Bible Reading Challenge Blog

I’m not sure that there is any more disturbing set of chapters in the Bible than these that we just read.  Remember, throughout this entire book we have the theme that “everyone did as he saw fit.”  Samson is the last judge that we find who was actually put in place to judge and rule Israel by God.  He reigns for 20 years, and he is actually not someone after whom we ought to mold our actions.  

We then get a story of Micah and his idols and his hiring a Levite whose role it is to play the priest and to serve out those functions.  The Danites come and take this priest and make him their own, and surprisingly it seems as if the Lord does speak through this priest even though we read about the presence of idols and an ephod and other items that we consider to be used by pagans and idol worshipers.  There is a whole mishmash of theologies coming to a head when the people do as they see fit and there is no clear direction.

You then have this terrible story of the tribe of Benjamin raping the wife of a man (who was offered by that man by the way) and the rest of Israel going to war against Benjamin as a result.  We finish the chapter with the Benjamites being defeated and a creative solution found on how to supply the remaining men from that tribe with wives.  Let’s just allow them to go and kidnap young women from another tribe within our family that way we were not actually helping them.  All very strange.  I’ll be glad when they finally get a king to put things back in order.  

We continue on with the self-imposed leaders of Israel with Jephthah next in line.  We know that he was a mighty warrior, but we also know that he was kicked out of his father’s tribe because he was born to a prostitute.  But now Israel needs him back because they need a strong warrior.  He does pray to the Lord but he makes a very pagan deal with God which results in him having to sacrifice his daughter when he arrives home.  Not something that the Lord would ever require, in fact, the Lord is quiet in these verses and it seems as if this vow that Jephthah makes is one sided.  

Once Jephthah is out of the picture then we have another line of self-imposed rulers until we get to Samson who is clearly chosen by God to lead the people of Israel.  We read multiple times that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him.  I tend to see him as a bit of prankster whose pranks are on the scale of many magnitudes which include death and destruction for those that he pranks.  Samson gets married, but not to Delilah first.  But just like Delilah she is a Philistine and helps her people out much to the damage of Samson.  He is angry and breaks a few things, but apparently still loves her, much to the surprise of his father in law who had already given her to marriage to someone else.

Again, Samson gets angry, burns all the fields of the Philistines which leads to the burning of his wife and father-in-law.  Samson was not crazy about that.  He kills a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey, so, yeah, he had that going for him.  He led Israel under God’s tutelage and grace for the next 20 years.  He was definitely put in power by God.  

We then transition to Psalm 49 which is attributed to the sons of Korah.  Let’s look at vs.20 and call it good: “A man who has riches without understanding is like the beasts that perish.”  So that’s good to know.

We get into the area of Judges that provides little solace for those who would want to follow the Lord.  We begin with Gideon who is chosen by God to lead his people, and he does a tremendous job in battle and conquers with only 300 men against hundreds of thousands of men.  It is truly a miracle that he was able to conquer.  But then look at what happens in 8:27 where Gideon pivots from his battle which saw him victories but only because of the hand of God, to making an ephod which was used to prostitute the Israelites to other gods.  

From there disorder and chaos ensue with Abimelech, who was not chosen by God, this is key, he is not a judge but rather a self-imposed ruler.  He takes the reigns and leads the nation with much infighting until a woman drops a rock on his head.  Not a fun way to die.  We others who rise up to rule Israel but we don’t seen at anytime after Gideon, that they were chosen by God as judges to rule over Israel.  It seems as if they were all self chosen leaders.  We do see the people of Israel turning back to the Lord at the end of chapter 10 as the armies are amassing against them.  Who knows, maybe the Lord will respond?

Psalm 43 is a classic psalm of lament and one that I said much about on Sunday.  You can listen to the sermon if you wanted to see more.  

We find ourselves in a new book of the Bible and one that tells stories in a cyclical nature that manifests itself in 1:18 and following which shows this book of the Bible as one that follows a rhythm of God appointing a judge who watches over the nation and the Lord being with that judge, but then the judge dies and the people do what was evil in the sight of the Lord by worshiping other gods.  When that happens then God does not strengthen the Israelites in battle and they end up losing territory and find themselves constantly in battle with the nation around them.  This really won’t change until David comes along, but we have a number of judges to look at before that.

We find the first judge is Othniel who had the Spirit of the Lord rest upon him.  As a result he ruled and the land had peace for 40 years.  Forty years is a good number since it elicits the 40 years that the Israelites had to wander in the wilderness.  Then a couple other judges come into rule until we get to my favorite judge, Deborah.  Do not discount the importance of Deborah in Scripture.  Some would just pass over her as an anomaly, but I see here as an example of how God is able and willing to use all people in all capacities in his kingdom and here on the earth.  She ruled wisely and she captured the lands that many before her were not able to subdue.  

