Medicine Hat Joe

Week 35  Matthew 1-2

Specific unambiguous directional dreams from the Lord aren’t all that common and not too many people in the NT get them. But Joseph did. He had four:
An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife…”
An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you…”
An angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel…”
Having been warned in a dream, (Joseph) withdrew to the district of Galilee.
Joseph is famous because of his connection with Jesus. But being part of the Mary-Joseph-Jesus Christmas Story was the only reason for his notoriety. Other than that he was mostly a shadowy and unknown man. No one knows where he came from or what happened to him. Mostly a life of obscurity. Except for those couple of key years where he played the role of saving the endangered life of Jesus while the Lord was still just a defenseless little kid.
But there at the beginning of Matthew’s gospel Joseph had his short & decisive role to play.
Then I guess that for him it was back to regular dreaming.

Note: quotes from Matthew 1:20 2:13 19-20 22 (NIV)

 

Week 34  Matthew 1

Matthew starts his gospel with two family name-lists. There’s a short one – only one verse long. Then right away there’s a longer list – fifteen verses of names.
Matthew could easily have started his gospel at verse eighteen:
This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.
That could have worked. But Matthew began his gospel story with a fifteen-verse list of names.
It can’t be because he figured it would grab people’s attention. But he must have figured the list was important to the story.
One thing the list does is make it clear that Jesus’ family connection went back through the centuries. Back through the kings of Judah to David. Then all the way back to father Abraham.
The key connection is to king David. In the OT a couple of key promises were made to David about the big things that would eventually come through his family line.
Matthew doesn’t come right out and say that’s his point. He just lays out a family tree showing that Jesus did come from the line of Judah’s greatest king (through whom someone big would come). And Jesus is part of David’s line. So now Matthew has twenty-eight chapters to make a case for Jesus being a big thing.

Note: quote from Matthew 1:18 (NIV)

 

 

Week 32  Malachi 3

Malachi 3:1 triggers a memory. The Lord is speaking: I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me.
The cross-reference says that the verse is quoted in the NT by Mark: as it is written…: “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way”. Right after quoting Malachi Mark starts talking about John the Baptist. He doesn’t explicitly say “John the Baptist is Malachi’s Messenger”. But that’s the implication.
Matthew quotes Malachi too (but he’s more unambiguous than Mark). Jesus is talking to a crowd of people – specifically about John the Baptist – and he tells them: (John) is the one about whom it is written: “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you”.
Anyway the reason I looked up the Malachi quote in Matthew & Mark is because there’s a note in the margin of the bible I’m using that says ‘messenger’ can also mean ‘angel’. That confused things. I felt pretty sure that Malachi’s Messenger was John the Baptist. But if the Messenger is an angel then he’s not John the Baptist. Unless John is referred to as an angel in an unliteral – a flatteringly figurative – way.
I check several dozen other versions. Almost all of them use the word ‘messenger’. So I decide to leave it at that – messenger…not angel. It’s a smallish but nagging glitch in my mind. But I’ll go with the majority opinion.

Note: quotes from Malachi 3:1 Mark 1:2 Matthew 11:10-11 (NIV)

Week 32  Zechariah 12-14

Zechariah focuses a lot of attention on a future time that he says will happen on that day. Other bible versions use that same phrase (or in that day). One says when the time comes. Another one day. And one goes out-on-a-limb and calls it the Big Day.
Zechariah uses on that day at least 18-times in chapters 12 13 & 14. A couple of the things he says about The Big Day are unclear. But one thing isn’t: it’s going to be a day of conflict. Distress. Mourning. Panic. War. It’ll be Jerusalem vs. Jerusalem’s Opponents.
Zechariah also adds a couple of details that will take place:
on that day…I will remove the names of the idols from the land
on that day every prophet will be ashamed of his vision
on that day (the Lord’s) feet will stand on the Mount of Olives
on that day there will be no light; the sunlight and moonlight will diminish
it will be a unique day known only to the Lord, without day or night
living waters will flow out of Jerusalem
on that day the Lord will become King over the whole earth.
But I’m left wondering about the Big Day. Has it already happened? (the second half of chapter 13 sounds like Christ’s time on earth). Or am I still waiting for it? Or did Zechariah squeeze two distinct Big Day events into one forecast?

