my burg

  Bible reading for weekend Oct 29 -- 31 Oct 29 -- Hosea 2 and Psalm 119:97-120 Oct 30 -- Hosea 3-4 and Psalm 119:121-144 Oct 31 -- Hosea 5-6 and Psalm 119:145-176 ================   "I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings." (Hosea 6:6) ISRAEL'S ADULTERY (ch 2). Marital infidelity, along with sexual promiscuity, is no laughing matter. Hosea experienced this pain first hand. Human sexuality is a gift from God meant to be a dimension of a life-long covenant relationship between and man and a woman. Israel's idolatry -- which often included sexual activity in pagan worship -- was a breach of trust between God's people and himself. They took the blessings God gave them (crops, wealth, and prosperity) and offered it to foreign gods. Israel "...did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil, and who lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal" (v 8). This is true of a...

  Bible reading for September 8 -- 9 Sep 8 -- Ezekiel 11 and Psalm 50 Sep 9 -- Ezekiel 12 and Psalm 51 ================   "And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God." (Ezekiel 10:18) BAD LEADERS, BRIGHT PROMISE (ch 11). Israel was chronically plagued by bad leadership (vv 1-12). In the days of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the rulers of Judah and their advisors, along with the popular prophets, urged the people of Jerusalem to hold out against the Babylonian siege. God had plainly told them through Jeremiah to not fight the Babylonians but to peacefully surrender. But in their pride and zeal they resisted and faced a long siege, starvation, disease, and finally, violence and enslavement by the Babylonians. But there's a bright ray of hope (vv 16-20),...

  Bible reading for weekend September 3 -- 5 Sep 3 -- Ezekiel 6 and Psalm 44 Sep 4 -- Ezekiel 7 and Psalm 45 Sep 5 -- Ezekiel 8 and Psalm 46-47 ================   "According to their way I will do to them, and according to their judgments I will judge them, and they shall know that I am the LORD." (Ezekiel 7:27) JUDGMENT UPON IDOLATRY (ch 6-8). The big thing to note in these chapters is that God's judgment is coming upon Israel (specifically, Jerusalem and Judah) for her idolatry. She, called to be a people who worship God alone, has become just like the pagan nations. There are even idols in the courts of the temple of the Lord. What's so bad about idolatry? Mainly it dishonors God. But also it's a lie. When I was a boy some of my friends would carry a lucky rabbit's foot. I was never sure how the foot of a dead rabbit might bring good fortune, but it was a popular belief. Idolatry runs the gamut from silly superstitions to Satanic orgies. At the heart of it...

  Bible reading for July 12 -- 13 July 12 -- Jeremiah 8 and Matthew 22 July 13 -- Jeremiah 9 and Matthew 23 ================    "...let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD." (Jeremiah 9:24) A BAND-AID ON CANCER (ch 8). The Babylonian invasion would be terrifying -- many would die, families would be divided, people carried off into captivity, and even ancestral tombs would be ransacked and exposed. The Babylonians would seek to eradicate Jewish history and culture. It was a severe judgment. One of the things that the people were saying was, "We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us" (v 8). But they did not really love God nor practice his commandments . They lived in "perpetual backsliding" (v 5) and treated sin lightly. The prophets and priests were putting band-aids on their society...

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 October 9.  I will be taking a break off-line for the next several days. Below I'll list the readings for the upcoming days.   1 Kings 12. "So the king did not listen to the people, for it was a turn of affairs brought about by the LORD that he might fulfill his word, which the LORD spoke by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat." (1 Kings 12:15)  THIS TURN OF EVENTS. This is one of those places in Scripture where we see that God rules and over-rules in the affairs of men. Rehoboam's inclination to take the bad advice of his younger friends -- which was his own sinful choice, and his responsibility -- was nonetheless ordained by God to fulfill his plan. Some theologians call this compatibilism, or the principle that God sovereignly ordains to use even the sinful choices that people freely make (from no outward compulsion) in order to accomplish his own will. This is clearly seen also in the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus (Acts 2:23; 4:28...

Bible reading for June 24.  Deuteronomy 29. "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law." (Deuteronomy 29:29)  COVENANT RENEWAL. Before entering the promised land the Israelites, led by Moses, renew their covenant with the Lord (v 1). They are witnesses of God's glory and works (v 2-3, 5-8).  But as confident as they feel at the time, Moses says that there is something lacking in them (v 4): "But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear." The prophets later will say that they (and we) would need a new and better covenant in which God works upon their hearts (Jer 31:33; 32:40; Ezek 36:26-27). This inability to understand and perceive the things of God characterized the Jews all the way up to Jesus day, including even the well-educated. Nicodemus, for example, a leading rabbi, did not ...

Bible reading Feb 24:  Exodus 7; Luke 10. "The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them."  (Exodus 7:5) The plagues begin (Ex 7).   Nine times in Exodus God tells us that people will come to " know that I am the Lord ."  (Btw, this phrase appears a whopping 72 times in the book of Ezekiel!)  Every single person on earth will come to know one day, or one way or another, that the Lord is God .  We will know either by redemption -- he has powerfully rescued us -- or by judgment, which will also come in power. The big question for each of us is, in what way shall we come to know the Lord in his power? Egypt will face ten very serious plagues , as recorded over the next several chapters.  In many ways these plagues were judgments upon the gods of Egypt in whom the people trusted.  But more on this in tomorrow's reading. =================   ...

