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Bible reading for April 12 -- 13 Apr 12 -- Proverbs 30 and 1 Timothy 1 Apr 13 -- Proverbs 31 and 1 Timothy 2 "Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him." (Proverbs 30:5)  OBSERVING CREATION (ch 30). This chapter records the words of Agur son of Jakeh. Nothing is really known of his identity (see the NET Bible notes on this chapter). The first section (vv 1-6) highlights Agur's dependence upon God's revelation. Here is a wise man stating his ignorance. The first step to knowing is to know that we do not know, and the more we know, the more we should realize that we do not know (though it doesn't always work that way). A philosopher once said that at best we humans are afloat on a raft of our knowledge upon a sea of our ignorance. We are dependent upon God's revelation to us, both in nature and Scripture, to know what is true, right, and wise. Agur introduces some of his sayings with numbers, such as, "there are 'n...

Bible reading for February 24 -- 25 Feb 24 -- Job 24 and 1 Corinthians 11 Feb 25 -- Job 25-26 and 1 Corinthians 12 "Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?" (Job 26:14) TO A MAN WITH A HAMMER (ch 24). Job's friends have one paradigm they're working with: if you are suffering, then you are being judged and need to repent. This is a case of the popular saying, "to a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail." Job's friends are locked into a worldview, a narrative, about the reason for suffering. Job raises the question of the silence and seeming inactivity of God to bring judgment against evil. In other words, the problem is not just, why do the innocent suffer, but also why do the guilty not suffer (24:1, 12)? As we read Job's examples and descriptions of injustice, take time to ponder. This has been a question that has bothered believers and unb...

Bible reading for weekend October 24-25.  2 Kings 5-6. "So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean." (2 Kings 5:14)  NAAMAN'S HEALING (ch 5). Leprosy was a dreaded and chronic skin disease that rendered a person defiled in the eyes of their community. In Israel lepers had to live  away from their towns and families, practicing social distance, literally. They were considered by many to be the living dead. Jesus not only spoke healing to, but also touched the lepers (Luke 5:13). Naaman, a gentile official from a pagan nation, comes to Elisha and humbles himself to obey a simple command. He is miraculously and instantly healed. Gehazi, though he served Elisha, seeks to enrich himself from this healing, and tries to deceive both Naaman and Elisha. The gift of healing was just that, a gift, and not a commodity for sale. Those who preach th...

Bible reading for weekend September 5.  I Samuel 29-31. "And David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in soul, each for his sons and daughters. But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God." (1 Samuel 30:6)  OVERVIEW. Chapter 29 : The Lord has mercy on David and he is spared from having to fight on the side of the Philistines against Israel. Chapter 30 : upon returning with his troops to Ziklag he finds his city burned with fire and their families taken captive by the Amalekites. This was a very low point in David's exile, with seemingly no one on his side. He seeks the Lord and finds strength in him. A number of David's psalms are written during the period of his exile. The Lord grants David a speedy and complete victory, and a return of the captives.  Chapter 31 : Saul and his sons are killed in the battle with the Philistines on Mount Gilboa. His body was taken, beheaded, and mounted upon...

Bible reading for July 21.  Judges 4 "But Jael the wife of Heber took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand. Then she went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died."   STRONG WOMEN. We read that the Lord raised up Deborah as a prophetess and judge in Israel, and that the death of the Canaanite king Sisera comes about by the hand of woman who knows how to wield a hammer and tent peg. When it came to the winning blow, Jael nailed it. Deborah had expected Barak to lead, and she rebuked him for his timidity (v 9). As noted in a previous post, the chariot (made of iron and pulled by horses) was a fearsome weapon against foot soldiers. It was fast, brutal (if you were in its path), and could put archers and swordsmen anywhere on the field quickly. But God gives victory in answer to his people's prayers. We'll read in the song lyrics of the next chapter about ho...

Bible reading day 18 (Jan 18):  Genesis 19; Matthew 18. Genesis 19.  Just reading this chapter provides all the commentary needed upon it.  How low we can sink in wickedness and depravity!  Not just Sodom, but the family of Lot, as well.  God's design for marriage and human sexuality has not changed from the beginning.  God is the same God today , and he will judge the world according to his holy standards (Romans 1:18-32). Matthew 18.  What a contrast to this is our Lord and Savior Jesus who teaches us about humility, purity, and forgiveness :     At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:1-4 ESV) We...

Today: Genesis 3; Matthew 3.  I'm following the two-year version of this plan .   Link is in the article, about halfway down, to a PDF copy of this reading schedule.   "The serpent..."   What kind of creature is this?  How did he get in the garden?   This is a bit hard for me to visualize, but I believe it is an historical account nonetheless.  There are many mysteries in the bible , things before and after this present age.  There are angelic beings, and we are given glimpses, for example, in Ezekiel 28 and Revelation 12, of a mighty fallen angel who disrupts human history.  Here he is called the "serpent" ( nahash , "snake, serpent, dragon"), and this dragon image of a great spiritual enemy weaves all throughout biblical history and history today. (See Rev 12:9; 20:2)   The first attribute mentioned of this being is not his evil nature but his craftiness.  He is cunning and shrewd .     ...

