Below are the chapters to read this week if you’re following along in my Bible in a year schedule, divided into morning and evening readings. Follow along any way you want: you can just do the evening reading, flip the morning and evening, or read it all. Whatever works for you and your schedule! It doesn’t have to be Bible in a Year for everyone.
This week we finish Song of Solomon and Luke. There will be 3 morning chapters on Friday instead of on Saturday to keep the end of Luke together.
Monday, July 15 Morning: Song of Solomon 5, Luke 18 Evening: Joshua 10
Tuesday, July 16 Morning: Song of Solomon 6, Luke 19 Evening: Joshua 11
Wednesday, July 17 Morning: Song of Solomon 7, Luke 20 Evening: Joshua 12
Thursday, July 18 Morning: Song of Solomon 8, Luke 21 Evening: Joshua 13
Friday, July 19 Morning: Luke 22-24 Evening: Joshua 14
Saturday, July 20 Morning: John 1-2 Evening: Joshua 15
Sunday, July 21 Morning: John 3-5 Evening: Joshua 16
One of the reasons Jesus encountered so much opposition was that He could see many of the religious leaders of His time as they really were – sinners condemned by the law and in need of a Savior – and was not afraid to call them out on it. Once when some scribes and Pharisees were crowding Him, trying to catch Him in an error, Jesus said to His disciples:
“Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known.”[1]
Jesus calls the Pharisees hypocrites, which means someone deceitfully playing a part, using leaven as a metaphor. Leaven is yeast, but how is yeast like hypocrisy?
Looking at leavened bread and unleavened bread from the outside, they might look the same: they both look like solid loaves of bread. However, in the process of making bread rise, yeast creates gas bubbles that form holes inside the bread (or “nooks and crannies” as in an old English muffin ad). So, when you break or cut open a piece of leavened bread, it does not look solid on the inside like it does from the outside. It is full of holes. On the other hand, unleavened bread tends to be more solid, such as many flatbreads or tortillas.
Yeast is like hypocrisy because the hypocrite is not the same on the inside as they are on the outside. The image they carefully craft for themselves fails inspection to One who can see inside. In the case of the Pharisees, who wanted to appear superior in their knowledge of, and observance of, Jewish law, Jesus revealed that they were “like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.”[2]
Later in the New Testament, in 1 Corinthians 8:1, the apostle Paul wrote: “we know that ‘all of us possess knowledge.’ This ‘knowledge’ puffs up, but love builds up.” Paul’s warning was that knowledge, if not used in love, puffs us up as yeast puffs up bread, making it full of air bubbles, and hollow inside. Knowledge can make us proud and inflate our own sense of importance if we aren’t careful. Love, on the other hand, seeks to build up others in humility.
Therefore, whose who seek to walk in integrity before God, to live an unleavened life, must reach out to the only One who can see all of our inner nooks and crannies, yet still loves us. Though we are still sinners, by His blood we are justified in His sight and being made whole by our Maker. We should pray as David prayed in Psalm 139:23 –
“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”
In the Old Testament, King David wanted to build a temple for God, reasoning that people lived in houses, but God has only ever lived in a tabernacle (tent). Why should people live in a nicer place than God? However, David was not allowed to build the temple, but God said his son Solomon would build it. David gives the reason in a speech to Israel from 1 Chronicles 28:2-3:
“I had it in my heart to build a house of rest for the ark of the covenant of the LORD and for the footstool of our God, and I made preparations for building. But God said to me, ‘You may not build a house for my name, for you are a man of war and have shed blood.’” (emphasis mine)
Since becoming king, David had to fight many of Israel’s neighbors in order to establish peace, which was accomplished by Solomon’s time as king. But David was not idle regarding the temple; he made many preparations to make Solomon’s job easier when the time came. After David’s death, Solomon, preparing for construction, worked with Hiram king of Tyre to secure lumber. In his letter to Hiram, Solomon wrote:
“You know that David my father could not build a house for the name of the LORD his God because of the warfare with which his enemies surrounded him, until the LORD put them under the soles of his feet. But now the LORD my God has given me rest on every side. There is neither adversary nor misfortune.” – 1 Kings 5:3-4
God wanted His temple – His dwelling place – built under peaceful conditions, by a peaceful leader, not by a warrior. Under Solomon’s leadership, God’s temple was completed.
Solomon’s temple is no more, but God is now building another temple – another dwelling place – His church. How do we know this? Peter wrote that Christians as “living stones are being built up as a spiritual house”[1] and Paul that Christians “also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”[2] God now spiritually lives in and among His people, not in a physical building.
What does David and Solomon’s experience teach us about the temple God is now building? We know that Solomon’s temple had to be built by peaceful people, and Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5:9, that:
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”
In the Greek language used in the New Testament, the word for peace comes from the verb “to join,” so peacemaking has to do with joining people together. Between believers, this means that the more we live like Christ, the more we are able to join together in unity. From believers to unbelievers, this “joining” means we offer them the love Christ gave us and hope and pray they will join with Him. When discussing all issues non-essential to salvation, this means we seek to join and not separate, to promote peace instead of discord.
