Introducing the Psalms

The Psalms are the Bible’s model prayers. About half of them are written by the famous king David, as well known as a musician and worshipper as he was as a warrior and giant-slayer. There’s a psalm for almost every occasion we’re likely to experience in life. In the Psalms, we find beautiful songs of praise, testimonies to God’s goodness, pleas for help, and questions asked when things don’t work out as they’re supposed to. The Psalms are really meant to be prayed—sung even—rather than just read. I find that I get the most out of them when I adopt them as my own, praying them as my own prayers. I tend to pray them verbatim—doing so aloud and with gusto whenever possible seems to improve the experience immensely—but I know other people who use them as jumping off points into further prayer in their own words. You might even want to try occasionally reading a psalm aloud together with someone else. Take turns reading stanzas aloud. At the end of the psalm—or in the middle of longer psalms—you could jump off-book to pray further about the ways the psalm connects to your own current life circumstances.

If you’re like me, praying two common types of psalms might initially make you a bit uncomfortable:

1. Extravagant claims of righteousness—occasionally, I find myself gulping when, aloud and with gusto, I end up praying something like, ‘I have led a blameless life; I have trusted in the Lord and have not faltered’ (Psalm 26:1). I wonder if the proverbial lightning will strike me down. Despite the fears of divine punishment, a few things have kept me praying these absurd boasts:
   1. First of all, I’ve noticed that my praying of these psalms take on a tone of aspiration: it makes me want to be the kind of person who can pray those things without blushing. That seems like a pretty good result to me.
   2. Secondly, I get the feeling that the psalmist doesn’t mean that he has never made any mistakes. I think what he’s saying is that he has never abandoned God. That’s still a pretty gutsy thing to say, but it’s not quite a claim to perfection. While the ‘not faltering’ thing still kind of trips me up, I think I can honestly say that ever since I met God I’ve taken my relationship with God seriously.
   3. Thirdly, I have a growing suspicion that these extravagant claims to righteousness have less to do with my moral report card, as it were, and more to do with how God sees me. I noticed that sometimes in the same psalm the author will ask for God’s forgiveness and will make one of these audacious claims to utter blamelessness. Once he’s confessed and been forgiven, it’s as if he never even took a mis-step. Perhaps these psalms are saying that, because of God’s goodness, we can be certain that God likes us, sees the best in us, and wants the best for us. If that’s the case—and I’m beginning to believe it is—then we can pray those crazy things with confidence and excitement.
2. Calls for violent retribution—some of the psalms seem like they’re more suited to a Quentin Tarantino movie than to the Bible. While I sometimes still find myself a little squeamish at the sheer bloodthirstiness of some of these ‘crush my enemy’ psalms, I’ve been surprised to find them among the most helpful psalms to pray, for a few reasons:
   1. They help me prepare for the difficulties of the day—if I start the day with one of these psalms, it reminds me that not everything is going to go my way. I can prepare myself, and ask for God’s help in facing the difficulties that are sure to come;
   2. It’s a faithful and non-violent way to vent—it’s extremely liberating to unabashedly express just how I feel about the people who treat me poorly and unfairly. But in the end, it’s harmless. I’m expressing it to God, not letting it leak out in my interactions with people. I express my anger and my desire for revenge; then I leave it in God’s hands to protect me and to vindicate me when appropriate. Once I’ve expressed my feelings and left action in God’s hands, I can much more easily let it go;
   3. I primarily focus the prayers on my true enemies—the New Testament author Paul tells us that our real enemies aren’t other people, but destructive spiritual forces whose entire purpose is to do us harm (Ephesians 6:12). I have no problem praying that these enemies die a gruesome death.

Introducing Isaiah

Isaiah is an Old Testament prophet. The primary role of the Old Testament prophets was not necessarily to predict the future, but to interpret current events from God’s perspective. Just like most other Old Testament prophets, Isaiah’s starting place is the local politics of Israel and Judah—in Isaiah’s case, around 800 B.C. But the scope of Isaiah’s prophecies is especially grand, encompassing surrounding nations, the future, and eventually all of the world and all of history.
During this part of our reading, we’ll be focusing on the latter part of the book. Here’s what has happened already:

1. The nation of Israel (the ten northern tribes of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, the people with whom God had formed a special relationship) is destroyed by the Assyrians;
2. The Assyrians, because of their arrogance and brutality, are judged by God and are in turn conquered by the Babylonians;
3. The Babylonians then proceed to conquer Judah (the two southern tribes of the Twelve Tribes) and carry its people into captivity.

