Medicine Hat Joe

Week 22  Psalms 146-150

Yesterday I searched through psalms 146-150 looking for qualities of the Lord. I found eight.
Today I dropped a couple off the list (they didn’t quite fit the bill…they seemed like action-qualities…doing as much as being). So I had six things that described the Lord:
great is our Lord (another psalm said surpassingly great)
he is mighty in power
his understanding has no limits
he reigns forever
his splendor is above the earth and the heavens
his name alone is exalted.
I thought it would be helpful (and maybe easier) to reduce these phrases to a single word. That seemed to work at first – for instance I tried Great Powerful & Brilliant. But the second three traits were too complex to describe in a single word (and for all I know the first three were too and I was just kidding myself). After all I noticed that the writer decided to add modifiers to really make his point:
• How great is the Lord? Stupendously great
• How powerful? Powerfully powerful
• Limitlessly smart
• Permanently in-charge
• Incandescently above everyone & everything everywhere
• Peerlessly superior
But really the main point in these psalms isn’t to get the Lord’s qualities out on-the-table – even though it does do that. The writer’s aim was to show what qualities the Lord could be praised for.
You’re the greatest
You’re the strongest
You’re the smartest
You always take care of things
You’re everywhere
You’re the very best.
Praise the Lord!

Note: quotes from Psalm 147:5 (& 150:2) 146:10 147:5 148:13 148:13 (NIV)

Week 22  Psalms 146-150

146 147 148 149 and 150 all have the same opening line: Praise the Lord.
Each time the expression is used my bible has a footnote that says “Praise the Lord” (in the Hebrew language) is Hallelu Yah. I looked up hallelujah in an English language dictionary and it said: praise the Lord.
Praise means approval. Affirmation. Commendation. Applause. If I go to a concert and it’s terrific I stand up and clap. I approve. I praise the performers.
When it comes to praising the Lord it seems like the same general idea applies. The Lord performs…and I can approve of the performance by Hallelujah-ing the Lord. If I wanted to I could stand. Shout. Applaud. Raise my hands in salute.
I did a quick re-reading exercise…scanning the psalms and counting-up things that the Lord did (what his praiseworthy actions were). There were quite a few of them. In 59-verses there were 41 actions the Lord could be commended for (for instance he determines the number of stars).
But in the process I also found something I wasn’t looking for: praiseworthy things that weren’t performance-related. They were praise-approvals of the Lord for what he was like…his qualities…his character-traits. I found 8-items describing what the Lord was like (for instance praise him for his surpassing greatness).
Anyway it was a pure numbers exercise. A follow-up idea might be to create two lists: a) the Lord’s actions and b) the Lord’s qualities.

Note: quotes from Psalms 145:21 147:4 150:2 (NIV)

Week 21  2 Chronicles 14-16

I noticed a couple of time-stamps that marked events during king Asa’s reign.
1) when Asa became king there was peace in the land for ten years
2) then an Ethiopian named Zerah attacked Judah. That ended the decade of peace but Asa still depended on the Lord. Later (it was in late spring, during the fifteenth year of Asa’s reign) a big public event reconfirmed Asa & Judah’s covenant loyalty to the Lord
3) after that there was no more war until the thirty-sixth year of Asa’s reign (an impressive twenty-year span of peace)
4) then the War of Year 36 was started by Baasha of Israel. Asa’s solution – a terrible & inexplicable decision – was to hire mercenaries from Damascus. A prophet – Hanani – told Asa from now on, you will be at war. That forecast came in Asa’s thirty-sixth year and he died in the forty-first year of his reign.
So…
Years 1-10: peace (devoted to the Lord)
Years 11-15: conflict (devoted to the Lord)
Years 16-36: peace (devoted to the Lord)
Years 37-41: conflict (not devoted to the Lord)
41-years as king. 36-years devoted to the Lord. But during those last 5-6 years something went wrong.
Hanani’s diagnosis was this: the eyes of the Lord search the whole earth…to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him
By that he meant that the Lord had searched the earth and would have helped Asa if he’d stayed fully committed to him.
But Asa had tailed off on the last lap.

Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 14:1 6 8 15:10 19 16:9 13 (NLT)

 

Week 21  Psalm 145

I found eight things that the Lord does. Actions he takes.
But I whittled that eight-item list down to three because a) there were people in that list who practiced three specific behaviours toward the Lord and b) there were specific ways that the Lord responded to those behaviours. I was interested in the Back-&-Forth. The If-X Then-Y connection. I wanted to see a) what the actions were and b) the Lord’s reactions.
The three specific things that people did were:
• Call on the Lord
• Fear the Lord
• Love the Lord.
The Lord’s response to them was described this way:
The Lord is near to all who call on him
The Lord fulfils the desires of those who fear him. He hears their cry and saves them
The Lord watches over all who love him.
I personalized it to see what it looked like:
• What if I call on the Lord? He’s nearby
• What if I fear the Lord? He fulfils my desires & hears my appeal & he saves me
• What if I love the Lord? He watches out for me.
My what’s-in-it-for-for-me instinct is to focus on how the Lord will benefit me. But I have a sneaking-suspicion that the benefits are secondary matters. By-products. So it makes better sense to focus on the primaries: appealing to the Lord…loving the Lord…revering the Lord. There’s no point in focusing primarily on the secondaries.

Note: quotes from Psalm 145:18 19 20 (NIV)

Week 21  Psalm 145

If I asked a hundred bible-reading people what specific things they’re looking for in the bible there’d be a bunch of answers. But I think one of them would be: “I want to find out what the Lord is like”. (Or maybe I just think that because it’s one of the questions I have.)
Psalm 145 is a useful place to find out What the Lord is Like.
While I was reading I wrote down a list of thirteen items. When I re-read the list I saw that there were actually two different types of things: a) what the Lord is like in his character (what the Lord is) and b) what the Lord does (his actions). I was more interested in a) and the psalm said five definitive things about the Lord.
• The Lord is great
• The Lord is gracious
• The Lord is compassionate
• The Lord is good (to everyone & everything)
• The Lord is righteous
I wondered what results I’d get if I gave an opinion survey to a random audience.
I sketched-out a table. The left-hand column had five rows – the five qualities of God.
Then three more columns – check-boxes:
Do you agree with this statement? (Check “Yes”)
Do you disagree? (Check “No”)
Are you on-the-fence? (Check “Maybe-Maybe Not”)
There’d be some “Yes” & “No” hard-liners. But I wonder if the majority would be uncertain about one or more of the things David claimed about the Lord.

Note: character features are from Psalm 145:3 8 9 17.

Week 20  2 Chronicles

Yesterday I was thinking about Solomon’s Choice.
The Lord: what do you want? Ask and I will give it to you
Solomon: give me wisdom and knowledge.
So when I get to the Queen of Sheba story I realize how exceptional Solomon’s gift was.
His reputation for wisdom had crossed international borders and the queen of Sheba made a state visit to see him. Why? to test Solomon with hard questions.
The queen asked and Solomon answered all her questions; nothing was too hard for him to explain to her.
Was she impressed? when (she) realized how wise Solomon was…she was breathless.
Did he live up to his reputation? The queen told him that everything I heard about your achievements and wisdom is true.
How wise was he? Your wisdom is far greater than what I was told.
Yesterday I was questioning Solomon’s Choice. I was thinking that maybe Solomon wouldn’t have turned his back on the Lord if he’d asked for a different gift (I thought Lasting Faith was a better choice).
But the Queen of Sheba story reminds me that wisdom was a genuinely fantastic gift. Maybe Solomon did choose the best possible gift of all. Maybe Lasting Faith – permanent loyalty to the Lord – wasn’t even on-the-table.
Maybe being devoted to the Lord is a whole different category. Maybe loyalty and devotion aren’t given. Maybe they’re qualities I have to work at being.

Note: quotes from 1 Chronicles 1:7 10 9:1 2 3-4 5 6

Week 20  2 Chronicles

Solomon had a dream and in it the Lord gave him an unbelievable choice: what do you want? Ask and I will give it to you. The offer sounds too good to be true. I can’t think of anyone else in the OT who got one like it.
Anyway with this sky’s-the-limit offer on the table Solomon asked for wisdom and knowledge. What a great character guy! And the Lord told him: because your greatest desire is to help your people, and you did not ask for personal wealth and honor or the death of your enemies or even a long life…I will certainly give you wisdom and knowledge.
I put together a list: Potential Choices for Solomon (in ascending order):
• personal wealth
• honor
• freedom from opponents
• long life
• wisdom-and-knowledge
When Solomon made his choice I don’t know how far down the road he was thinking. But I read 1 Kings a couple of weeks ago and know that Solomon’s wisdom-and-knowledge didn’t inoculate him against idol-worship. So maybe not far enough.
I’m wondering if another choice might have been better for Solomon. Not to say that Wisdom-Knowledge wasn’t good. But would something like Long-term Faith have been better? Probably.
Based on what he knew about himself at the time Solomon made a solid choice. What he didn’t plan for was the long deviation that gradually took him farther and farther away from the Lord.

