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 52: Israeli Idol

Isaiah 41-52

*image courtesy of shiyali at stock.xchng

Imagine you are a woodworker… just go with me on this.  You dig through a pile of logs and find one you like.  You start working one end of the log and create a nice little statue.  You saw it off at the bottom and separate it from the rest of the log.  You take that bottom piece, the unshaped part, and you throw it into your fireplace and get a nice fire going.  You make some supper over the flames, you snuggle up nice and warm by the hearth.

Now, here’s where it gets weird.

You take that piece you carved and place it on the mantle above the fireplace and you pray to it.  You worship it.  You ask it to keep you safe.  It is your god.

That’s exactly the situation Isaiah describes in today’s passage, specifically in chapter 44.  You can almost hear the sarcasm in Isaiah’s words.  It’s like he’s saying, “Boy!  I wish I was as smart as you!  You obviously know which end of that stick is divine.  I might have burned the wrong end!”  Through His prophet Isaiah, God is telling His people that the idols they are crafting (whether wood or metal, see vv. 12-13) are worthless.  They are senseless.  They cannot hear their prayers, they cannot speak in response, they cannot understand or feel.  They are blocks of wood!

God reminds His people in 45:5-6 that there is no other God besides Him.  Worshiping a block of wood is absurd, but it’s no better to think that there is any other God besides the God of Israel.  He says in 48:11 that He will not share His glory with another.  He also creates a bit of irony in the following verses.  He remind Israel that He is the Creator of not only them, but of the entire universe.  People were worshiping what their own hands had made, and God is commanding them to worship the One who made them with His own hands.

The irony goes further with the imagery of the clay and the potter in v. 9.  In this, God points out the arrogance of Israel in questioning their Maker.  The clay cannot say to the potter, “What are you making?” or, “He has no hands!”  The contrast is interesting because not only are they the clay, but in the above passage they were the potter!  God is saying that anything made cannot be greater than its maker, yet this is exactly what the idolaters were doing.  They were taking something they had made and elevating it above themselves.  In effect, they as the potters were allowing the clay to tell them what to do as their god!  How backwards this is!

And yet, are we much better?  You see, the people Isaiah was prophesying against were guilty not only of idolatry, but of worshiping false gods.  (There is a distinction between the two that requires more space than we have available.)  We may not bow down before little statues (though this is not absent from the world), but we worship all kinds of things.

Mostly, in our modern Western culture of enlightenment, we worship ourselves.  We have put man at the center of the universe.  We call this secular humanism.  It is essentially the great sin of the universe – pride.

We also worship things.  We call this materialism or consumerism.  An old saying goes, “Get all you can, can all you get, and then sit on the can!”

Some of us worship our kids.  We put them at the center of our little universe, and do everything to make them happy.

Some of us worship entertainment.  Above all else in this world, we want amusement and relaxation.  Nothing else matters.

Let’s not let anything take God’s rightful place at the center of all things.  We are called in the New Testament to worship Him with our whole lives, and our entire being.  Let’s not give anything else that place.  Let us worship God in spirit and in truth, and never put any idol or false god in His place.

*originally at Words of Reason

Bible in 90, Day 43: …for He is good!

Psalms 90-108

*image courtesy of my buddy Billy at stock.xchng

“Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever.”

You’ll find this phrase all over the Old Testament (1 Chronicles 16:34, 41; 2 Chronicles 5:13, 7:3, 7:6, 20:21; Psalms 106:1, 107:1, 118:1, 118:29, 136:1-3, 136:26; Jeremiah 33:11).  It seems to have started with David, and became a customary word of praise.  It sometimes was used as a call and response, where the leader would say the first two parts, and the congregation would respond with “His love endures forever!”

Today we came across the first of eight uses of it in the Psalms.  We talked previously about this phrase (Day 34), but there we focused on the faithful love aspect.  Today, we will look at the middle section of the phrase, “for He is good.”  There is a saying today that is somewhat parallel in that it is widely known and frequently used by many churches.  It goes like this:

Leader: God is good!

Congregation: All the time!

Leader: And all the time…

Congregation: God is good!

Hearing this on a regular basis, just like hearing the phrase from psalms frequently, is a good thing.  It serves as a reminder to us of one of God’s essential attributes – His goodness.  This is what I call one of God’s “omnis.”  He is omnipresent (He is everywhere), omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerful), and omnibenevolent (all good).  Now, without the fourth omni, the other three are pretty scary.