We pick up the story just after the people of Judah have heard that they will be carried into captivity. We’ll read about God’s plans for Judah and for Babylon. And then Isaiah describes a surprising new, larger plan God unveils, involving the whole world and a mysterious servant.

Introducing Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy is one of the five books of Moses. Moses was the great leader who, by God’s power, rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, introduced them to God, and led them to the land God gave them. After Moses and the Israelites escape from Egypt, they spend forty years wandering in the desert (it’s a long story—we’ll get to it when we read Exodus and Numbers). Toward the end of that time in the desert, Moses knows that he is about to die just as the Israelites reach their final destination, the Promised Land. So, Moses makes a final speech to the Israelites, reminding them of all they’ve been through and passing on to them what he has learned about God. Deuteronomy is that final speech.

Introducing Revelation

Revelation is a collection of visions seen by John, one of Jesus’ twelve apostles. They’re written in a genre, called ‘apocalyptic,’ that was apparently very popular at the time but has now become extinct. Apocalyptic writing is very stylized. Two prominent features of apocalypse are visions of fantastical creatures and the symbolic use of numbers. The best we can tell, certain numbers and images had standard, well-known interpretations; but we’ve lost the keys to interpreting them. So, this most popular of the biblical genres has become perhaps the most difficult to understand for modern readers. I often liken Revelation and other apocalyptic literature to comic books: easy to read if you know the conventions, but pretty confusing if the style is unfamiliar. I think Revelation can still be worthwhile to read, and even pretty entertaining, if we simply acknowledge that some of the code is lost to us. The over-the-top imagery is quite engaging, and I think it’s possible to get a decent (but not exact) picture of what’s being described by considering what impressions the images evoke and by seeing how an image is used over the course of the book. It’s almost certainly a lost cause to spend any time at all trying to figure out what the various numbers mean, apart from the vaguest of impressions.

Almost everyone agrees that parts of Revelation refer to current events at the time of John’s writing and that parts of it refer to the end of time or to the distant future. People disagree about which parts refer to John’s time and which refer to the future. In getting the most out of my reading of Revelation, I try to avoid the temptation to map it to our own current events. Instead, I try first to ask the question, ‘What would John’s original readers have gotten from this?’ Then, I try to translate that message into a more timeless truth, which I can apply to my own life.

Introducing Paul’s Letters

After Revelation, our New Testament readings for this season are several letters from Paul, one of the church’s early leaders, to a number of churches he started.

As we read these passages, it’s helpful to keep in mind that we are, in fact, reading letters—actually, we’re reading one half of an exchange of letters. Paul and his team would start new churches in new cities, and then rather quickly move on to other new cities. They would leave each newly started church with the task of living out their newfound faith within the culture and circumstances of their city. Inevitably, these new churches would encounter situations they didn’t know how to respond to, hear teachings that they didn’t know how to mesh with what they’d heard from Paul and his team, and run into other unexpected problems. They would send messengers and letters to Paul asking for his guidance; and he would respond with the letters we now have in the Bible. We don’t have a record of the letters and messages to Paul from these churches, but usually Paul’s responses gives us a pretty good idea of what’s going on; it’s sort of like overhearing one half of a phone conversation.

Ephesus was a city in the Roman province of Asia (modern-day Turkey). It was one of the largest and most important cities in the whole Roman Empire. It was a significant Aegean port and a center of trade, commerce, culture, and religion. Paul spent an atypical amount of time in Ephesus, preaching there for more than two years. In the letter to the Ephesians, Paul places a special emphasis on the theological implications of being a community of people following Jesus together.

Corinth was the political and commercial center of Greece. It had a typical Greek culture, especially its philosophy and wisdom. The citizens of Corinth were engaged in the worship of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, which brought a great deal of prostitution to the city through the temples dedicated to her. In 1 Corinthians, Paul specifically addresses issues including division within the church, sexual immorality, questionable practices (such as eating meat previously offered to idols), and proper use of spiritual gifts. This letter has a mission to build up the followers of Jesus in Corinth while stemming behavior that's gotten out of control. 2 Corinthians has a different structure and tone than the other. In it, Paul deals with issues of a more personal nature to him rather than the general issues in 1 Corinthians. Paul uses the first part of the letter to heal any rifts between himself and others in Corinth and to talk some about his current situation. He continues with a call for a collection for the poor. The end of the letter changes pace as Paul defends the authority given to him by God, probably in response to "false teachers" challenging his message.

