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Week 50 James

A couple of years ago I read James in fifteen minutes. I don’t remember the circumstances. I was likely in hurry-up mode, trying to finish by December 31. Fifteen minutes – nine hundred seconds – doesn’t give you too much time on any one of James’ 108 verses. Only about 8.3 seconds per verse on average.
This year I’m ahead of myself so I’ve had three days to read James.
One thing I noticed was the contrast James made in chapter three between two kinds of wisdom. James described one kind of wisdom as being: earthly, unspiritual, and motivated by the Devil. The other kind of wisdom is a kind that: comes down from heaven.
So the question about where I’m sourcing my wisdom is pretty important.
Then James goes on to point out that different wisdoms from different sources also produce different outcomes. Three times in verses fourteen, fifteen and sixteen James says that the this-worldly type of wisdom is jealous and selfishly ambitious. By contrast the wisdom that comes from above: is first of all pure. It is also peace-loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and good deeds. It shows no partiality and is always sincere.
So according to James wisdom isn’t just a free-floating mental capacity, a big bag of intellectual smartnesses. It’s quite a bit more comprehensive than what I know. It includes who I am.

Note: quotes from James 3:15 & 17-18 (NLT).

Week 50 Hebrews

I think Hebrews 11 is a good argument for reading the OT because it names a bunch of OT people. If I haven’t read the OT at all then reading Hebrews 11 is a bit like reading, for example, Ezra chapter two. It’s just another long list of unknown names.
But if I have read the OT then I’m thinking, yeah, I recognize him, or, I remember her story.
Of course chapter eleven isn’t really meant to be an OT Highlight Reel. It misses too many important people. It’s really a selective list of OT people who exercised faith.
Which is pretty interesting because when I think about the OT there are obvious big-ticket practices like civil regulations, sacrifices, religious ceremonies and like that. But the writer of Hebrews is saying that faith was part of that OT mix too. I notice that it’s thirty-one verses before the writer even gets to Mount Sinai and the Law. Which means that in all the time before-the-Law some people had faith. And even in the after-the-Law time of verses 32-39 people were still acting by faith. In fact they all: gained approval through their faith.
So I’ve got to be careful to not breakdown the bible like this: the OT = law, and the NT = faith. According to chapter eleven there was faith all the way back to Abel. So it’s more like this: the OT = faith, and the NT = faith. Faith in all of it.

Note: quote from Hebrews 11:39 (NASB)

Week 50 Hebrews

Let’s say someone asked me this question: which NT book is the most frustrating one to read if I’ve never read the OT, and if I don’t know anything about the OT?
I’d be tempted to answer: the letter to the Hebrews. It would be in my top-three for sure. Hebrews is a log-jam of OT-isms.
For starters the title – saying who it’s written to – should be a big tip-off.
But then I start bumping into names: Abel, Abraham, Melchizedek, Esau, Levi, Judah, Aaron, Moses, Joshua, David. Chapter eleven alone mentions a dozen and a half OT people.
And I can’t avoid OT topics – the law, priests, the covenant, manna, the tabernacle, the ark of the covenant & holy of holies, the veil, animal sacrifices, the Sabbath, Zion, Jerusalem, Egypt, and like that.
I found fifty-seven verses in Hebrews that have OT quotes in them.
So anyway, if I don’t know anything about the OT I’m in for a long hour of reading in Hebrews.
Coming toward the end of the year I’m thinking about 2021. Will I try reading through again? Whenever I’m thinking about bible-reading there’s always two questions: a) am I going to read it, and b) am I going to read all of it or not? First there’s the decision – yes-I-am or no-I’m-not. And if I decide yes-I-am then there’s the action pieces – what and how?
As of today I’m figuring I’ll try to read through again in 2021.

