With Today's reading we're mostly back on schedule with Chronicles, Ezra, Esther and Nehemiah; and Psalms 88-105 make up a rather sizable chunk of reading but once you hit a strident pace with Chronicles you'll find that reading them together in one sitting is rewarding.

Chronicles

Do it again! Do it again! That's what children shout when they're having fun. And Chronicles doubles up on the fun of Samuel and Kings, hey it even doubles up on the fun of Numbers. We get line after line to the sum of nine chapters of generational family tree goodness in the first book of Chronicles. Enjoy with two caveats.

1. Don't get bogged down in the litany of names if you're just here to read.
2. Don't jump off the deep end and pull out rare deviations like Jabez and make an entire theology out of them. Call Heretics Anonymous and move on.

Reading Chronicles as a whole you may see some deviation after the genealogical section but First Chronicles is primarily written as a almost entirely about David's kingship and that for good reason he is the prefigurement of the Messiah and the penultimate Old Testament King. Second Chronicles records the horrendous crash of the nations of Israel and Judah as they obstinately refuse to listen to the prophets God sends them. After hundreds of years of warnings God finally took action an suddenly the people who call themselves God's people were taken by surprise when God finally took action. Read the books with a comprehension of both ancient history and modern society and you'll feel like you're reading the newspaper. All the more reason to pay attention to what you're reading because Just like way back then when God finally does act, I suspect many will be taken off guard.

The Great Coffee Disaster

I had to get up earlier than normal yesterday to help my wife and one of my daughters get out the door on a camping trip. Since it was 4:30 AM I figured I'd get plenty of Bible reading done and still have plenty of time to finish my other goals for the day. Wrong.

My coffee pot was dead - all the way dead in a way that makes it worthless dead. That meant I had no morning coffee and that is not a good thing. So once I got my wife out the door I tried to read and work until the other kids got up. I guess I'm not used to concentrating without my coffee. I didn't get very far.

So I made a trip to town and bought a new coffee pot - well a coffee press actually. I've been wanting one for quite awhile but didn't want to spend the money. Now that I was faced with purchasing a new coffee pot anyway I nabbed a press instead. Like most models this one doesn't use any electricity to heat up the water. That means I heat up the water in a large measuring cup in the microwave and once it's almost ready to boil I pour it in, cap it - let the brew steep for four minutes and then slowly press the grounds down to the bottom. The result? A really good cup of coffee.
Now, let's open the Bible and get some reading done.

I enjoyed starting with the Psalms first so much yesterday that I think I'll do it again.

Well it's not because I didn't read but because I couldn't read. It's Thursday morning and till now I've had no internet since last Friday. Our local service provider's antenna got hit by lighting the second week in a row out here. I guess when you put an antenna on top of the co-op's tallest bin you're just begging for a lighting strike.

The end result, on top of missing the fact that I was linked on the ESV blog is that I'm unintentionally three days behind. Well enough of that, Tallyho!

Let's do Judges and 1 Samuel today and Psalms 60-75.
Plus, to mix things up a bit, I'm going to start with the Psalms Today. From a cry for deliverance to cries of victory the Psalms resound with faith in the midst of struggle. Surely as on preacher said, there is no life situation which the Psalms fail to encounter and encourage us. Perhaps the crown of today's reading in the Psalms comes from PS 64:10.

Let the Righteous one rejoice in the Lord and take refuge in him! Let all the upright in heart exult!
-Psalm 64:10

All in all these fifteen Psalms, while they encompass a variety of literary types they center around the theme of salvation as echoed most strongly in the 68th Psalm.

Our God is a God of salvation,
oand to God, the Lord, belong deliverances from death.
-Ps 68:20 ESV

Today's reading encompasses caring for the temple, jealous husbands, Nazirite vows, Temple dedication and preparation.
One of the problems that occurs to me as I reflect on the reading and on the history of Israel throughout the book of Numbers is their many rebellions. Rebellion isn't much of a surprise to me, not as well as I know my own heart. But the shear knowledge that for forty years, every single day the Israelites would look outside their tent and see the glory of God in smoke or fire resting on the tabernacle. Then they would go out and gather up the Manna which God had given for them miraculously. Then they would rebel by grumbling with some degree of regularity. They did not rebel because they couldn't see the raw evidence of the God they were serving and should have been seeking. They rebelled for the same horrible reason that I rebel. Wickedness.
God be gracious to me a sinner!

I note that my passage cutoff's aren't as even as they should be. At approximately 30 chapters a day I'm overlapping Leviticus and Numbers as books that could almost be read in one sitting. Ah, well that's alright. Now SHH. It's time for me to get reading. But not before I make one more observation: Leviticus has become my favorite Old Testament book. So this is a special treat for me today.

As a pastor it is significant to me that the Leviticus reading begins with sacrifices for a priest who sins. Someone once wrote, "If a solitary man sins, he destroys himself. If a family man sins, he destroys his family. But if a Pastor sins, he unravels his whole church." That's a sober warning to myself and to any pastors reading this. Men we have got to draw near to Jesus Christ!

As I read through Leviticus it occurs to me that "sin is costly". My wife and I bought a 1/2 a cow last year which is now only partially remaining in the freezer. It was expensive. It was cheaper than buying all that meat from the grocery store for certain but it was still expensive. The sin offerings were bulls and goats (and birds for the poorest) but the overwhelming sense I get is that sin is costly.

I've had to fight through some of my own addictions in the past but it makes me wonder if we had to slay a bull instead of hitting our knees would our addictions find a harder time sticking? - at least once we were truly committed to repenting I mean.

