5 minute Bible

Igorot Beggar photo by martiniko

Peter gets some powerful lines in these two great chapters :) Since I was a child I’ve loved his: “I don’t have silver and gold, but what I do have I’ll give you. Get up and walk!” So different from what we usually hear… And then when faced by the authorities he talks about his Master as the “Stone the builders rejected” quoting Ps 118:22. This superb Psalm all through contrasts human power and “protection” with God’s steadfast love that endures forever…

So in these chapters, two powerful reminders from Peter that Christian faith is NOT about human power, just the opposite. And the challenge of hearing how the first Christians lived. The Bible is perspicuous, we just wish we could remain blind and deaf!

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In this 5 minute recording I try to introduce Daniel, a book that has been placed among the prophets in Christian Bibles (following the tradition of the old Greek translation) but is not a “prophet” in the Hebrew Bible. The book contains two sorts of material, stories about Daniel, like this one “Daniel in the Lions’ Den”, and records of Daniel’s visions, which seem to speak in a half hidden coded language. The visions are rather like Revelation in the New Testament, and scholars class both as “apocalyptic” (from the Greek for uncover or reveal what is hidden). The stories are most like the stories of Joseph and Esther.

I also suggest that reading chapter 6 (Daniel in the Lions’ Den) with chapter 3 (The burning firey furnace) adds an important link between Daniel and the Christian message in the New Testament.

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Proverbs are pithy sayings. Short, thought-provoking, often using vivid imagery proverbs work by making you think. But they are often used as a source of quick simple answers. The book of Proverbs is a collkection of loads of such sayings with a long preface and short epilogue that encourage young men to meditate on this advice. The goal of Proverbs is lives lived well.

A proverb can be applied like a Band Aid to appropriate situations, BUT their greatest value is when you meditate them. So Proverbs 10-30 is the one part of the Bible that is better read verse-by-verse. This most secular of Bible books offers surface results (wealth, success…) but with under the radar spirituality.

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Most of Proverbs contains collections of proverbs (pithy sayings about life) but the book has a nine chapter prologue and a half chapter epilogue. The epilogue is a poem describing an ideal(ised) wife. The prologue seeks to motivate the student (a young male – notice all the “my son” language) to follow his mother’s advice and live a faithful, respectable, respectful, honest life.

The last chapters sex up this motivational speech by picturing Wisdom as a woman, who should become the young man’s fiancee and eventually bride.

The podcast though focuses on these chapters, with a short digression explaining what the Apocrypha is.

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There are some technical details to explain: what a “hymn” is (not a long old-fashioned worship song), what it means to “bless God” and the meaning of hesed. But mainly this podcast aims to encourage you to  hear the celebration of the creator God who is gracious, even to those who do not deserve it, merciful and above all faithful. It’s a beautiful psalm, that expresses how God is not “a god” clearly and sharply, and it just begs us to join in blessing Yahweh!

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