We usually read the Bible as a series of disconnected stories, each with a ‘moral’ for how we should live our lives. It is not. Rather, it comprises a single story, telling us how the human race got into its present condition, and how God through Jesus Christ has come and will come to put things right.

More and more Bible teachers are emphasizing the intricate connections that weave the various stories together, demonstrating that only a sovereign God could create this tapestry of truth. Today I was struck by a connection so obvious I honestly don’t know how I’ve missed it all these years.

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” Matt 26:26

With these words, Jesus ushers in the New Covenant, so that we as believers receive all the blessings of life in Christ. But these words are remarkably similar to others used in Genesis, when Eve listened to the serpent’s suggestions:

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. Genesis 3:6

But rather than bringing life, Adam and Eve experienced death and through Adam all men died.

What a striking contrast: two hands held out offering food. One is the food that brings death and the other the one that brings death.

But oh, how wide a gulf separates these two offerings, and only Christ’s sacrifice of himself could build a bridge from one to the other.

The pandemic has robbed us of many things, one of them being some of the shared joy and frequency of communion. Many churches initially stopped celebrating communion all together for sanitary reasons, and some resumed with the individually packaged sets that most of us struggle to open. But even in these difficult times, how precious is the hand held out with the offer of life: Take and eat.

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In 1 Thessalonians 2, Paul describes his ministry during the brief time he was among them. This description captures in a wonderful way the balance of pastoral ministry between both proclaiming truth and loving people. Often biblical values that are held in tension lead to error in one direction or the other: Truth vs. Love, Word vs. Spirit, Justice vs. Mercy, Freedom vs. Discipline. How often do we see someone in leadership pursuing one of these values and sacrificing the other? Here Paul perfectly combines the pastoral heart of love with the preacher’s proclamation truth.

1 Thes 2:3 presents Paul as a steward of God’s truth, proclaiming the message just as he received it, unmixed with personal additions.

1 Thes 2:5-8, Paul describes himself as a nursing mother, devoted to loving and meeting the needs of these new disciples.

1 Thes 2:9-11 Paul describes his ministry as a loving father, patiently teaching through both verbal instruction and through the example of how he conducted his life.

1 Thes 2:11-16 Paul role is again a herald, proclaiming the truth of God’s word, which did its transformative work in those who believed.

What a precious precious illustration of the principles of growth Paul outlines in Ephesians:

Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. Eph 4:15

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I suppose this fancy word is popular today because it make the act of apostasy sound more palatable to our progressive ears. While asking honest questions is good and to be encouraged, abandoning faith to be “more authentic” is a sure path to darkness.

Equally prominent in today’s Christian news are stories of popular Christian leaders who—after becoming successful and building a large following—have fallen into egregious sin.

Despite all the head scratching about why this is happening, is there really anything new going on?

These last few weeks I have been studying Kings and Chronicles and cannot help but notice a distinct pattern of events occurring in the lives of the leaders of Judah. Over and over, good and Godly kings end up in rebellion and idolatry. This pattern happens so frequently that it contributes to the confusion that seems to be inherent in reading these books (not helped by the fact that different kings have identical names and sometimes a specific king’s name changes from book to book!).

I often find myself thinking, didn’t I just read this story?  A king does good and right like his father David, wins victories, and then—after great success— walks away from the Lord and begins worshipping foreign gods. Yes, it is a very familiar story, repeated often. The pattern is broken only by the occasional story of a bad king like Manassah who repents and turns to the Lord and does good.

In today’s highly charged political environment, we see various leaders presented as the “good” one that will lead us out of our troubles. Like the children of Israel, we want someone to rule over us who will bring peace and prosperity. But just as the children of Israel learned—over and over again—there are no good kings…in the end, they all fail. And this has one clear reason…the entire Old Testament is looking forward to a better King, one without sin, who will rule with true justice and righteousness.

This is a lesson we would be wise to learn in our own times as we are tempted to look to political leaders to fix our problems. Like the kings of Judah, our leaders will fail, they will sin, they will walk away from their promises. There is only one King we can look to and not be disappointed: that King is Jesus.

“Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Heb 12:2

May you find him more lovely and worthy of praise each day!

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I know the Bible gets deeper and wider the more we read it. Many truths are like gold that we have to dig and search for, as Solomon describes the way to seek wisdom as silver or hidden treasures in Proverbs 2.

But other insights are given to us like nuggets lying on the surface of the stream of His grace, just waiting for us to pick up and admire. God gave me one of those nuggets this morning as I was thinking about the first resurrection morning.

What first caught my attention was this quote by G. K. Chesterton:

“On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.” –GK Chesterton

I had never thought much about Mary Magdalene mistakenly identifying Jesus as the gardener in the story John tells of her visit to the tomb. Finding it empty Mary turns from the two angels to see Jesus, and:

Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” (John 20:15)

What if Mary wasn’t mistaken about calling Jesus a gardener, but saw something true about the figure in front of her?

Wasn’t Adam’s job to be a gardener in Eden, to work it and keep it (Genesis 2:15)?

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

But when the first Adam sinned, he was sent out of the garden into a wilderness of thorns and thistles and painful toil. Christ as the Last Adam is the true Gardener returned to remove the thorns, “far as the curse is found,” as we sing in Isaac Watts’ hymn of joy at Christmas:

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

Another interesting contrast in the two garden scenes is the different way Adam and Mary respond to the voice of God. When God calls to Adam, Adam turns away and hides because of the shame of his sin. When Jesus calls Mary by her name, rather than turning away, she immediately recognizes who He is and tries to cling to him (John 20:16-17).  Jesus, the new Gardener has made complete provision for our shame through his death and resurrection. We no longer need to hide. A new dawn has truly come.

 

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This verse struck me with special force yesterday in my daily reading of the M’Cheyne plan. I have certainly thought about this psalm before, for David’s words have a particularly powerful way of directly confronting one of my besetting sins: discontent.

Many times as I read these words I have had to humble my heart and ask forgiveness for fretted about different aspects of my life situation, whether job, family, housing, finance. I often didn’t feel like I was in a pleasant place.

It is easy to think of David sitting on his throne in his palace of cedar and gold and writing “The lines have fallen in pleasant places.” But perhaps he wrote these words when he was hungry and alone  in a dark and smelly cave, fleeing Saul.

Today, we have all found ourselves with new unchosen boundary lines. Setting healthy boundaries—a topic for many self-help books—has taken on a new and sinister meaning. We go to the store and see lines of tape every 6 feet to keep us apart: healthy boundaries indeed.

Many of our choices have been stripped away. The boundaries have closed in…we cannot move. No, I can’t go hang out at my favorite coffee shop with a friend. No, I can’t go to the book store and browse the shelves for a new reading adventure. No, I can’t see what great bargain I can find at the thrift store to change up my wardrobe. No, I can’t start planning a trip to see my precious grandson in Hawaii, who is growing up so quickly. All my thoughts crash into the new boundaries set around me: No, No, No.

But David gives us the key to making these and all boundaries pleasant. “The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup.” In this time of isolation, I can choose to focus on God himself. I can gaze with fresh wonder on the mercy and grace that led him to the cross. I can read the Bible and drink deeply of his precious word, preserved for me by God’s determined will and the suffering of unnumbered saints.

And I can pray for those for whom the new boundaries are creating real suffering, for those who are sick, for those who have lost loved ones, for those who have lost jobs, for those on the front lines of serving in a pandemic.

The word used for line in Psalm 16:6 comes from the Hebrew word for cord since boundary lines for individual portions of land were measured and set with a standard length of cord. Cords were used on Jesus when he was bound and taken away to Pilate to be judged for our sins (Mark 15:1). These cords are part of  the beautiful inheritance we have in Christ.

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Scientists even say that the earth itself is moving less now that people have stopped rushing to and fro to stores and work.

It is a Selah moment. This mysterious word that occurs 71 times in the Psalms now governs our life. Strong’s Lexicon defines Selah as “a technical musical term probably showing accentuation, pause, interruption.” It is derived from similar Hebrew word meaning balance. So by extension we have “a pause that brings balance.”

