My Bible Study Notebook

One of the more controversial stories in the Bible is the story of Lot and his daughters in the cave after the destruction of Sodom.  The distress is not over whether the story is true or not, but whether it should be included in scriptures.  What point did it have?  My students were appalled at the story.

it is interesting that the daughters lost their husbands and Lot lost his wife in the memorable salt pillar episode.  In the smoking demise of Sodom, the group thought that the world had ended and they must begin again, helped along by a bottle of wine, thoughtfully brought along by someone in the party.  They must begin again to populate the world in a variant of the Adam and Eve story.

But the solution came with a certain humorous twist.  A student, Ruth, raised her hand with eyes like saucers.  Ruth, Ruth, Ruth, she kept repeating.  One of the children produced by that incestuous drunken orgy was Moab.  Moab began a line that rose to redemption in the person of Ruth.  Ruth, a link in the line of the Messiah, came from the moral and atmosphere darkness.  Diamonds in the mud.

The story of Lot in the cave is important to the story of Ruth and perhaps should be studied in preparation for the gentle maiden.

I collect bits of prayer that I can use when people asked me to pray. So often we pray using such familiar words that people stop listening. Sometimes if you use a sentence from a great prayer from the past, it kind of wakes folks up. These bits and pieces are from the year 1000.

1. Jesus, we love you. You shine in our darkness.
2. Jesus, we are so glad you came to save us. The whole world is being washed with your light.
3. The light of your coming has driven the darkness from our lives.
4. In our weakness, we embrace you who became one of us because you loved us.
5. Father, we love you because you despise no one, reject no one, drive out no lonely soul, welcome everyone into your arms, and opened the doors of heaven for all of us.
6. Your love flows into our lives with quiet peacefulness.
7. You enter us to calm our troubled heart.
8. Forgive us sometimes for thinking we are the master of our lives because when we leave you even for a moment our life becomes a burden.
9. We do not want to live for ourselves but to rise into the beauty of your heavens to be wrapped in warmly in the blanket of your love.
10. Lord, destroy our darkness with your daylight.

Aren’t they beautiful! They were prayed by people 1000 years ago. I read them through each morning and when someone asked me to pray I try to use at least one of them in my prayers. When I can’t sleep at night I’ve become so used to them that they run through my head.

Here are two different translations of my favorite verse, well, maybe one of my favorite verses. It is from Psalm 27. They too have given me much comfort. They are from Psalm 27:8.

My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, LORD, I will seek.

My heart has heard you say, “Come and talk with me.” And my heart responds, “LORD, I am coming.”

Faith is an odd concept.  I remember the first time it was brought to my attention in a way and place that I couldn’t ignore.  The pastor in catechism stood before my desk and demanded that understand it.

I muttered and meandered with a skill that has always gotten me through such situations until he decided to help me out.

“If you were on your back porch on the railing and your father came out and asked you to jump and he would catch me, faith would be closing your eyes and leaping into his arms. Faith,’ he said, “was what drove that leap!”

As  I walked home afterward, the conversation bothered me.  I didn’t like thinking about closing my eyes and jumping.  I wanted to jump with my eyes open.  Do we really have to close our eyes?

The one who would catch me was my father, not a stranger.  He had caught me before.  Faith seemed to me to be an action based on experience.  It is not simply a belief in a theological or historical belief, it is an action.  It is a habit of thinking and acting based on knowledge gained by experience.  It is not blind.

 I was reading the book of Esther in a Jewish publication the other day. It was an interesting article and perhaps tomorrow I can summarize more of it. Do you realize that there are only 2 books that Jews are required to read with their family every year? The 1^st is the book of Moses, which we have divided into 5 books. The 2^nd is the book of Esther which must be read every year all the way through with your family on the feast of Purim. I had never realized that the book of Esther and the character of Esther were so important to the Jewish people.

There was a movie out a while ago about the 300 Spartans who stood in the way of the million man Persian army. The army was so huge that when the horses drank from a river, it was said that the river ran dry. The 300 Spartans stood between that Army and the country of Greece. They held up the Persian army until the country of Greece could prepare and defeated. The king of that army was Xerxes, the king in the book of Esther. When he returned to his country’s people were very angry and his wife Vashti refuse to have anything to do with him. If you remember the story he sends Vashti away and marries Esther. There are many assassination attempts on the king and after Mordechai and Esther revealed that they are Jewish, he begins to staff his government with loyal Jews rather than his own people whom he fears.

It is interesting that that heroic stand of 300 farmers against an army of trained Persian soldiers changes the events of the Bible. God’s people who had been taken into captivity rose to positions of power in the nation that took them captive. Eventually, they had attained such a position of trust and power that Darius the next King was willing to send them back and gave the money to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple.

We must read carefully and often.  I am often exasperated by the average person’s lack of interest in the portion of the Bible that Jesus and Paul knew and loved.

Notice where this story occurs.  Some folks in Seminary who should know better are annoyed that it was included “by mistake” in the middle of the Joseph story.  The Bible does not make mistakes!

