Luke 21:5-24

Dear RTB’ers,

It seems in today’s reading that the Pharisees, scribes and Sadducees are no longer troubling Jesus, but that He is speaking to a smaller group of His followers. As they praise the Temple building, He warns them of the future destruction, nearly four decades later. I’ve gone back and forth on this “destruction of Jerusalem” vs. “end of the age” issue, but my Study Bible helped out this morning. It suggested that much of Luke 21:8-18 in today’s reading could easily apply to both of these events. That is, we may not be choosing between an either/or position. So that’s helpful. Typically, back in those days, when an invading army was approaching, the citizens would flock to the safety of the city and its city walls. Not so this time, Jesus says, with three warnings: if you are in Judea, flee to the mountains; if you are in the city, you must leave; and if you are in the country, do not enter the city (Luke 21:21). He saw in the future that Jerusalem would be trampled, as it was in 70 A.D.!

What struck me today was a New Testament – New Testament connection. Jesus speaking:

But before all this they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. This will be your opportunity to bear witness. Settle it therefore in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.

Luke 21:12-15

Some three weeks down the road we will begin reading the Book of Acts. In Acts 4 we will see Jesus’ words played out, as Peter and John are testifying before the Council: Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. (Acts 4:13) They had been with Jesus. That was enough!

Blessings!

Luke 20:27-21:4

Dear RTB’ers,

It’s always nice to connect the New Testament with the Old Testament. We get an opportunity to do that today, with the Sadducees asking Jesus about the resurrection (trying to trip him up, actually). Their question of seven brothers all dying and all having the same one wife calls to mind Genesis 38. In Gen. 38:6-11 we see Judah’s son, Er having a wife, Tamar, and dying. Then Judah asked Er’s brother Onan to go in to Tamar and raise up children for Er. But he also died. Then Judah withheld his third son, Shelah. So while we don’t have the Sadducees’ seven brothers as in today’s reading, we do see the pattern of one brother raising up children for a deceased brother. God later established this as law in Israel. See Deuteronomy 25:5-6.

I have always had trouble understanding the quotation in verse 44: The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, until I put Your enemies under Your feet.” (I have added the bold for further clarification.) Here Jesus is quoting Psalm 110:1, a psalm written by David. My Study Bible clarified the first six words at the beginning of that quotation by substituting “God” for “The Lord” and “David’s Lord” for “my Lord”, so it now would read, “God said to David’s Lord…”. That is, David’s Lord would be David’s superior – ultimately the Messiah…”. That helps me see how Jesus was confounding the Pharisees and challenging them that David’s descendent (the Messiah) was also his Lord. I hope this helps others.

There have been times when I have spoken in churches about giving. At St. Andrew’s we see tithing as the Biblical standard. But I’ve pointed out that three other Biblical references are quite a bit more demanding than the tithe – “first fruits”; the rich, young ruler; and the widow’s mite. These three all make tithing less challenging!

Blessings!

Luke 19:47-20:26

Dear RTB’ers,

The Lord is risen! He is risen, indeed! Hallelujah!!

The chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people were seeking to destroy Him, but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were hanging on His words.

Luke 19:47b-48

The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on Him at that very hour, … but they feared the people.

Luke 20:19

And they were not able in the presence of the people to catch Him in what He said, but marveling at His answer they became silent.

Luke 20:26

The chief priests and the scribes have one goal during that eventful Holy Week, to destroy Jesus. They ask Him questions, intentionally designed to make Him fail. But He outwits them each time. And even though they are marveling at His answer, they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge Him for who He is. Nearly a century ago another skeptic got fed up with all the Jesus nonsense that he was hearing and set out to disprove the Resurrection. As I recall, he used only “internal texts” (no outside sources) from that first Holy Week, essentially letting the gospels speak for themselves. In the end that skeptic, who wrote under the name of Frank Morison, not only could not disprove the Resurrection, but ended up embracing Jesus and His truth and came to be a believer himself. His search became a widely popular book, Who Moved the Stone?, originally published in 1930. This Easter morning I would encourage you to order that book or maybe check it out from the library, because without the Resurrection we Christians have nothing! One of my favorite verses (with my own paraphrase) from I Corinthians 15:17,19 is , “…if Jesus is not raised from the dead…, we are, of all people, the most to be pitied.” (See I Cor. 15:12-20.) But we do believe and it did happen!! Praise the Lord, this glorious Easter morning!!.

Blessings!

Luke 19:29-46

Dear RTB’ers,

It’s Holy Saturday. At St. Andrew’s we’re ending Holy Week, while in our readings we’re just beginning. Today, Palm Sunday, as recorded in Luke. We just celebrated Palm Sunday last Sunday, so the story is familiar to all of us. Anything new? To me, yeah: …He sent two of the disciples… (v. 29b). He sent two. Did it take two disciples to bring back a donkey? Recall that He sent 72 of His disciples into the Galilean villages two-by-two (Luke 10:1). Something special about working together…!

Two other incidents are reported in today’s reading – Jesus’ prophecy over Jerusalem’s destruction and His cleansing of the temple. Jesus will have more to say about the destruction of Jerusalem in chapter 21, so we’ll wait on that. As for His cleansing of the temple, this incident is recorded in Holy Week in all three Synoptic gospels, while John has it at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (John 2:13-22). It’s interesting that the market was available in the temple for the benefit of travelers who had come from afar and did not bring sacrificial animals with them; thus with the market in place they could purchase them from traders in the temple. However, Jesus refers to this market as a “den of robbers” (v. 46b), so we’ll go with His take on this marketplace.

