That posture marks David’s cry in Psalm 17. He wrote of “deadly enemies that surround me” (Psalm 17:9) who “advance against me” and are “determined to throw me to the ground” (v.11). David’s prayer here is a deep cry for justice as he appealed to his character and his faithfulness to God. In verse 1, he wrote, “listen to my prayer— from lips free of deceit.” David reminded the Lord that he had sought to follow Him well, but David did not rely on his own works so that the Lord would save him.

Rather, the prayer hinges on verses 6–7. David said: “I call on you, God, because you will answer me; listen closely to me; hear what I say. Display the wonders of your faithful love, Savior of all who seek refuge from those who rebel against your right hand.” In this prayer we see two primary pillars that David stood on as he felt oppressed on every side by his enemies.

First, David appealed to the Lord’s faithfulness to hear: “I call on you, God, because you will answer me” (v.6). This appears throughout the psalms as a consistent phrase of David’s because he could trace through his life story the times he had seen the Lord hear and respond to him. David’s plea is personal, rooted in his own experience of God always hearing, always caring for him.

Second, David called upon the “faithful love” of the Lord. The Hebrew word he used here is hesed, a word often used to describe the unfailing faithfulness of God. This specific word is used in Scripture for the love God showed to Abraham and Joseph, the love David showed to Jonathan and Mephibosheth, the love that appears more than one hundred times in the psalms, the love Boaz showed to Ruth and Naomi, and on and on. In Exodus 34, when God revealed himself to Moses, He used the word hesed when He said, “The LORD—the LORD is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth” (Exodus 34:6).

David’s prayer for mercy and deliverance was not based on his actions or emotions; rather, it was deeply rooted in his knowledge of God’s character (His hesed) and His faithfulness to hear. As we pray throughout this Lenten season, may we remember to pray to the Lord who is faithful to love us in every circumstance. He is the Savior of all who seek refuge.

In Acts 5, Gamaliel the Pharisee encountered a similar situation with the Sanhedrin, the high Jewish court. The Jewish leaders had yet again imprisoned the apostles for preaching the gospel. The apostles were no longer the frightened men who ran when Jesus was captured. Instead, they were risking their lives, regular imprisonment, and beatings to tell the world about the Messiah. They knew what they had seen, claiming “we are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him” (Acts 5:32).

The Sanhedrin persisted, and the revered Gamaliel stepped in. He warned the leaders, who felt their power threatened by these upstart and unstoppable apostles, that they didn’t know what they didn’t know. He said, “For if this plan or this work is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them.” (vv.38–39).

If the Sanhedrin were right, the apostles would likely be killed. But if they were wrong, if the apostles were telling the truth about Jesus, then they might be “found fighting against God” (v.39).

French philosopher Blaise Pascal offered a similar argument in the seventeenth century. His famous wager posited that either God exists or he doesn’t. If people didn’t believe in God and they were right, then they would lose little. But if they didn’t believe in God and they were wrong, they would lose everything. He said, “Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.”

I find myself often spinning into doubt, playing the same game as the Sanhedrin. What does it cost to follow Jesus? Do I tight-fist my own power, idols, and control? But I know, because of the work of the Holy Spirit, the gift of faith lives in me. The same gift that propelled the apostles to preach, day after day, no matter the cost, is mine! And so I pray today for less doubt, for less self-reliance, for more faith; and I hope I will have the same strength as the apostles, who “every day in the temple, and in various homes, they continued teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah” (v.42).

Verse 43 of today’s reading felt like a punch in the gut to me, a turn of phrase that exposed all my idols with its economical nine words. This is a reading about the Pharisees, those oft-demonized leaders of the Jewish people in Jesus’s time. I’ve heard illustrations that compare me to the Pharisees dozens of times: I struggle with legalism (which is true), I focus on outward actions rather than inward transformation (also true), I struggle to believe (definitely true). But this particular description of the Pharisees really knocked me flat.

