Contemplative Bible Reading

2 Chronicles 13:13-18 (New International Version)

¹³ Now Jeroboam had sent troops around to the rear, so that while he was in front of Judah the ambush was behind them. ¹⁴ Judah turned and saw that they were being attacked at both front and rear. Then they cried out to the LORD. The priests blew their trumpets ¹⁵ and the men of Judah raised the battle cry. At the sound of their battle cry, God routed Jeroboam and all Israel before Abijah and Judah. ¹⁶ The Israelites fled before Judah, and God delivered them into their hands. ¹⁷ Abijah and his troops inflicted heavy losses on them, so that there were five hundred thousand casualties among Israel’s able men. ¹⁸ The Israelites were subdued on that occasion, and the people of Judah were victorious because they relied on the LORD, the God of their ancestors.

This is the (hi)story of one of the many battles between the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Jeroboam is leading Israel; Abijah is leading Judah.

The men of Judah find themselves in a losing position as they are attacked from both the front and the rear. Instead of dying, they cried out to the Lord. The result was

God routed Jeroboam and all Israel

The tally was horrific – 500,000 casualties among Israel. Half a million men were either killed or injured in one battle on one day. Medical practice of the day was limited and that bode ill for someone with a puncture wound from a sword or spear.

Please note – these are all cousins. The men of Judah and Israel all descended from Jacob. This is family massacring family.

As we look back on this about 3,000 years later, we wonder. God allowed half a million men to suffer. How could he do that? How could reliance on the Lord bring about such a disaster for one big family? I find no soothing answers. I find one ugly answer: sin. Many of those involved on that day – on both sides – were  not obeying the Lord in their daily lives. They had forsaken the Lord’s instructions for life. Horrible? Yes.

I thank God for His grace that allows me to live as I do given my sin.

Ecclesiastes 12:5 (New Century Version)

You will fear high places
and will be afraid to go for a walk.
Your hair will become white like the flowers on an almond tree.
You will limp along like a grasshopper when you walk.
Your appetite will be gone.
Then you will go to your everlasting home,
and people will go to your funeral.

The Teacher, the writer of Ecclesiastes, is here writing about the marks of older age. The item near the bottom caught my attention:

You appetite will be gone.

This has occurred with several people I know who are in the late 70s and beyond. The sense of hunger is gone. They eat three meals a day, but from habit or discipline. They watch their weight, not to keep it from ballooning as many of us younger people do, but to ensure that they don’t wither.

Think about it – you are never hungry. You never desire food. And that becomes a health problem as you may often forget to eat.

The Teacher is lamenting the uselessness of life without God. We grow old; we lose out appetite, and we die. What’s the use? Well, without God, there is no use in this life on earth.

Judges 1:27-31  (New International Version)

²⁷ But Manasseh did not drive out the people of Beth Shan or Taanach or Dor or Ibleam or Megiddo and their surrounding settlements, for the Canaanites were determined to live in that land. ²⁸ When Israel became strong, they pressed the Canaanites into forced labor but never drove them out completely. ²⁹ Nor did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites living in Gezer, but the Canaanites continued to live there among them. ³⁰ Neither did Zebulun drive out the Canaanites living in Kitron or Nahalol, so these Canaanites lived among them, but Zebulun did subject them to forced labor. ³¹ Nor did Asher drive out those living in Akko or Sidon or Ahlab or Akzib or Helbah or Aphek or Rehob.

This was written after God’s people moved into the promised land. The people were instructed to drive out the land’s inhabitant’s. The above verses are only a partial list. Over and over,

each tribe failed to drive out the inhabitants.

God’s people lived among other people who did not worship the Lord.

The result was predictable and predicted. The previous inhabitants influenced God’s people – not the other way around. Behavior went down, not up.

Proverbs 24:17-18 (New International Version)

¹⁷ Do not gloat when your enemy falls;
when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice,
¹⁸ or the LORD will see and disapprove
and turn his wrath away from them.

This is a timely read considering the recent death of Osama bin Laden and the ensuing celebrations. Perhaps connecting these verses with those events is a stretch, but perhaps not.

Leviticus 2:13 (New International Version)

Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings.

I read this verse recently and noticed the striking similarity to one of my favorite verses in the New Testament from Colossians 4:6:

Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

Today, salt is salt. It comes in those little white paper packets in the condiment bags you find at cheap food places. You break the paper, the salt spills everywhere, and makes a mess. Where it snows, we pour salt on the ice to melt it. It’s just salt. Who cares? People who eat too much salt have high blood pressure and die.

Salt was worth more in the ancient world. It was a symbol of purity and things that endured. The phrase “salt of your covenant” was important. A covenant signified by salt was an important agreement.

“I’ll have lunch with you some day,” is just a figure of speech and is not an important agreement.

