Medicine Hat Joe

Week 18  Psalm 115

One of the problems with reading through the bible is that a big percentage of the content – especially in the OT – doesn’t have too much connection to me. There’s an Application Disconnect (that feeling of this-content-don’t-mean-nuthin’-to-me).
So anyway a couple of verses into the psalm I started getting the feeling that I was reading advice aimed at someone else:
O Israel, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield
O house of Aaron, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield.
This was operational advice for a) Israel and b) Aaron’s family.
But then I got to a third group – a more general audience:
You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield.
What Israel was told to do (trust in the Lord) and what Aaron’s family was told to do (trust in the Lord) was the same advice for anyone at all who feared-the-Lord (trust in the Lord).
So what started out seeming pretty inapplicable turned around. If I revere the Lord then I’ll set store by him (and I guess the flipside is true too: that if I don’t revere then I won’t trust).

Note: quote from Psalm 115:9-11 (ESV). It was helpful that in my bible’s margin it said that ‘fear’ is roughly equal to ‘revere’. So fearing the Lord isn’t – for example – like being terrorized by a zombie.

 

Week 17  Psalm 107

This psalm could be quite a bit shorter if the writer had jumped straight from the first paragraph to the final two verses. And it would still be a pretty good – and short – psalm:
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his faithful love endures forever.
Let the redeemed of the Lord proclaim that he has redeemed them from the power of the foe
and has gathered them from the lands – from the east and the west, from the north and the south.
The upright see it and rejoice, and all injustice shuts its mouth.
Let whoever is wise pay attention to these things and consider the Lord’s acts of faithful love.
A five-verse psalm would save me some reading time. At the same time it would still give me some good content. For example, God is Good. Short. Simple. A factual statement and an excellent reminder of something that’s very easy for a reader to lose sight of. God is Good. Lots of people look around and figure that God isn’t all that good. Or that he’s an on-again-off-again unpredictable God – good sometimes & bad other times. And some people figure that he’s flat-out terrible.
So even reading my abbreviated psalm I get a nice reminder: God is Good. A world of disastrous inexplicables happening all around me doesn’t fundamentally tell me much about God. Any more than my (poor old) dog dying of bone cancer says very much about me.

Note: quote from psalm 107:1-3 & 42-43 (CSB)

Week 16  Psalm 105

Psalm 105 retells some of the stories from Israel’s past.
One is the story of Joseph being sold-down-the-river by his brothers.
I look back at the story in Genesis. It’s about 90 verses long. So the psalm 105 version – 5 verses – is a real whittled-down version:
(The Lord) had sent a man ahead of (Jacob’s family) – Joseph, who was sold as a slave.
They hurt his feet with shackles; his neck was put in an iron collar.
Until the time his prediction came true, the word of the Lord tested him.
The king sent for him and released him; the ruler of peoples set him free.
He made him master of his household, ruler over all his possessions.
The full-length Genesis account of Joseph is one of the best stories in the bible. I prefer it to the condensed version. But whatever reason the psalm writer had for writing a short-version the important thing is that his version was accurate. Different but accurate.
I remember reading a guy’s explanation of Jesus walking across the Sea of Galilee. This guy figured there was a weather anomaly in the eastern Mediterranean where the temperature plummeted and froze the lake. Jesus was actually walking on ice. (I can do in Alberta and so I know there’s no miracle there.) Different and inaccurate.
Changing a story is okay. But an important rule is that when it gets changed it has to stay roughly the same story.

Note: quote from Psalm 105:17-21 (CSB)

Week 16  1 Chronicles 3

Mental focus is one of the challenges a reader faces while reading the first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles. That’s why I didn’t notice at first that mid-way through chapter three there’s a list of the kings of Judah. But then it did register: the kings of Judah. Yes! This was familiar ground for me.
I re-read the list of the fifteen kings that followed Solomon: the son of Solomon was Rehoboam, Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joram, Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah, Azariah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon, Josiah. 
Since I’d posted on the kings of Judah in May, 2023 I wanted to cross-check my list with this one in 1 Chronicles 3.
The fifteen kings of Judah in my list were: Rehoboam Abijah Asa Jehoshaphat Joram Ahaziah Joash Amaziah Azariah Jotham Ahaz Hezekiah Manasseh Amon & Josiah.
The lists are the same if I allow for the fact that Jehoram’s other name was Joram. And Uzziah was also called Azariah.
The writer of 1 Chronicles 3 no doubt expected his readers to know the stories behind this list of names. And so – fortunately for me – I did.
But unfortunately for me that was only part of the list. The rest (especially verses 17-24) kind of fall-off-a-cliff. Zerubbabel is the only name I recognize – I remember him from the book of Ezra (he’s also in the genealogies of Jesus in the gospels). But with the other names I’m at-sea.

