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.
This week we’ll finish John (and Isaiah), and also 1 and 2 Thessalonians!
Follow along (or not) any way you choose!
Monday, July 28: John 15-16 Tuesday, July 29: John 17-18 Wednesday, July 30: John 19-20 Thursday, July 31: John 21, 1 Thessalonians 1 Friday, August 1: 1 Thessalonians 2-3 Saturday, August 2: 1 Thessalonians 4-5 Sunday, August 3: 2 Thessalonians 1-3
Additional readings if you want to read the whole Bible this year: Isaiah 60 – 66; Jeremiah 1-2
Jesus knew what He was getting into when, near the end of His earthly ministry, He determined to go to Jerusalem. After being betrayed by one of His own disciples, arrested and turned over to the authorities, Jesus was tried up to six times as Jewish and Roman authorities passed Him back and forth. There are a number of ironies that happen during these trials, but this post will focus on the comparison of Jesus and Barabbas.
One of the American Heritage Dictionary’s definitions for insurrection is “The act or an instance of open revolt against civil authority or a constituted government.” This idea of insurrection is important in Jesus’ final trial before Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea and Samaria, who condemned Jesus to be crucified even though he saw no fault in Him.
An irony in this story is that there was a tradition whereby Pilate would release one prisoner as a way of doing the Jews a favor. Pilate asked the crowd whether he should release Jesus or a man named Barabbas, and the crowd insisted on Barabbas. Who is Barabbas? He was an insurrectionist and murderer. He had been involved in a plot started in Jerusalem to overthrow Roman rule.[1] The irony is that the charge against Jesus according to the Jewish leaders was that He was “misleading our nation and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king.”[2] Anyone in Caesar’s realm claiming to be king was revolting against Roman authority. In other words, they were accusing Jesus of insurrection, while asking for the release of a man who had actually participated in an insurrection. This is also strange because one of the reasons the Jewish leaders rejected Jesus as Messiah was that He wasn’t actually going to revolt against Rome. They didn’t like that Jesus was not an insurrectionist.
Why did Pilate agree with the crowd about releasing Barabbas? Pilate was a man under higher authorities in the Roman empire, and one way he could lose his position is if he didn’t effectively silence any opposition to Rome. When the crowd grew more and more belligerent in their crying out for Barabbas to be released and for Jesus to be crucified, there was a risk of riots or even a larger uprising. Therefore, to keep from attracting unwanted attention and criticism from his superiors, Pilate decided to let the crowd have its way. Barabbas was released instead of Jesus because of what? The threat of an insurrection by this crowd.
There’s even another layer to this when we consider who Jesus is and what the name “Barabbas” means. Jesus is the only human ever who never participated in a revolt against the highest authority, His Father. He, the Son of God the Father, was condemned to die in place of an actual insurrectionist, Barabbas, whose name means “son of father.” Since everyone has a father, the meaning of the name Barabbas could apply to anyone. So symbolically, Jesus died in place of someone whose name represents everyone, or all of us, so we could be sons of the Father. In summary, Jesus was killed in place of an actual insurrectionist because the Jewish leaders didn’t like that He wasn’t really an insurrectionist but accused Him of being one anyway. This all happened in spite of the fact that Jesus is the only person ever to not commit insurrection against the highest authority, God the Father.
Sometimes the Bible asks us to do things that are hard to take literally. For example, in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 Paul writes that we should “pray without ceasing.” Other translations say “pray continually,” the same basic message. But what does it mean? We can’t kneel, fold our hands, and repeat the Lord’s Prayer all day every day. Paul wasn’t asking us to do the impossible, but how does one actually do this?
The life of Nehemiah, partially recorded in the Old Testament book bearing his name, may provide a good example for us. Around 445 B.C., Nehemiah was part of the third group of exiles in Babylon to return to Jerusalem. About 90 years after the first group returned, he heard Jerusalem’s walls and gates were still in ruins. He returned to lead the rebuilding of the walls, meeting opposition along the way from those who moved into the area during the exile as well as some of the Jews themselves.
Scattered throughout the book are several brief prayers, what Warren Wiersbe called “telegraph prayers,” [1] in 1992, but we might call them Twitter prayers now. These very short appeals to God are often made quickly and quietly, and you might say “continually.” I’ll put them in 3 categories:
The first group of these prayers are prayers for strength. Early in the story, Nehemiah was serving as cupbearer to King Artaxerxes and had to work up the nerve to ask the king to let him return to Jerusalem and take on the work of rebuilding the walls. Nehemiah 2:4 says: “Then the king said to me, “What are you requesting?” So I prayed to the God of heaven.” We don’t know what exactly he prayed, but he must have done it silently and quickly during his conversation with the king, otherwise the king might have been offended. Prayers can be dropped right into any conversation![2]
Second are prayers for justice, which are similar to the “imprecatory,” or cursing, Psalms, such as Psalm 58. In these prayers and Psalms the writers curse the enemies of the writer and of God. Instead of taking time away from the work on the wall, or vowing to take vengeance themselves, Nehemiah trusted God to righteously judge all evil. In Nehemiah 6:14, he prays this about his opposition: “Remember Tobiah and Sanballat, O my God, according to these things that they did, and also the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets who wanted to make me afraid.” Nehemiah is honest with God about his frustrations but turns them over to God to take care of them.[3] We too can pray for God to handle any scores we feel we need to settle during the day!
