Month: April 2020

Week 16 I Kings

In I Kings chapter eleven a pretty interesting thing is happening.
For starters, Solomon has turned renegade on the Lord, and because of that the Lord is going to take action, is going to take away the kingdom.
The rest of the chapter explains how the Lord will get that done.
First: the Lord raised up an adversary to Solomon, Hadad the Edomite.
Then: God also raised up another adversary to (Solomon), Rezon the son of Eliada.
And finally Jeroboam was told by the Lord: I will take you…and you shall reign over Israel.
So the Lord took indirect action by prompting three of Solomon’s enemies.
What’s pretty interesting here is that Hadad, Rezon, and Jeroboam were already natural adversaries of Solomon, with long preexisting hatreds against the king.
So on the one hand there is the Lord operating in the affairs of Israel by stimulating and animating three angry men.
And at the same time Hadad and Rezon and Jeroboam are operating too, already personally stimulated and animated, making personal decisions and choices, taking action, doing what they want because of who they are and what has happened in their pasts, scores to settle, personally driven by their own personal drivers in a way that looks pretty exclusive. People, not coded automates.
In the end the Chief Operator has the final say. And in their own way the sub-operators have a say, too.

Note: quotes from I Kings 11:14, 23, 37 (NASB version)

Week 16 I Kings

First Kings chapter eleven describes Solomon’s crash. It comes abruptly, like a sudden darkening in a high blue Alberta sky.
In chapter after chapter Solomon’s incandescent career has been described. An astute ruler, a master-planner, a state organizer-manager-builder, he’s famous for his prodigious wisdom, staggering wealth and religious faith. For ten chapters his reputation builds as one of the great guys in the bible.
Then chapter eleven verse one begins with the words: now King Solomon loved many foreign women. It’s an innocent-enough sounding verse, an understandable verse. But as of that verse Solomon stops being one of the luminous guys.
The writer makes a very clear point that Solomon had romantic attachments to many, many foreign wives and lovers. The point is so clear that there’s a bit of a temptation to blame the women for his disintegration. But whatever part they were in the mix, Solomon was his own man…
Solomon: turned his heart away after other gods.
Solomon’s: heart was not complete with devotion to the Lord his God.
Solomon: worshiped Ashtoreth and Milcom.
Solomon built temples to other gods. 
Solomon: did what was evil in the Lord’s sight.
Solomon: refused to follow the Lord fully.
Solomon: did not listen to the Lord’s command.
So a long, long international procession of gorgeous and sensuous and alluring middle-eastern women turned Solomon’s head.
But when-push-came-to-shove Solomon turned his own heart.

Note: quotes from I Kings 11:1, 4-7, 10 (NASB & NLT versions)

Week 16 I Kings

Solomon’s great temple took seven years to build.
It was meant to be the geographical place of the Lord’s residence, the earthly address where people would come to worship God. And it was as lavish and beautiful a piece of architecture as Solomon could build.
But on the big day when it came time for the public dedication Solomon realized that his temple wasn’t really as phenomenal as he thought. It’s more like it was laughably inadequate.
You can see that when Solomon asks: but will God really live on earth? Why, even the highest heavens cannot contain you. How much less this Temple I have built?
Will God really live on earth? It’s a good and legitimate and sensible and logical question, and pretty clearly the answer is no. God doesn’t live on the earth. He doesn’t live in the sky. He’s not geographically constrained. He has no spatial limitations.
I get the feeling that Solomon is weighted down thinking about the dimensions of a Big God, an authentically titanic God. And it’s not only his size, it’s his unqualified difference. God is different, alien and antithetic.
Fortunately Solomon doesn’t travel very far along the God-and-I-are-so-mismatched-that-I’m-basically-a-meaningless-zero tangent. Instead he admits that we’re impossibly qualitatively different but in spite of that incompatibility please, please, please watch over this temple and the people who come here to prayer and please: hear us from heaven…and when you hear, forgive.