Note: quote from 1 Chronicles 3:10-14 (ESV). The phrase ‘his son’ is repeated fourteen times so I deleted it.

Week 15  Psalm 93

The third & fourth verses spend quite a bit of time talking about oceanic power to make the point that the Lord is mightier than the sea:
The floods have lifted up, Lord,
the floods have lifted up their voice;
the floods lift up their pounding waves.
Greater than the roar of a huge torrent—
the mighty breakers of the sea—
the Lord on high is majestic.
The psalm-writer could have briefed things up. For instance:
“The Lord is greater than a north Atlantic gale”.
But he didn’t. So when I’m reading the psalms I try to keep in mind that the writer has an idea he wants to convey and he’s conveying it (in his view) in an appealing way.
Let’s face it…I could write up an accurate list of this psalm’s basic ideas in bullet-points. The Lord is:
• The King
• Majestic
• Immoveable
• Everlasting
• Powerful
• Holy
And I think my list covers the main attributes of the Lord. But I’d also have to admit that my version isn’t very elegant. Not compelling. Not forceful. Kind of ho-hum. Sure…it conveys key facts. But in a stiff & wooden & kind of boring way.
Factual information about the Lord can be communicated concisely & clearly & accurately. But I figure the writer asked himself: ‘how do I make it attention-grabbing too?’ And he knew that a bullet-pointed list wouldn’t be half as absorbing as his word picture.

Note: quote from Psalm 95:3-4 (CSB)

Week 14  1 Samuel 16

I started reading the story of David this year and after a couple of days I noticed that it kept going on-and-on.
David’s story is good. But it’s long. And when I started wondering who had the longest life-story in the bible I figured that David might be a good candidate.
I added up all the chapters from 1 Samuel 16 to 31 (16) plus all of 2 Samuel (24) plus 1 Kings 1-2 (2). The arithmetic  said David’s biography was 42 chapters long. (I didn’t want to quibble about a couple of non-David side-stories in those 42. And I didn’t tack-on the couple of dozen chapters of duplicated stories in 1 Chronicles.) 42 chapters is my rough number.
The only other challenger in the OT (that I could think of) was Moses. I could argue that Exodus 2 to Deuteronomy 34 are about Moses – 136 chapters. But that would be an inaccurate tally since the majority of those chapters aren’t Moses’ biography. I didn’t have time to do a chapter-by-chapter review of Moses so I don’t know if there are 42 biographical chapters. But I think Moses would be in-the-conversation.
There are other great stories in the OT: Noah Samson Ruth Elijah Elisha Jeremiah Jonah. But as far as the narrative-space devoted to a person? David is near the very top.
[Of course if I include the NT then Jesus takes-the-cake – racking up ~90 chapters.]
Anyway David is very very important in the OT scheme of things. And in spite of its length the story still moves along fairly quickly.

 

Week 14  1 Samuel 16

When Samuel went to designate a replacement for Saul he looked at a number of candidates but the Lord told him: do not look at his appearance or his stature because I have rejected him. Humans do not see what the Lord sees, for humans see what is visible, but the Lord sees the heart.
So the Lord sees differently than people see.
It’s a pretty important concept for me to keep in mind. I See Things Differently Than the Lord Does. Meaning I’m faced with a personal question: do I believe my own eyes or do I believe the Lord’s? Quite a bit rests on my answer.
Am I going to run with what I see & think? Or do I run with what the Lord says he’s seeing – even if it unbalances or maybe even contradicts what I’m feeling certain about? (It’s very difficult to believe what I don’t.)
When Samuel went to Jesse’s house looking for a king he was impressed by a couple of the brothers because they were actually impressive. But the Lord wasn’t impressed because he wasn’t impressed by the things that impressed Samuel.
There are likely a number of different cases of human smartness. When totaled up there’d be an enormous collection of smartness in the world. No denying the big bunch of smartness. But it wouldn’t be totality of all- smartness.
In fact it’d maybe be something like one one-trillionth as smart as the Lord.