“I’ll pay for this house in monthly installments over 30 years,” is an important agreement. It is much more like a covenant of salt.

And then I consider the verse from Colossians. Consider my words carefully. Speak as if I am making a long-term agreement. I guess I don’t do that often enough. Lord, help me to choose my words as if they are enduring and pure and an agreement made with salt, because they are.

Acts 3:17-18 (New International Version)

¹⁷ “Now, fellow Israelites, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. ¹⁸ But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Messiah would suffer.

Now let’s read these verses from The Message translation

^17-18“And now, friends, I know you had no idea what you were doing when you killed Jesus, and neither did your leaders. But God, who through the preaching of all the prophets had said all along that his Messiah would be killed, knew exactly what you were doing and used it to fulfill his plans.

Note the last three words from The Message.

I believe that the audience of Jesus on that day was part of God’s plan. God wanted to accomplish something; He wanted to redeem the world and restore the perfect relationship He created in the beginning. The people of Israel acted in ignorance, but what they did was part of God’s plan.

I believe that everyone alive today and everyone who ever lived are part of God’s plan. The troubling question I ask myself is:

Do I treat everyone as if God created them specifically to be part of His plan?

Oooops. Well, maybe on a good day. That, however, isn’t too good. How would my life be if I truly treated everyone as if they were part of God’s plan? As if everyone were created by God for a specific purpose in accomplishing His intent?

I am afraid that I treat too many people as if they are part of my plan for life, not God’s.

Proverbs 16:33 (New International Version 2011)

The lot is cast into the lap,
but its every decision is from the LORD.

We are back to casting lots to make decisions. This verse strikes me as one more simple example of using the lot or the die to seek what the Lord wants us to do.

I doubt we will return to this practice. It is, however, based in scripture with plenty of instruction on how to use it.

Acts 19:13-16 (New International Version 2011)

13 Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” 14 Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. 15 One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” 16 Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.

The Apostle Paul is in the city of Ephesus. According to earlier verses in this chapter, Paul stayed in Ephesus for over two years.  Note what extraordinary miracles happened around Paul:

11 God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, 12 so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.

If you could grab a dirty sock from Paul’s laundry basket, you could heal the sick and cast out evil spirits. This power led some Jews to try to cast out evil spirits using Paul’s fame and the power of Jesus Christ.

Note the attributes of evil spirits from verses 13 through 16:

• Evil spirits know about Jesus, i.e., spiritual matters
• Evil spirits know about Paul, i.e., physical, personal, and political matters
• Evil spirits empower people to perform super-human actions
• Evil spirits exist

This leads me to speculate about super-human actions. When was the last time you saw one man beat seven men? We usually refer to such people as professional athletes. I think this is possible, but not likely. It is, however, something to consider.

2 Chronicles 2:5-6 (New International Version 2011)

⁵ “The temple I am going to build will be great, because our God is greater than all other gods. ⁶ But who is able to build a temple for him, since the heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain him? Who then am I to build a temple for him, except as a place to burn sacrifices before him?

King Solomon is sending a note to the King of Tyre. He is placing an order for building materials for the Temple he is about to build in Jerusalem. As a man of words, Solomon introduces the order with a description of the Temple. Summarizing, and Kings and other politicians rarely summarize, what Solomon writes here:

This doesn’t make sense to build a temple, because God is greater than all the universe. Nevertheless, we should have a place to offer to sacrifices of our agricultural economy as God requires, so this is the best we can do.

Lessons for today? Let’s try these:

No amount of love for others,

No amount of service to others,

No amount of prayer, Bible study, and meditation,

No amount of any of these good things can in any measure compare to the grace God has extended to me.

Nevertheless, they are ways I offer myself as a living sacrifice to God.

Acts 16:16-18 (New International Version 2011)

¹⁶ Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. ¹⁷ She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” ¹⁸ She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her.

Here we have Paul on one of his missionary journeys. He meets a young woman who has a spirit in her. Note the facts presented:

• She predicts the future
• She knows that Paul is preaching about the one true God
• She knows what Paul is preaching

Now some conjecture:

• The spirit in her is from Satan

I don’t think this spirit is from God. If if was, why would Paul cast it out of her?

And some more conjecture:

• The same spirits from Satan are in people today

What a curse, the ability to predict the future. Sure, it seems nice to be able to predict sporting events, stock market prices, even just predict the weather. A person could make a lot of money with that ability. Think a little more, the wonder of life goes away. You would know how you will feel at any time in the future. There would be no surprises. Everything would be dull.

Oh, yes – the controversial part to some people – evil spirits in people today. I know there are biblical arguments against this idea. Still, I can’t find a verse that plainly says, “There will be a time when spirits won’t be in people.” I am open for someone showing me such. I tend to believe that there are evil spirits in some people in some form. Why else might a person crash a plane full of people into a building full of people in a city full of people?