In this passage, John recounted Isaiah’s prophecy and experience to contextualize the Pharisees’ disbelief in Jesus as the Messiah. In Isaiah 53:1, Isaiah asked, “Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” When John made this reference, he was showing us how Jesus fulfilled yet another prophecy in the Old Testament. This is a hallmark of John’s Gospel, revealing these glimpses backward to show us the true nature and identity of Jesus. Jesus had done so much to fulfill the words of the prophets; He had “performed so many signs in their presence,” and yet, “they did not believe in him” (John 12:37).

But what struck me today wasn’t what this passage reveals about Jesus (though that is, as always, incredibly important). It was what it reveals about the Pharisees and what it reveals about me. Yes, the Pharisees are often painted as evil. But who were they? They were men who guarded the truth. Men who dedicated their lives to God’s law, to following it and teaching it. They were misguided by their unwillingness to change, to see the mystery and providence of God in the divinity of Jesus. Tolstoy called it the “stationary righteousness of the Pharisee,” this rigid belief in the words on the page, rather than the incarnate Christ standing before them.

Pharisees measured their life by their actions, but it was all they had known. Their north star was the Word of God, but they did not see the Word made flesh who dwelled among them. I am duly convicted: by my own unwillingness to turn to Christ but also my willingness to only dwell on the grace of Jesus at the expense of following His law. I can learn from both the Pharisees’ mistakes and their commitment to the Word of God.

But the prioritization John gives us in verse 47 is the piece to remember, the pin that holds together this tension of belief and action. We should love God’s Word as much as the Pharisees loved the law, and we should love Jesus and cling to Him. Our actions should be for Jesus, not for humankind. We should love the praise of God more than the praise of humans. May we crave the praise of God more than anything else, and may our lives reflect the limitless love of Christ.

To my Sunday School teacher, this information served to amplify the already stunning miracle, adding to our awe of Jesus. Feeding five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish is impressive enough, but what if it were really fifteen or twenty thousand?

But for me, one of the best gifts of reading Scripture, especially familiar stories, isn’t these amplifications; it’s how new things rise to the top when we read and reread. In today’s reading, the parallel stories of Numbers 11 and John 6 stopped me in my tracks. I’ve read both of them dozens of times, heard them taught from my earliest Sunday School days, and yet, the way they mirror each other captivated me today. Scripture is such a sprawling web of connections and references and adjunct stories; beginning to untangle it never gets old.

Leading up to our Numbers 11 passage, the Israelites had fled from slavery in Egypt. But when they were alone in the desert, they had nothing. Nothing to eat, nothing to drink, no schedule or plan or anything. So they, naturally, began to complain and ask Moses if there was a plan. Moses pressed the Lord for a response.

But Moses replied, “I’m in the middle of a people with six hundred thousand foot soldiers, yet you say, ‘I will give them meat, and they will eat for a month.’ If flocks and herds were slaughtered for them, would they have enough? Or if all the fish in the sea were caught for them, would they have enough?”
—Numbers 11:21–22

Jesus and His disciples shared a similar back-and-forth. Philip said, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread wouldn’t be enough for each of them to have a little” (John 6:7). Then Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish and fed everyone, with abundant leftovers.

We often bring our own needs before God with the same doubt and scoffing as the Israelites and Philip. We ask for much with little faith. In these two stories, we see the Lord provide because our God is a God of abundance, not scarcity. He cares for us lavishly. He doesn’t offer the bare minimum or only what we need to survive. He provides “everything required for life and godliness” through the gift of Jesus (2 Peter 1:3).

Our girls’ names act as bridges from the past to the future; they remind us we come from somewhere and someone and that the story of our families will continue long past us. Their names fill us with emotion: with love for those long-gone and hope for those yet to come.

In John 1:29–51, Jesus was given seven names or titles by the various people He encountered. Throughout our study in John, we’ll look at several descriptive names Jesus used for Himself. For today’s reading, let’s focus on these twenty-three verses in John 1 where Jesus was given seven names that present specific information about Jesus’s identity and mission. Each name represents the past, present, and future of God’s plan for redeeming the world.

