PSA Bible Reading Challenge 2023-2024

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.

We begin our reading with Ezra in the first person. The King of Persia, whom you can understand as the king of Babylon, gives permission to Ezra to gather people who want to voluntarily relocate to Judah, and specifically Jerusalem. He gathers them up and there are numbers that are in the hundreds, so about 2,000 people join him to head down south. Now, keep in mind there is no army among them and they are laden with silver and gold and all sorts of valuable treasures that the king of Babylon had given them to bring with them down south. He was embarrassed to ask the king for protection because he had kinda bragged that God would deliver and protect them. If that was the case then why ask for an army, so he didn’t. Guess what? God protected them.

Interestingly enough they get close to Jerusalem and Ezra declares a fast to understand and seek out the favor and the direction of the Lord. While they were praying and putting themselves before the Lord one of the people of God received a message that we have a problem. The problem is that many who are going to be serving in the temple of the Lord while they were slaves married foreign wives and either allowed them to practice, or they themselves practiced, the foreign religions with the foreign gods, along with worshipping the Lord. This caused a major crisis with Ezra grieving and tearing his clothes and tearing out his hair. A solution had to be found.

We can certainly say that they did not take the easy road on this one. The solution is found: send away the foreign wives and the children that came as a result of these marriages. There is a questionable justice issue here with not knowing what would become of these foreign wives and children, the most vulnerable of that society, but that is the solution, and it is taken and we move on from there.

We begin a new chapter in the life of the people of God, literally a new book of the Bible. We see the people of Israel were stillin captivity in Babylon when the king of Babylon, Cyrus, gave them the freedom to return to Jerusalem, and gave them instructions to rebuild the temple. They set to work right away to get the job done. Many returned to Jerusalem and the work was being done, even before the foundation of the temple was laid sacrifices were being done. But then it hits a snag.

Over time when there is a transition of power, similar to what happens in our country, there are different priorities and different policies. Once Cyrus was no longer around the Samaritans from the South, many of whom had not been sent into exile and were still in the region just north of Jerusalem this whole time, “volunteered” to help build the temple. Those who had been in exile and now returned said: “No thank you.” I mean, not exactly in that way, but there was definitely a fear that this people whose worship was probably very different from their own, should in any way corrupt the real worship which they were involved in and wanted to reestablish in Jerusalem.

Well, that didn’t make the Samaritans happy. So they got to the king and convinced him to have him send a cease and desist notice. Now the reconstruction of the temple came to a grinding halt. More time passes and King Darius is shown the error of his ways. Remember Darius, isn’t he the same king who was around when Esther was around? Actually, he was the son of the king who married Esther. That’s interesting. But as we go forward Darius says go ahead and build the temple and as the original decree said, take the money out of the royal treasury. Great story.

This section gives us a pretty good understanding of where the nation of Israel, the whole people of God, were, and where they ended up. Let me clarify that a bit, it is absolutely focused on the southern kingdom, Judah. We see if exclusively from that perspective. We begin with a great king, Hezekiah, and near the end of this reading we see an even greater king, Josiah, whose people rediscover the law. As a result of this discovery, these are some of my favorite verses in the Bible, the king grieves and tears his clothes because he recognizes how far removed he and his people are from where the Lord wants them to be. The image of the king of Judah in utter grief because they are not following the Lord as they ought is inspirational. From the top down the example is set.

We end this history lesson with the people of Judah, again the southern kingdom, being taken away into captivity into Babylon. The rule of Hezekian and then eventually the rule of Josiah, both great kings, is followed by people who turned their back on the Lord and built up the high places. As a result God sent the Babylonians to capture and make slaves the people of Judah. We end with their captivity. We know that there is more to the story, but for now that is where we end up.

Let’s start with the psalms that we have for our readings. They are both categorized as Psalms of ascent, which literally means psalms of going up. They are both pilgrim psalms with the readers, or those saying out loud the words making their way to Jerusalem and on their way up toward Jerusalem, literally, they are able to cry out that they, just like Psalm 121, lifting their eyes up to the Lord. 123 begins with to you I lift up my eyes, again, to see Jerusalem perched on its hill. 122 gives us the phrase: I was glad when they said let us go to the house of the Lord.

This then takes us to the reforms of Hezekiah who was able to do right according to what God wanted him to do in a way that hadn’t been seen since the days of David. Notice that he reinstalls the passover but since so much time had passed when they last had a passover festival not everyone knew how to do it. But he prays to God and asks for grace for their shortcomings and God grants it. Even though the worship isn’t perfect or even what was prescribed, at least they tried. I find that fascinating. Our worship is stilted and confused, and yet I think we are trying. I pray that the grace of God be extended to us like in the days of Hezekiah.