There is a contrast between the behavior of Joseph and the behavior of Judah.  The loving of Joseph towards others and the rather unpleasant behavior of Judah.  The last verses in the previous chapter tell about the anguished sadness of his father at losing his son and a sneeze later Judah leaves his father and leaves the land given to Abraham by God and goes to the Philistines.  He went to a land where the God’s were feared, not loved, and the motivation to go to the temple was that the priestesses were prostitutes.  Worship was not an spiritually uplifting experience.

An interesting sidelight is that today in India, many girls serve the Gods by providing similar services in exchange for some money in the collection plate.  Satan seems to have found a way of destroying a soul with the crude desires of the body.

He marries a Canaanite as you point out, but notice his rather abrupt behavior, no love or courtship is recorded in the Bible the way it does in so many other storiesHe marries her and sleeps with her in one breath.  He saw her, marries her, and sleeps with her.  A hint of what will happen with Tamar. No grief seems to be recorded at the death of his wife and sons.  His sons are wicked and he seems to value the last because he is his heir.

He leaves off mourning and on the way to care for his sheep, spots Tamar and skips the small talk.  He is blunt about what he wants.  He is rough enough to give her some things that he should have been more cautious about.  His staff, his staff, and his cord.  With a sort of impatient need to make love to her, he ignores the fact that these are his credit card and the deed to his property.  In the suddenness of his encounter, there is no mention of house or bed.  Just grab and run.  Sorry if I seem a little annoyed, but this is not how anything that has the label of love on it should happen.

I am both amused and annoyed that he doesn’t look at her veiled face which would have alerted him to who she was.  No kissing and quiet conversation here.

Later when he discovers that SHE has misbehaved, his words in the Hebrew text are “Take. Burn.”  When he sees that staff, the cord, and the seat, he says,  “She is legally more correct than I am.”  Sort of a dubious.  “I’m sorry.”  What a rascal!”

I have been working on the story of Jacob. He is an absolute failure in almost every verse. I think that if God could love Jacob, and oddly enough Jacob is the only one that God says, “Jacob have I loved,” then God certainly should be able to love me. Of all the heroes of the Old Testament, Jacob seems to be especially a part of God’s affections.

But what a mess he is. His mother talks him into deceiving his father. His uncle takes shameless advantage of him. His wives boss him around. His children commit murders and other evil acts that are beyond his control to control. Finally, in desperation he gives a coat, the correct translation is an embroidered coat, to Joseph as a sign that he is passing on the power of the family to Joseph. The brothers who are older to Joseph are appalled that this little kid is going to get in their way. It is an interesting passage when they finally decide to do him in. They are supposed to be feeding and grazing the sheep and instead they have gone to a town called the Canaan Las Vegas. It was a town full of wine women and song. When they see him coming they know they’re in trouble. They decide to do him in. It isn’t just a chance decision, they are in trouble and they know it.

I’m always a bit frustrated when people think that the cut that Joseph gets is sort of a fashion statement. This is the same coat he loses when part of his wife tries to get him in trouble. A coat or cloak in the ancient world was a sign of authority.

Notice the fuss they make over Jesus’ robe. They mock him they dress them up in a Herod’s robe. It is difficult to read the Bible because of our world and their world being so different. When the woman wishes to be healed, she touches the tip of his robe and he feels the power flow out of him.

Three men were in a line on the road pushing small carts filled with stones.  The king came by and asked them what they were doing.  The first said that he was carrying stones.  The second said that he was earning a living.  The third said that he was building a palace.  The king placed the third man in authority over the rest of his workers.

Why this website?

Why spend time searching out the details and dusty corners of the Bible?  To know God better.  We learn a lot about a person from the art, the books, and the music that they produce.  We can learn a lot about God from the things He created.  The Bible is among those things He created and it reveals a lot about Him.  Although we cannot comprehend him completely, we can comprehend Him much more than we do.

Do we have to do all this searching to be saved, to be brought into a living, loving relationship with Him?  God himself tells us what we need to do to be brought into that passionate embrace and relationship that will bind us together forever.

Luke 10: 25 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying Master, what shall I do to be saved? 26 He said unto him, What is written in the Torah? How do you read it? 27 And he as his answer said, You shall love the Lord thy God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. 28 And he said unto him, You have answered correctly: this do, and you will be saved.

This comes from the mouth of God himself.  The words erase all the complexity of human theology. We must love the God who made us and who made the world for us to love. We are called to love God and the likeness of God that is stamped on each of His beloved creatures.

The sin of Adam and Eve was their need to seek to know good and evil when they were created to seek the knowledge of the glory of God.

God created a woman for the man because it was not good to be alone. One wonders if that was the reason for the creation of it all.

He is a sociable God, fascinated and curious about his creatures. God in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New ask a bundle of questions. Our purpose also is to question, to find and to understand as much about him as we can find in His Word and in his world. We search not because we wish to be saved but because we want to know all we can about Him whom we love.

I hope that this will be a living website.  I hope that over time, I will revise, expand, and correct the material here.  I want readers to suggest and expand and correct the ideas recorded here.

I also plan to explore other websites and summarize the best here while posting links that will allow readers to explore and correct what we discover.