Note: quotes from I Kings 8:27 & 30 (NLT version)

Week 16 I Kings

Solomon weathers a leadership crisis and becomes king.
Then in chapter four I see a bunch of names.
I scan down the list. Okay – new government, new officials.
Solomon appoints twelve deputies to his taxation districts. Twelve districts is no surprise – back in Joshua the land was divided among the twelve family units.
I look at the first name on the list: Ben-hur. Ben-hur leads Ephraim. Right away I figure I know how the pattern will play out – the name of some guy I don’t know will be connected with the name of a known guy/territory: Reuben, Simeon, Judah, etc.
My great idea breaks down with name #2. Ben-deker is deputy in Makaz.
I check the list for Jacob’s son’s names. I see Ephraim, Naphtali, Asher, Issachar, Benjamin, Judah. But that’s it.
Where are the rest? I need an accurate map of cities and tribal boundaries during Solomon’s reign. And I need time to match the cities to the traditional territories. For example, in my back-of-the-bible map the town of Bethshemesh looks like it could be in Judah.
But I don’t have a good atlas and I’m out of time. Maybe the cities line up with the original territories or maybe they don’t.
I guess it doesn’t make too much difference.
I need to keep in mind that things are changing all the time. And I need to keep in mind that the bible tells me things worth knowing but doesn’t tell me everything.

Week 16 Psalm 42

Easter Sunday morning and I landed on Psalm 42. It’s a things-are-really-not-going-very-well-for-me psalm, and the despondent writer is asking himself why-am-I-in-despair?
Even though he asked the question, it looks like he actually does know why he’s down. First there’s a bunch of negative things happening, and secondly the Lord isn’t offering him any back-up.
So his real question is more like ‘how-can-I-stop-feeling-this-bad?
Eventually Despondent Writer’s question leads to an answer: hope in God.
When you think about it this isn’t a bad answer. A bad answer would be something like: well-let’s-just-hope-for-the-best. Hoping for the best, apart from sounding pretty nice and pretty caring (which is its real strength) doesn’t have much living-my-life heft. It’s a disengaged virtue-word. Despondent Writer’s antidote isn’t: Just Hope. It’s: Hope in Something. Hope connected to something is better than hope disconnected from anything.
The God Despondency Writer has in mind is the God that the OT is portraying as being decisive, involved, insistent, engaged, a God who has definite opinions and values and preferences and standards.
Despondent Writer is saying that the answer to despair is to hope in the concrete God who’s described in scripture.

Note: quote is from Psalm 42:5 & 11 (NASB version). Pastor Steve talked about hope in his Resurrection Sunday sermon (from I Peter 1:3-5 (I won’t get there until December)). So it was a nice coincidence.

Week 15 II Samuel 

When Nathan the prophet exposed David’s crimes of adultery and murder he also forecast two pretty heavy outcomes. First: the sword shall never depart from your house. Secondly: I (the Lord) will raise up evil against you from your own household.
The last twelve chapters of II Samuel map out how that forecast developed.
David’s son Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar. In retaliation Tamar’s brother Absalom had Amnon murdered. Eventually Absalom mounted an armed revolt against his father. The rebellion turned into civil war. David escaped, regrouped, and eventually defeated his son. The war was won but the nation was divided between the factions of Israel and Judah. There were post-war reparations to figure out. Disloyalties to be punished. Internationally, the wars with the Philistines kept right on going.
Not much light shines through the grisly treachery of the second half of the book.
David started out so well – so much drama and heroism and bravery and faith and romance and suspense. What a great, talented, story-book guy.
But in the second-half, not so much.
There doesn’t seem to be any question that within himself – in his inner life – David matured and grew during those last years of his life. His faith and his connection with the Lord were restored and vitalized. But despite that, the last years of his living-in-the-natural-world life were turbulent, conflicted, topsy turvy, error-prone, tragic.

Note: quotes from II Samuel 12:10-11 (NASB version)

Week 15 II Samuel

Chapter eleven. Sundown in Jerusalem, gloaming, only a little light left in the sky. But enough that from his pavilion David can see a woman. She’s on her roof, having as private a wash as she can. He stands watching until the day is full-dark and the woman goes inside. Her image stays in David’s head, and a plan starts uncoiling.
[It’s easy to understand what’s happening in David’s head. How short a step it is from seeing a desirable woman to playing out a sexual fantasy. Image, desire, imagination, body chemicals, dizzily stirring up an intense concoction.] 
David stands in the dark with a witches’ brew filling up inside him, and then spilling over into the concrete world of action. David gets the woman, gets his sexual intercourse, conspires to have the woman’s husband killed, and closes the circle by marrying the desirable Bathsheba. On the surface things worked out.
Except there’s a grey stratus smudge on David’s inner horizon: the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of the Lord.
Nathan confronts David.
He tells him that before the adultery, before the murder, back on the dark roof: you despised the word of the Lord. The prophet then adds, quoting the Lord: you despised Me.
David is abjectly, penitently sorry. But the evil outcomes are already working their way out into David’s world.

