The One Year Bible- May 20th
In September of 1990 PBS aired the miniseries “The Civil
War” by Ken Burns. It was 11 hours in length and an estimated 40 million
viewers watched the premiere episode. More people watched the premier episode
of “The Civil War”, than just about anything else in prime time in the past 20
years except the Super Bowl. Needless to say, the Ken Burns film was a hit! It
is still one of the most popular shows in the history of public television. Why
bring this up? Well the story of David and Saul is a story of Civil War. It is
a time where brother fought against brother and many died. The events
surrounding the end of Saul’s reign and the beginning of David’s are filled
with intrigue and action. I am not sure that 40 million people would tune in to
watch it as a miniseries but countless millions have read it and have seen the
events unfold in the pages of Scripture. At times there are things that we read
that don’t seem right. Some of the stories we find in the Bible are disturbing
but we must remember that they are still the word of God and we need to dig to
try to find what they mean. That is one of the reasons for this study. I hope
that you can start to put it all together as you read. Without further ado, on
to the study...
Seth’s
Thoughts
The Old Testament
The saga of David and Saul continues in our Old Testament
readings this week. The story has its climax towards the end of 1 Samuel. I
think that David and Saul had a very co-dependent
relationship. They both hated and loved each other and this made things very
confusing. One moment they want to kill each other, the next they say how much
they love and respect one another. We see some interesting things about David’s
character in this story too. David is revered as one of the best kings that
Israel ever had. But his record is not spotless. In fact he is not the nicest
of guys at all. David often took the high road (i.e. not killing Saul in the
cave) but equally as often he took the low road (i.e. taking multiple wives and
the fiasco with Bathsheba). David is an interesting king for sure. I think that
remembering that David took the low road at times is something we cannot
forget. Even after all the bad things that he did, God still loved him and
promised that his kingdom will last forever in the person of Jesus. A couple of
other things from this week that I want to make note of: I have always liked
the story of Saul going to see the medium at Endor. For those of you who are
fans of the Star Wars movies you would remember that George Lucas called one of
the planets in the Star Wars universe by the same name. It was on a moon of
Endor that the final battle in “Return of the Jedi” took place. Did George
Lucas know his Bible or did someone feed him that name, I don’t know. It is just
another example that things from the Bible are everywhere. That story has
another point. Saul has lost his trust in God. He seeks the advice of a medium
to try to get information. The LORD has left him and is now with David and that
makes Saul angry. Finally during a battle Saul is injured and falls on his own
sword and dies. It was a bad day for the house of Saul. “So Saul and his
three sons and his armor-bearer and all his men died together that same day.”
(1 Samuel 31:6 NIV) This starts another Civil War and eventually David becomes
king. I find it odd that the first thing that David builds in the new capital
of Jerusalem is a palace for himself. He does not build a place for God or for
the Ark. We will see why a bit later.
The New Testament
In the story of the death of Lazarus, Jesus says “I am
the resurrection and the life.” What a great analogy and given at the right
time. It is by the power of Jesus that Lazarus was raised from death to life
again. We see a glimpse of the human side of Jesus, showing love in the
shortest verse of the bible, “Jesus wept.” (John 11:35) Confirmation students
often want this to be their verse given at confirmation since it is so short. I
hope no teachers have used it in that context but nonetheless it is still a
powerful verse. Jesus shows his emotion and his love for his friend Lazarus,
and it is that same love he has for us. He died not only for Lazarus but for us
as well. Our resurrection will not be in this world but will be in heaven on
the last day. What a great comfort. Jesus shows that love a few verses later
when he washes the disciples feet. That was a tender act of love that shows the
servant heart of our Lord. Just after this we have another great “I Am”. “I
am telling you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will
believe that I am He.” (John 13:19 NIV) This “I Am” statement is a direct
pointer to the name Yahweh. Jesus was again telling them who he was and what he
was all about. There is a lot more in this section of scripture, but I don’t have
the time to dig into all of it. If you have any questions please let me know.
Psalms
We started reading Psalm 119 this week and I want to make a
few comments. First of all, it is the longest Psalm in the Bible; secondly the
Psalm is a giant acrostic poem. There are twenty-two stanzas in the Psalm, one
for each successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Each of the eight verses
within each stanza begins with the Hebrew letter named in its heading. So in
the first stanza, known as “aleph”, each
line begins with the Hebrew letter “aleph” and so on for each of the 22
letters. Of course, once you translate it you loose this unique structure. This
is a common literary form used for Hebrew poetry. When you know some of the
structure, you can see more of the beauty of the original.
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