Week 49 Hebrews

Right away the writer starts dividing things up into Thens & Nows.
Then: God…spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways.
Now: in these last days (God) has spoken to us in His Son.
Of the two you get the sense pretty quickly that the writer’s big concern is the Now – by the time he’s thirty words in he starts giving details about the Son, about Jesus Christ.
If I’d decided in August to jot down all the other things I found about the Lord after I’d finished the gospels I’d definitely be writing down things from Hebrews 1:
(God) has spoken to us through his Son
God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance
Through the Son (God) made the universe and everything in it
The Son reflects God’s own glory
Everything about (the Son) represents God exactly
(The Son) sustains the universe by the mighty power of his command.
These aren’t simple ideas. But this kind of information really bulks up what I learned about Jesus in the gospel stories. And since the gospels already showed me a pretty muscular Lord, some of this post-gospels material really piles on substance, complexity, and dimension. The outside-the-gospel writers supplement what I learned about the gospel-Lord. There’s more to him than meets the eye.
[I’d like to be more alert to that next time through.]

Note: quotes from Hebrews 1:1-2 (NASB) and 1:2-3 (NLT)

Week 49 Philemon

Paul wrote this letter to a man he already knew. The man hosted church meetings in his own home. He was Philemon.
The letter to Philemon was about a runaway slave named Onesimus. While he was on the lam he had come to belief in the Lord (probably after running into Paul). The ironic thing – and the reason Paul wrote about him – was that Philemon was the man Onesimus had escaped from. Philemon owned Onesimus!
You have to figure that Paul & Onesimus had some serious what-to-do-now conversations. In the end Onesimus decided he had to return to his master.
The interesting twist that Paul puts on Onesimus’ return to Philemon is that his slave is coming back: no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother.
Technically that wasn’t entirely true because believing in the Lord didn’t alter Onesimus’ legal status as a slave.
What Paul was driving at was that even though Onesimus was formally still in a state of institutional bondage, he was also more-than-a-slave.
In the first-century political-legal Roman world Onesimus was just as much a slave after he believed in the Lord as he was before. Belief didn’t work any social-status miracles for Onesimus in the material world.
What it did do was add a whole new dimension on the non-material side. Which would have been a ticklish thing for both Philemon and Onesimus. Legally master & slave; but brothers & equals in-the-Lord.

Note: quote from Philemon 16 (NASB)

Week 49 1 Timothy

Bible writers sometimes tell us exactly why they’re writing, and that’s what Paul does right in the middle of this letter. He tells Timothy he wrote: so that you will know how people must conduct themselves in the household of God. This is the church of the living God, which is the pillar and support of the truth.
So 1 Timothy was Paul’s Guide-to-Conduct-in-the-Church. I scanned backward and forward looking for what-all Paul included.
A few of the big-ticket items were:
prayer in the church
women in the church
leaders in the church
needy people in the church
conflict in the church
slaves in the church
money & wealth in the church, and
teaching in the church.
Some pretty interesting topics that make me regret that I’m hurrying to read through.
The church has all kinds: men and women, old & young, rich & poor, powerful & powerless. A mixed company, all of us more or less committed to the Lord, all of us part of the church of the living God, and all of us with our centrifugal pulls of gender, wealth, opinion, influence and age whirling away and pulling us apart.
It seems like a pretty shaky group. But Paul isn’t fooled, and calls it the pillar and support of the truth.

Note: quote from 1 Timothy 3:15 (NLT). I forgot my end of the month tally yesterday so checked today: I’ve read 1662 of 1730 pages. 96% finished in 92% of the year.