Was our life out of balance before the pandemic? Could this be a pause to bring correction? A realignment of our actions and thinking?

Selah has been variously translated “Stop and think about that” and in The Passion Translation, “Pause in His presence.”

Having time to stop and think about it and pause in His presence, I looked up all the occurrences of the word Selah in Psalms. Then I categorized the verses based on general topics in an effort to find the primary things that God wants us to stop and think about. This is what I discovered:

• 11 verses are about the actions of evil men, how they think, what they say, and the consequences of evil. Many there be which say of my soul, there is no help for him in God. Selah. Psalm 3:2
• 19 verses are about various aspects of God’s goodness: how he blesses his people, redeems them, saves them, forgives them, shows himself faithful, and provides a refuge in the time of trouble. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble;  you surround me with shouts of deliverance.  Selah. Psalm 32:7
• 21 verses are concerned with God’s sovereignty and righteous judgement, which has two aspects: protecting and establishing righteousness and punishing and destroying wickedness. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Selah. Psalm 67:4
• 11 verses deal with prayer, how God delivers and answers when we cry out to him. I cried aloud to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy hill.  Selah. Psalm 3:4
• 9 verses exalt God, 5 verses with words of praise and adoration and 4 by describing the glories of Zion where God’s people will be with Him and see His glory. In God we have boasted continually, and we will give thanks to your name forever.  Selah. Psalm 44:8

So in this unprecedented moment of pause where we are being inundated with bad news and fear, let’s take time to refocus on what the Psalmist has asked us to “stop and think about.” God is good, his judgements are righteous, he will deal with evil, he hears us when we cry out to him, and no matter what is happening around us, he is worthy of worship.

One day we will be in his presence in the New Jerusalem, the true City of God, where every tear will be wiped away.

(Note: If you would like to see the full list of verses categorized, you can find it here.)

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As the M’Cheyne Bible reading plan has led us through the book of Exodus, I was struck by how the word intricately is always used to describe the ephod, the special priestly garment woven of linen, gold, blue, purple, and scarlet threads. For example, here it is introduced in Exodus 28:8

And the intricately woven band of the ephod, which is on it, shall be of the same workmanship, made of gold, blue, purple, and scarlet thread, and fine woven linen.

Intricate also describes the wonderful ways that the Holy Spirit has woven the themes in the Bible together. Today I caught a glimpse of that intricacy in a reference to a humble plant, the hyssop. 1 Kings 4:33 describes Solomon’s wisdom in speaking of trees, from the greatest—the cedar of Lebanon—to the least—the lowly hyssop that grows out of the wall. Similar to many references to Biblical plants, scholars are not agreed on the exact species of plant that the Hebrew word ezowb points to. But hyssop plays a crucial role in Old Testament worship. It was used:

1. By the Hebrew people to mark the lintel and door posts of their homes with blood so the death angel would pass over (Exodus 12:22)
2. By Moses to sprinkle blood during the dedication of the book of testimony and the people (Hebrews 9:19)
3. By the priests to sprinkle blood for the cleansing of leprosy (Lev 14)
4. By the priests when they burned a sacrificed red heifer for creating the ashes used to purify the unclean and prevent them from being cut off from the community (Numbers 19)

In all these cases, no power rested in the lowly hyssop; rather, it became the means of sprinkling the blood that brought freedom from death and forgiveness of sin. It is in this sense that David mentions hyssop in Psalm 51, which is his great psalm of repentance after Nathan exposed his sin with Bathsheba.

And this is where we see the intricate weaving of threads come together in John 19:29-30. In Jesus final moments on the cross, he cried “I thirst,” and a soldier reached a sponge soaked in sour wine to him. The soldier could have attached that sponge to any kind of stick; but instead, he “happened” to use a branch of hyssop to touch the lips that next uttered the word “Tetelestai” (it is finished).

God again provided a humble branch of hyssop to touch the true blood sacrifice that takes away the sin of the world, foreshadowed in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers.

