Category: 1 Year Bible Reading Plan

Exodus 8-11 shows us  eight more plagues on the people of Egypt and the prediction of the final plague: the death of the firstborn.  As we read Exodus 8-11 we see over and over again Pharaoh tells Moses if he relieves Egypt of the current plague, he will let the people of Israel go into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the LORD.  Each time once the plague ends, Pharaoh goes back on his word. The interesting thing is sometimes we read that Pharoah’s heart was heard or remained hard, and at other times we read God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.  So, which was it? Was Pharaoh’s heart hard, or did God hardened Pharaoh’s heart? We have to read out of the text what is there. The text tells us both, which means Pharaoh’s heart was hard and God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.  Which came first? God had told Moses he would harden Pharaoh’s heart in order to show His power to both the Israelites and the Egyptians.

Some have concluded that makes God unfair. After all, if God hardened Pharaoh’s heart then how could Pharaoh be held accountable for having a hard heart? It’s a great question.  I’m not going to defend God, because He doesn’t need me to defend Him.  I will say Pharaoh started out with a hard heart as every person does. We are all sinners. None of us are righteous. Are hearts are hard.  Does God further harden some hearts, so they can never become soft? It appears that way as we read the Bible from cover to cover, but never more so than with Pharaoh. Yet, repeatedly we see both that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart and that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.  The ultimate answer to this question remains for us to learn when we see Jesus face-to-face one day. For now, the application I take from the situation is when God offers His grace to us, we do well to receive it. When we harden our hearts over and over again, God shows us in His word that He eventually gives us what we want. That is our hearts become hardened to His grace. Does that mean the longer we wait to respond to God’s grace, the less likely it is we will respond? In practice, that’s exactly what it means. God’s grace is available in each of our lives, until we die. But the clear message of the Bible is the sooner we respond to it, the better!

Today we turn to Mark 1 again. As we continue through the 1 year plan, we will repeat gospel readings at times. My purpose in having us do this is I want us to become familiar with the “outline” of each of the gospels over time. As we become more and more familiar with Jesus’ life story, it will become more and more part of our minds (heads) and our souls (hearts). Mark 1 offers us a great deal of action that covered a relatively short period of time.  We read first of  John the Baptist  preparing the way. That likely took place over a matter of months, and certainly not more than a year or two.  Jesus’ baptism and temptation took place over a period of forty days. (We know that from Matthew and Luke’s gospel, which is why we need to learn the outline of each of the gospels.) The calling of first four disciples, seems to have taken only a matter of minutes.  Jesus teaching in a synagogue and driving out an evil spirit took a few hours at most.  Jesus’ healing of Peter’s mother-in-law and the healing of  many of the townspeople took an evening.   Jesus praying in a solitary place took a few hours. When His followers came to find Him to take Him back to serve the people He served the day before, it took  Jesus only minutes to tell them they were going somewhere else.  Finally, Jesus’ healing of a man with leprosy took only moments.

This brief chunk of Jesus’ life reminds us that important, even vital events can take place in moments, although sometimes they take longer. Jesus’ entire ministry on earth was only about three years, so we don’t have any examples of Jesus waiting for years for something He prayed about to take place. That makes sense, though, doesn’t it? Jesus didn’t come to invest a lifetime on earth, and to show us every possible scenario for our lives as His followers. Jesus came to live a perfect life, die a sacrificial death, rise from the dead, and return to heaven, from where He would send the Holy Spirit to His Church. As we read Mark once again, let’s remember Jesus’ purpose was to seek and save the lost. The examples of teaching, preaching, healing and delivering we read about, show us the power of God in Jesus’ life and the power He offers us as His followers. What one thing you read about in Mark 1 will you apply in your life today?

Exodus 5-7 reminds us of Joseph’s early days in Egypt. God was with Joseph, yet Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers; served faithfully as a slave in Potiphar’s household, but was falsely accused of rape; and ended up in prison, where he was a model prisoner, yet wasn’t released for a number of years. Similarly, when Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh to demand he release the Israelites from slavery, Pharaoh immediately increased the work load on the Israelites. This does not sound like God delivering the people from slavery, does it?

