tip for bible readings

Good morning ladies--

I wanted to make a quick suggestion this morning as we begin reading about all the kings of Israel and Judah.  When I first studied these books, a teacher suggested we do this and it was SO helpful.  If you have not read my blog yet about the Divided Kingdom, read that to understand what I'm talking about.

Use a blue colored pencil to underline (or mark however you choose) the kings of Judah (because blue is the Davidic color of the Jews).

Use a red colored pencil to mark the kings of Israel.

This will help you keep from getting confused which nation is being referred to.  Remember, Judahbegins with Rehoboam (Solomon's son), so he and each of his successive descendants will be blue.  Israel begins with Jeroboam.  So he and each of his successive descendants will be red.  You may even want to go back to the last day of last week and mark those kings at the beginning of their reigns.

This is when our readings become like a novel again, learning the history of God's people and why the Jewish nation was longing so desperately for Messiah to come.  Enjoy!

Would you believe my bible fell open to this prophecy this morning?

"There will be one king over all of them and they will never again be two nations or be divided into two kingdoms...They will be my people, and I will be their God."  (Ezekiel 37:22b, 23b)

O the joy of knowing the end of the story...that Messiah will come and reign!!!!!!!!!!

Love you gals,

Julie

 

A Kingdom Divided

Something very significant happened in our Bible readings this week.  If this is the first time you've read through God's Word, you may not have noticed this huge event, so I want to be sure and point it out to you.

First, however, I want to have you take a look at some passages from Jesus' life.  Are you familiar with the story of the Samaritan woman in John 4?  She was the woman at the well to whom Jesus spoke and asked for a drink of water.


<sup>5So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.


7</sup>A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." ⁸(For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) ⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) ¹⁰Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." ¹¹The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹²Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock." ¹³Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,¹⁴but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."  ¹⁵The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water."  (John 4:5-15)


This is an incredibly powerful story that gets even better, and I could write and talk about it all day (I have before, at women's retreats!).  But the Living Water is not my point today--although He is the greatest thing we could ever thirst for, and the ONLY thing that truly satisfies! 


Did you notice what the woman said about Jews associating with Samaritans?  Then she brought up that bit about her father Jacob (renamed Israel) and that well of his from which she was drawing water.  See Genesis 33:19 and Joshua 24:32 for the references about Jacob's well.  Now read a little more of Jesus' conversation with this Samaritan woman.



²⁰Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship." ²¹Jesus said to her,  "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. ²²You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. ²⁴God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." ²⁵The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things." ²⁶Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he." (John 4:20-26)


Wow!  What an encounter!  Her life was never the same.


What I want you to notice is the discussion about which mountain God is supposed to be worshipped upon, and worshipping what you do know versus what you don't know.  IT ALL STARTED IN OUR READINGS THIS WEEK.


Sadly, as we read about the end of Solomon's life, we watched him fall into the sin of idol worship.  He disobeyed God's command to not marry foreign women, for God knew they would lead him to worship their gods.  The wisest man ever became very foolish at the end of his life.  Actually, I don't think it was foolishness and much as laziness.  He let down his guard, and that was not good.  What's worse?  His children and future descendants got to pay the price.  Parents...take heed.


⁹And the LORD was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice ¹⁰and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the LORD commanded. ¹¹Therefore the LORD said to Solomon, "Since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. ¹²Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. ¹³However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen."  (1 Kings 11:9-13)


Consequences.  Now Solomon's son Rehoboam gets to reap them...and he sure did miss the boat on the wisdom given to his father.  Take a look at 1 Kings 12 for the full story.  Because God caused Rehoboam to be so foolish and take very foolish advice, the kingdom was almost completely ripped away from him.  The people's words were pretty clear:  "What portion do we have in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse. To your tents, O Israel! Look now to your own house, David." (1 Kings 12:16b)


The result of Solomon's sin of idolatry and his son Rehoboam's folly?  "So Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day." (1 Kings 12:19)  Then the prophecy given to Jeroboam comes true, and all Israel goes to him to be their king.


"And when all Israel heard that Jeroboam had returned, they sent and called him to the assembly and made him king over all Israel. There was none that followed the house of David but the tribe of Judah only." (1 Kings 12:20; emphasis mine)


Notice that part in bold letters.  Which tribe remains part of the house of David?  Judah.  They were called "Judaites"and eventually shortened to "Jews."  Thus we now have the Jewish nation made up of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin ("When Rehoboam came to Jerusalem, he assembled all the house of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin" 1 Kings 12:21).  What happened to the other ten tribes?  They followed Jeroboam as the "Israelites." 


So from this point on throughout the history of God's people, we now have Judah (called the southern kingdom) and Israel (the northern kingdom).  Judah...the Judaites...the Jews...were the ones who remained true to the faith of their fathers and continued the line of David.  They worshipped God at the temple Solomon built in Jerusalem and kept God's laws.


