Contemplative Bible Reading

Zechariah 7:4-6 (New International Version 2011)

⁴ Then the word of the LORD Almighty came to me: ⁵ “Ask all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for the past seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted? ⁶ And when you were eating and drinking, were you not just feasting for yourselves?

The LORD had His people fast and feast several times a year. Each of these, especially the feasts, were to be celebrations of the LORD. Well, no big surprise here, but the celebrations were often not celebrations of the LORD. Instead, they were celebrations of all sorts of other things.

This brings the question to mind, when we celebrate today,

are we celebrating the LORD or celebrating some thing?

I once heard a radio sermon in which the speaker defined idolatry:

Idolatry is worshiping the gift, not the giver.

Oooops. Am I celebrating something I did? Am I celebrating that God gave me the ability to do something? There is a slight but huge difference.

Luke 23:31 (New International Version 2011)

For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

Refers back to Hosea 10, which begins with

Israel was a spreading vine;
he brought forth fruit for himself.

and continues in Hosea with

As his fruit increased,
he built more altars;
as his land prospered,
he adorned his sacred stones.

Ooops, good times brought idolatry. Which of course eventually leads to its own bad end (Hosea 10).

Their heart is deceitful,
and now they must bear their guilt.
The LORD will demolish their altars
and destroy their sacred stones.

Finally, in Hosea 10 we have the verse repeated by Jesus in Luke 23:

Then they will say to the mountains, “Cover us!”
and to the hills, “Fall on us!”

Times are good, yet people are doing awful things to one another. What terrible things will people do to one another when times are bad? This is a case of

success breeds failure

Today? Well, the U.S. economy is in a douple-dip recession or something. Still, we enjoy the highest standard of living of anyone at any time in the history of the world. And look at the awful things people do to one another. How low will we sink if something really bad happens?

2 Corinthians 4:5 (New Living Translation)

You see, we don’t go around preaching about ourselves. We preach that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we ourselves are your servants for Jesus’ sake.

This is pretty simple. Paul says that the Gospel is not about him; it is about Jesus the Christ. We, however, have been stumbling over ourselves in this point for a long time.

It is easy for me to talk about me. I know myself better than I know anyone else. That isn’t a difficult concept. If I want to tell stories about someone, I am my easiest subject. And I have plenty of stories about the failing of the human condition where I am the center of the failure.

The problem is that it is easy for people to understand the Gospel message as self-centered. I am the center of the universe. Live like me and God will love you.

And then we reach the last phrase of the above verse, the part about me being your servant. That must be a figure of speech or something because it can’t possibly be interpreted literally. Then again, maybe it is to be interpreted literally.

Sometimes this Gospel can be difficult. Jesus – not me – is the center of the story. I am to serve everyone else. Simple concept, difficult implementation. I am glad that God helps me every second of every day.

Zechariah 7:8-10

⁸ And the word of the LORD came again to Zechariah: ⁹ “This is what the LORD Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. ¹⁰ Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.’

He was a good friend of mine in high school. We lost touch as high school friends often do.  Then I learned of what he had done to his mother.

He wanted to buy something, but had no credit. People who give their lives to alcohol tend to lose all credit with lenders. He pestered his mother until she signed her house to him as collateral for the loan. The result was what people expected.

He defaulted on his loan, and his mother lost her home.

I wanted to find him and hit him in the head with a board. Perhaps that is how the LORD felt as he spoke through the prophet Zechariah. His people

• were unjust towards one another
• showed no mercy
• had no compassion
• oppressed widows and orphans and the poor
• plotted evil against one another

What makes it all worse is that these people were family. They all descended from the sons of Jacob; they were all cousins as  They were doing just as my former high school friend had – they were swindling members of their own family.

The LORD sort of hit them in the head with a board. How? He left them alone. He left them to their own resources. He let them suffer the natural consequences of their actions.

They simply got what they deserved.

Today, God let’s us have what we deserve unless we choose otherwise. We can escape our just desserts by accepting His grace.

1 Corinthians 6:9-10  (New International Version 2011)

⁹ Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men ¹⁰ nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

There must be something wrong with this list of sins. I mean, someone must have made a mistake when creating the list.

The list includes the obvious, horrible sins:

• sexually immoral
• idolaters
• adulterers
• men who have sex with men
• thieves
• drunkards

But really, why are these in the list?

greedy – isn’t greed good, isn’t that what drives the economy?

slanderers – why, that’s just saying something that is sort of bad about someone else, we all do that, right?

swindlers – that is a harsh translation, it is really talking about good business people, those who are able to sell $1 worth of goods for $5 and drive the economy

They put fill-in-the-blank-with-a-little-sin right next to fill-in-the-blank-with-a-big-sin. That must be wrong.

This is all subjective – on our part. From God’s perspective, it isn’t so subjective. Note – everything in the list hurts someone. God advises us to avoid things that hurt people. If we are hurting people, we are not loving them, and God wants us to love one another.

Funny how so much of this adult stuff goes right back to what we were told as small children in Sunday School – love one another.

Judges 16:15-16 (New International Version 2011)

¹⁵ Then she (Delilah) said to him (Samson), “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when you won’t confide in me? This is the third time you have made a fool of me and haven’t told me the secret of your great strength.” ¹⁶ With such nagging she prodded him day after day until he was sick to death of it.

