Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Bible Commentary

  • Psalm 119:168 – You Know My Ways

    Psalm 119:168 – You Know My Ways

    I have kept your precepts and testimonies,
    for you can see all my ways.

    Poetry is a good start for meditation because so much is left to the imagination. Poetic passages are like seeds that grow into thoughts.

    In this verse you can ask so many questions that will generate valuable thought. For example, is God’s view of all ones life and actions the motivation for doing right? If so, is it because of fear of judgment or the desire to please? Is this “big brother is watching me” or “I have such a knowledgeable and helpful companion that I’d like to do what he finds positive.”

    Another thought occurred to me, however, and that is simply that the person who sees everything can give good directions for attaining any goals I might be likely to have. I like that thought. It goes well with my view of the doctrine of creation, and particularly the creation of human beings.

    In Genesis 1, we have the expression of power. When it comes to the creation of the first human, it’s simply a story of God says “let’s make humans” and so God makes them. No fuss or bother. Simple power.

    This is followed by Genesis 2, in which we have God playing in the mud and personally getting involved in the making of the humans. God spends time with the first man, and moves on to make the first woman, taking time to introduce that first man to the animals..

    Then there is Psalm 104, which expresses the continuous care. God gives breath and creatures live. God removes breath and they perish. Everything is dependent on God and God’s power.

    But then we have Psalm 8, where we are told that humanity is made a little lower than God and is crowned with glory and honor. So humanity is not some throwaway project, but rather an important part of God’s activity.

    I hear all of these elements in the phrase, “for you can see all my ways.” God can see as the creator. God values us as the objects of care and attention, continuously. God plans to honor us, having a glorious purpose for each and every one.

    The invitation is to get with the program of the creative and powerful, caring, attentive God who hold us in high value.

    Does this sound like a good place to be?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:167 – Keeping

    Psalm 119:167 – Keeping

    I keep your testimonies,
    I love them greatly.

    The first line here is formally “my soul keeps,” which is a way to refer to oneself. I does have the added connotation of keeping them from the heart out. That goes with the second line that says this comes from the love that the Psalmist has for God’s law.

    I couldn’t help today thinking about the difference in the way the various laws are presented here by the Psalmist. In Christian churches you rarely have positive references to the law as something to love and appreciate. We’ve taken pieces of Paul and used them to build the attitude that the law is very negative, so we want to avoid it.

    We have a major problem, however, in that we want to trot the law out to make other people behave the way we want them to. That again presents the law in a negative way, as we keep saying that salvation is by grace, meaning that “getting into heaven” is by grace, and then detaching that from Christian life.

    As a result we act as though God will take you to heaven, but we still need something to control things on earth before we get to heaven, so we have laws, and we enforce them. That tends to result in a loose and capricious application of standards of behavior, and soon the fires of hell will start sneaking in the other way.

    But both the law and grace come from a loving God. It’s not that grace is a way around the law. It’s more of a way through it. Ultimately, sanctifying grace says that God is going to get you in the end, which does not mean that God is going to discipline you into formal good behavior, but rather God is going to make you holy, and that “holy, just, and good” law will be part of you as well.

    Grace is the gift that keeps on giving. Even in Romans 7, which is often viewed as a “downer” chapter, Paul notes that he’d like to do God’s law, but he finds himself in a battle with the flesh which definitely does not want to keep the law.

    The answer is to live by the Spirit, at which point you do, in fact, love God’s law. You may (and should) still realize how much you fall short, and how much your flesh (to use Paul’s term) is at war with it, but it’s something that tells you where God is going to take you.

    As even the very next verse, which we’ll discuss tomorrow, the only reason anyone goes anywhere with any of this is that God is at work.

    Having trouble with keeping God’s law? Let God’s Spirit do the work.

    (Featured image from Adobe Stock. Licensed, not public domain.)

  • Psalm 119:166 – Hope

    Psalm 119:166 – Hope

    I put my hope in your salvation, LORD,
    and I put your commands into action.

    I’m thinking of this today from a distinctively Christian perspective, and less about historical meaning. I’m looking back at the text through another lens.

    In one of my favorite texts, Paul puts these two concepts together:

    … With fear and trembling work out your own salvation, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do his good pleasure.

