Bible Reading Challenge Blog

There tends to be a lot of imagery in the Psalms about battle and the people of the Lord crushing those who would serve other gods.  It is sometimes quite graphic, and also can be disturbing.  Why would the Lord use violence and war as a means to accomplish His goals?  That is a great question and there is an answer, albeit a somewhat tepid one.  It was a different time when war and battles were all that was known.  It was how nations grew from nothing to something.  It was how people were able to identify who ruled over them.  It was a time that was very, very different from ours today.  Although, with what is happening in the Ukraine maybe it is not so different after all.

Psalm 107 begins what is known as Book 5 of the Psalms.  Like our hymnals is divided into liturgical seasons and themes, this book of the Psalms is divided into sections, but they don’t tend to be thematic in any way.  Psalm 110 is used many different times in the New Testament.  You can find it referenced in Mark 12:36, 14:62, Luke 20:41-44, I Corinthians 15:25, Hebrews 5:1-6, 6:20, 7:4-7 and 7:17-24.

Every year when we were in Italy in the fall, sometime in October normally, we would take our church communities and go up to the mountains to gather chestnuts.  We would call it the hunt for the chestnuts.  And every year it was a great event, a real time of fellowship.  We would eat at a restaurant up there with our prize chestnuts that we knew we would cook eventually.  You see, in Italy they still have chestnut trees that produce edible chestnuts.  

Every year as soon as we arrived and before we started our hunt I would gather the community and I would read Psalm 104 on the summit of the mountain so that we could have a 360 view of the glory of God’s creation.  There is something about being able to see the glory of God’s creation that elicits awe and wonder in our great creator.  

We can’t skip over Psalm 103 which reminds us that the Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  Now, we didn’t begin with such praise, we found ourselves in lament for a period of time in Psalm 102.  The beginning of the prayer we read: “A prayer of an afflicted man.  When he is faint and pours out his lament before the Lord.”  It is pretty heavy.  But all of these Psalms remind of this song.

A couple of times we read in these six psalms the phrase: Sing to the Lord a new song.  Keep in mind that the psalms are a lot like our hymnal.  They were written to be sung.  Often before the psalm they even tell us to what tune they are to be sung.  So when the psalmist commands us to sing a new song, it means something similar to what it does today.  How do you feel on the Sunday that the organist or the pastor introduces a new song to you?  I’m guessing most of us would rather have the oldie but goodie.  There is always some sort of push back, some sort of reticence.

But God says in these psalms that we tried the oldie but the goodie, but you did not obey.  The people of God disobeyed when we tried to do it the old way.  Now we need a new song that the people do not know so that they will be forced to pay attention and try to figure out exactly what it is that God wants us to do.  I like the oldies but the goodies, but the newbies provide some great spiritual edification as well.

Today we cover the Psalms that were not covered in our reading list for some reason.  If you make it through to the end but do not read these Psalms then it means you have not read the Bible completely.  I recommend you read these Psalms if you are at all goal oriented like I am.

I want to focus on Psalm 105 which takes us through the history of the people of Israel as they were in limbo about to leave Egypt with the arrival of Moses to bring them out.  So many of these Psalms are reminders of the work that God has done in the past.  These reminders serve to provide people with an assurance that if God has done it in the past then he will do it again in the future, the future potentially being now in your life.  That is good to know.  That God’s work is not done and that His miracles are not finished.

We find ourselves back in the psalms.  Remember, they are songs that were written normally after some fairly significant event in the life of the writer, or in the life of the nation of the writer.  If you remember, Jesus when he is tempted in the wilderness by Satan uses Scripture to defend himself and to ward off whatever temptations that the devil might bring his way.  When he was taken to the pinnacle to look down  and Satan asked him to throw himself down, it is here where actually Satan uses the words of Psalm 91 verses 11-12 where it states: “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”

You know it is serious when Satan himself uses Scripture to try to tempt you.  But Jesus responds that you shall not tempt the Lord your God.  That’s a good answer.

Paul saves some of his harshest words for the Corinthians in these chapters.  There are two issues that are at stake: 1) the community that he founded was questioning whether Paul was actually an apostle, appointed by God, to be doing the type of work that he was doing.  He certainly was not one of the 12 original disciples, so from where was he getting his authority.  This leads him to “boast” about the work that he has done, including, look at chapter 11:23ff where he lists all of the times that his life was in danger because of the work for the Gospel.  He admits that while his letters are powerful, his words might be a little less so.

