Saturday, March 27

Good evening. Our friends Pete and Sandi are coming up tonight to hang and go out for Indian Food. Excellent. Excellence in evening planning. I guess that's it for now. Bible time.

Reading for March 27
Deuteronomy 7:1-8:20
Wow - I love this whole section. There is some extremely interesting stuff in here, including why God had chosen the Israelites and you really get a large sense of the scale of God's plan for these people. We are still waiting for the Israelites to enter the promised land and God is still delivering this huge, inspirational, motivational speech to his people.

It opens with God telling the Israelites that when the enter this new land, that they should be not hold back and conquer all of these people. He tells them not to inter-marry with the people who currently live there and basically builds the Israelites up as a superior race. To which I was like, wait a minute...why would God favor these people so much over these other people? To which the Bible replied:

 ⁷ The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. ⁸ But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

Then it goes into this - which is absolutely an incredible insight into God's mind:

² Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. ³ He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. ⁴ Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. ⁵ Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you.

This explains why God led the people into the desert, the purpose of the manna, uses a line that Jesus famously quotes when being tempted by the devil, and rationalizes the punishment God deals out...to an extent.

It's just remarkable to see such transparency with God. Usually the whole idea of God is the wondering. The whole idea of God is based on faith in something we can't see, which is a mysterious idea in and of itself, and a lot of ideas about God come from man's interpretation of God's often-strange actions. So for him to be so forthcoming with information is such a change of pace that it really catches you off guard.

I've re-read this entire section 2 or 3 times now. It's so interesting, and while some of the things could be seen as cop-out type answers, I think it answers a good deal of things and presents a level of honesty and clarity that is so rare in the Bible.


Luke 7:36-8:3

This is a pretty famous scene. Jesus was invited to dinner at a Pharisee's house. While they're there, a "sinful" woman comes in and begins weeping at Jesus feet and pours a jar of expensive perfume on his feet. The Pharisee thinks that its a shame that such a sinful woman is touching the Savior, but Jesus rebuts him with a story:

 ⁴¹"Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii,^[a] and the other fifty. ⁴²Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both.

He then asks the Pharisee which one of the men would love the moneylender more. The Pharisee says "the one with the larger debt." because he was in more trouble and was forgiven more trouble. So this woman who owed a huge debt because of her sin was forgiven and therefore loved Jesus all the more for it. It's an interesting dynamic between sin and forgiveness. There is a line about "Where sin abounds, Grace abounds all the more" or something like that. The two things definitely need each other to have any significance...the black and white, the good and evil. 

Psalm 69:1-18
Again, this one isn't saying much to me. Sorry everyone...

Proverbs 12:1
 ¹ Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge,
       but he who hates correction is stupid.

Alright - takin it back to the knowledge concept, only this time its switched around. Knowledge has already been established as something desirable. Now he is trying to establish discipline and correction as something to seek. Which I suppose is a good thing to look for - we should always be looking to improve ourselves and getting called out on stuff by others is the best way to do that.

OK - that's it for me this evening. Peace out, kids.