    Philippians 2:12-13, my translation with the final word taken from the KJV

    This again brings together these two important concepts: Trusting and Doing. If one’s hope is in God’s salvation, then what’s the doing about? Paul makes it clear here (and I think it’s clear in the Psalm as well) that it all depends on God, and yet there is doing involved.

    The problem for us is mixing the two up, getting our hope from our efforts. For many, there is a fear that if we don’t demand effort, no effort will be made. So we try to make salvation, or many other lesser goals depend entirely on work that is simply not sufficient to support it.

    What would it do to someone’s morale if they are facing an impossible barrier, and are told, “You have to put your hope in your own efforts to get over this barrier”? The result is that hope dies and the person gives up. One human approach is to follow this up by calling the person a loser because they have failed to overcome a barrier that was, in fact, impossible.

    The book of Hebrews, also a favorite of mine, leads up to presenting Christ as the one God perfected on our behalf at the end of chapter 5, and then in 6:1 says, “let us be carried on toward perfection.” (I believe the passive, not middle is the correct translation of the verb here.) The idea being that having through Jesus we are now to be carried on to the kingdom.

    If we get this idea of identity, and of a hope provided by God, then the idea of putting God’s commands into action becomes something different. We are winners with every step, not because we have accomplished the goal, but because we are on the journey, being cared along to perfection.

    Given a couple of quotes recently, you might be aware that I’m reading Deanna Thompson’s commentary on Deuteronomy. I have another quote from that book:

    Moses’ act of remembering and retelling Israelite history, as Israel stands between its future and its past, makes an important theological point about Israelite identity: Israel’s relationship with the God who freed them from slavery is its identity, and after years of dishonoring that memory, it is time to remember, honor, and obey.

    Commenting on Deutereonmy 1

    The Bible is very much about trust and hope, but it is also very much about action. Our problem is often leaving one or the other element out, or getting them in the wrong order. Trust and hope make action possible. Knowing who we are is what frees us for action.

    So, after all, this verse of Psalm 119 is very clear and reminds us of the order. Trust in God and do. In that order.

    What will God free you to do today?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:165 – Offense

    Psalm 119:165 – Offense

    Those who love your law have great peace;
    Nothing will offend them.

    I adjusted my translation a bit toward the KJV, which is the translation of this Psalm that I memorized when I was younger. I like the word “offend,” which is within the semantic range of the word used here. You’ll see that many translations use something like “make them stumble.”

    The verse got me thinking about things offend us. One connection between “offense” and “stumbling” is simply that offense makes us think about things around us in suboptimal ways. Offense makes us think about and respond to things that have really done us no harm.

    Why are we so often offended?

    1. We might be looking for an offense so as to divert our attention from our own failings.
    2. We might feel inadequate and find offense at someone else a good distraction from our own inadequacies.
    3. We might want to put someone down who seems to be getting more attention and support than we do.
    4. We might not actually have any idea why we’re offended. We just find it easy to be offended.

    Following God’s instructions is a good antidote to offense. If we are confidently acting in an appropriate manner, if we feel that we are following God, if we are acting with a clear mind and conscience, we are less likely to be offended by others.

    As an old song says, “Full of beauty is the path of duty / Cheerful we may always be!”

    What will build your confidence in God today?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:164 – Seven Times

    Psalm 119:164 – Seven Times

    Seven times a day I praise you
    because of your righteous judgments.

    What’s with seven times?

    The number seven is used quite a number of times in scripture, and represents completion or wholeness. I thought today rather than discussing the number seven as I understand it, I’d provide some examples.

    There are some fairly well-known stories in the Bible that center around the number seven:

    • The conquest of Jericho, in which Israel marches around the city once a day for six days, but then on the seventh day they march around it seven times, following which, famously, the walls fall down. (Joshua 6).
    • Elisha heals the widow’s son, after he has stretched out on the child’s body, he sneezes seven times and opens his eyes. (2 Kings 4:8-37).
    • When Naaman is healed, he is told to dip seven times in the Jordan river, and is then healed. (2 Kings 5:1-19).
    • In 1 Kings 18, Elijah has his servant go look for signs of rain coming seven times.
    • Psalm 12:6 (7 in Hebrew) says God’s word, often thought of as promises, are purified seven times.
    • Proverbs 24:16 tells us that the righteous may stumble seven times and get up, but one stumble is enough for the wicked.
    • … and we should not forget the three group of seven–seals, trumpets, bowls of wrath–in Revelation.

