Here is the list of readings for this week: 2 chapters to read per day as the main reading plan, and extra chapters for anyone who wants to read the whole Bible in 2025. Reading 3 chapters a day on weekdays and 4 on weekends almost exactly covers the 1,189 chapters of the Bible, so the “extra” readings are about 9 chapters per week.
Follow along (or not) any way you choose!
Monday, August 25: Ecclesiastes 9-10 Tuesday, August 26: Ecclesiastes 11-12 Wednesday, August 27: 1 Corinthians 1-2 Thursday, August 28: 1 Corinthians 3-4 Friday, August 29: 1 Corinthians 5-6 Saturday, August 30: 1 Corinthians 7-8 Sunday, August 31: 1 Corinthians 9-10
Extra chapters for those reading the whole Bible this year: Jeremiah 30 – 38
Some parts of the Bible are harder to read than others. Some things seem repetitive or pointless, but we know that “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness”. (2 Timothy 3:16). For me, it can be very hard to concentrate while reading the many long genealogies, mostly of people I know nothing about. But maybe the point is that God does know all those people.
I’ve heard a story that may or may not be true, but I’m sure it’s at least possible, and an example of how God can use long genealogies in a profitable way. The story goes like this: a Christian who attended church regularly invited a non-Christian friend to church, and they accepted. They had been having some discussions and the friend was curious, so the Christian was hopeful. However, the pastor on that day decided to preach on one of the long genealogies in the Old Testament. The Christian sat there disappointed because they were hoping their friend would hear the gospel. In a complete surprise to the Christian, the friend said soon after the service that they had decided to follow Christ. When asked why, the friend said something like: “I never was close with my family, but the idea that God cared about each and every one of the people listed in those genealogies convinced me that God cares about me. He didn’t leave them out of His book. He cares about me and wants me to be part of His family.”
Like I said, I’m not sure that this is a true story, but the point that mattered to the friend in the story remains: God cared enough about every person in those genealogies to have them recorded in the Bible. He thought of every one of them.
God has another book full of names in addition to the Bible and its genealogies: His book of life[1] which has the name of every one of His people listed in it. If you are a Christian, your name is in that book and God loves you as His adopted family. Like the genealogies, this book tells us that every person is precious to God and He knows each one personally and intimately.
If you find books like 1 Chronicles (which begins with many genealogies) hard to read, maybe as you read each name, remember that God loves that person, and loves you as well. Nobody is irrelevant to God, and that’s a key part of the good news of the gospel!
Here is the list of readings for this week: 2 chapters to read per day as the main reading plan, and extra chapters for anyone who wants to read the whole Bible in 2025. Reading 3 chapters a day on weekdays and 4 on weekends almost exactly covers the 1,189 chapters of the Bible, so the “extra” readings are about 9 chapters per week.
Follow along (or not) any way you choose!
Monday, August 18: Deuteronomy 29-30 Tuesday, August 19: Deuteronomy 21-32 Wednesday, August 20: Deuteronomy 33-34 Thursday, August 21: Ecclesiastes 1-2 Friday, August 22: Ecclesiastes 3-4 Saturday, August 23: Ecclesiastes 5-6 Sunday, August 24: Ecclesiastes 7-8
Extra chapters for those reading the whole Bible this year: Jeremiah 21 – 29
I am on vacation this week, so I’ve collected some old posts about James 1:27 for the week. I’m reposting them as is, but they definitely need some editing!
Have you ever wondered what life was like for Adam and Eve during Genesis 3:7? This verse, which happens between the moment they fell to temptation and the moment they next meet God, says “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” Since they were able to figure out how to make clothes for the first time, we can guess that the time frame within Genesis 3:7 was more than a few minutes.
The song “Trees” by the band twenty øne piløts may be a contemplation of that time, and if it is, the song imagines that Adam and Eve had some time to think about it. Songwriter Tyler Joseph crafts lyrics that allow for religious and secular meanings, but also that sometimes also apply to multiple audiences. In the song’s lyrics, “You” is sometimes capitalized, and sometimes not, and therefore I think the song has two intended audiences, God and the band’s fans.
Reading between the lines a bit, I’ll explain below what I get from this song, in each audience perspective.
You = the Father The lyrics are relatively compact, with the repeated verse of:
I know where You stand, silent in the trees And that’s where I am, silent in the trees Why won’t You speak where I happen to be? Silent in the trees, standing cowardly
Our first ancestors had lived a perfect life in fellowship with God in the garden of Eden, but the fall into temptation changed that relationship, and the verse imagines how.
First, the sense of togetherness was gone. They were still in the garden, but the sense that God was also there was gone.
Second, although “the eyes of both were opened,” the voice of God guiding their activities had gone silent. They had chosen to determine their own way but had not considered the consequences. Wherever they were, He used to guide them, but now they were confused.