The Israelites, however, mixed their worship of God with foreign gods, and as we read this week, Jeroboam sought to counterfeit the things of God by creating his own version for fear his people would go back to Jerusalem and follow Rehoboam instead.


²⁶And Jeroboam said in his heart, "Now the kingdom will turn back to the house of David. ²⁷If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the LORD at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their lord, to Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam king of Judah." ²⁸So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, "You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt." ²⁹And he set one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan. ³⁰Then this thing became a sin, for the people went as far as Dan to be before one. ³¹He also made temples on high places and appointed priests from among all the people, who were not of the Levites. ³²And Jeroboam appointed a feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month like the feast that was in Judah, and he offered sacrifices on the altar. So he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves that he made. And he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places that he had made. ³³He went up to the altar that he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day in the eighth month, in the month that he had devised from his own heart. And he instituted a feast for the people of Israel and went up to the altar to make offerings.  (1 Kings 12:26-33)




Does any of this sound familiar?  Are you thinking "Aaron" and "the golden calf" while Moses was on Mt. Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments?  He even used the same words:  “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” (Exodus 32:4b)  As Solomon said, "There is nothing new under the sun." (Ecc. 1:9)


The Jewish people became so disgusted with Israel (the other ten tribes) at the way they had profaned God's law and gone to worship other idols they they wanted to have nothing to do with them.  They counted them their enemies.  Samaria was a town in Israel among these ten tribes.  Now does the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman make more sense?  How about the story of the Good Samaritan who helped the Jewish man who was robbed and beaten on the road, and not a Jewish priest or a Levite would stop to help him, but rather his enemy?


What about this story?


¹¹On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. ¹²And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance ¹³and lifted up their voices, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." ¹⁴When he saw them he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went they were cleansed. ¹⁵Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; ¹⁶and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. ¹⁷Then Jesus answered, "Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?¹⁸Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" ¹⁹And he said to him, "Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well."  (Luke 17:11-19, emphasis mine)




This is why we are reading through the Bible together.  When you read it in it's entirety, it makes so much more sense and has tons more meaning.  Now we understand why Jesus calls the Samaritan a "foreigner."  Don't you love Jesus words to him?  Don't you love that Jesus didn't just reserve healing and salvation for the Jews, but freely gives both to all who believe?  That is the beauty of the Gospel--undeserved grace!


We are all "foreigners" when it comes to God's kingdom, because our sin has separated us from God and made us His enemies (Romans 5:10).  But at the great exchange, we are clothed in Jesus' righteousness as He takes our sins upon Himself.


"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed."  (1 Peter 2:24)


O for the day when we all are made pure and are brought together in unity in the Kingdom of the Son He loves!


"For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." (Colossians 1:13-14) 

Overflow

Hi sweet sisters in Jesus--

In our recent "read thru the Bible" readings, we've read through most of Psalms and Proverbs, all of Song of Songs (whoo hoo!), and this week Ecclesiastes.  What a ride.  Are you getting wisdom yet?  Those of us in the women's "Wising Up" study are getting an incredible serving of the main course of wisdom, enjoying every bite--even the bitter-sweet ones.  I've lost count, but we have well over 20 precious ladies in this study, a few college girls even, and I'm loving it!

Life and ministry have been blessedly full lately, so I have found little time for blogging about our readings.  I have enjoyed our Sunday morning discussions and will once again look forward to that this Sunday.  But this morning, during my quiet time with Jesus, I responded to Him with a poem I felt compelled to share with you.

As some of you know, I've been reading the book One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.  Powerful, powerful stuff.  So after my Bible reading this morning and then a little reading in that book, I wrote the following prayer/poem in my journal.  If you've read her book, you'll understand.

"Overflow"

Eucharisteo.
He must increase, I must decrease.
The best gifts are down lower and lower.
Joy.

O LORD, what are You teaching me?
Where are You taking me?
How are You shaping me?
I cannot see.
I hold Your hand and trust-walk with covered eyes, open heart.
A heart I fear is about to be pierced beyond bearing--but You know what that's like...and You bore it for me.

Home study in just three days.
Babies about to be born in jail.
Babies, toddlers, living on streets...in dirty motel rooms...in only You know where.
How did you ever get me here, LORD?
Who would have thought?

Holding homeless mama's hand in hospital before she gives birth.
Lying quiet next to precious children as they fall asleep in my home--Your home--when what they need is their own place to call "home."
When...how...did You do this in my life?
In their lives?

Intersect.
The Grace of God.

It has touched me in a new way.
Never the same.
Thank you, Jesus.
Never the same.

Empty.
I empty.
You fill.
Overflow.

love,
Julie