Mercy Is Coming (Micah 7:8-20)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
“Justice Tempered with Mercy,” an oil painting by Emil Bisttram, 1936

Do not rejoice over me, my enemy,
        because when I fall, I will rise;
            if I sit in darkness, the Lord is my light.
I must bear the raging of the Lord,
    for I have sinned against him,
        until he decides my case and provides justice for me.
    He will bring me out into the light;
        I will see by means of his righteousness.
    Then my enemy will see;
        shame will cover her who said to me:
            “Where is the Lord your God?”
    My eyes will see her ruin;
        now she will become something to be trampled,
            like mud in the streets.

A day for the building of your walls!
        On that day, the boundary will be distant.
        On that day, they will come to you from Assyria and the cities of Egypt,
            from Egypt to the River,
            from sea to sea,
            and from mountain to mountain.
And the earth will become desolate because of her inhabitants,
        because of the fruit of their actions.

Shepherd your people with your staff,
        the sheep of your inheritance,
        those dwelling alone in a forest in the midst of Carmel.
    Let them graze in Bashan and Gilead, as a long time ago.

As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt,
        I will show Israel wonderful things.

Nations will see and be ashamed of all their strength;
        they will cover their mouths;
        their ears will be deaf.

They will lick dust like the snake,
        like things that crawl on the ground.
They will come trembling from their strongholds to the Lord our God;
        they will dread and fear you!
Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity,
        overlooking the sin of the few remaining for his inheritance?
    He doesn’t hold on to his anger forever;
        he delights in faithful love.
He will once again have compassion on us;
        he will tread down our iniquities.
You will hurl all our sins into the depths of the sea.
You will provide faithfulness to Jacob, faithful love to Abraham,
        as you swore to our ancestors a long time ago. (Common English Bible)

The prophecy of Micah was directed to the people because of the nation’s messed up social and political relations. Unrighteousness had thoroughly drenched the land. In this situation, the nation groaned; Micah responded to them and interceded for the people; God agreed with it all; and Micah concluded with a theological reminder of who God is and what God is like.

The nation of Israel was in a bad way during the eighth century B.C.E. because of their injustice toward one another. The leaders only thought of themselves, and not the people as a whole. Unfaithfulness ran so deep that not even one’s closest friends or relatives could be trusted.

To be a faithful and righteous person during that time required a resolve to wait for God’s deliverance – because there was no way any one person or group of people could fix any of it.

And this is the nature of hope – it can only be understood and realized by knowing, sensing, and feeling hopelessness in all of its despair. We do not hope for something we already possess.

The prophet Micah recognized the situation of the nation for what it was, as well as the consequences to having injustice throughout the land. Yet, he also looked forward to a time when God’s wrath will move from God’s people to the people’s enemies.

It may seem as if the Lord is either slow, not paying attention, or doesn’t care; but God’s timing is not the same as ours. Divine deliverance will come when divine deliverance will come.

The circumstances of Israel’s national sins were ripe not only for God’s judgment, but also for Micah’s prayers on behalf of the people. He called on the Lord to shepherd Israel, while at the same time, to put Israel’s enemies in their place.

And God, out of the storehouse of divine mercy, granted an assurance of pardon.

But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from everything we’ve done wrong. (1 John 1:9, CEB)

Micah affirmed the grace and mercy of God. He had the confident expectation that the Lord would cast all of Israel’s sins into the depths of the sea. Guilt, shame, and despair will not have the last word; the final word belongs to mercy.

Into a world full of cynicism and sarcasm, hopelessness and despair, it is vitally important that we have faithful and godly individuals who have a settled hope. This is what it means to be a remnant, a small minority of people who hold onto that which is just, right, and good.

We are to quietly go about our business of bringing justice, mercy, and love to this world with a quiet and confident expectation that God’s grace will overcome and overwhelm everything in its path.

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.

The Lord Was With Him (1 Chronicles 11:1-9)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

All Israel came together to David at Hebron and said, “We are your own flesh and blood. In the past, even while Saul was king, you were the one who led Israel on their military campaigns. And the Lord your God said to you, ‘You will shepherd my people Israel, and you will become their ruler.’”

When all the elders of Israel had come to King David at Hebron, he made a covenant with them at Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel, as the Lord had promised through Samuel.

David and all the Israelites marched to Jerusalem (that is, Jebus). The Jebusites who lived there said to David, “You will not get in here.” Nevertheless, David captured the fortress of Zion—which is the City of David.