Week 49 1 Timothy

While I’ve been reading-through this year I’ve had one Big Focus – to read everything right through. But back in about February I decided to tack on a secondary exercise, and that was to record verses that said something about what the Lord is like.
So I struck gold in chapter one. Paul is talking to Timothy but then it’s like all-of-a-sudden he’s addressing the Lord: now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.
I think Paul is mainly showing respect for the Lord here, but in the process he names specific features about him.
I added three to my What’s-the-Lord-Like list:
The Lord is eternal, there’s a Permanency of Existence quality;
The Lord is invisible. A spirit doesn’t register on my optic nerves (so if seeing-is-believing then I’m in trouble); and,
The Lord is unique; there’s just nothing else to compare him to.
I haven’t tried subdividing my list but if I did I’d put these three under something like Difference-Emphasizing Qualities. All of them tend to put quite a bit of distance between the Lord and me – actually quite-a-bit-more than quite-a-bit. The discrepancy between us gives me a sense of unease.
Still, feeling unease about the Super-Qualities of the Lord isn’t a deal-breaker for me because I figure that the more closely I could identify him & me the less & less like God he becomes.

Note: quote from 1 Timothy 1:17 (NASB)

Week 48 2 Thessalonians

People in the church in Thessalonica discovered that believing in the Lord included getting bashed by some of the people around them. So Paul started his letter by consoling them. He also told them: God will use this persecution to show his justice. For he will make you worthy of his kingdom…and in his justice he will punish those who persecute you.
It looks to me like there are two things going on. The first is that persecutees will in some way be made more worthy by going through hardships. But I leave that idea and move on to the second thing – that persecutors will be punished.
That gets my attention because Paul says that persecutors: will be punished with everlasting destruction, forever separated from the Lord.
Which seems to me like an awful outcome. I wonder how I would feel being in a lonesome, changeless state of isolation, of being cut off, and of remaining exactly and perpetually who-I-am-right-now from now on. Doesn’t seem so good to me.
On the other hand maybe that’s just my way of thinking. Maybe a person who currently thinks of the Lord as a kind of gargoylian monstrosity will in future get to go on thinking the same thing forever – a sort of continuity-of-belief. Maybe the afterlife just locks in and kind of petrifies what I think and am now. A rigor mortis of the soul.

Note: quotes from 2 Thessalonians 1:5-6, 9 (NLT)

Week 48 1 Thessalonians

Paul has a pretty interesting section about the Lord coming back to earth to wrap everything up. Eighteen verses running from the end of chapter four on into chapter five.
Sometimes it’s hard to know exactly why writers choose certain topics, say certain things. I wonder why Paul told them: we who are still living when the Lord returns will not rise to meet him ahead of those who are in their graves.
I’m sitting thinking about the phrase ahead-of-those, wondering why Paul said that.
Were people in Thessalonica concerned that the living would get an advantage? That the dead were handicapped because they’re dead? (In a material world you’d be inclined to think that a live guy would just, by definition have a clear jump on a dead guy.)
I’m wondering if Paul is reassuring them that living people won’t get a head start, that being dead doesn’t disadvantage me at the resurrection.
He spells it out this way: the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. All together.
Anyway even though I’m not exactly sure what the question-behind-the-answer was, that doesn’t really jam me up because I’m pretty solid on two basic things: a) the Lord will come back to earth; and b) if we believe in him we’ll go to be with him.

Note: quotes from 1 Thessalonians 4:15 (NLT), 4:16-17 (NASB)

Week 48 1 Thessalonians

Paul is thinking back to his arrival in the Macedonian city and says: when you received from us the word of God’s message, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which performs its work in you who believe.
When Paul got to Thessalonica nobody – as far as I know – knew who he was. No one knew his reputation as a high-profile apostle, or suspected he’d go on to have maybe a bigger influence on the church than anyone for two-thousand years. He was just a guy who showed up and gave a public address. And the people listening to him had a decision to make. Either this is just a speech the guy made up out of his own brain, or it’s a message from God.
Nine times out of ten you’ll think that the guy just made-it-up. Messages from God are pretty rare, pretty unlikely.
But for some reason people there in Thessalonica believed Paul. You wonder why someone starts believing in the Lord. Quits believing what he believed and starts believing what he didn’t.
The decision was theirs to make and some of them decided to turn from their idols and serve the living and true God.
A pretty momentous decision. You wonder what made them do it.

Note: quote from 1 Thessalonians 2:13 (NASB), 1:9 paraphrased