Contemplative Bible Reading

John 13:35 (New International Version 2011)

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

Jesus is speaking here. People will know that we follow Him by our love for one another.

How are we doing? How are we doing in America?

If we judge by how well we “get along,” we aren’t doing so well. Christians have divided a thousand and one ways. Just look at all the different churches with different signs everywhere you go. We must not like one another much.

If we judge by how well we “agree to disagree,” we are doing well. I haven’t seen any name-your-favorite-denomination members burning buildings that belong to name-your-second-favorite-denomination.

How do you judge? I am happy to not be the judge.

This is an answer from several thousand years ago. It is still a great one:

Nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head.

– Nehemiah 6:8 (New International Version 2011)

Ezra 8:21-22 (New International Version 2011)

²¹ There, by the Ahava Canal, I proclaimed a fast, so that we might humble ourselves before our God and ask him for a safe journey for us and our children, with all our possessions. ²² I was ashamed to ask the king for soldiers and horsemen to protect us from enemies on the road, because we had told the king, “The gracious hand of our God is on everyone who looks to him, but his great anger is against all who forsake him.”

Ezra is about to begin a long journey from Babylon back to Jerusalem. This isn’t like driving from Florida to California today. The journey would take months and there was the reality of “highway bandits.” Safe travel wasn’t a matter of driving defensively. There was a lot of prudence in it. The king would provide Ezra and his party a military escort to guarantee safe passage. Should Ezra request and receive such an escort? He had told the king that God would be gracious and grant them safety.

Would an escort show trust in the sword?

Should they instead show trust in the Lord?

We face similar questions today. We send missionaries to a foreign country. Do we make detailed preparations and raise enough funds to support them for five years before sending them? Do we have them pack a single bag and have faith that money will come when needed and all will be safe? Do prudent preparations shows a lack of faith? I don’t have answers for these questions.

Ezra? Oh his party arrived safely. They carried large amounts of silver and gold – prime targets for highway bandits.

³¹ On the twelfth day of the first month we set out from the Ahava Canal to go to Jerusalem. The hand of our God was on us, and he protected us from enemies and bandits along the way. ³² So we arrived in Jerusalem, where we rested three days.

Zechariah 8: (New International Version 2011)

³ This is what the LORD says: “I will return to Zion and dwell in Jerusalem. Then Jerusalem will be called the Faithful City, and the mountain of the LORD Almighty will be called the Holy Mountain.”

⁴ This is what the LORD Almighty says: “Once again men and women of ripe old age will sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each of them with cane in hand because of their age. ⁵ The city streets will be filled with boys and girls playing there.”

The LORD is describing a time of good through the prophet Zechariah. Notice the words the LORD uses to describe something good:

The city streets will be filled with boys and girls playing there.

God takes joy in boys in girls playing.

The next time you see boys and girls playing, smile because I believe God is as well.

Esther 1:16-18 (New International Version 2011)

¹⁶ Then Memukan replied in the presence of the king and the nobles, “Queen Vashti has done wrong, not only against the king but also against all the nobles and the peoples of all the provinces of King Xerxes. ¹⁷ For the queen’s conduct will become known to all the women, and so they will despise their husbands and say, ‘King Xerxes commanded Queen Vashti to be brought before him, but she would not come.’ ¹⁸ This very day the Persian and Median women of the nobility who have heard about the queen’s conduct will respond to all the king’s nobles in the same way. There will be no end of disrespect and discord.

So concludes the first story in the book of Esther. Queen Vashti has disobeyed King Xerxes and she has done so in public; everyone knows about it.

What must be done? A group of advisers gather. The conclusion?

If Queen Vashti is not publicly punished, all the women will follow her example and disrespect their husbands

Note several items:

• The advisers were all men discussing women
• They assumed that all the women were currently respecting their husbands
• They exaggerated an outcome
• The kinds of things men decide when it is only men deciding

I have always found this to be one of funniest histories recorded in the Bible. How silly and how stupid can a group of royal advisers be? At least their decision sets in motion a series of events to that lead to good for God’s people.

Psalm 137:8-9 (New English Translation)

O daughter Babylon, soon to be devastated!

How blessed will be the one who repays you for what you dished out to us!

How blessed will be the one who grabs your babies and smashes them on a rock!

This cry was written after the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem. The conquerors burned every inflammable sacred object and took all the precious metal objects from the temple back to their homeland. They literally raped, pillaged, and plundered the land of God’s people.

Oh, by the way, God used the Babylonians to do this as punishment for the sins of His people. The person writing this Psalm didn’t mention those sins here and didn’t have any mention of confession and asking for forgiveness, but I digress a bit.

Note the vehemence and hatred in the Psalm.

How blessed will be the one who grabs your babies and smashes them on a rock!

I have a five-week-old granddaughter while I am writing this blog post. I cannot think about the statement from the Psalm. I cannot imagine how much the writer hated the Babylonians.

Do I hate anyone this much? I have never written such hateful words as I found in this Psalm, but do I hate anyone this much?

Let’s flip the question a bit. Do I hate any sin this much?

Jeremiah 32:17 (New English Translation)

Oh LORD God, you did indeed make heaven and earth by your mighty power and great strength.

Nothing is too hard for you!

The key word from the above proclamation is nothing. Indeed, nothing is too hard for the LORD.

There, I wrote it. That is a simple statement, not complicated, not qualified by any adjectives or such.

Do I believe it? Sure I do. God is omnipotent. I have known that for years.

Do I believe it? Sure I do.

Do I believe it? I mean, do I believe it? Every day, do I pray that God will do things that are too hard for all other means imaginable? Or, do I only pray for things that make sense?

God, give me the faith to believe that nothing is too hard for you. Fulfilling that request seems impossible, just simply too hard, but give me the faith to believe that nothing is too hard for you. Then give me the faith everyday to ask you for things that are too hard.

Isaiah 65:14 (New International Version 2011)

My servants will sing
out of the joy of their hearts,

Singing has changed over the 30 centuries since Isaiah wrote this. What we call “music” has changed over the 30 centuries since Isaiah wrote this. I think that the “singing” mentioned here bears little resemblance to the four-part harmony gospel singing of my lifetime.

I think the “singing” mentioned here is more like what I know today as:

• shout for joy
• the rebel yell (if you’ve never heard it, I can’t explain it in text)
• the cheer at a sporting event

Have you ever heard the “singing” that takes place at European football (soccer) games? I think that is the closest thing to the Old Testament singing that we have today.

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?