Bible Reading Challenge Blog

A number of these Psalms have inspired praise songs that I love and which I want to share with you. When I read Psalm 103, and we are going in no particular order, I can’t help but think of the song below.

Then when I read Psalm 100 I can’t help but remember a story that my dad told me of his first Easter Sunday when he was an associate pastor at a big church and he was tasked with giving the call to worship. He stood up in front of the congregation on this most important of Sundays and began by proclaiming Psalm 100 and he said with gust: “Make a noyful joise to the Lord!” He blew it, but the congregation laughed and loved him even more after that.

When I read Psalm 99 I can’t help but think of this song that extols the greatness of our God. I hope you enjoy these praise songs as they bring us to a place where we worship the Lord with all instruments, including the instrument of our voice.

There are a number of psalms that we read today which have a common theme and that theme is one of calling people to worship. Psalm 95 calls people to worship and also requires obedience from them. This Psalm which commands us to sing a song to the Lord is reminiscent of the next psalm, 96, which tells us to sing to the Lord a new song. This is one of the primary reasons that we have songs in our worship. We are commanded to sing to the Lord. It isn’t just because music and song move us in a certain way, but because we are actually commanded to sing to the Lord. Don’t you often find yourself humming or singing a song to the Lord, or is it just me?

Psalm 98 strengthens this command to sing to the Lord a new song. But it also lays out the various instruments that we are to use in order to praise God. There should be no argument that God requires us to sing to him and praise him in a new way and in creative ways. No one instrument or no one form of worship was instituted by God, but rather a command to do it new day after day.

It might be good to go Psalm by Psalm to see the goodies that are in there. Let’s start: Psalm 87 – Interesting Psalm and one that I do not remember reading before, although I am sure that I have, it emphasizes how God will recognize those who are born in His land and will call them out. It is from here that the hymn: Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken comes. Psalm 88: A classic psalm of lament where the author cries out to God and does not hear from him for most of the psalm. Most of the Psalms of lament end with God answering but not this one, the lament ends this one. Psalm 89: A very long psalm which extols the presence of God especially on the battlefield. If I were going into battle I definitely would want this psalm read and I would put myself on the side of the Lord because it is obvious from this psalm that no one, and I mean no one, is going to conquer him.

Psalm 91: I can’t place from where I know this Psalm, but it is one with which I am very familiar. It speaks to God’s protection. It is a good psalm to read when we are afraid or anxious for whatever life event we might be facing. The verse that reminds us that he will cover us under his wings is similar to the verse in Matthew where Jesus looks out over Jerusalem and states how he wishes he could gather all his people under his wings like a mother hen gathers her brood. Psalm 92 – Finally we have a psalm which extols the righteous and gives thanks for God and all that he has done. It is a call, like Psalm 1, to righteous living.

The second part of Paul’s letter is a bit more acerbic and certainly more pointed and maybe even angry than the first part of the letter. He feels like he needs to remind the Corinthians that it was Paul who led them to Christ, even though they may feel like they are now free to live and believe as they like even outside of the confines of the what is becoming the orthodoxy of Christianity. Paul reminds them that no, they are to live and believe within the paramaters that Christ has established and that those parameters are not for the sake of Paul or for anyone who may have brough them the Gospel, but for the sake of the kingdom so that others might come into the fold.

That is a good lesson for us to remember. We are called to live and believe in a certain way not to maintain our institutional presence, but rather so that the kingdom of God can be realized and Jesus Christ proclaimed as Lord and Savior. Paul spends a lot of time warning against false prophets and supporting his own authority and the reasons why they should listen to him. We don’t find ourselves in a position having to defend anyone today. Our job is to proclaim Christ and to understand that Scripture has authority that comes not from the power that we give it, but rather as a result of the inspiration that proceeds from it.

In Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth he scolded them because of the immorality that was taking place in the church. He went so far as to say that if things don’t change then you need to cast out the person who is acting so. In his second letter he lets the church know how proud he is of them because they listened to his words and now it is time to forgive and to bury the hatchet, to remember no more the transgressions of the person. In fact, he says how proud he is of the church because they made a complete transformation as a result of his words. This isn’t the primary point of the letter, but it is an element that is found in our reading for today that is interesting.

I wanted to lift up two points that I saw in this letter that are well known and should be known by anyone who reads II Corinthians. The first is found in chapter 4 where Paul describes these treasures that we contain in clay jars. We have the power of Christ within our bodies, and yet our bodies are so weak and frail that it seems as if at any moment they can crack and break. And yet Christ chose to reside with us and within us. That is a pretty powerful image of having treasure in clay jars, jars that are so vulnerable and yet which can still carry that which is from God, if not God Himself.

In chapter 5 Paul speaks to the ministry of reconciliation which is a paragraph that we would do well to reread. You can focus on vs.15 where we read that no longer live for ourselves but for Christ, then again in vs.20 where we are called ambassadors for Christ. What a poweful image which reminds us that wherever we go we go and represent Christ in all that we do. Finally, I know I said two but it is actually three, we can look at chapter 6:14 where we read that we are not to be unequally yoked. I remember growing up and hearing that verse constantly as we looked to date and we were told, not by my parents but by my youth group leader, to not be unequally yoked. Meaning, we were to find people who loved Jesus and make sure that we date them and not people who didn’t know Jesus.