Third, instead of being comfortable in God’s presence, they were terribly afraid of Him.
And a repeated chorus of:
I can feel Your breath I can feel my death I want to know You, I want to see I want to say Hello, hello Hello, oh, hello
In the original Hebrew Genesis was written in, the words for “breath” and “spirit” are sometimes the same word. Therefore, the first two lines of this chorus mean that our ancestors could still feel God’s presence (His breath/spirit), but instead of it being a comfort, they now felt something they never felt before – their mortality. This is a foreshadowing of their being cast away from access to the tree of life.
Also, instead of the constant conversation with God they had known their whole lives, now they wanted to speak with God and know Him again, but He was not responding. In the context of the song, maybe it was then that “they knew that they were naked.” They knew they had done wrong, were exposed, and thought judgement was what they should expect. Adam and Eve went from perfectly hearing their Father’s and Master’s voice, to feeling like orphans and castaways from His family.
What came next? Genesis 3:8 says, “And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.”
You = The Fans The “you” in the song is also the band’s fans – and Tyler sings out to them, in the trees. Tyler says the song is also about a personal experience he had, which he doesn’t publicly explain, but He does publicly display tattoos of both the cross of Christ and of bands around his wrist, which likely represent rubber bands people wear to manage and prevent self-harm. These tattoos are like permanent memorials – or Ebenezers – from his life, and his ongoing recovery from mental illness. Many of the band’s fans are going through similar struggles and many feel left behind by the world.
Therefore, the “you” of the song is those who feel alone and silent in the trees, who feel ashamed before God, hiding themselves. They expect God to show up in judgement, as Adam and Eve expected, and hid their nakedness. Tyler could be calling out to them: God did not judge me, and neither will He judge you if you call out to Him. God will speak to them, “where they happen to be.” After all, Genesis 3:9 says: “But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” It was God who desired and initiated reconciliation with His people.
The outro of the song has Tyler screaming HELLO over and over again, before the song ends with 12 seconds of intentional silence before the track ends.
What will be the answer?
When you find someone alone and silent in the trees, remember James 1:27 – “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”
If you find yourself alone and silent in the trees, tell your Heavenly Father you want to say hello. He wants to know you and He wants to see you.
Coda For many years, “Trees” has been the last song played at every twenty øne piløts concert. Why is this? On the album “Vessel”, “Trees” was the next-to-last song and other parts of the album built to it. The first song on “Vessel” describes demons and spiritual warfare, the second song is called “Holding On To You,” and the third song, “Migraine,” has the repeated line:
And I will say that we should take a moment and hold it And keep it frozen and know that life has a hopeful undertone
It seems like from the beginning of the album, that moment to hold on to when you’re battling whatever demons you have was coming. So, in each concert, the fans know that the moment to hold on to is coming. The song is a moment you can remember when you’re down and know you’re not alone. The song is an Ebenezer in its own way, and a bold statement that the band is not going to ignore the problems of people left behind, the metaphorical widows and orphans of the world. Also, if they pay close attention, those fans can find the message of Christ in the lyrics. God doesn’t wait until our affliction is over and we make ourselves acceptable to come to us. He bridges the divide Himself.
Below is a video I took last year at a concert in Philadelphia. Apologies for the video quality, especially when they fired massive amounts of confetti into the air, which fans collect to remember the moment later. My phone camera just couldn’t keep up, but I offer it as a 5-minute moment you can take and hold and know that life has a hopeful undertone.
I am on vacation this week, so I’ve collected some old posts about James 1:27 for the week. I’m reposting them as is, but they definitely need some editing!
It’s common to think that the point of religion is to have the right laws and to follow them. However, James 1:27 says “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” This is a different definition of religion than we often think of. Today continues a series based on this verse, focusing on the insufficiency of laws as a way to salvation. Only by Christ’s fulfillment of the laws of God through His life, death and resurrection can we achieve salvation, or a restoration of a right relationship with God and with each other.
Which laws do I mean? In the Old Testament, there are three types, which include what many people think of as “religion”: moral laws of what is right and what is wrong, civil laws about what to do when those laws are broken, and ceremonial laws that explain requirements for restoring relationship with God. But also in the Bible are signs that all civil and ceremonial laws are provisional, or temporary and incomplete, even if they are designed by God. They exist because man cannot keep the moral laws, which is where this post begins…
The Poor Among You Consider these verses from the same chapter in Deuteronomy: “But there will be no poor among you; for the LORD will bless you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess— if only you will strictly obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all this commandment that I command you today.” – Deuteronomy 15:4-5 “For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’” – Deuteronomy 15:11
Just a few verses apart, it says that “there will be no poor among you”, but then that “there will never cease to be poor in the land.” It seems like a contradiction, but the two thoughts can coexist because the first one is conditional on full obedience of the law – “if only you will strictly obey…” God knows His moral law is perfect, but also that our obedience is imperfect, which will lead to poor in the land. So, He further commands that His people take care of the poor. This second command shows that He provides additional moral and civil laws to help those who are hurt by the failures of people to follow moral law. Every failure of His people throughout time was known to Him when He gave the law, but He gave it anyway because it was not intended as an ultimate solution.