David had said, “Whoever leads the attack on the Jebusites will become commander in chief.” Joab son of Zeruiah went up first, and so he received the command.

David then took up residence in the fortress, and so it was called the City of David. He built up the city around it, from the terraces to the surrounding wall, while Joab restored the rest of the city. And David became more and more powerful because the Lord Almighty was with him. (New International Version)

Originally, in the Hebrew Bible, 1 and 2 Chronicles were one book, not two; and the Chronicles are the final book of Hebrew Scripture. The Greek translation of the Hebrews Bible – the Septuagint – was accomplished around the turn of the second century B.C.E. and made Chronicles two books because of its length.

Compilers of Christian Scripture moved the location of Chronicles from the end of the Old Testament and put it alongside the other historical books of 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings – mostly because Chronicles is generally a restatement of those books for a different generation of Jews living in the post-exilic period along with Ezra and Nehemiah.

Chronicles largely retells the story of the ancient Israelites, and then summarizes their history before focusing primarily on the reigns of King David and King Solomon. Yet, it is more than a retelling.

Chronicles is a restatement that emphasizes the importance of faithfulness to God and highlights the necessity of taking God’s Law seriously.

Religious reforms play an important part of Chronicles. Removing idols, obeying God’s Torah and God’s prophets, and honoring the proper worship of God are central to ensuring that a Babylonian exile never happens again – that the people will see the consequences of infidelity to the Lord, and live in the right and just ways handed down to them.

King David is pictured as a politically unifying figure of all Israel and Judah because he sought to conscientiously and faithfully live according to God’s commands. Later generations of kings did not do so, which led to the people losing their land and their temple.

David had proved himself as the right person for the job of leading the people. After becoming king, he used his position and authority to do God’s will. And it was a long time in coming; David patiently waited for the Lord’s timing and purpose to be accomplished.

Although anointed by the prophet Samuel as king while Saul was still in his reign, it took years for David to be enthroned as the actual king. David had several opportunities to make himself king by killing Saul (who was trying to kill David) but he allowed God to enthrone him in God’s own good time.

Rarely does anything the Lord promise come to fruition immediately. We must wait patiently for deliverance from painful trials of faith and the return of Christ. God makes promises. Then we persevere until those promises are fulfilled.

All of David’s waiting finally dissipated into kingly action. Before there were kings, judges ruled in Israel. And before that, Joshua led the people into the Promised Land. They had a mandate to expel the Canaanites. Those instructions from God only partially happened. There were still remnants and pockets of resistance. The Jebusites, ensconced in the city of Jebus (Jerusalem) were the most stubborn.

Part of the reason there were Canaanites still living in the land was the former King Saul’s failure to follow through on God’s plan. One of the first acts of King David was to finish and fulfill the complete takeover of the land.

David was willing to attempt something nobody else could do, and that no one believed could be done. If we were a fly on the wall during discussions about this, I can imagine a coterie of people saying to the king, “We tried that before. It won’t work. You cannot get rid of the Jebusites. This is a fool’s errand.”

Pessimism and passivity certainly do not dislodge anything, and the people had fallen into a cynicism that believed they needed to put up with the current situation.

Whenever a group of people fall into passive defeatism, criticism is rife because folks are not working together toward shared goals and solutions. Instead of addressing problems, there is merely complaining about whatever they don’t like.

On the other side of it, the Jebusites were smug in their self-confidence, showing their bravado through being blowhards. However, they had not yet faced David. If they thought another king like Saul was coming along, they were in for a big wake up call.

The Lord almighty was with David. And that is what made all the difference.

King David did not accept the status quo. He worked toward accomplishing the Lord’s will, as he understood it. And his faith always led to effective action.

Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to you, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly yours, utterly dedicated unto you; and then use us, we pray you, as you will, and always to your glory and the welfare of your people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Divine/Human Dialogue (Psalm 95)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
Psalm 95: “If today you hear His voice, harden not your heart.” By Gina Lazarchik

Come, let us sing to the Lord!
    Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come to him with thanksgiving.
    Let us sing psalms of praise to him.
For the Lord is a great God,
    a great King above all gods.
He holds in his hands the depths of the earth
    and the mightiest mountains.
The sea belongs to him, for he made it.
    His hands formed the dry land, too.

Come, let us worship and bow down.
    Let us kneel before the Lord our maker,
    for he is our God.
We are the people he watches over,
    the flock under his care.