For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Hebrews 9:13-14

That Roman soldier could have grabbed anything at hand, but God ordained a branch of hyssop to be available so he could add a finishing touch to the intricately woven story that began in the Garden, where he promised that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head.

How much more can he provide for us and ordain our steps as we trust in Him!

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Today, as part of the M’Cheyne reading plan, I read Exodus 32, which describes God’s wrath when the Israelites began worshipping the golden calf while Moses is on the mountain. In response, God tells Moses that he will wipe out the people, and offers to start a new nation based on Moses. But Moses—the humblest of men—intercedes for the people, and in Exodus 32:12, he begs God to relent. And then follows this wonderfully hopeful verse:

“So the LORD relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people.” Exodus 32:14

The word relent in Hebrew is nacham, which comes from a primitive root meaning to sigh or breath heavily, by implication to be sorry. As a positive action, it means to offer comfort. And I do find it comforting to think of God sighing…the way a mother sighs when she sees her kids fighting again…not in anger, but in sadness and longing for them to learn to play together peacefully, the way Jesus sighed and wept over Jerusalem (Luke 13:34).

David also experienced mercy when God relenting from destruction. When David sinned by numbering the people, the prophet Gad gave him three choices of punishments. David chose the plague because he trusted in God’s mercies. And indeed, in 2 Samuel 24:16, the Lord relented and David built and altar and worshipped.

And when the angel stretched out His hand over Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD relented from the destruction, and said to the angel who was destroying the people, “It is enough; now restrain your hand.” 2 Samuel 24:16

Later, the Psalmist in recounting all of God’s goodness to Israel in Psalm 106 remembers also how God relented:

But they rebelled in their counsel
And were brought low for their iniquity.
Nevertheless He regarded their affliction, when He heard their cry;
And for their sake He remembered His covenant,
And relented according to the multitude of His mercies.
Psalm 106:43-45

Jeremiah the weeping prophet insists on God’s willingness to relent from judgment when people turn from their evil.

If that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. Jeremiah 18:8

Five times he offers the hope of God relenting if his people will repent (Jeremiah 18:8, 26:3, 26:13, 26:19, and 42:10), but of course we know the judgment came as Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and took the people away.

Other prophets also remind us that God relents from harm when his people return to Him:

So rend your heart, and not your garments;
Return to the LORD your God,
For He is gracious and merciful,
Slow to anger, and of great kindness;
And He relents from doing harm. Joel 2:13

God relented of two disasters when Amos pleaded for his people in Amos 7:3 and Amos 7:6.

And even more famously (or infamously depending on how you feel about the Assyrians), God relented from his plan to destroy Nineveh when the people of the city turned from their evil ways at the preaching of Jonah.

Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it. Jonah 3:10

What does all this have to do with COVID-19? Surely a great evil has come upon us and the world. And truly, God is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. So we can be confident that when we intercede, our God is willing to change his mind.

Let us plead his mercies, turn away from our sins, and perhaps we also as David did will see God relent and halt the plague among us.

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Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. Habakkuk 2:2

I’ll have to admit that I chose this theme verse because it was about writing, which seemed a natural fit. Writing is what I have done most of my adult life and I hoped that my website would be a place to continue writing after I retired.

In the years since I first created my website, I have discovered many other reasons to love Habakkuk. Habakkuk is short (the 4th shortest book in the Old Testament) but packed with truth. And of course—and most obviously—the fact that God told Habakkuk to write is secondary to the actual message he wrote down.

Here are some of the reasons I have grown to love Habakkuk over the years.

Habakkuk is a man of prayer. Habakkuk is introduced to us through his prayer, which is not for his own needs. He is an intercessor whose heart breaks over the condition of the world around him: a world filled with violence, where God’s word and ways are no longer followed, and wickedness prevails. His world sound a lot like the one we live in and I find my own heart often crying out “How long, O Lord,” as I scan the local and world headlines.

Habakkuk receives an answer to his prayer central to redemptive history. To his intercessor, God entrusts a glimpse of his plans to purify his people by bringing a great evil against them. Habakkuk’s response is initially disbelief, but he continues to seek God for how this evil can produce faith.

