1-3 Harass these hecklers, God, punch these bullies in the nose.
Grab a weapon, anything at hand;
stand up for me!
Get ready to throw the spear, aim the javelin,
at the people who are out to get me.
Reassure me; let me hear you say,
"I'll save you."
"This is a prayer that God, by the exercise of his secret and intrinsic power, would show that he alone is able to encounter the whole strength and forces of the ungodly.
David desires to have it thoroughly fixed in his mind, and to be fully persuaded that God is the author of his salvation."
(Commentary from Heart Aflame: Daily Readings from Calvin on the Psalms)
"A Call to Self-Examination"
Galatians 6:3-4
3 For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4 But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor.
"Faulty self-evaluation is an obstacle to walking in the Spirit." It causes us to believe that we are betther than others. It makes us think that we are not like those sinners.
But it can also cause us to believe we are inferior to others, making us unable to help someone else with their burden.
We need to know where our strengths and weaknesses are, so we can be good servants. I don't need to be trying to help someone fix their car. But I might be able to help by cooking a meal for someone who is disabled or in need. Each of us has ways that we can serve. But we need to know that we are neither better than nor worse than anyone else.
New book!! By Jerry Bridges, author of The Pursuit of Holiness, has written a new devotional book. The subtitle is, "Transformational Thoughts for Your Spiritual Journey." It works on a weekly schedule, so I can start on any Monday. So here we go.
The page before the first reading says this: "We can begin each day with the deeply encouraging realization, I'm accepted by God, not on the basis of my personal performance, but on the basis of the infinitely perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ." That's a great start!
Week 1/Monday
"Incredible Inheritance" Ephesians 3:8
The story is told of a plantation owner who left a $50,000 inheritance to a former slave. The slave was notified, yet weeks went by without him making any claim on his inheritance. When the banker called him about it, the slave said, "So, do you think I can have fifty cents to buy a sack of cornmeal?"
That's a good illustration of our understanding of the "unsearchable riches of Christ." We have been given this glorious inheritance, yet most of us are only hoping we can squeeze "fifty cents' worth" out of it. I'm certainly guilty of this lack of understanding. Of course, the gospel is not referring to monetary riches, nevertheless, we have this inheritance in Christ that far surpasses our debt to God. There's no way we could ever repay what we owe to God, but Jesus went even further than that. Not only are we no longer God's enemies or objects of his wrath, we are considered as his sons and daughters, "heirs with Christ to all His unsearchable riches." What great news! THIS is the gospel!
In Genesis 27, Jacob and Rebekah pull off the king of deceptions. A con job supreme!! Remember, Jacob has already conned the birthright out of Esau for a bowl of stew. In this chapter, he steals their father's blessing, as well. It wasn't his idea, though, it was his mother's. He agreed to it and helped carry it out. Poor Isaac was so blind that he could tell the difference (personally, I think he must have been a bit daft in the head, as well, because he acknowledges that the voice sounded like Jacob, yet since he felt and smelled like Esau, he fell for the trick). This blessing was very important to their culture. We really don't have anything like it in our day. We wouldn't really see the big deal about this, thinking that he could just bless the other one, too, but that's not the way it worked. Apparently, there was only one blessing. It should have been Esau's, but Jacob stole it.
Here's the difficult thing in this passage. This was all part of God's plan. It was God's plan that Jacob be in front of Esau. Going back to chapter 25, God said, "the older shall serve the younger." Later, in Romans 9 (that great "predestination" chapter!), it says, "though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad--in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of his call--she was told, 'The older will serve the younger.' As it is written, 'Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.'" (Romans 9:11-13, referenced passages, Genesis 25:23 and Malachi 1:2-3)
So, even though Jacob was a lying, conniving, thieving so-and-so...he was God's man. Yet another lesson on who God can use.
Needless to say, Esau began plotting to kill his brother, so Rebekah conspired to send Jacob away, under the guise of keeping him from marrying a Hittite woman like Esau did.
Remember Laban, from the Isaac story? In chapter 28, he re-enters the story. He was Rebekah's brother. She sends Jacob off to his place. On the way, he stops for the night and has a dream, from which we get the term, "Jacob's ladder." He sees this ladder, reaching to heaven, with angels going up and down on it. God stood above the ladder and made the same promise to Jacob that he had made to Abraham and Isaac. He's keeping the plan going down the lineage.
Esau, in the meantime, goes to Ishmael and marries one of his daughters, just to make his parents mad! Hehehe...darn those rebellious teenagers!
So we come to chapter 29. Jacob marries Laban's daughters. I love Rich Mullins's song about this, called "The World As Best As I Remember It.' Jacob saw Rachel first and fell head over heels for her. So much so that he worked for Laban for seven years just for the right to marry her. Wow. Can you imagine that? So...time comes for the marriage to be consummated. Jacob's in his tent, all excited, waiting for his new bride. Only Laban (has Jacob met his match here??) pulls a switch on him and brings the older daughter, Leah, to the tent.
Folks, it must have been really, really dark there, because I cannot for the life of me understand how Jacob could have been so stupid to NOT KNOW THAT HE HAD THE WRONG GIRL!!! I mean, c'mon!! Sigh...anyway, he didn't realize until morning that he had spent the whole night with Leah. When he complained to Laban, Laban gave him the excuse that he couldn't marry off the younger daughter first. But, he agreed to give him Rachel, too, for another seven years.
What a convoluted circumstance! Some people believe that God was punishing Jacob for his deceptions with Isaac and Esau. I don't agree with this. First of all, because God didn't say anything to Jacob about punishment. When he met him at Bethel (Oh, yeah...Jacob named the place where he had that dream with the ladder, Bethel, which means "house of God") he made promises of blessings, not threats of punishments. I also disagree because all of this was part of God's plan, as well. We don't understand the way he works. But we accept it by faith.
So at the end of chapter 29, the 12 tribes of Israel start being born. Leah had Simeon, Levi and Judah in chapter 29.
What on earth do we learn from all this?? Wow. It's tough, because of all of the deception that's going on. And it's not over yet. Over the next few chapters, a battle of wits ensues between Jacob and Laban, the likes of which has never been seen since, I think. It's actually quite entertaining.
To me, the major lesson here is, once again, that God doesn't pick "perfect people" for his plan. Well, of course he doesn't, because there aren't any! But Jacob is far from perfect. He's a con artist. But he still figures into God's plan. And he was part of God's plan before he was ever born. So...if you are part of God's covenant community, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, take heart that, no matter how rotten you may think you are sometimes (I speak from personal experience, here), God has chosen you for something. Not because, as Romans says, of anything good or bad that you might have done, but because of God's good pleasure.
I also praise you for the inheritance that is mine in Jesus Christ. I pray that you help me obtain a state of mind that enables me to make claim on that inheritance. Not that I might become rich, but that I might become spiritually rich.
And I pray that you might help me realize that I am neither better than nor worse than anyone else. Let me base my opinion of myself on what you say about me in Scripture.
So, if you are afflicted, oppressed or fatherless, take heart. God will come to your rescue. And he may use someone else just like you to do it. Which is way we go all that way back to the Tabletalk reading for today. We must realize how God can use us to help lift the burdens of those around us.
Grace and peace, friends.