If only you would listen to his voice today!
The Lord says, “Don’t harden your hearts as Israel did at Meribah,
    as they did at Massah in the wilderness.
For there your ancestors tested and tried my patience,
    even though they saw everything I did.
For forty years I was angry with them, and I said,
‘They are a people whose hearts turn away from me.
    They refuse to do what I tell them.’
So in my anger I took an oath:
    ‘They will never enter my place of rest.’” (New Living Translation)

Praise and thanksgiving.

Complaining and grumbling.

Those two phrases are antithetical to each other.

And yet, out of the same mouth can come both worship and whining.

Maybe the psalmist was trying to teach us a thing or two by inviting us to sing and bow to the Lord, as well as hear God’s voice.

Worship and listening are meant to go hand in hand. Revelation and response are to be the spiritual rhythm of the believer. True worship is a divine conversation between us and God. The Lord speaks. We listen and answer. Back and forth we go together. God and God’s people are to be involved in a divine/human dialogue.

When the worship rhythm is off, then our response will be off.

And that is what happened to the ancient Israelites. They were miraculously delivered from their cruel bondage in Egypt. You can imagine the kind of praise and worship service the people had in the desert! After four-hundred years of slavery, freedom!

Yet, before you know it, the thanksgiving turned sour; there began some rumblings of grumbling.

At the first encounter of adversity, when there was no water to drink, it was as if the people had some sort of collective dementia take them over. Suddenly, hearts started hardening. Soon, everything coming out of the mouth was a constant stream of complaints, as if the entire world revolved around the complainers.

One minute, hands are raised in praise; the next minute, those same hands clench into fists shaking at God.

The people forgot that life is an ongoing dialogue with God – and not a one and done conversation of revelation and response.

God acted by delivering the people. The people responded with praise and thanksgiving. And they didn’t want it to stop. Yet, all of life is a rhythm. What goes up, comes down. Good times eventually fade into tough times. The real muster of any person or group is the response when the hardship comes.

The Lord purposely brought the Israelites out into the desert to face a difficult circumstance. God was teaching them to trust. The Lord wanted a response of faith and prayer to the adverse situation.

But the people weren’t looking for a dialogue. They were looking for water. And when they didn’t have it, their hearts hardened through murmuring, bellyaching, and dissatisfaction. Then, all the people could see was their own stuff – blinding them to others, especially God.

However, God was still in the conversation. The generation who saw the incredible deliverance from bondage would die in the desert, never setting eyes on the Promised Land. And it all began because of grumbling.

We need to take complaining seriously. Why? Because it rots the soul, like Mr. Grinch who incessantly complained every year about Christmas. Grumbling makes one into a Grinch-like creature, like the song says:

You’re as cuddly as a cactus
You’re as charming as an eel…

You got termites in your smile
You have all the tender sweetness
Of a seasick crocodile…

Your heart’s an empty hole
You got garlic in your soul.

It was only when the Grinch forsook his isolation of complaining and began connecting in conversation with the folks in Whoville, that he had his rhythm restored.

When the divine/human rhythm is off kilter, what will it take to get it back?

The author of the New Testament letter to the Hebrews helps us here. After quoting our psalm lesson for today, the writer responded to the biblical revelation by saying:

Be careful, brothers and sisters, that none of you ever develop a wicked, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. Encourage each other every day while you have the opportunity. If you do this, none of you will be deceived by sin and become stubborn. 

After all, we will remain Christ’s partners only if we continue to hold on to our original confidence until the end. Scripture says, “If you hear God speak today, don’t be stubborn. Don’t be stubborn like those who rebelled.” (Hebrews 3:12-15, God’s Word Translation)

Revelation and response is the rhythmic dynamism of the Christian community.

Lone Ranger Christians are an oxymoron, as well as moronic. We are hard-wired by God for community. All of us need to encourage one another – every day. Without the communal connections of encouraging conversations, it will be difficult to sustain a divine dialogue of God speaking, with people listening and responding in obedient faith.

Celebration is wonderful. We need times and experiences of celebrating deliverance from bondage. Eventually, when Christ returns, there will be unending worship in the form of jubilation.

That time is not yet here. This side of heaven, we must learn to engage God in ways which address our hardships and difficulties. Otherwise, our hearts will become stubborn and hard.

Let your heart become open enough to receive encouragement. And let it also be brave enough to encourage others.

