Thursday, June 19, 2014

The Road to Rome, From Alabama to Tekoa, to Judah, and Bethlehem, and Through Babylon



Yeah, I know.  It's a heckuva route to get to Rome.  In the title, I'm referring to my Scriptural path to Paul's letter to the Romans.

For roughly the past six weeks or so, my personal Bible study has been in the Old Testament.  I've studied Amos, the Prophet from Tekoa, and (as I'm sure you can see from my last post) Jeremiah.  I've prayed a lot for guidance from the Holy Spirit.  Honestly, y'all, when I finish a book of the Bible, I don't know where I'm going to turn next.  I'm just going along with where the Holy Spirit is leading me, and I don't understand exactly why I'm being led by this particular route, and I don't feel like I have to know.  I'm happily studying the Scriptures that the Lord is putting in front of me.

After finishing a study in Jeremiah, where I didn't actually complete the whole book, just a study of chapters 1-36, I was led to Ruth, and from there to I Samuel, II Samuel, and then to Daniel.  I finished Daniel yesterday, and today I was led to Paul's Letter to the Romans.

Understand something, y'all.  I'm not advocating that anyone else follow the same study path that I'm on.  For well over a decade, I was away from the Church, and my feet had strayed so far away from God, and this personal journey through God's word is just that:  PERSONAL.  I've got a lot of catching up to do.  Most of y'all who are reading this blog are probably far ahead of me in your personal transformation, and you should be studying in the way that the Holy Spirit leads you to do.  I'm just recording my own study course in this blog because I've got to tell SOMEBODY about what I'm experiencing.  I want to tell EVERYBODY, really, because every day's reading in Scripture is filling me with such awe and wonder that I'm going to explode if I don't share it.

Back to the Bible.  What I'm seeing, and what I'm getting from this study, are several things.  In studying the Prophets, we learn not only that God is a long-range planner, but we learn things about the Prophets as fellow humans.  Amos, Jeremiah, Daniel.....they were as real as we are, and they had very personal feelings about the events that happened in their lives, and the words and visions that God revealed to them to tell to others.  Personally, I'm learning a lot about obedience; unswerving, unquestioning obedience to the very omnipotent, omniscient God.  I'm learning that God's plan is perfect, and that His faithfulness is perfect, and unswerving.

After completing Jeremiah, I detoured from the Prophet's writings to Ruth, which led to I and II Samuel, where the lineage of David and Christ is first recorded.  I'm still processing a lot of what I read in those books, and will no doubt be going back to them again.

Daniel was mind-blowing to read as a complete book, rather than the way I read it in my youth.  When I was younger, in Sunday School, I learned the miracles in the stories of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and of Daniel in the lion's den.  Now that I'm older, and a little more learned in the history of the Middle East, the power and majesty of the visions that were revealed to Daniel hit me harder.  In those visions, Daniel saw not only the destruction and partitioning of Babylon, but the coming of Christ and the Catholic Church and the Papacy.  I didn't see or understand all that on my own.  I have at hand Halley's Bible Handbook, 23rd Edition, Copyright 1962 from Zondervan Publishing House as a reference work.

As a famous comedian once said, "I told you all of that so I could tell you this."  Today, I felt moved to open Romans.  I've been avoiding studying Romans as a complete Book for a couple of years now, and some of you reading this blog will understand why.  Romans is not only a long epistle, (16 Chapters in one letter!) but it's also one of the deepest books in the Bible, where Paul was trying to give his most complete testimony to a group of the faithful in Rome.  When Paul wrote it, he was unsure if he'd ever get out of Jerusalem alive, and was desperate to communicate a message to a budding congregation in the most famous city in the ancient world.

Of course, I've read verses from Romans in the last few years, and have studied and reflected on short passages in it, but to make a study of the book as a complete work.....well, I just wasn't ready yet.  I remember taking several months to get through it back in the 1980's in my Youth Bible Study at Eulaton First Baptist Church, but the lessons of Paul have dimmed through the years, and I think I'll understand things a little better now.

(Here's a short, funny story from my youth:  There's a lot of talk of circumcision in Romans.  I think I was probably fifteen years old or so, maybe sixteen, and I didn't know what circumcision was.  Our Bible Study class was being led by our young, female Youth Minister, a lady by the name of Rachel.  In the middle of the class one Sunday night, I finally blurted out, "what the heck is circumcision?  I don't get it!"  At which point, from the looks and blushes on everyone else' face, I realized that I was the only one in the room who didn't know.  Without speaking a word, Rachel thumbed through the dictionary in the back of her Bible and handed it to me, to read the definition silently.  Oh, my.  At that point, my neck began turning red, and the flames went all the way up until I thought my ears were going to catch fire.)

Today I read the first five chapters of Romans, and came to a passage that blew me away.  I'll provide a link here, so y'all can read it for yourselves from The Message version.

Yeah.  One man, Adam, disobeyed God, and brought Sin to all mankind.  One Man, God himself as Jesus Christ, came, and paid the price for the sins of all mankind.  Think about that One.  For some reason, that passage hit me really hard today, and both humbled me with awe, and filled me up with a joy that just can't be described to those who have no faith.  It something you just gotta experience for yourself.

Sorry it took so many words to get to this point, but my skills as a writer are somewhat lacking, and brevity isn't in me.  I hope y'all have a good day.  Thanks for reading this far.