Note: quote from 1 Samuel 16:7 (CSB)

Week 14  1 Samuel 15

Samuel said: the Eternal One of Israel does not lie or change his mind, for he is not man who changes his mind.
It’s a reassuring reminder that the Lord is not like humans. He’s not changeable. Not unstable. Not unreliable.
At the same time the Lord’s character isn’t locked-down into a kind of conscious state of emotional rigor mortis.
Here’s a hypothetical example of the Lord showing some common-sensical elasticity. Let’s say there’s two guys:
If Guy #1 lives a life of good actions from beginning-to-end the Lord will affirm him.
If Guy #2 lives a life of evil actions from beginning-to-end the Lord won’t affirm him.
But what if Guy #1 lives a life of good actions for a while but then turns around and lives an evil life? Things have changed. So the Lord doesn’t affirm him any more.
And what if Guy #2 lives an evil life for a while but then turns around and lives a life of good? Things have changed. And he goes from not being affirmed to being affirmed.
If the Lord was Totally Inflexible & Rigidly Mechanical then he wouldn’t be responsive to changeable things happening all around. But one thing the bible confirms is that the Lord is responsive to new developments.
The Lord responds intelligently and fittingly to mutating inputs. He changes.

Note: quote from 1 Samuel 15:29 (CSB)

Week 14  1 Samuel 15

Samuel told Saul something about the Lord: the Glory of Israel will not lie or change His mind; for He is not a man that He should change His mind. (Saul might have already known that. But in this chapter he got a reminder.)
I like this verse because it says something specific about what the Lord is like. But the verse is also a bit concerning because a few weeks ago I read another verse that said: so the Lord changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people.
Samuel says that the Lord doesn’t change his mind. Moses says that he does. Who’s right?
The thing is that these are two different scenarios. Samuel is making a comment about the Lord’s basic nature. He doesn’t change. There are no character mutations with the Lord. He has original qualities that don’t metamorphize. In his essentiality the Lord is non-evolutionary. And why would he be? He’s constitutionally flawless so any change he made to himself would be a step down.
The situation in Exodus is different. The Lord does change his mind because he was wrong. What changes is his response to changing circumstances. Personally I think the verse is clearer if it said (something like) the Lord’s reaction is customized in response to developing circumstances.
The Lord is consistent within himself. And he adjusts to new developments.

Note: quotes from 1 Samuel 15:29 & Exodus 32:14 (NASB). End-of-month reading: 34% completed.

Week 9  1 Samuel 15

After Saul made his career-&-life-altering stupid decision (making a sacrifice that he wasn’t supposed to make) Samuel told him this: rebellion is as bad as the sin of divination; arrogance is like the evil of idolatry.
It’s a pretty interesting comment and it seems like Samuel was implying that there was a kind of socially-acknowledged Evilness Scale. I don’t know for sure but I don’t think there actually was such a scale. If there was it would map-out evil actions – sins – and classify them into different families or castes. So for instance there might have been a) Mildly-Evil Actions & b) Middle-of-the-Road-Evil Actions & c) Seriously-Evil Actions. A concrete example would be that killing someone is a heavier & eviler evil than stealing a bag of coleslaw.
But Samuel said that rebellion was roughly equivalent to divination. Arrogance was on the same footing as idolatry.
Personally I think I’d want to argue that rebellion & divination are two distinct evils (same with arrogance & idolatry). And I don’t want to put words in Samuel’s mouth but I figure he might agree that evils do have their own unique individualities. But I don’t think that was his point. I think Samuel’s main point was that all evils share a kinship. There’s a family likeness. All thing that are bad – small medium & large – are similar because they can never get to be good.

Note: quote from 1 Samuel 15:23 (CSB). Month-end reading report: I’ve read 26% of the bible in 17% of the year.