    But Leviticus 14, discussing restoration of defiled buildings and objects, and 16, discussing the day of atonement are both very interesting in how many things are sprinkled seven times, and also the number of times waiting seven days is mentioned.

    I’m not going to try to discuss any of this in detail. I just found it interesting to enumerate these cases, which certainly do not exhaust the use of the number seven in scripture.

    How many times will you praise God today?

    (The featured image was generated by Adobe Firefly using a prompt based on one generated by Jetpack, and improved by Gemini.)

  • Psalm 119:163 – Falsehood

    Psalm 119:163 – Falsehood

    I hate and abhor falsehood,
    but I love your instruction.

    When I read something like this, I ask myself if I could say it and be truthful.

    That’s a tough question. With the rise of the internet and social media we’re more and more aware of the sheer quantity of falsehood that is spread around. Now falsehood is nothing new as the psalmist could have told us. False stories about others are nothing new. That’s why we have so many warnings against gossip and backbiting in the Bible.

    On social media, our gossip is preserved and available for public comment. Do we hate, even abhor, false stories? Or do we have quite a different reaction, such as hoping nobody will notice, because the story is negative about someone we don’t like.

    This reminds me of a saying I heard regarding lawyers: “Americans hate lawyers, but love their own lawyer.” We tend to hate falsehood that smears someone we like, but supposing it smears something we also hate. Do we hate it, or do we just reluctantly turn away from it?

    If we’re really going to love God’s instruction, we do need to hate falsehood. Otherwise, we’re merely loving convenient parts of God’s instruction. We’re not nearly so happy about the parts that tell us not to spread falsehoods about others.

    How will you respond if you hear or see something false today?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:162 – Rejoicing

    Psalm 119:162 – Rejoicing

    I rejoice over your word
    as someone who finds great treasure.

    I recall a small kitten who showed up at our house. She had apparently lost her mother. She was crying pitifully. When I picked her up and took her in she settled in happily. She had found a place to be safe. I have no idea how she knew I’d take care of her, but she did. I, in turn, was delighted to help this delightful little bundle of fur and life, and was able to find a home for her.

    The rescue, was a time of joy for us both.

    I’m reminded of the parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15:3-7), followed by the lost coin and the lost son. There’s an important point in theses stories. There is seeking going on even when the person or thing sought is in no way doing any seeking. There is great joy in heaven, we are told (Luke 15:10) over one sinner who repents.

    In the similar parable of the pearl of great price (Matthew 13:45), we have someone seeking, finding, and acquiring. There’s joy!

    When I was younger, I was taught that this was about how diligently we should seek the kingdom of heaven and what we should be willing to give up to get it. In this version of the parable, the kingdom of God is a sort of acquisition, or at least something I invest in because it seems to be a good idea.

    But the kingdom of heaven is both already there and is not something you can acquire. In fact, it is the kingdom (or its King!) that is looking for you, often when you’re not thinking about it at all. The one seeking the pearl is the King, and the King want’s to acquire you!

    I was reminded recently about how I came to join Pine Forest United Methodist Church (now Wilde Lake Church) here in Pensacola. I was not, in fact, looking for a church. I was not invited by someone to go to this church. It was, to all appearances, an accident. I was following the suggestion of my business partner to do something that wasn’t work. I chose that church because I could figure out how to get there, and they had a Sunday night service.

    Every single thing about that visit had the appearance of an accident. I was definitely not seeking God. I was just following a suggested plan of looking at how various churches worked to distract me from my coding work.

    Yet God and I had an encounter at that church.

    There was joy, I’m sure, in heaven. I, on the other hand, reacted with joy. I began to rejoice again in God’s Word, which had not excited me for some time. God’s rejoicing brought my rejoicing.

    I feel this verse with the Psalmist. It’s not my doing, yet I rejoice. I came upon treasure for which I was not looking.

    I was reading a quote from John Wesley in another context today, describing “preventing grace,” more commonly known as prevenient grace.