When the Israelite leaders went to Pharaoh to complain about their increased work load, Pharaoah’s response was, “You must be lazy. Otherwise, why do you want to go out into the wilderness to worship your God.” In other words, “It’s your fault that you’re undergoing this increased work load. When the Israelite leaders left Pharaoh they saw Moses and Aaron. Immediately, they told Moses and Aaron it was their fault that this increased burden had come to the people, and they weren’t going to listen to them anymore.

Can you imagine being Moses and Aaron? They had done everything God told them to do. The result was their people were in a far worse condition than before they had done anything. Or at least it seemed that way. If you have been following Jesus for any length of time, you have probably experienced this principle:  When you commit yourself to serving the LORD, life often gets harder, before the deliverance comes.  I don’t know how many times over my life I have deepened or renewed my commitment to follow Jesus, and soon afterwards, if not immediately, life got harder.

I can go all the way back to my teenaged years when I committed to asking our basketball team to pray together and dedicate the season to the Lord. The other four starters said, “Yes.” We got down on our knees and prayed to God and dedicated the season to the Lord. The result? Our team went 4-17 (for those of you who aren’t familiar with won-loss notation, that’s 4 wins and 17 losses.) We were one of the worst teams in the history of our high school from a win-loss standpoint, and we had a lot of other problems. In the middle of the season my brother Kenn had the cornea of his eye torn at practice.  It didn’t seem that God answered the prayer at all.

Yet, if you know my story, you know it was that injury to Kenn’s eye that led to several key events: 1) God healed Kenn’s eye through the prayer of Pastor Andy Weigand; 2) I experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit; and 3) God called me to serve Him as a pastor.  I wish I could say, that was the beginning of everything going wonderfully. But as we will read in the rest of Exodus and on through Deuteronomy, the Israelites continued to go through a series of challenges and deliverances.

As we turn to Mark 16, we read the account of Jesus’ resurrection. Mark’s account is the shortest account of Jesus’ resurrection, and the earliest manuscripts of Mark include only verses 1-8. Thankfully, even the shorter version of Mark tells us of the empty tomb, the angel’s announcement of Jesus’ resurrection, and the promise of Jesus meeting the disciples in Galilee. The longer ending reminds us Jesus called us to go to the ends of the earth with the good news of His salvation. No one’s life is ever the same after experiencing the resurrection power of Jesus. In the short-term, that difference will include some roadblocks and problems. In the long-term it means victory and eternal life!

As we move to the Book of Exodus, chapters 1-4 introduce us to the Israelites being enslaved by the Egyptians. It’s amazing that any king of Egypt could ever forget what Joseph did for his nation, but this one did, and assumed the Israelites who had grown greater in population than Egypt, would one day side with Egypt’s enemies and escape the country. The king’s response was to enslave the Israelites and put restrictions on their ability to continue multiplying, by killing the male children born to the Israelites.

One of the amazing results of the Egyptians’ decree that the Israelites had to kill their male children, was when Moses was born, his mother kept him alive for three months, and then made a small boat out of reeds and put Moses in it, and set him adrift in the Nile River. As God’s providence would have it, one of Pharaoh’s daughters found Moses, and decided to adopt him. That meant Moses lived for forty years as a prince in Egypt.

Somehow Moses knew he was a descendant of the Hebrews, and one day when he saw an Egyptian slave driver mistreating one of the Hebrews, and as we read, he killed the slave driver. The next day two Hebrews were fighting with each other, and Moses attempted to intervene. One of the men asked whether Moses was going to kill them as he had killed the Egyptian. When Moses realized his murder of the Egyptian was known, he took off into the wilderness.

Again, God ordered his steps and he “happened” to come across some Midianite shepherdesses. He helped them with watering their sheep, interceding between them and some shepherds who were harassing them. As a result, the women’s father gave one of his daughters to Moses as a wife, and gave Moses the job as the shepherd of his sheep. While this might not seem important at first glance, Moses had forty years of leadership training as a Prince of Egypt and then forty years of training leading sheep. It seems the combination would be great experience for his next vocation: leading the people of Israel out of Egypt.

God called Moses in a most unusual and supernatural way: He appeared to Moses in a burning bush, but although the bush was on fire, it wasn’t consumed by the fire. Amazingly, instead of going along with God’s plan right away after such a clear and powerful demonstration of His presence, Moses argued and debated with God about his lack of qualifications for the task. He also told God he would lack credibility with both the people of Israel and the king of Egypt. Eventually, God got tired of Moses’ excuses and told him to just do it!