"The unfolding of your words gives light;  it imparts understanding to the simple."   (Psalm 119:130)  "Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures..." (Luke 24:45) Not routine.   It is important that we read the Scriptures aware of the presence of God , and that we are asking the Holy Spirit to help us understand and apply the Scriptures rightly.  We must be sensitive especially to those areas the Spirit is drawing our attention to, and then pray about those truths, commandments, or promises. This is the teaching ministry of our Lord to us through the Holy Spirit.  We need him to illumine our minds and hearts as we read.    J. I. Packer explains this:  "The work of the Spirit in imparting this knowledge is called 'illumination,' or enlightening. It is not a giving of new revelation, but a work within us that enables us to grasp and to love the revelation that is there before us in the biblical text as heard ...

Moses said, "Please show me your glory."  And he said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name 'The LORD.' And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy."  But, he said, "you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live."  (Exodus 33:18-20 ESV) "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!"  (Romans 11:33 ESV) "...he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen."  (1 Timothy 6:15-16 ESV) We know what we know about God because he chooses to reveal himself to us.  Though we may know him truly -- and we do -- we do not know him exhaustively .  We should always be aware ...

Behold, God is great, and we know him not;  the number of his years is unsearchable. ... The Almighty--we cannot find him;  he is great in power;  justice and abundant righteousness  he will not violate. (~Elihu, Job 36:26; 37:23 ESV) Job's friends were right in some of the truths they spoke, but wrong in their application to Job. Job was right in what he spoke, but his attitude was increasingly not humble.   Elihu gets things back on track with "the Almighty-- we cannot find him..." (37:23)  And this is the last thing said before God enters the conversation and repeatedly asks Job... "Where were you...?" "Do you know...?" "Are you able to...?"  (Job 38-41) Theologians speak of the incomprehensibility , or inscrutability , of God.  This can be stated different ways:  "The utmost that we know of God is nothing in respect of that which he is." (Thomas Aquinas)  "A finite creature can never fully comprehend that...

"During a good part of history the philosopher endeavoured to deal with objects which he believed to be of the same exactness as the mathematician’s. Finally Hegel arrived, and if not perhaps the first, he was certainly the most prodigious exponent of emotional systematization, dealing with his emotions as if they were definite objects which had aroused those emotions. His followers have as a rule taken for granted that words have definite meanings, overlooking the tendency of words to become indefinite emotions.  "If verbalism were confined to professional philosophers, no harm would be done. But their corruption has extended very far. Compare a medieval theologian or mystic, compare a seventeenth-century preacher, with any 'liberal' sermon since Schleiermacher, and you will observe that words have changed their meanings. What they have lost is definite, and what they have gained is indefinite. "The vast accumulations of knowledge—or at least of informatio...

"Mystery is the lifeblood of dogmatics. To be sure, the term 'mystery' in Scripture does not mean an abstract supernatural  truth in the Roman Catholic sense. Yet Scripture is equally far removed from the idea that believers can grasp the revealed  mysteries in a scientific sense. In truth, the knowledge that God has revealed of himself in nature and Scripture far  surpasses human imagination and understanding. In that sense it is all mystery with which the science of dogmatics is  concerned, for it does not deal with finite creatures, but from beginning to end looks past all creatures and focuses on the  eternal and infinite One himself. From the very start of its labors, it faces the Incomprehensible One. "All things are considered in the light of God, subsumed under him, traced back to him as the starting point.  Dogmatics is  always called upon to ponder and describe God and God alone, whose glory is in creation and re-creation, in nature and g...

“Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.”   “Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord.”  “We must seek, in studying God, to be led to God.”   “How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is simple but demanding. It is that we turn each Truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.”  “Repentance is more than just sorrow for the past; repentance is a change of mind and heart, a new life of denying self and serving the Savior as king in self's place.”   “He that has learned to feel his sins, and to trust Christ as a Saviour, has learned the two hardest and gr...

"What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it--the fact that he knows me.  I am graven on the palms of his hands.  I am never out of his mind.  All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when his care falters." ~ J. I. Packer, Knowing God , p. 41.

"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father." (Matthew 10:29 ESV) This summer we have enjoyed watching birds drinking and taking baths in the birdbath on our deck.  The sparrows especially take energetic baths, spraying water everywhere.  This means, of course, having to fill the bath from time to time to accommodate all the feathered guests.   It struck me that God the Father knows each and every sparrow in our entire world.  (I'm assuming this applies also to catbirds, blue jays, and doves, as well.)  And that not one of them dies apart from the knowledge and will of the Father.  What amazing attention to detail God has toward his creation! Then this morning I read again Isaiah 40.  And in verse 26 we are told God has names for all the stars -- billions upon billions of them.  And he maintains the existence of each one.  "Not one" of them is missing...  ...