Note: quotes from 1 Chronicles 1:7 11-12 (NLT)

Week 20  Psalm 138

By definition there’s a huge difference between the Lord and me. And one result is that there’s a gigantic distance between us. But when David says though the Lord is great, he cares for the humble, but he keeps his distance from the proud that’s a tip-off that distance is dynamic.
Knowing that the Lord’s proximity isn’t fixed and static is useful information to have. The Lord isn’t equidistant from every single one of us. Arrogance has a distancing effect and so the Lord keeps the proud at arms-length. By contrast humility narrows the gap.
Proximity is a dependent variable. The personal space between the Lord and a) a proud person and b) a humble person works in a kind of inverse way. The standard distance between the Lord and people is stretched by pride. But humility reduces the space.
This raises a practical question. What if a guy feels proud of himself (maybe he’s talented popular good-looking & successful)? What if he’s thinking: how do I feel less proud? Unfortunately David doesn’t give advice on the How-To question.
His big point is: the Lord is great. That’s the fundamental thing. If I think that the Lord is genuinely great – way greater than me for instance – then that’s my starter-step in the direction of closing-the-gap. By contrast if I think that the Lord isn’t so great then that’ll be an important distance-extending decision that I get to make.

Note: quote from Psalm 138:6 (NLT)

Week 20  1 Chronicles 24

About 20-seconds into the chapter I was already thinking: this content is completely useless to me.
So anyway I’m lucky that I read in a pretty steady state of thinking-adjusting-reacting-assessing and so pretty quickly I realized that panning chapter 24 was just a knee-jerk reaction on my part. I needed to pull-back. Not take myself too seriously.
The idea of ‘total uselessness’ isn’t really fair. What I could say (to be more fair) is that today chapter 24 was pulsating in my head with powerful vibrations of irrelevance. The most I could say is that today chapter 24 seemed useless-to-me.
What that means is that I don’t get to say chapter 24 is absolutely useless. For instance I’m pretty sure it was useful – maybe necessary – instruction to the OT priestly class. The way it divided & organized people & clans could have been precedent-setting and it might have influenced tasks & responsibilities for centuries. Still…even if that’s true my personal interest in the chapter is very minimal.
One thing I notice at the end is that all these religious assignments were done publicly ‘in the presence of King David, Zadok, Ahimelech, and the family leaders of the priests and the Levites’. So…fair enough. David was a key player and organizer with a vested interest in religious practice. But a niggling question I’ll be keeping in the back of my mind is: shouldn’t David (the head-of-state) be at arms-length from the priesthood (the religious department of the state)?

Note: quote from 1 Chronicles 24:31 (NLT).

Week 20  Psalm 127

Unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is useless.
I don’t think Solomon is saying that a) the Lord actually builds houses or that b) home builders’ work is futile.
I think Solomon is talking about doing a project (maybe something as simple as just working at my job). I think Solomon’s point is that I consider the project in terms of its Degree of Usefulness.
He says: IF I build a house BUT I give Zero Consideration to the Lord THEN the house is useless.
Think of some Project X:
Project X – the Lord = a Useless Project
Project X + the Lord = a Useful Project
(There’s likely a fairly big middle ground between 100% Uselessness and Total Usefulness. There’s likely many points along a continuum that measure a greater or lesser inclusion or exclusion of the Lord in the project.)
I thought back to the Tower of Babel. I’m guessing that those builders solicited roughly zero input from the Lord. The result was a building that registered close to zero on the Degree of Usefulness Scale.
I remember the Lord’s story about two builders. One guy built a house on a sand foundation. The other built on rock. Both guys successfully got their houses built and they moved in. And there was no need to think about the Degree of Usefulness of the structure or its foundation. Or at least not as long as the weather cooperated.

Note: quote from Psalm 127:1 (NLT)