I don’t know whether you have ever been called by God to do something, and argued with Him about it. I have. In fact, my call to serve as a pastor came when I was seventeen. It wasn’t as dramatic as Moses’ call, but it was dramatic. Even so, I told God flat out I would not become a pastor, and struggled against becoming one for five years. Eventually I gave in, but I didn’t become a whole-hearted servant of Jesus until long after that. It comforts me to realize one of the greatest leaders of the Old Testament era, and one of the greatest leaders in all history, begged God not to put him in a leadership position. It helps me, and all of us to see we don’t have to feel qualified to serve God for Him to call us to serve Him!

In Mark 15, we read of Jesus’ trial before Pilate, His condemnation by the people (and not Pilate!), and Pilate’s agreeing to have Jesus crucified. We also read of Jesus’ crucifixion, and how the people mocked Jesus and challenged Him to come down from the cross to prove He was God’s Son. He could have done that, but He would not derail His purpose of paying the penalty for the sins of humanity for His own benefit. When Jesus died, one of the Pharisees, named Joseph, asked Pilate for permission to bury Him in his tomb. Pilate agreed, and the stage was set for Jesus’ resurrection. Not a single person believed it was going to happen. Otherwise, the women wouldn’t have come to the tomb early on Sunday morning to finish embalming Him, and every one of the remaining disciples would have been camping outside the tomb on Easter morning to get a first glimpse of their risen Lord.

Jesus had told His followers a number of times, at least three that are recored in the Gospels, that He was going to be handed over to the religious leaders and the Romans, tried, convicted, and crucified. But they were not to worry, because He would rise on the third day. Each time they heard the message the disciples, the women, and the crowds were either confused, misinterpreted it, or ignored it. It’s easy for us to wonder why, because we live on the resurrection side of Easter. We know Jesus rose from the dead. But had we lived in His day, believing would not have been so easy.

Thankfully, Jesus didn’t need an audience to rise from the dead, although I’m sure the angels of heaven witnessed it! More about that tomorrow.

As Genesis comes to an end, so do the lives of Jacob and Joseph. While the “patriarchs” of Israel are considered to be Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, without a doubt Joseph’s contribution to Israel’s history was great. As we read the accounts of such men, we might think, “What is my role? What kind of legacy will I leave?” Few leave the kind of legacy Joseph left. He saved at least two nations, and possibly more through his work as a leader in Egypt. Not bad for a man who was sold into slavery by his brothers and spent thirteen years as a slave and a prisoner.

As we look at the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we see they contributed in differing degrees to Israel’s formation and history. Obviously, Abraham’s position was prominent, because God gave the promise of founding a people set apart for Himself through Abraham.  Abraham’s faith is remembered in three books of the New Testament, and he is mentioned in others. Not only Christians, but also Jews and Muslims consider Abraham to be their spiritual “father.” Abraham’s imperfections were overcome by his deep and abiding faith, which is why we remember him thousands of years after his life on earth.

Isaac wasn’t as prominent, and in truth contributed little to the legacy of Israel except his two sons: Esau and Jacob. The younger would become both famous and infamous for his intimate struggle and relationship with God, for his twelve sons and for moving his family to Egypt, where Israel was “born” in the sense of their becoming a sizable nation. As we read of Jacob’s “blessings” on his sons, and two of his grandsons, we see Jacob didn’t pronounce only good over his sons. That makes sense, because some of Jacob’s sons were rebellious, and none of them were perfect. When Jacob blessed Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, he took a page from his own life, by giving the greater blessing to the younger, rather than the older as the cultural tradition would have expected.

As we consider our own legacies, remember, no one knows the full extent of her or his influence on others in this life, nor how that influence might impact another’s eternity. Until we get to heaven, we will never know the full extent of our influence. That’s where our legacies will count the most. Perhaps, in what we considered to be a casual conversation, someone came to trust Jesus as Savior and Lord, or at least took a first step, or a next step in that direction. A small offering we gave to a missionary might have been the resource necessary to lead someone to a saving relationship with Jesus. As long as we point people to Jesus through our words and lives, we will leave  legacies that matter in eternity.