It's dawn and the ESV Literary Study Bible awaits. This morning I begin in Exodus with the Exodus. God has just finished hammering the nation of Egypt with "10 mighty blows" which the ESVLB says is the meaning of the original Latin for "plague".
From the opening salvo of the passage on through the end of the Pentateuch (heck include the rest of the Bible) the major theme present is the glory of God in delivering his people. This is the penultimate old testament moment of salvation. It is met with worship first because people love to see God work but soon afterward the cycle of murmuring and judgment sets in.
A key moment for me was actually the salvation of Jethro, Moses' father in law.

Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods, because in this affair they dealt arrogantly with the people.” -Exodus 18:11 ESV

For me it's a significant quote for a couple of reasons. First it is the salvation moment of a human being who turns and recognizes that there is no God above YHWH. Second, thanks to Michael Heiser I've been thinking allot lately about the gods of the nations surrounding Israel. I'm not going to replicate his work you can read it for yourself. Many of the gods which the nations worshiped are what we would recognize as demons - that is, fallen angels. Jethro's comment opens up a world of cultural understanding when we combine it with God saying that he executed judgment on the gods of Egypt through the plagues. (Exodus 12:12, Numbers 33:4) God wasn't merely attacking the mentality of the Egyptians in the plagues, he was rendering judgment on the spirit beings behind the idols which Egypt worshiped.

BANG! With that I'm out of the starting gate. I haven't quite determined how in depth to make this little blogging routine but I have two windows open. One on each monitor. :-) To my left is the Literary ESV set on Genesis 1 - I started to read the notes and figured I'd best open a blog window on the right. I'm already enjoying the literary notes. Viewing the Bible through a literary Genre lens is a worthy endeavor. Thanks to the venerable KJV the english language is packed with literary allusions to the Bible. Just go looking for them. I've got some reading to do. Don't know how much I'll blog about the content itself but here we go.

Epic. Not only is it the theme of the book of Genesis from a literary standpoint but it is the only way to truly regard reading the book of Genesis (well 1/2 of it) in one sitting. Creation, Fall, Flood, Families of the Earth, and the pivot point of not only the book of Genesis but of the entire Old Testament - the selection of the Patriarch Abram and his children to be the family through whom God will bless the earth.
The flood narrative demonstrates that merely starting over isn't good enough. Once the human soul has been marred by sin, even a proverbial "new years day" won't change anything. So God chooses Abraham and puts into play the long term plan to redeem the human soul.

A PBB resource of E.W. Hengstenberg's Commentary on the Psalms, Vol. 3 is now ready. You can download it below. Volume 3 contains commentary on Psalms 79-150 plus seven treatises in an appendix.

This 3-volume work is now complete. I am going to look into obtaining a copy of Hengstenberg's commentary on Revelation as my next project.

Grace,
Bill

Thanks to a long and relatively quiet Christmas vacation, I have completed a PBB resource of E.W. Hengstenberg's Commentary on the Psalms, Vol. 2. You can find it for downloading at the bottom of this post. Enjoy!

Volume 2 covers Psalms 35-78.

Volume 3 contains the rest of the Psalms and appendices. It's about 600 pages, so without the benefit of time off, this one will take some time to prepare.

Grace,
Bill

With Independence Day right around the corner, the Topic often at hand is freedom and the tremendous cost by which we achieved it. But it seems these days that Freedom alone is the hallmark of American Liberty - America has forgotten that her foundation is not a freedom based upon lawlessness. And gaging by the stereotypical lawyer mentality the plethora of laws which we do have in this country are written full of loopholes so that they can be ignored or rather talked around by wrestling the relevant semantics out of their clearly intended meaning¹ with phrases like, " that all depends on what the meaning of "is" is.²

But America and Her laws and thus by extension her freedoms cannot live in abject lawlessness. If America is to continue she must as a nation be subject to the Law of God. If she will not be subject to God's laws than she who was formed thereon may well come to slavery and non-existence. Even our founding fathers knew this to be the case. Our second president, John Adams wrote:

"[I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. Religion and virtue are the only foundations...of republicanism and of all free governments."³

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.⁴

President Adams was merely quoting the concept of Scripture. The sad reality is that we have become an immoral and irreligious nation. Yet worse than that - many Christians have likewise become so freedom focused that by ignoring God's law they have themselves been taken captive and placed in bondage.

The message in scripture is that if you want to walk in freedom, you must have the Law of the Lord. I would like you to turn to the one-hundred-nineteenth Psalm and join me at Verse 45. (Psalm 119:45). Please, for contexts sake would you read with me Psalm 119:41-48.

We cannot afford to miss the context of freedom which is spelled out in this passage and clarified everywhere else in Scripture: Freedom comes not from a lack of mastery but by being willfully submitted to the law of the Lord!

This nation will not remain free if it will not submit itself to the law of the Lord. Many nations - even great world powers have risen and those who lived in their time would say, "They can never go away for they are too great and powerful a nation!" But these same dynasties and nations have fallen and come to nothing with none but archaeologists having any capacity to find them again. Where is Babylon, Assyria, Medo-Persia and the Roman Empire? Where are the Pharaohs of Egypt? They exist only in archaeological extrapolation. There may even be nations standing in the same place with the same names but they are merely shadows of another time. Strike down a nation and another will rise up to take it's place - but it will not be the same nation. Grandeur and power do not make insurance which guarantees continuity.

The only guarantor is God alone and he will not be trivialized and abandoned without recompense!