Note: quotes from II Samuel 11:27 and 12:9-10 (NASB version).

Week 15 II Samuel

Exercise:
Let’s say I have an inverted-V.
And I have the book of II Samuel.
Let’s say I have to fit the inverted-V over the story of David so the point of the V sits at the high point in his story. Question: where will it land?
Answer: chapter seven. Hands down. Where the Lord gives David a Big (twelve-verses long) Promise. It ends by saying: your house and your kingdom shall endure before Me forever; your throne shall be established forever.
This long promise divides into several smaller promises.
The beginning promises are for David – success, victory, peace, rest, fame. Right-Now promises.
Then there’s a promise that one of David’s descendants will build the temple. That’s a Near-Future promise.
And then there’s the final promise: your throne shall be established forever. A permanent dynasty. Which is a Distant-Future promise.
Prophecies that are true have to come true. So I’ll tuck these last two away for future reference.

Note: quote is from II Samuel 7:16 (NASB version).
Side-note: The descendant’s promise (verse 12-14) is complicated by having an if-then attached to it. This muddies things because at first the promise sounds like it’s totally without any conditions. But it  turns out that the way the descendant lives his life will have a huge impact on the way the promise develops. The kingdom will succeed, guaranteed. Will the descendant succeed? Maybe.

Week 15 II Samuel

II Samuel six starts with David’s decision to bring the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem. It had been sitting in Abinadab’s house in Baalejudah for twenty years. Now David wants it in the royal city.
It’s a big event, a processional with crowds, celebration, music. The ark sits on an ox-cart escorted by Ahio and Uzzah. The ark begins to tip over; Uzzah steadies it. And then it happens: the anger of the Lord burned against Uzzah, and God struck him down there for his irreverence.
Uzzah steadies the ark in one second, the next second he’s dead.
David’s reaction is a bit of a consolation to me. He was angry over Uzzah’s death. He was afraid. He stopped the procession in its tracks. All of a sudden he didn’t want the ark. He just left it right there with a Philistine named Obed-Edom.
It’s a weird story for how you’re left feeling. Uzzah was an irreverent man and got the costly outcome of irreverence. At the same time it seems kind of unfair, like he got what he didn’t deserve. I feel perplexed, and I wish I knew more.
Sometimes the bible tells me more than I want. But not this time.
I sit for awhile thinking about reverential fear for the Lord, not so much concerned for Uzzah, more concerned about mhj.

Notes: See the ark story in I Samuel 4-7. Quote is from II Samuel 6:7 (NASB version)

Week 14 I Samuel

Nobody gave me the job but if I revised the two books of Samuel I’d be tempted to make one single book: The Book of Samuel. The two Samuels are pretty much one seamless, interlocking story of The Three Bigs – Samuel, Saul, and David. Separating their stories is like trying to scrape the cheese out of a grilled sandwich.
Still, I’ve got to admit that the book division makes sense. Samuel has already died, and I Samuel ends on the day Saul dies. [Aside: I know I’m likely wasting some good sadness on Saul, but I feel kind of sorry for him. After a good start he joins the Renegade Against Normality Club. It’s like his personality stepped on a landmine, obliterated most of his common sense, and left behind big chunks of murderous rage, delirium, and paranoia – mostly aimed at David.] Anyway, now that Saul is dead the stage is set for the II Samuel story of David in power.

Notes: This morning I recalculated my April numbers. The rest of the month looks like this:
Week 15 II Samuel
Week 16 I Kings
Week 17 II Kings
Week 18 I Chronicles (a five-day week)
I like the thought of reading exactly one book a week. That might not happen again this year, but this month it could happen four times in a row! Plus, those four books give me my 100 chapters – so going forward things are lining up for me.