Who is God? And, how can we find God - Bible answers.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lovingscripture.com/2021/10/21/ruth-3-commentary/

Ruth 3 Commentary.

At this point, both Ruth and Boaz had known each other very well. The question of suitability had been answered already. Ignoring these simple basics, many have lived to regret their decisions. Regardless of the advancement of cultures, the basics remain.

It is said that love is blind. No. Here we see that love is fully intelligent and can actually wait. Boaz is no doubt drawn to Ruth. Who wouldn’t? Ruth is drawn to Boaz. Men who combine godliness and stature are rare. It is a perfect union! But there is a problem. Love has to wait. Love which cannot wait is not deserving of the word. It can be very dangerous. Boaz was aware of another man who was in line to take up the responsibility.

Yes, you love him. He loves you. But he is married. Cut the relationship. Love shouldn’t exist in this case.

It should interest the reader that this godly relationship is taking place during a time when Israel had no king. The time of the Judges was characterized by shocking events and a culture completely out of touch with the instructions of the LORD. The saint is living in a similar world. Will you be a Ruth who decides not to ‘run after the younger men, whether rich or poor’? Or, is there a Boaz in you who will respect a woman, right in your bedroom, because righteousness demands it?

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This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lovingscripture.com/2021/10/19/ruth-1-commentary/

Ruth 1 Commentary

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The timing of this love story is the days when the Judges ruled. While the Book of Judges looks at the life of the nation of Israel, Ruth zooms into the life of an ordinary Israelite family. The Book of Ruth seeks to establish the point that the LORD had been at work ‘in the background’. At the national level, the tools used to deliver Israel were often raw, unpolished, and often very faulty. But in the background, the LORD was nurturing the seed. The Book, therefore, is about the LORD’s work of redemption wrapped in a love story.

If you have been through the Book of Judges, you will also appreciate the tone of the book with its strong godly connotations. It is such a relief!

Elimelek’s relocation to Moab during a famine gives you an impression that families amongst the various peoples were freely mingling. So we find Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah living freely in Moab. Elimelek’s family included his wife Naomi and two sons Mahlon and Kilion. While in Moab, Naomi lost her husband and her two sons. Having no reason to continue staying in Moab, and also having heard that back home there was now food to survive on, she returned home in the company of Ruth, her daughter-in-Law. It is this Ruth who becomes the main character of the book that bears her name.

“Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.” We can start from here. These famous words are important because they are a reflection of someone who had come to love and appreciate Naomi’s God. They represent Ruth’s integration into God’s family of believers.

Naomi is an evangelist. Her lifestyle ministered to Ruth. She sought the God of Israel because of this woman’s faith. This is the purpose for which the saint exists. Has anyone come to the LORD because of your lifestyle? Will someone want your God to be his God?

In the lineage of the LORD Jesus that the Gospel of Matthew presents, only five women are mentioned by name: Tamah, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary. We read about Tamah in Genesis and Rahab in Joshua. We are blessed to read about Ruth today and in the next few days. We shall read about Bathsheba in the Book of Samuel. The fifth woman is the well-known Mary, the mother of the man Jesus Christ. Put in this context, the Book of Ruth has importance well beyond these few pages.

It is exciting to read about the women who carried in their wombs the seed of salvation. There is a reason why the LORD chose Tamah. There is a reason why the LORD chose Rahab. By reading the Book of Ruth, we can possibly guess the reason for her selection. The women the man Jesus Christ called moms; this can be an interesting study!

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This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lovingscripture.com/2021/10/18/judges-21-commentary/

Judges 21 Commentary

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The Book of Judges winds down with chapter 21, and with the statement that has been used repeatedly in the closing chapters of the Book of Judges: In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit. The presence of a king means people would live by rules. But for Israel, it is the absence of the King and His rules, (represented by the Ten Commandments), that is most worrying.

In the immediate context, a good king would probably ensure a system exists to avoid events of chapter 19. Man has always looked to the man leader amongst men. The problem however is not a lack of credible leaders for humanity but a lack of the King and His rules. Unlike those days, Israel now has a King, the man Jesus Christ.