    Salvation begins with what is usually termed (and very properly) preventing grace; including the first wish to please God, the first dawn of light concerning his will, and the first slight transient conviction of having sinned against him. All these imply some tendency toward life; some degree of salvation; the beginning of a deliverance from a blind, unfeeling heart, quite insensible of God and the things of God.

    John Wesley, “On Working Out Our Own Salvation”

    What treasure will give you joy today?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI. That’s quite some images the AI picked out of this post. Don’t you think the kitten looks joyful?)

  • Psalm 119:161 – Persecuted

    Psalm 119:161 – Persecuted

    Princes have persecuted me without any reason,
    Yet what I fear is your word.

    A great deal in life comes down to priorities. What is it that makes me most afraid?

    People frequently comment on how hard it is to talk to people about their faith. They wonder if people will get upset. Perhaps they’ll hurl insults or ridicule someone.

    Now I have to confess that I don’t get a real choice about this. When I’m asked what I do I answer, “I own a Christian publishing company.” I’m now on the hook for my faith. I might feel like avoiding faith sharing for some reason, but it won’t work. If someone wants to insult me, there I am.

    But what I find is that relatively few people, in fact vanishingly few, want to say nasty things to me. Some are sympathetic and compliment me on a great professional activity. Some are not Christians, and comment on that. Some will actually ask me about my faith. I feel l distinctly unpersecuted.

    Other people may well have a different experience. It may often depend on what you choose to put first in conversation.

    Now with some other Christians, things can get interesting, and here there is an important point. The Psalm here doesn’t saw whether these “princes” or “powerful people (NLT) are Israelites or not. Christians can get quite nasty.

    I was talking about this today with a friend. People can get very uncomfortable when I talk about actual spiritual experience. “God spoke to me yesterday,” can put some other Christians on edge, even when I’m noting that what God said was to me. It wasn’t a message directed at them. It’s just “God spoke” that gets them upset. There’s also the notion of “prayer language.” Just the term can get people upset for various reasons.

    What about a belief in present day miracles? Or variations in the way we understand miracles? There are so many things that we actually have a hard time discussing with one another. What about my reaction to the person who has a negative reaction when I say God has spoken to me?

    The one thing we’re supposed to fear is God’s word, and most frequently when people encounter God or a messenger of God, their response is fear and the messages is “Fear not!” I suspect that God has something to say to you as well.

    What is God saying (God’s word) to you today?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:160 – Truth

    Psalm 119:160 – Truth

    The source of your word is truth,
    and every one of your righteous judgments is eternal.

    It is said that we live in an age where truth is becoming less and less important.

    Personally, I disagree. I think truth has rarely been all that important in human society. From village gossip to the propaganda inscriptions of ancient rulers, words were made to serve the goals of those speaking them, with truth either secondary, or of no concern at all.

    What has happened in our modern society is that technology has made it much easier to spread lies. It is much easier to provide good evidence for falsehood as well.

    I am not an artists, but I wanted a picture of a tiger cat like my Mo (the Energion Spokescat!) taking off on a quadcopter to fly around the house. I fed a couple of sentences to Adobe Firefly and you can see what I got below.

    Cat on a Quadcopter!

    Now I see a number of things about this that indicate it’s not real, but I’m wonder what would happen if I posted this on social media and said that Mo had learned to ride on a quadcopter I’d bought him, and was now carrying out his mission of flinging all objects possible to the ground.

    There might even be people who would repost the picture and claim that they now knew cats could do this, and who wouldn’t care if the picture was generated by AI. This is why I always try to indicate when something I post was generated by AI.

    No, Mo does not ride any kind of flying device. That picture is absolutely artificial. But I have seen less plausible pictures immediately accepted as truth simply because they tended to back someone’s political or social views. When someone points out the problems with a picture or a post, I frequently see people respond what was posted was plausible and fit with the character of the person(s) described.

    No matter how many fact checkers we may line up, people will believe what they want to believe. But that isn’t the main problem. The main problem is that people become indifferent to the truth of any statement or the genuineness of any picture. They decide that doesn’t matter.

    I think it would be better if we had opinions on many less topics, and only took a position on something we had been able to study thoroughly enough to give a good foundation to our opinion on it.

    The Psalmist is here thankful that God’s Word, the foundation of all God’s creation, is founded in genuine reality, really real reality. When God judges it’s right.