Lord Jesus Christ, by your patience in suffering you caused earthly pain to be holy. And you gave us the example of obedience to your Father’s will. Be near me in my time of weakness and pain. Sustain me by your grace so that my strength and courage may not fail. Heal me according to you will. Help me always believe that what happens to me here is of little account if you hold me in eternal life, my Lord and my God. Amen.

The Good Shepherd (John 10:11-18)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
Jesus the Good Shepherd, by Solomon Raj (1921-2019)

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. When the hired hand sees the wolf coming, he leaves the sheep and runs away. That’s because he isn’t the shepherd; the sheep aren’t really his. So the wolf attacks the sheep and scatters them. He’s only a hired hand and the sheep don’t matter to him.

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own sheep and they know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. I give up my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that don’t belong to this sheep pen. I must lead them too. They will listen to my voice and there will be one flock, with one shepherd.

“This is why the Father loves me: I give up my life so that I can take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I give it up because I want to. I have the right to give it up, and I have the right to take it up again. I received this commandment from my Father.” (Common English Bible)

This is a beautiful passage of Scripture, as we look at it now, two-thousand years removed from its original context. Yet, at the time, Jesus spoke these words after a smack down conflict with the religious authorities, complete with plans to stone him.

In healing a man born blind, Jesus not only restored his physical sight, but he also gave him clear spiritual vision. In contrast, Christ’s opponents remained in their spiritual darkness, unable to see the light of life. And in their spiritual blindness, they couldn’t lead anybody anywhere without falling into a pit and making things worse.

Jesus is the good shepherd, the caring leader who is aware, and has the sheep’s best interests in mind, and at heart. The religious authorities proved to be bad shepherds who only wanted to fleece the sheep of their wool; such persons steal, harm, and kill. Jesus, however, offers abundant life.

The good shepherd provides altruistic care at a great cost. Whereas the hired hand runs away when the wolves come and threaten the flock, Jesus as the Good Shepherd puts his life on the line to protect the sheep. Three times we are told that Christ lays his life down for the benefit of others.

Bad shepherds have no such concern. And, unfortunately, such leaders have been around ever since the fall of humanity into sin. They cut and run when things get risky and dangerous.

This is what the Sovereign Lord says: “Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. 

So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them.” (Ezekiel 34:2-6, NIV)

Jesus, in his incarnation, embodies the love and concern of God for the people of this world. Christ takes the initiative to do what needs to be done for the benefit of the at-risk sheep.

Jesus the Good Shepherd, by Francisco Borboa

For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: “I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and in all the settlements in the land. I will tend them in a good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land.

There they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign Lord. I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.” (Ezekiel 34:11-16, NIV)

Since Jesus is the Good Shepherd, he has the unique ability and authority to decide who is in the sheep fold, and who is out. Nobody else gets to make those sorts of decisions. This way, ultimate issues of eternal life and abundant life are handled with perfect justice and righteousness.

It’s okay that this is all a mystery to us. We sheep need only to keep the Shepherd in our line of sight, and let him do his job of caring for us – without whining or complaining. After all, we could easily have a bad shepherd herding us around like a bunch of stupid cows, and treating us with indifference, even meanness.

The Holy Trinity of God – Father, Son, and Spirit – work as One. The Father loves the Son and the Spirit, and also loves those whom the Son and Spirit have touched. The Son loves the Father and the Spirit, and obeys all things from the Father, while listening to the Spirit. And the Spirit loves the Father and the Son, knowing them intimately and always operating in love for the benefit of the sheep’s deliverance from wolves.

In particular, the Son, Jesus, lays down his own life, but takes it up again. He does so because of love. The perfect unity and love of the blessed Holy Trinity spills out in Christ’s care for us.

The laying down and taking up of life on the part of the Good Shepherd is not only an expression of great love and faithfulness toward us sheep, but it is also a deep abiding love and commitment toward the Father from whom all blessings flow.

To put it another way, this motley flock of sheep are purposely drawn into the unity, harmony, and love between the Father and the Son. And when we glimpse and experience such overwhelming love, we choose to remain connected to this incredible loving dance.

Our world is much too characterized by selfish concerns and shortsighted actions. In the loving embrace of the Good Shepherd, we have an opportunity to experience peace and rest, grace and abundance, light and life. To know such love is to never turn back to old self-centered ways of living.

Shepherd of all, by laying down your life for the flock, you reveal your love for all. Lead us from the place of death to the place of abundant life, so that guided by your care for us, we may rightly offer our lives in love for you and our neighbors. Amen.