Bible in 90, Day 63: Lions and Fires and Prayers, oh my!

Daniel 1-8

image courtesy of memoossa at stock.xchng

So today we covered about a month’s worth of Sunday school lessons.  We read about Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refusing the king’s choice food so as not to defile themselves.  We saw Daniel interpreting dreams for Nebuchadnezzar.  We held our breath as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were throw into the fiery furnace.  Daniel had a sleep-over with some lions because he had prayed to God even though it was against the law.  We scratched our heads as the hand appeared and wrote on the wall.

What did that look like anyway?

What’s interesting to see is the confidence and boldness in these four Hebrew men throughout these various ordeals.  To refuse the king’s food was to take a serious risk of seeming defiant.  I’m sure that disobedient refugees were not treated well by the royal court.  Daniel made a bold claim that he could interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, and had he not made good on his claim we know he would have died for it.  The penalty for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego’s allegiance to the Lord and refusal to bow before the image Nebuchadnezzar had made was brutal, yet they survived.

Perhaps my favorite moment of brash on the part of Daniel is in chapter 5 when he responds to Belshazzar’s questions about his reputation and ability to interpret the handwriting on the wall.  Belshazzar promises Daniel a robe, a gold chain, and a position of high political power in the land if he can interpret the writing.  Daniel’s response is quite forthcoming: You can keep your stuff!  But I will tell you the meaning of the words.

Um… Daniel… that’s the king

This was not the first king Daniel had ever tangled with.  He’d had dealings with Nebuchadnezzar, as we read earlier, and possibly two other kings whose reigns were fairly short.  Belshazzar was also not the last king he would deal with on not-so-friendly terms.  However, Daniel knew that his true King was more powerful than any earthly king.  In truth, the Lord was the source of the authority and power these kings had attained.

We don’t have to fear people either.  If we are in Christ, then we are children of the King of the universe.  No earthly power holds any real sway over us.  What’s the worst they can do to us?  Kill us?  That didn’t seem to bother Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They figured that God could save them from the flames of the furnace, but even if He didn’t, they wanted Nebuchadnezzar to know that they would not worship anything or anyone but God, even if it meant death.  We should serve Christ regardless of the consequences, knowing that either God will save us from the consequences, or that the consequences are not enough to keep us from being faithful to our King.

Let’s remember the example of these Hebrew men who were surrounded by a pagan culture.  Let’s not fear man, but rather, let’s fear God.  For man can only kill the body, but God can kill both the body and the soul (Matthew 10:28).  Let’s honor God, trusting Him to either deliver us from the fire, or to deliver us through the fire into His presence.

originally at Words of Reason

Bible in 90, Day 48: The conclusion of the matter

Ecclesiastes 3 – Song of Solomon 8

*image courtesy of gnmills at stock.xchng

I MET a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.   Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley at http://www.bartleby.com/106/246.html

I hope the first half of today’s reading didn’t get you too depressed.  It sounds like Solomon is saying that all of life is useless, a pointless, endless cycle of give and take. If you leave out the last few verses of the book, you’re left with nothing but a hopeless look at the grave.  Better eat, drink, and be merry, cuz you gon’ die!  However, we’re missing something if we stop here:

The conclusion of the matter.

The whole book is Solomon’s reflection on his experiment to find life’s meaning.  Every good experiment has some failed attempts, right?  If we don’t read Solomon’s conclusion, we don’t get the point of his experiment.  We don’t benefit from his research and findings.  So, what does he conclude?

“Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” (12:13)

Without God, life is vain and meaningless.  If this life is all there is, then I can see where Solomon’s desperate tone in the rest of the book comes from.  The best results of my hardest work will be passed on to other people I might not even know, maybe last a little while after I’m forgotten, and then crumble.

But those of us who are in Christ have a greater hope.  We know that everything we do has an eternal impact, whether for good or bad.  Unlike Ozymandias, our deeds will not crumble into the sands of time, but will precede us into eternity, and last there with us forever.

Let’s live lives that reflect this knowledge.  Let’s do all things as unto our Lord (1 Corinthians 10:31), knowing that there is more life after this one, and that this life will impact the one to come.  Let’s not despair, but put our hope in Christ!

*originally at Words of Reason

Bible in 90, Day 25: Stupid kids!

1 Kings 7-16

*image courtesy of jan-willem at www.sxc.hu

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you!”

How many times do we ignore this as kids?  How many times do we ignore it now?  We always think we know better.  And the younger we are, the more we think we know!

This was certainly true of Rehoboam.  Even though he was forty-one years old when he became king, he made a bone-headed move, typical of a man half his age (1 Kings 12).  He had just become king, and the people came to him seeking a bit of relief from the hard labor his father, King Solomon, had put them under.  Here was a great chance for the new king to gain favor in the sight of his people.  He consulted the elders, the men who had been Solomon’s advisers.  They counseled him to answer them favorably and so gain their allegiance.  He then made the mistake of rejecting this counsel and sought the advice of his friends.

Stupid move.

These were the guys he had grown up with.  These men were obviously not diplomats, or wise elders.  These were the guys he goofed off with all his young life.  They were not statesmen, they were not kings or king-makers, they weren’t even all that godly if we look at their response (check out the way some translations render 12:10! if memory serves me correctly, this is the gist of what they were saying! pretty crude).  These were the rough and tumble guys that had grown up as Rehoboam’s chums.  Not exactly the best place to go for godly counsel.  They give him terrible advice, and he follows it!  It goes quite badly for him, as you’ll remember, and ends up splitting the kingdom.

Thanks buddies!

One of the great ironies of all this is that, as we discussed yesterday, Solomon spent a lot of ink trying to teach his son to get wisdom (Proverbs 4:5, 7; 16:16; 23:23).  Obviously this pleading fell on deaf ears.  Perhaps this is why Solomon spent so much time reminding his son to get wisdom.  Perhaps he saw his foolishness early on in Rehoboam’s childhood.

But we do the same, don’t we?  We go to our friends “for advice” and really all we hope for is to hear what we have already decided to do.  Instead of seeking out those who have true wisdom, we go to those we know think like we do.  We may even read the Bible, but we bring our preconceived notions to it and read our desires into it instead of looking into the perfect law and letting it change our lives (James 1:22-25).

Instead, as we discussed yesterday, we should ask God for wisdom (James 1:5).  In addition, we should seek the counsel of godly people.  We younger folk need to be reminded that those older and more experienced than us have a wisdom we cannot yet even understand, a wisdom that comes from living life.  This is not to say that all older people are wise and all younger people are fools (1 Timothy 4:12).  Notice that we should seek the counsel of godly people.

Let us not be like foolish Rehoboam.  Let us seek wisdom from God and from those whom God has already gifted with wisdom through a long life of faithfulness to Him.  And then, by all means, let us heed this wisdom and not reject it!

• Sorry about yesterday’s post everyone!  I’m out of town for school this week and my wi-fi connection had a bad case of the hiccups last night.  I wrote the article for yesterday, pressed “Publish” and the only thing that made it was the title and the tags!  I’m going to go back and re-do it when I get back home and get a hardline connection again.

Bible in 90, Day 24: Wisdom

2 Samuel 22 – 1 Kings 7

*image courtesy of

God asks you what you want.

Pleading with Rehoboam to get wisdom

James 1:5