Galatians addresses what was a pretty major area of concern for the early church: the place of Judaism in following Jesus. As increasing numbers of non-Jews (often called ‘gentiles’ in the Bible—gentile is an Anglicization of the Greek for ‘the nations’) became followers of Jesus, it brought up the question of what their relationship to Judaism was supposed to be. Did gentiles need to become Jews to be followers of Jesus? If not, what relevance did the Old Testament have for these gentile Jesus-followers? And if non-Jews could become followers of Jesus, what did that mean about God’s previously unique relationship with the Jews? It was a surprisingly thorny issue because it involved issues of culture, deep theology about the goodness of God and the reliability of his promises, and very practical questions of everyday living. While the specific issue of non-Jews following Jesus is certainly less of a big deal nowadays, the big questions behind the issue—of culture, dealing with difference, how rules help us and hurt us, and the nature of God’s promises—all still seem pretty relevant.

1 and 2 Timothy and Titus were written not to a church, but to individual people. Paul had left his younger ministry partner Timothy behind in a city called Ephesus; similarly, he left Titus behind in Crete. Their task was to select and train a group of leaders for the new churches they had started there. This letter contains Paul’s follow-up instructions, probably based on some questions Timothy and Titus had sent to him.

In applying the lessons of these letters to our lives, it’s helpful to recognize that Paul is writing to specific groups of people with specific questions and problems. It’s not always possible or beneficial to apply Paul’s instructions without some interpretation. A helpful sequence of questions for me is,

1. What problem or question is Paul addressing?
2. What is his answer to his audience?
3. What’s the general principle behind his answer?
4. Are there circumstances in my life where that principle would apply?
5. What would it look like for me to take Paul’s advice?

Introducing the Gospel According to John

The book of John is the last of the four gospels. Authorship is traditionally credited to John, one of Jesus’ twelve closest followers, known as the apostles (the ‘sent ones’). He refers to himself in the gospel as ‘the disciple Jesus loved.’ This is probably both a mark of humility—not wanting to refer to himself by name—and of the deep affection that he felt from Jesus and for Jesus. The book is dated at 70 AD which means that it was written later in John's life, about 30 years after Jesus died and later than the other three gospels.

John's perspective on the life of Jesus is notably different from those of the other three gospels (called the ‘synoptic’—Greek for ‘seen together’—gospels). There are some differences in the timeline of events, for example the duration of Jesus' ministry, the overlapping of his ministry with John the Baptist, and the number of trips he made to Jerusalem. In the synoptic gospels, Jesus is betrayed by Judas, but in John, Jesus identifies himself for arrest. Only John contains the stories of turning water to wine at a wedding and the resurrection of Lazarus.

John's gospel contains more monologue and dialogue from Jesus with fewer miracles. The miracles he performs in John are perceived less as demonstrations of power and more as signs of things to come; in other words, the symbolic meaning of the miracles is given more prominence in John’s gospels than in the others. While John’s gospel contains, in general, fewer miracles, in these Epiphany readings, we’ll actually focus on miracles in John. How do people respond to Jesus’ miracles in John? And what’s the deeper significance John draws from them?

Introducing the Gospel According to Mark

Mark was one of the early followers of Jesus. He may or may not have known Jesus himself, but he was probably a traveling companion of the apostle Simon Peter. Simon Peter never wrote a history of Jesus himself, but John Mark collected and wrote down Simon Peter’s story. I’m sure that as you read you’ll see that Peter’s perspective comes out strongly, and that it’s a really valuable perspective to have. Mark’s gospel was the first one written, about 30 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. It seems that both Matthew and Luke based their gospels on Mark’s. They took the basic plot from Mark, and added inserted additional teaching and stories. Mark’s story itself is very terse and quick-moving. Jesus is seen here as a man of action.

If you’d like more thoughts about Mark, you can find a Daily Bible Guide for Mark on the Leap of Faith page. The dates and passage splits don’t match our current schedule, but you may be able to glean some helpful insights on the story and how to apply it to your life.

Introducing the Gospel of Matthew