Ruth 2

Some sermon notes from when Justin spoke on the second chapter of Ruth. In Ruth, an amazing tapestry of redemptive history unfolds.

Justin touched on the Hebrew word "Hesed", meaning God's covenant love and complete obligation to provide. And in Ruth, we see how God over-abundantly meets the needs for Ruth and Boaz.

In the Old Testament Jewish cannon, Ruth is located between Proverbs and Psalms, which is significant, as Proverbs ends with chapter 31 (the "Godly woman" chapter) then goes into Ruth, then continues into Psalms, with Psalm 1 speaking about the characteristics of the "Godly man". The book of Ruth also caps off with genealogy of David, and then leads into Psalms, which is basically all about David.

Hesed is seen in Ruth characterized first by Ruth's hope in God. We see her meekness and submissiveness to God's providence. Ruth asks God, "
Why have I found favor?", reflecting an attitude of gratefulness (especially relevant in our age of greed, want and selfishness.) We don't deserve anything good, and any good thing we have is solely as a gift of God.

Hesed is also seen in the life of Boaz, as the life of Boaz is one centered on God (described in Jewish writings as "A mighty man strong in the Torah".) His chief concern for his workers is that they know God and his blessing falls upon them. "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" and Boaz follows this: not just through legalistic faithfulness but through heaping blessings on Ruth and Naomi. A real test of a person is how they reply to the marginalized, the needy and the poor.

We see hesed in Boaz in his respect for Ruth and for a desire to protect her. Boaz had a willingness to provide, and gave without expecting anything in return.

Genesis Chapter Summary

High level summary of every chapter of Genesis, from some recent notes I took. These are all in my own words, and not just lifted from the chapter titles in the Bible (although some are likely very similar)

Ch. 1 - Song of Creation
Ch. 2 - Adam and Eve and Marriage
Ch. 3 - The Fall and the Promise of Redemption
Ch. 4 - Cain kills Abel
Ch. 5 - Geneology of Adam to Noah
Ch. 6 - The Baptism of the earth
Ch. 7 - Flood
Ch. 8 - God's Covenant
Ch. 9 - God blessed Noah and his sons. Ham's sin
Ch.10 - Nations Descendant from Noah
Ch. 11 - Tower of Babel
Ch. 12 - Callof Abram. Abrahamic covenant (land, seed, blessing)
Ch. 13 - Abraham leaves Egypt with wealth and riches. Abram and Lot separate.
Ch. 14 - Abram rescues Lot. Melkizedek blessed Abram.
Ch. 15 - Covenant Restated. God passes between pieces of animals.
Ch. 16 - Sarah and Hagar. Hagar flees with Ishmael and encounters angel of the Lord
Ch. 17 - Covenant renewed. Isaac birth promised.
Ch. 18 - Three visitors. Abraham pleads for Sodom.
Ch. 19 - Destruction of Sodom. Lot's wife dies. Lots daughters beget Moabites and Ammonites.
Ch. 20 - Abimelech. Abraham lies about Sarah.
Ch. 21 - Birth of Isaac
Ch. 22 - Abraham tested
Ch. 23 - Sarah dies
Ch. 24 - Isaac and Rebecca.
Ch. 25 - Birth of Esau and Jacob.
Ch. 26 - Isaac and Abimilech
Ch. 27 - Jacob is blessed
Ch. 28 - Jacob works for Laban
Ch. 29 - Jacob marries Leah and Rachael
Ch. 30 - Jacob has children
Ch. 31 - Jacob flees Laban
Ch. 32 - Jacob's repentance
Ch. 33 - Jacob meets Esau again
Ch. 34 - Detour with Dinah and Shechemites
Ch. 35 - Jacob renamed
Ch. 36 - Esau's descendants
Ch. 37 - Joseph's dreams
Ch. 38 - Strange Judah/Tamar/Onan detour
Ch. 39 - Potiphar's wife causes problems for Joseph
Ch. 40 - Joseph interprets dreams of prisoners
Ch. 41 - Joseph interprets the Pharaoh's dream
Ch. 42 - Joseph's brothers head to Egypt
Ch. 43 - Joseph's brothers return home
Ch. 44 - Joseph tests his brothers
Ch. 45 - Joseph reveals his identity
Ch. 46 - Joseph's family goes to Egypt/Jacob and Joseph reunited
Ch. 47 - Jacob and family move to Egypt/famine
Ch. 48 - Jacob blesses Joseph's sons Ephriam and Manasseh
Ch. 49 - Jacob blesses his twelve sons/Jacob's death and burial
Ch. 50 - Joseph's death/Embalmed in Egypt/Buried in Shechem

Joshua 7

The sin of Achan from Joshua 7 shows all of Israel punished as the result of one man's sins. And while all of Israel was punished because of Achan's crime, it could very well be that many people were aware of the crime and did nothing about it, but simply kept silent. Or its also possible that they saw the plunder that Achan kept and, secretly approving, did nothing about it. The main message here is that there are no private, victimless crimes. All of Israel was held accountable to Achan's sinful act.