The Lamb of God (John 1:29)
John the Baptist, Jesus’s relative and a prophet who prepared the Jewish people for the coming Messiah, called Jesus the “Lamb of God,” a reference to the Passover event in Exodus 12, Isaiah 53:7, and several other passages in the Old Testament. In the Mosaic law, lambs were a sacrificial option for sin offerings to God. Jesus was the ultimate sacrificial lamb who died once and for all for the sins of His people.

Son of God (v.34)
John the Baptist also called Jesus the “Son of God” in this passage. Jesus is called the Son of God throughout the Gospel of John, which emphasizes His deity. Jesus was fully God and fully man.

Rabbi or Teacher (v.38)
Two of John the Baptist’s followers, or disciples, called Jesus “Rabbi” when they saw Him. Rabbi is the Hebrew word for teacher. This title was given to official teachers of the Jewish law as a way to show respect.

Messiah, the Christ (v.41)
In verse 41, Andrew (John’s disciple who became Jesus’s disciple) told his brother Simon Peter that Jesus was the Messiah. Messiah (the English translation of a Hebrew word) and Christ (the English translation of the Greek word for Messiah) both mean “the anointed one.” This title referred to the promised savior of God’s people.

The One Moses Wrote About (v.45)
Philip, after believing in Jesus upon meeting Him, called Jesus the “one Moses wrote about.” By doing this, Philip recalled the Old Testament prophecies made incarnate in the person of Jesus.

King of Israel (v.49)
In verse 49, Philip also introduced Nathanael to Jesus, and Nathanael believed and followed Jesus. Nathanael then called him “Son of God…the King of Israel.” This name points back to Old Testament promises of an eternal king.

Son of Man (v.51)
Jesus called Himself “Son of Man” a dozen times in the Gospel of John.

In these verses, seven names give us a rich tapestry of Jesus: His purpose, His nature, and His power. These names teach us about Jesus, reminding us who He is and why He came. And they beckon our hope in the future we have because of Him.

A few summers ago, one of my best friends went to Greece. He didn’t go to see the Acropolis or the Parthenon or to eat feta and olives by the handful. Instead, he spent several months on the island of Lesbos tending to thousands of refugees who had flooded there from war-ravaged Syria.

He sent pictures of little children, of lines of people waiting for blankets and clothes, of tents, of towers made of life jackets used to keep people afloat after their lifeboats sank. And he sent one picture of a fence post with these words scribbled across it, a holy graffiti: On earth as it is in heaven.

Every text, every story, every picture made me catch my breath and whisper a prayer. If you search online for his camp, you see headlines with words like “trapped” and “welcome to prison,” “horrific” and “languishing.” A few months after he left, his camp burned to the ground. Tears flow as I write this just thinking about it.

The people of God were hardly strangers to displacement. I hesitate to pull a direct parallel to the refugees from Syria because in reading Nehemiah 11 we see a cautious return to their forsaken home. Even while many Syrian refugees (at this point in time) have been able to return, the circumstances continue to unfold with ongoing hardship, challenges, and uncertainty. It feels odd to use them as an illustration here without being able to do something to ease the tragedy of their situation. But I believe we have to sit in that together and feel the unease and discomfort.

We know that God’s people felt the pain of being dispersed during the exile. They were torn apart from their families, and they watched their cities burn. But at the end of Nehemiah, Jerusalem was ready. The walls were strong again. And yet, the people didn’t come willingly.

Nehemiah 11:1–2 tells us that they had to cast lots to decide who had to live in Jerusalem. They blessed the people who volunteered to live there. Why? Because Jerusalem would be the target of all of Israel’s enemies. Matthew Poole described the situation so poetically in his commentary on Nehemiah, saying, “This city was the butt of all the malicious plots of their enemies.” The return to David’s holy city wasn’t marked by a parade, by triumphant singing, or by celebration. It was marked by trepidation, a slow and careful entrance into the city that God had given them once again.

I can imagine the Israelites were tired, limping across a finish line that still didn’t seem ideal. They were home, but they still had only the Lord to keep them safe. They knew the walls of Jerusalem had been burned once, and they could be burned again.

Like the Israelites, we are still seeking a safe haven, a homeland. We, too, serve a God who is preparing a city for us—a heavenly city, where there will be no need for walls to protect us because we will dwell with God in perfect peace forever (Hebrews 11:16).

