Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Bible Commentary

  • Psalm 119:147 – Before Dawn

    Psalm 119:147 – Before Dawn

    I got up before dawn and cried out.
    I put my hope in your words.

    I’ve said in some of these posts that there were many ways I could go, but, of course, I choose one. With today’s text, though there are doubtless a number of ways I could go, I really kept thinking of one thing: What’s with the early morning thing?

    Many people talk about their morning devotions, and emphasize prayer before you get up, and the importance of meeting God as you begin your day. This is supposed to make your day better. One of the side effects of this emphasis on morning devotions is that many who are not morning people simply decide devotions are not for them.

    Let me start with the procedure that I have used in producing these meditations. It starts in the evening, generally shortly after I go to bed. I read and begin thinking about the text I’ll write on the next evening. Then I look back at it through the day, especially if, as has happened multiple times, I actually forget which verse I’m meditating on while I’m working. In the evening I write my post on the text and schedule it to be published the next day at 7 am, at which point I will be meditating on the next one.

    Any number of times, this procedure has failed me. I’ve been so tired some evenings that I went to sleep without looking at the text first. A couple of times, I’ve forgotten until after work, and started meditating around dinner time. Once I completely failed in following my procedure, and sat down to write about the text and read it at the same time. Oddly enough, I still found a meditation, even though it was “speed meditation”!

    While I like a morning prayer time, that time is infrequently the most important time of prayer for me in the day. For me there will be various times during work. Lunch time is one of the better times for reading scripture. Prayer is more likely to come multiple times during the work day at my desk. I’m pretty sure a strong majority of my prayer time over the last 30 years has occurred at my desk at work.

    I believe the psalmist when he said he got up before dawn and cried out. I believe that was a good thing for him. But everyone approaches their day differently. The pattern we impose on our meditations can be itself a work, and a dead tradition.

    I would suggest spending some time in prayer and meditation at any time that strikes you as valuable. Then watch what happens. I have found that if I don’t take breaks during the day and do something to keep my spirit in shape, the day will go badly. I have found it doesn’t matter if I pray right at the moment I get up. Now sometimes I do, because I feel called to pray about something specific.

    No matter when you call out to God, you can apply the second half of this verse and hope in the divine words, whether on the pages of scripture or spoken to you in your heart.

    What time will you spend with God today?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:145 – Answer Me

    Psalm 119:145 – Answer Me

    I cried out with all my heart.
    Answer me, LORD!
    I will observe your statutes.

    If you have spent any time in prayer, you have likely spent time wondering if an answer was coming, and if it was coming, when would that be.

    This is not just our experience in prayer, but our experience in almost any relationship. The time between a request and response seems very long.

    I suspect this is inevitable. Everything takes time, but we like to see results immediately. Waiting in line is difficult for us. We wonder why the line doesn’t move faster, or why the store doesn’t take action to open more checkout stations.

    Near my home there is a railroad track that leads into a nearby chemical factory. Frequently we have trains going in and out of the plant, often adding more loaded cars over a period of time. As a result, one can wait quite a long time for these trains to get out of the way. Traffic can line up for a long ways down the road on either side.

    I am not so patient. I’ll frequently take a detour around the train, crossing the track some ways away. Sometimes this gets me to my destination faster, but frequently by the time I’ve completed my detour, I find that the traffic has dissipated, and I took longer getting around the delay than I would have taken just living through it.

    There’s this natural desire to make things happen if they aren’t happening. We’d like everything to work on our timetable. But when we’re waiting on God and going on our own detour it’s possible that, like I do with the train, we might miss what’s going on because we’re so busy working our way around. We are seeming to accomplish things when we’re just occupying time on detours.

    With the psalmist, we cry out with our whole heart. We ask for an answer. We promise God our obedience, our observance, our careful attention. But it’s easy to play busy, rather than to wait.

    There are times to be busy. We don’t want to miss those. But there are also times to watch and wait, to look to the Lord for the answer. Like Habakkuk (2:1), we need to climb up on the watchtower, stand guard, and wait to see what the Lord says.

    Can you manage to wait for God today?

  • Psalm 119:144 – Testimonies

    Psalm 119:144 – Testimonies

    Your testimonies are righteous forever.
    Give me understanding that I may live.