Delilah is attempting to manipulate her husband Samson. She tries one of the oldest, most used even to this day ploys:

If you really love me, you would fill-in-the-blank

There isn’t much new when it comes to how we can twist and turn and nag and generally become a pain to those we love. This is the epitome of conditional love.

It is a shame that we use the word – love – for how we feel about people and things and then use it for how we feel about God. In Greek, there are different words for the different types of love, but in English we have one word. That makes it easier for us to twist and turn and nag God. That makes it easier for us to say things like,

If you truly are a God of love, you would fill-in-the-blank

We’ve heard phrases like that so much, they come naturally. We see conditional love everywhere, hear that God is love, and conclude that God’s love is conditional as well. Is there any other kind?

God, thank you for loving me unconditionally. Thank you for loving me when I stumble and when I glance away at something else. Help me learn to love in he same manner.

Jeremiah 10:1-2 (New International Version 2011)

¹ Hear what the LORD says to you, people of Israel. ² This is what the LORD says:

“Do not learn the ways of the nations
or be terrified by signs in the heavens,
though the nations are terrified by them.

Now and then, the LORD sent a message to His people through a prophet. To me, these messages often sound like a parent scolding a child, “If Johnny Jones jumped off a cliff, would you jump off a cliff?”

Seriously, look at the verses above. The people around God’s people worshiped the skies and the stars in the skies. If they saw the stars aligned in a peculiar way, they were terrified.

The LORD created the heavens and the earth. He put the stars in the sky. He aligns them as he intended. Don’t worry about all that. Besides, the LORD has provided everything the people need. The LORD even gave them pointers on how to live that would be good for them (somewhere else we note that the nations around the LORD’s people recognized the excellence of these pointers or laws).

The situation is much the same today – if we let it be. Congress and the White House can’t make a budget deal (again this year). Or maybe the deal they make is worse than doing nothing at all. I can be terrified by these modern-day, American signs in the heavens. I can let these rule my life and determine my outlook.

Or maybe I can listen to the pointers God has given me on how to live and dwell in grace He has provided.

2 Kings 23:13-14 (New International Version 2011)

¹³ The king also desecrated the high places that were east of Jerusalem on the south of the Hill of Corruption—the ones Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the vile goddess of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the vile god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable god of the people of Ammon. ¹⁴ Josiah smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles and covered the sites with human bones.

Here is another episode in the life of good King Josiah – one of the last good kings of Judah. Here is a (hi)story of Josiah ridding Jerusalem and the country of idols. Note the “high places,” i.e., places of idol worship that Josiah desecrates or destroys in verse 13. These places of idol worship were built by King Solomon.

A little research on Wikipedia (among other places) shows that Solomon was King about 330 years before Josiah. Through all the ups and downs and good times and bad times over 330 years, the people of Jerusalem and Judah kept these places of idol worship in tact.

330 years!

It seems that someone in those 16 generations, someone would have said, “Hey, these things shouldn’t be here!”

Nope. That never happened. I guess the people just became accustomed to these places and left them in place. I mean, they seemed to have been there forever. Perhaps the attitude was:

If those things were wrong, someone would have removed them.

Perhaps that is my attitude today. I see things that are wrong, things that shouldn’t be. Things that are not good for me or for my neighbor. But hey, they’ve been here a long time, so who am I to do something. I am a person who follows Christ. That’s who I am. I should do something.

God, get me going like Josiah. Get me to remove the places of idol worship that are about me.

2 Chronicles 34:29-31 (New International Version 2011)

²⁹ Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. ³⁰ He went up to the temple of the LORD with the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests and the Levites—all the people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the LORD. ³¹ The king stood by his pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the LORD—to follow the LORD and keep his commands, statutes and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, and to obey the words of the covenant written in this book.

The king here is Josiah. He was one of the last “good” kings in Judah. He was good because when he learned of the law, i.e., the covenant, he did everything he could to obey the words of the covenant.

I keep noticing how often these passage in this part of the Old Testament call it “the covenant.” These people had a covenant or an agreement with the LORD. It was sort of a contract.

Do I have a contract with God? I started to think of this for a while. One quick answer is “yes.” If I do what God wants, I am saved.

Ooooops, that doesn’t work. Sometimes I do what God wants. Then there are the other times – somewhere between 2% and 98% of the time – when I don’t do so well. I’m not trying to exagarate here, but let’s try to remember every person I have met today and ask myself how much I loved each and every one of them. And that is just the simple parts of “the contract.”

Have I broken the contract? Will God turn his back on me? I sure hope not.

I believe I have better than a contract that I have to renew every day. Instead, I have grace.

God, thank you for granting grace.

2 Kings 19:14-15 (New International Version 2011)

¹⁴ Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it. Then he went up to the temple of the LORD and spread it out before the LORD. ¹⁵ And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD: “LORD, the God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth.

Hezekiah was in trouble. The letter mentioned above was from an enemy who was poised to destroy Hezekiah and his people.  Hezekiah spreads the message before him and begins to pray.

Superstition?

I don’t think so. I have done this. Sometimes I make a list of

• things troubling me
• people in my concerns
• wonderful things
• wonderful people

Sometimes I open the Bible to an especially important passage (for that day).

I look over the list or the passage and pray. The items on the list come closer to my heart, and I pray deeper.

God, thank you for prayer. Thank you for the example of Hezekiah and praying over a document.