No, instead, the LORD wants the king of Judah to…(wait for this one)

Do what is right

Hmmm, think on that one a while. A person could do all sorts of things that would fall under that single task. I mean, I could spend all day doing what is right in many situations and not exhaust all those right-things-to-do. Maybe that is what the LORD wanted. Just do what is right.

Ezekiel 9:9 (New Living Translation)

Then he said to me, “The sins of the people of Israel and Judah are very, very great. The entire land is full of murder; the city is filled with injustice. They are saying, ‘The Lord doesn’t see it! The Lord has abandoned the land!’

The situation: the sins of the people are very, very great.

The response: Yahweh has left. He doesn’t see this.

After all the the LORD had done, the people still don’t understand. They attribute to the LORD the same abilities as people have. The LORD is not here. If you are not here, you cannot see what is happening here.

The LORD is omnipresent, i.e., everywhere at once. The people, however, have limited the LORD’s presence and the LORD’s vision.

They didn’t understand the ways of the LORD.

Am I any better at understanding the ways of the LORD? I should be. I mean, I have these (hi)stories to read and contemplate. I should be able to learn from them. I guess I do learn, but then I become tired and angry and all those other things and I fall back into what the people described by Ezekiel are doing.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (New Living Translation)

¹⁹ Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, ²⁰ for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

A temple:

A building devoted to the worship, or regarded as the dwelling place, of a god or gods or other objects of religious reverence. (Google define)

The body is the place devoted to the worship of the Spirit of God. What does it mean to go to my body to worship the Spirit of God?

I don’t know.

Let’s list some possible answers:

• I’m always with my body, so I’m always worshiping
• I’m always with my body, so I should be always worshiping
• I should take great care of my body
• I should learn how to take great care of my body
• Maybe this is why drunkenness and gluttony are sins
• I can worship the Spirit of God as it is in the bodies of other Christians

This last one is something I’ve never considered before. The Spirit of God is in the bodies of other Christians. How do I treat those temples? How do I act when I see those people mistreating their bodies? How do I act when I see those people cherishing their bodies?

How is that I started with one question but ended with several that I can’t answer?