Medicine Hat Joe

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 summing up:
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 developable qualities I have to work at.

Note: quotes from 2 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 was reading 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? Maybe so.
Based on what he knew about himself at the time Solomon made a solid choice. What he didn’t plan for was a long deviation that would gradually take him farther and farther away from the Lord.

Note: quotes from 2 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 my normal reading approach is to think & adjust & assess & evaluate soberly. And so pretty quickly I realized that panning chapter 24 was just a knee-jerk reaction on my part. I needed to pull-back. Hold-my-horses.
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 I’d have to admit that my personal interest in the chapter was very minimal.
One thing I notice at the end is that all the 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 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 and either a) making the Lord part of the mix or b) disregarding the Lord. My choice of a) or b) will determine the project’s Degree of Usefulness.
He says: IF I do something BUT I give Zero Consideration to the Lord THEN what I do is useless.
Let’s say there’s 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 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. Initially both guys successfully got their houses built and they moved in. And both showed high initial Degrees of Usefulness. But eventually inclement weather would be the real test of the build.

Note: quote from Psalm 127:1 (NLT)

Week 18  2 Kings 17

The kingdom of Israel was finished by chapter 17. Kaput.
At the end of the story the writer goes back to the beginning and says something about the first king: Jeroboam drew Israel away from following the Lord and made them commit a great sin. And the people persisted in all the evil ways of Jeroboam. Jeroboam stands out as a beacon of darkness and his (bad) influence comes up again-and-again. For instance Jeroboam’s son: Nadab did what was evil in the Lord’s sight and followed the example of his father, continuing in the sins of idolatry that Jeroboam had led Israel to commit.
I wondered about the other 17 kings – Baasha Elah Zimri Omri Ahab Ahaziah Jehoram Jehu Jehoahaz Jehoash Jeroboam II Zechariah Shallum Menahem Pekahiah Pekah & Hoshea. How many of them imitated Jeroboam?
I did a quick 27-chapter scan looking to see if it was definitely spelled-out whether a king followed Jeroboamism. And what I found was that Baasha Zimri Omri Ahab Ahaziah Jehoram Jehu Jehoahaz Jehoash Jeroboam II Zechariah Menahem Pekahiah & Pekah all did (Elah Shallum & Hoshea were the exceptions.)
The kings who followed Jeroboam might have rung-up some of their own individual religious-isms. But the starting point was Jeroboam in 1 Kings 12. He got the ball rolling. The others added momentum.
I don’t know if that makes Jeroboam 1 the worst king (that’s not what I was looking for). But I think he’s a warning about the power of a bad influencer.

Note: quotes from 2 Kings 17:21-22 1 Kings 15:26 (NLT)

 

Week 18  2 Kings 1-8

Jehoram was Ahab’s son and he became king in the first chapter of 2 Kings.
At first I figured that Jehoram’s story was long because he was a contemporary of Elisha – a king hanging-around in the shadow of the prophet. So I needed to check that:
Chapter 1 Jehoram becomes king
Chapter 2 Jehoram isn’t mentioned
Chapter 3 Jehoram is named in the battle against Moab
Chapter 4 Elisha miracle-stories. Jehoram isn’t named
Chapter 5 Naaman miracle. A ‘king of Israel’ is mentioned 3 times. Jehoram isn’t named
Chapter 6 Arameans. A ‘king of Israel’ is mentioned about 8 times. Jehoram isn’t named
Chapter 7 Ben-had. A ‘king of Israel’ is mentioned twice. Jehoram isn’t named
Chapter 8:1-6 a ‘king of Israel’ anecdote. Jehoram isn’t named
Chapter 8:16-24 Jehoram is named. His career is summarized. And then he dies.
Jehoram is only identified clearly in about 35-verses. But I think that he’s probably the (unnamed) king-of-Israel. So in that case 2 Kings devotes about 185-verses to Jehoram’s monarchy. But…when push-comes-to-shove I think he stays mostly in the shadows. A bit of an anonymous phantom.
Both (father) Ahab and (son) Jehoram get a lot of coverage. The big difference between them is that I think Ahab was a star whereas Jehoram was a third-rater. Both were bad. Ahab was Capable Bad. Jehoram seemed more Inept Bad.
At first I thought that Ahab was a marquee guy because of Elijah. But now I don’t.
And I thought that Jehoram was a marquee guy because of Elisha. And I still do.