Jesus also recognized that poverty would not be solved until we reach Paradise, after He comes a second time. In Mark 14:7, He said “For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me.” He said this because His disciples were criticizing Mary of Bethany, who decided to use ointment worth a years’ wages to anoint Jesus rather than to sell it and help the poor. The gospel of John singles out Judas as the accuser of Mary, but also says that Judas “said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it.”[1] Elsewhere, Jesus quoted Isaiah, who said “this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me.”[2] What we now call “virtue signaling” is not new. Throughout history, people have been better at promoting virtue in concept than in practice, and in others rather than in themselves. Therefore, even if the law we have is perfect, we will never achieve its ends.
Ruth and the Civil Law Second, the Old Testament story of Ruth shows that even a perfect moral law, perfectly followed, cannot solve every problem – specifically the problem of “orphans and widows in their affliction.” In addition, civil law can only limit the impact of some problems, not eliminate them. The civil laws for gleaning and levirate marriage are key to Ruth’s story, while providing examples of faithfulness in a broken society, are also reminders that society is broken in ways laws can’t fix.
Gleaning, provided for in Leviticus 19:9, 23:22 and Deuteronomy 24:19, is necessary because “there will never cease to be poor in the land.” God commanded His people to leave the edges of their fields unharvested, so the poor could eat what was there. Levirate marriage, defined in Deuteronomy 25:5-10, is necessary because there are widows and orphans in the world. It gives provision for widows by obligating relatives of the deceased husbands to care for, or even marry, the widow to preserve the family line and inheritance. However, these laws didn’t prevent Naomi and Ruth from becoming poor, or from losing their husbands.
One aspect of Ruth’s story is that people of faith can rely on God’s provision, both through His civil law and through others who follow it, to make a tangible difference in a world where many ignore God’s law. Good civil law can improve the conditions of the poor, the orphan, and the widow, if people also follow the eternal moral law of love.
Civil law is a provision for a fallen world, not a pathway to a perfect world.
Another aspect of the story of Ruth is how it keeps us “unstained from the world.” The world wants us to believe that with enough time, effort, resources, cultural revival, laws, coercion, or whatever, that we can produce a widow, orphan, and poverty-free utopia. But whatever its source, civil law is a provision for a fallen world, not a pathway to a perfect world. There will always be widows and orphans as long as there is death, and no law can overcome death.
Jesus, Our Religion For me, the power of thinking about James 1:27 this way is not that I come away thinking, “now I know what to do! Let’s go!” but that I come away knowing there is no way any of us could possibly measure up to the standard God requires. Every time we see someone left behind it is a reminder of our collective failure, evidence that we really don’t have the answer even to our own individual problems, much less a path to perfection for the world.
Fortunately for us, the book of Ruth ends with hope, in the form of a genealogy showing her as an ancestor of King David, and therefore an ancestor of Jesus Himself.[3] Through His life, death, and resurrection, He overcomes both death and the cause of death – our inability to generate religion that is acceptable to God the Father on our own. Only Jesus, in a perfectly lived life, seeking out and loving “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” fulfilled the requirements of “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father.” He offered His perfect record to the Father in our place, so we could be accepted based upon His religion, not ours. He fulfilled the moral, civil, and ceremonial laws in our place, providing a way to a world with no poor, no orphans, and no widows.
For many in the world, civil law is their false gospel, their hope of salvation. But the Bible lets us know that in this world, we will always have poverty. There will always be widows and orphans here. However, because we cannot follow moral law perfectly, we need temporary civil law as a provision for a fallen world. To keep society from falling apart until Christ returns and molds us into new creations that follow the moral law of love naturally, with no need for civil or ceremonial law.
Until that day, Christ rejects both the tyranny of, and freedom from, law as the answer for His people. Any civil law – even that of the Old Testament – can only mitigate the damage of sin, but in many cases, the wrong laws can make the damage worse. However, absence of, or rejection of, all law is not the answer because the gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news of a Kingdom. Jesus said in John 8:31-32: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” This freedom is from the failed kingdoms of this world, but not license to reject His righteousness as our personal standard of behavior.
Jesus said “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”[4] His righteousness brings us into a Kingdom like no other, where to “Visit orphans and widows in their affliction” is the freely offered sacrifice acceptable to our Lord, and an example of what James refers to later in his letter: “But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”[5]
[1] John 12:6 [2] Isaiah 29:13, Matthew 15:8, Mark 7:6 [3] Ruth 4:17-22 [4] John 14:6 [5] James 2:18
Driving Toward the Morning Sun 