Note: Conflict verses are in Zechariah 12:3 4 6 9 11 14:13. Quotes from 13:2 4 14:4 6 7 8 9 (CSB)

Week 32  Zechariah 12

I can’t say for sure but I think the last three chapters of Zechariah – 12-14 – are a separate section of the book. Up to that point there’s been a lot of content dealing with Zechariah’s visions. But then 12 starts off with what looks like a heading or subtitle:
The burden of the word of the Lord concerning Israel.
A few other bible versions use that same (odd) expression: the burden of the Lord. But others change the word burden – replace it with:
a pronouncement
a prophecy
the oracle.
I notice that a couple of them decided to make it into a kind of title by adding a semicolon:
A prophecy:
One of them bolds the words to emphasize it:
An Oracle.
Anyway the point is that it looks to me like chapter 12 is the start of a new section. I realize that it’s possible to break down the book of Zechariah in other ways so I’m not going to go-to-the-wall over this one.
But I have two reasons to think that Zechariah was moving-on in 12:1.
The first was that opening phrase: An Oracle. To me that looks like an ancient-world equivalent to a bit of neon signage.
Secondly was that Zechariah began to frequently use the expression day of the Lord in his last three chapters – I counted 18 times in 44-verses. Often enough that the day of the Lord might be Zechariah’s key idea in 12-14.

Note: quote from Zechariah 12:1 (NASB CSB CJB ESV NIV & RSV)

Week 31  Zechariah 7

The chapter begins with men coming to Zechariah and asking him about a fast they had been practicing for years-and-years.
The way they put the question to Zechariah he had two options. Answer a) yes…keep fasting. Answer b) no…stop fasting. But like what happens sometimes in the bible Zechariah didn’t answer the question directly. Instead he told them about other things the Lord wanted to see:
Make fair decisions
Show faithful love and compassion to one another
Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the resident alien or the poor
And do not plot evil in your hearts against one another.
I check a cross-reference to Isaiah where the people  were wondering about fasting and Isaiah told them what the Lord preferred:
break the chains of wickedness
untie the ropes of the yoke
set the oppressed free
share your bread with the hungry
bring the poor and homeless into your house
clothe the naked
and don’t ignore your own flesh and blood.
Some of the same practices in both lists. Some of them maybe even harder than fasting.
I like lists like these.
They remind me that the technical formalities of OT religion were supposed to be technical. And also personal.
And they remind me that the prescribed practices of OT religion didn’t end in the Temple court. They were supposed to carry over into my regular day-in-and-day-out.

Note: quotes from Zechariah 7:9-10 (reformatted) & Isaiah 58:6-7 (reformatted & slightly rephrased) (CSB)

Week 31  Zechariah 6

The Lord told Zechariah to visit the high priest – a man named Joshua – and say: here is the man whose name is the Branch, and he will branch out from his place and build the temple of the Lord. So it makes it sound like Joshua is the Branch.
I’ve got a niggling concern about this so I check the five marginal references in my bible:
In that day the Branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit
The days are coming…when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land
I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land
Listen Joshua, you and your associates…are men symbolic of things to come: I am going to bring my servant, the Branch.
These other verses explain a couple of reasons why Joshua is not the Branch.
First the Branch is – genealogically-speaking – going to come from David’s clan. Not Levi’s.
Second Zechariah says the Branch will come at a future time. The Branch is waiting-in-the-wings.
Third Zechariah tells Joshua he only symbolizes the real Branch. A kind of logo… a trademark.
So whoever the Branch actually is…he isn’t Joshua the priest.