Mark’s gospel reminds us not all legacies are positive. In chapter 14, we read of Mary anointing Jesus at the home of Simon the leper. During Jesus’ time there, Judas left to betray Jesus to the Jewish religious leaders. At the last supper, Jesus told the disciples one of them would betray Him. Each one asked, “Is it I, Lord?” No one was so sure of himself as to say, “I won’t!” Jesus told Peter before the night was over, Peter would deny ever knowing Jesus three times. We all know it happened, but Peter couldn’t imagine it happening at the moment Jesus spoke the words. Thankfully, Peter’s legacy doesn’t end around that campfire where he denied Jesus three times. Our lives are filed with opportunities to speak up for Jesus or to remain quiet; to live out our faith in Jesus toward others, or stand in the shadows doing nothing. How we respond day-by-day forges the legacies we leave behind on earth, and much more importantly the legacies we forge in heaven.

As you and I go about today, which is the only day we’re guaranteed to experience, let’s build into our eternal legacies by representing Jesus faithfully, in the power of the Holy Spirit!

As we continue Joseph’s story in Genesis 45-47, we see the ultimate fulfillment of Joseph’s teenaged dreams: his whole family bows before him. Joseph’s leadership in Egypt saved the Egyptians and then the entire people of Israel, which at that time numbered only 70 people. As Jacob travelled to Egypt, he stopped in Beersheba to offer sacrifices to God. God spoke to Jacob and promised his family would “multiply” in Egypt. How true that promise was! When the Israelites left Egypt 400 years later the people of Israel numbered 600,000 men, most of whom had wives and families. We can assume the total number of Israelites must have been at least two million people. God’s promise to Abraham was fulfilled generation by generation, and it was Joseph’s hardships that led to the open door for the Israelites to travel to Egypt, where that promise would be multiplied.

One of the most challenging tasks we face in life is to determine when we are being blessed and when we are being cursed. The reason it’s a challenge is God often takes the tests, trials, and temptations we face and uses them for good. In Romans 8:28 we read: In all things God works for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.  It doesn’t say all things are good. It wasn’t good that Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery, or that he became a slave in Potiphar’s house, or that he was falsely imprisoned. None of those realities were good, and Joseph could easily have seen them as curses from God. Instead, Joseph saw God’s goodness remaining with him in each situation. Ultimately, they led to Joseph becoming the second in command in all of Egypt. We would certainly consider that a blessing.

As Jacob and his family travelled to Egypt, they must have been overwhelmed by God’s blessing in their lives. Rather than living through a horrible famine in a land without resources, they were moving to the best land in Egypt. Best of all for Jacob, he was being reunited with his favorite son, Joseph. It was a blessing for Jacob and his family. Yet, hundreds of years later the blessing turned a curse, as a king came to power in Egypt who forgot about Joseph. He enslaved the Israelites and they would suffer under harsh conditions for many decades. During that time the people multiplied. So, even in the time of slavery, God was with His people.

We do well to learn from these examples, because each of us face times of “blessing” and “cursing” in our lives. How we respond to the times will be determined by how we view God’s presence in our lives. Jesus promised He would never leave us nor forsake us. In Mark 13, He told us what it will be like as the time of His return draws near. Many read Mark 13 and think, “All the signs are taking place!” That is true. The signs have been taking place throughout history. What I take away from Mark 13 is Jesus is with us, and Jesus will return to be with us in all His fullness one day. In the meantime, we are to rely on His promises to be with us always, and to never leave us nor forsake us. We are also to be ready when He returns! While many invest (spend?) most of their time trying to determine when Jesus will return, our time is better invested by living in the power of His Spirit through the blessings and challenges, and even the curses of life, with a constant readiness for His return, and a focus on helping others come to know and serve Jesus so they can be ready, too.

If Jesus comes back today, the best thing for us will be for Him to find us living faithfully in His presence, and being ready. That way, whether He returns today or not, we will live today to the fullest. Joseph could have moaned and groaned day after day from the moment his brothers turned him over to the Ishmaelite traders. Instead, he lived each day with the expectant hope that God’s promises are true, and God was with him. He never lost the dream God gave Him, and thirteen years and many hardships later it came true. God is faithful whatever experiences we may be facing right now, so let’s live in His presence and to His glory every moment!