The second issue was that of an offering that was supposed to be taken up that all of the other churches had taken up but the Corinthian church had not been required to do it as of yet.  But Paul states that he is on his way to collect it, or he would send Titus to collect it for him.  These two issues lead him to warn the community that as he is on his way to see them he tells them to examine themselves because when he comes he will drive out those who are involved in immoral deeds that is taking the community away from being the virgin bride that Christ wants his church to be.  

I love 13:12 which states – “Greet one another with a holy kiss.”

We begin Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth.  Keep in mind that this is Paul writing to a community that he knows very well, and to a community that we saw in I Corinthians that needed a little encouragement and even a little bit of correcting.  We see Paul a few times almost needing to prove who he was in light of being sent by God to provide the community at Corinth correctives that would send them along their way in a much more faithful path than the one on which they are currently embarking.  

He clearly claims the community as his own since he was the one that founded it.  You hear him say ini 3:3 – “You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry.”  We also read Paul reminding them that the Gospel of Jesus is something that we contain but that we need to proclaim it.  He states in 4:7 – “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”  

A phrase that he states which has created a lot of debate is found in 6:14 – “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.”  This has often been taken to mean that we are not to marry those who do not believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and who are not His disciples.  I didn’t always feel strongly about this, but the more I am in ministry the more I see people who were of strong faith led astray in relationships where their partner or spouse is not a believer.  I’m going to have to go with Paul on this one.

We come to the end of Revelation.  We find in chapter 21 some of the most used chapters in funeral services.  It isn’t the rider on the white horse which many people like to refer to as something powerful and something that we have seen in movies as well.  Think Lone Ranger.  But in chapter 21:4 we find – “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain for the old order of things has passed away.”  That’s pretty encouraging.  

Revelation then ends with the promise that God is coming back again, soon, very soon.  The book of Revelation ends with the term maranatha which means: “Come, Lord Jesus”.

As I mentioned earlier a modern overlapping of events with what is depicted is pretty much impossible.  But an ancient one is a little less tricky.  It is fairly clear that Rome and Nero are seen as the great enemy in the day of John who wrote Revelation.  We have a couple of hints in regards to this.  We see in chapter 17 an angel who interprets the visions that John sees and in 17:9 says: “This calls for a mind with wisdom.  The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits.”  Everyone knew, and even today it is very well known, that Rome is a city with 7 hills.  When I studied in Rome I lived on the Aventine hill, the Palatine hill is famous for the Forum and there are others as well that make up the city of Rome.

Clearly John had in mind the arch enemy of Israel would be the one who crucified their messiah, Jesus himself, which was Rome.  Jesus died on a cross which was a national execution for those who did not fall in line with the Roman Empire teachings.  Rome was responsible for the burning and the final destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 AD by Nero.  It makes sense that John, both the Gospel writer and the writer of Revelation and the writer of I,II, and III John would describe the enemy as the one who destroyed the very fabric of the people of Israel.  John probably wrote these books of the Bible at the end of the 1st century.  He is always depicted as very old because of the belief that this was written at that time.  This means that he witnessed the destruction in some format.

Granted, he was a disciple of Jesus Christ and a Christian, but back then Christians, especially if they came from a Jewish background, still very much identified as Jews, just as followers of Jesus as well.  So if we read Revelation in light of this revelation, that the beast and all of his minions are the Romans and those who helped facilitate the destruction of the temple with the Romans, it makes much more sense.

Now we are in the part of Revelation that people are afraid of.  First, we find the 144,000 who receive a seal, and they are the nations of Israel times 12 which is a complete number and which represents all of the nation of Israel.  This number is used by the Jehovah’s Witnesses to describe the finite number of people who are saved.  I like to use the number that we find in 7:9 which says: “after this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language…”  That is the number, an infinite number of people that God has saved and will bring to himself.

You find in 8:8 and following the description of a great mountain that is hurled into the sea.  It is thought that this is the description of what happened with Vesuvius when it erupted, because we know that this great mountain in Naples was thrown into the sea and destroyed many villages and people in its wake.  

One word on prophecy vs predictions.  Prophecies describes ways in which God is going to work or ways in which God has already worked.  When I read Revelation I interpret it as a message to the first century church and an attempt at describing what has already happened, much less what will happen in the 21st century.  I know that takes some of the “fun” away from trying to match what Scripture says in Revelation and what is happening today in current events, but it is much healthier to see it this way.

I had not seen that 12 is also covered in this reading.  So, the woman has habitually been seen as Mary who gives birth to Jesus, what with the killing of the innocents by Herod after Jesus is born and their fleeing to Egypt, all of this can neatly fit into the prophecy that this Scripture lays out.