    This verse illustrates a point I’ve made a few times during this series. The psalmist does not draw clear distinctions between the various terms he uses for God’s law. There’s the overarching “Torah” or “instruction,” but it’s very difficult to differentiate functions for the different aspects of this instruction in the text. This is why I believer the psalmist is using a variety of terms both for literary value (imagine this whole psalm with one word for “law”!) but also to emphasize the broad nature of God’s law.

    This runs from historical narrative, personal experience, and instructions for specific circumstances, all the way to general ethical principles, all wound together. It’s important to understand this. Logically, we distinguish law, as such, from other things in scripture, but this Psalm is not attempting to make careful literary or logical distinctions. He’s praising God for the whole.

    In the law as conceived here we learn that God creates, judges, calls, rescues, guides, blesses, and curses. God interacts with people in many and varied ways. Much of this interaction, in fact, I would argue, the vast majority of the interaction comes in what we would call the natural order of the universe.

    We sometimes look for God in action, and when we fail to find spectacular things happening, we think God is no longer active. I recall in a class I was teaching someone asking me why God is no longer so active as in the Bible. My first reaction is to look around the room and note that we are still here. The laws of nature are still functioning. That’s God in action.

    Someone did something wonderful for me and for my family this week. It was a complete surprise. There was no apparent violation of the laws of nature, but I still believe it was a miracle, and I say this without intending to take anything away from the person who did it.

    So when we get to this verse and we see the prayer, “Give me understanding that I may live,” we see God in action, always and everywhere. “Except the LORD build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” God is, by nature, involved with everything.

    Some people wonder why we should be totally dependent on God’s grace for salvation. Let’s go back further. We’re totally dependent on God’s grace for existence. I like to call this creating grace, the realization that our very existence is a gift. So any other dependence on God is simply derivative of that initial complete dependence. You can’t pay God, because you’d be paying God out of the Divine bank account.

    There’s one other special aspect of this prayer. It’s a prayer that will be fulfilled. For Christians, I would point to James 1:5: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all generously and willingly, and it will be given.” The understanding or the wisdom is a gift that will be given.

    What might change for you today if you relied on God to answer this prayer?

  • Psalm 119:143 – Trouble!

    Psalm 119:143 – Trouble!

    Trouble and anguish have found me,
    Still I delight in your commands.

    I’m going to let a Psalm take over commentary for today.

    1 In you, LORD, I take refuge.
        Never let me be disappointed.
    2 Deliver me in your righteousness, and rescue me.
        Turn your ear to me, and save me.
    3 Be to me a rock of refuge to which I may always go.
        Give the command to save me,
        for you are my rock and my fortress.
    4 Rescue me, my God, from the hand of the wicked,
        from the hand of the unrighteous and cruel man.
    5 For you are my hope, Lord GOD,
        my confidence from my youth.
    6 I have relied on you from the womb.
        You are he who took me out of my mother’s womb.
        I will always praise you.
    7 I am a marvel to many,
        but you are my strong refuge.
    8 My mouth shall be filled with your praise,
        with your honor all day long.
    9 Don’t reject me in my old age.
        Don’t forsake me when my strength fails.
    10 For my enemies talk about me.
        Those who watch for my soul conspire together,
    11   saying, “God has forsaken him.
        Pursue and take him, for no one will rescue him.”
    12 God, don’t be far from me.
        My God, hurry to help me.
    13 Let my accusers be disappointed and consumed.
        Let those who want to harm me be covered with disgrace and scorn.
    14 But I will always hope,
        and will add to all of your praise    .
    15 My mouth will tell about your righteousness,
        and of your salvation all day,
        though I don’t know its full measure.
    16 I will come with the mighty acts of the Lord GOD
        I will make mention of your righteousness, even of yours alone.
    17 God, you have taught me from my youth.
        Until now, I have declared your wondrous works.
    18 Yes, even when I am old and gray-haired, God, don’t forsake me,
        until I have declared your strength to the next generation,
        your might to everyone who is to come.
    19 God, your righteousness also reaches to the heavens.
        You have done great things.
        God, who is like you?
    20 You, who have shown us many and bitter troubles,
        you will let me live.
        You will bring us up again from the depths of the earth.
    21 Increase my honor
        and comfort me again.
    22 I will also praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, my God.
        I sing praises to you with the lyre, Holy One of Israel.
    23 My lips shall shout for joy!
        My soul, which you have redeemed, sings praises to you!
    24 My tongue will also talk about your righteousness all day long,
        for they are disappointed, and they are confounded,
        who want to harm me.