The third category are prayers of dedication, reminders that the work is being done for God and asking that He bless the outcome, as well as the workers, including Nehemiah personally. In Nehemiah 13:14, after the walls were rebuilt and he oversaw the collection of the tithe, he prayed: “Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and do not wipe out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God and for his service.”[4] God does not forget any service given to Him, but we can pray to remind ourselves who we serve and trust that He will remember!
Nehemiah’s constant life of worship was made up of more than just short prayers made in the moment. Longer prayers (all of chapter 9) and fasting are recorded, and along with these short prayers are a clue as to what it means to “pray without ceasing.” It means to always keep the lines of communication open, to consider that God is there, willing to listen, and lovingly able to bless His people any time. Even a split second in the middle of something is a good time to pray because His love for us is steadfast. We always need Him, and He is always able to meet our need!
Therefore, we can repeat the prayer of Psalm 66:20, which says:
“Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!”
Coda
Steven Curtis Chapman’s 1996 song “Let Us Pray” captures this idea of “pray without ceasing” beautifully. In it he sings that we should pray “every moment of the day,” because “the Father above, He is listening with love and He wants to answer us”
You can read the song’s lyrics at this link. Or listen to the full song at this link.
[1] Wiersbe, Warren. Be Determined (Nehemiah) (1992). P. 34. [2] Nehemiah 6:9 is another example. [3] Nehemiah 4:4-5 and 13:29 are similar prayers. [4] Nehemiah 5:19, 13:22, and 13:30-31 are similar.
As Israel was preparing to enter the Promised Land of Canaan after wandering in the wilderness, God gave them many instructions through Moses about how they were to live when they got there. One of the instructions was to eliminate all of Canaan’s inhabitants. Part of the warning not to ignore this comes in Numbers 33:55, which says:
“But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell.”
What this is communicating is the urgency of getting rid of anything that could influence us to sin, and this applies as much to us as to ancient Israel. In Israel’s case, the nations they were to remove from Canaan were under God’s judgement for centuries of worship of false gods, which included practices like ritual prostitution and child sacrifice. God knew that His people would be tempted by these foreign gods and practices unless all trace of them was eliminated.
For us, God also wants to protect us from false gods and harmful practices and habits, and the phrase “barbs in your eyes” is a picture of the urgency for us to get rid of anything that would tempt us. Think about it: If I had a thorn in my eye, I would drop everything and not be able to do anything else until I got it out. Until the thorn was gone, it would be my one and only priority. In modern times, God doesn’t tell His people to attack other nations in judgement, but He does want His people to attack sin with the same zeal.
So when I read “But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell” it leads me to ask the question:
Do we remove sources of sin from our lives as urgently as we would a barb in our eye?
We all have bad days. Sometimes on those days it’s hard not to dwell on what’s gone wrong. It’s hard not to make a list of the reasons why we’re feeling bad and focus on them. It’s hard not to think about ways to immediately fix whatever problem we’re having. However, Psalm 42 recommends a different approach. Verse 6 of that Psalm ends with:
“My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.”
When we feel like our “soul is cast down,” we might say therefore we need to spend our time thinking about why. We might say therefore I’ll just feel bad for myself. We might say therefore the world is a bad place, or therefore the universe is conspiring against us.
But I got helpful advice from a friend years ago that when you find a “therefore” in the Bible, you should ask what it’s there for. Everything in the list above are not what this “therefore” is there for.
According to Psalm 42, the right “therefore” is to remember God. The therefore is there to give us something to think about when we feel “cast down.” But what does it mean to “remember” God? How is it helpful? It means to meditate on God’s works, in the world, in the Bible, and in our lives, as reminders that He is bigger than our problems.
We may have many, many reasons to feel down, and the Psalmist knows this. In verse 7 is written:
“Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.”
Breakers and waves – difficulties in life – can constantly come one after the other and can seem to have no end, especially if we dwell on them, but note that the Psalmist refers to the breakers and waves as “your breakers” and “your waves.” They belong to God, and do not come to us without His permission. Often its more natural for us to think “I need a solution” than to think “I need God,” but He is always what we need.
While difficulties can go on and on, God’s love has no end either, as written in verse 8:
“By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.”
His love is steadfast, meaning He cares for us “by day … and at night.” He is always with us and ready to remind us of His love, even when all we can see are waves crashing over us. If your soul is cast down, remember Him and His works.
Driving Toward the Morning Sun 