Chapter 21 opens with an assembly at Bethel. Israel is mourning the loss of one tribe: Benjamin. Why has this happened to Israel? Why should one tribe be missing from Israel? The LORD remains quiet; probably because we all know why. The Book of Judges runs us through an unending cycle of idolatry and unfaithfulness. We should know why the LORD is quiet.

The foolishly taken oath has its own message. Benjamin is representing Israel. He is not good enough to be trusted with a decent man’s daughter. Benjamin becomes like the Canaanite who Israel shouldn’t intermarry with.

Israel builds an altar and presents burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. The LORD is still quiet. Then Israel proceeds with man-made solutions to restore the ‘lost tribe. Again, the LORD is quiet.

With hindsight, we appreciate the silence. The LORD had spoken volumes and volumes concerning Israel’s way of life as one distinct from the deposed Canaanite peoples. From the Book, we cannot tell them apart.

Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Joshua 1 verse 8. What else do they expect the LORD to say? This chapter may remind us of the need to reflect on our own lives before we engage the LORD. Have we been careful to do everything written in the Book of the Law? Will burnt offerings and fellowship offerings help us when we have forgotten the rules of the Kingdom?

It is not strange at all that even in the very last chapter we can see bloody violence against Jabesh Gilead. Man's solutions are messy, raw, and altogether sinful. We can check it for ourselves. There is no law obliging Israel to clear out Jabesh Gilead. But what else do we expect from Israel? They no longer know the law of the LORD.

But is the LORD really quiet? No. Somewhere around these times, the LORD is nurturing the seed of the woman, as promised in Genesis. The promise to bless humanity was repeated to Noah in Genesis chapter 9. In Genesis chapter 12, the LORD isolated Abraham from Babel for purposes of blessing mankind. The seed would run through Isaac and then Jacob. Judah’s blessing from his father Jacob was that the scepter would not depart from under his feet until it came to whom it belonged. Between Judah and the real owner of the scepter, the man Jesus Christ, are Perez, Hezron, Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon, Salmon, Boaz, Obed, Jesse, and David, among others. In the next book, we shall read about Boaz.

What is abundantly clear is that the LORD’s promise to bless mankind is longsuffering. It survived the Book of Judges. The faithfulness of the LORD is such that no one is too dirty to receive forgiveness. Indeed it is the purpose of scripture that we see ourselves in these lines and seek the LORD in repentance and salvation. Then, unlike Israel, we can have a King to rule over our lives.

The Book of Judges ends here.

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This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lovingscripture.com/2021/10/17/judges-20-commentary/

Judges 20 Commentary

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400,000 men armed with weapons of war assembled at Mizpah. Mission? Punish the perpetrators of extreme wickedness of chapter 19 at Gibeah. Everyone is in apart from Benjamin, who actually refuses to surrender the wicked men of Gideah. Civil war ensues.

The massively outnumbered Benjamites should be defeated easily. But it doesn’t happen. The message is simple: The battle against wickedness can only be won when man seeks the face of the LORD. Yes, we need unity of purpose, and the number up against this level of wickedness is quite impressive. But the power for victory lies with the LORD. This chapter speaks to the times when we feel like our strong resolve is good enough to fight wickedness. These lines here are emphatic in stressing the point that neither good intentions nor intellectual prowess is good enough.

Every adult Christian knows there are two types of miracles. The first one happens when the LORD takes over the battle. We have seen this kind with just about every Judge that the LORD used. You achieve everything with very little or nothing at all. The second one is what we are looking at in this chapter. You achieve nothing with everything. You fail where no one else fails. When you fail when failure is nearly impossible, then you know there is a miracle.

You want to stop and reflect. Fasting and prayer help man to focus his attention on the LORD. They help draw out an understanding that the battle against wickedness isn’t one to be won on man’s physical strength. Yes, the effort is required from us. We also need strategy but the power to overcome is from above.

In reality, prayer and fasting isn’t a power bank for the saint, rather it is a humility bank. Humility demands an understanding that we cannot do it all by ourselves. Emphasis is on the grace of the LORD. It is this picture that chapter 20 wants us to see clearly. It is the first time in Judges that Israel is heading into battle with a hugely massive advantage over the enemy. They lose the battle, save for God’s intervention. The contrast is important.

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This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lovingscripture.com/2021/10/16/judges-19-commentary/

Judges 19 Commentary

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This chapter records a horrifying incident that would make the Sodomites envious. You don’t want to read it twice.

