Tuesday, April 27

Hi now. How are you, friends? I had a nice little 3 mile walk with my babe this evening. But we walked to Dairy Queen and I got a Oreo/Cookie Dough Blizzard, so it probably canceled out.


OK - so I fell asleep last night when I was doing this. Let's catch up. I read all the content today so all I need to do now is write about it.

Reading for April 27
Judges 7:1-8:17
This section is exceptionally cool. The Israelites are getting ready to take back the land that was claimed by the Midianites. God doesn't want them to attack the Midianites using the full army because he doesn't want the Israelites to think it was by their own power that they won. He wanted it to be clear that he was their God and he alone was responsible for their victory over the Midianites. So God thins their numbers down to a certain amount - actually that certain amount is 300.

Shortly after the 300 were all selected they started doing situps and pushups like crazy. Then they all got sweet battle gear and put oil all over their bodies. Then God was all like "SPARTANS!" Then Gerard Butler was the new Judge of Israel and Frank Miller made a comic about him.

Wait...is that how it happened?

Anyway, the real story is the 300 men went to the Midianites camp late at night, made a lot of noise to scare the crap out of the Midianites and the Midianites fled. Yay Jews.

As I was reading this section today, I started thinking about "bad guys". Clearly in the Bible the Israelites are set up to be the "good guys" of the story, while it seems like every other nation is the bad guy. But then I thought, "well if the Midianites are the bad guy, I'm not getting that same sense of justice out of their defeat that I get like when Biff drives into the manure truck in Back to the Future." Right? I'm always so pumped when stupid Biff is covered in manure. "TAKE THAT BIFF!" I always yell. So why don't I feel that same thing when God leads Israel to a victory over a nation - here's what I realized:



The main villain of the Bible is not the other nations. The main villain of the Bible isn't even Satan. The main villain of the Bible is sin.


Put sin in an 80s movie and sin is that stupid sweater wearing jerk who steals the nice guy's girlfriend and tries to take her away in his boat but at the end the girl realizes he's a butthole and comes back to the nice guy. Then sin is covered in manure and says, "Manure! I hate manure!"

Kidding aside - that feeling of justice that's missing when I'm  reading about victories over various nations, is fully present when I read about Jesus' conquering sin once and for all through his sacrifice. "TAKE THAT SIN!" I yell.

Luke 23:13-43
This account of Jesus' crucifixion really goes into detail about Pilate's attempt to let Jesus go. He pleads with the crowd three times saying that he's found no crime to charge Jesus with, nor has Herod. Eventually he gives into the crowd's cries for Jesus' death, but washes his hands of the decision as we read about in other gospels.

What's interesting is that Pilate seems like the honorable, good guy in this story, while the religious leaders and the rest of the crowd are often demonized. But in actuality Pilate was working against God's plan here. Pilate was actually standing in the way of what God had planned to carry out for a long time, while the awful religious leaders who demanded blood were actually aiding Jesus in carrying out his ultimate goal.

There's a line somewhere in the Bible that says "What you intended for evil, God used for good." Just looked it up - it's in Genesis. Boom.

Psalm 97:1-98:9
Love this:

⁸ Let the rivers clap their hands,
      Let the mountains sing together for joy

Proverbs 14:7-8
 ⁷ Stay away from a foolish man,
       for you will not find knowledge on his lips.
 ⁸ The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways,
       but the folly of fools is deception.

Word up.