Think about it for a minute.

Imagine a Being that is everywhere, knows everything, and can do anything.  That’s a bit scary.  All that power, but can you trust it?  Isn’t that the great fear in Superman 3?  The man of steel loses it after being subjected to red kryptonite, and goes on a rampage.  The world’s greatest hero becomes the world’s greatest villain because now all his power is not being harnessed by good intentions.  Now, multiply that by infinity, and this is the Malevolent Being we’re talking about!

What makes the God of the Bible who He is instead of a cosmic sadist is that He is good.  It is the goodness of God that makes it so we can trust Him.  Unlike some religions that must appease their god through ritual and sacrifice, we can serve God with a glad heart, trusting that He is all good all the time.  We don’t have to worry about Him suddenly snuffing out the universe.  He is good.  And as we’ve discussed before, even when things seem to be going bad, God is still good and is working out His plan (Romans 8:28).

Let’s remember this.  Let’s give thanks to the Lord, because He is good.  Let’s praise Him with our words, our actions, and our lives, because He is good and His love endures forever.

*originally at Words of Reason

Bible in 90, Day 30: Ignorance is no excuse

1 Chronicles 10-23

*image courtesy of my buddy Billy at www.sxc.hu

There was an interesting story today that on the surface can be kind of puzzling.  In 1 Chronicles 13, we read the story of Uzzah’s death after touching the Ark.  At first glance, it appears kind of harsh.  The Ark was being carried along, and everybody’s celebrating before God.  Suddenly, the oxen stumbled, and Uzzah reached out to steady the Ark so it wouldn’t fall off the cart.  The next thing ya know, he’s been struck dead by God!

Harsh much?

So here’s the thing, this whole situation was wrong from the start.  It seems like everything was going along great and then some guy dies, right?  Wrong.  If you read down to 1 Chronicles 15, you’ll find out that David did some homework while the Ark stayed at the house of Obed-Edom and discovered why Uzzah was killed.  They had not consulted the Lord on how to transport the Ark.  Only the Levites were supposed to carry the Ark (Numbers 4:15; Deuteronomy 10:8).  No one, not even the Levites were to touch the Ark directly.  The Levites only touched the poles that were slid into rings on the side of the Ark, thus never touching the Ark itself.

If David had sought the Lord in the first place, the Ark would have been properly carried by the Levites.  It never would have sat on a cart, and thus would have never been in jeopardy of falling off.  Uzzah would have never reached out his hand to steady it, and thus would not have died that day.

This gets back to the idea of the right worship of God (see Day 8).  Combine this with the concept of God’s revealed will, and you can see what went wrong today.  There was a right and wrong way to worship God for the Israelites.  God had very specific commands on this (as we saw in Leviticus).  In addition, these commands and expectations were clearly laid out in the Law for all to see.  It was negligence of the Word of God which lead to the tragedy we read about today.

The same can happen to us today.  If we neglect God’s Word, the Bible, we can find ourselves in a mess we never saw coming.  We may find ourselves facing the judgment of God for treating something lightly which we didn’t even know about.  We may think skipping out on some taxes is no big deal since we haven’t read and heeded Romans 13:1-5.  We may come to the Lord’s Supper with no thought toward the condition of our heart because we have not read 1 Corinthians 11:27-32.

Let us not be guilty of the sin of neglect.  Much of God’s will for our lives is spelled out clearly in the pages of Scripture.  Let us make reading and study of the Word a habit, as this 90 day challenge is striving to do.  Let us seek the Lord’s instructions, and the Holy Spirit’s empowerment to live them out (Ephesians 5:8-10; Galatians 3:10).

Bible in 90, Day 8: The Worship of God

Leviticus 1-14

*image courtesy of marcos_bh at www.sxc.hu

Are ya still with me?  Hang in there!  I know today’s reading was not what we’re used to, but it is all God’s Word and we can learn from all of it.  Stay faithful and remember that at all times, the Holy Spirit is with those of us who are in Christ and will illuminate the Word.  “So,” you ask, “what do we get from today?”

I’m glad you asked!

So, we read five chapters of instructions to those who desired to worship God.  These chapters cover the proper items to bring for a burnt, grain, fellowship, sin, or guilt offering.  The next two chapters are instructions to the priests on what to do when a worshipper brings one of these offerings to the Tabernacle.  This is followed by three chapters on the priests themselves.  There is a lot of ink spent on the topic of the proper worship of God!  This shows me a couple of things: