Bible Reading Challenge Blog

As we make our way with Job we see another friend accuse him and Job takes a couple of chapters to intervene and speak against the reasoning and the rationale that his friends speak. God better intervene sometime soon, don’t worry, he’ll be along soon. But I really want to focus in on Romans 12.

If you look at Romans 12:9-21 you find what is called the marks of a true Christian. Now, we do not sit on the judgment and seat and we are not tasked with the job of deciding who is a Christian by name and who is a true Christian. But these verses serve as a great measuring stick for our own lives. Don’t try to measure up the lives of others, we would do well just to measure our own lives. Look at the guidelines that we are given to measure our lives, I’m just going to throw some phrases out and read them and let them sink in.

Hate what is evil and hold fast to what is good. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering and persevere in prayer. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. That should sound familiar. That is my benediction, at least that last phrase. I think this is good enough to end on. Wait, there is more. Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good. Yeah, that’s a good place to end it. Can you imagine if people tried to over come evil with good. Wow, just wow.

It is in these chapters where Job famously declares that he is willing to defend himself before. Not as if he were perfect or as if there is no guilt or sin in him, but rather as someone as he says that is not suffering as a result of his own work, but rather as this being the work of God irrespective of his life of righteousness or sin. Clearly speaking, this is God at work here and not his work that has put him in this untenous, impossible position. One of his friends, again, blames him and calls him a fool for not recognizing that God was punishing him for his deeds. This is what causes him to say: I will argue my case with God. In seminary we had a mock trial of Job vs. God where Job goes to court and pleads his case against God. Needless to say, Job loses.

Romans strikes a similar vein where we find in 9:20 where Paul asks us a simple but pointed question: Who are you to argue with God. That is question we can ask of Job. Who are we to wonder what God was really up to? I guess once you lose all of your livelihood and your children and everything of value you somehow get a sense that you might have a right to question just a little bit. Yeah, even then we are clay and God is the potter. No matter how much God has shaped us and molded us and brought us back down to nothing, we are still the clay. That never changes.

We go in streaks here in this blog with material that is a bit pedantic, and then other material that every chapter there is something of import that needs to be discussed, but given the limitations of this space we aren’t able to cover all of it. We find ourselves once again this latter situation. After Job is told to repent by another one of his friends, he ends up saying that his loathes, read hates, his life. The reality of his current life was such that there didn’t seem to be any value because God has seemed to basically have abandoned him.

We then move on to chapter 6-8 of Romans which arguably has some of the best known memory verses and theological concepts in all of Scripture. Chapter 8 we call at times: “pieces of eight”, because it has so many precious verses that we should know. Let me give you just a couple of examples in 8. Look at vs.1, just to begin the chapter, we have the assurance that we have no condemnation in Jesus. vs.18 where we see that the present suffering doesn’t even compare to the future glory that we will experience. vs.26 that speaks to prayer and how it intercedes and takes over for us when we are not capable or able to pray as we should pray. vs.30 refers to predestination, the favorite of the Presbyterian theologies. vs.38 tells us that we are more than conquerors in Jesus.

Paul gives us the assurances that we need to recognize that Jesus is our Savior and that Savior provides all the assurances that we need to understand that our salvation is assured and cannot be taken away from us.

The basic theme of these verses in Job is that the friends of Job accuse him of being unfaithful to God and so as a result God is punishing him. God has not spoken yet or taken a side yet, but Job responds to his friend’s accusations that it is impossible that Job has been righteous simply because these things that have happened to him never happen to a righteous person. Job responds and says simply no, no, I have not been unfaithful, this is not a result of my sin. I don’t know why I am going through this, but I am. It is not a direct result of my sin, it is unexplainable. God will respond later on because Job also makes assumptions that don’t hold up. We will address them later.

Romans always gives us some of our favorite memory verses. I think if there are any words from Paul you have heard me utter, they are the ones from 5:8. “God proves (don’t you love that word and that concept that God proves) his love for us that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” As if God had to in some way prove that he loves us. Just in case we weren’t fully convinced, we have full proof. God loves us! That’s all we need to know.

Two of my favorite books of the Bible, but each for a very different reason. Job I love because his defense of who he is and what he will continue to believe takes place even in the most severe of circumstances. As soon as he is overcome with trials his tells him the route he should take which ultimately his three friends subscribe to: Why don’t you just curse God and die? Things would be so much easier if you just come to terms that you are a sinner and that you did something wrong to deserve this. The answer is one that we should all be able to say: Yes, I know that I am a sinner, and yet this current state of mine is not the direct result of any one action, but rather it is a season in which I find myself that will pass. God is faithful and just, abounding in steadfast love and slow to anger. While these aren’t Job’s words, they could be in his current state. He remains faithful in the most horrific of situations.

Romans gives us the meat of our theology. If you wanted to know anything about anything that we believe all you have to do is look at Romans. The problem with Romans in this context, however, is that there are so many verses to lift up that we could be here all day, but let’s at least do a few. Look at 1:16, this is a strong reminder of who we should be: never ashamed of the Gospel. In that statement we find the confidence to preach Christ crucified even while all around us we have a Christ who is serving the wishes and the desires of powerful people who use his words, or at least his name and sometimes his name alone, to justify horrific policies and actions of which Jesus would be ashamed. “The one who is righteous (who acts according to the will of God) will live by faith”

Romans 1 gives us a laundry list of perversions that we should not support, but they seemed to have been forgotten in our culture. There are other lists, but this is one that is fairly significant. If you look at vs.20 and that section you see that God reveals himself to those who would not self-identify as Christian just by the creation of God around them. There is no one on earth who has an excuse that God never revealed himself to me. That simply is not true. And while nature is a strong convincer of the presence of God, the life and resurrection of Jesus is the full revelation that changes peoples’ hearts. I could go on, I didn’t even get to chapter 2. There is so much here.

We find ourselves once again with an embarrassment of choice. There is so much that we could highlight in Philippians. Whether it be salvation by grace through faith that Paul emphasizes here (2:12). But I like to highlight the most practical how to that we find in Philippians which should be the rule of life for each and every disciple of Jesus Christ. What if you made your motto Philippians 2:11b – “I have learned to be content with whatever I have” To what degree is our life a pursuit of one desire after another to help mitigate our uncontentment? Don’t we find ourselves pursuing that which we feel we need because we are currently not content with what we have?

Oh, how life would be different if we truly could believe the memory verse of all times: I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me (4:13). This can only happen if we are truly content with our lives which is based upon the life of Christ within us. When we are not content it is a result of not knowing that Christ is actually present in our lives in a way that he comes to our rescue at all times. The key is being content. I love this.

Psalm 42 is a classic, but most get stuck at the deer at the stream, when all along it is a psalm of lament that the author is feeling like God is far removed from him in the midst of his suffering. Proverbs 20:30 is incredibly disturbing unless we take it metaphorically, but even then it moves the meter a bit in regards to being a bit masochistic

Once again we find ourselves immersed in Proverbs and Psalms and again the dichotomoy between the wise and the foolish and the righteous and the evil. I love the verse in Proverbs 18:10 which states that the name of the Lord is a strong tower. It reminds me of this song which I will leave you with.

The story continues, but it continues with establishing, or I guess I should say reinstalling the laws and the people in their places that were supposed to be there according to the laws of Moses. We begin this section with Ezra who reads the book of the law out loud to the people over a series of days and the people reacting to it as if they had never heard it before, because maybe they hadn’t. This goes on for some time and the people begin to follow the commandments that were written. The Levites are reestablished in the temple, the people begin to celebrate the religious festivals as they did in the olden times. This happens even to the point where we read in 12 that the celebration of Jerusalem was heard from far away.

But when the cat is away the mice will play. While the people had signed a covenat to reestablish their committment to the Lord, Nehemiah goes back to the king, remember they are still under the rule of Babylon. All of this is taking place under the watchful gaze of the king of Babylon, so the Israelites were not really free, but under his rule. While Nehemiah goes away the people disobey. They establish one of the overseers in the temple and give him a nice cushy office in the temple. The Levites weren’t being paid what they were supposed to be paid so they left the temple and went back to their lands to farm and abandoned the temple.

When Nehemiah comes back he does three things: 1) He kicks out the overseer from his cushy office in the temple and replaces it with the articles that should be used to celebrate the presence of the Lord. No one should have an office in the temple except the Lord. 2) He brings the Levites back and ensures that they are being given what they should be given and so eliminates any incentive that they might have to leave the temple and do their own thing. Lastly, 3) he demands that all those who are married to foreign women, or foreign men, separate themselves from them in order to keep the people of God pure. That’s a lot of work for Nehemiah. He did a lot. I did also see that the sin that Solomon committed was that he married many, and I mean many, foreign women. This is spelled out in this book of the Bible.

I know the story of Nehemiah, but didn’t really know it. Let’s give a brief summary of it and remember its importance. The people of Israel were slaves in Babylon, taken captive by King Nebuhadnezzar and forced to work for him. Now with a new king Nehemiah, who was the king’s cupbearer, was sad in his presence. As a result the king said that he would grant what he wished to make him happy.

He asked to be able to return to Jerusalem to build its walls back up. The king granted the wish, but the surrounding countries were not happy at all. They remembered the power of Judah in the olden days and were afraid that they would rise up again as they had in the past. But the king of Babylon was more powerful and granted the wish of Nehemiah and he started building the walls. The walls were eventually built, and this was even before the houses were built within the walls. But they were always on edge because the nations surrounding them were looking to stop them from building.

Notice how they had to build. Some built while others guarded, even those building could only do it with one hand because the other hand was on a sword in case the enemies came wandering along. But the work was accomplished and now it was time to rebuild the city within the walls. Nehemiah did that which was the desire of the Lord and the Lord rewarded him in kind. Great book, let’s see what comes next in this story.

On a day when we only have psalms and proverbs one can easily run into another. There is one aspect of the psalms that I didn’t realize and I should have. Look at Psalm 37:11 where it states that the meek shall inherit the earth. It is then directly quoted by Jesus on the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5:5, and it makes so much more sense within the context of the psalm rather than just when Jesus said it. We know that in the psalm the meek are the Israelites and the earth is the promised land that the Lord has promised to them over the time period in which he has established their covenant with them. Jesus is confirming this promise and reminding the people that God has not abandoned or forsaken them.

A commonality with the psalms and the proverbs that we read is that the wicked and the righteous are juxtaposed with the Lord showing favor to the righteous. Now, while this does not happen in real life, that the righteous are actually favored and we can see and experience that favoritism, there is a sense that the Lord requires us to be righteous because He is righteous. There is a constant repitition of making sure that if we are to follow the Lord, whose love is from everlasting to everlasting by the way, then we ought to emulate the righteousness that he exhibits.