Psalm 3 brings us to a specific time in the life of David which is defined in the prelude to the Psalm.  It is described as a psalm that David put together when he fled from his son Absalom.  If you want to read the whole story you can find it in II Samuel 15-18.  It would be helpful to read that to situate the Psalm in history.  David asks the Lord for deliverance against his many foes but ends the Psalm with a recognition that deliverance does belong to the Lord.  

We come to the end of the Acts of the Apostles with Paul still under lock and key and on his way to Rome since he appealed to Caesar.  Paul continues to swear his innocence to Festus and Felix and now King Agrippa enters the picture as well.  King Agrippa was really the next Herod in a long line of Herod’s who was in charge of that region and actually was pretty active in persecuting Christians.  It is surprising that he would sit still and listen to Paul since he was so active in persecuting Christians historically.  

Paul makes his way to Rome and his boat shipwrecks, but he ends up saving the lives of all of the sailors because and angel of God told him to take courage, not a one of them would die.  As the men tried to flee the ship, Paul encourages them to stay on, and as a result they are all saved.  He does make it to Rome where he becomes an instant celebrity.  The story ends there, but it is thought that Paul eventually dies while a “prisoner” in Rome.  We read that he was able to live on his own with only one guard watching him.  Sounds like house arrest where he doesn’t have to really stay in his house.

Psalm 2 gives us a reminder that God is over not only the heavens and the earth, but also over all the kingdoms and he is the one who makes them rise and fall.  Blessed are all those who take refuge in him.  Proverbs was once described as a cross country trip with your mother-in-law.  Here the advice we are given is to keep an eye open for fools and don’t give them the light of day or else you will be counted in their company.  Pretty harsh advice, but I didn’t write it.

We find ourselves at the end of the life and the story of Joshua and the end of the conquering of the lands which the Israelites had claimed.  As we had seen earlier there were two and a half tribes who were promised land on the other side of the Jordan, that would have been on the east side of the Jordan, but they had to send troops to fight in order to take over the entire land that the God had promised for the rest of the families.  Now that those battles are over those tribes were able to head home and claim the land and settle in the homes that were theirs.

On the way home they built an altar to the Lord for a remembrance.  But that was a problem and a misunderstanding broke out.  The rest of the Israelites saw the altar and thought that it was for idols and so they got ready for war against these two and a half tribes.  It was cleared up, no, no, no, it isn’t for other gods, it is to remind you that we worship the same God for if you ever try to come against us you will see this altar and remember that we worship the same God.  Joshua dies and the times of the patriarchs come to an end.

In Acts, Paul remains in prison as he will through the end of the book.  But it is kind of soft prison.  He is given permission to speak to the people of Jerusalem and he tells them his witness, this is how I came to know and love the Lord.  But the crowd turns on him when he says that he was sent to preach the good news to the gentiles.  Everything was fine until loving your neighbor and consider your neighbor to be worthy of being loved by God was brought into the picture. 

He is about to be whipped by the Roman guard when he tells him that he himself is a Roman citizen which provides protection until there is a trial against him.  There had been no trial, so he is protected.  Paul is brought before the high priest and things are going poorly until he throws in a theological conundrum which had separated the two camps of priests: Pharisees and Sadducees.  They almost get into a riot among themselves.  

The Jewish leaders plot to kill Paul, his nephew warns him, and he is taken to Felix and then Felix introduces his wife to Paul, his wife is Jewish and so the assumption is that she would be more sympathetic to Paul’s testimony about Jesus.  

In Joshua we finally complete the actual allotment of the land to the tribes of Israel.  Now this was no longer a hypothetical exercise but the people of Israel were actually given the land after they took over the towns and the people who were inhabiting those lands.  Chapter 20 gives us the towns where people who had killed others by mistake could flee and escape retribution.  The final chapter gives us the cities where the Levites were able to stay since they were the only tribe not given land as a result of their vocation, as the priests of the people.  

In Acts we find ourselves ping ponging back and forth from the third person to the first person in the description of what happens next in the life of Paul.  Remember the theme that we identified last time?  Arrival, preaching, beating, moving on, well that continues here as well.  This time Paul finds himself in Ephesus which is where the church sits that he writes to in Ephesians.  A riot takes place there because the silver smiths were furious that they were about to lose their livelihood as a result of Paul’s preaching against idols.  