Here are some helpful articles regarding a complementarian view of men's and women's roles in marriage and ministry... A Vision for Biblical Complementarity . "Over the years I have come to see from Scripture and from life that manhood and womanhood are the beautiful handiwork of a  good and loving God." (John Piper) Unwilling to twist Scripture.   "And I must confess: attitudinally, I am an egalitarian. I find what scripture says on these matters very difficult to swallow  at times. However, I am positionally a complementarian because I can’t go against my conscience. For me at least, to read  these passages in an egalitarian way is to do some exegetical gymnastics in which one twists and turns the text to conform it  to their views. I may not be comfortable with my complementarian position, but I am unwilling to twist scripture into  something that it does not say."  (Daniel Wallace, Professor of New Testament, Dallas Theological Seminary) On ...

Dr. Russell Moore quote from a year ago...

Sin is and has always been the denial of reality : the serpent in the garden not only questions God's word ("Did God really say? [Gen 3:1]) but contradicts it ("You will not certainly die" [3:4]). It is hard not to see the transgender liberation movement as a transgression: an overt rebellion against the binary divide between male and female bodies and behavior.  The sex-change operation is a radical surgical intervention into an otherwise healthy body.  As such, it is a bad improvisation in which, forgetting what happened in Act One (creation), one strikes out in one's own technologically clever (but self-determined) direction, ontologically ad-libbing, laughing all the way to the organ bank.  To perform sex reassignment surgery is to encourage the worst kind of playacting: hypocrisy.  The irony, as with all sin, is that in trying to find oneself, one loses oneself.  Those who seek to rewrite their roles make God a bit player in a drama that exchanges the gospe...

Here are two similar views -- related to the issue of women in combat -- from two very dissimilar sources.  First from an evangelical pastor, John Piper, and then from a feminist professor of humanities, Camille Paglia: "So it has been in almost every society that has come under the sway of Christian truth: women of valor, women ready to die in the service of family and fatherland, but not women armed by men for combat. It would have been viewed by most men as cowardly."  (John Piper, The Folly of Men Arming Women for Combat ) "Extravaganzas of gender experimentation sometimes precede cultural collapse, as they certainly did in Wiemar Germany.  Like late Rome, America too is an empire distracted by games and leisure pursuits.  Now as then, there are forces aligning outside the borders, scattered fanatical hordes where the cult of heroic masculinity still has tremendous force.  I close with this question:  is a nation whose elite education...

Recently we had someone challenge us on the propriety of allowing women to share and pray aloud during the Lord's Supper remembrance.  (He was from the Plymouth Brethren background.) This is what I wrote for him... Why we allow women to share and pray during the Lord’s Supper... During our Lord’s Supper service we enjoy a special time of open sharing and prayer.  We invite all believers gathered with us, whether young or old, male or female, to share Scripture or pray or suggest a hymn to sing.  It is our desire that our worship at this time be informal, open, and led by the Spirit.  (See Joel 2:28f.) Some assemblies do not allow women to speak during this service, citing the following passage: For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them as...

I was sent a very interesting article in Touchstone. Here's an excerpt and link... We still have the word “friendship,” and we still have something of the reality, but it is distant, dilute, bloodless. For modern American men, friendship is no longer forged in the heat of battle, or in the dust of the plains as they drive their herds across half a continent, or in the choking air of a coalmine, or even in the cigar smoke of a debating club. That is partly because our lives, for better and for worse, no longer involve the risk and the sweat that was the cement of deep friendship. No man will help hew the oaks for our cabin, because we no longer live in cabins. No man will stand by as we jump overboard to set the trawling net, because we have no boat and set no net; we live too comfortably for that. Under such fortunate circumstances, we need all the more the camaraderie and intellectual risk of the club. But gentlemen’s clubs have vanished or have been sued out of existence. (The C...

But one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal's wife, "Behold, David sent messengers out of the wilderness to greet our master, and he railed at them. Yet the men were very good to us, and we suffered no harm, and we did not miss anything when we were in the fields, as long as we went with them. They were a wall to us both by night and by day , all the while we were with them keeping the sheep. Now therefore know this and consider what you should do, for harm is determined against our master and against all his house, and he is such a worthless man that one cannot speak to him." (1 Samuel 25:14-17 ESV) This is a description of the type of men that had gathered under the leadership of King David, even though he was in exile. It struck me that this is an apt description of godly men, and especially husbands: --they are good and do no harm to those under their care. --they have integrity and do not use their power to take from others. --persons and goods are saf...

Michael Patton does a good job on explaining, and drawing logical conclusions, about the differences between egalitarianism and complementarianism in gender: " what complementarianism is really all about " ... You see, when people are truly committed and consistent egalitarians, they have to defend their denial of essential differences. In doing so, they will advocate a education system in the home, church, and society which neutralizes any assumption of differences between the sexes. In doing so, men will not be trained to be “men” since there is really no such thing. Women will not be encouraged to be “women” since there is no such thing. The assumption of differences becomes a way to oppress society and marginalize, in their estimation, one sex for the benefit of the other. Once we neutralize these differences, we will have neutered society and the family due to a denial of God’s design in favor of some misguided attempt to promote a form of equality that is neither possi...