God tells Habakkuk to write down what he is about to hear, and what he writes is that “the righteous shall live by his faith,” a verse referenced three times by New Testament writers:

• Romans 1:17 is the key that opened up the Gospel to Martin Luther and became the basis of the Protestant reformation: man is made just by God’s grace through Christ when grace is received by faith, and not by works.
• Galatians 3:11 highlights the foundational confusion of the Galatians between faith, which produces life, and works of the law, which produce death.
• Hebrews 10:38 emphasizes the ability of the believer to endure by faith and the hope that God will complete His work.

The woes Habakkuk records give us hope for final justice. God proclaims five woes over the Chaldeans, Israel’s enemies. Even though God plans to use them to purify his people, they will not ultimately escape judgment for their evil deeds. These woes give substance to our faith that the “judge of all the earth will be just” (Genesis 18:25). God demonstrates his concern about social justice issues in the pronouncement of woes on:

1. Those who take from the poor (Habakkuk 2:6-8)
2. Those who accumulate wealth with no thought for others (Habakkuk 2:9-11)
3. Leaders who build using methods that abuse others (Habakkuk 2:12-14)
4. Those who encourage others to abuse drugs and alcohol to take advantage of them (Habakkuk 2:15-18)
5. Those who encourage others to trust in the works of their hands rather than the living God (Habakkuk 2:19)

Habakkuk looks forward to the final consummation of history. Habakkuk’s prayer in Chapter 3 looks back at God’s mighty acts in the Exodus, but even more to his final victory over not just Egyptians or Chaldeans, but over the enemy of enemies, that old serpent, Satan. Habakkuk 3:13 speaks of crushing the head of the house of the wicked, echoing the words God spoke in Genesis 3:15 that the seed of the woman would bruise Satan’s head.

Habakkuk gives us reason to sing in the darkest time. The final verses of Habakkuk’s prayer (3:17-19) are a powerful and joyful expression of faith and hope that is not based on anything the eye can see.

As a watchman who has been called to pray, this hope in the unseen has been life-giving to me since often all I can see with the natural eye is destruction and sorrow. Still, remembering Habakkuk, I can rejoice in the Lord and take joy in the God of our salvation.

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Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. James 5:17-18

Even though James is telling us that Elijah didn’t have any special characteristics that we don’t have, I think most of us find it hard to believe that our prayers will get the same results that Elijah’s did. Surely Elijah knew some secrets to effective prayer that we would all like to learn. Or perhaps he was more earnest then we are or more holy.

James mentions rain, but rain wasn’t all that fell in response to Elijah’s prayer; he also called down fire from heaven when the priests of Baal couldn’t awaken their God to respond.

However, if we read I Kings 18 carefully, we can easily discover the source of Elijah’s effectiveness; it is really very simple and plain. Elijah heard from God.

When we read the story of Elijah and the rain, we may miss the importance of 1 Kings 18:1

During the third year without rain, the Lord spoke his word to Elijah: “Go and meet King Ahab, and I will soon send rain.” 1 Kings 18:1

As the rest of the story plays out, Elijah does pray seven times for rain, but his persistence in prayer is based on his certainty of having heard God’s original promise.

Similarly in the story of Elijah and the priests of Baal, it is easy to be intimidated by Elijah’s extraordinarily boldness. He tells them to pour four jars of water over the wood to be burned, not once, but three times! Lighting the wood by natural means is impossible. Could I, we think, every do something so crazy?

But again, we must not miss that Elijah didn’t come up with these actions on his own. He says clearly that he received instructions from God and was simply following them.

At the time for the evening sacrifice, the prophet Elijah went near the altar. “Lord, you are the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel,” he prayed. “Prove that you are the God of Israel and that I am your servant. Show these people that you commanded me to do all these things.

Sometimes I think Christians fall into the error of thinking that the power to make change is in our prayer, but in fact, as Jesus said, “apart from me, you can do nothing (John 15:5).” God invites us to participate in what he wants to do through prayer, but first we must hear from him, by waiting on the Holy Spirit and by reading his Word. Then we can pray with the faith of Elijah.

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