If you want to know where we get the phrases “pearly gates” and “streets of gold” when we are describing heaven you need look no further. Revelation 21 contains much of what we imagine when heaven is talked about as this idyllic place. But the part that I use most consistently is the beginning of the chapter which describes the promise of what it will be like as a result of the victory of Jesus on the cross. Death will be no more, he will wipe away every tear from our eye. These descriptions provide much joy and consolation for one how is mourning the death of a loved one.

Once again it is absolutely impossible to understand the original meaning of Revelation without knowing a little bit about what is happening in the first century. Remember, Jerusalem and all of the promised land including the regions where all of the disciples and apostles are now living is under the rule of the Roman Empire. So when we hear talk about the great city that is fallen and is buring, see Revelation 18 and other places, it needs to be clear that John, the author is clearly speaking about Rome.

We know that in 64, when John would have clearly been alive, the great city of Rome burned for over a week. There is a common story that Nero, the great emperor, was playing the fiddle while it was burning. At the end of the day Nero blames the Christians for setting Rome on fire which leads to the greatest of persecutions which lasted for centuries. All of this we see in Revelation, even in the places where it talks in 17:9 about the seven hills. It is common knowledge that to this day Rome is constructed on seven hills. This was true back then as well. We would do well to know a little history before trying to attribute modern events to what is happening in Revelation. What was is and will be…

There is always that fine line between telling the future and telling the present in ways that make it impossible to understand in the future. That is the line that Revelation dances upon. There are areas of this prophecy that we have to say that God is telling us that Jesus is coming back in the future, but until he comes there will be great tribulation. There are some who have spent a lot of time (I would probably say wasted a lot of time), in putting together a theory on the coming of Christ and what the times are going to look like. They are called dispensationalists who have come up with theories of millenialism, postmillenialism, and amillenialism that has nothing to do with what generation you were born. But the bottom line is that Jesus is coming back like a thief in the night and we cannot predict when that will be, nor should we attempt to correlate modern events with those described in Revelation.

Let me give you one example of what John wrote in Revelation that some try to match up with today but was probably an event that took place in the 1st century. Look at 8:8-9 where we see a flaming mountain thrown into the sea. My take is that this is the description of Vesuvius erupting which took place in 79 AD. It is thought that John was still alive then and that Revelation was written soon after that and so he described this horrific event as something that today some would say is a prediction, when in fact John incorporates it as a description of current events. We have to be really, really careful in trying to read Scripture and attributing it to future events in ways that we try to predict. Careful as in we should not do it at all.

There really isn’t much specific to say about Revelation. To start with, it is not plural it is singular. Many make the mistake of calling this book with its plural, similar to when we read a Psalm a person identifies it with the plural often. But the term Revelation in the Greek is Apocalypse of John. This term apocalypse identifies the end times and when Christ will come again, and identifies the main thrust of this book of the Bible.

It would not serve anyone to try to diagnose each of the images that are given to us. It is a writing that describes to a persecuted community that one day Jesus will come back and conquer the Roman empire. All of the metaphors relate to modern events in the 1st century which are signs according to the author John, that Jesus is on his way back to take us with him. If you want to identify Revelation with a single theme you can use this one: NO COMPROMISE!

John is writing to a community that daily has a difficult decision before them. Do we stay with the faith and be killed or do we turn our back on Jesus and the community of believers and deny the faith, apostasy is the term, and so save our lives? This is where Jesus’ words ring especially true when he says those who would save their life will lose it and those who are willing to lose their life for His sake, will keep it. We do not live in such an intense environmnet, but the theme of NO COMPROMISE rings true for all of us.

We find a shocking image in Zechariah, an object lesson, two of them actually, which set up the coming of Jesus as Lord and Savior. Zechariah is told to take two staffs. The first represents the covenant that God made with his people, this one was called Favor. The second staff represented the oneness of the people of God even though they were divided between North and South, Israel and Judah, this staff was called unity. Zechariah is commanded to break the staff of favor and thus breaking the covenant that God had with his people. The favor of God no longer rested upon a single people, but in the coming of Jesus it rests upon the whole world, all of creation, every single person who was created and had the life of God breathed into them. This is super significant. The breaking of unity is less significant because we know that the diaspora of the Jews created all sorts of different nationalities and races and tribes within the Jewish family. There are Jews literally from all over the world. But there does remain unity and that is in their understanding of being Jewish.

But the breaking of that first staff, the covenant, required that there be a new way, a new covenant, in which God interacts with his people and saves them from His wrath so that he would not destroy them. We even see two clear references to Jesus who will be coming up in a few centuries in the same chapter when it describes the same amount of silver that Judas was paid to betray Jesus. In chapter 12 we read about mourning for the one that they have pierced. Again, the breaking of the covenant by God, because it had been broken previously by the people, requires a new covenant, this new covenant that Jeremiah had discussed which is one that is written upon our hearts and not on tablets.

Psalm 84 reminds me of this song that is nice, but not a classic.