    Psalm 71, World English Bible, slightly modified by me.
  • Psalm 119:142 – Eternal

    Psalm 119:142 – Eternal

    Your righteousness is right forever,
    and your instruction is reliable.

    I commonly use the phrase “God’s eternal law” in discussing the absolute, eternal, immutable law of God. This is what defines who God is and the purpose of the universe, and is not subject to our perspective. That is to say, objective law. God’s law which is forever, in the words of this verse.

    Our problem is that we cannot really comprehend eternal things, nor can we truly comprehend things objectively. There is always an element of our own experience in what we do. It is a statement of faith when we claim that God’s law is, in fact eternal.

    Each individual law contained in scripture, or expressed in any other way is a derivative of God’s eternal law. A particular expression of God’s law is never the same as God’s eternal law, though it derives its authority from that eternal law. Just as I understand God as without beginning or end, and as trinity, things which are not empirically observable, so I understand God’s law as eternal, again something which cannot be objectively demonstrated.

    Growing up, I regularly heard the ten commandments described as God’s eternal law. This was to be distinguished from various other laws, largely ceremonial, in Torah, which are temporary. (Note that this is growing up in a Christian, Seventh-day Adventist home. This is not the understanding of Judaism.)

    The problem here is that Torah itself does not make this particular distinction. All of the laws given by God are binding. They may be binding at different times, on different people, and under different circumstances, but they remain divine law.

    I maintain that all expressions of law that we can receive an understand relate to particular times and circumstances. Some are much more eternal and broadly applicable than others. All derive from God’s eternal law. None are, themselves, eternal in form and expression.

    I’m going to embed two videos here that come from my series on Paul from some years ago. The first begins a discussion of reading about law in scripture.

    The second follows up with more detail.

    Now there are a few sessions between these two, so if you are very determined, you can view the playlist.

    But now we jump to the second half of the verse. “Eternal” is daunting and impossible to reach. Sometimes we have a tendency to dismiss the things we cannot fully understand. But with this statement we get the other side. We can rely on God’s instruction. We may not be able to fully comprehend the source, but we can rely on what we have.

    In real life we learn to accept what works. We get on airplanes and travel without having a full conception of how that aircraft works. We don’t often think about it, but that aircraft is also not perfectly made. It would be hard to even conceive of what perfect means. Every part is tested, not to some absolute perfection, but rather to certain tolerances. We live with this sort of thing every day.

    One way to discover that you can rely on certain things as a way to live is simply to try them. Taste and see that God is good. Try it. Don’t get shaken by what you can’t understand. You can understand enough.

    Take the challenge to adventure with an incomprehensibly great God!

  • Psalm 119:141 – Despised

    Psalm 119:141 – Despised

    Though I am small and despised,
    I do not forget your precepts.

    There are two times when it is difficult to stay on the right track: When things are going well and people are praising you, and when things are going badly, and people look down on you. Either of these can make you turn away from the right path.

    Well, then there’s the third option, which is that things are going moderately well. Well enough for you to be comfortable, but not so well that people are coming and praising you. Then there’s a major temptation to apathy, to contentment with things being not so bad.

    In real life, we may be confronted with any of these situations. We can find that ridicule prevents us from doing what is right or speaking of what is right. Or when things are going well, we find pride taking over, and we start to think too well of ourselves, and often speaking too highly of ourselves to others.

    Then there is the way that is simple, but very hard. That is to think of ourselves as we ought to. Paul speaks about this in Romans 12:3 —

    I tell all among you through the grace that has been given to me that you shouldn’t think of yourselves as better than you are, but you should think of yourselves properly {or wisely}, each according to the wisdom God has measured out to them.