Monday, June 2, 2014



With much fear and trembling, I recently began studying the book of Jeremiah.  I began in fear and trembling because I've tried to read Jeremiah before, and became confused about many things.

In previous years, I made a couple of mistakes that I don't make anymore.  I used to read the Bible alone.  Now, I never, ever open my Bible without praying for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, so that I have divine assistance to engrave the words on my heart and help me find the meaning that God intends for me to learn.  I also never before read Bible commentary.  Now, when I'm trying to study a particular book that has given me trouble in the past, I go to my church library, and look for a study guide to help me.  Bible scholars, men and women who have devoted years to studying ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek have written thousands and thousands of guides and commentaries to help others deepen their understanding of God's written Word.

For Jeremiah, I'm using Studies in Jeremiah, published by Convention Press (that's the Southern Baptist publisher) copyrighted in 1961 by Clyde T. Francisco.  Between Rev. Francisco and the Holy Spirit, I'm actually seeing things that I wouldn't have seen on my own.  I'm going to share a little of what I've learned here in this post.

Why did God choose Jeremiah to be his prophet?  Verse 5 of Chapter 1 says:  "Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations."  Well, God knows all of us before we're born, so it's understandable that God's answer doesn't throw much light on the situation to us.  The thing is, at the time God told Jeremiah that he was going to be His prophet, they were already in conversation.  Jeremiah, probably alone among the inhabitants of Israel, actually had a personal relationship with God.  Further reading in Jeremiah let's you know real quick that the rest of the Jews, although they went to their temple sometimes, and paid lip-service to being God's chosen people, the majority had no PERSONAL relationship to their God.

Over and over again, Jeremiah preaches to the people that God wants none of their sacrifices and is not listening to any of their songs, because they were only following the outward trappings of their religion when they went to their temple.  When they weren't in the temple of Jehovah, they were in the temples of Baal and other false gods, visiting the prostitutes that honored those false gods.  The sins of the Jews at that time were many, too many to list here,but all through this Book, the reader can't help but see that the Jews weren't really talking to their God, or listening to anything He had to say to them.

In various places in Jeremiah 10 through 20, Jeremiah wrote (actually, his scribe, Baruch wrote them down for him) several laments, or complaints to God for how the Jews were treating him.  All of Jeremiah's friends left him, and some accused him to the Jewish elders.  God wouldn't allow Jeremiah to get a wife, because He knew that destruction was coming to Israel, and didn't want Jeremiah to bring a new life into a place where invading armies were going to come, bringing death and destruction.  Jeremiah at one point was arrested, and put into stocks for everybody to spit on, and throw rotten food at him.  Jeremiah was understandably angry, frustrated, and feeling pretty defeated; so he complained to God about it.  At one point, Jeremiah even quit preaching.

I'm paraphrasing a lot here, but I want y'all to read this stuff for yourselves, and not take my word for it.  God's answer to Jeremiah was essentially, "Quit being so selfish, Jeremiah.  If you think things are rough now, just wait, because they're about to get even worse."  Oh, my, how hard that must have been for Jeremiah to hear.  Jeremiah was in danger of having the Lord decide not to use him as His prophet.  Although Jeremiah made complaints, though, and was very frustrated, he never stopped talking to God, and by Chapter 20, Jeremiah stopped complaining and got back to doing the Lord's work.

I've been angry with God before, too.  When my older brother was killed in a car accident in 2009, I was angry with God, and told Him so.  Rather than hurting my relationship with God, though, I was actually brought closer to Him. I think it's because I was honest with God and myself, and by continuing to talk to God instead of shutting Him out, I was made to see that I'm very small in all this vast universe, and my plans are also small and insignificant.  Even though I was hurt and angry, and probably no fun to talk to, God didn't stop loving me or talking to me, even if some of the things He had to say were probably not enjoyable to say.
Jeremiah struggle through some awful things, too, and even though he didn't understand all of God's plans, he got his act together, and went back to being obedient to God, and God continued to use him.  Today, we have the book of Jeremiah to study, and to learn from, which was obviously part of God's plans that Jeremiah was never aware of.

We all struggle.  The book of Jeremiah is so much more than just a piece of Jewish history.  I confess, I really like the guy, Jeremiah.  Apparently, according to Rev. Francisco, Jeremiah was an artist, and a dreamer sort of fella before God told him to prophesy.  It seems he liked people, a lot, and he struggled with being the bearer of bad news, and having all his friends leave him, and to see everybody turn away from him and with he'd just shut up.  The struggles of Jeremiah make all of my problems seem pretty small, and his sheer persistence in doing what God told him to do is touching.  Jeremiah's laments to God strike a familiar chord.  We struggle, and sometimes we have no idea why things are so hard; faithfulness and obedience seem to be out of our abilities.  The truth is, though, our struggles don't even come close to what Jeremiah had to endure, and yet Jeremiah continued to speak and to do what God commanded him to do.

We have something that Jeremiah didn't.  Jeremiah had no knowledge of Jesus.  In his day, the Holy Spirit was not available to comfort and console.  Jesus had not yet come to intercede.  Remember in the Gospel of John, Chapter 20, Verse 29, Jesus told Doubting Thomas:  "Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."

In this day, we have our faith in Jesus Christ to give us comfort that was unavailable to Jeremiah.  If he could persevere, then we can, too.