    So we get the idea that when we get something from God’s word, it must be true. This is in turn morphed into the idea that if you found it in the Bible, it must be true. That’s obviously why we have hundreds of denominations with a variety of opinions on just what the Bible teaches.

    It’s not that we all have to be right. We’re human. We’re going to make mistakes. Lots of them. The point is that we need to be very careful what we claim is true and what we accept as true. That includes studying your Bible. Are you sure you’ve gotten precisely what that verse said? Perhaps you need to study some more.

    Or perhaps we should simply admit that we are expressing our opinion of what is true.

    Now don’t get the idea that opinions are unimportant. An opinion should be backed by the best evidence you can find. You should try to have accurate, true opinions. Just don’t be arrogant enough to believe you always do.

    A commitment to God’s Word means both a commitment to serious study, and also a realization-an accurate realization!-that we are not perfect.

    Seek truth. Admit fallibility.

    (The featured image, also a cat on a quadcopter, was generated by Jetpack AI. Different take!)

  • Psalm 119:159

    Psalm 119:159

    Look how I love your precepts!
    In your lovingkindness, LORD, give me life.

    Reading this Psalm drives me frequently to meditate on the nature of life, and particularly spiritual aspects of it. In this verse, for example, we have two lines that could be connected in at least two distinctive ways.

    First, we could see the first as a boast, as calling attention to one’s incredible goodness, which the Lord should reward by granting life. We are sometimes put off by this approach, because it sounds self-righteous. But I wonder how many of us can claim that we have never called on God to take note of various good things that we have done as we request something else. We believe that we don’t really have anything that gives us a claim on God except that lovingkindness of the second half of the verse, but at the same time, we just can’t help putting ourselves in a good light.

    Second, however, we can take this quite differently. “Look Lord, how I love your precepts, but I know that isn’t going to do the trick. In your lovingkindness, the one thing that gives me any hope, give me life.” This is also a very common prayer, I think. It’s the one that says, “I’ve really put everything into this, but it’s all in your hands, Lord.”

    I’m not sure what relationship the Psalmist proposed between the two lines, though from reading the Psalm I gather he is well aware that he needs God to get him through the trials of his life. He’s well aware of what he owes to God, and the things he can only expect to receive from God.

    This is one of the more interesting elements of the Bible story. Most countries or cultures record the best possible things about their ancestors and founders. They present stories of heroes who accomplished great things. These are to be a source of pride for the nation, and also an example of what the true citizen should really be.

    The Bible does not take this approach. We get the good, the bad, and the ugly, and little enough of the first sometimes. The characters are all seriously flawed. God isn’t working with championship material, at least as presented in the text. We get full descriptions of the failings of prophets, priests, kings, and people in general.

    Take, for example, the lawgiver and hero of the exodus, Moses. I referenced Deanna Thompson’s excellent commentary on Deuteronomy yesterday. Here’s a quote:

    Theological reflection on Moses as paradigmatic of the spiritual life, a life devoted to God, and at the same time a flawed, limited life with tragic dimensions to it, offers profound insight into the human condition. In the pages of Deuteronomy we find the dramatic conclusion to one of the most powerful stories of the Bible, one that speaks to the deeply human issues of limits, brokenness, and incompleteness along with evidence of faithful obedience to “choose life,” as Moses implores the people to do in his final speech to them. Moses is not an ideal character; indeed, that his human failings mix with his successes is what draws us to his story and to the wider story that is Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 30:14 implores us to keep the story in our mouth and in our heart as we strive to live in faithful obedience to God’s living Word. May our reading and reflecting on Deuteronomy help us choose life in the midst of the constant threat of death.

    Deanna Thompson, Deuteronomy, BELIEF Commentary Series, p. 35

    As Christians, we maintain that Jesus was perfect. He was and is God, after all! But if we look at the stories of the apostles, we find the same pattern. They are portrayed in the gospels with all their faults and failings.

    It’s good to do right as much as we can. But it’s also good to remember that we have a heavenly parent who is ready to work with us as we are and take as far, or not-so-far, as we can go. We’d love to be that great person. Look, Lord, how much we want the life you have for us.

    In your lovingkindness, carry us!