Genesis 41-44 show us God was, indeed, with Joseph! When Pharaoh had two dreams no one could interpret, the cupbearer remembered Joseph. Joseph was brought to interpret the dream, and you have to love his honesty. When Pharaoh told Joseph he had been told that Joseph could interpret his dreams, Joseph said, “I can’t do it.” Imagine, being set free from prison to come before the King of Egypt, and given the opportunity to gain your freedom if you could interpret a couple dreams. Would you say, “I can’t do it.”? Joseph followed up the comment by saying God would do it. And God did it. Joseph’s interpretations proved correct, and resulted in him becoming Pharaoh’s right-hand-man.

When the famine spread to neighboring lands, Joseph’s brothers left Israel and travelled to Egypt to see whether they could buy grain. Just as God had shown Joseph, his brothers knelt down before him. The drama of the situation must have been intense, because it certainly reads that way! As we close out today’s reading, Joseph is about to reveal himself to his brothers, but the experience of having them all with him was overwhelming. God’s grace in Joseph is so powerful he holds no animosity toward his brothers. He strings them along for a time, but his ultimate intention is to save them and his entire family.

What would you have done in such a situation? Would you be able to forgive such a plot against you? The short answer is: only if God were with you. God’s presence in Joseph’s life throughout his time in Egypt was never more obvious than in his interactions with his brothers. We often say, “I don’t get mad, I get even,” but Joseph held no such intentions. We can learn so much from his response to his brothers.

As we turn to Mark 12, we see Jesus interacting with the religious leaders. Jesus knows His time on earth is short, His crucifixion is near. Yet, He takes the time to tell a parable about the impending death, and the implications of it. Then He shows the Sadducees and Pharisees that none of their questions can trap Him. He demonstrates the reality of the resurrection, and the ultimate authority of God. Finally, He stumps the religious leaders with the question of how the Messiah can be both David’s son and Lord.

Chapter 12 ends with Jesus pointing out to the disciples the faith of a poor widow who gives her last two pennies to God. Jesus reminds the disciples the woman’s gift is incredible, because it was all she had. The quantity of our gift isn’t the measure of it, but the quantity of the sacrifice involved in  the gift. As we give our time, talents, treasure and touch as Jesus’ followers, we do well to remember the widow’s example, and Jesus’ response to it.

Today’s readings from Genesis 37-40 show us biblical accounts don’t always flow in a “straight line,” that is Genesis chapters 37 and 39-40 tell us about Joseph, while chapter 38 diverges to an account of Joseph’s brother, Judah, and his encounter with Tamar, who was his daughter-in-law,  but ends up becoming his wife! There’s nothing illogical or unreasonable about the insertion of the account of Judah and Tamar in chapter 38, but it does take us away from the flow of the account of Joseph’s life, which dominates most of the rest of the book of Genesis.

The account of Judah and Tamar and its placement shows us that at times the biblical writers included information than seems tangential to the main flow of their book.  Some biblical scholars believe this is because the writers were using different source materials and they simply inserted material from a different source at that point.  That is possible. Luke tells us in chapter 1 of his Gospel that “many” had undertaken the important matter of writing an account of Jesus’ life. Then he tells us that he had reviewed the accounts, and interviewed eyewitnesses to write his account. Thus, Luke used different sources. That does not eliminate the underlying truth that God led each of the biblical writers in their writing through the Holy Spirit. For whatever reason, God wanted us to have the account of Judah and Tamar, and so it is included within the account of Joseph.

The account of Judah and Tamar is another reminder that God’s people didn’t always act as God would have had them act. The account of Judah’s sexual immorality was not included to show us how to live. Quite the contrary. Throughout the Bible sexual immorality is condemned. The account ultimately shows us how the lineage of the tribe of Judah flows, and that is vital to the overall message of the Bible, because both King David and  Jesus were from the tribe of Judah.

In chapters 37, 39-40 we read of Joseph’s “rise and fall,” as it were. As a teenager, Joseph dreamed he would one day rule over his family. The dreams were from God, but Joseph’s method of presenting them to his brothers, and then his parents led them all to be critical of his claim. The dysfunction of Joseph’s family manifested itself in the brothers selling him into slavery. As readers, we think, “Oh, no. God can’t fulfill the dreams now.” If chapter 40 were the end of the story, we would be right, but as Joseph ends up first as a slave in Potiphar’s house, and then in prison, we read the words, “God was with Joseph.”