Darth Vader Exegesis

After recently reading this post at the Blessed Quietness website, it turns out that I'll be going to Hell unless I read the KJV version of the Bible, so I decided that following my last read of the Bible (the "heretical" NASB) I'd better give the KJV another go, if for no other reason than to sharpen up on my Shakespearean English (if not to avoid hellfire!)

Anyhow, I found that the library has an MP3 format of the AV that I could download and listen to while washing dishes at night. And this edition is actually pretty fascinating: the Old Testament is read by Alexander Scourby, who has a rich English accent (he sounds like a Beatrix Potter character) and the New Testament is read by none othen than Darth Vader himself, James Earl Jones. His reading is actually fascinating, because as you listen you sort of visualize Darth Vader reading this aloud, sitting in that pod-thing in "Empire Strikes Back" (the thing he'd open up, tell off an Imperial admiral, then close again). In a strange way, its like you can visualize Vader reading a book like Romans out loud, maybe in a time-frame just prior to the end of "Return of the Jedi", and possibly pondering the words of Chapter 12 and contemplating turning from evil?

Romans 12:9 "Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good."

In any case, the narration is fascinating and James Earl Jones has a deep, engrossing voice that really makes the AV fascinating to listen to.  And of course, every time he introduces a chapter of "Luke", you can't help but think - oh, you know how the rest of it goes...

Luke 7:11-17

Some more Oak Ridge sermon notes from Luke 7:

The preface to the message was reinforcing that Jesus Christ has eternally existed with God the Father. We understand that creation is a trinitarian work, just as redemption is, and that God speaks things into existence and they exist.

In Luke 7 we read about Jesus raising to life the widows son. In this we see providentially timed "crowd of death" meeting the "crowd of life". To the reader, Christ's instruction to the widow to "stop crying" seems like a strange one, unless it was said by someone with the authority to restore life. From the passage, there is no indication that this woman knew Christ or that she had asked anything of him, but rather He has arrived with a mission to heal.

Luke 7 also touches on the principle of touching the dead/the "unclean", and the idea that touching unclean things makes the clean unclean, but Christ is clean, and when he touches the unclean things (us) we become clean again. In vs. 14, Jesus "went up and touched the coffin", restoring the child to life.

The people here recognized that Christ was similar to the prophets of the Old Testament, and there was excitement that, 400 years following the Old Testament, God was revealing his power again. This passage in Luke is the first account of Christ raising the dead to life again.

Psalm 139

Some quick sermon notes from a few months ago:

In Psalm 139 David is praising God for the omni-aspects of his nature:

• Omnipresent
• Omnipotent
  
• Omniscient

David acknowledges that he is unable to hide (in a negative sense), yet at the same time the positive aspect remains that he is never away from God's presence.

All of human life, even that of the unborn, is a miracle. In Psalm 139 David, contemplating the fetus in the womb, responds by giving thanks to God.

Basic Greek in 30 Minutes a Day

I've been (slowly) working through "Basic Greek in 30 Minutes a Day" by James Found. I picked this up at Lifeway, and I've been enjoying the fairly user-friendly introdcution to the Greek language presented in this workbook. Basically, the text is printed in a pulpy, worktext-style format where you fill in answers on most every page. The text starts out great, with very simplistic example of reading english words in greek (such as English words like "bat" written in greek characters) and slowly starts through exercises that introduce greek characters and words. The pace is nice and smooth for a linguistic dummy for me.

However, the book tends to take a deeper direction into Greek grammar around page 120+, and once you start getting into the nominative, genative stuff, my eyes start to glaze over. You know, it's not for lack of effort, but this stuff gets pretty hard! (good observation Captain Obvious!) But I'm going to keep on with this. What's remarkable is how, as you learn these words, you start to slowly (if in subtle ways) see the richness in the word usage within certain passages of scripture, as well as gaining an appreciation for semi-regular words you hear from time to time, in terms of tracing back to the Greek (scoliosis, anathema, etc, in addition to so many Biblical words).

Might be slow progress finishing this but I've enjoyed the experience so far.