Paul moves on to Jerusalem which his disciples and loved ones encouraged him not to go to because the Christian movement, or the Way as it is described a couple of times in our readings for today, has become so popular that it is affecting the Jewish population as well.  There is an accusation that Paul is telling people not only to love Jesus, but to give up all of their Jewish customs and traditions.  This was very serious and Jerusalem would have been the one place he would not want to go if this accusation was true.  But he goes anyway.

It is from here where we see that he is arrested and the rest of Acts plays out with him under arrest and in the hands of the Romans with the Jewish authorities looking for opportunities to finish him.  The rest of Acts has Paul in custody, but this is where it begins.

We continue along with our readings as they lay out the territories that are allotted to the Jews as they move into the promised land.  We begin with the allotment for the sons of Joseph which covers 16 and 17.  In 18 we see the division of the rest of the land by scouts going out and charting and mapping the land so that it could be divided evenly.  Not much more to say about Joshua in these chapters.

We can say a lot for these chapters in Acts.  We are introduced to Timothy in 16 who becomes an important figure in the life of Paul, as Paul becomes an important figure in Timothy’s life.  He considers Timothy his son in many ways and even writes two letters to him which we have in Scripture which are I and II Timothy.  These chapters are a series of events that seem to follow a pattern.  Paul and his entourage arrive in a city, they go to the synagogue and preach Jesus.  People believe in Jesus, the leaders get jealous and stir up the crowd and bring them to the authorities, the authorities do nothing about it and so the leaders gather a group of people and beat up Paul and the people that he is with.  Not a great routine, but at least it is a routine.  

Notice in chapter 18 when he gets to Corinth he ends up spending quite a bit of time there.  He loves the church there, but seems to consistently get frustrated with them.  That frustration comes out in his two letter to them: I and II Corinthians.  It is interesting that we now are able to see the beginning of the letters of Paul to churches and people and recognize how this man of faith was used by God to fill the majority of the New Testament that we have today.

These chapters may seem a bit dry but they are important in finalizing the promise of the Lord to the people of Israel.  It states that Joshua was getting old and the promise of the Lord had not yet been fulfilled and so you have a listing of the lands that God was going to give to the 12 tribes.  Notice, and this is important, that Joseph’s family actually had two tribes come out of it.  Look at Joshua 14:4 where we see the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim.  But the tribe of Levi, who became the priests of Israel, did not have any land allotted to them.  They had to reside in each town and carry out their functions in that town.

In Acts you see the dynamic duo of Barnabas and Paul working together and bringing a whole bunch of people to faith.  It is interesting that later on this chapter you will see the two of them in a disagreement and they separate, that you will find in our reading for today 15:36-41.  We often think of the first century church as perfect in every way, but here we see that they had a dispute which caused them to separate.  Now, we know that they later reconcile, but at least here the dispute was sharp enough that they had to separate.

Paul comes very close to dying in 14:19-20, but he continue to preach and proclaim God’s word to those who would listen.  Chapter 15 is one of the most important chapters in Acts.  We find the council of Jerusalem where the leaders of the church had to gather and had to decide if they would require gentiles who had come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ to be burdened with the same Jewish laws and requirements that none of them were able to fulfill.  The primary example of that would be circumcision, and as you can imagine that would be a deal breaker for some people if the only way that they could become a Christian would be if they would be circumcised.  

At the end of the day the decision is made that gentiles coming to know Jesus did not have to take on the same Jewish requirements, and could in fact love Jesus period.  It was a time when the Gospel message was then allowed to flourish as a result of this decision.  It reminds us that Jesus is enough.

It is these types of chapters in the Bible that give God a bit of a bad name.  Granted, Joshua is carrying out the commands of God and fulfilling the promises that were given to him by God, but all of the slaughter and the killing and all of the countries that are overtaken without a single living soul remaining.  It is interesting that Joshua was able to stop the sun and he is described as someone who was in charge when: “there has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a man.”  That pretty heavy praise.

At the end of the day we have 31 kings and their lands taken over and that translates to 31 groups of people, nation states, completely wiped off the face of the earth.  It is hard to swallow, but it is also something that we have to recognize as taking place in the old covenant which certainly was not a covenant of grace.  Thanks be to God that we now live under a covenant of grace and God would never call us to do something similar.

We then transition to Acts and Peter takes center stage once again.  Peter’s vision is crucial for two reasons.  One for its literal translation which allows us to eat all that God has created and we no longer have to follow the dietary laws which God had given to the Israelites.  While that is great news to us meat lovers, the greater news is how he explains his vision to Cornelius which is that God has chosen all of the humanity, including the gentiles, to be a part of his kingdom.  No longer is just a select nation God’s children, but rather God so loved the world…  Here’s an appropriate video that speaks to the love of God for all people.