We might think when God is with someone that person’s life will be blessed. In a manner of speaking, Joseph’s life was blessed in Egypt. He was the chief slave in Potiphar’s house, and had great freedom. Even when he was falsely accused of rape and imprisoned, he quickly became the warden’s right hand man, and once again experienced great freedom. This is nothing compared with the blessing Joseph would eventually experience, but the greatest blessing in any situation is to have God’s presence in our lives. Joseph was freer as a slave in Egypt than his brothers were back home in Palestine. We must always remember when God is with us whatever our circumstance, our lives are better than if we were “free” or “rich” and didn’t have God in our lives.

As we turn to Mark 11, we find Jesus triumphantly riding into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. For a brief moment everyone acknowledged Jesus for who He was: the King of kings. But the moment wouldn’t last. We see Jesus’ authority demonstrated in the cursing of a fig tree that withers, and in His driving the money changers out of the temple, but even after all this evidence the religious leaders question Jesus’ authority. They want to know what gave Him the right to do the things He did. Jesus didn’t answer them. He changes the subject to the source of John the Baptists authority. He asked the religious leaders whether it was from God or man? The religious leaders realized they couldn’t answer without putting themselves in a jam, so they said, “We don’t know.” This gave Jesus the opportunity to respond, “Neither will I tell you, where my authority originates.”

The tension is obvious, and as we’ll see in the remainder of Mark, Palm Sunday led to a week of confrontation and ultimately Jesus’ crucifixion. Thankfully, just as God was with Joseph during his time of slavery and imprisonment, Jesus being God’s only Son, experienced His Father’s presence through the week leading to the crucifixion. The key in each of our lives is not what happens to us at any given moment, but that we rely on God’s presence in those moments. God will give us the strength to endure whatever we face, when we put Him first in our lives. Joseph and Jesus are two of the best examples of that reality!

In our readings for today, Mark offers six major events in Jesus’ ministry in one chapter, while all three chapters from Genesis cover only a few significant events. Let’s turn to Genesis 34-36 first.

In Genesis 34 we read the account of Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, being raped by Shechem the Hivite. This tragic event led to Jacob agreeing with the Hivites to let Schechem marry Dinah, and to have the groups intermarry with one another. But Simeon and Levi, two of Dinah’s brothers, placed a condition on the arrangement: all their men would have to be circumcised. Schechem’s father convinced the people to go along with the agreement. While the men were recovering from the “surgery,” Simeon and Levi went into the town and slaughtered them. We see again, God didn’t choose Jacob and his family for their goodness. The Bible records so many examples of God’s people not acting at all as if they were God’s people. Yet, God continued to relate to them, and to call them His people.

We see this clearly, as we move to chapter 35, because God not only continued to relate with Jacob, but gave him a new name, something God often did as a sign of His covenant with His chosen leader. Jacob means one who grasps the heel. He received the name, because he was grasping Esau’s heel when they were born.  His new name, Israel, can mean many things, but one of the more likely possibilities is “Prince with God.” Jacob or Israel wrestled with his brother, with God, with telling the truth and with himself. Yet God continued to work in and through Jacob/ Israel, and ultimately his descendants would become the people of Israel.

I placed chapter 36 in parentheses, because it consists of the genealogy of Esau, along with a listing of the rulers of Edom. While, some might find it interesting reading, it’s one of those passages I typically skim through on my way to the next chapter!

Moving to Mark 10, we find Jesus addressing the matters of divorce, blessing children, a rich man’s desire to obtain eternal life, Jesus again predicting His impending death, James and John’s request to sit on His right and left hand, and Jesus addressing that, and Jesus’ healing of a blind man named Bartimaeus. Wow! That’s a lot in a single chapter. Remember, though, the chapter and verse markings weren’t original to any book of the Bible. They were added later to make it easier to locate specific passages. Mark didn’t record these events as six events in chapter 10, but as six important events from Jesus’ life and ministry.

It’s important for us to remember as we’re reading the Bible, the first task we have is to understand what was happening at the time the event occurred. We want to read “out of the text” what is there. The fancy word for that is exegesis. The challenge is we tend to “read into a text” what we know from our own experience and situation or what we want it to mean. That is called eisegesis. Exegesis is good, while eisegesis is not. For example, when we read Jesus’ comments about divorce in Mark 10:1-12, we tend to think about divorce from a  21st century perspective, or we might think about it based on our own biases regarding divorce. What we need to do is consider the context and meaning of divorce in Jesus’ day. When the religious leaders came to Jesus they had a specific question about divorce, “Should a man be allowed to divorce his wife?”

