Image: the famous “Earthrise” photo captured by the crew of Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve, 1968.
Part One: a Challenge to Put Some Effort into Your Bible Reading.
Most of us believe we ought to read the Bible. Many of us start. But finishing is a real challenge and a significant accomplishment.
The Good Book, is the book of books, the single most widely read book in history. When you read the Bible, you are reading words that people have been reading for thousands of years. Those Old Testament scriptures? Jesus read them too. So did Matthew and the Apostle Paul and John the Baptist and so many others. The New Testament? Who has not read it? Winston Churchill read it. George Washington read it. Abraham Lincoln read it. Everyone who ever attended an American or European school in the last 1500 years has read parts of the Old and New Testaments (though that is not as common today as it was in previous centuries).
Moving your eyes across the pages of the Bible is like walking the streets of Rome, London, or New York–the whole world has been there before you. Use your imagination. Think of all the greats from history: William Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Jonathan Edwards, Billy Graham, JFK, MLK, FDR, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Handel, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, General Lee and General Grant, Patton and MacArthur, and on and on and on. Some read the Bible over and over, like Isaac Newton (who was more interested in theology than science). On Christmas Eve, 1968, three astronauts, the first to orbit the moon, read the Bible’s creation account from Genesis 1:1-10 to a worldwide television audience of over one BILLION people. (They say one in four people on earth was listening to the reading.) The astronauts closed their moving reading this way:
“And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas–and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”
When you read the Bible, your mind is following a train of thought–walking a mental path–that has been walked countless times by many of your heroes, whether artists, scientists, explorers, generals, brilliant thinkers, passionate musicians, kings, queens, and many of the greatest men and women of history. When you sit down to read the Bible, you join this “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) who read the Bible and whose lives were changed by it, before you were even born.
Get up in the morning, come to the Book of Books, and commune with the greatest minds in history! Join them. Think their thoughts. Open your mind to what God has to say.
But again, this is not light reading—and we are a people who read less and less with each passing year. Not because we cannot read, but because we are so easily distracted by lesser things.
Remember that the Bible is not an easy read. You will not read it at all—and you will not read it well—without some kind of plan.
One challenging part of the Bible story is the history of the kings of Judah and Israel. To understand this difficult period, you will need to pay close attention. Look at charts and timelines provided in study Bibles. Write notes. Read a chronological Bible to see which prophets lived alongside which kings. There are many tools available. Use some of them.
Reading about some of these wars and alliances reminds me of studying multi-party litigation in law school. We were encouraged to draw pictures in order to keep track of all the claims and counterclaims. The war between Israel and Judah in 734 B.C. is similarly complicated. I had to make a diagram to figure it out…
Part Two: a Story About the Fear of the Lord.
The story begins with an evil king. King Ahaz of Judah was the grandson of the good king Uzziah (2 Kings 15:3) and the son of the good king Jotham (2 Chronicles 27:2). But King Ahaz was not good at all, even sacrificing his child to a pagan god.
“Twenty years old was Ahaz when he began to reign, … and he did not that which was good in the sight of the Lord his God, like David, his father. But … made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen” 2 Kings 16:2-3.
King Pekah of Israel made an alliance with King Rezin of Syria, and those two nations laid siege against King Ahaz of Judah (a siege is like the Alamo–your walled city is surrounded and its supply lines are cutoff).
While under siege, King Ahaz managed to send a plea for help—along with all his silver and gold—to Tiglath-Peleser, King of Assyria, and Assyria agreed to come to the aid of King Ahaz, 2 Kings 16:9.
The result was a fairly simple, four-nation war: Israel and Syria versus Judah and Assyria.
Assyria made one quick move: while Israel and Syria were busy with their siege outside Jerusalem, Assyria attacked Syria at home (Damascus), killed King Rezin of Syria, and took the people of the city captive (2 Kings 16:9).
However, in spite of massive casualties suffered by Syria back home in Damascus, Syria nevertheless won the war in Jerusalem:
“Wherefore the Lord his God delivered [Ahaz] into the hand of the king of Syria … and he was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who smote him with a great slaughter. For Pekah [king of Israel] slew in Judah an hundred and twenty thousand in one day” 2 Chronicles 28:5-6.
Remember Jacob, father of Joseph and his eleven brothers? Jacob whom God renamed Israel? Generations later, Jacob’s children are now killing each other in all-out war.
It gets worse. After killing 120,000, the army of Israel captured 200,000 of their cousins, the citizens of Judah, in order to force them into slavery.
“And the children of Israel carried away captive of their brethren two hundred thousand, women, sons, and daughters, and took also away much spoil from them, and brought the spoil to Samaria [the capitol city of Israel]” 2 Chronicles 28:8.
But this is the moment in which cooler heads prevailed. The prophet Oded spoke up, rebuking those who returned from war with the captive Israelites. Then four leaders of the tribe of Ephraim spoke up, demanding the captives be released.
“So the armed men left the captives and the spoil before the princes and all the congregation. And the men … rose up, and took the captives, and with the spoil clothed all that were naked among them, and arrayed them, and shod them, and gave them to eat and to drink, and anointed them, and carried all the feeble of them upon asses, and brought them to Jericho, the city of palm trees, to their brethren. Then they returned to Samaria” 2 Chronicles 28:14-15.
What do you think of when you hear the phrase,
“the Fear of the Lord”?
We often think of fear, of course, of being somehow scared of God, or of God’s wrath. But think instead of mercy. Think of compassion.
When we possess the fear the Lord, we exercise mercy and compassion.
It is the fear of God that caused these Israelites to let go of their anger and rivalry against Judah.
It is the fear of God that motivated them to release 200,000 captives.
The fear of God caused them to find clothes for their enemies—who were also their cousins.
The fear of God caused them to find shoes for them and to feed them and give them something to drink.
Because they feared God, they anointed the captured (treating them with the hospitality due to guests), dressing their wounds and providing for any who were injured.
The fear of God caused them to provide donkeys so the weak or elderly or injured would not have to walk back to their homes in Judah.
The men of Israel were ready to destroy their brothers, the people of Judah—and in doing so, to bring great wrath on themselves. But the words of the prophet Oded caused them to snap out of it. Because they feared God, they released their anger and showed compassion to their enemies. This is the fear of the Lord in action.
Do you fear the Lord enough to forgive your enemies? Do you fear the Lord enough to show them compassion?
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” Matthew 5:44.
Dear God, teach us to study your word with EFFORT, to bring our best to the Bible: attention, effort, and eagerness. Fill us with a healthy fear of the Lord. May we show compassion to people–not only friends and family, but anyone you bring across our path.
AΩ
*Some say the “Earthrise” picture is the most important photograph ever taken.
Household Words: 