Man without the King is a complete mess. Since Israel really doesn’t want the LORD as her King, the LORD would allow Israel to install a king. The human kingship doesn’t exactly fit the bill but the LORD would approve this institution to ensure that this kind of inhuman, anti-life behavior doesn’t resurface.

The husband of the victim is careful enough not to spend a night in the ungodly Canaanite communities. Who knows what these uncircumcised and godless Canaanites would do to him? So he reasons. He lands at Gibeah to lodge there until the following day. But we have a shocker. His fellow Israelites at Gibeah are inhospitable and shockingly do to him what the Canaanites wouldn’t have probably done. This is Israel.

The entire nation is shocked. We are also shocked. Not even animals do things like this!

This is exactly the point. Man is in need of salvation. Man is in need of the King.

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me. – Jesus Christ. [Revelation 3:20. NIV]

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This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lovingscripture.com/2021/10/15/judges-18-commentary/

Judges 18 Commentary

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The chapter begins with what seems like a disclaimer. The human author seems to reflect on the sad events of these last pages of Judges with an explanation: in those days Israel had no king. The prophetic understanding would be that Israel had no King of kings.

We have a priest; we have an ephod and men enquiring of the LORD. But don’t be mistaken again. Right behind this priest is Micah’s idol with a host of other gods. Do we know the gods behind today’s so common religious lingo? Do we know who people are consulting when they claim to ‘go to the house of God’? You shall know them by their fruit. Right here, the treachery of this money-happy priest and the conduct of the Danite army tell their own story.

“Do you know that one of these houses has an ephod, some household gods, and an image overlaid with silver? Now you know what to do.” When wickedness dethrones and evicts God from your life, then you have no King, (read king); then you become envious of anything looking like a god. You can now see what this priest was presiding over: image, household gods, and an illegal ephod.

The fact that the priest delivers what appears like the message from the LORD doesn’t at all mean he is living right, or indeed he is speaking on behalf of the LORD. The success of the mission as a result of the priest’s blessing isn’t at all reason good enough to conclude all is well. Today many priests are saying a lot of good things wrapped in religious lingo but they are not speaking for the LORD. Behind them are images, household gods, and an illegal ephod. Examine their fruit and you will tell them apart.

Look at Micah again. The God who can be stolen from you; the God who you need to fight for; the God whose favor only appears with some priest; the God that the Danites threaten to kill Micah for; that God isn’t the Creator, the Almighty God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The chapter closes with a reference to another parallel worship structure that the Danites installed. Instead of having one place of worship at Shiloh, with the Ten Commandments housed in the Ark as the most important worship system, the Danites install the stolen idol with its own system of worship and an illegally instituted priesthood serving before the idol.

The Bible mentions the ‘captivity of the land’. This captivity here may be different from the two famous conquests: the conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel by Assyria, and later the conquest of the Southern Kingdom of Judah by Babylon. Dan’s idolatry made it disappear in captivity earlier than others. The possibility is that the same could have happened to the Trans-Jordan tribes as we don’t hear much from them as united Israelite communities.

So many things are happening in this book and it appears the LORD is silent. But somewhere within these Israelite communities is Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz. They are residents of Bethlehem. This should ring a bell. The LORD is at work. The seed of a king is being nurtured. So the Book of Ruth is appropriately placed just after this book. Again it is during these times that the LORD would raise Hanna to carry within her womb a prophet in Samuel. He would institute reforms and install the much-needed kingship. The Book of Samuel comes after the Book of Ruth.

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This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lovingscripture.com/2021/10/14/judges-17-commentary/

Judges 17 Commentary

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We should not be fooled by the lip service to the name of the LORD by the characters in this chapter. They have clearly forgotten the first two Commandments. We have encountered this kind before: people having a very vague picture of worship but still proceeding with their worship. The worship of the creator God has finely and delicately defined instructions. Any violation is fatally punished. Ignorance is no defense.

So what we have in this chapter is man’s way of worshiping God in direct violation of the set standards. So Micah builds a shrine and goes ahead and installs one of his own sons as a priest. The fact that Micah thinks of the young Levite from Judah as a more suitable candidate means that Micah knows something about the law concerning the acceptable practices in the worship of the LORD.