These promises from God remind me of the hymn “Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah.” It is the mournful cry of a pilgrim people who know that one day, we will be home. “When I tread the verge of Jordan / bid my anxious fears subside. / Death of death, and hell’s destruction / Land me safe on Canaan’s side. // Land me safe on Canaan’s side / bid my anxious fears / bid my anxious fears goodbye.”

Written by Melanie Rainer

In reality, the work of gardening is work—hard work. It’s never simply warm when my garden needs tending because I live in the south and it is almost always scorching hot. It’s sweaty labor, on sore knees and with callused fingers, pulling up the same weeds week after week. I love it for what it produces; I usually dread the work to get there. 

The people of Judah—the southern kingdom—had been exiled by the Babylonians. Their temple and city of Jerusalem were destroyed, their lives in ruin. After they returned to their city, the good work of rebuilding began. 

But then it got hard. While they envisioned the glorious return of God’s presence to his holy temple, the reality of building felt daunting. Then their neighbors from Samaria started attacking them, making the job really, really hard. So they stopped. For years. 

The prophet Haggai served an important role as God’s messenger by encouraging the people to return to the work of rebuilding the temple. And Haggai prophesied directly to Zerubbabel, who was the governor of Judah, saying “‘Go up into the hills, bring down lumber, and build the house; and I will be pleased with it and be glorified,’ says the LORD” (Haggai 1:8). 

Zerubbabel responded instantly. Verse 12 says, “Then Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, the high priest Joshua son of Jehozadak, and the entire remnant of the people obeyed the LORD their God and the words of the prophet Haggai, because the LORD their God had sent him.” The Lord later honored Zerubbabel’s response and hard work, saying “‘I will take you, Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, my servant’—this is the LORD’s declaration—’and make you like my signet ring, for I have chosen you’”  (Haggai 2:23). The signet ring marked the authority given by God to rule his people; as Zerubbabel was part of King David’s family, this symbolized the continuation of God’s covenant with David—that someone from his house would rule God’s people forever.

Working for the Lord can often feel slow, tedious, or like we’re under attack constantly. The fruit is not ours (it is the Holy Spirit’s alone) but we are empty vessels in the Lord’s hand. We are more like the Judeans than Zerubbabel—slow to listen or to do the hard things required to tend to our spiritual well-being. But as Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 15:58, “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” 

Part of our liturgy in our weekly worship service is confession of our sin to one another. As a congregation—as brothers and sisters knit together by our sin, suffering, hope, and dependence on Jesus—we confess our sins together. We lament the brokenness of the world and the way sin has intersected with our relationships, our motivations, and creation. Then, the liturgist leading the morning’s confession will speak over all of us an assurance of our pardon, reminding us using the words of Scripture that Christ accomplished everything we need for full forgiveness and acceptance. We often use the words of Psalm 103:8–12, “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love. He will not always accuse us or be angry forever. He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve or repaid us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his faithful love toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” It’s our weekly proclamation of the gospel.

Reading Isaiah 56–57 reminds me of this practice. We are people incapable of following the law, and we are desperately dependent on the High and Exalted One (Isaiah 57:15) to save us and guarantee our salvation and forever with Him. 

These two chapters of Isaiah bring to mind the Ten Commandments, with many reminders of the original laws woven into this proclamation from the Lord: “who keeps the Sabbath” (Isaiah 56:2), “[who] love the name of the LORD” (v.6), those who are “offspring of liars” (Isaiah 57:4), “who burn with lust…[and] slaughter children” (v.5), who “poured out a drink offering” to others (v.6). These chapters read like an accusation, the charged confession of all the ways the Israelites have strayed away from the Lord’s commands.  

And yet, Isaiah 57 does not conclude with a final punishment or a just verdict. Rather, the Lord says, “For the High and Exalted One, who lives forever, whose name is holy, says this: ‘I live in a high and holy place, and with the oppressed and lowly of spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and revive the heart of the oppressed. For I will not accuse you forever, and I will not always be angry’” (vv.15–16). 