Jesus offers us a helpful strategy for reading out of a text what is there, rather than reading into it what we think. He asks another question, “What did Moses say in the law about divorce?”  Jesus turned the question back on the religious leaders.  He knew the religious leaders knew what Moses had written about divorce. Jesus also knew those leaders were seeking to trap Him into saying something that would go against that law, so they could discredit Him. The religious leaders told Jesus that Moses permitted divorce.  Jesus’ answer is instructive. He told the religious leaders God permitted it only because of the hardness of human hearts. Then Jesus referred back to God’s original intention for marriage in Genesis 2. There we see marriage was instituted by God in the fabric of creation. Marriage is to be between a man and a woman, and to last throughout the couple’s life.

Jesus’ answer established marriage as a permanent union between a man and a woman. He notes divorce is permitted for reason of adultery, but is not commanded, and is not God’s intention. He adds another comment to ensure the permanence of marriage, when He says, “…let no one split apart what God has joined together.” Jesus’ words hold a clear meaning for marriage, its definition, and its permanence. We can read other things into it, but if we only read out of the text what is there, Jesus told us marriage is between a man and a woman and God’s intention is for it to be permanent. We find Jesus applying an important principle of interpretation in His comments to the religious leaders: let one part of the Bible interpret another, and let every part of the Bible be interpreted by the rest of it.  While the religious leaders wanted to go back only to Moses’ law, because they condoned divorce, Jesus took them back to God’s original intention for marriage. Jesus then affirmed that original intention and deepened it with His comment about letting no one split apart what God had joined together.

As we read the remainder of Mark 10, we see Jesus going against the accepted norms in several areas.  He took the time to bless the children brought to Him by their parents. The disciples thought this was a wast of Jesus’ time.  When the rich young man came to Jesus to find out the key to eternal life, Jesus first told Him to obey the commandments. When the man said he had done so since his youth, Jesus didn’t even argue about whether he had, indeed, done so. He pointed to the man’s wealth and said that was the stumbling block to eternal life for him. The man was incredulous–as were the disciples. In those days, as often is still the case in our day, people thought financial “blessing” was a sign of God’s favor. Financial blessing can be a sign of God’s favor, but Jesus showed us in this example, the man’s money was an obstacle to his salvation.

When Jesus again predicted His death, James and John saw the opportunity to ask Jesus to place them at His right and left hand (positions of power and authority) when He came into His Kingdom. Jesus took the opportunity to show that “power” in God’s Kingdom is inverted from power in the worldly perspective. The greatness of a person isn’t found in lording over others, but in serving them. Reading out of the text what is there, will often leave us shaking our heads when Jesus is the subject of the passage. As Isaiah had told the Israelites 800 years before Jesus was born, “…God’s ways are not our ways…” Jesus made that so clear in His daily interactions with the crowds, the religious leaders, and His disciples. Thankfully, we have the records of many of those interactions, so we, too, can be impacted by them!

In our reading from Genesis, Jacob responds to God’s call to return home  with his family. But while Jacob responded to God’s call, he relied on his own methods rather than God’s. First, Jacob left without even telling Laban, his father-in-law, he was leaving.  When Laban found out what Jacob had done, he took off in pursuit of Jacob.  That could have ended quite badly for Jacob, except God intervened and spoke directly to Laban. He told him not to take action against Jacob.  The interaction between Jacob and Laban wasn’t healthy, but at least it led to an agreement that they wouldn’t hurt each other in the future.

Next, Jacob decided to appease Esau, his brother, by sending gifts ahead of his entourage as they returned. Jacob surely remembered Esau’s promise to end Jacob’s life after their father died. Thankfully, Jacob’s long absence had given Esau time to cool down, and to recognize God’s hand in his own life.  Thus, Jacob and Esau came together as brothers, their long-standing animosity put behind them.  Again, Jacob’s plan wasn’t the key. After all, Esau didn’t even want Jacob’s gifts or bribes. He took them at Jacob’s insistence, but Esau had grown significantly during the years Jacob was away.  Had Jacob taken time to consult with God about this, Jacob would have saved a time, worry and effort.