Note: quotes from Zechariah 6:12 Isaiah 4:2 11:1 Jeremiah 23:5 33:15 Zechariah 3:8 (NIV)

Week 31

I’ve never met a bible reader who says “I sit down to read every day and I always feel the same.” Same level of interest. Same motivation. Same focus.
I’ve not met one. Because every day isn’t the same. Some days are better than others.
Occasionally I can account for why a day isn’t so good:
I’ve got a headache
I travelled through six times zones yesterday
I just said good-bye to a friend
I’ve got an unhappy conversation coming up in an hour.
But other times there’s no telling what to make of how today feels.
In general terms I tend to categorize my reading-days under three rough divisions:
Good Days
Average Days
Bad Days.
Every day it’s going to be one of those. Good. Average. Bad. Fairly randomly. And unpredictably enough that my bible-reading exercise varies.
Sure…I’m trying to beef-up my total number of Good Days (and trying to reduce the Bad ones). That’s a part of my (ragged) longer-term Personal Life Management plan.
But meanwhile I just try to keep reading – come-what-may. Pretty good reads on good days. Grind-it-out reads on grind-it-out days.

Note #1 grind-it-out reading is a technique that I can usually do pretty successfully. It’s not too rewarding. And it’s maybe not the way for everyone since we’re all finding-our-way & finessing-our-way through our reading program. Part of the reading is discovering how to manage.
Note #2 End-of-month reading report. I’ve been speeding ahead the last several weeks and have read 78% in 58% of the year.

Week 28  Jonah 1

Once I get past the thirteen-word introduction the next thing I read is the Lord giving Jonah a very specific instruction: go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it.
The first thought that comes to me is that it’s rare for the Short Prophets to begin with an explicit actionable directive. I decide to test that so I quit reading Jonah and go back and scan through the opening verses of the other little prophets. I see that Hosea got a very definite actionable directive: go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her. But that’s it. Other than that and Jonah’s go to the great city of Nineveh I don’t find any other up-front orders. The books just jump right into the message:
hear this you elders…
the Lord roars from Zion…
we have heard a message from the Lord…
So it was just Hosea and Jonah. Each of them told to do a definite (and unpalatable) thing. And each taking action. But the difference was that Hosea did what he was told. Jonah didn’t.
I can’t think of any other prophet like Jonah. He just walked away. A real renegade.
In the end the coercive arm-twisting of the big fish forced Jonah to comply. But it never really changed his mind. A maverick to the end. Even when he did what he had to do he couldn’t be forced to like doing it.

Note: quotes from Jonah 1:2 Hosea 1:2 Joel 1:2 Amos 1:2 Obadiah 1:1 (NIV)

Week 28  Proverbs 8

The second half of the chapter gets around to asking the question: how old is Wisdom? The short answer: Wisdom has always been around.
Wisdom was:
• at the beginning of (the Lord’s) creation
• before (the Lord’s) works of long ago
• before ancient times, from the beginning, before the earth began
• when there were no watery depths.
There could be a debate about whether wisdom has existed forever or if it was created by the Lord way back when. But that’s a technical point. My bigger concern here is that wisdom – as far as it matters to me in practical terms – has been around forever. It’s a permanent fixture. People didn’t think-it-up. It didn’t evolve over eons. Wasn’t doped-out over time. It pre-existed everyone-everything. Greeks. Babylonians. Hebrews. The bible. Adam & Eve. Wisdom isn’t a human invention. It’s a square one perennial. Always there. Never absent in the history of everything.
I was a skilled craftsman beside him (the Lord). I was his delight every day, always rejoicing before him. I was rejoicing in his inhabited world, delighting in the children of Adam.
So it looks like Solomon isn’t sitting around thinking up proverbially wise sayings. It’s more like he’s tapped into this deep and universally accessible well of Wisdom and then he siphoned off thimblefuls of prepackaged digestible understandable wisdom to benefit his readers. Uncomplicated sayings from the Deep Well.

Note: quotes about wisdom are from Proverbs 8:22-24 and 8:30-31 (CSB)