Street Life Worldwide | Urban Missions & Media

55 days down, 310 to go.

Today’s scriptures for my Read the Bible in a Year plan are Leviticus 15:1 – 16:28; Mark 7:1-23; Psalms 40:11-17; Proverbs 10:13-14.

My thoughts from today’s reading:

1. THE BIBLE AND STD’S
2. INDIANA JONES HAD IT WRONG – God is in you, not a gold box
3. WHAT REALLY MATTERS IS WHAT’S IN YOUR HEART – PART 1
4. POOR AND NEEDY? Talk to God
5. I PITY THE FOOL! – Mr. T had it right

1. THE BIBLE AND STD’S
Just in case you still haven’t figured out yet, there’s nothing new under the sun, and that the bible covers almost every issue you can imagine. From murder to rape to prostitution to adultery to intoxication to drugs to robbery to murder…you name it, it’s in there.

Even STD’s. That’s right. It’s a problem today and it was a problem thousands of years ago.

Nowadays, we can wash our hands whenever we want, and we have medications to clear up things that soap cannot. But even today, if you get that burning sensation, that leakage or that weird rash “down there”, you’ve got some problems.

Well, it was no different back in the Old Testament. Read Leviticus 15 to see how God handled everything from STD’s (referred to as “discharge”) to hygiene after sexual intercourse, to sexual intercourse with a woman during her period. God ain’t scared.

2. INDIANA JONES HAD IT WRONG – God is in you, not a gold box
You remember that scene from the Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Indie and his gal were tied to that pole and the Nazi were going to steal the Ark of the Covenant to use it as a weapon of war.

The special effects were cheesy by today’s standards, but when the German bad guys opened the ark, all kinds of lightning and “power” and weird looking stuff shot out of it, killing all whose eyes were open to see it. In fact, they didn’t just die, their flesh melted off their bones and they became a pile of quivering goo.

Well this made for a fitting and satisfying fate for the movie’s bad guys. However, it was not, nor was it intended to be, accurate.

In the Old Testament, God lived in the Tabernacle, hovering in a cloud above the Ark of the Covenant, in the Holy of Holies – the inner most, and most holy locale on the face of the earth.

In Leviticus 16:1-28, we see that even the priests, who God Himself ordained, couldn’t just go in and out of this place as they pleased.

Leviticus 16:6
6 “Aaron will present his own bull as a sin offering to purify himself and his family, making them right with the Lord.

Now if the Indiana Jones movie had been set back in that time, it would have been accurate. Anyone approaching the Ark, much less opening it, outside of God’s specific parameters would die. We don’t exactly know the method of death, but who’s to say it couldn’t have been by their flesh melt off their bones?

But God no longer lives in a gold box, or in a cloud above, or any specific locale. Jesus switched the game up entirely on the cross. Through His blood, we humans – those of us who believe – became the new temple of God.

God lives in us if we ask him, and we don’t even have to go through a million purification rituals and blood sacrifices to get there. Jesus blood was all that it took, and now God Himself, the creator of all things seen and unseen, comes to mysteriously and unexplainably live within us sinful and wretched human creatures, transforming us into glorious members of a holy family.

Try that one on for size.

3. WHAT REALLY MATTERS IS WHAT’S IN YOUR HEART – PART 1
This story was also told in Matthew 15, but we see it again here in Mark 7:1-23.

In Mark 7, the Pharisees are haggling once again with Jesus over legalistic matters, meaning they were treating the letter of religious law and their traditions with more importance than God’s command and His intention behind them.

Additionally, the religious leaders had begun to elevate their traditions to the status of God’s laws, and they were using both to wield authority instead of lead people to righteousness and health.  In effect, they had hijacked God’s laws and His purposes, and usurped it with their traditions and their purposes.

Jesus knew this, and whenever the religious leaders of his day attacked him for not following their law, He took it as an opportunity to point out to them that no matter how much they followed the law and forced others to do so also, that it meant nothing because their heart was in the wrong place.

A great example of this is Mark 7:1-23 when the Pharisees ask Jesus why His disciples violated their time-honored tradition by not washing their hands before they eat. Jesus harshly rebukes them for missing the point, and points out their hypocrisy in placing their tradition above God’s commands. Then, with great insight and reason, he completely dismantles their argument. He says that, “You are not defiled by what you eat. You are defiled by what you say and do” (CEV).

The Pharisees of the day had missed the point entirely. While they were so busy accusing people every chance they got, they failed to treat people with compassion, speaking condescendingly and intentionally entrapping them.

So Jesus’ point was that if you don’t wash your hands, maybe you eat dirty food, but it will soon pass from your body. But if you say and do bad things, then you have a real problem because the root of the things you say and do is in your heart; and Jesus says that from a wicked heart flow all sorts of bad things that will defile you spiritually before God, but eating with dirty hands will never defile you and make you unacceptable to God.

4. POOR AND NEEDY? Talk to God
Politically speaking, Republicans traditionally believe in smaller government, while Democrats favor a larger government more involved in the day to day affairs of citizens.

The poorer one may be, the more likely he is to align himself with democrats in order to receive aid from taxpayer supported government welfare programs.

This can of course easily create an entitlement mentality, especially when a family is on government support for generations. On the flip side, it creates a bit of a resistance from those who are not in need of government support, whose tax dollars pay for the programs that serve those who are in need of it.

Of course, if the shoe was on the other foot, who knows how things would work out.

Politics aside, however, we can rely on God to provide our needs, no matter how poor and needy we are, if keep our faith and trust in Him.

Psalm 40:17
17 As for me, since I am poor and needy,
      let the Lord keep me in his thoughts.
   You are my helper and my savior.
      O my God, do not delay.

5. I PITY THE FOOL! – Mr. T had it right
Mr. T had it right. “I pity the fool!” And according to scripture, you should pity them…because they’re going to get beat. Just thought this one was a bit comical.

Proverbs 10:13
13 Wise words come from the lips of people with understanding,
      but those lacking sense will be beaten with a rod.