The “High and Exalted One, who lives forever, whose name is holy” is Jesus. And Jesus is the one who will lead and restore comfort to us (v.18), the ones who suffer and mourn because of our indwelling sin. And during Lent this year, as we look toward Easter we must remember how deep our disobedience is and how perfect Christ’s love and payment is. This is the reminder of Isaiah’s words in these chapters, and it is the greatest gift we have. 

Written by Melanie Rainer

Some cultural background helps this story because it’s a rather tangled web of relationships. Levirate marriage was a practice in the ancient Near East that was later written down in Deuteronomy 25 as part of the Mosaic law. Basically, it meant that if a man died before he had a child, his brother had to marry his wife, and their first child would carry on the first (dead) brother’s name and place in the deceased brother’s lineage.

Judah had three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. Er married a woman named Tamar, and Er was so evil that he died. Onan married Tamar but didn’t want to preserve his brother’s place in the lineage, and because he did not impregnate Tamar, was killed for his sin. Judah had seen both of his sons die after marrying Tamar, so he hid Shelah away and kept him from Tamar.

Tamar, the widow who had the right to bear Judah’s eldest son’s child and continue the family line, responded. She dressed as a prostitute, tempted Judah, and conceived a child with him without him knowing who she was (Genesis 38:13–19). Later, when Judah found out she was pregnant, he threatened to kill her for adultery (against Shelah, whom she was technically betrothed to). When she revealed that Judah was, in fact, the father, he then admitted that he had wronged her. Tamar had twin sons, Perez and Zerah, and Perez continued the family line.

There is a lot of background to unpack in this unlikely story of God’s faithfulness to a family. Judah almost destroyed promises made to his great-grandfather: the blessing of the whole world through the line of Abraham. God had made a promise to Abraham, and He continued that promise to Isaac and to Jacob. At so many turns, the promise appears threatened by someone’s sin. 

But the author of this very complicated story is the author of the ultimate story: The story here makes a way for all of His promises, and we are given the free gift of grace purchased on the cross by Jesus. God can and does redeem the hardest, most impossible, most complicated stories. What a gift it is to be His.

Envy is threaded through the Bible, a throughline of sin from Cain and Abel, Rachel and Leah, Saul and David, the Pharisees who watched Jesus draw crowds to Himself, and more. In history, art, and literature, examples are rampant. In Shakespeare’s Othello, Iago cautions Othello about such envy: “Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.”

Joseph was the victim of his brothers’ jealousy, which robbed him of his family, his home, his dignity, and almost his life. His brothers stripped him of his robe and would have killed him, but instead, they sold him to a band of traders. It was perhaps the equivalent of death in their eyes; they expected to never see him again and delivered the news of his death to their father, Jacob.

As modern readers, we know how the story goes: Joseph trusted the Lord, and the Lord protected him. He rose to power in Egypt and eventually saved his family from famine and forgave his brothers. But the moment we read about today in Genesis 37 doesn’t have any of that goodness—only pain. And by not reading ahead, we must face the devastation that jealousy wreaked on Joseph’s brothers. Jacob mourned the loss of his son and could not be comforted. Joseph was sold again, this time to an Egyptian official. No longer in control, Joseph had lost all agency at the hands of his jealous brothers.

This is that same “green-eyed monster,” and throughout Scripture, we are warned against its fallout. Proverbs 14:30 cautions that “a tranquil heart is life to the body, but jealousy is rottenness to the bones.” Ecclesiastes 4:4 tells us that “all labor and all skillful work is due to one person’s jealousy of another. This too is futile and a pursuit of the wind.” And James 3:16 advises that “where there is envy and selfish ambition, there is disorder and every evil practice.”

Scripture certainly doesn’t hold back about the consequences of jealousy, and neither should we. As I read about Joseph’s story, I’m aware that I should “let the story read me” too: Where is my jealousy hurting people that I love? Where is it corroding my heart and sowing disorder? Where is it disordering my priorities away from Christ and toward my own selfish gain? These are important questions to ask because jealousy isn’t something to be taken lightly. My prayer is that I never will.