So, with God now building a temple of peacemakers, Paul urges us to be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”[3] Pray that this Spirit can grow in each of us and in His people worldwide!
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”
[1] 1 Peter 2:5 [2] Ephesians 2:22 [3] Ephesians 4:3
Tagged as “Christian Propaganda” on IMDB.com, Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot is a powerful movie based on the true story of a small black church in East Texas where 22 families adopted 77 of the most difficult children in the local foster care system. If this is propaganda, I wish there was more like it.
Donna Martin is one of 18 children but has only 2 children of her own and hears God speaking to her, telling her to share the love her mother had with more children. She begins exploring how to adopt children in the foster care system. Her husband, Reverend WC Martin, reluctantly agrees after considering their limited resources and the fact that they already had one special needs child. However, WC eventually preaches to the small congregation of his church that Jesus calls His people to sacrifice themselves for the needs of others, and quotes 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.” – to show that orphans are often the neediest among us.
WC gives a clear spiritual message, but the movie doesn’t delude us into thinking God’s call for us is easy, if we decide to follow it. For me, the best part of the story is that it doesn’t shy away from the terrible experiences of these foster children, who have often suffered beyond what many of us can imagine. It also doesn’t shy away from the difficulty of bringing these children into a Christian home and the struggles to convince them that they are truly loved, both by their adoptive parents and by God. Donna, as the story’s narrator as well as a main character, says that we only really understand the depths of God’s love for us and His power when we are stretched by faith to our breaking point. There are many temptations for them to give up along the way.
The movie doesn’t stop at its own story. It challenges everyone to do something, to not just look away from the pain of children in the foster system. While not everyone can, or will, adopt a child, those who do adopt have many needs that other Christians can help meet. Those needs may be physical and financial, or they may just be emotional and spiritual support through relationship and prayer.
The movie, from Angel Studios, is still in theaters and I highly recommend you see it while you can! It may inspire and challenge you to listen for God’s call for your life.
“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.”
In 1989, Rain Man, a movie starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman, won the Oscar for Best Picture and Hoffman won for Best Actor in a Leading Role, playing Raymond, an autistic-savant. Long before autism was widely recognized, Raymond showed that those with autism have amazing talents, personalities, and human dignity just like anyone else. In the movie, Raymond wins the affection of his selfish, arrogant brother Charlie, played by Cruise, who was initially only interested in Raymond because of his inheritance.
In one of the movie’s more well-known scenes, Raymond performs what in another context might be considered a miracle. You can watch the 1 ½ minute clip here or read my summary below it.
In the clip, a waitress drops most of a box of toothpicks on the floor and in just a couple of seconds, Raymond counts that 246 of them scattered on the floor (he also counts three groups of 82). At this point of the movie, Charlie still sees Raymond as someone he has to put up while he chases down his inheritance. The waitress says the box had 250 toothpicks, so Charlie says Raymond guessed “pretty close” because he just wants to leave. But when the waitress says, “there’s 4 left in the box”, Charlie realizes something amazing has just happened. It wasn’t a guess.
It’s easy to be skeptical of miracles, or to choose to ignore them, but some of the Bible’s miracles aren’t much different than Raymond counting toothpicks at super-human speed. We can’t explain why some people count faster than others, or run faster than others, or have photographic memories while others don’t, yet if we call something a “miracle,” many people will demand an explanation. Other very abnormal things we just take for granted.
One miracle is recorded in Matthew 21:18-19, which says: “In the morning, as [Jesus] was returning to the city, he became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, ‘May no fruit ever come from you again!’ And the fig tree withered at once.” This tree was eventually going to wither anyway, so all Jesus did was change the speed of a natural process. True, Raymond was special because of his own speed, and Jesus controlled the speed of something other than himself, but still part of what makes it a miracle is the speed.
If the speed of a natural process, like counting or the growth of plants, can be variable and manipulated, why not also the direction of the process? In Mark’s gospel, the word “immediately” appears in at least 5 references to healing miracles[1]. The word “immediately” means the speed was part of the miracle. Jesus not only healed a paralytic in Mark chapter 2, but the paralytic “immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all,”[2] without months or years of physical rehabilitation therapy. From everyday experience, we know that different people recover from injury at different rates, yet why do we demand an explanation when its immediate? If we don’t know what process took place to make this man a paralytic, why is it hard to believe that process could go backwards, and quickly? It’s partly a miracle of degree, not of kind.
Of course, we shouldn’t believe every miracle: some are mere hoaxes, and some signs are done in opposition to God. But also, we should not be too quick to dismiss the possibility of miracles we didn’t expect or can’t explain. And while Rain Man does not claim to be based on a true story[3], the Bible does. And Jesus, the one who could control the speed and direction of what we consider “natural” processes, claimed to be the God who put those processes to work in the first place.
“As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.” – Ecclesiastes 11:5
[1] See Mark 1:42, 2:12, 5:29, 5:42, and 10:52 [2] Mark 2:12 [3] The movie was based on a novel, but Raymond’s abilities were modeled on a real person named Kim Peek, who you can read more about at this link. https://allthatsinteresting.com/kim-peek-real-rain-man
