Thursday, March 4

Good evening. Jilly and I just finished watching "Drag Me to Hell". It was alright - an entertaining, completely over-the-top horror movie with more demon vomit per capita than any movie to date. Except maybe Monsturd. Yes, the movie about a turd monster, thus Mons-turd.

All of this has nothing to do with the Bible. So in the famous words of D-Pro...

Now let's do it!

Reading for March 4

Numbers 2:1-3:51
There is a lot of chronology stuff here. Basically, there are 12 tribes of Israel, all which were counted in the reading from last night, and they totaled 603,550. However, the tribe of Levi was not counted in that total because God commanded Moses not to include them in the count.

God set the Levites aside because they were the first born tribe of Israel, which I suppose means that Levi was Jacob's first son. God says here that every first born belongs to him, be it animal or human. God even mentions the Egyptian slaughter of the first born -

The Levites are mine, ¹³ for all the firstborn are mine. When I struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, I set apart for myself every firstborn in Israel, whether man or animal. They are to be mine. I am the LORD."

So instead of being ready for battle, the Levites were to tend and maintain God's temple, and that's pretty much a summary of these two chapters. All the other text was lineage stuff.

Mark 11:27-12:17


Jesus PWNS the Pharisees
OK, so I don't quite understand the way Jesus worked his way out of this trap, but apparently he totally served the Pharisees. Not served in a "here's your dinner" kind of way, but served like "You suckas just got served" and then Jesus gets to be in a Lil Kim video kind of way.

Anyway, at this point in the story, Jesus is perceived as a major threat to the Pharisees and other religious leaders of the day, so they were constantly trying to trip him up in his words. And this example is no different. The Pharisees ask Jesus if it's right to pay taxes to Ceasar. Jesus points out that Ceasar's face appears on the currency and says, "Give to Ceasar what is Ceasar's, and give to God what is God's."

BOOM! Ya'll suckas just got SERVED!

I think what this means is believing God does not exempt you from the laws of the state or place you find yourself in. Follow Jesus ultimately, but don't blatantly disregard laws because of it.

The last line of this section is what intrigues me so much about it. It says "And they were amazed at him." By saying "Give to Caesar..." Jesus won over even more followers.

Psalm 47:1-9
This is another psalm that wasn't written by David. Again a very different style, it doesn't really shift between "everyone's out to get me" and "God is awesome" dynamic that David had going - this is full throttle praise music. I mean check out this middle part

 ⁵ God has ascended amid shouts of joy,
       the LORD amid the sounding of trumpets.
 ⁶ Sing praises to God, sing praises;
       sing praises to our King, sing praises.
 ⁷ For God is the King of all the earth;
       sing to him a psalm ^[a] of praise.

Verse 6 tells us four times to sing praises. This text is much more easily evident of being structured like a song than any of the psalms I've read so far.. 


Proverbs 10:24-25
 ²⁴ What the wicked dreads will overtake him;
       what the righteous desire will be granted.
 ²⁵ When the storm has swept by, the wicked are gone,
       but the righteous stand firm forever.

So sleepy. Goodnight.