As we read these passages, we’re reminded of how often God works despite.  He has a plan for our lives, and He has modeled that plan in His word. Yet, all too often, we forge ahead without reading what He has written to us in the Bible, or listening to what He says to us through the Holy Spirit as we pray. Investing time and effort in prayer and Bible reading is so important for us to discern God’s purpose and plan.  Then we must step forward in faith.  That’s no small feat.  Consider what happened with the disciples in Mark 9. They had been with Jesus for nearly three years.  They had heard His incredible teaching.  He had called each of them to follow Him.  They had seen Jesus perform amazing signs and wonders. But nine of them couldn’t cast one demon out of a boy, when Jesus and the remaining three disciples took a few days away.

It’s easy to condemn the nine, because Jesus did. But we are not Jesus! Would we have fared any better when faced with the opportunity to help the boy? Our purpose in reading the Bible from cover-to-cover is so much more than accomplishing that feat, as important as it is. Our purpose is to hear God’s voice in it, and to believe He speaks to us through it, and will use His words to equip us to live His will in our lives. But reading the words will not be enough. We must live them out in the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus told the disciples they failed to heal the boy, because some demons come out only through prayer. (Some manuscripts of Mark 9 read “…prayer and fasting.”) As we go about this day, having read God’s word, having gained some additional understanding of how He works, the key is to let the words build our faith, so we will approach our lives here and now trusting that God is still working today, and will work in our lives as we let Him.

Jacob heard directly from God–and often lived according to His own plan.  The disciples lived with Jesus–and often lived according to their own plan. We have both God’s written word and His Holy Spirit speaking into our lives.  We don’t need to live according to our own plan.  We see God can and does work in and through our plans, broken as they are, but the better course of action is to live out God’s plan in faith and obedience. That is always the best path to take, not the easiest sometimes, but always the best. God’s plan is always better than ours!

In Genesis 27-30, Jacob is the “star.” At least Jacob is center stage in these chapters. The account of Jacob deceiving Isaac and taking Esau’s birthright makes me wonder, “Why did God choose Jacob instead of Esau?” While, Jacob was only following Rebekah’s instruction, when he went to his father and deceived Isaac into giving him Esau’s blessing, even that shows us Jacob’s weakness of character. The chief lesson we learn here is God doesn’t choose us for our character, goodness, or integrity. God chooses us because He does! After God chooses us He works on our character, goodness and integrity. Sin broke us all. When Adam and Eve rebelled against God, the nature of rebellion became part of us. We are born with a me first attitude. Jacob exhibited that attitude as much as any character in the Bible. Even so, God blessed Him, and used Him to fulfill His promise to Abraham and giving Him many descendants.

While Abraham contributed only one son, Isaac, to the promise; and Isaac contributed two sons, only one of whom, would be considered part of the completion of the promise–Jacob; Jacob would eventually contribute twelve sons. Those twelve sons would become the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel. As we will see as the book of Genesis continues to unfold and we move to Exodus, it was the descendants of Jacob who multiplied and became a nation. The process took about 400 years, but God always keeps His promises, and thankfully, He uses ordinary, imperfect people in the process. We don’t have to wonder why. Ordinary, imperfect people are all God has had to work with ever since Adam and Eve rebelled against Him.

Mark 8 offers several important encounters between Jesus and others, but the most important of all is His encounter with His own disciples, when He asked them who people were saying He was. Peter’s response that Jesus was the Messiah marked the turning point in Jesus’ ministry. Everything in Mark’s gospel led up to that moment, and in the remaining eight chapters, Jesus walked into His destiny of dying on the cross to pay the penalty for human sin, and rising from the dead to demonstrate His victory over sin and death. While we are reading only one chapter of Mark each day, it is important for us to see how each chapter fits into the bigger picture of God’s plan for the redemption of humanity.

In the even bigger picture, one of Jacob’s sons, Judah, provided the human lineage for Jesus.  As we read through the Bible during this year, we will see time and again how God’s great plan is lived out in simple events, including the births of particular people at just the right time. You and I were also born at just the right time to fulfill the plan God has for us. the next time you’re thinking you don’t matter all that much, remember that!