Have a blessed Holy Saturday!

Fred

Genesis 37-50

Dear RTB’ers,

It’s Good Friday, not a day where we put a “Happy” in front of that salutation, but rather a day for reflection. So it’s a good day for us to ponder Jesus and His sacrificial death on our behalf. I hope we’ll see one another at church this evening.

No new reading today. Instead the authors of Search the Scriptures ask us to consider Joseph’s life, from chapter 37 forward to the end of the book. I’m especially intrigued by their second question, essentially seeing Joseph as a “type” of Christ. So today, out of the ordinary, how about some posts from you? How many similarities can you find between Joseph and Jesus? I’ve found a few already (I even listed one a few days ago) and I’ll post my list sometime mid-afternoon. So, let us all hear from you!

Have a blessed Good Friday!

Genesis 50

Dear RTB’ers,

“…you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good…” (Gen. 50:19b). This verse stands out for me in all of Genesis, second only to Abraham’s offering of Isaac in Genesis 22. Things happen, good and bad, over which we have no control. Our response needs to be to trust in God for whatever outcome and move on. It’s Jesus’ Gethsemane prayer all over again (fittingly, on this Maundy Thursday remembrance day), “Not My will, but Your will be done.” And another variant on Jesus’ words that we need to embrace, “You are God, I am not.”

Have a blessed Holy Thursday!

Genesis 49

Dear RTB’ers,

Jacob’s blessings on his twelve sons. We see Jacob’s most abundant blessings falling on Judah and Joseph. Why not Reuben, his firstborn? While Israel lived in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine. And Israel heard of it. (Genesis 35:22) So Jacob bypassed Reuben. Why not Simeon and Levi? Go back to Genesis 34, where we read of the violence of their revenge on behalf of their sister, Dinah, and Jacob’s response to that episode: Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites…” (Gen. 34:30). We will see Jacob’s “blessing” on Simeon and Levi fulfilled later in the division of the Promised Land among the twelve tribes, “…I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel.” (Gen. 49:7b) So, with these three set aside, Judah inherits the blessing of Jacob’s firstborn, the firstborn of Leah, and Joseph inherits the blessing of the firstborn of Rachel.

There’s so much more to be said about all this. Let’s discuss Judah and Joseph more at our next gathering on April 7.  

Blessings!

---

See also: January 16 (2023) / Genesis 47-50

Genesis 47:13-48:22

Dear RTB’ers,

Two major stories in today’s reading: Joseph/Pharaoh now owns everything in Egypt – the livestock, the land, and the people – and Jacob places Joseph’s younger, Ephraim, before the firstborn, Manasseh.

Joseph now owns the land and the people, so it is his decision to settle the people in the cities and remove them from their land (Gen. 47:21). I suspect that his major motivation in doing this had to do with the efficiency gained in food distribution during the continuing famine, but that final result – separating the people from their land – makes for a very harsh, emotional reaction from the people. I saw this policy in action on my first trip to Slovakia in 1996. [Recall that the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.] Slovakia (actually, Czechoslovakia) had come under the “Iron Curtain” domination of the USSR in 1948 and had effectively been governed from Moscow. I was in eastern Slovakia, teaching in their second-largest city, Kosice, when we were taken on a tour of a “collective farm”. This farm was a dairy farm; I recall a figure of 10,000 cows on this farm. [By contrast, in the United States, most cow-calf operations are relatively small and have fewer than 50 cows though a few very large operations (with more than 1,000 cows) can be found. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/107126/cow-calf-farm-sizes_768px.png?v=8986)] The people on this collective farm lived in five or six villages spread out on the farmland property and worked the fields and the livestock and did the milking. The Soviets had taken the land and the peoples’ devastation from that separation had been severe – as Carol and I learned more personally in a later trip to Czechia in 2010. So this is what Joseph has done with the Egyptians; he has become a (hopefully, benevolent) dictator.

As for Jacob placing Ephraim before Manasseh (Gen. 48:14-20), recall that Jacob had, himself, taken Esau’s birthright and blessing. My Study Bible stated that Joseph now received the birthright of the firstborn: “…I give you one portion more than your brothers…” (Gen. 48:22a, NASB). Over time we will see the ascendancy of Ephraim over Manasseh and, in fact, over all of the twelve tribes except Judah (and possibly Benjamin).

Blessings!

Genesis 46:1-47:12

Dear RTB’ers,

Carol and I have our Maryland daughter, Nancy here with us this week, together with her two children, Matthew age 6 and Isabelle age 3, so I may have some difficulty getting these early-morning post out. But Holy Week might be a good time for me to fall short – and the rest of you pick it up a bit, commenting/posting on what you are reading.

On March 29 we do not have any new readings – the STS schedule simply has us reviewing Genesis 37-50, essentially Joseph’s life. The second question for that day asks us to draw parallels for Joseph as a “type” of Jesus. So I will jump in ahead a bit with what struck me today as I read about Joseph reuniting with his father Jacob. Jesus had come from His Father and upon his death, Resurrection and Ascension He returned to His Father. As I read about Jacob embracing his son, Joseph after those many years separated, I was thinking about what a happy homecoming that must have been for Jesus and His Father! Your thoughts?

Blessings!