    This verse doesn’t tell you that you should always think of yourself poorly. You don’t have to say that you are small and despised as did the psalmist. It’s likely you’ll feel that way sometimes, but that’s not some type of “holy” goal. Nor should you consider yourself more important than others. Rather, you’re supposed to think of yourself as you really are, as God sees you.

    This invites a change of vision, a change of perspective. And the psalmist tells us where we need to be. We need to be looking at what is right. He speaks of God’s precepts, as he has elsewhere spoken of God’s word, God’s testimonies, God’s statues, God’s judgments, and God’s commands.

    That’s all the long version of saying, “What’s right.”

    That is often our problem. We aren’t concerned with what’s right, but rather with what other people think of us. That is never a good place to be. Sometimes the person whose opinion matters to you is himself out of sync with what is right, and may be despising you for the things you won’t do in order to get ahead.

    How are you going to look at yourself today?

  • Psalm 119:140

    Psalm 119:140

    You’re word is thoroughly tested.
    Your servant loves it.

    Several translations use “promise” rather than “word” here. There is some reason to do that, but in this case I like “word” as having a broader meaning that includes “promise.”

    In what way is God’s word thoroughly tested? We talk about being sure of God’s word, of it being true, of God being faithful, but what drives us to believe that?

    This is a case where experience is very important. Many people play down experience as less reliable than scripture, and in one important way it is. The reason your experience is less reliable than scripture is that it has not had the same testing that God’s word given in scripture has.

    Scripture is a recounting of the experience of lots of people with God. Even when scripture records a specific statement with “the Lord says this,” that is an experience of God. If you don’t think hearing from God is an experience, then I hope you’ll have a chance to experience it. If you don’t remember such an experience, read that of some of the prophets, such as Ezekiel 1 or Isaiah 6.

    So if you have an experience of hearing from God, what’s the difference? The difference is testing. God’s word in scripture has been testing over the centuries over and over again and we have found it secure. We’re not questioning this any more. It has become the experience against which you can test your everyday experience for validity.

    I personally believe that God can still speak today. How will you know if that happens? There are many things I could mention, but the key one is this: Read that tested word in scripture and become so familiar with with it that you know God’s voice beyond doubt.

    Try listening for God’s voice today. Remember to check out the tested word as well!

    (Featured image generated by Adobe Firefly using a prompt created by Gemini AI. Yes, I’m experimenting.)

  • Psalm 119:139 – Zeal

    Psalm 119:139 – Zeal

    I am overcome by my zeal,
    because my enemies have forgotten your word.

    What exactly makes you angry about another person?

    Few of us can claim that we have not been provoked to anger by something about another person. The question is whether or not the cause of our anger is valid. But, you say, we’re talking about zeal. True, but more precisely we’re talking about an emotion regarding other people that is overwhelming.

    So let’s use “zeal,” as I did in the translation. What gets you feeling zealous? What gets you to take action about something?

    And that’s where we can join the Psalmist. For him, what gets him going is that there are people out there who have forgotten God’s word. I wonder what he did about it.

    Often we speak against anger (or sometimes any emotion) as though the emotion itself is bad. I don’t think this is right. I’ll note that when Jesus spoke against anger, it was against anger at your brother that could lead you to doing harm.

    I can get very angry, but my most common approach to interaction is reconciliation. I want to get people talking to one another, or having a dialogue with me, with the hope that we’ll work out some good solution to our problems. I may want to convince them of the (obviously excellent!!!) approaches that I absolutely know are right. Even so, I generally want a solution reached through dialog. One of the things that bothers me most is that so many times people just won’t talk. Either they’ve talked too long already, or the other person is too far off the map for them to engage with.

    And I admit that there are times when these people are right. I have the experience of wasting time talking with people and trying to create meetings and discussions to bring reconciliation when the parties simply weren’t sincerely interested in a peaceful or friendly solution.

    I don’t entirely like the word “balance,” but there is a balance needed here. Or perhaps an integration. Strong emotions exist for a reason. We need to get angry in order to bring ourselves to action. When there is injustice, when people are being hurt, when people’s lives are destroyed, we need to be angry. And if we consider the law as I discussed it a few days ago, as summed up by loving one another, then when we see people hurting others, our zeal should overcome us, because they have forgotten God’s word.

