Reading from Saturday, July 17

Hey. I am once again harboring a cold, or at least the start of one. I almost bailed on doing this thing tonight, but I'm already three days behind so I didn't want to fall off the train. However, I really don't feel well, so please forgive me if this one is a shorter one...

Also, a quick plug. Yesterday, my pastor spoke about a very dark message from Jesus. It is one of the hardest sections of text in the Bible and it is from Matthew. He speaks about it in as honest a way you could hope to hear it, and it is riveting and frightening and moving and beautiful all at the same time. I sincerely urge you to listen to it. Crap - I wrote all that and then found out that the mp3 isn't available yet. Well, remember what I said about this later in the week when it goes up.

Word. The Good Word in fact.

Reading for July 17
1 Chronicles 24:1-26:11
90% of this reading is just lists of names, and I don't feel good, so I don't feel like reading them. There is one thing that stuck out as pretty interesting to me though, and that was the appointment of the musicians that played in the Temple. After listing the names of these musicians, the text says this:

⁶ All these men were under the supervision of their fathers for the music of the temple of the LORD, with cymbals, lyres and harps, for the ministry at the house of God.

It's just interesting because I have served that very same role many times in my life, and I've always thought of praise and worship music as a fairly modern thing. I mean I know there were songs in the Bible, but I always thought of them as like impromptu bursts of joy that came out of hearing great news from God. To see that there were hired, skilled musicians working specifically to lead praise at the Temple is really cool. New Ancients guys - does this strike a fancy in your pantsys? 

I just noticed something else too. These musicians cast lots to determine what their duties would be, or what instrument they would play, I suppose. Casting lots was something the Jews did to determine God's will. It was basically like rolling a set of dice, or a 20-sided die. Actually, it was more like Dungeons and Dragons. God is always dungeon master and he's vicious. Anyway, it goes down the list of people who participated in this casting of the lots and it says each person got 12 as their number. I might be wrong, but it seems to me like that's a pretty unique circumstance. I imagine it would be like getting 20 people to roll 2 dice and every one of them rolls double sixes.

Now, I have no idea what it means that they all ended up rolling a 12, other than it probably forces them all to play 12-string guitar, but I think we all know the importance of the number 12 in and of itself. 12 Tribes of Israel, 12 disciples, and so on. This site explains the number 12 pretty thoroughly, but here is the definition if you don't want to click:

Twelve is a perfect number, signifying perfection of government, or of governmental perfection. It is found as a multiple in all that has to do with rule. The sun which "rules" the day, and the moon and stars which "govern" the night, do so by their passage through the twelve signs of the Zodiac which completes the great circle of the heavens of 360 (12 x 30) degrees or divisions, and thus govern the year.

Twelve is the product of 3 (the perfectly Divine and heavenly number) and 4 (the earthly, the number of what is material and organic).

While seven is composed of 3 added to 4, twelve is 3 multiplied by 4, and hence denotes that which can scarcely be explained in words, but which the spiritual perception can at once appreciate, viz., organization, the products denoting production and multiplication and increase of all that is contained in the two numbers separately. The 4 is generally prominently seen in the twelve.

It doesn't answer my question as to why all the musicians cast 12, but it sure is interesting, init?

Romans 4:1-12
This is one of my favorite topics of the Bible - the relationship between faith and works (or deeds). Paul here is trying to promote the idea that you cannot "earn" credit or favor from God by doing good works. The book of James later challenges us to let good works flow from our faith, and that if faith does not produce good works then that faith is dead. But Paul first builds the foundation of this idea by presenting his ideas on the importance of faith over works:

¹What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, discovered in this matter? ²If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about—but not before God. ³What does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness."

I often quote the line from God on Trial where the Rabbi suggests that Abraham should have told God 'no' when God asked him to sacrifice his son. And the writers of that movie certainly had a good point there, but what an example Abraham created. I think almost every biblical author references Abraham's faithfulness. Looking at other examples of this, we just saw a conversation between King David and God where God was kind of disgusted with all the people David had killed. Remember that God had ordered him to do that, and he wasn't being punished for it, but there was no reward for protecting Israel from hundreds of thousands of people either. David had God's favor because of his faith, not his kill count. Or for you COD nerds, his K/D Ratio.

Then Paul gets into the whole bit about circumcision. Apparently there was a group of people who believed that those who were uncircumcised were unworthy of God's love - circumcision being the physical symbol of being set apart for God - I just realized how weird that is...

"No no - I'm Jewish, check it out!!"
"OK - this date is over."

Anyway, my first reaction was to ignore that section because it really isn't relevant any more - no one judges people based on whether or not a piece of skin on their wiener has been removed. But think about it - are there modern examples of physical characteristics that Christians use to shun people outside the faith? Just a few off the top of my head:

Smokers
Drug addicts
The poor (sadly sometimes this is true in some churches)
People with unsavory career choices
People with tattoos or piercings
Gays
People of a different race or gender

Anything at all could be something to use to exclude people from the church, or from the faith. I have done my best to look past all of these things in people and just love everyone the same. I have definitely failed in this area over and over again, so I need to challenge myself (and feel free to do this too) to look at people as Jesus looked at people. Loving and unassuming.

Psalm 13:1-6
David, I totally feel ya, buddy:

 ¹ How long, O LORD ? Will you forget me forever?
       How long will you hide your face from me?

 ² How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
       and every day have sorrow in my heart?
       How long will my enemy triumph over me?
 ³ Look on me and answer, O LORD my God.
       Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;

Verses 1 and 2 are the exact things I'm going through with some of the stuff I've encountered in the Bible. David is quickly climbing the ranks as my favorite Biblical figure.  He's honest about his feelings towards God. He gets angry at things I get angry at. He is an emotional, sensitive, sometimes cowardly person. I am all of these things. Me and David would have been homies if I was alive back then.

Proverbs 19:15-16
 ¹⁵ Laziness brings on deep sleep,
       and the shiftless man goes hungry.
 ¹⁶ He who obeys instructions guards his life,
       but he who is contemptuous of his ways will die.

And I've written probably double the amount I would write on a normal, non-sick night. Such is life.