Micah said, “Now I know that the LORD will be good to me, since this Levite has become my priest.” We have paganism written all over Micah’s practices. The mention of the name of the LORD and the supposedly good intentions of his practices cannot stand in defense of a direct violation of the Commandments of the LORD.

What is the shape of our worship and who shaped it? Micah doesn’t seem to have bothered too much about it. But we should be concerned. A God we manufacture with the tools of our imagination and model according to our experiences and observations; a God we define by our practices; a God we feed and carry around by our ambitions likes and dislikes; such a God doesn’t exist. If we have learned anything from the scripture, it is this: that the LORD holds His own and defines how man is to offer worship. And the Ten Commandments are a complete list given in the simplest of languages for the simplest of us. And when measured against the Ten Commandments, Micah falls way too short. He is a very bad example of religion and provides a good case study for our own.

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This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lovingscripture.com/2021/10/13/judges-16-commentary/

Judges 16 Commentary

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Chapter 16 winds down the story of Samson. What a story! It is a nice Sunday-school story but every grown man knows men don’t have to be this dumb. Samson is an embarrassment to the menfolk. There can be an easy conclusion to the story: with his hair, Samson is strong; and without his hair, Samson is as weak as every man. To unlock this secret is the third woman in Samson's life named Delilah. But really, was this a secret? With hindsight, we can boldly say no.

The saint is warned against joking about matters of life and death. Samson is in the wrong place and in a wrong relationship. Here Samson leads himself into temptations when his prayer should be, "Lead us not into temptations". He completely ignores the fact that he and he alone stands to lose the most valuable asset in his possession - life.

As a vanity seeker, Samson has taught us a lot. He has gained nothing from his many sinful engagements. The disappointment here, and a temper there; loss of sight here and eventually a shameful death there; that is all there is for Samson. The message that the wages of sin is death is very loud in this chapter.

Blind and bound, and haired again Samson is led into the idol temple to perform for his captors. Samson’s prayer has a tone of a man who has reflected on his life. Indeed that is the LORD’s desire that man calls out to him from his land of captivity. The story of Samson holds value for many who find themselves in circumstances wrought on self by self. A man who admits his own foolishness has hope because the LORD can hear prayer even at this point.

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This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lovingscripture.com/2021/10/12/judges-15-commentary/

Judges 15 Commentary

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One can decide to focus on the awesome strength of Samson and never get disappointed. Imagine the strength of a single man who rounds up a pack of 300 foxes! Most men will have problems catching one chicken! It took three thousand men from Judah to ask him to surrender to the Philistines. And how happy he was to have yet another opportunity to avenge himself on the Philistines.

The story of Samson it telling us a lot more than just the escapades of a morally weak but physically strong man. Of course, there is an important message that physical strength can always be outdone by moral weakness. But the meat in the message is that with the LORD, Israel is as strong as Samson. One would put a thousand to flight. The LORD is demonstrating the vast possibilities available to Israel if Israel lives a life of dedication to the LORD.

The many things wrong about Samson are the many things wrong about Israel.

This chapter records three battles and consequently three moments of victory for Israel. We notice that these attacks are one-man attacks. This in itself reflects Samson’s lack of leadership sense. Later in the Book of Samuel, we shall see how the Philistines build a successful military team around Goliath. But Samson is Samson. His strength doesn’t become Israel’s. Samson is a very good example of how one should not use their gift.

Look at the battles again. Look at the strength of Samson. Israel was going to be completely free of enemy oppression had Samson possessed even a pint of substance in him. Our individual talents can achieve more if packaged with the right ambition. Who doesn’t feel bad about Samson’s wasted gift?

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This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lovingscripture.com/2021/10/11/judges-14-commentary/

Judges 14 Commentary

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His father and mother replied, “Isn’t there an acceptable woman among your relatives or among all our people? Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines to get a wife?” Indeed, isn't there an acceptable man or woman among the brethren? Must you go to the nightclub to get a spouse?

With the story of Samson, we are looking at the Sovereign working out everything to serve His purposes. But from where we stand, how we wish Samson’s anger was stirred by a noble theme. How impressed and encouraged we are when we see David’s anger flare up because of Goliath’s insult against the LORD! But Samson is Samson. So the stories would always revolve around his women and his desire to get even with his perceived aggressors.

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