    On the other hand, we find it much easier to get angry at the other people because they annoy us and not because they have forgotten God’s law. Then we like to pretend tat we’re angry about their failure to serve God properly, while it’s really just that they rub us the wrong way.

    What should you be angry about today?

  • Psalm 119:138 – Righteous and True

    Psalm 119:138 – Righteous and True

    You have sent forth your testimonies righteously,
    And very truthfully.

    I have been treating the word I translate here as “testimonies” as focusing on the stories contained overall in Torah, and also throughout scripture and our experience. The other day I saw a question posted on Facebook regarding a certain aspect of Christian ministry. The person asking the question said specifically that he wanted an answer based both on scripture and experience.

    The story is important. We often look at stories and wonder if they are factually true. We wonder if they are absolutely accurate in every detail. The idea here is that the key message to get is what precisely happened. On the other hand, we can look at stories as metaphorical, always carrying some message, but with the actual details totally irrelevant.

    Most stories, however, are true in multiple ways. They can also be false in multiple was as well. When you see a meme posted on social media, you should always ask the question: Is this based on actual events or data? Beyond that you should also ask whether that information is being used to convey a true result, or to produce valid, effective, and morally good results.

    In all cases, I’m ignoring details. Details are the playground of critics. Stories we like will be excused for minor, inconsequential errors. Stories we don’t like will be picked apart for every possible error of detail in order to diminish the message.

    The stories in the Bible are frequently important in multiple ways. Rarely are stories present in scripture in order to satisfy curiosity. They are there to present a narrative of God’s actions. This means we can study them from multiple angles. We can try to understand God’s intent in the stories. We can learn about God’s laws and how they might apply by meditating on the stories of how those laws came to be.

    We live as part of a story of faith that extends back into prehistory and looks forward to the consummation of all things. God is still sending out–commanding, if you will–righteous testimonies.

    He is sending them out with you today. What message are you sent forth to convey?

    (Featured image generated by Adobe Fireflly from a prompt created by Gemini based on my input.)

  • Psalm 119:137 – Right

    Psalm 119:137 – Right

    You are righteous, Oh LORD,
    and your judgments are correct.

    Have you ever noticed all the things we say about God that might sound like value judgments?

    Everything from God is love or God is good to God is just or God is righteous. Just how did we make that determination and is it ours to make? Come to think of it, what would we do about it if we happened to be wrong? If we quit worshiping or praising God, speaking of all these wonderful attributes, God would still be God and would still do precisely what God wants. Who could stop God?

    Of course we don’t mean that we have evaluated God and decided that God passes all the God-tests. We really don’t! But at the same time, we’re right ready to complain if God doesn’t pass some of the God tests. In our superior opinion, of course.

    So is there anything worthwhile going on here or are we just repeating stuff because other people have repeated it for how long we don’t know?

    I’d suggest that these kinds of affirmations do serve a very real purpose. They help us remember that we are going somewhere, that there are options for things to be better, and that we do actually matter. If God is good, then there is goodness at the other end of our activities, our lives, and even our universe. It’s not all just a jumbled mess.

    In fact, I have known people who don’t believe in God to make similar affirmations about the world we live in. Like various religious believers, they make these affirmations with various levels of assurance. Sometimes it’s a faint hope that things can get better. At other times it’s a determination.

    Over may years I’ve seen this note after various national elections. I always say that God is in control. As affirmed in Daniel 4, God rules in the kingdoms of men. Sometimes God sets over them the basest of men. In the dialect of English I used there, “basest” is not a compliment.

    Inevitably someone then asks me why I bother to vote if I think God rules it all. I think that gets it absolutely backwards. Because God rules, I believe there is a good goal to work toward. Because God rules, I feel I owe the situation the best that I can do. With Dr. Martin Luther King I affirm that ?the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I immediately want to bend it faster!

    We really have our own choice of hope or despair, and it is a choice. If we choose despair, it will follow us all our days. If we choose hope, we will pursue that all our days.

    Will you choose hope, and righteousness, today?

    (Featured image generated by Adobe Express, which uses Adobe Firefly based on a prompt produced in a discussion with Gemini AI.)